She gave him a piercing glare. "C'mon, Alexion, don't lie to me. With the exception of the popcorn, you haven't eaten anything since you've been here, have you?"
He looked away from her.
Danger reached across the table and took his hand. She wanted an answer to this. "Please tell me the truth."
Alexion considered the ramifications of being honest with her. But then she wouldn't remember it, so why not? She already knew more than she should.
But what if it disgusted her?
Then again, that might be beneficial. She might find the truth so repellent that she'd leave him to do this alone, and not be in danger anymore.
He didn't know, but in the end, he found himself confiding in her. "Have you ever studied Greek myth at all?"
"A little."
Good, that would make this a little easier on him. "Do you remember when the heroes would travel to the Underworld what they had to do to be able to speak with Shades?"
She thought it over for a few minutes before she answered. "They made a blood sacrifice."
He braced himself mentally for her possible reaction. "And what did the Shade do with their sacrifice?"
Her face went pale as she realized the truth of him. "It drank the blood so that it could speak."
He nodded.
Danger sat there horrified at what he was telling her. "You live on blood?"
Again he nodded.
She went completely cold at the next thought that entered her mind. There was only one person he could feed from. Only one person he was ever around. "You drink Ash's blood?" .
"Yes."
"Ew!" she said, scooting her chair back. She had a horrible image in her head of the two of them feeding each other. "So you suck on Ash's neck?"
"Hell, no!" he said in an offended tone. "A, never in a million years-I'd rather be dead and tortured, and B, you go near that man's neck and you better have a will made out. He can't stand for anything to touch his neck."
"Then how do you feed?"
"He literally opens a vein, drains his blood into a cup, and gives it to me to drink. I know it's disgusting. I know you're horrified. But if I don't feed, I return to what I was and I don't know if it's true or not, but Artemis claims that if I return to a Shade, there's no way to bring me back again."
She thought about that until she remembered something he had told her yesterday. "But you said you were different from the other Shades. Do they drink blood too?"
"No. Acheron brings them back another way."
"And that would be?"
"I don't know. Acheron never shared that secret with me, probably because he knows I'd want to kill him for the injustice of it."
She couldn't blame Alexion there. Ash really had screwed him up. "So how did he learn this other way?"
He sighed. "About three hundred years after he brought me back, he met a..."-he hesitated as if searching for the right word-"teacher who taught him how to use his god powers. Savitar is the one who showed Acheron how to bring back the dead without using blood for it. But it was too late for me. Because I live off his blood, he and I are bonded much like two classic Hollywood vampires."
Now they were back to being gross again. "So he has to feed from you too?"
"No. Well, actually I guess, in theory, he could. But I think he'd rather die than feed from a man."
Oh, yeah, like the alternative was any better. "So he feeds off women? Stryker was right, he is a Daimon."
"Calm down," Alexion said, taking her hand in his. "He's not a Daimon or an Apollite. And he doesn't prey on people. He only feeds from one person and she's not human either."
And in that instant she understood who. "Artemis."
He nodded.
Everything made sense now. No wonder Acheron put up with all of them. He really had no choice. "So neither one of you can eat?"
"We can eat. We just don't have to. I don't eat out of habit. Since I can't taste food, it's rather futile."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because you do need food to fuel your body, and I want you to live a long and happy immortality."
"You summoned me, akri?"
Stryker turned away from his window, which looked out onto the city in Kalosis where daylight never shone. The lights there sparkled like diamonds in the darkness, while his people lived in fear of the gods who had cursed them and the one god who had saved them.
Being one of the first who was cursed, he, unlike the majority of the others here, knew what it had once felt like to have sun on his skin. He remembered the time when he'd loved his father, Apollo, when he would have given his life for him.
And then in a fit of anger over a Greek whore, his father had cursed the entire race he'd created. Every Apollite adult, every Apollite child... even Apollo's own son and grandchildren had been cursed so that they could never walk in daylight again.
Stryker's wife, who had been Greek, had been spared the curse. But his sons and daughter hadn't.
Strange how after eleven thousand years he couldn't remember what Dyana had sounded like, but he still recalled his daughter's precious face. She'd been lovely until the day she had died on her twenty-seventh birthday, cursing her grandfather's name as she disintegrated into dust. To his eternal pain, she had refused to turn Daimon and be saved.
His sons hadn't. They had followed in his footsteps and had sworn allegiance to Apollymi, the Atlantean god who had shown them how to feed on human souls so that they didn't have to die. For centuries his family had been virtually intact.
Until his aunt Artemis had created her damned Dark-Hunters.
One by one, his sons, her blood nephews, had been destroyed by the Dark-Hunters she sanctioned.
Except for Urian...
The pain of that thought was enough to drive him insane. He wanted his son back with a need and grief so strong that it was crippling.
Now it was just him. He, alone, was left. So much for his dreams of eternity spent with his family.
But life seldom turned out the way one planned.
"Akri?" Trates said again, drawing Stryker's attention back to his second-in-command.
Stryker focused his gaze on the tall Daimon. "I want you to gather together the Illuminati." They were the strongest and bravest of the warrior Spathi Daimons. "Tell them they are going to have a treat."
Trates looked confused by that. "A treat?"
He nodded. "If I know the Alexion, and I do, he will pull all the Dark-Hunters together to deliver his ultimatum before he dies. I think we should have a little surprise waiting for him when he does."
"But if all the Dark-Hunters are together... they'll kill us."
Stryker laughed evilly as he patted Trates on the shoulder. The poor fool was not half the strategist Urian had been. "You forget, Trates, that when they are together, the Dark-Hunters weaken each other. In that form, they will be easy pickings for us."
Still Trates didn't join his humor. "What if the Alexion doesn't kill himself? He has the power to kill us even without Artemis's servants."
Stryker clenched the hand on Trates's shoulder, digging his fingers into the Daimon's flesh.
Trates pulled away with a hiss.
"Don't you think I've thought of that?" he asked Trates, who stood rubbing his bruised shoulder. "The Alexion has one major weakness."
"And that is?"
"The Dark-Huntress he travels with. She is our key to destroying him."
He looked horrified. "She's a Dark-Hunter, she'll kick our ass."
"I don't think so."
"And why is that?"
Stryker went to his desk where a black wooden box sat. He opened the box and pulled out the deep red stone medallion, then cradled it in his palm. "Because I have something I think she'll want returned to her."
The Daimon's eyes widened at the sight of what should never have fallen into Stryker's hands. "How did you get her soul?"
"I have my ways." Stryker laughed again. "If she interferes or if the Alexion refuses to do the right thing, then they can both suffer eternal torment."