CHAPTER FIVE
Wiping her eyes, Susan pulled back from him and gaped. "Best hope for what, Catman? Death? Bankruptcy? You know, my life was going along..." She paused as she considered what she was about to say. "Well, rather crappily, to be honest, but at least no one was trying to kill me and no one was dying around me. Since I met you, my life has taken the high road to Shitsville with no off-ramp in sight. My best friends are dead. I've seen you kill a total of five people in-"
"Four," he said, interrupting her. "You took the one out with the bat crack upside his head."
Did he have to remind her of that? "And why was I playing Hank Aaron, huh? Because I stupidly took a stray cat home. Now I'm out the eighty-two dollars it cost to spring you from the shelter, my house is destroyed, my car has become Swiss cheese, and I owe my neighbor God only knows what for the little fence she keeps around her petunia bed. Thanks, Puss in Boots. Really. Thank you."
He looked aghast at her. "I can't believe you're thinking about money at a time like this."
"What am I supposed to think about?" she asked, her voice cracking, "The fact that the two people who mean the most to me in this world are gone and I can't even go to their funeral because everyone thinks I killed them?"
She ground her teeth as grief and frustration overwhelmed her. "If I'd just listened to Jimmy and got them out of there, they'd be alive now. I should have never left them alone. They're dead and it's all my fault... Yeah. That's really what I want to dwell on." She fought the tears that stung her eyes and her heart. She couldn't afford to think about Angie and Jimmy right now. Not if she wanted to stay functional. That pain was too deep, too severe for her to cope.
She could see compassion in his eyes as he cupped her cheek in his warm, callused palm. "Look, I'm really sorry for what happened to them. But you're not responsible for it. You hear me? They're dead because Jimmy found out about the Daimons and was dumb enough to think he could run from them. Trust me, he wouldn't have gone far before they found him and killed him anyway. With the information he was carrying, he was dead before you ever got there."
She scowled at him. "If you're trying to make me feel better, it's not working."
"I know." And by the look on his face, she could tell he meant that as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. "You've had one hell of a shock today." She saw respect in his eyes and something in there she couldn't identify. "You're entitled to a momentary meltdown, but believe me when I say that a momentary one is all you can afford. You are in way over your head and you've got a long road ahead of you."
"And how is that?"
"You're used to dealing with humans who don't have psychic abilities. Well, baby, the world you know just got ugly. Everything Jimmy told you at the shelter is true. You just stumbled into a war that your kind isn't even supposed to know is happening. Forget everything you thought you knew about physics and science, and now imagine a world where mankind is nothing but food to a whole race of people who want to subjugate you."
She shook her head in denial. "I don't believe in vampires."
He opened his mouth to show her his vicious set of fangs. "If you want to live past tonight, you better learn to start. "
Susan wanted to reach out and touch his teeth just to make sure they were real, but she knew the truth. She'd actually seen them in action. "What are you? Really? You said a Dark-Hunter. What is that?"
Ravyn hesitated. Having spent three hundred years as a Dark-Hunter and taken an oath to never let those outside of their circle know anything about their world were deeply ingrained in him. But this wasn't the usual set of circumstances. The Daimons had dragged her into this and if he didn't give her the truth, she was defenseless against them. Whether she wanted to be in this or not, she was.
"No. Dark-Hunters are immortals who have sworn to protect mankind by hunting down the Daimons who prey on them."
"And Daimons are?"
He took a deep breath as he thought about the easiest way to explain it to her. "Long ago, in ancient Atlantis-"
"Atlantis is real, too?" she asked, screwing her face up.
"Yes."
She shook her head. "What next? Unicorns?"
Her spunk amused him. "No, but dragons are."
She narrowed those blue eyes on him. "I really hate you," she said in a voice that was laden with venom.
He offered her a kind smile while he let the softness of her cheek soothe the heat of his blistered fingers. He should be tending his own wounds and yet he wanted to soothe her first. That didn't make sense to him. It was contrary to everything that came naturally to him, and yet here he was, explaining to her a world that she would no doubt consider preposterous.
"I don't blame you. I'd probably hate me too if I were in your shoes. But back to Atlantis. There was a race of beings there who were called Apollites."
"God, I was really hoping they were some kind of diet apple drink."
He laughed, then cringed as a shard of pain went through him. "No, they're definitely not that. Their name comes from the fact that they were created by the god Apollo. It was his plan to have them dominate the humans, but as with all best-laid plans, it blew up in his face. The Apollites turned on him by killing his mistress and son and he cursed them all to die at age twenty-seven. Slowly. Painfully."
"I bet they loved that."
"Yeah. Needless to say, it wasn't to their taste, so a group of them somehow learned that they could kill humans, suck their souls into their bodies, and elongate their lives. Since that day, whenever Apollites near their twenty-seventh birthday, they have a choice-die or start preying on humans and become Daimons. The only problem with that is that the souls they feed on aren't meant for them. As a result, the soul starts to die as soon as they pull it into their body. If it dies and they haven't taken in another one, they die, too."
She stepped back from him and ran her hands over her face as the horror of that sank in. "So they're on a constant quest to keep killing in order to stay alive."
He nodded. "And now it appears they've been able to get some of your people to help them."
"Why?"
"I don't know. You have Hollywood to thank for that. Most humans who help them have the misguided belief that the Daimons can make them immortal by biting their necks and converting them. They can't. You're either born an Apollite or you're not. There's no way for them to pass along their powers or false means of elongating their lives to a human."
She shook her head as if she couldn't believe what he was telling her. "Have you any idea how hard this is to believe?"
"Yeah, well, you might not believe in Santa Claus either, but that doesn't mean someone isn't leaving presents for the kids on Christmas Eve."