No Mercy (Dark-Hunter 18)

Chapter 10

Dev stalked through Nick's Bourbon Street mansion searching for a sign of the little prick. He had to have gone somewhere. It wasn't like Nick had simply vanished into nothing. And this was still the most likely place to find him. No matter what, Nick would always return to his home. The fact he was here as a Dark-Hunter after only having died a couple of years ago said it all. Artemis normally required a minimum of a hundred years to pass before a Dark-Hunter returned to the city he'd been killed in--the idea was that after that amount of time any immediate friends and family would be dead and the memories wouldn't be quite so harsh. But Nick needed his touchstone--this house and this city. He couldn't function without them. It was like New Orleans fed his soul, which Dev could understand. And right now he was grateful for that because it would bring Nick back into his circle.

Yeah, Ethon had told him he'd stopped by earlier looking for him and he wasn't here, but it wasn't the same.

Ethon wasn't out to kill him. He only wanted to hurt the Cajun.

Dev intended to use Nick's entrails as shoelaces, but first he needed Nick's fresh scent. No one betrays me. No one. There was too much history between him and Nick for Dev to let this one go. The fact that the little Cajun guttersnipe had brought Daimons into his home--no, his room--was a declaration of war. Nick had offered all of them up to the Daimons and Dev wanted a piece of him so bad he could already savor it. Not to mention the small fact that Nick had hurt Sam.

Yeah, the bastard was going to pay with his life.

But Nick wasn't here and from the looks and faint smell of things, he hadn't been in here in a couple of days. The house appeared to have been abandoned. The bed wasn't slept in. There were no dirty towels or even a wet sink to say he'd brushed his teeth or bathed. His Jaguar XK-R was still parked in the garage. None of his clothes or shoes seemed to be missing.

Weird. Where could he have gone? Nick had told his guard Dogs that he was going to bed. No one had seen him since and that had been four days ago.

Leaving the immaculate bedroom, Dev paused in the upstairs hallway as he spied one of the pictures on the wall that made up a huge montage of Nick's early life--something his mom must have placed here. While Nick could be an arrogant ass, he usually wasn't conceited.

The photo that drew his attention was one of him, Nick's mom, Aimee, and Nick, who'd been around the age of fifteen at the time. The women had been trying to get a good photo with him, but Nick had been Nick--goofing off and cutting up. So Dev had come up behind him and wrapped him in a headlock. Dev's mom had snapped the photo that had Nick laughing while Dev pretended to choke him and Aimee and Nick's mother had feigned shock. It was a really cute photo.

And that one moment made him take a step back from what was going on. How could that boy have grown into a man who'd threaten Dev's family? Nick had fought on their side against the wolf pack just a few months back. Sanctuary was as much his home as this house was and while Nick wasn't quite right anymore, he wasn't that different.

Was he? Could he really have betrayed them all?

What if he didn't and you're wrong about him? What if he had a reason for what he'd done?

Something strange was going on. In his gut, he knew it.

Now that he thought more about it, Nick wouldn't have breached Sanctuary without a damn good reason. The Cajun might be a lot of things, but he'd never been a turncoat.

"Boy, what have you gotten yourself into?"

"We have a problem."

Acheron froze as Urian materialized directly in front of him. Thank the gods he'd pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms before he came into the kitchen to get his wife the bowl of Chunky Monkey ice cream she'd been craving. Otherwise Urian would now be blind and he'd be even more pissed at the interruption. "Were you raised in a barn?"

A loud knock sounded on the back door.

Acheron rolled his eyes at Urian's sarcasm when it was obvious Urian had thrown the sound as a "screw you" to him. Lucky for you, I just had great sex with my wife that put me in such a happy place not even your assholishness can disturb it. Otherwise Urian would have been a flaming stain on the wall. "What's up?"

"Dev's not on crack."

Acheron licked the back of the spoon before he set it in the sink. "Never thought he was.... Ketamine maybe, but never crack. Why did you?"

Urian watched Ash return the ice cream carton to the freezer. "I just came away from a chat with one of my old friends." A term Urian reserved to describe one of the Daimons who still served his father. At one time, Urian had been Stryker's right hand. But that had been before Stryker had cold-bloodedly murdered Urian's wife and cut Urian's throat, then left him for dead. And to think, Urian was such a rotten bastard that he carried a grudge against his father for that.

Yeah...

Stryker was seriously lacking a screw in his drawer.

"He told me that the Daimons are able to take gallu demon souls into their bodies and that Stryker is converting his army with their blood."

Acheron froze at those words. The Sumerian gallu powers were intense. The ultimate in evil, one of them in a Daimon's body would make one hell of a weapon. More than that, gallu bites turned the victims into mindless drones. One could make thousands.

Crap. A Daimon would now be able to make more of their kind.

Ash could take one down without breaking a sweat, but a normal Dark-Hunter...

That would be bloody indeed. If not fatal.

"What's Stryker planning?" he asked Urian.

He gave Ash a stare that doubted his mental functionality. "What he's always wanted. To kill my grandfather and subjugate the humans."

Ash returned the "duh" expression. "I didn't ask for the goal, Urian. I've known that. What I need is the game plan. Why is he converting his people?" Ash's phone rang. He started to ignore it until he saw it was from Ethon.

What now?

Sighing, he looked at the bowl of melting ice cream on the counter. Tory hated ice cream soup. He refroze it then flashed it upstairs to where she waited in bed for him while he answered his call. Good thing his wife was used to his weirdness and would understand why he didn't deliver it himself.

However that didn't stop the fact that he felt like whimpering over the interruption of what he'd planned on doing with the ice cream and his wife....

Some days his job seriously sucked. Why couldn't humanity clean up after themselves?

Ungrateful bastards.

He flipped open his phone.

"Nick is working with the Daimons," Ethon said without preamble.

"Nice hearing from you too, Spartan. Care to tell me why you think this?"

"'Cause the little shit tried to kidnap Sam out of Sanctuary. He was there in all his glory, offering her up to our enemies." Ethon continued speaking after that, but Acheron didn't hear a single word of it.

Instead he saw images in his head that he couldn't quite place. Something was profoundly wrong with this entire scenario. He knew that Nick was tied by blood to Stryker, but Nick had been fighting that bond....

Had something happened to put him back under Stryker's command?

No. No way. Nick was too stubborn for that. Not even Ash could control him.

He hung up the phone and met Urian's curious gaze. "Get over to the Charonte Club and ride herd on Dev and Sam. Anything comes at her, I don't care who or what, you protect her."

"Okay. What's going on?"

"Just do it." Ash didn't explain himself to others. Ever. He honestly had no idea why Stryker would want Sam, but whatever the reason it had to be diabolical. Stryker didn't move without purpose and precision. And because Stryker's actions directly affected Ash, he couldn't use his powers to see what the hell the bastard was doing.

Urian vanished.

Ash summoned his Charonte protector, who currently resided on his biceps in the form of a dragon tattoo. Simi peeled herself off to take human form in front of him. Appearing around the age of nineteen, she was only slightly shorter than his six-foot-eight stance even though she could pick any height she wanted. Her long black hair with a red stripe in the front matched his and she was dressed in a short plaid skirt, tall biker boots, and a black leather corset.

She flashed a set of happy fangs at him. "Hola, akri. We going to the movie now with Akra-Tory and Marissa and N.J.? The Simi wanna see that tall green ogre man 'cause he reminds her of her uncle--"

"Not quite yet." He hated to interrupt her word flow, but Simi had a tendency to babble on forever at times. Which he loved, and it was usually humorous as hell, but right now they had to stay focused. "I need a favor, Sim."

Her eyes lit up as she rubbed her hands together in excitement. "I get to eat something you don't like? Can I eat the bitch-goddess finally? She be tasty with the right sauce! Take the bitter right out of her meat." She grinned widely.

Ash laughed before he kissed her on the forehead. "Not quite. I want you to go upstairs and guard Tory for me."

Simi gasped. "Akra-Tory okay? Our baby not hurt, is it?"

When he'd first told Simi Tory was pregnant, he'd been terrified Simi would be jealous since she was technically his baby and had been for eleven thousand years. Instead, she'd been as thrilled about it as they were and now she claimed part ownership.

"She's fine, Sim. I just don't want to leave her alone while I do something." And if anyone was dumb enough to come at his wife and powerful enough to break the shield he'd put around his house, he wanted Simi here to tear them to pieces.

Simi was the only person he trusted with his wife.

"Tell Tory I had an emergency and that I'll be back real quick."

Simi cocked her head suspiciously. "Where akri going the Simi can't go with him?"

"Out, Sim. Now please protect her and remember, anyone tries to hurt her, don your mitt, baby, and feast on their entrails."

She saluted him before she vanished.

Ash summoned his street clothes--a long black leather coat, black jeans, and a T-shirt--before he flashed himself from their small modest house in New Orleans to Artemis's temple on Mount Olympus. From the outside the temple was beautiful. Made of gold with forest and nature scenes emblazoned all over it. But it, like Artemis, was definitely a case of skin deep.