Titus pushed up on his thighs and stood. “She’s not that far ahead of us. We should be able to catch her if we hustle.”
Her footprints were easy to follow until the snowfall increased and the forest turned into a sheet of white. They tracked her for a least a mile through the trees before the snow covered her prints. Zander stopped and turned a slow circle as big, white, chunky flakes fell all around him and clung to his hair, eyelashes and the stubble on his jaw. Dammit, where was Demetrius when they fucking needed him? “There’s nothing out here.”
Titus scanned the eerily dark forest. His mustache and soul patch were white with ice crystals. He squinted and pointed through the trees. “There. A light.”
Zander held up a hand to block the snow from slapping him in the eyes. “What is that? A fire?”
“A house of some kind. There’s nowhere else to hide out here, and contrary to what you think, she’s not stupid. She wouldn’t stay out in the open, no matter how pissed at you she is.”
Zander ignored the jab and picked up his pace. He made it another fifty yards in the trees before pain exploded behind his eyes and radiated through his skull all over again. Only this time it was a hundred times worse than what Cal-lia had thrown his way.
“Mother…fucker.” He grabbed for a tree trunk, swayed but caught himself before he went down.
“What the hell’s wrong with you now?” Titus asked, stepping up beside him.
Zander pressed his fingers against his temples, leaned his shoulder against the Douglas fir at his side. “I don’t know.” Another sharp pain gouged out the area behind his eyes. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
“Is it your back?”
“No.” He cringed as the pain knifed him again. “It’s my fucking…head.”
“When did you hit your damn head?”
“I didn’t.” He leaned forward, tried to give gravity a chance to ease the throb. “What the hell did she give me?”
“Nothing that would have fucked up your head. Holy crap, Zander. Eight hundred years with barely a scratch, and in the span of two days you’re about to keel over. Old age has finally hit you, moron.”
That couldn’t be it. This was something else, but Zander didn’t know what.
“Come on, old geezer,” Titus said, tugging at Zander’s sleeve with his gloved hand. “We gotta find Callia. Then we’ll have her take a look at your pathetic head.”
“She’ll probably bash it in,” Zander mumbled. But he let Titus pull him along and tried not to think of what might happen when they found her, only focused on finding her before it was too late.
Fear drowned out the scream in Callia’s throat as her body sailed through the air. She smacked into the far wall of the cabin and slumped to the ground. Pain ricocheted off her forehead where she’d hit the hard wood, a stabbing sensation behind her eyes. In a daze she tried to get up, but her head spun, and stars fired off in her line of sight.
“You make this too easy, Princess,” the daemon growled behind her. “Get up.”
She shook her head, rolled to her back and pushed up on shaking hands. Then wished she’d kept her back turned. The monster coming toward her was straight out of a nightmare. Seven feet of quivering muscles. His catlike face didn’t mesh with the sharp pointy ears, the goat horns sticking out of his head or his human body. But his fangs were a clear reminder he was anything but docile. She’d run into a daemon once before—in Greece—but that one hadn’t been nearly as large as this one. And he definitely hadn’t been as menacing.
Adrenaline spiking, she scooted backward, but hit the wall. She glanced right and left, desperately searching for a way out. The cabin was small, nothing but a main room and a doorway that led to what looked like a tiny kitchen. A table blocked her path.
She wished beyond wishing she could blend into the wall or flash herself somewhere else like she could in Argolea. A piece of broken porcelain from a bowl he’d thrown at her earlier caught her eye. She picked it up and heaved it toward the daemon.
“I see you want to play.” He deflected the shard and stepped over—oh, gods—what looked like a pile of bloodied, decapitated bodies. Her stomach roiled. She scrambled to her feet and darted toward a wooden table, putting it between her and the monster.
The daemon chuckled. “Imagine my surprise, running into you here, of all places.” A menacing smile slid across his gnarled face, his sharp teeth glinting in the low light from a lamp above. “I have to be the luckiest archdaemon ever.”
Terror made it hard for her to latch on to coherent thoughts. But two got through. One, for some reason this beast thought she was Isadora. And two, from her schooling she knew the archdaemon supposedly had powers none of the other daemons did, though just what those were, she couldn’t remember.
She was dead if she stayed put. In hopes the cabin had a back door, she turned and ran through the kitchen. She made it two steps before he grabbed her from behind. Claws raked across the top of her chest and lower abdomen, and she screamed in pain as he dragged her back into the main room.
“A fighter, I see.” The daemon threw her onto the table. Her back and skull hit the old wood with a deafening thwack, though the pain was nothing compared to the fire burning in her torso. The massive hand holding her down was like ten tons weighing on her chest. “Do you know, Princess, what the biggest perk is to being the archdaemon?”
She struggled, tried to roll off the table, but couldn’t move more than a few inches. Blood soaked through her shirt, and the burn intensified.
“No?” he answered for her. “Then I’ll tell you.” He leaned over, so close the vile stench of his breath triggered her gag reflex. She tried to turn her head but his other hand caught her face. She looked up into glowing green, soulless eyes. “I’m not impotent like those other fuckers.”
Terror turned to bone-melting horror. She struggled harder. His foul laughter echoed all around her as she fought against his rock-solid hold.
“Ah, Princess,” he growled. “This is going to be fun.”
“What have you found, Thanatos?”
Callia froze at the sound of the sharp female voice. The daemon loosened his grasp enough to allow her to look to the side. A woman dressed in red stood on the far side of the cabin as if she’d appeared from thin air. Her robe draped over one elegant shoulder, the waist cinched in tight. The long, flowing fabric pooled on the ground at her feet. Her skin was like alabaster, her hair a long fall of black silk, and though she was easily as tall as the daemon, she was a thousand times more graceful. But her eyes…her eyes were just as dead and soulless as his.
Atalanta.
Though pain still seared across her abdomen, Callia sucked in a breath and held it. Evil—true evil—swirled in the room as Atalanta moved forward.
The daemon let go of Callia and straightened at the side of the table. He bowed his head. “My queen. I—I did not expect you.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Atalanta said. “Which is why I’m here.” She moved closer. “Why have you not killed this Argolean?”
The daemon’s glowing eyes darted Callia’s way and back again. “She…My queen, she is of royal blood.”
Atalanta’s dark eyes narrowed as she moved closer. A spark of recognition crossed her flawless face as she studied Callia. “Why, Thanatos,” she said in a somewhat shocked voice, “she is.” Her gaze slid down the length of Callia’s body and back up again, and she drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes in the process.
Callia didn’t move. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she sensed there was some kind of power struggle going on between these two. The daemon was all but vibrating at her side, and as her eyes darted his way, she saw the way his clawed hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, a very clear indication he wasn’t happy with Atalanta’s interruption.