The Dark-Hunters, page 105
“Now I can sit here and play with you.” He delivered another staggering blow to Thanatos. “But I’d rather just put you out of both our miseries.”
Before he could strike again, a shotgun blast hit him square in the back. Zarek felt the shrapnel ripping through his body, narrowly missing his heart.
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
Thanatos grabbed him by his throat and lifted him up until he was forced to stand on his tiptoes. “Better yet, why don’t I just put you out of yours?”
Struggling to breathe, Zarek smiled grimly as he felt a trail of blood run out from the corner of his lips. The metallic taste of it suffused his mouth. He was hurt, but not daunted.
Smiling snidely at the Daimon, he kneed the bastard in the jewels.
The Daimon crumpled. Zarek took off running again, away from the Daimon, the Squires, and the cops, only he was nowhere near as fast as he’d been.
The pain made his eyesight blurry and the more he ran the more he hurt.
The agony of his body was unbearable.
Not in all his beatings as a child had he hurt this much. He didn’t know how he managed to keep going. Only that some part of him refused to lie down and let them have him.
He wasn’t sure when he lost them, or maybe they were right behind him. Zarek couldn’t really tell due to the buzzing in his ears.
Disoriented, he slowed, stumbling forward until he couldn’t go any farther.
He fell into the snow.
Zarek lay there waiting for the others to grab him. Waiting for Thanatos to finish what they had started, but as the seconds ticked by, he realized he must have escaped them.
Relieved, he tried to rise.
He couldn’t. His body just wouldn’t cooperate anymore. The best he could manage was to crawl forward three more feet where he caught sight of a large cabin-style house in front of him.
It looked warm and cozy and in the back of his mind was the thought that if he could just make it to the door the person inside might help him.
He laughed bitterly at the thought.
No one had ever helped him.
Not once.
No, this was his fate. There was no use fighting it, and in truth, he was tired of struggling alone in the world.
Closing his eyes, he drew a long, ragged breath and waited for what was inevitable.
3
Astrid sat on the edge of the bed as she checked the wounds of her “guest.” For four days now, he had lain in her bed unconscious while she watched over him.
The tight muscles under her hands were firm and strong, but she couldn’t see them.
She couldn’t see him.
Her eyesight was always forfeit when she was sent to judge someone. Eyes could deceive. They judged things very differently from the other senses.
Astrid must always be impartial even though at the moment she didn’t truly feel that way.
How many times had she gone in with an open heart only to be fooled?
The worst case had been Miles. A rogue Dark-Hunter, he had been charming and amusing. He had dazzled her with his vibrancy and ability to make everything a game. Whenever she had tried to push him to his limits, he had laughed off her tests and shown himself to be a good sport about everything.
He had appeared the perfect, well-balanced man.
For a time, she had even fancied herself in love with him.
In the end, he had tried to kill her. He had been completely amoral and ruthless. Cold. Unfeeling. The only person he had been able to love was himself, and while he was nothing but scum, in his mind, he had been wronged by mankind so it was okay to do whatever he wanted to them.
And that was Astrid’s biggest problem with Dark-Hunters. They were humans who were usually recruited from the sewers. Spat upon by others from the cradle to the grave, they were hostile to the world. Artemis never took that into consideration when she converted them. All she wanted was a soldier under Acheron’s command. Once they were created, Artemis washed her hands of them and left them for others to monitor and maintain.
At least until they crossed whatever line Artemis had drawn. Then the goddess rushed to have them judged and executed, and though she had no proof, Astrid suspected Artemis only followed that protocol to keep Acheron from being angry at her.
So Astrid had been called multiple times over the centuries to find some reason to allow a Dark-Hunter to live.
She never had. Not once. Every one she had judged had been dangerous and raw. A menace who threatened mankind more than the Daimons they pursued.
Olympian justice didn’t operate quite the way human justice did. There was no assumption of innocence. On Olympus, once accused, the defendant must prove himself worthy of mercy.
No one ever had.
The closest Astrid had ever come to clemency had been Miles, and look how that had turned out. It terrified her to think of how close she had come to judging him innocent and then having him set loose on the world again.
That experience had been the last straw for her. Since then, she had pulled herself away from everyone.
She wouldn’t let a man’s beauty or charm trick her again. Her job now was to get to the heart of this man on her bed.
Artemis had said Zarek had no heart whatsoever. Acheron had said nothing. He had only given her a piercing look that told her he was depending on her to do the right thing.
But what was right?
“Wake up, Zarek,” she whispered. “You only have ten days left to save yourself.”
* * *
Zarek came awake to a pain that was indescribable, which given his brutal background as a whipping boy and slave was hard to believe. Especially since as a human being, pain had been the only certainty in his life.
His head throbbing, he shifted, expecting to feel cold snow and ground underneath him. Instead, he was struck by how warm he felt.
I’m dead, he thought wryly.
Not even his dreams had ever left him this warm.
Yet as he blinked open his eyes to find a fire blazing in a hearth and a mountain of quilts over him, he realized he was very much alive and lying in someone else’s bedroom.
He looked around the room, which was decorated in earth tones: pale pinks, tans, browns, and dark green. The log-cabin walls were the upper-crust kind that denoted someone who wanted the look and feel of a rustic cabin, but who had enough money to make sure it was well insulated and cozy, and not drafty and cold.
His bed was an expensive iron reproduction of the large beds from the end of the nineteenth century. To his left stood a small nightstand where an old-fashioned pitcher and washbowl rested.
Whoever owned this place was loaded.
Zarek hated wealthy people.
“Sasha?”
Zarek frowned at the soft, melodic voice. A woman’s voice. She was down the hall in another room, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint her location through the pain in his skull.
He heard a soft canine whine.
“Oh, stop that,” the woman chided with a gentle tone. “I didn’t really hurt your feelings, did I?”
Zarek’s frown deepened as he tried to make sense of what had happened to him. Jess and the others were hunting him and he remembered falling down in front of a house.
Someone from the house must have found him and dragged him inside, though why anyone would bother he couldn’t imagine.
Not that it mattered. Jess and Thanatos would be after him, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where he was, especially given how much blood he’d been losing as he ran. No doubt, there was a trail that led straight to this cabin’s door.
Which meant he had to get out of here ASAP. Jess wouldn’t do anything to hurt those who’d helped him, but there was no telling what Thanatos was capable of.
His mind flashed to a burning village. To the horrid sight of people lying dead …
Zarek flinched at the memory, wondering why it would haunt him now.
It was a reminder of what he was capable of, he decided, and a reminder of why he had to get away from here. He didn’t want to hurt someone who had been nice to him.
Not again.
Forcing himself to forget the pain of his body, he sat up slowly.
The dog instantly came running into his room.
Only it wasn’t a dog, he realized as it stopped by his bed and growled at him. It was a large, white timber wolf. One that appeared to hate him.
“Back off, Scooby,” he snapped. “I’ve made boots from bigger and badder wolves than you.”
The wolf bared more teeth as if it understood his words and was daring him to prove them.
“Sasha?”
Zarek froze as the woman appeared in his doorway.
Damn me …
She was incredible. Her long blond hair was the color of honey, and it fell in soft waves around her thin shoulders. Her skin was pale, with rosy cheeks and lips that had obviously been protected very carefully from the harsh Alaskan climate. She stood close to six feet in height and wore a white cable-knit sweater and jeans.
Her eyes were a pale, pale blue. So light that at first glance, they were almost colorless. And as she came into the room with her hands stretched out as she moved slowly and methodically, trying to locate the wolf, he realized she was completely blind.
The wolf barked at him twice, then turned and went to his owner.
“There you are,” she whispered, kneeling to pet it. “You shouldn’t bark, Sasha. You’ll wake our guest.”
“I’m awake and I’m sure that’s why he’s barking.”
She turned her head toward him as if she were trying to see him. “I’m sorry. We don’t get much company and Sasha tends to be a little antisocial with strangers.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling.”
She walked toward the bed, again with her hand outstretched. “How do you feel?” she asked, patting his shoulder as she located him.
Zarek cringed at the sensation of her warm hand on his flesh. It was gentle. Searing. And it made a foreign part of him ache. But worst of all, it made his groin hard. Tight.
He’d never been able to stand anyone touching him.
“I’d rather you not do that.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Touch me.”
She pulled back slowly and blinked methodically as if it were more habit than reflex. “I see by touch,” she said softly. “If I don’t touch you, I’m completely blind.”
“Yeah, well, we all have problems.” He scooted to the opposite side of the bed and rose to his feet. He was bare except for his leather pants and a few bandages. She must have undressed him and treated his wounds. That thought made him feel rather strange. No one had ever bothered caring for him before when he’d been wounded.
Why would she?
Even Acheron and Nick had left him to his own devices after he’d been hurt in New Orleans. The best they’d offered was a ride home so that he could heal in solitude.
Of course, they might have offered him more had he been a little less hostile toward them, but hostility was what he did best.
Zarek found his clothes folded on a rocking chair by the window. In spite of the painful protests of his muscles, he started pulling them on. His Dark-Hunter powers had allowed him to heal for the most part while he slept, but he wasn’t in as good a shape as he would have been had the Dream-Hunters helped him. They often came to injured Dark-Hunters to heal them during their sleep, but not Zarek.
He scared them as much as he scared everyone else.
So, he’d learned to take his hits and deal with the pain. Which was fine by him. He didn’t like people, immortal or otherwise, anywhere nearby.
Life was better alone.
He grimaced as he caught sight of the hole in the back of his shirt where the shotgun blast had struck him.
Yup, life was definitely better alone. Unlike his “friend,” he couldn’t shoot himself in the back even if he wanted to.
“Are you up?” the unknown woman asked, her voice surprised. “Dressing?”
“No,” he said irritably. “I’m pissing on your rug. What do you think I’m doing?”
“I’m blind. For all I know you really are peeing on my rug, which is a very nice rug incidentally, so I hope you’re kidding.”
He felt a strange twinge of amusement at her comeback. She was fast and smart. He liked that.
But he had no time to waste. “Look, lady, I don’t know how you got me in here, but I appreciate it. However, I have to get going. Believe me, you’ll be very sorry if I don’t.”
She pushed herself off the bed at his hostile words and it was only then he realized he’d growled them at her.
“There’s a bad blizzard outside,” she said, her voice less friendly than it had been before. “No one is going to be able to go anywhere for a while.”
Zarek didn’t believe it until he parted the curtains on her window. The snow was falling so fast and thick that it looked like a dense white wall.
He cursed under his breath. Then louder he asked, “How long has it been doing this?”
“The last few hours.”
He ground his teeth as he realized he was stuck here.
With her.
This was really not good, but at least it would keep the others from tracking him. With any luck the snow would disguise his trail and he knew for a fact that Jess hated the cold.
As for Thanatos, well, given his name, language, and looks, Zarek would peg him as an ancient Mediterranean, too, and that meant Zarek still had an advantage over both of them. He’d learned centuries ago how to move quickly over the snow and what dangers to avoid.
Who could have known that nine hundred years in Alaska would actually pay off someday?
“How can you be up and moving?”
Her question startled him. “Excuse me?”
“You were severely injured when I brought you in a few days ago. How can you be moving now?”
“A few days?” he asked, stunned by her words. He ran his hand over his face and felt his thick whiskers. Shit. It had been days. “How many?”
“Almost five.”
His heart pounded. He’d been here for four days and they hadn’t found him? How was that possible?
He frowned. Something about that didn’t seem right.
“I thought I felt a gun wound on your back.”
Ignoring the gaping hole in the shirt, Zarek pulled his black undershirt on over his head. He was sure it’d been Jess who had shot him. Shotguns were the cowboy’s weapon of choice. His only consolation was the thought that Jess was aching from it as much as he was. Unless Artemis had lifted her ban. Then the bastard would feel nothing but satisfaction.
“It wasn’t a gun wound,” he lied. “I just fell.”
“No offense, but you’d have to fall off Mount Everest to have those kinds of wounds.”
“Yeah, maybe next time I’ll remember to take my climbing gear with me.”
She scowled at him. “Are you mocking me?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “I just don’t want to go into what happened.”
Astrid nodded as she tried to discern more about this angry man who couldn’t seem to speak without growling at her. Awake, he was far from pleasant.
He’d been near death when Sasha had found him. No one should be so badly beaten and shot, and then left for dead as he had been.
What had the Squires been thinking?
She was amazed the rogue Dark-Hunter could stand at all even after four days of rest.
Such treatment was inhumane and unbecoming of those who had sworn to protect mankind. Had a human found Zarek, his cover would have been even more blown by their carelessness, and the humans would have learned of his immortality.
It was something she fully intended to report to Archeron.
But that would come later. For now, Zarek was up and moving. His immortal life or death rested completely in her hands and she intended to test him fully to see just what kind of man he was.
Did he have any compassion left inside him or was he just as empty as she was?
Her job was to be the epitome of the things that drove Zarek to anger. She would push him to the heights of his tolerance and beyond to see what he would do.
If he could control himself with her, she would judge him safe and sane.
If he lashed out to hurt her in any way, she would judge him guilty and he would die.
Let the tests begin …
She ran through her mind what little she knew about him. Zarek didn’t like to talk to people. He didn’t like the rich.
Most of all, he hated to be touched or ordered about.
So she decided to press his first button with idle conversation.
“What color is your hair?” she asked. The seemingly innocuous question made her memory flash to the way it had felt under her hand as she had bathed the blood from it.
His hair had been soft, smooth. It had slid sensuously through her fingers, caressing them. From the feel of it, she knew it wasn’t too short or too long, but probably fell to his shoulders when styled.
“Excuse me?” He sounded surprised by her question and for once didn’t growl the words at her.
He had a beautiful voice. Rich and deep. It resonated with its Greek accent, and every time he spoke, it sent a strange chill through her. She’d never heard any man who had a voice so innately masculine.
“Your hair,” she repeated. “I was wondering what color it is.”
“Why do you care?” he asked belligerently.
She shrugged. “Just curious. I spend a lot of time alone and though I don’t really remember what colors look like, I try to picture them anyway. My sister Cloie gave me a book once that said every color had a texture and feel. Red, for instance, it said was hot and bumpy.”
Zarek frowned at her. This was an odd conversation, but then, he’d spent enough time alone to understand the need to talk about anything to anyone who would stand still long enough to bother. “It’s black.”
“I thought so.”
“Did you?” he asked before he could stop himself.
She nodded as she rounded the bed and came a little too close to him. She stood so close that their bodies almost touched. He felt an odd impulse to touch her. To see if her skin was as soft as it appeared.
