Blackness spiraled in. The end—at least for today—loomed close. Even though he couldn’t move, his body felt heavy, his mind a brick falling fast. And as he separated from what was being done to him, tried to think of a way out of this never-ending hell, the irony wasn’t lost on him. As a descendant of the famed hero Perseus, his power had been the ability to freeze his enemies for a few minor seconds, just enough time to get the upper hand. It didn’t matter that he’d rarely used that gift. He was now paying for it.
Would always pay for it.
“Please.”
There was no use begging. There was no one to hear him. Not even the voice. Blackness closed in until all he saw was one tiny pinprick of light.
He was alone.
Dead.
Forever.
***
How could Orpheus be both daemon and Argonaut?
Skyla’s mind whirred with impossibilities as she stood in the trees, staring at Orpheus, and thought back to what she knew of the Argonauts. The seven strongest heroes had been chosen by Zeus himself to protect both the Argolean realm and the human world from Atalanta’s daemons. Though Zeus and the other Olympian gods couldn’t cross into the blessed realm, they sure as hell kept tabs on what happened there, and they were fully aware which descendents from each line served with the Argonauts. There was no way a daemon hybrid could have slipped in unbeknownst to them. And the fact that neither Zeus nor Athena had bothered to tell her cut deep.
Her spine stiffened. She was being played. There was more going on here than simply a daemon gone wrong who was pressing Zeus’s buttons.
“Well?” she asked.
“Consider me gifted and talented.” Orpheus grasped the dead daemon at their feet and dragged it across the damp earth toward the river.
His snarky comment wasn’t lost on her. It was the same sort of response she would give when she didn’t want to actually answer. How in hell was this all possible? The only thing clear at the moment was that he was moving more slowly than he had before. When he came back for the second dead daemon, sweat covered his forehead and blood began dripping from the wound near his ear all over again.
Daemons healed quickly. So did Argonauts. But apparently the shifting process took something out of him. Questions pinged around in her brain, questions she wanted—needed—answered. But she could see she wasn’t going to get them now. Not with him in this condition.
She dragged what was left of the third daemon to the river herself. When she got close, she let go of the body, stepped over it, and grasped the legs of the daemon Orpheus was trying to hurl into the water. She could see he’d filled the beast’s pockets with rocks and was having a hard time lifting him.
He stilled, stared at her for a long second. Moonlight accentuated the muscles in his jaw, the strength in his neck, the width of his shoulders. “Working with the evil daemon Argonaut now?”
“It’s either that or watch you struggle. Consider it my good deed for the day. I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog.”
He harrumphed, hefted the daemon’s upper body. “If under’s the position you like, woman, all you have to say is when.”
“Ha. The state you’re in now, you’d never be able to keep up.”
A glint lit his eyes, but he didn’t respond. And that more than anything told her how much he was suffering. She helped him hurl the other bodies into the river and reminded herself to stay on her toes. He may look docile right now, but he wasn’t. Not really. And even though he was sexy—tall, strong, with sandy brown hair that needed a trim and a day’s worth of stubble on his chiseled jaw—he was still a threat. Though a threat that intrigued her.
When all the remains were disposed of, Orpheus wiped the sweat from his brow then stepped past her, heading back toward the clearing. She followed and slowed as he stopped to look down at her bow, lying on the forest floor.
Nonviolent. Athena’s word echoed in Skyla’s mind, but her fingers twitched at her side and the dagger felt heavy where it pressed against her lower back.
He reached down for her bow, turned, and handed it to her. Cautiously, she accepted it, still unsure of his intentions, then depressed the button on the end without a word, shrinking the weapon to a metal bar only six inches long.
“Definitely not human,” he said. “Though that body…not bad. Since I know you’re not Argolean either, that leaves only a couple of options.”
She didn’t answer. Wasn’t about to tell him anything. But she recognized the heat in his eyes. Not a daemon heat or a battle heat, but a male heat. The kind that said he was interested. Her stomach tightened as she slipped the bar into her boot and waited.
“Not that I care.” He shrugged. “Something tells me you’re the sort of female who doesn’t play well—or like to share—with others.”
Maybe. But Skyla wasn’t thrilled with the fact he could read her so easily either.
“I guess I’ll be on my way.” He turned toward the lights of the parking lot.
Panic closed in as she watched him stalk away. “Wait.”
One eyebrow angled upward as he looked back over his shoulder, a sexy expression that warmed her blood. “For what?”
Yeah, for what? She searched her mind. It’s not because he intrigues you. It’s because you have a job to do. Zeroing in on his shredded pants and shirt, she said, “You can’t walk around like that. You’ll draw attention.”
He glanced down at his nearly bare chest—his very impressive, very muscular bare chest. Then his so what? gaze jumped back to her face.
Skyla’s cheeks heated. Even to her, the excuse sounded lame. But she still needed answers. And though she knew she could follow him again and see where he went next, she’d always been better at enticing information out of her mark rather than tailing him. After all, it was what she’d been designed to do.
So do what you’ve been assigned to do and get on with it.
“I have a room not far from here,” she said. “There are clothes there. You’re welcome to them. Plus, you need that wound covered before infection sets in.”
He lifted his blade from the ground, found the scabbard a few feet away. “A room? You just conveniently have a room in this podunk town?”
Not exactly, but when she’d found out the female he’d been chasing had bought tickets to the metalhead concert, she’d had a feeling it might draw all kinds. And she’d hoped he’d show up looking for her.
Luckily, her intuition had been right.
Since she couldn’t tell him that, she said instead, “I…like to be prepared.”
He didn’t immediately answer as he slung the weapon over his back so the strap cut across his bare chest and crossed back to her. He stopped inches away. And though she fought it, the heat from his muscular body made her the slightest bit light-headed.
“Why would you care?” he asked. “You saw what I am. And you’re the one who cut me.”
She had. But that was before, when she thought he was going to eat her. Now…now things had changed and she wasn’t sure why. She glanced down at his forearms again, covered with the Argonaut markings. Markings that should not be on his skin. “It’s the least I can do.”
“That must grate.”
“What?”
“Thanking a daemon.”
Her warrior shield came up even as she worked to keep her expression neutral. “If you hadn’t been chasing that girl, she wouldn’t have run into that pack of hybrids and I wouldn’t need to thank you, now, would I?”
“No one asked you to intervene.”
No, no one but Zeus. Though she wasn’t about to say so.
She debated the best tactic. Knew—regardless of how attractive he was—that her feminine charms were her surest bet.
So get on with it.
Before she could change her mind, she eased a half step closer, then reached out to run her finger down the center of his sweaty chest. “It’s up to you, daemon. I was just trying to be nice. If you’re not interested—”
> A jolt of déjà vu rippled through her when she touched him. As if she’d touched him like this before. Her words cut off midsentence. He sucked in a breath as if he felt it too.
Skyla moved back. Searched his face and tried to remember if she’d met him somewhere else. But she was sure she hadn’t. He was a stranger…a daemon hybrid…her mission. Only, as she stared at him, her stomach clenched as if he had touched her and she’d enjoyed it. Immensely.
She stepped past him, more rattled than she wanted to admit. Weird. Residual energy from the fight? Memories of the last time she’d run into a hybrid and nearly died? It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else.
“Where’d you get them?”
His voice stopped her feet, slowed her mind. She turned. “Get what?”
“The clothes.” His boots crunched over sticks and dried leaves as he stalked toward her. His interest flared hot all over in his eyes.
Relaxing, because this was a role she knew how to play well, she rested her hand on her hip, shifted her weight in a way she knew accentuated her breasts. Males were all the same—human, hybrid, or immortal. If all went as planned, she’d have the information she needed from him before the night was over. “Worried they belong to an ex-lover?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“No?”
He leaned in close, and even though he was covered in blood and moments ago had shifted into a monster, heat ignited in her abdomen. A heat that sent her back a step, right into the hood of a parked car. “Especially not since you haven’t been able to stop staring at my ass since we left the river.”
“That’s not what I…”
He braced his hands on the hood of the car. Leaned in close. Until the warmth of his breath tickled her ear, sending tingles all along her skin. “Curiosity killed the cat. Or so humans like to say. Be sure this is a curiosity you’re willing to gamble with, female.”
He pushed away and threaded through the parking lot before she could think of a comeback. Before she could tell herself she’d just lost the upper hand. She was trained for seduction, but he seemed to be the one doing the seducing. If she let this go on without taking the reins, she’d be putting not only herself but her order in jeopardy.
And that…well, to put it in his words, that wasn’t something she was willing to gamble with. She may not have a lot, but she had the order. It had saved her life. It had given her a life. No sexy, charming, or intriguing daemon would ever make her forget that.
Chapter 3
Maelea closed the front door of her Laurelhurst home on the banks of Lake Washington and stood in the dark entryway, listening to the silence. So much silence. Years of silence. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone insane from all that silence eons ago.
Like you aren’t nuts already?
She ignored that thought because it would get her nowhere, breathed deep to slow her adrenaline. Not bothering to turn on the light, she crossed the marble floor and moved up the richly carpeted stairs until she reached her bedroom suite on the second floor. Lights shimmered across the water through her bedroom window, but tonight she didn’t bother with the view.
She flipped on the bathroom light, stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes looked haunted, her face sunken. In all her years, she hadn’t felt like a ghost, but tonight she did. Tonight, after running into those daemons, she wondered what the hell she’d been thinking, going to that concert, searching for the dark one.
She’d known the big man chasing her. She could feel the darkness of the Underworld radiating from him.
Images of those daemons re-formed in her mind all over again, and to keep from freaking out, she crossed to the shower, flipped on the water. Careful not to look at her arms or legs as she peeled off her baggy black clothes, she stepped under the spray and scrubbed away any remnant of the night.
She towel-dried her hair, combed out the long black strands, then wrapped her body in a peach silk robe and headed downstairs to the kitchen. But as she started a pot of green tea to settle her nerves, then relaxed into her favorite plush chair in the parlor and stared out at the water of Lake Washington, the light inside her that was drawn to all that darkness leaped with excitement.
What if he was the one? What if she’d finally found her way to Olympus?
Fear and excitement, light and dark, they were each so much a part of her life, she didn’t know where to start. Common sense told her she should have stayed at the concert, should have waited to see if he emerged from the trees after that daemon fight. If he’d tracked her there, he could find her home. But fear had sent her running. Fear and a need to formulate a plan. Though she might not age, she wasn’t immortal like her parents. She had no godlike powers. She was simply female and fragile and alone. So very alone.
Just as they wanted.
Bastards.
What her parents didn’t know was that she was determined. Now more than ever. And if the man who’d chased her tonight really was the one, she knew he’d come looking for her again. Next time, she’d be prepared. Next time, she’d do whatever it took to make her dream come true.
The kettle whistled and she bounced out of the chair with a renewed sense of purpose, then moved into the kitchen where she poured herself a steaming mug and tried not to get ahead of herself.
Only one thing was certain: She wouldn’t wander this earth alone and silent like a wraith until the end of time. She wouldn’t let the silence drag her to insanity. And no matter what, she wasn’t about to become the dark thought Hades had cursed her to be.
***
Orpheus followed Skyla up a flight of stairs and paused outside a blue metal door in the run-down rent-by-the-week motel on the edge of town.
As he stared at the back of her head, a waft of honeysuckle met his senses. The same fragrance he’d noticed in the concert crowd, in that clearing, and every second since. A scent that was oddly…familiar.
She reached up to the doorframe, felt around, flashed him a one-sided grin as her hand lowered with a key. “Stay here. I’ll be right back out.”
He didn’t know what she was up to, but he waited in the hallway while she disappeared into the apartment then came out seconds later with folded jeans and a T-shirt slung over her forearm. She locked the door, replaced the key, then motioned for him to follow her again down the hall.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Neighbor. He’s about your size. Works nights. Way too trusting.”
He smirked as she stopped in front of another blue door and pulled a key from her pocket. A schemer, like him. Who’d have thought it? “I thought you said they were your clothes.”
“I never said that,” she answered, pushing the door open with her hip. “And no way you’d fit into my pants. If you did, I’d have to kill myself.”
He eyed her pants. And her sexy backside. Told himself trying to find a way into her pants was a really dumb idea. He didn’t have time to play with the blond, no matter what she was. He should be back out there already, searching for the dark-haired female again. But he didn’t want to be. For just a few minutes, he wanted a break. Craved something just for him. Needed that connection with another person to remember he wasn’t dead. Like Gryphon.
Thoughts of Gryphon brought back the tightness to his chest he’d been living with the last three months. He thought of the female he’d been chasing earlier. And the way the blond had talked to her in the crowd at that concert.
The two knew each other somehow. Why else would the blond have followed them into the trees?
She closed the door after him, flipped on the kitchen light. The place was a far cry from the Ritz. The kitchen spilled into a tiny living room with a wall of windows that looked out to an enclosed deck and the darkness beyond. The furniture was old, covered in brown and orange checked fabric that looked like something straight out of the seventies. The tables were wood veneer, and the draperies hanging on one side of the windows were made of some heavy off-white, smoke-stained material.
He
turned a slow circle, took in the closet-sized kitchen with its avocado green Formica and matching fridge that barely reached Skyla’s shoulder, the cracked vinyl brown chairs and matching table. And the short hallway off to his left, with its thick brown shag carpet, was bracketed by two doors, both dented and scarred from time and abuse.
He didn’t doubt for a minute that this was nothing more than a stopping place for her, one that suited her as much as the Argonauts suited him.
“The bathroom’s here.” She moved down the hall, pushed the door to the left open, flipped on the light.
More avocado green countertop and a mirror over the sink that reflected hollow cheeks streaked with blood, pale skin, and hair standing out every which way.
He looked away from his reflection, moved into the doorway of the other room, where she’d disappeared. A full-sized bed with an ugly burnt-orange bedspread filled the space. A small dresser, nightstand, and lamp rounded out the room. “Gorgeous. You do the decorating yourself?”
She crouched in front of the dresser, pulled the bottom drawer open, and extracted a clean towel. “Oh yeah. Shit brown and puke green are my favorite colors. Aren’t they yours?”
“Obviously. I’m a daemon, right?”
One corner of her lips curved. A sexy little grin that supercharged his blood. And again he was struck by the fact she didn’t seem the least bit afraid of him.
She stood, held out the towel and clothes. “While you get cleaned up, I’ll find bandages for your head.”
He didn’t bother telling her he didn’t need bandages. Instead he took the clothes, pulled them against his chest so she could pass. Was just about to ask why she wasn’t scared as a normal person would be, when her body grazed his in the doorway.
Her heat seared every inch of him, reigniting the arousal he’d felt back in the trees. Only this wasn’t just sexual. No, this was something more. An awareness. A déjà vu feeling. A memory he couldn’t quite bring into focus.
Her feet stilled. Her smile faded. And his stomach felt as if it flipped over when he realized she felt it too.