Sherrilyn Kenyon - Sins of The Night

Still not appeased over the aggravation they had caused, Alexion straightened his coat with a tug at the lapels.

Daimons… they never learned.

The Squire's face blanched as he backed up and stared in horror. "What the hell are you?"

Alexion sauntered up to Keller and handed him the dagger. "I'm Acheron's Squire." It was kind of true. Okay, not really. It was a lie, but Alexion had no intention of letting anyone know his real relationship with Acheron.

Not that it mattered. Keller didn't buy it. "Like hell. Everyone knows Acheron doesn't have a Squire."

Yeah, right. If everyone on earth put together all the correct information they had about Acheron, it wouldn't fill a fairy's thimble. Alexion tried not to laugh at the poor man who thought he understood the world around him while the truth was he didn't know jack about shit.

"Apparently everyone's wrong since here I am, sent to you by the head honcho himself."

The athletically built young man scanned him from head to toe. "Why are you here?"

"Your Dark-Huntress, Danger, called for Acheron and since he's busy, I was sent to check things out and report back to him on what's happening. So here I am. Joy, oh joy of my life."

That didn't seem to soothe the man at all, but then sarcasm was seldom soothing. Although, to be honest, Alexion found a great deal of entertainment from it. Which was probably a good thing since sarcasm was Acheron's native tongue.

"And how do I know you're not lying?" Keller asked, his eyes still filled with doubt.

Alexion forced himself not to laugh. The man was smart. It was all a lie. Acheron knew exactly what was happening… at all times. But it was true that his boss couldn't come here in person. Not while all the Dark-Hunters in the area were suspicious of him. They would never believe the truth from Acheron's lips.

If they were to choose wisely and live through this, they needed to hear the truth from an "impartial" third party, and that was why he'd come. His goal was to save them from their own stupidity.

Provided they weren't all terminally stupid.

Alexion pulled a small cell phone out of his pocket. "Call Acheron yourself and hear the truth."

"I'm telling you the truth, Danger, Acheron is going to kill all of us. We know too much about him and he won't suffer us to live."

Dangereuse St. Richard stood in the receiving room of Kyros's antebellum mansion outside of Aberdeen, Mississippi, with her arms folded over her chest. She'd never been on the best of terms with the ancient Greek Dark-Hunter. Tonight, she wasn't in the mood for his bull, especially not after the stories she'd heard that said Kyros had turned Rogue and was allowing Daimons to live—and this from the lips of the Daimons she'd dusted earlier tonight.

She had no patience with anyone who betrayed the Dark-Hunter Code.

The sole job of a Dark-Hunter was to kill Daimons who were former members of the cursed Apollite race—children of Apollo who had offended him and been cursed to live in the night, and to die at age twenty-seven. If Apollites chose to start sucking human souls before that birthday, they became Daimons who could live indefinitely. But for every Daimon who lived, countless human souls died.

It was something she refused to tolerate. If she could kill Kyros for it, she would. But for one Dark-Hunter to kill another was instant death. She couldn't even attack him. Whatever she did to him, she would experience ten times worse.

Thanks, Artemis, for that particular gift.

Until Acheron answered her call for help, there was nothing she could do to stop Kyros from his madness.

In fact, she could feel the drain on her powers just from being in the same room as Kyros. Dark-Hunters weren't allowed to spend any significant amount of time together without draining each other's powers.

The room she and Kyros stood in was dark and musty, and should have been decorated with antiques instead of the modern furniture that clashed with the neoclassical design of the house. The walls were painted a deep, antebellum gold while the ceilings held exquisite white medallions. The hardwood, pine floors under her feet were scuffed and in bad need of repair. How odd for a Squire not to take better care of his Dark-Hunter's property.

But that was neither here nor there. Right now she had much more pressing business with Kyros than the fact that he had no taste and his Squire had no clear understanding of his job description.

"Okay, Kyros." She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. "Acheron is a Daimon who feeds off humans and all of us were created solely so that he could fight a war with his mother, the Daimon queen, who no Dark-Hunter has ever heard of. Uh-huh."

He slammed his hand down on the cherrywood desk he sat behind. "Dammit, woman, listen to me. I'm more than nine thousand years old. I was there in the beginning—one of the first Dark-Hunters ever created—and I remember stories of Apollymi from my childhood. She was called the Destroyer and she was Atlantean… just like Acheron."

So it was a coincidence. Two Atlanteans did not a family make. She most certainly wasn't the only French Dark-Hunter, she wasn't even the only one to come out of the French Revolution, and none of them were related by a long shot.

Kyros would need a lot more proof than that to convince her that Acheron was the son of this Atlantean god-queen.

She gave him a bored stare. "And this Atlantean Destroyer is now leading the Daimons and sending them out to battle against Acheron, who is just using us and the humans as cannon fodder to protect himself? Really, Kyros, put down the crack pipe… or go write children's fantasy novels." She leaned forward and whispered loudly. "I'll bet you even know exactly who conspired to kill Kennedy, huh? I'm sure the money from D. B. Cooper is what financed your stunning collection of furniture."

He bolted to his feet and approached her. "Don't patronize me. I know I'm right. Have you ever seen Acheron eat food? We all know he's a lot more powerful than the rest of us. Didn't you ever wonder why?"

That was a no-brainer in her book. "He's the oldest and has had his powers a lot longer than the rest of us. You know the saying 'practice makes perfect,' and that man has had a lot of practice. As for food, I haven't been around him enough to notice."

"Yeah, well, I was around him a lot once upon a time ago, and while Brax and I ate, he never did. After we were created, Acheron wrote down his bullshit rules and the rest of us have been blindly following them for centuries without questioning them or him. It's time now that we started thinking for ourselves."

She made a noise of sarcastic amusement. "And what has suddenly brought on this grand epiphany of yours?"

Kyros laughed at that as an evil, spooky look came over him. "Do you really want to know?"

" Pourquoi pas ? Why not?"

"Stryker!"

Danger frowned at his shout. Half a minute later, something flashed so bright in the room, she had to turn away to keep her light-sensitive Dark-Hunter eyes from burning. But the hair on the back of her neck rose as she sensed a Daimon's sudden presence in the room. Hissing in anger, she pulled the dagger out of her boot and straightened to confront it.

Kyros grabbed her arm. "No. Don't."

Her temper raged at his actions. "You would invite a filthy Daimon into your house?"

The question had barely left her lips before the Daimon sensation ceased. The newcomer still stood there, but he no longer cast that warning beacon that announced a Daimon presence to a Dark-Hunter.

A bad feeling went through Danger as she looked at the newcomer. Like Acheron, he stood a dead six feet eight, with long black hair that flowed around his shoulders, and he wore a pair of opaque sunglasses over his eyes.