CHAPTER FOUR
“You are certain of this?”
Atalanta looked out across the River Styx in the belly of the Underworld and ground her teeth at what she had just learned.
“Yes, my queen,” her archdaemon said. “There is no mistake. Her essence was strong.”
She turned to look back at Deimus, the creature she considered her number-one daemon, and narrowed her eyes. Her bloodred robes spilled over her bare shoulder, the hems pooling on the blackened ground where she stood. “He was wise to keep her from us.”
“Yes, my queen. Wise but not perceptive. To think she would not be found was an oversight on the king’s part.”
“Hm,” was all she said. “And what of the princess?”
A low growl rumbled from Deimus’s chest. “The Argonaut Theron sent her back to Argolea before we could apprehend her.”
“I see.” She knew, of course, that Theron’s sending the princess home had drained the Argonaut of his powers. Just as she knew he still lived due to her daemons’ ineptitude. She lifted one eyebrow in challenge. “And he is dead?”
“No, my queen. The human woman interceded. She…When we recognized her, we came directly to enlist your guidance.”
“I see,” she said again, with perfect calm. She linked her hands behind her back and stared down at Deimus, three steps below on the blackened ground. He was tall, but being one of the original heroes, so was she. And he had not even a tenth of the powers she did. “Tell me of the princess.”
He breathed out what sounded like a sigh of relief. “She is fragile, my queen. For her, it is a matter of time. This one, however…” He hesitated. “She could strengthen their cause if left unchecked.”
“And yet you said she is but human.”
Deimus nodded. “Human and weak, my queen. Like all humans.”
Deimus didn’t know of the prophecy, but Atalanta did. The temper she’d so carefully tamped down rumbled deep in her soul. “Then explain to me why she still lives!”
He bowed his head in submission. The hesitation confirmed what she suspected.
Spineless.
Disgust roiled through her. She turned her full fury his way. “Do I not bleed for what I have created? Have I not sacrificed myself for what I have built?” She lifted her arms and looked to the swirling sky, now red and glowing from the rage that spilled forth from her body. “Did I not give up all that was within my grasp for immortality, to lead you and your rogue band?”
In two quick steps she was on level ground. His head darted up at her swift movement. She watched his surprised eyes as she deftly pulled the sword from his hip guard and, without looking away, threw her arm out sideways. The blade sliced the jugular of the daemon at Deimus’s left, sending him to his knees in a gasping gurgle of blood.
He made no move to help his brother in battle. Deimus’s shocked eyes quickly shifted from the daemon, who moments ago had stood with him in the human parking lot, back to Atalanta. His head dropped lower. “Yes, my queen.”
Atalanta’s disgust grew as she thrust the bloody sword to the ground and kicked the writhing daemon to his back. Useless. All of them. Was she forever going to be surrounded by imbeciles?
“A human woman will not be the fall of what I am on the verge of commanding!” she yelled. “I have not spent the last three thousand years in the bowels of hell to fail now. Argolea belongs to me. And I will take my rightful place on the throne and rule that which should have been mine eons ago. Not the fool-hearted king, nor the hapless princess, nor the mightiest of the Argonauts can stop me from attaining what is mine. And I relish the day they are banished from my kingdom forever. She is but a human, as you so eloquently pointed out, Deimus. Find her. Kill her. And bring me her head.”
Green, catlike eyes lifted to hers. And smoldering in them was true fear. “But she is—”
“Do you dare question my authority?” she bellowed. “I am the goddess. You are but a servant in my realm. My dominion over the daemons is all-encompassing and the choices I make regarding that rule are mine alone. No god, including Zeus, can overrule my authority. Make no mistake, Deimus, if you cannot do the job that is before you, I will turn you over to Hades myself. You think this is bad?” She gestured to the limp daemon at her feet and slowly shook her head. “Your time in my kingdom will feel like heaven compared to what awaits you with him.”
Deimus’s head dropped once more, and though the tense line of his shoulders remained defiant, his acquiescence was palpable. “Yes, my queen.”
She waited until Deimus and his incompetent warrior fools dragged the mutilated daemon out of her stone temple, then turned her attention back to the River Styx. She drew in a steadying breath to calm herself as she climbed the steps again and stared out at the water.
Oh, how she hated them all. Every single Argolean. Especially the Argonauts. There’d been a time…
She ran her hand over her lips and thought back. Yes, there’d been a time when she’d wanted only to join them. But that time was long over. Their dominance was nearing an end. Argonauts were merely mortal beings with longer-than-average life spans. They could be killed. They would be killed. She lived for the day the Argonauts—every last revolting one of them—was wiped from the face of the Earth and the Argoleans they protected were hers for the taking.
She’d had it with the Underworld. Her time was now.
She took another deep and calming breath. The prophecy would never come to pass. She had stopped it before. She would do so again at all costs.
A smile worked its way across her face as the knowledge relaxed her further. And ice, as cold and wintry as the winds that blow across the Arctic in the human world, solidified in the space that had once held her heart.
Casey was halfway to the living room, where she planned to lie down on the couch and get at least thirty minutes of sleep before she went to check on the mystery man in her bed again, when she heard a knock at her front door.
She froze, glanced at the clock on the wall—3:14 A.M.—then at the door. And for a moment had a paralyzing flash of seething wild animals in the lot behind XScream.
Which was off-the-charts insane, because such things just didn’t exist.
The knock turned to a heart-thumping pounding. Her adrenaline shot through the roof.
Oh, God. What if that was…
“Casey?” A muffled voice called from beyond the door. “I know you’re in there. Your light’s still on.”
Nick.
Panic turned to bewilderment to apprehension. What was Nick Blades doing at her house at three o’clock in the morning?
“Nick?” She took two steps toward the door.
“Open the door, Casey,” he said in a more forceful voice.
Her hand hovered over the doorknob as she glanced down at her feet and suddenly realized she was wearing nothing but ruined Keds, blood-stained jeans and her bra. “Um. Hold on. I need to get, um…I’m not decent. Just…wait.”
She ran to the hall bathroom and grabbed her white terry robe, only to realize her hands were covered in dried blood. Crap. She didn’t have time to scrub them. Nick’s earlier warning zipped through her mind, and she knew for certain she couldn’t let him know about the injured man in her bed.
She tugged the robe on over her bra and cinched it tight, curling the collar up so it hid any blood that might have splashed onto her chest. Then she unrolled the sleeves as far as they’d go until they hung over the tips of her fingers. Confident her hands were now hidden, she glanced in the bathroom mirror and swallowed a gasp at what she saw.