Sherrilyn Kenyon: No Mercy

“I can’t. Your people are feeding on the humans because of your curse.”

Apollo bristled. “Not my curse. Apollymi was the one who taught them how to steal human souls. She’s the one housing and protecting them now. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Then lift your curse from your people. Apollymi won’t be able to control them if they don’t need to take human souls to live.”

“I can’t.”

Artemis shook her head. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. If I take it back, it will kill me and undo the entire creation of the world. I can’t fix this.”

Artemis let out a long sigh before she raked him with a repugnant sneer. “You’re pathetic, Apollo. Pathetic.” She turned and left him alone in his temple where he stared into an orb similar to the one in Sam’s palm.

Apollo’s hand shook as he conjured an image of Stryker in his orb. His eyes swam with tears. “You were ever disappointing to me, but I never meant to hurt you. I was trying to make you strong.” He choked on a sob. “If I could undo this, Strykerius, I would. I would…. I am so sorry for what I’ve done….”

Sam pulled back from the scene as her head whirled with everything she’d learned.

Especially about Acheron. Was that what had made him the first Dark-Hunter?

He’d been Artemis’s lover?

A whore…

Surely Apollo hadn’t meant that Acheron was really a whore, whore. Had he? Or was it just his anger at Acheron that caused him to say that?

“Well?” Stryker prompted. “How do I kill Apollo?”

She blinked at Stryker’s impatient tone as her mind replayed everything in sequence.

Zephyra sat forward on her throne. “What did you see? Can we break the curse?”

Sam shook her head. “It can’t be undone.”

Rage contorted Stryker’s handsome features. “You lie!”

“No, I swear. There is no way. Apollo would have undone it in the beginning had he been able to.”

Stryker cursed. “And his weakness? What will bring him to his knees?”

Oh he wasn’t going to like the answer to that question. She knew it. “The same thing that caused him to curse the Apollites to begin with.”

“His whore, Ryssa?” Stryker asked.

She shook her head. “The death of the son he loves more than anything.”

Scowling at her, Stryker sat back. “I don’t understand. What son?”

She licked her dry lips and braced herself for his wrath. “You, Stryker. You’re his weakness. You’re what he loves above everything else…. You’re the only thing he loves.”

Zephyra put her hand on his shoulder as Stryker sat there completely stone-faced. “She’s telling the truth.”

Stryker grabbed Sam by the arm and jerked her to him. “Are you playing with me?”

“Why would I?”

Snarling, he threw her away from him. One minute she was in the center of the hall and in the next, she was being sucked back into the vortex.

Sam fought against it with everything she had. Stryker had lied, there was no Dev. He was sending her back empty-handed.

Screaming, she tried to stop falling. Tried to get back to Kalosis so that she could hunt for him.

It was no use.

She found herself on the street just a few feet from where she’d gone into the vortex earlier.

“No!” she screamed as it closed right behind her and left her alone. She got up and ran around trying to find another opening.

There wasn’t one.

She was here and Dev…

Oh God, Dev…

Tears blinded her as that old helpless feeling ripped her apart. “You lying bastard!”

Guilt and grief tore through her. Dev was dead and it was all her fault. She’d caused this. Had she not thrown him out, she would have been there to protect him when Stryker came to get him.

How could she have let him go?

You’re a fool. Twice now she’d lost the man she loved.

And as she wept, she felt her Dark-Hunter powers waning. I don’t care. Nothing mattered to her anymore. Let them kill her.

Yet again the Daimons had taken everything from her. Only this time, she couldn’t blame her sister.

She could only blame herself.

Sick to her stomach, she didn’t know where to go or what to do. Aimless, she found herself back at Nick’s house, walking through the gate and then the back door.

How do I tell Dev’s family what I let happen? They would be crushed. All of them…

Nick stopped her as she reached the bottom of his staircase. “Where did you go?”

She ignored Nick’s question as she stepped past him.

“Sam?” Nick snapped. “What are you doing?”

Numb, she couldn’t think straight. “I need to be alone for a minute.”

Or a millennium.

I just want to die.

She stumbled up the stairs, wishing Stryker had killed her too. How could she have ever been so stupid as to trust a Daimon?

Her heart breaking, she opened the door to her room and froze.

No way…

Was it possible?

She blinked her eyes in disbelief as she saw Dev standing near her bed.

It couldn’t be.

“Dev?”

He was looking around as if he was as dazed as she’d been in Kalosis. “How did I get here? I swear I’m not stalking you, Sam. I didn’t—”

Laughing, she launched herself at him and wrapped her body around his while she kissed him over and over again.

Dev staggered back as Sam assaulted him. He’d expected her to be mad for his breaking her “space,” but there was nothing even remotely angry about her giddiness as she kissed him senseless.

Yeah, the woman was nuts. But as she rained kisses over him, he was getting harder by the minute and forgetting why he wasn’t supposed to be here with her.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Not yet.”

She squeezed him so tight, he could barely breathe. “I’m so sorry if I hurt you, Dev. I’m so sorry.” But for someone apologizing, she got more aggressive as she shoved him back onto the bed and pinned him there under her body.

Then she gave him the hottest kiss he’d ever had in his life.

But he wasn’t playing this. As much as he hated doing it, he shoved her back. “I’m not your yo-yo, Sam. And you’re not going to play head games with me.”

Sam swallowed as she saw the fury in those precious blue eyes she’d never thought to see again. “I don’t want to bury you, Dev. I don’t. I love you and it terrifies me.”

Those words hit him like a vicious punch to his gut. “What did you say?”

“I love you.”

He cupped her cheek in his hand as he stared at her in disbelief. Those were the three words he’d never expected to hear from someone he wasn’t related to. “I don’t want to live without you, Sam.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “I haven’t been alive in over five thousand years. Not until some bear made a smart-ass comment about my bad driving and followed me home.”

He bristled under her accusation. “You invited me.”

Her smile blinded him. “And I’m inviting you in again.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I know this is fast, but—”

A loud knock on the door interrupted her. “Clothes on, people, quick,” Nick said from the other side of the door. “Buckle up, buttercups. We have incoming and it’s about to get bloody.”

Dev opened the door to find Nick in the hallway, dressed for battle. “What’s going on?”

“My Spidey sense is off the radar. There’s a massive demon migration and it’s charting a course straight for us. Since I don’t want my house destroyed, I vote we take it where we’re least likely to be seen and where we have an advantage.”

“And that would be?” Dev asked.