Sins of the Night (Dark-Hunter 7)

Chapter 2

"I'm telling you the truth, Danger, Acheron is going to kill all of us. We know too much about him and he won't suffer us to live."

Dangereuse St. Richard stood in the receiving room of Kyros's antebellum mansion outside of Aberdeen, Mississippi, with her arms folded over her chest. She'd never been on the best of terms with the ancient Greek Dark-Hunter. Tonight, she wasn't in the mood for his bull, especially not after the stories she'd heard that said Kyros had turned Rogue and was allowing Daimons to live-and this from the lips of the Daimons she'd dusted earlier tonight.

She had no patience with anyone who betrayed the Dark-Hunter Code.

The sole job of a Dark-Hunter was to kill Daimons who were former members of the cursed Apollite race-children of Apollo who had offended him and been cursed to live in the night, and to die at age twenty-seven. If Apollites chose to start sucking human souls before that birthday, they became Daimons who could live indefinitely. But for every Daimon who lived, countless human souls died.

It was something she refused to tolerate. If she could kill Kyros for it, she would. But for one Dark-Hunter to kill another was instant death. She couldn't even attack him. Whatever she did to him, she would experience ten times worse.

Thanks, Artemis, for that particular gift.

Until Acheron answered her call for help, there was nothing she could do to stop Kyros from his madness.

In fact, she could feel the drain on her powers just from being in the same room as Kyros. Dark-Hunters weren't allowed to spend any significant amount of time together without draining each other's powers.

The room she and Kyros stood in was dark and musty, and should have been decorated with antiques instead of the modern furniture that clashed with the neoclassical design of the house. The walls were painted a deep, antebellum gold while the ceilings held exquisite white medallions. The hardwood, pine floors under her feet were scuffed and in bad need of repair. How odd for a Squire not to take better care of his Dark-Hunter's property.

But that was neither here nor there. Right now she had much more pressing business with Kyros than the fact that he had no taste and his Squire had no clear understanding of his job description.

"Okay, Kyros." She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. "Acheron is a Daimon who feeds off humans and all of us were created solely so that he could fight a war with his mother, the Daimon queen, who no Dark-Hunter has ever heard of. Uh-huh."

He slammed his hand down on the cherrywood desk he sat behind. "Dammit, woman, listen to me. I'm more than nine thousand years old. I was there in the beginning-one of the first Dark-Hunters ever created-and I remember stories of Apollymi from my childhood. She was called the Destroyer and she was Atlantean... just like Acheron."

So it was a coincidence. Two Atlanteans did not a family make. She most certainly wasn't the only French Dark-Hunter, she wasn't even the only one to come out of the French Revolution, and none of them were related by a long shot.

Kyros would need a lot more proof than that to convince her that Acheron was the son of this Atlantean god-queen.

She gave him a bored stare. "And this Atlantean Destroyer is now leading the Daimons and sending them out to battle against Acheron, who is just using us and the humans as cannon fodder to protect himself? Really, Kyros, put down the crack pipe... or go write children's fantasy novels." She leaned forward and whispered loudly. "I'll bet you even know exactly who conspired to kill Kennedy, huh? I'm sure the money from D. B. Cooper is what financed your stunning collection of furniture."

He bolted to his feet and approached her. "Don't patronize me. I know I'm right. Have you ever seen Acheron eat food? We all know he's a lot more powerful than the rest of us. Didn't you ever wonder why?"

That was a no-brainer in her book. "He's the oldest and has had his powers a lot longer than the rest of us. You know the saying 'practice makes perfect,' and that man has had a lot of practice. As for food, I haven't been around him enough to notice."

"Yeah, well, I was around him a lot once upon a time ago, and while Brax and I ate, he never did. After we were created, Acheron wrote down his bullshit rules and the rest of us have been blindly following them for centuries without questioning them or him. It's time now that we started thinking for ourselves."

She made a noise of sarcastic amusement. "And what has suddenly brought on this grand epiphany of yours?"

Kyros laughed at that as an evil, spooky look came over him. "Do you really want to know?"

"Pourquoi pas? Why not?"

"Stryker!"

Danger frowned at his shout. Half a minute later, something flashed so bright in the room, she had to turn away to keep her light-sensitive Dark-Hunter eyes from burning. But the hair on the back of her neck rose as she sensed a Daimon's sudden presence in the room. Hissing in anger, she pulled the dagger out of her boot and straightened to confront it.

Kyros grabbed her arm. "No. Don't."

Her temper raged at his actions. "You would invite a filthy Daimon into your house?"

The question had barely left her lips before the Daimon sensation ceased. The newcomer still stood there, but he no longer cast that warning beacon that announced a Daimon presence to a Dark-Hunter.

A bad feeling went through Danger as she looked at the newcomer. Like Acheron, he stood a dead six feet eight, with long black hair that flowed around his shoulders, and he wore a pair of opaque sunglasses over his eyes.

"What's going on here?" she asked Kyros.

Kyros let go of her. "Yeah. I didn't believe it, either, at first. But he can mask the Daimon in him so that we can't feel his presence."

"How?" she asked.

The Daimon laughed, flashing her a set of fangs. "It's a trait that runs in my family. My mother can do it. I can do it and my brother can do it."

Scowling at the two men, she didn't understand what he was talking about.

Not until he removed the sunglasses and revealed a set of swirling silver eyes that she had only seen on one man before...

Acheron Parthenopaeus.

"He's Acheron's brother," Kyros said as if he could hear her thoughts. "And he's told me lots of things about our fearless leader that have left me cold. Acheron isn't who or what you think he is and neither are we."

"So how did you do that thing that made all them Daimons explode?"

Sitting next to the Squire who was driving him back to Danger's home, Alexion winced as Keller continued to ramble on with questions and comments. The man had three speech speeds: fast, faster, and "shut up before my brain explodes from trying to follow you." He'd always been told that Southern Americans spoke slowly.

That was apparently a myth.

He hadn't had a headache since he'd been human, but for the first time in nine thousand years, he was beginning to feel throbbing pain between his temples.

Much like an irritating toddler, Keller kept going, picking up speed with every word. "Now, you haven't answered me and I gotta know. You know, if we could all think them Daimons into pieces it would sure be a whole lot easier. Can you imagine all of us just looking at them-and boom! They're dead. You got to tell me how you do that. C'mon. I have got to know, you know?"

Alexion flexed his jaw before he answered. "It's a trade secret."

"Yeah, but I'm in the trade. Squires need to know, too. We're not the ones who are immortal so it seems we should know first, you know? C'mon, tell me how you did it."

Alexion stared at him in warning. "I would show you, but it would kill you to use it."