CHAPTER 27
Esher wanted to growl the moment Marek appeared and snatched Aiko from his grasp. He wanted to step and follow her home, to attack his brother for daring to lay a hand on her even when it had been the plan all along. Instead, he breathed through the twin needs and focused on the park ahead of him as he strode out of the cover of the trees and onto the dark swath of grass.
Into the open.
He raised his gaze to the moon, using its beauty to calm himself. It was barely a sliver now, would be a new moon soon.
A good time to do battle.
A new moon affected the tides as strongly as a full moon, and in turn affected him, drawing his power to the surface, making it well up inside him.
He reached out with his senses, aware that somewhere in the park, the daemon lurked, watching him, waiting for her moment to attack him now that Aiko was gone, her trump card stolen from her. Darkness welled in time with his power, coaxed him into hunting the bitch down and butchering her for what she had done to Aiko. The female would pay. He would see to that.
After she had talked.
He would break her, would squeeze every drop of information from her, and then he was going to kill her.
He was going to kill her.
Keras wouldn’t care once she had served her purpose, was no longer useful to them. His brother would let him do as he pleased with her, despised daemons as much as the rest of them. Gods, he would probably want to lend a hand.
But this kill belonged to Esher.
He wouldn’t share it with anyone.
Not even Daimon and Calistos where they waited in the wings, his white-haired brother hiding in a tree close to the torii gate across the field to Esher’s right, and their blond tornado casually reclining against a lamp post to his left, near the entrance of the park.
Doing the complete opposite of what he was meant to be doing.
He glared at his brother, even though Cal wouldn’t see it, and twitched his left hand.
Cal tipped his head back as the weather changed, more heavy mist than rain at first, but becoming a steady downpour as Esher focused on his power and the environment, allowing his anger and the burning need for violence to slip its leash enough to affect it.
His youngest brother kicked away from the lamp-post and disappeared as the wind picked up, gusting hard across the field and battering Esher. It whipped through the trees, shaking the branches, filling the still night air with ominous creaks and the steady swish of leaves brushing each other.
Daimon moved, Esher sensed it as he dropped from his perch and teleported, shifting into position.
Any moment now.
The swirling sensation in his gut grew stronger, warning that it was almost time, and the coppery scent of daemon hit him as the wind battered him.
It blasted through the trees opposite him, so fierce that branches flew into the field, together with something else.
The daemon.
Esher grinned and spread his feet shoulder-width apart, readying himself as he called on his power and darkness spread through his veins, whispering delicious words about revenge.
He launched his hand forwards, drawing on the lake of the teahouse, and a wall of water swept behind her, cutting off her escape. It turned to ice as Daimon joined him, becoming a glittering white barrier three storeys high that curved into a semi-circle thanks to Cal’s wind.
Now he just had to form the other side of her cage.
He caught a glimpse of a female with long inky violet hair and silver eyes that glowed as brightly as the moon, a black dress hugging her figure, and then she was gone.
Together with the park.
He turned left and right, his pulse rocketing as a different scene constructed itself around him, bright sunshine and endless green rolling hills replacing the darkness and the trees. A worn mud road snaked through the hills, leading his eye towards a distant village of stone buildings.
His stomach sank, fear curling through his veins and his throat closing as he stared at that familiar village.
His heart laboured, kicking hard against his chest, and his mind screamed at him to run, to flee.
Now.
They were coming.
Chants filled the air, had him spinning on his heel, desperately scouring the landscape for their source. When he turned back towards the village, a sea of humans blocked his path, barely a metre from him, torches and farm tools clutched in their hands, their dirty faces filled with fury as they shouted at him, jeered and waved their weapons.
Someone screamed.
His head snapped to his right, desperation flooding him as he tried to stop them from grabbing his companion. He lunged for the ones who held him, fear of what was going to happen spreading like poison through his veins, weakening him.
When he was already weak, without his power. Stripped of it. Left vulnerable.
He stilled, eyes widening in horror as the humans seized him and he saw his companion being dragged kicking and screaming towards the village.
Aiko.
Her fear rushed through him, roused the darker part of himself, and he snarled as he pushed at the people trying to contain him, lashed out and struck one of them hard enough to send them down. The male remained on the ground, blood pouring from his face.
Blood.
Esher gritted his teeth, mustered all of his strength, focused on the bastards who were hurting Aiko as they pulled her by her arms, some of them moving to grab her legs. She kicked at them, hit one but it wasn’t enough to stop them.
He was.
He would stop them.
He growled and focused harder, willed their blood to do his bidding.
But it refused.
They remained unaffected as they carried her, hollering vile things about her, calling her a witch.
Burn the witch.
Cold swept through him, followed by fire that blazed so hot he couldn’t contain it. He snarled and managed to get his arm free, punched someone as they tried to hold him back and kicked at another, desperation driving him. He needed to reach Aiko.
He needed to save her.
He couldn’t fail her again.
Something slammed into him, and he frowned as the world around him wobbled, the scenery rippling like a flag in the wind, and he saw a flicker of a different place, a darker place.
The invisible force struck him again, knocking him right out of the world he had been in, landing him in a park.
“No!” He pushed against the weight on him, growling through his fangs as he tried to get it off him. “Aiko needs me.”
He had to get back to her.
“It’s a fucking lie.” Cal seized his shoulders and rattled him, slamming him into the grass, breaking the scenery that had started to build around him again.
Esher stared up at his brother.
Cal breathed hard, sweat beading on his brow, running down his jaw.
No, it wasn’t sweat rolling down to his chin.
It was tears.
The shapeshifter could cast illusions, just as they had feared, and she had shown Cal something terrible.
“Cal?” He grabbed his brother’s arms. “Are you alright?”
Cal stared blankly at him. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“What did she show you?” He feared asking that, but he needed to know.
“Nothing.” Cal pushed off him, frowned and stared at the grass. “Something. I… I was over there, where I was meant to be… and then I was… where?”
His brother’s blue eyes turned stormy grey.
“I don’t remember.” Cal shoved away from him, gripped the sides of his head in trembling hands, burrowing his fingers into his blond hair and tugging strands loose from his ponytail, and gritted his teeth. “I don’t fucking remember.”
He never did.
Thank the gods for that.
For a moment, Esher had feared he would be able to remember the illusion he had seen, a messed up version of his past if Esher’s had been anything to go by, and it was better Cal didn’t remember the details of what had happened back then.
Esher wished he couldn’t remember the things that had happened to him.
“Shitting, fuck, fuckety fuck.” Daimon was sounding particularly eloquent as he sprinted over to them. “I saw you both go down. What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.” Cal stared at him, eyes wide, irises swirling like a tempest.
Daimon looked as if he wanted to embrace him, to hold him until the storm passed and he was calm again, and then shifted his ice-blue eyes to Esher.
“I saw my past, but Aiko was there… they took her.” Gods, Esher didn’t even want to think about what he had seen.
It was too much.
It roused the darkness in him, had brought him dangerously close to giving into it. If he had seen the rest of the illusion, he would have surrendered to it.
“We need to find a way to combat…” Daimon trailed off as the ground heaved and split open, and a huge black Grecian temple rose from it, earth and grass tumbling down the pitched roof as it pushed up. He leaned sideways towards Esher but didn’t take his eyes off the familiar building. “You see that?”
Esher nodded.
Their home.
Cal stopped muttering to himself and stared at it, his mouth hanging open. “I don’t like this.”
Hades stepped out from between the towering fluted columns of the temple, dressed in his black armour, his eyes bright crimson and his bident gripped in his left hand. Persephone moved out from behind him, her red hair tumbling down around her pale shoulders.
“Wrong,” Cal said exactly what he was thinking.
Rather than the black dress of mourning that their mother had been wearing since losing Calindria, she wore a bright green dress, the sheer layers cinched with gold at her waist.
“I’m getting sick of these.” Daimon curled his gloved right hand into a fist and lifted it, and spears of ice shot up from the ground, impaling Persephone.
Her blood rolled down the white ice, stark against it.
Hades leaped out of the path of them all, dodging them with ease, closing in on Esher and his brothers.
Esher swept his hand across from right to left, hurling a wall of water that Hades ran straight into, one that transformed into clear ice a split-second later, trapping the male.
“You think one of them was her?” Daimon cautiously peered at the trapped Hades and the dead Persephone.
It was possible the daemon participated in her illusions, used them to mount an attack after weakening her enemies with their worst fears.
“Aiko mentioned she wasn’t strong. It stands to reason that she would employ whatever tricks she had at her disposal to win a fight.” Esher slowly slid his gaze towards his right and then his left as two more temples rose from the grass, and two more sets of his parents strode out of them.
Followed by another two, and then another two, until there were ten Hades staring him down, with ten Persephones beside him.
“Any guess which one might be her?” Cal turned his back to Esher as the illusions spread out, forming a ring around them.
Esher assessed them all, searching for any differences, and shook his head when he found none. “We just have to kill them all.”
“It feels wrong killing our parents.” Said the male who had driven an ice spear through their mother’s heart without hesitation.
Esher was going to pick Daimon up on that later. Esher had hesitated, the false Persephone so lifelike that his heart had almost been fooled into believing it was her. Daimon had stuck a spear through her.
Although, he supposed the presence of Hades was a dead giveaway that these weren’t their real parents. Hades was trapped in the Underworld, bound there and unable to leave.
Cal and Daimon broke away from him, each attacking a section of the group surrounding him. Daimon threw small spears of ice, each one only a metre long, and Cal directed them with his wind, making sure none of the illusions could evade them. They buried three in each one, working together as they had practiced a thousand times in the Underworld, easily taking down their foes.
Esher scanned the group again as more illusions appeared to join the others, replacing the fallen, keeping his brothers busy. There had to be a tell, a way of pinpointing which of the illusions was the shapeshifter.
“Esher!”
He turned as Aiko’s voice rose above the din of the battle and frowned as he spotted her running towards him across the park, her eyes round and filled with fear. Behind her, a female with a mass of blonde waves tied at the back of her head, and a bikini made of golden swirls pursued her. Wings burst from her back as she kicked off, feathered on the top half and leathery below that, and she shot towards Aiko, closing in on her.
A valkyrie.
He reached for Aiko, the desperate need to save her rising inside him again as she threw a terrified glance over her shoulder and ran harder.
“Damn it. Cal!” Daimon’s deep voice shattered the silence, and wind swept across the field, striking the valkyrie and sending her hurtling through the air, tumbling and struggling to right herself.
Daimon’s gloved hand closed over Esher’s wrist, ice burning his flesh through his long black coat, and pulled him back. “It’s not her.”
“It is.” Those two words burst from his lips, filled with certainty even as his heart wavered, was no longer sure whether it was really Aiko before him.
He couldn’t risk standing by and doing nothing. If it was really her, and she was hurt again, he would never be able to live with himself.
Bright light off to his right had him squinting and looking down.
Daimon tapped the send button on his phone. It was hardly the time to message someone.
The phone vibrated almost instantly, and his brother turned the screen towards him, revealing a picture of Aiko holding a clock that showed today’s date and a time that almost matched Daimon’s phone.
“It isn’t her.” His brother pocketed his phone, darkness washing across his face as he glared at the Aiko running towards them. “She wouldn’t be here. She knows better. Remember that.”
Esher tried to drum it into his head, but it was hard when Daimon launched himself at Aiko. His little butterfly. She shrieked and brought her arms up to cover her face, cried out and stumbled backwards as Daimon attacked her, pulling none of his punches. Rage curled through Esher’s veins, a need to attack his brother building inside him even as he focused on the image Daimon had shown him.
Aiko wasn’t here.
The bitch was just trying to weaken him and find a way to attack him without him putting up a fight.
Aiko was that weakness.
The valkyrie loosed a fierce shriek as she finally righted herself and swooped towards Cal. Cal blasted air at her, forcing her to sway side to side to dodge each attack. She kept plummeting towards him, her talons at the ready as she grinned, her golden eyes glowing in the darkness.
Esher lined up his attack and let it loose, sending a spiral of water at her so fast that she didn’t have a chance to see it coming. It struck hard, pummelling her right side and slamming into her wing, bending it at an awkward angle and ripping a cry from her throat as she veered off course. Cal grinned and stepped, landing on her back and shoving his boot into the back of her head, sending her hurtling towards the ground as he leaped off her and dropped at least twenty metres to land in a crouch on the grass.
The valkyrie hit it hard, tumbled and twisted, and found her feet, skidding backwards with her right hand clawing the earth to slow her to a stop. The second she stopped, she kicked off.
Esher snarled and stepped, appeared and slammed into her side, knocking her back down. He seized her throat and growled as she lashed out at him with her talons, raking them over his black coat and leaving long tears in his sleeves. Her foot caught him in his gut and he grunted as the air pushed from his lungs, and tightened his grip on her, cutting off her air supply.
Fucking Keras would want to question her too.
Aiko screamed.
Esher’s head snapped towards her.
The damned valkyrie pressed her feet into his chest and kicked hard, knocking him onto his arse and freeing herself. She was gone before he had flipped onto his feet, her wings beating the air hard as she made a break for it. Cal casually stepped past Esher and a smile curled his lips as she started to slow, and then hung in the air, her blonde hair streaming behind her in tangled waves as she battled the wind, making no progress.
“You got her?” Esher moved the moment Cal nodded and started towards the valkyrie.
He broke left, running towards Daimon where he fought Aiko, telling himself on repeat that it wasn’t really her.
The park shattered again.
“No!” He slammed to a halt, his pulse kicking up a notch as the village rapidly constructed itself around him.
He didn’t have time for this. Daimon and Cal needed him.
A distant scream reached his ears.
Cal.
His heart thumped against his chest and he turned, tried to see the park through the illusion as it continued to build.
She was fucking with his little brother again and she was going to pay for it.
He pushed off in the direction the scream had come from.
Or would have, but he couldn’t move.
Esher looked down and swallowed hard at the sight of his wrists bound in front of him, the rope wound around them up to his elbows.
No. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth, fighting the pain that surged inside him and the fear as it pressed down on him, both of them threatening to crush him.
It wasn’t real.
Another scream, only this time it was feminine.
Aiko.
His eyes shot open, head whipping up and heart stopping as he saw her.
She struggled against her bonds, wriggling her shoulders as she grimaced, tears streaking her cheeks. Her brown eyes were wide, wild as she watched the males around her as they stacked wood against the platform on which she stood. She fought harder, kicked at the thick pole against her back, and frantically shook her head.
“I’m not a witch.” Her bloodshot eyes tracked a male with a torch. “Please… I’m not a witch.”
It wasn’t real.
Esher clenched his fingers into fists and stared down at them, focused on them and his breathing, trying to shut out her cries for help and the fear that flooded him. Her fear. Darkness welled, pushed up from his heart, whispered things that were honey in his ears, had him stilling as they swept through him, chasing out the fear and the pain.
Kill them all.
The humans didn’t deserve his protection. They deserved death.
He grunted as a stone struck his temple and leaned to his left, his skull aching from the fierce blow as warmth trickled down his cheek. Another followed it, cracking off his neck, and then another bit into his brow, between his eyes, and blood flowed down his nose.
The dark voice grew louder.
Kill them all.
The humans deserved to burn. They deserved his retribution. Not his protection. They were vile. Wretched. Unworthy.
He bowed his head as stones pummelled him, each one a shard that pierced his heart, made it bleed. He was weak. Stripped of his power. Unable to fend them off. Why? Because his father wanted to protect them. His father had sent him, his son, to the world of humans without his powers, vulnerable to their wrath.
His father had banished him too, had forced him to come to this world.
To protect them.
They didn’t deserve his protection.
They deserved to die.
They feared him, so they beat him, tortured him and tried to kill him.
He would give them a reason to fear him.
He growled and pulled his arms apart, easily snapping the ropes that held him, and devoured the startled gasps and fearful murmurs of the humans as they backed away from him.
He pushed onto his feet, swayed a little as he gathered himself and got his bearings.
“Esher!” Aiko screamed.
His little butterfly.
He would butcher them all for hurting her.
His eyes snapped open and he grinned, baring fangs at the pathetic mortals quaking before him, and water swirled around his feet, gathering speed as the darkness poured through his veins.
He would make this world burn.
And the Underworld would follow it.