Acheron (Dark-Hunter 14)

He curled his lip at her reminder. "Don't push me, Artie. I'm one step away from the edge and it wouldn't take much to step over it. Trust me, you don't want me there. Now get out of my sight. I don't ever want to see you here in my domain again."

Her tears started falling again, but this time they didn't affect him. He refused to allow that. She'd changed him from the man he'd been.

The whore was dead and a god of destruction had been born. Cursed. Hated. Powerful. Lethal.

His hatred for the world was carved into his heart. His past was a weight he carried on his back and his future was uncertain.

He had enemies aplenty who wanted him dead, an angry mother out to end the world, a baby demon who needed to be fed every few hours, two lunatics training him for a coming war neither would explain, and a horny goddess who only wanted him chained to her bedpost.

Yeah . . . it was "good" to be back in the mortal realm. He couldn't wait to see what tomorrow would bring. Too bad he had no warning for his place in it.

Damn the Fates-his sisters who'd betrayed and condemned him to this existence.

One day, he'd pay those bitches back too.

April 10, 9526 BC

Mount Olympus

Acheron didn't know why he'd agreed to meet Artemis. The mere thought of looking at her right now was enough to make him physically sick-if he could get sick. For almost a year, he'd been cleaning up Apollo's mess. There were remnant Apollites turning into soul-sucking Daimons on a daily basis.

Not that he blamed them, really. It'd been a small group of men that the Atlantean queen had sent out to assassinate his sister and nephew. Jealous over the fact that Apollo no longer came to her bed, the Atlantean queen had turned her venom to Ryssa. In the middle of the night, the queen's men had snuck into Ryssa's bedroom and killed her while she was feeding Apollodorus.

Then after Apollo had finished killing Acheron, the god had turned on the very race of people he'd created. Since the assassins had made it appear as if an animal had torn into Ryssa and Apollodorus, Apollo cursed them to feed on each other. Only Apollite blood could sustain them. What was it with Apollo and Artemis and blood?

If that wasn't enough of a curse, Apollo had banished them from the sun so that he'd never have to see them again and be reminded of their treachery. And not to be outdone, he'd then condemned their entire race to die slowly and painfully on their twenty-seventh birthday-the same age Ryssa had been.

Given the severity of the punishment, Acheron might have thought the god loved his sister. But he knew better. Apollo was no more capable of love than Artemis was. It was nothing more than a show of power. A warning to others who might think of turning on Apollo who was now telling everyone that he'd destroyed Atlantis to get back at the Apollites.

Stupid bastard. And stupid people for believing his lies.

Acheron kept his silence, not to protect the god, but only because Apollo's pathetic arrogance amused him.

By his own stupidity the god was going to be undone. Even now Acheron's mother sat in her prison, plotting the god's death . . . along with Artemis's. No sooner had Apollo damned his people than Apollymi had gone to Strykerius, Apollo's condemned son, and showed him how to circumvent death by taking human souls into Apollite bodies and thus elongating their lives.

No wonder Savitar had failed to tell Acheron the name of the goddess Acheron would be fighting.

It was his own mother. She was the one leading the Daimon army that was set on its own vengeance. He should have known.

But then his revenge had been more direct. He'd hunted down the ones who'd killed his sister and nephew-those who'd survived his mother's attack, and he'd made them wish they'd never been born with nerve-endings.

Now he was at war with his mother.

Acheron sighed heavily. "One day, I'm going to kill those damned Fates."

But it wouldn't be today. Today he was meeting with Artemis to see why she'd been shrieking and threatening to kill him these past months. Between her and his mother ranting at him, this was the first time since he'd died that his head had been clear of their incessant nagging.

He felt the ripple of power down his spine that signified her arrival. He stiffened in expectation of her shrewish voice. When she didn't start yelling at him, he turned his head to find her hesitating.

"Why so nervous, Artemis?"

"You're very different now."

He laughed at her acute sense of perception. He was different. No longer a subservient slave, he was a pissed off god who wanted the entire world to leave him alone.

"I don't like your hair black."

He gave her a droll stare. "And I don't like your head attached to your shoulders. Guess we can't all have what we want, huh?" He narrowed his gaze on her. "I don't have time for this shit. If all you want is to gawk at me, then you can admire my back as I walk away from you."

He turned his back to her.

"Wait!"

Against his better judgment, he hesitated. "For what?"

She had approached him cautiously as if terrified of him. "Please don't be angry at me, Acheron."

He laughed bitterly at her words. "Oh, anger doesn't even begin to describe what I am at you. How dare you bring me back."

She gulped as her features drew taut. "I had no choice."

"We all have choices."

"No, Acheron. We don't."

As if he believed that. She'd always been selfish and vain and no doubt that was the only reason he'd been brought back when he should have been left dead. "Is this why you've been summoning me? You want to apologize?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sorry for what I've done. I would do it over again in a heart pound."

"Beat," he snarled, correcting her.

She waved the word away with her hand. "I want there to be peace between us."

Peace? Was she insane? She was lucky he didn't kill her right now. If it wasn't for fear of what could happen, he would have.

"There will never be peace between us. Ever. You shattered any hope of it when you watched your brother kill me and refused to speak up on my behalf."

"I was afraid."

"And I was butchered and gutted on the floor like an animal sacrifice. Excuse me if I don't feel your pain. I'm too busy with my own." He turned to leave her then, but she stopped him again.

It was then he heard the muffled whimpering of a baby. Scowling, he watched in horror as she withdrew an infant from the folds of her peplos.

"I have a baby for you, Acheron."

He jerked his arm away from her as fury singed every part of him. "You bitch! Do you honestly think that could ever replace my nephew whom you let die? I hate you. I will always hate you. For once in your life, do the right thing and return that to its mother."

She slapped him then with enough force to split his lips. "Go and rot, you worthless bastard."

Laughing, he wiped the blood away with the back of his hand while he stared venomously at her. "I may be a worthless bastard, but better that than a frigid whore who sacrificed the only man to ever love her because she was too self-absorbed to save him."

The look on her face scorched him. "I'm not the whore here, Acheron. You are. Bought and sold to anyone who could pay your fee. How dare you think for one minute you were ever worthy of a goddess."

The pain of those words seared a permanent place in his heart and soul. "You're right, my lady. I'm not worthy of you or anyone else. I'm just a piece of shit to be dumped naked in the street. Forgive me for ever sullying you."

Then he vanished from her.

Their relationship was now over. There was no power in the universe that would ever make him speak to her again.

You need her blood.