Sins of the Night (Dark-Hunter 7)

Urian shook his head. "No, old man. I'm your enemy." Urian grabbed the dagger from Alexion's hand and ran at his father with it while Alexion went for Danger.

"Retreat!" Stryker ordered his Daimons an instant before five bolt-holes appeared.

Stryker hesitated, looking at Urian for a long minute, before he jumped through and vanished.

His heart broken, Alexion gathered Danger into his arms while Xirena stared at them from where Kyros had set her down. Alexion pressed a cloth to Danger's chest to stop the blood flow from her injury.

The demon was wounded but, unlike Danger, not fatally. Stryker hadn't stabbed the demon in the heart.

Urian turned on him. "What the hell was that action, Shade? My life was supposed to be kept secret."

"Shut up, Urian," Alexion growled as he held Danger and fought against the tears that wanted to blind him. Fought against the debilitating pain that overwhelmed him.

His entire being was screaming out in pain as it refused to believe what had happened to her.

"Come on, baby," he whispered to her as he gently rocked her in his arms. "Don't die on me."

"It should heal," Danger whispered softly in a voice that belied her pain. "Why isn't the wound healing?"

"I'm sorry, akri," Xirena whispered. "Xirena didn't mean to get stabbed and let your woman die."

Urian joined them, his face pale as he noted her chest wound. "Did Stryker stab her with his personal dagger?"

"Yes," Alexion choked, noting the haunted look behind Urian's eyes. No doubt the man was reliving the death of his own beloved wife at Stryker's hands.

"Is there any way to save her?" he asked the Daimon.

"Acheron!" Urian called.

Alexion tensed as he heard a summons he knew Acheron wouldn't heed. He knew the rules of his mission. Acheron wouldn't interfere.

Danger was going to die.

The pain of that thought lacerated his chest and shredded his heart.

It brought tears to his eyes that he couldn't stop.

"I wish he would have had your soul," Alexion whispered against her cheek. "At least then I could have made you human."

"Can't you call on Ash's powers to heal her?" Urian asked.

Alexion shook his head. The power over life and death wasn't one Acheron was willing to share.

Kyros fell to his knees beside them. "I'm so sorry, Danger. None of the Dark-Hunters were supposed to be hurt tonight. Dammit, this is all my fault."

Alexion glared at him and his stupidity as his anger swelled, wanting to kill his so-called friend. "How do you figure? You were trying to turn them against Acheron."

"I know," Kyros said with a sincere gaze. "I screwed up. I'm so sorry. Stryker was so convincing. At first he turned Marco, and the next thing I knew, Marco was dead. Stryker swore it was you who killed him. I should never have listened to him."

But Alexion wasn't really listening to Kyros at the moment. All he could hear was Danger's breathing getting lighter and lighter.

She choked as she struggled to continue breathing. She reached up and touched his cheek with a cold hand. "If anything is left of me, will you take it to France? There's a mass grave in a park in Paris-"

"I know that park," Alexion said. It was where the victims of the guillotine had all been buried.

Danger took a deep breath. "My father, his wife, and my brother and sister are there. If I can't be with you, I want to be with them."

Alexion nodded as tears choked him. "I promise, Danger. I won't let you be alone."

She offered him a wan smile. "We had fun, didn't we, mon coeur?" She stroked his cheek with her thumb. "I'm so going to miss you."

Then he felt it... that last expulsion of breath from her body.

She went limp in his arms as her hand fell away from his face.

Alexion threw his head back and cried out as pain tore through him. In that moment, he hated Acheron. He hated Kyros. He hated Stryker, but most of all he hated himself for not being able to protect her.

Xirena and Kyros stayed back, their faces pale as they watched him, but Alexion didn't care. Nothing mattered except the woman who lay limply in his arms.

A woman whose vibrancy had shown him how to live again. More than that, she had shown him how to love. She had reached inside his heart and made it beat for the first time in more than nine thousand years.

Now she was gone.

And his heart would never beat again.

No! his heart screamed in denial. She couldn't die. Not like this. Not someone who had loved to live so much. Someone who had spent her life helping others.

She had believed in him and he had let her die...

Urian paced back and forth between Kyros and Xirena, and Danger and Alexion. "I can't believe Ash just let her die," he growled. He looked up at the ceiling. "You are a fucking asshole!"

"No," Alexion said as tears fell, while he held her cold, pale body to his chest. "It has to be this way. He can't change fate."

"The fuck he can't," Urian snarled angrily. "He brought me back and I was a Daimon. Why would he save me and not her?"

Alexion had no answer to that. He didn't have any answers at the moment. All he could feel was the pain of her loss. The agony. It was raw and consuming.

How could she be dead?

How could he have allowed this to happen? Damn me, damn me, damn me!

"I'm sorry I failed you, akri," Xirena said.

Alexion didn't speak. He couldn't.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared in the room.

Acheron flashed into a corner, where he stood with a stoic expression.

Urian turned on him with a curled lip.

"Don't even, Daimon." Acheron zapped him out of there before Urian could speak.

"Kyros," Acheron said gently. "Go home and rest."

Then he, too, was gone.

Acheron hesitated as the demon stared at him as if he were an apparition.

Her face was ghostly pale from her fear of him. "Will you kill Xirena now?"