Phoebe was in tears. She’d been trying to be strong and hide them, but this silence was shredding her.
Closing the door to her apartment, she felt someone standing right behind her.
“What’s wrong, agapi mou? Did the Muppet offend you? I’ll rip out his tongue if he did.”
Her breath left her with a rush as she recognized Urian’s thick accent and then realized that he’d already lit candles for them all around her room. Turning, she threw herself against him and rained kisses all over his face and neck. “I thought you were dead!”
He tsked at her. “You know me better than that. I just had to wait for it to calm a little.”
She was already peeling his clothes off his body.
Laughing, he helped her with his powers. “Take it you’re hungry?”
“Starving, and not just for blood and soul. Se hriazome!”
Urian’s eyes widened as she said “I need you” in Greek. In all this time, she’d only picked up a word here or there. Never had she ever said a whole phrase before. “You must have missed me.”
“More than you can imagine.” She sank her fangs into his neck and sent him reeling.
Urian barely made it to the couch with her. She was absolutely wild tonight. So much so that she immediately slid herself onto him and took control with wanton abandon.
She ravaged his neck and tore at his arms and chest with her nails as she rode him with fury. There was a strange kind of pleasure with the pain, while his head spun from her insistent hunger. Her emotions overrode his until he lost himself completely.
He lost all sense of time as her body milked his and all he felt was Phoebe. He didn’t care about anything or anyone else. His life began and ended with her.
Phoebe jerked up, clutching at Urian, who was too weak to even turn his head to see who was there.
The door closed again.
Panting and weak, Urian tried to focus his gaze. “Who was that?”
“My sister,” she hissed, climbing off him to rush to the bathroom.
Urian attempted to get up and go after her, but he fell back onto the sofa. “I’m going to wait here.”
If Phoebe heard, she didn’t pause or say anything. She merely ran out of the apartment to catch up to her sister.
After a few seconds she came back in and sat down primly by his side.
“You okay?”
“That was embarrassing.”
“Let me guess? Your sister and Muppet had a little PMS meltdown over what they saw?”
“I call him Sasquatch, but yes. Yes, they did.”
He laughed. “Remind me later to kill him … and I won’t be calling him Sasquatch.”
“Why? I think it’s quite fitting.”
Urian scoffed. “Not really. That implies he’s intimidating and scary. Trust me, he’s not.”
“Maybe not to your hulking, almost-seven-foot-tall ass he isn’t, but from my vantage point, he’s terrifying.”
He snorted. “Trust me, don’t feed Muppet’s ego. If it gets any bigger, we’re going to have to put in for a larger apartment for them. I think it’s why his mansion was so big. They needed it just to house his inflated self-image.”
Phoebe laughed. Until they heard a loud commotion from outside.
“Ah shit …” Urian used his powers to summon clothes. Without being told, he knew Wulf had pissed off the natives and trouble was brewing. Because that out there was the sound of hell’s wrath, and only a Dark-Hunter in the middle of an Apollite commune could cause that much ruckus.
Teleporting into the middle of it, Urian took one second to get the lay of the drama before he grabbed Wulf and inserted himself between the Dark-Hunter and the Apollite who wanted his head. Still weak from Phoebe’s feeding, he kept one hand on each of them to make sure they kept a safe distance from each other.
“Enough!” Urian roared at the two of them.
Wulf frowned at him. “Are you all right?”
Not really. He felt rather queasy and he definitely didn’t need this shit.
Urian released both men. The Apollite was taken off by some of Shanus’s watchmen, but he cast a parting malevolent glare at them.
Grateful it was over, he wiped a hand over his sweat-covered brow. “You need to stay out of sight, Dark-Hunter.”
“You really don’t look good. Do you need something?”
Urian shook his head to clear it. “I just need to rest for a while.” He curled his lip at Wulf. “Can you stay out of trouble long enough for that?”
“Uri?” Phoebe came up behind him and placed her hand on his forehead. “Did I take too much, baby?”
Wanting to reassure her, Urian pulled her against his side and kissed her cheek. “No, love. I’m just tired. I’ll be fine.”
He pulled away and had just started back for their apartment when his legs buckled.
“Bullshit!”
Much to Urian’s absolute horror, the Muppet came up and slung his arm over his shoulder to help him back to Wulf’s apartment.
“What are you doing?” Urian asked angrily.
“I’m taking you to Kat before you pass out.”
Urian hissed at the very thought of being with her. “Why? She hates me.” Artemis’s handmaiden was more likely to gut him than help him.
“So do I, but we both owe you.”
Chris and Kat sat on the floor playing cards when they entered.
Kat shot to her feet as soon as she saw Urian’s condition. “Oh jeez, what happened?”
Phoebe rushed in behind them. “I think I took too much blood from him.”
Wulf laid Urian down on the couch. “Can you help him, Kat?”
Kat pushed Wulf out of the way. She held up two fingers in front of Urian’s face. “How many fingers do you see?”
“Six.”
She popped him on the side. “Stop that. This is serious.”
Urian widened his eyes and tried to focus his gaze on her hand. “Three … I think.”
Kat shook her head. “We’ll be back.”
Cassandra watched in awe as Kat flashed them out of the room.
“Now why didn’t she do that when we were being chased by Stryker?” Chris asked.
Phoebe scoffed at the clueless human. “She’s taking him to Kalosis, Chris. I doubt any of you want to go into a realm ruled by nothing but Spathi Daimons and one really pissed-off ancient goddess who is bent on destroying the entire world.”
He nodded like a clucking chicken. “You know, I really like it here. Not to mention, I can now look at Kat’s hand.” He picked up her cards and cursed. “I should have known she wasn’t bluffing.”
Her face turning bright pink, Cassandra moved closer to her. “I’m so sorry I interrupted you two.”
“Please don’t be. I mean, don’t make it a habit, mind you, but if you hadn’t come in, I might have killed him. He has a bad tendency to not tell me when I’ve taken too much blood. It scares me sometimes.” Actually, it scared her a lot, as she wondered if Urian didn’t have a death wish.
There was something about him. A darkness inside that she’d catch a glimpse of from time to time that never quite went away. Whenever she asked about it, he’d tell her that she was imagining things. But she knew what she saw.
He’d lived a long time and lost a lot of people he cared about. That kind of tragedy left its mark.
Whether he owned up to it or not, her husband was very shattered.
Wulf crossed his arms over his chest. “So Daimons can die from blood loss?”
Phoebe gave him an arched stare. “Are you planning on using that against us?”
Wulf shook his head. “I’d rather die myself than suck on another man’s neck. That’s disgusting. Besides, didn’t you tell me that’s how Apollites can be changed to Daimons? It begs the question of whether a Dark-Hunter could be made a Daimon, too.”
“Yeah, but DH blood is poisonous to them.” Chris shuffled the deck of cards. “Isn’t the point of that so that no Daimon can feed off or convert you guys?”
“Perhaps …” Phoebe watched Chris cut the deck again. “But then disembodied souls can possess a Dark-Hunter and since Uri and I share souls, it makes you wonder if perhaps a Daimon and Dark-Hunter could share one too.”
“Let’s hope we never find that one out.” Wulf moved to sit on the couch in front of Chris.
Phoebe turned back toward Cassandra. “So what did you want when you came to see me?”
“I’ve been putting together a memory box for the baby. Notes and pictures from me. Little mementoes to tell him about our people and family after I’m gone, and I was wondering if you would mind putting something in there from you.”
“Why do you need something like that when we’ll be more than happy to tell him anything he wants to know?”
Cassandra hesitated as if there were something she didn’t want to tell her. She glanced to Sasquatch before she answered. “He can’t grow up here, Phee. He’ll have to be with Wulf in the human world.”
Phoebe ground her teeth at that. Of course. Leave it to Cassie to be prejudiced against her own people. “Why can’t he grow up here? We can protect him just as well as Wulf. Probably more so.” At least they wouldn’t hate him for being part Apollite.
Wulf glanced up as Chris dealt him a hand of cards. “What if he’s more human than even Cassandra is? Would he be safe here?”
Phoebe hesitated. He should be, but … There were some Apollites who had a lot of problems with humans. Even as long as she’d been here, she still had trouble with a few once they learned her father was human.
And she was grateful that at least they didn’t tie each other to stakes anymore and set fire to them.
At least not often.
Wulf gave Phoebe a meaningful stare. “I can protect him and his children a lot easier than you can. I think the temptation of having a human soul here would be way too much for some of your people to handle. Especially given how much they hate Dark-Hunters. What a coup—kill my son, get a human soul, and get revenge on the very thing all of you despise most.”
Phoebe nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” She took Cassandra’s hand. “Yes, I would like to add some things to the box for him.”
And Phoebe knew exactly what she wanted her nephew to have.
So after she wrote her note, she excused herself and went to get her present for Cassandra’s box.
She returned to her sister’s apartment a short time later with the book.
Cassandra looked up with a frown as Phoebe slid it into the keepsake box Cassie still had out on the couch next to her. “What’s this?”
Phoebe gave her a wicked grin. “It’s a book of Apollite fairy tales. Remember the one Mom used to read to us when we were kids? Donita sells them in her shop, so I went just now and bought one for the baby.”
With suspicious eyes, Wulf picked the book up and flipped through it. “Hey, Chris?” He handed it to his Squire. “You read Greek, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s in here?”
Chris started reading silently, then burst out laughing. Hard. “I don’t know if you want the baby to see this if you’re the one raising him.”
“Let me guess?” Wulf glared at Phoebe. “He’ll have nightmares that Daddy is going to hunt him down and rip his head off?”
“Pretty much. I’m particularly fond of the one called ‘Acheron the Great Evil.’ ” Chris paused as he turned to another story. “Oh wait … You’ll love this one. They’ve got the story of the nasty Nordic Dark-Hunter. Remember the story with the witch and the oven? This one features you with a furnace.”
“Phoebe!” Sasquatch’s glare turned to murder.
She blinked innocently. “What? That’s our heritage. It’s not like you guys don’t swap stories on Andy the Evil Apollite or Daniel the Killer Daimon. You know I see human movies and read their books too. They’re not exactly nice to my people.”
Wulf scoffed. “Yeah well, your people happen to be soul-sucking demons.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Phoebe cocked her head with attitude. “You ever met a banker or a lawyer? Tell me who’s worse, my Urian or one of them? At least we need the food. They do it just for profit margins.”
Cassandra laughed at their bantering, then took the book from Chris’s hands. “I appreciate the thought, Phee, but could we find a book that doesn’t paint the Dark-Hunters as Satan?”
“I don’t think one exists. Or if it does, I’ve never seen it.”
“Great.” Sasquatch picked up another card. “Just great. My poor son’s going to have nightmares all of his childhood.”
“Trust me,” Chris said as he upped his bet against Wulf. “That book’s going to be the least of your kid’s problems with you as his father.”
Cassie frowned. “What do you mean?”
Chris put his cards down and met her gaze. “You do know that as a small child, they actually carried me around on a pillow? I had a custom-made helmet that I had to wear until I was four.”
Sasquatch scratched at his beard. “That’s because you banged your head every time you got angry. I was afraid you were going to get brain damage from it.”
Chris snorted. “The brain is fine. It’s my ego and social life that’s in the toilet. I shudder at what you’re going to do to that poor kid.” He dropped his voice and imitated Wulf’s lilting Norse accent. “Don’t move, you might get bruised. Oops, a sneeze, better call in specialists from Belgium. Headache? Odin forbid, it might be a tumor. Quick, rush him for a CAT scan.”
Wulf shoved his shoulder playfully. “And yet you live.”
“Ever the better to procreate for you.” Chris met Cassandra’s gaze. “It’s a hell of a life.” Then Chris dropped his gaze as if he was thinking about that for a minute. “But there are worse ones out there.”
He was right about that. Phoebe sighed as she wondered about Urian and what he was doing.
Katra waited outside Urian’s bedroom until Davyn came outside to meet her. “Is he all right?”
“He will be, but that was very close.”
She let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I’ve never seen him like that. Didn’t know he could get weak.”
“Me neither.”
She glanced to the closed door. “Do I want to know what you did to fix him?”
With grim expression, Davyn shook his head. “You wouldn’t approve.”
“Pardon the pun. Sucks to be a Daimon.”
“You have no idea. Believe me, it’s not something we enjoy. There’s not a one of us who wouldn’t give our souls to change it.”
Kat saw the truth in his dark eyes. And oddly enough, she saw Davyn’s gentle soul, and his guilt. “I’m sorry.”
“No, Kat. That’s an empty sentiment. You really don’t get what your uncle did to us.”
“Pardon?”
“I know who and what you are. Urian doesn’t.”
Panic filled her. “How?”
Davyn laughed. “I see and hear a lot more than anyone credits me with. And I’m not as dumb as everyone thinks. I’ve seen Artemis. You look just like her. Right down to the eye color. Given that, I figure you have to be related to Apollymi’s son in order for her to tolerate you to live. Never mind come and go here, whenever you like.”
Katra’s jaw dropped. “You’ve never told him?”
“Of secret things I am silence.”
“The Bhagavad Gita?”
Davyn shrugged. “I read a lot of things.”
The door behind him opened to show Urian looking a lot better. His deep tawny skin had a healthy glow. His eyes were bright and for once he wore his long blond hair down around his shoulders. She would give Phoebe credit. Her husband was extremely gorgeous.
Dressed black on black, there wasn’t much difference between Urian and a Dark-Hunter.
“You look like you ate someone who agreed with you.”
Urian wasn’t amused with her joke. “Ha, ha, Katra. Do you have any real reason to be here? Or are you just wanting to piss me off?”
“I was making sure you lived. Sorry I cared.”
“I’m not sorry you cared. I am sorry you feel the need to nettle.” Sighing, he met Davyn’s gaze. “Thank you, brother.”
“You know I love you.”
“You, too.”
“Aw!” Kat threw herself against them both and hugged them close. “It’s a Daimon love fest!”
Urian screwed his face up. “Gah! I’m getting Olympian cooties. Someone call an exterminator! Better yet, a Charonte!”
Snorting, Kat pulled away. “Fine. I’m heading back. See you later.”
Urian took a minute to talk to Davyn. “I got rid of the body.”
“Thanks.”
When he started to leave, Davyn stopped him. “Uri … it’s none of my business, but you know that’s not normal, right?”
“It wasn’t her fault. I picked a particularly nasty asshole to feed on and it affected her. You were lucky—Paris was particular about the souls he took. To keep you safe, he preyed on gentle ones so that you wouldn’t have to listen to them screaming as much.”
Davyn looked away, shame-faced at a secret they’d all kept from him. Paris had been the only one of them who had taken the lives of women and weaker humans so as not to risk Davyn going trelos. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t realize that until he was gone and I had to pick my own meals.”
And it made a big difference. Urian was used to feeding himself only. Because he’d been doing it for so long, the voices had become a part of him. He could ignore them most of the time. Phoebe was still adjusting. And when they were dying, they were louder and worse. Especially the strong ones.
She was still getting used to all that.
He’d considered going after a weaker human. But he just couldn’t make himself do it. His warrior’s code was too strong. It wasn’t in him to prey on someone weaker. There was no honor in that.
He smiled at Davyn. “I’ll be more careful with her in the future.”
“What if she goes trelos?”
“She won’t. She’s part human.”
“A human who almost killed you tonight!”
Urian shook his head. “My stupidity almost killed me tonight, not Phoebe. I’ve got this.”
Davyn scoffed as Urian headed off. And the last words he heard him say were ominous indeed. “Strange. Those were the last words Paris said.”
It was just after midnight when Urian returned to the Muppet’s apartment to collect his wife. Phoebe smiled as he neared her.
Wulf didn’t. In fact, the tension between the two of them was fierce.
“What’s the matter, Dark-Hunter?” Urian couldn’t resist taunting as he draped his arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. “You were hoping I’d succumb?”
“No, I was just wondering who you killed to reclaim your health.”
Urian snorted. “I’m sure the cows you eat aren’t exactly thrilled by their slaughter either.”
“They’re not people.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Dark-Hunter, there are a lot of people out there who aren’t human either.”
Taking Phoebe’s hand, Urian led her toward the door. “C’mon, Phee, I don’t have much time before I have to return to Kalosis and I don’t want to spend it with my enemies.”
He took her back to their apartment.
Phoebe watched him carefully. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Other than hacked off? Yeah. I’m good.” Urian turned toward her. “What about you?”
“I have a headache, but other than that, I’m fine.”
A headache … that didn’t bode well. Urian tried not to let Davyn’s words infect his mind and panic him. Phoebe was fine.
She was. She wasn’t going trelos. His father wasn’t going nuts and he wasn’t playing with fire.
Everything would be fine.
Yeah, he didn’t believe it either.