Sherrilyn Kenyon - Devil May Cry

That urge was so strong that it was all she could do not to yield to it.

"Katra?"

Kat jerked at the sound of Artemis's voice in her head.

"What's going on? Why are you so angry? Is Apollymi bothering you?"

Kat rolled her eyes. "Stop spying on me."

Sin curled his lip. "It's hard not to look at you sprawled out on my couch. Not to mention how funny that is coming from you given what you did last night."

She grimaced at Sin as she realized she'd spoken out loud.

"Katra? Tell me what's wrong or I'm coming to check on you. It's not like you to get this riled."

Now she's concerned about me? Kat didn't know what aggravated her more, being trussed up by a Sumerian ex-god or patronized by a Greek one.

Oh wait, the trussing definitely won this one out. It ranked right up there with eye gouging.

"It's all right, Matisera," she said silently to Artemis. "I have it."

"And why is it I find that hard to believe?" Artemis popped into the room right in front of Kat, hands on hips. Dressed in a long white sheath gown, Artemis wore her vibrant red hair down so that it flowed around her body.

Kat cringed as she realized what the goddess had just done.

Sin spun around. His jaw went slack as he took in Artemis's presence and realized that Kat hadn't been lying to him. Obviously, she wasn't the goddess after all.

To her credit, Artemis didn't panic. Instead she merely eyed him as if he were a mild annoyance. "Wow, look what the cow dragged in." She cast a penetrating glare at Kat. "Why is he here?"

Sin cursed as he realized he'd just been played by both of them.

The handmaiden forgotten, he went for Artemis, but before he could reach her, the handmaiden somehow appeared before him. How the hell had she gotten out of the net? He knew firsthand that it didn't give that easily. But that wasn't here or there.

What mattered was getting his hands on Artemis.

"Calm down," Kat said, cradling her arm.

He shook his head. "Move out of my way, girl. I won't be kept from what I want."

Artemis rolled her eyes. "And what do you want? Your mewling powers back?" He lunged at her, but Kat caught him about the waist and slung him to the ground with a strength he'd never imagined a woman could have —especially considering the fact that she had a broken arm.

She landed on top of him.

Pushing her away, he growled, "I don't want to hurt you, but it doesn't mean I won't."

Kat glared at him. "Ditto."

He tried to move past her, but the woman was like Velcro. Kat attached herself to his body and kept him from reaching Artemis.

Artemis scoffed at their struggle. "Get out of the way, Katra, so I can zap him."

Sin paused as he finally calmed enough to realize something highly significant. He looked back and forth between Katra and Artemis.

And as he did so, he knew exactly how to get his upper hand back.

He pulled the long, ornate dagger out of its sheath in his boot before he grabbed Katra and held the blade to her throat. He cut a gimlet glare at Artemis. "Give me my powers back, Artemis, or I'll take your daughter's life."

Kat cringed as Sin spoke a truth that only the bravest of souls would even dare whisper. And never within Artemis's hearing range.

Kat leaned back against him, away from the knife. "Damn, boy, you have an unholy gift for pissing off people." As was evi­denced by Artemis's shriek of outrage. "Why don't you tell her that dress makes her look fat while you're at it?"

He answered by pressing the blade closer to Kat's throat. "I'm not playing, Artemis."

Artemis's face turned to stone. "And neither am I."

Before Kat could even blink, the dagger left her throat. She was pulled from Sin's arms by an unseen force an instant before the knife was ripped from his hand and plunged into his chest, three times. On the third time, it was left buried to the hilt where it slowly rotated in his chest.

Sin cursed foully before he jerked it out.

Kat held her hand up toward Artemis, trying to defuse the situ­ation. "Matisera."

"Stay out of this, Katra. Go home."

By the tone of Artemis's voice, Kat knew she should obey. But she couldn't stand by and let Sin die if what he'd said about the gallu was true. They couldn't be left without someone who knew how to fight them.

Artemis stalked toward him. "It's time I finish what we started."

Sin pushed himself up from the floor and ran at Artemis, but he didn't come close before he was slammed into a far wall. He growled, then slung his arm out.

Artemis went flying.

Kat took a step toward her mother to protect her. But before Kat could take two, Artemis's voice rang out. "Deimos!"

Kat came to a halt at the same time a large, fierce man ap­peared by Artemis's side. Dressed all in black, Deimos had short jet-black hair that was streaked with wide white stripes—a much different hairstyle than he'd had the last time they met. He was terrifying in appearance, especially with the tattoo that started out as a light eyeliner around his electric blue eyes and then zigzagged from his tear ducts down his cheeks to his neck. Beautiful and deadly, he stood before them with his legs braced wide apart, his head tilted low like a predator and his arms held at his sides, close to his weapons—one sword and one gun—ready to fight.

"Suck his powers out and kill him," Artemis snarled.

Kat gaped at the order. Once issued, it couldn't be taken back. Deimos was one of the most dangerous of the Dolophoni. A son of the dreaded Furies, he was the one the gods called out when they needed a relentless Terminator and he wouldn't stop until Sin was dead.

Deimos ran at Sin and slammed him to the floor.

"What have you done, Matisera?"

"What I should have done in the beginning." Artemis tried to flash Kat out of the room, but since Artemis had traded Kat's ser­vice to her grandmother, she didn't have that power anymore.

Kat's mother snarled at her, "Leave us, Katra. Now."

But she couldn't. She was the reason Sin was in this mess, and thoughhe was giving Deimos a good fight, in the end she knew who would win it.

And it wouldn't be Sin.

Sin was fighting with one hand tied behind his back and three nasty chest wounds while Deimos could draw from the power of the entire Greek pantheon to kill him—it was one of many benefits bestowed on the Furies and their children. And though Sin might deserve to die, he didn't deserve death like this.

Not after what they'd done to him and not if what he'd said was true. They would need him to fight the demons of his own pantheon.

"Sorry, Matisera." Kat barely registered the confusion on Artemis's face before she ran at Sin. He was against the wall, fight­ing, while Deimos was pulling out his sword to finish him off. Kat grabbed Sin from the side and flashed them from his apartment to her own place in Kalosis.

They landed in a pile of twisted limbs in the center of her dark living room. Sin hissed before he pushed her away. Kat didn't go far. He was bleeding profusely, but what concerned her was the gaping wound his dagger had left. If he were mortal, that would have been fatal to him, and it was probably causing him enough pain right now that he was wishing it was.

She scooted herself toward him. "You need to be tended."

He glared at her. "Where are we? What did you do?"

"I kept you from dying."

He pushed her hand away from his wound. "Oh, believe me, I could have held my own."

Kat sat back on her legs. "Yeah, you were doing a real bang-up job of it. I particularly liked the way you were bruising his fists with your face. A few minutes more and I'm sure your heart would have been on the attack... after it was ripped from your chest."