Elisabeth Naughton: Marked

“Yeah, Nick,” she mumbled as she turned and headed for the dressing room. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

“Theron, put me down.” Isadora’s free hand pushed against Theron’s chest, but her protest did little more than annoy him.

He wouldn’t lose his temper. The fact that he’d spent four days tracking her down was inconsequential at this point. So was the fact that he’d left his kinsmen to come after her. He would simply take her home before the Council discovered she was gone and all hell broke loose.

“Theron, I mean it,” she said again, as the door to the human skin club snapped shut behind them and he headed away from the building.

“It’s time to go home, Isadora. You’ve had your fun.”

Isadora glanced over his shoulder back toward the building with a defeated look in her eyes. “You don’t understand. I need her.”

Need her ? Like hell. He was the only one she needed right now. If her father found out what she’d been up to…

He gnashed his teeth at the thought and kept walking. If it were up to him, no one would know where she’d been these last few days or what she’d been up to. The last thing he—the leader of the Argonauts and a descendent of Heracles, the greatest hero ever—needed was for his warrior brothers to know his future wife had a human-female fetish.

He cringed at the thoughts. Both “human female” and “future wife.”

Isadora squirmed in his arms again, but finally gave up with a sigh. And that was just fine with Theron. He wasn’t in the mood to play nice.

The air was cool, but Theron barely felt it. A muffled thump-thump-thump echoed from the club behind him as he walked. Quietly, Isadora said, “She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Graceful and tall. I…I didn’t expect her to be so tall.”

More frustrated by the second at Isadora’s strange behavior, Theron picked up his pace. It wasn’t until Isadora sighed again and rested her head against his chest that he remembered how inebriated she was and how tightly he must be holding her.

He loosened his grasp and forcibly gentled his voice, though even he knew it came out rough and stilted. “Isadora, you cannot just run off like this.”

“I…I know,” she breathed against him, her body growing lax in his arms. She shivered and tried to burrow closer. “I just wish…”

Her fading voice made him remember how she’d had trouble standing in the club. For the first time, he realized there hadn’t been a single glass on her table. Not even a watermark from one that had been recently cleared away. Gathering her in one arm, he reached around and felt her forehead. Her skin was cold and clammy.

His aggravation morphed to urgency. She wasn’t drunk at all. She was sick.

Skata. He had to get her back to Argolea. Like, now . “Hold on to me,” he said firmly in her ear, repositioning his arm under her legs again. “I’ll get you home.”

She closed her eyes and, after a moment of what looked like incredible pain and heartbreak, nodded in what he could tell was great reluctance. “Yes. Yes. You’re right. It’s long past time. Take me home, Theron.”

He took one step forward with her in his arms and felt the air change. It went from moist and warm to frigid in the span of a nanosecond. And he knew without looking that they were not alone.

Four daemons, beasts of the Underworld caught between mortal and god, horns sharp, teeth bared, appeared as if from thin air. One directly ahead, two to Theron’s right, one to the left. They had bodies of men, covered in leather and trench coats that flapped behind them as they moved, with hideous faces, something of a mix of lion and wolf and goat.

Isadora’s muscles relaxed in Theron’s arms. He wasn’t sure if she’d fallen asleep or if the sickness that racked her body had pulled her into unconsciousness, but at the moment he didn’t care. It was better for her if she didn’t see what they faced.

“Release the princess, Argonaut, and your life will be spared,” the daemon directly ahead announced in a raspy voice.

A humorless sound bubbled from Theron’s chest even as his mind spun with options on how to get out of this one. His kinsmen were nowhere close. He’d come looking for Isadora on his own. “Since when have daemons been known for their mercy?”

The leader growled. “Our mercy is the only thing that will save you. Unhand her. Now. You will not be given another chance.”

They were about out of chances, as far as Theron could see. He glanced down at Isadora, out cold in his arms. For nearly two hundred years he’d served his race because it was his duty. Even though it hadn’t been his first choice, he’d been willing to marry her if it meant preservation of their world. Tonight, though, he knew he would serve the gynaíka who would one day be Queen of Argolea in order to save her life and that of their people. Even if it meant losing his own.

The two daemons on his right moved closer. Theron closed his eyes and used every ounce of strength within him to form a protective shield around Isadora. The effort drained him of his powers. He had nothing left for the fight to come.

Knowing she was now safe from the daemons, he slowly set Isadora on the ground at his feet. She curled onto her side on the cold asphalt but showed no other signs of consciousness. He rose to his full height of six feet, five inches and stared at the four daemons who still towered above him. “If you want her, boys, you’ll have to come and get her.”

The one in the middle, who was clearly in control of the others, chuckled, though the sound was anything but humorous. “So arrogant, Argonaut. Even when you’re trapped. Atalanta will be most amused by your brashness.”

“Atalanta is a petty hag with a perpetual case of PMS. And let me guess…As her number-one whipping boy, you get what? The right to wipe her ass?” He laughed, though he knew all it did was enrage the beasts in his midst. If he was going to go out, though, he might as well go in a blaze of glory. “Let me ask you this, dog face, just how inconsequential is your race that Hades would so easily hand you off to a bitch on wheels like Atalanta, anyway?”

The four growled in unison. The leader’s eyes flashed green. “Taunt all you want, Argonaut. In mere minutes, you’ll be begging for us to kill you.”

They moved forward in a unit, as if of one brain. And without hesitation, Theron brought his fingers together until the markings on the backs of his hands glowed from the inside out. The portal opened with a flash and closed seconds later, leaving him alone with the daemons in the cold parking lot.

In the split second of silence that settled over them like a dark cloud, fury filled the face of each daemon, followed by a roar the likes of which only a god has ever heard.

“Sending the princess home was the last mistake you’ll ever make, Argonaut,” the leader growled.

They struck as a pack, taking him down to the pavement hard before he had time to reach his weapons. Teeth bared, fangs unsheathed, they tore into his flesh.

As his back hit the unforgiving ground and the last vestige of strength rushed out of his body, Theron had one fleeting thought.

This was going to be bad. Before it was over, it was going to be very, very bad.

In the club’s locker room, Casey changed quickly back into her jeans and white fitted tee. She slipped on her Keds, threw her pathetic excuse for a uniform into her backpack and headed for the service entrance on the side of the building.

She chanced one quick look back into the club as she pushed the door open, and saw Nick was watching her.

Her nerves jumped a notch, but she told herself there was nothing to worry about as she fingered her keys and crossed the parking lot to her car. The mid-September night in the foothills of the Cascades of western Oregon was balmy, with just enough bite to remind her fall was right around the corner. In another week or two she’d need a sweater when she came out here after work.