The Dark-Hunters, page 694
Vane walked stonily toward Anya and sank down beside her. He gathered her wolf’s body up into his arms and cradled her as if she were a baby. Tears streamed down his face as he rocked back and forth with her and whispered in wolf to her.
Fang let out a fierce howl and turned into a man. His body bare, he laid his head down on Anya’s back and held onto her too.
Ash would never forget the sight of the three of them huddled there in their grief. It would haunt him forever.
All too well, he remembered the past.…
Pain like that never fully healed. He knew it for a fact.
His face grim, Ash took a step toward them. “Do you need me to—”
“Get away,” Vane snarled, his voice feral and cold. “Just leave us alone.”
“There might be more Daimons coming,” Val reminded Vane.
“And I will kill them,” he growled. “I will kill them all.”
There was nothing more to be done to help them and Ash hated that most of all. The brothers needed time to grieve.
Disintegrating his staff he turned toward Val, who watched the brothers with a troubled gaze.
“There was nothing more you could do,” Valerius said to Vane. “Don’t blame yourself.”
Vane let out an inhuman snarl.
Ash pulled Val’s arm and led him away from the scene before Vane attacked out of sorrow.
“The innocent should never have to suffer from the battles of others,” Val breathed as he followed Ash.
“I know,” Ash said, his heart heavy. “But it seems to always be the case.”
Val nodded. “A furore infra, libera nos.”
Ash paused at the Latin quote. Spare us from the fury within. “You know, Valerius, there are times when I think you might actually be human after all.”
Valerius scoffed at that. “Trust me, Acheron, whatever human part of me that ever existed was killed a long, long time ago.”
Deleted Scene #2 from Night Embrace
This is one of the epilogues pulled from the back of the book.
New Orleans, three hours later
“Did he eat?”
Vane swallowed at Mama Bear Peltier’s question and shook his head no. Fang hadn’t eaten a bite since the bears had taken them in.
His brother was dying, and just like with Anya, there was nothing Vane could do to save him.
Impotent rage filled him and he wanted blood for what had happened that night. Most of all, he wanted Talon’s heart in his fist.
Mama Bear brushed a kind hand over his shoulder. “If you need anything, ask.”
Vane forced himself not to growl at her.
What he needed was his brother to be whole again. But the Daimon attack had left Fang without any will to survive. They had taken more than his brother’s blood, they had taken his dignity and his heart.
Vane doubted if his brother would ever be normal again.
Mama turned into her bear form and ambled off. Vane was only vaguely aware of Justin padding by outside in his panther form, followed by a tiger and two hawks. All were headed for their rooms where they could spend the day in their true animal bodies, safely locked away from the unsuspecting world.
“It’s a zoo, isn’t it?”
He looked up at Colt’s voice coming from the doorway. Standing six foot four, Colt was one of the members of the Howlers. Like Mama and her clan, Colt was a bear, but unlike them, he was also an Arcadian.
Vane was amazed the bears had tolerated one in their midst. Most Katagaria packs killed any Arcadian on sight.
He would have.
But then, Mama and Papa Bear weren’t the usual bunch.
“What do you want?” Vane asked.
Colt shifted uneasily. “I was thinking … you know it would be a lot safer for everyone at Sanctuary if there were two Sentinels protecting the Peltiers.”
Vane sneered at that. “Since when does a Sentinel protect a Katagaria clan?”
Colt gave him a droll stare. “That from a Sentinel who is stroking a Katagari wolf’s fur?”
Rage darkened Vane’s sight and if it wasn’t for the fact that he needed to stay here for Fang’s welfare, he’d be lunging for Colt’s throat. “I’m not a Sentinel and I’m not Arcadian.”
“You can’t hide from me, Vane. Like me, you have chosen to hide your facial markings, but it doesn’t change what you are. We are Sentinels.”
Vane cursed him. “I will never be a Sentinel. I refuse that birthright. I won’t hunt and kill my own kind.”
“Haven’t you already done that?” Colt asked with an arched brow. “How many Sentinels have you slain for your birth pack?”
Vane didn’t want to think about that. That had been different. They had threatened Anya and Fang.
“Look,” Colt said. “I’m not here to pass judgment on you. I’m just thinking it would be easier to—”
“I’m not staying,” Vane said. “Wolves don’t mix with others. Once I’m strong enough to protect Fang again, we’re out of here.”
Colt took a deep breath and shook his head. “Whatever.” He turned around and left.
Vane’s heart ached as he left the room long enough to take Fang’s uneaten food to the kitchen.
If his brother didn’t snap back soon, he didn’t know what he’d do. They were both under a death sentence.
It wouldn’t be long before their father would send scouts back to determine their fate. Once they found out that both of them had survived, assassins would be coming for them. He needed Fang mobile.
He could fight alone, but carting Fang’s catatonic ass around with him wasn’t going to be easy and it wasn’t something he looked forward to doing when all he wanted was to lie down and lick his wounds too.
Damn Fang for being so selfish.
When Vane returned to his room upstairs, he found Wren just inside the door and Aimée Peltier on the bed beside Fang.
In his early thirties, Wren looked much younger. He wore his dark blond hair in dreadlocks and had yet to speak a word to Vane.
Mama Bear had told him that Wren had been left for dead a few years back and brought to Sanctuary. No one knew anything about Wren other than the fact that Mama didn’t like or trust him.
Aimée Peltier was a beautiful blonde—that was if a man liked his women extremely skinny and Vane didn’t. She was the pride and joy of the Peltier clan and from what he had seen she was one of the few truly kindhearted bears.
Vane frowned as Aimée leaned over and whispered something to Fang.
To his amazement, Fang licked her hand.
Aimée patted Fang’s fur, then rose from the bed. She froze as she caught sight of Vane.
“What did you say to him?” Vane asked.
“I told him you were both welcome here. That no one would ever hurt him again.”
Vane glanced at his brother, who had returned to his unmoving wolf state.
“We’re not staying here,” Vane reiterated.
Wren gave him a wry smile. “Funny. That’s what I said ten years ago.”
Deleted Scene #3 from Night Embrace
This was a scene in which I wanted to show why Talon lived in the swamp. My editor thought it was unnecessary, so it, too, was cut.
Acheron placed a hand on his shoulder. The touch was electrifying, sizzling. It burned without pain and it shot him straight into the past.
Talon couldn’t move as he saw himself more than two hundred years ago. He was in his old plantation home that he’d built before he’d gone into the swamp. It had been just after midnight when he and Acheron had returned from hunting to find a small bundle on his doorstep.
At first he had thought it nothing until he heard the soft whine of an infant. The moment he had seen the abandoned baby girl, his emotions had overwhelmed him.
“I will keep this child.”
“Talon,” Acheron snapped. “Are you mad? Dark-Hunters don’t have children. She’s a foundling and you need to find her a family.”
“Nae, I willna do it, Acheron. She was given to me by the gods to care for. Besides, other Dark-Hunters have children around them,”
“But they are the children of their Squires.”
“Then send me a Squire to tend her.”
Acheron had balked, but in the end, he had given in and found Talon someone to help raise the baby.
Talon’s thoughts tumbled with images as he saw his adopted daughter grow in his mind. Sirona as a toddler taking her first steps and laughing as she reached up for him. Sirona as a little girl running in to hug him before bed. Sirona saying her prayers each night before he tucked her in and left her to hunt Daimons.
She’d been the most beautiful girl he’d ever beheld. Her laughing blue eyes and golden hair had reminded him much of Nynia and at times he would imagine that she was their daughter.
He’d protected and cared for her as a father, giving her anything and everything she wanted.
He’d told her that he was her uncle and that her parents had died and left her to his care. No one had ever questioned it. Only his Squire had known the truth.
“How do I look, Uncle?”
Talon’s breath caught as he saw Sirona leaving the dressing room at the tailor’s shop in town. It was two hours after dark and he’d paid a fortune for the tailor to accommodate his odd schedule. But it was worth every penny, he decided, as he saw the happiness on Sirona’s face.
Her wedding gown was a pale blue that made her sky-colored eyes sparkle. Her blond hair was pulled up in a matching ribbon.
He’d smiled at her. “Thomas is a lucky man who had best take care of you.”
She laughed and pressed her lips to his cheek, then rushed back inside to try on the rest of her wedding trousseau.
A few minutes later, the seamstress’s assistant had run out to him. “She’s fainted!”
Terrified, Talon had rushed to her and carried her home. He’d sent for a doctor only to be told no one knew what ailed her, but that she wouldn’t live out the night.
He’d spent hours by her side, holding her in his arms, listening to her struggling to breathe.
Her young body had been racked with pain and she was covered in sweat.
“I will never marry Thomas now,” she whispered. “I shall never be a mother.” She looked up at him as tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. “There will be no one left to care for you, Uncle.”
And she had died there in his arms, her hand on his cheek.
Talon had been inconsolable. He’d foolishly believed that the curse had been lifted and that she’d been a blessing. In the end, he’d learned that Camulus was once more toying with him.
He would never be able to love without loss.
The night Sirona was entombed, Talon had burned his plantation to the ground and headed into the swamp where he vowed to let no other human being near him again.
Deleted Scene from Seize the Night
The events that occurred during Seize the Night took the Dark-Hunter world by storm. Much-beloved characters died, and suddenly nothing was sacred. What with Desiderius’s massacre and everything that happened to Nick Gautier, the novel rattled off to its end at an insanely intense pace. Because of that, this soft, quiet, and beautiful scene featuring Acheron at Cherise Gautier’s grave just didn’t quite fit.
Ash listened quietly as the priest spoke words of comfort outside the tomb in the St. Louis cemetery where Cherise Gautier had been laid to rest. Julian, Grace, Kyrian, Amanda, Tabitha, and Valerius stood to his right while Talon, Sunshine, and the Peltiers were lined up on his left to pay respect to one of the finest women Ash had ever been privileged to know.
He was dressed in the same clothes he’d had on the day he’d first met the woman. A pair of slouchy black pants, an oversized black sweater, and a long leather coat. Cherise had taken one look at him and clucked her tongue.
“When was the last time you ate?” she’d asked him.
“An hour ago.”
His words hadn’t fooled her at all. Convinced he was lying to save his pride, she’d promptly sat him down in a chair and proceeded to make him a plate of Cajun hash browns while Nick had tried not to laugh at them.
In the last eleven thousand years, she had been one of the rare humans who had treated Ash like a human being. She hadn’t seen him as anything more than a young man who needed a mother’s love and a friend.
And he missed her more than anything.
As he stood with the cold wind cutting through him, he could hear his own soul screaming out in rage that he had caused this. How could one sentence uttered in anger cause so much damage? But then they could. Cuts and bruises always healed, but words spoken in anger were most often permanent. They didn’t damage the body, they destroyed the spirit.
“I first met Cherise the day her mother birthed her,” the old priest said to them. “And I was there the evening she brought her own child into this world. Nick was her pride and all of you who knew her know that if you’d ever asked her what her most prized possession was, she would have answered with Nick’s name.”
Kyrian slid a sideways look to Ash, who heard the former Greek general’s thoughts. Since Nick’s body hadn’t been found after the vicious murder of Cherise, the consensus among the New Orleans Dark-Hunters and Squires, both former and current, was that Nick had become a Dark-Hunter himself.
They all knew better than to ask Ash for the truth.
The humans who didn’t know of their world all assumed that Nick had been another casualty to whatever fate had befallen his mother, while the authorities believed Nick had killed her.
The latter was why Ash knew he couldn’t bring Nick back to New Orleans. Not for a long time at least. The police were looking for him and they would convict him in a heartbeat.
Not to mention he didn’t really want anyone to know about Nick. At least not until Nick was ready to deal with the world.
After the priest finished, Amanda and Tabitha placed the roses they held in their hands at the door of Cherise’s tomb while the priest and Peltiers left.
Amanda paused beside Ash. “We’re having a memorial service later for Nick at our house. Just the Dark-Hunters and Squires.”
Ash nodded, but refused to meet her eyes. If he did, he was sure she’d know the truth.
He didn’t move until he was alone. Sighing, he glanced around at the stone monuments that made up the cemetery. There were so many here whom he had personally known. So many he had seen live and die.
He could hear the sound of their voices on the wind, remember their faces, their lives.
“I’m sorry, Cherise,” he whispered.
Stepping forward, he created a mavyllo, a sacred black rose that had been created by his mother, and laid it beside the red ones. Unlike the red ones, it would take root here and grow in memory of her.
It was the highest honor his kind could bestow on anyone.
“Don’t worry, Cherise. I won’t let anything else bad happen to your son … I promise.”
Reading Order of the Dark-Hunter Stories and Novels
Child, how naive of you. I want the soul of the woman who has compelled you to make a deal with the devil.
—Hades
If you’re a stickler for making sure you’ve read everything in the Dark-Hunter universe in the order in which it was released, here’s a checklist for you. It includes the novels as well as all the Dark-Hunter-related stories, and where those stories were originally found.
Fantasy Lover
“The Beginning”
“Dragonswan” (from Tapestry)
Night Pleasures
Night Embrace
“Phantom Lover” (from Midnight Pleasures)
Dance with the Devil
“A Dark-Hunter Christmas”
Kiss of the Night
Night Play
“Winter Born” (from Stroke of Midnight)
Seize the Night
Sins of the Night
“Second Chances” (from the Dark-Hunter Collectible Booklet)
Unleash the Night
Dark Side of the Moon
“A Hard Day’s Night-Searcher” (from My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding)
“Until Death We Do Part” (from Love at First Bite)
“Fear the Darkness” (2007 online e-mail exclusive)
The Dream-Hunter
Devil May Cry
Upon the Midnight Clear
Official Series Web Sites
Ahhh, the beauty of annihilation. There’s nothing like it.
—Apollymi
Dark-Hunter Web site, www.Dark-Hunter.com
Dream-Hunter Web site, www.Dream-Hunter.com
Were-Hunter Web site, www.Were-Hunter.com
Daimon-Apollite Web site, www.Katoteros.com
Sherrilyn Kenyon Fan Club, www.vampirechick.com
Sherrilyn Kenyon MySpace Page, www.myspace.com/officialdarkhunter
Exceptionally Brief Afterword
Baby, the world you know just got ugly.
—Ravyn Kontis
As Promised
Now that you’re finished, go back to the beginning and start again. Read often. The information in this book tends to change as often as Ash’s hair color. A smart Dark-Hunter is a breathing Dark-Hunter. Protect this book with your life.
Now, go on, go play. Save the human race from extinction. I’ve got work to do.
And so do you.
Acknowledgments
The ability of the human heart to sacrifice for the one it loves … there is nothing on Olympus than can even begin to compete with that.
—M’Adoc
Like me, this compendium would not be the amazing thing it is without a lot of help and inspiration from my friends and family.
First and foremost, I must thank the Dark-Hunter posse and my own personal muses—Dee Clingman; Lillie Rainey; Janet Lee; Tracy Willoughby; Kitti McConnell; Kristi Gillis; Mary Robinette Kowal; Nicole Hamilton; and Shannan Starnes—for keeping me in line, tossing ideas around, and helping at the drop of a hat. I must also thank the lovely and effervescent Jenny Rappaport and Lori Perkins. Jenny Hime, you’re the best friend a fairy-godmother-in-training could hope to have.
