CHAPTER 6
Esher reached the narrow cobbled street that was barely wide enough for a car and paused outside the unusual grey façade of Lion, with its almost European arched entrance topped with blue Japanese roof tiles and two sets of windows flanking a large pill-shaped one on the upper floor.
Above him, the thick mass of electrical wires that chased along the street gave off a faint hum in his sensitive hearing as rain poured down, steadily growing heavier, soaking through his coat to his shirt and jeans.
The street was mercifully empty, the weather chasing everyone away.
Part of him felt bad about the rain, which was strange, and unsettling. He never felt bad when his mood affected the weather and brought rain or a storm.
So why did he feel bad this time?
He pushed the door to the café open and headed straight upstairs, to his favourite corner where the classical music played softly over the huge arrangement of wooden speakers visible on the balconied upper level sounded the best. He slid into the booth and breathed out a sigh as he sank into crimson velvet cushions.
The interior of the café was dark, the walls painted black and the furniture resembling ebony wood, and worn in places, but it felt like a sanctuary to him, the low lighting and the darkness of it allowing him to relax and enjoy the music as it kept the eyes of the locals away from him.
The female staff brought him his usual glass of water, setting it down as she bowed. He waited for her to rattle off the menu and walk away before he removed his earbuds.
A different classical piece washed over him, and he closed his eyes, tipped his head back and savoured it.
Her day was probably ruined because of him.
It hit him hard, coming at him out of nowhere, and he frowned as he opened his eyes and stared at the water, and felt the rain outside as it struck the roofs across the city, and poured down on the people coming and going in the streets.
That was why he felt bad.
She was probably getting rained on, and her day out with her friends wrecked, and it was all his fault.
He hadn’t been able to keep a lid on his mood, and it had bled over, messing with the weather and spoiling what had looked as if it might be a beautiful sunset.
Esher shifted his focus to the glass in front of him on the dark wooden table and his breathing, narrowing the world down to that one small amount of water. It trembled, the surface rippling as it began to take on the full force of his mood, his anger over the mortals, and his darkest desires. When the rain outside slowed, the water in the glass began to drip upwards, beads breaking from its surface to hang in the air above it.
He toyed with them, moving them in time with the music, letting them distract him as they danced and played with each other.
The rain stopped, and everything seemed to still, outside him and inside him.
The music softly played, and the few mortals in the café were silent in their enjoyment of it, a contrast to the bustling world outside where they were normally noisy and intrusive, and he needed the music to shut them out.
But not her.
He hadn’t wanted to shut her out when he had been with her, and he had welcomed her presence when he had been watching her with her friends, as she had laughed and smiled, so carefree.
He still couldn’t believe he had followed her, studied her like that. She had never stopped smiling.
It had come close to affecting him at one point, before his mood had gone south and a thought had hit him.
Would she smile so much if she knew the real world and the future that awaited it if he and his brothers failed?
He wanted her to keep on smiling.
He wanted to keep her world from colliding with his to make that happen.
Daimon appeared in the booth opposite him, looked down and arched a white eyebrow at the glass and then lifted his icy blue eyes to his. “Your water is raining.”
Esher looked down at it, watching the miniature storm he had created in the glass. Better it rained in there than outside, on her.
“I told you not to bother me here.” Esher let the storm build, until the water turned choppy.
Daimon touched his gloved fingers to the outside of the glass, a brief caress but enough to affect the water. Tiny icebergs formed, and some of the rain became snow. Esher tossed him an unimpressed look.
“Our conversation wasn’t finished.” Daimon leaned back, rubbed his white hair and waved his hand, signalling the waitress. She bustled over, and his brother shifted to Japanese. “I’ll have what he’s having.”
She bowed and walked away, returning a moment later with a tall glass of water.
“Cheers.” Daimon nodded to her, and then turned to him and mock-scowled. “No making my water rain, alright?”
Esher ignored him, closing his eyes and trying to shut him out by focusing on the music, because he could feel the clouds building again outside, and he wanted to hold the rain at bay.
“Where did you go?” His brother just wouldn’t shut up, would he?
He clamped his jaw tight, the muscles tensing in it as he gave up trying to control his mood. It was impossible when Daimon was poking his buttons, doing it on purpose to make him talk. His brother wasn’t going to give up until he told him something.
It didn’t have to be the truth.
He stared at the tall wooden speakers suspended on the wall above the ground floor and his thoughts returned to the female. He should stay away from her, should let her live her life in peace, but gods, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Whenever he tried to push her out of his head forever, whenever he came close to shutting himself off from her, he ended up thinking about how much he wanted to see her again, and there was a part of him that didn’t care if that placed her in danger.
He feared it was the same part that wanted to kill all the humans, and that by giving in to it, he might only be luring her to her doom, tricked by his own other self.
“I just needed some space. I didn’t want to hurt you again.” It was part truth. He really didn’t want to harm his brothers, especially Daimon.
Unless they were sparring.
Then Daimon got what he deserved.
“Because of the wraith… or Megan?” Those words were carefully weighed, and Esher looked at him again.
He didn’t like thinking about what she had done for him, because he didn’t like owing his life to her, a mortal, not even when she was becoming part of their family now. Just as Eva was.
“Both,” he murmured, and Daimon sighed, but he continued before his brother could speak. “The wraith’s blade… don’t tell anyone, because I don’t need them fussing like I’m some special fucking snowflake… swear it.”
Daimon crossed his heart, his expression deadly serious, which was as much of a promise as Esher would get out of him.
“I’m still healing,” Esher blurted.
His brother’s white eyebrows dipped low, the corners of his lips turning downwards as his eyes brightened, his anger shining in them. “What do you mean? You should be healed by now.”
He tried to reach across the table, and Esher swatted his hand away before he could grab his shirt and lift it to see the wound.
“It looks like a scar, but sometimes I feel it. It hurts, and I’m weaker than normal.” Esher caught hold of his grey shirt when Daimon looked as if he might make another attempt to see and tugged it up enough to flash the scar at him.
Some of the worry in his brother’s eyes faded, but a hell of a lot remained, and it was there in his voice too as he leaned towards him, pushing the glass of water aside. It instantly froze, and frost flowers grew outwards from Daimon’s hands as he pressed them into the table top.
“Megan healed you though.” Daimon’s eyes darted between his, as if he could see in them whether or not she had.
“She stopped the toxin on the blade from killing me, and the wound healed, but what if some of it remained? What if I’m still purging it now, and that’s the reason I took so long to come around?” It made too much sense to Esher to be anything else. He wasn’t dying and didn’t feel as if his soul was in jeopardy, but he wasn’t quite right yet either. He ran his finger around the rim of his glass, making the water chase it. “I feel stronger every day.”
“So you are purging it?” Daimon sounded relieved, but uncertain at the same time.
Esher nodded, because everything pointed towards that being the case, but it was taking a long time, and he was getting pretty damn sick of feeling weak, and could damn well live without the attacks that left him feeling as if he was going to collapse again. The memories the sudden flaring of the wound provoked were as much responsible for that temporary weakness as the toxin was though. It was a psychological reflex.
Like the one he had whenever he thought about humans.
Or the times he saw his brothers in danger.
His twisted fucking mind used it as a chance to bombard him with memories of events that tore at him, as powerful now as they had been when he had lived them.
“Come back to the mansion,” Daimon said, cutting into his thoughts before they could lead him down a dark path.
He nodded in agreement, but only because he could see Daimon needed him safe now that he knew the toxin was still weakening him. His brother wanted him protected by the powerful wards that shielded the mansion, locking everyone but him and his brothers out of it.
Not because he feared the wraith would come for him again while he was weakened, but because he feared the female daemon their enemies had spoken of would.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Daimon insisted on taking gate duty in Tokyo until he was healed and forced him to remain in the mansion at all times. He would go crazy if his brother did, which was another odd thing. Normally, he hated being out in the city, avoided it as much as he could.
But as they teleported back to the mansion, all Esher could think about was how he wanted to walk the streets.
Because he wanted to see her again.
When they landed on the porch of the mansion, the shoe rack was almost full, and he glared at Daimon.
His younger brother shrugged. “Don’t kill me. It was Cal’s idea.”
Esher glared at the thick wooden door to his left, and the noise coming from inside the building, and the rain started again.
“Fucking hell,” Ares grumbled from what sounded like outside, possibly in the courtyard. “It just stopped!”
Daimon pushed the door open to reveal Cal setting the long, low wooden dining table, and Valen arranging cushions around it with the help of Marek, and Keras pacing. Beyond them, through the open doors to the garden, Ares paused where he crouched on the gravel, and Esher canted his head at his older brother.
Tidying?
That wasn’t like Ares. Normally, he lived in an apartment that looked as if Cal had swept through it in a mood, clothes and food cartons strewn everywhere.
But here he was, smoothing down the gravel so every damned piece was back in its rightful place.
Esher dialled his mood back, even when he wanted to demand to know what his brothers were all doing in the mansion just so he could watch them splutter excuses about everything from a family night to a meeting, to more flimsy ones like they had wanted to see his gorgeous face.
He appreciated the fuck out of one thing about this gathering.
Ares fixing the gravel.
The rest of it meant nothing, irritated him a little if he was honest, because it was obvious his brothers were only here to keep him occupied and protected. If they just happened to be in Tokyo on a night the gate was attacked, they also just happened to be on hand to fight either at his side or in his place.
He didn’t need bodyguards.
Although he reluctantly admitted to himself that he would have behaved the same way if it had been one of his brothers in his situation.
But Ares fixing the mess in the garden—that was priceless. Gold. Smoothed the edges off his mood enough that he decided to stop the weather from raining all over his eternally-grumpy older brother.
Ares glanced up, his overlong tawny hair clinging in damp waves to his neck and cheeks where it had come free from the band he tied it back with, and then looked back inside at him. “Appreciated.”
He nodded, showing his brother he felt the same way, and stripped off his coat, and went into the kitchen on the far left of the long room, beyond the dining table.
Daimon followed and parked himself against the cupboards behind him, hindering more than helping as they went to work on making dinner. He listened to Daimon drone on about the new building they were throwing up in Hong Kong, and how there wouldn’t be any sky left soon, as he chopped vegetables. His brother liked to complain, but Esher knew he loved the view of the modern neon-lit skyscrapers from his villa on the side of Victoria Peak.
He pushed the vegetables aside, ignoring the fact that Daimon had managed to chop a single onion in the time it had taken him to chop countless vegetables, and focused on preparing the meat. Lots of meat. His brothers ate like pigs when he fed them. Probably because most of them didn’t know how to cook, and relied on eating out or ordering in.
Cal’s voice rose above the din in the other room, Keras’s deep one joining it as he challenged him to a round, and Marek joked that he would pay to see Keras beat their youngest brother at his own game. Not likely to happen. Keras was awful at video games.
Where were Valen and Ares?
A soft female voice broke through the male ones, and Esher frowned, leaned back and glared into the room to his left.
At a slim mortal dressed in skin-tight black jeans and a halter-top, the hem of it lifting as she pushed a bright blue streak in her short black hair out of her cerulean eyes.
Eva.
Before he could ask what she was doing there, he spotted Megan beside her, the slender brunette’s dark eyes bright as they talked while she tied her shoulder-length chestnut hair up.
Ares curled a protective arm around her waist, his all-black clothing a contrast to her jewel green t-shirt and blue jeans. Next to Eva, Valen grinned, the scar that ran down the left side of his jaw and neck pulling tight.
Both females were flushed, cheeks bright pink, and freshly showered by the looks of things. At least they had taken their shoes off this time.
He stilled as Megan gestured, waving her arms in a dramatic fashion.
Scowled.
Bruises littered her arms.
Had someone hurt her?
The thought that someone might have drew a startling reaction from him. He wanted to hunt them down and hurt them back.
Megan was family now.
His family.
Anyone fucked with her, they fucked with him too.
Even if she was mortal.
Eva spoke, arresting his attention, her Italian accent thickly lacing her words. “It was a good session. I think next time we should use some dummy weapons.”
Eva was teaching Megan to fight?
Sensible, he supposed.
Mortals were weak, no match for a god or even a daemon.
The little female he had met hadn’t even been able to fend off a human male. A powerful need filled him as that thought flowed through him, one that struck him silent and froze him in place halfway through drawing the knife down the chopping board to push the meat into the pot.
His mother’s words swam in his mind, her voice whispering at him to forgive, and to learn to love the mortals again.
His own ones followed, a denial that had been nothing more than a growl at the time—that he would never forgive them and he would never love a mortal.
But he wanted to protect her.
His fascinating little butterfly.