Шеррилин Кеньон: Dark Side of the Moon

Yeah. Great odds there… not. His only hope was that Erika would get concerned when he didn’t show up after nightfall—

Wait, he was talking about Erika Thomas here. Erika. The girl who liked to pretend she didn’t have to work for him. The girl who went out of her way to avoid him and her duties. She wouldn’t notice for days that he wasn’t home.

No, the little mutant would throw a party the instant she found out that while she’d ignored his absence, some mad Apollite had gelded his ass and left him impotent. Then, she’d call all her friends and laugh about it.

I am so screwed. …

Susan sighed as she toyed with the small gold medallion that she kept in her purse. Only a hair larger than a silver dollar, it didn’t look like much, but on the night she’d won it, it’d held even more value than a hundred-million-dollar lottery ticket.

She paused to look at it as old memories assailed her. She’d won the Sterling Award for Investigative Reporting for Politics in 2000. She’d been on top of the world that night…

Clenching the award in her hand, she cursed under her breath. “Just sell the damned thing on eBay.”

But she couldn’t and she hated herself for that. It was hard to let go of a glorious past even when all it did was bring her pain. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so cocky back then. Maybe this was her comeuppance.

Bullshit. She didn’t believe in that kind of divine retribution. She was where she was because she’d allowed herself to be deceived and she had been after more glory. There was no one to blame but herself. She’d been stupid and trusting, and she would pay for that one moment of fallacy for the rest of her life.

Her phone rang.

Grateful for the interruption to her morbid ruminations, she picked it up and answered. “Susan Michaels.”

“Hey, Sue, it’s Angie. How you doing?” Her buddy sounded a little less than upbeat, but it was still good to hear a friendly voice.

“Fine,” Susan said as she tucked her award away into her purse. If anyone could make her feel better, it was Angie. A smart-mouthed vegan veterinarian, Angie had a way of cutting through the thick of any matter and pointing out the ludicrous—it was truly a gift Sue appreciated. “What are you up to?”

“Five by five as always.”

Susan rolled her eyes. The statement wasn’t just a reference to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show Angie loved, it was also the way Angie described herself, since she was round and cuddly.

“I’ll only give you five by three… maybe.”

“Yeah, right. Trust me, I am as wide as I am tall, but that’s not the point of this. You got a minute away from your lunatic boss?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“‘Cause I’ve got some news that I think you’re going to want to hear.”

In spite of Angie’s dire tone, Susan smiled. “Hugh Jackman has divorced his wife and happened upon my picture in some old article and decided that I’m the woman for him?”

Angie laughed. “Damn, you have been working for that paper for a long time. You’re now starting to believe the rubbish you publish.”

“Har, har. Is there a real point to this conversation?”

“Yes, there is. You know those strange missing-person reports Jimmy’s been talking about that’ve been going on for a while? The ones Jimmy said might be related?”

“Yeah?”

“They are.”

Susan froze as her old reporter self leaped to the forefront. “How do you mean?”

“I can’t say anything more on the phone, okay? In fact, I’m on a pay phone, and you don’t want to know how hard one of these things is to find nowadays. But I can’t take any chances. Can you come by work in about an hour to look for a cat?”

Screwing her face up, Susan let out a disgusted breath. “Ew! I’m deathly allergic to those things.”

“Trust me, it’ll be worth your wheezing and then some. Just be there.” The phone went dead.

Susan hung up as a thousand scenarios went through her head. She’d heard real panic in Angie’s voice. Real panic, and that wasn’t like her friend. This was a serious situation and Angie was scared.

Susan tapped the phone with her fingernail as her thoughts scattered into a million different directions. But they all came back to one single thing—this odd call just might be her own road back toward salvation and respectability.

In many parts of the world and in many religions, the concept of hell has long been one where the dead were punished for the evils they participated in or perpetrated while living.

In the Atlantean hell realm of Kalosis, there were wicked souls aplenty, but none of them were being punished for what they’d done while alive. Indeed, most of them had led calm, peaceful lives. As Urian—a Spathi Daimon who’d once called Kalosis home—so often said, “We’re not the damned, folks, we’re the categorically fucked.”

And it was true. Those here were all being punished not for their transgressions, but rather for something a long-forgotten queen in Atlantis had done centuries ago to strike back at her former lover. In one fit of anger against the Greek god Apollo, she’d sent her soldiers out to murder his child and mistress. By doing so, she’d damned all of her Apollite people not only to a life spent in darkness but to a life span of only twenty-seven years. A life that would end on their birthday as their body slowly, painfully deteriorated over a twenty-four-hour period until there was nothing left but a faint dust.

It was a cold, callous fate that each man and woman here in Kalosis would have met had their leader Stryker not found the mythical portal that allowed him to descend from the world of man into this realm where he’d met another god. A god whose indignant fury had made a mockery of Apollo’s.

Trapped within the hell realm by her own family who had feared her powers, Apollymi wasn’t one to let Apollo get away with his cruelty. She had embraced Apollo’s cursed son, Stryker, adopting him as her own before she taught him how to harvest and use human souls to elongate his life. It was a lesson Stryker had gladly shared with others of his race as he brought them here to serve not only his own code of vengeance but Apollymi’s as well. Currently he commanded legions of Daimons who used the pathetic humans as cattle.

And even though he owed her so much, Stryker truly hated the goddess who had saved his life and adopted him.

Now, he sat in the banquet hall of her home and watched as his Spathi warriors celebrated their latest victory.

“Death to the humans!” one of his warriors shouted above the din.

“Fuck that,” another replied. “We need them. Death to all Dark-Hunters!”

An echoing cheer rang out through the barren hall. Stryker leaned back in his cushioned throne as he watched the Apollites and Daimons congratulate each other on their most recent success—the capture of Ravyn Kontis. The darkened hall was lit only by candles as they poured Apollite blood—the only thing that could sustain their cursed bodies—from pitchers and spilled it all over themselves.

Like the other Spathis gathered here, Stryker envisioned a better world. A world where his people weren’t condemned to die at the tender age of twenty-seven. A world where they could all walk in the daylight that he’d taken for granted as a child.

And all because his father had knocked up a whore and then gotten pissed when the Apollites had killed her off. Apollo had cursed them all… even Stryker, who had been the ancient god’s most beloved son.

But that was eleven thousand years ago. Ancient, ancient history.

Stryker was the present and the Daimons before him were the future. If everything went as planned, they would one day soon reclaim the human realm that had been taken from them. Personally, he’d have rather started with another city, but when the human official had come to him with a plan for the humans to help rid Seattle of Dark-Hunters it had been a perfect opportunity to start aligning the race of man with the Apollites and Daimons. Little did the humans know that once the Dark-Hunters were cleared, there would be no one to save their souls. It would be open season on all mankind.