Acheron leaned his head back and cursed at the fact that those tears affected him. Why did he care? What the fuck was so wrong with him that he actually wanted to comfort her?
He slammed his staff down on the floor, making her cry even harder. 'What do you want from me, Artie?'
'I want my friend back.'
'No,' he said bitterly. 'You want your pet back. I was never your friend. Friends aren't ashamed of each other. They don't live in fear of other people seeing them together.'
She looked up at him with her green eyes swimming in tears. 'I'm sorry. There, I said it. I wish I could go back and repair everything that's happened. But I can't. I wish I could save our nephew. I wish that I'd been more decent to you. I wish…' She paused, but it was too late. He'd heard it loud and clear.
'That I'd never been a whore. Trust me, what you feel about that is a pittance compared to my sentiments. You were never the one they degraded and used. I'm the one who has to live with that past. Not you. You should be grateful those nightmares don't haunt your sleep.'
'I have my own nightmares, thank you.'
Perhaps she did. After all, she was the pitiful child who had to tolerate Apollo.
She looked up at him. 'Food can't sustain you anymore, Acheron. You don't even have to eat human food again. But you do have to feed from me or you will revert to the Destroyer's Harbinger. You will have no compassion for the world and you will destroy it.'
A muscle worked in his jaw. He wanted to call her a liar, but he knew the truth. He already felt those violent urges inside him. And he hated her for this 'gift.'
Cursing, he held his hand out to her.
She took his hand and he jerked her to her feet and into his arms. Then, just as he started to ravage her throat, he pulled back and bit into her gently.
At the end of the day, he wasn't a monster. He wouldn't brutalize her even if she did deserve it.
He'd made her a promise and though he may have been a thief and a whore, he wasn't a liar. He wouldn't serve to her what she'd served to him. He would always be better than that.
Artemis sighed as she felt Acheron's powers surging around her. His skin marbled to blue while he drank. The heat of his breath on her flesh ignited her desire, but when she tried to remove his clothes, he stopped her.
She closed her eyes as she heard his voice in her head.
When he'd taken his fill, he stepped away from her. His eyes were blazing red as he wiped the blood from his lips. 'I need time away from you.'
Those words sliced through her. 'What are you saying?'
'Send a kori to me with your blood.'
'No.'
This time, he turned on her with all his powers ignited.
Artemis shrank away at the sight of his true god form. He was massive and terrifying.
'You will do as
She nodded slowly as her heart broke again over what she'd lost. 'While you're telling me what to do, you should know that when I brought you back, Styxx came with you. And he's filled with even more fury and hatred than you are.'
Acheron cursed at the mention of his twin. 'Where is he?'
'He's on the Vanishing Isle, under the care of a god who owes me a favor. He can't harm anyone where he is and he's in a good place with his every desire fulfilled.'
'Then leave him there. I have no wish to ever see his face again.'
'Rather difficult, isn't it?'
He curled his lip at her reminder. 'Don't push me, Artie. I'm one step away from the edge and it wouldn't take much to step over it. Trust me, you don't want me there. Now get out of my sight. I don't ever want to see you here in my domain again.'
Her tears started falling again, but this time they didn't affect him. He refused to allow that. She'd changed him from the man he'd been.
The whore was dead and a god of destruction had been born. Cursed. Hated. Powerful. Lethal.
His hatred for the world was carved into his heart. His past was a weight he carried on his back and his future was uncertain.
He had enemies aplenty who wanted him dead, an angry mother out to end the world, a baby demon who needed to be fed every few hours, two lunatics training him for a coming war neither would explain, and a horny goddess who only wanted him chained to her bedpost.
Yeah… it was 'good' to be back in the mortal realm. He couldn't wait to see what tomorrow would bring. Too bad he had no warning for his place in it.
Damn the Fates-his sisters who'd betrayed and condemned him to this existence.
One day, he'd pay those bitches back too.
April 10, 9526 BC
Acheron didn't know why he'd agreed to meet Artemis. The mere thought of looking at her right now was enough to make him physically sick-if he could get sick. For almost a year, he'd been cleaning up Apollo's mess. There were remnant Apollites turning into soul-sucking Daimons on a daily basis.
Not that he blamed them, really. It'd been a small group of men that the Atlantean queen had sent out to assassinate his sister and nephew. Jealous over the fact that Apollo no longer came to her bed, the Atlantean queen had turned her venom to Ryssa. In the middle of the night, the queen's men had snuck into Ryssa's bedroom and killed her while she was feeding Apollodorus.
Then after Apollo had finished killing Acheron, the god had turned on the very race of people he'd created. Since the assassins had made it appear as if an animal had torn into Ryssa and Apollodorus, Apollo cursed them to feed on each other. Only Apollite blood could sustain them. What was it with Apollo and Artemis and blood?
If that wasn't enough of a curse, Apollo had banished them from the sun so that he'd never have to see them again and be reminded of their treachery. And not to be outdone, he'd then condemned their entire race to die slowly and painfully on their twenty-seventh birthday-the same age Ryssa had been.
Given the severity of the punishment, Acheron might have thought the god loved his sister. But he knew better. Apollo was no more capable of love than Artemis was. It was nothing more than a show of power. A warning to others who might think of turning on Apollo who was now telling everyone that he'd destroyed Atlantis to get back at the Apollites.
Stupid bastard. And stupid people for believing his lies.
Acheron kept his silence, not to protect the god, but only because Apollo's pathetic arrogance amused him.
By his own stupidity the god was going to be undone. Even now Acheron's mother sat in her prison, plotting the god's death… along with Artemis's. No sooner had Apollo damned his people than Apollymi had gone to Strykerius, Apollo's condemned son, and showed him how to circumvent death by taking human souls into Apollite bodies and thus elongating their lives.
No wonder Savitar had failed to tell Acheron the name of the goddess Acheron would be fighting.
It was his own mother. She was the one leading the Daimon army that was set on its own vengeance. He should have known.
But then his revenge had been more direct. He'd hunted down the ones who'd killed his sister and nephew- those who'd survived his mother's attack, and he'd made them wish they'd never been born with nerve-
