“She’s not here,” Skyla whispered.
Yeah, she was. He turned toward the female he still couldn’t stop thinking about but who was quickly becoming a thorn in his side. “Why don’t you see if she’s downstairs.”
“And leave you here alone? I don’t think—”
The double doors to his right flew open. A high-pitched shriek echoed through the room just as a slight figure draped all in black charged, hands held high over her head, holding a blade as big as a machete poised to slice him in two.
He dropped back three steps. The female hurled herself at him, the whites of her fury-filled eyes blinding in the darkness. She slammed into his body. Another shriek filled the room as she sliced out with the weapon. “I will kill you!”
She couldn’t have been more than five-five, a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. Didn’t even knock him off his feet when she barreled into him. He easily overpowered her, grasped her forearms, and wrestled for the blade now only centimeters from his face. When he pulled it from her fingers, she screamed in denial. He tossed it to his left and flipped her around, her back pressed to his front, her arms pinned beneath both of his. “Stop. Now.”
“I’ll never stop,” she screamed. “Never. Do you hear me?”
Bloody hell, she was stronger than she looked. With her arms still locked tight under his, he eased back a few steps until he felt the bed, dropped down, and pinned her on his lap, hooking one leg over both of hers to hold her still. “Stop fighting, do you hear me? We’re not going to hurt you.”
She continued to struggle, and when she realized she was trapped, finally stilled. But her chest rose and fell with her labored breaths, and Orpheus knew she was plotting a way out.
“Orpheus.” Skyla stepped forward from the shadows, concern across her perfect features as the lights from outside reflected off her face. He hadn’t lied when he said she was built like an X-rated Barbie. Not only was she the hottest thing he’d ever seen, that warrior-princess getup with the arm guards and breastplate and those ridiculous platform boots made him hard with just a look.
The female in his arms stopped breathing. And too late he realized she thought he was turned on because of her.
Not even close.
“Are you calm enough for me to let go?” he asked, careful to keep his tone even and his body still. “Or do I need to restrain you?”
Silence.
“Orpheus,” Skyla warned again.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said. “I just want to talk.”
The female nodded once.
He didn’t trust her, but she was no threat. And he didn’t want to restrain her if he didn’t have to. A willing hostage was way better than an enraged one. “Okay then. Nice and easy, you got it?”
Maelea nodded again.
He eased his leg off her lap, let go of her arms one by one. As soon as she was free, she bolted away and flipped around, pressing her back into the wall and searching the ground for her blade.
He rose, kicked it toward the bathroom door, spread his feet to use his size as intimidation.
“Now that we’ve got the awkwardness out of the way, let me introduce myself. I’m Orpheus. The chick in the Halloween getup over there is a Siren.” Skyla flicked him an irritated look that only amused him. “You’re familiar with Delia in the Argolean realm? She sent me to find you.”
Confusion crossed Maelea’s face. She shot a look toward the weapon behind him again. “The witch? Why?”
Delia was the leader of the Medean witch enclave that resided in the Aegis Mountains outside the Argolean city of Tiyrns. And she’d been a personal friend of Orpheus’s mother and was now a friend of his. “I’m looking for a warlock named Apophis. He broke free of his prison in Argolea and crossed into this realm a few months ago. He has something that belongs to me. I want it back. It’s as simple as that.”
The female’s wary eyes darted his way again. She wore a long-sleeved black tunic that covered her hips, the sleeves so long they fell all the way to her fingertips, and a full, black, bohemian-style skirt that swallowed her slim frame. Straight black hair fell around her shoulders like a curtain. “What does that have to do with me?”
“I want you to tell me where he is.”
“And what if I won’t?”
“I’m hoping,” he said carefully, putting a hint of malice in the words, “that won’t be your choice.”
Skyla’s blond head darted his way, and in his peripheral vision he read the warning in her violet eyes, but he ignored it.
After a silence, Maelea said, “I don’t know anything about any warlock.”
She was lying. The daemon in him stirred as his patience waned. He took a step toward her. “Maelea—”
She pressed her hands against the wall at her back. Glanced past him to the weapon she’d never reach. “I’m warning you. Stay back.”
He nearly laughed. But he was well past laughing. He needed to know where that shitty warlock was hiding. He took another step her way. “If you won’t cooperate willingly, I’ll have to come up with creative ways to make you talk.”
“Orpheus—”
A howl cut off Skyla’s protest. Both females turned to the windows at the front of the house. The daemon in Orpheus vibrated with excitement, sensing something otherworldly outside.
The howl echoed through the still night air again. Maelea’s eyes went wide with fear. Skyla stepped past him and looked out the front window.
“Shit.”
“What?” Orpheus reached her side and peered out into the dark.
“Hellhounds.”
Three enormous doglike creatures with pointy ears, red eyes, and protruding fangs stood on the front lawn, looking up at the house.
“Skata.” It wasn’t daemons who’d been following him. It was Hades’s miserable underlings.
“You really are on a roll tonight, aren’t you, daemon? Is there a god you haven’t pissed off yet this week?” Skyla shot him a way to go, dumbass look, then turned back to Maelea. “Shit, she’s gone.”
He whipped around. Sure enough, the room was empty. And Maelea’s weapon of choice was missing as well. “Motherfucker.”
Skyla pulled a metal bar from the inside of her boot. Seconds later her bow unraveled. She reached inside her collar and extracted what looked like a toothpick but which grew into a full-blown arrow right before his eyes.
“Now that is sweet,” Orpheus murmured before he thought better of it.
“Check the first floor for her.” Skyla readied her weapon. “Those things will tear her to pieces if she tries to run.”
“Now you don’t mind me being alone with Ghoul Girl?” He stepped toward the door. “How the tides have changed.”
She twisted back to the window, slid the pane open a crack, and brought the bowstring to her shoulder. “If it’s a choice between you and Hades’s hounds, I’ll take you any day.”
“Gee, I feel so loved.” He moved into the hall, intent on putting the Siren out of his mind and finding that damn Maelea before she screwed this up for him for good, but paused when a whisper met his ears.
You aren’t now, but you were once, daemon.
He whipped around just as Skyla pulled the arrow back near her ear, let it go with deadly precision. He heard the whir as it spiraled toward its target, then the yelp and howl of the hound as its flesh tore open. And couldn’t ignore the fact those words hadn’t been in his head. She’d said them. Out loud.
The world spun. Blurred then cleared, until the bedroom walls disappeared and he was surrounded by trees. Standing in a field of green. The woman in front of him poised with her bow, exactly as she’d been in Maelea’s bedroom. Only this time she was aiming for a target propped against the trunk of a tree.
She released the arrow like a pro. It sailed through the air, struck the target dead center with a resounding thwack. With a triumphant grin, she lowered the bow and turned to face him.
“Your turn. Try to beat that, lover.”
His lungs tightened on a gasp. And an ache, the same one he’d experienced in the hallway of her apartment two nights before, settled deep in his chest.
Holy Hades. Whatever head game the Siren was playing with him had to stop now.
A scream from the back of the house jolted him out of his trance. The trees and field disappeared like a wisp of fading fog.
“Maelea.” Skyla passed him in a dead run.
Orpheus simply pictured the back patio and flashed there. Feet from him, Maelea stood frozen, the blade she’d used on him earlier shaking in her hand as she stared out at the side yard and the hellhound growling an ominous warning.
The door crashed open behind him. Skyla leaped onto the patio, spotted the hellhound, and froze. “Orpheus! Behind you.”
At Orpheus’s back, another growl echoed. He looked that way to see another hound, its eyes glowing as red as death. Skyla and Maelea stepped backward toward him as two more hounds joined the fray, followed by the bleeding and pissed hound with Skyla’s arrow sticking out of its shoulder.
“If you’re thinking about shifting so we have a chance here,” Skyla muttered, “I wouldn’t object.”
Orpheus couldn’t agree more. Though the fact the Siren had flipped from trying to stop him to trying to help him wasn’t lost on him. He tuned in to his inner daemon, felt his eyes morph to glowing green and the power of the daemon ripple through his limbs. In a rush he released the hold he kept on his dark side and unleashed control.
Nothing happened.
“Um…” Skyla raised her bow, pulled the arrow back as she cast him a frantic look. “Now would be a good time.”
He focused deeper on the daemon’s strength rumbling right beneath the surface. Pictured it consuming him as it had done so many times before.
Only again, nothing happened.
“Sonofabitch,” he hissed.
Skyla’s eyes darted from hellhound to hellhound. “Orpheus?”
Panic closed in. He could feel its strength, damn it. Why wasn’t it working?
He reached for the knife he kept strapped to his hip. “I don’t think that’s gonna work this time.”
“What?”
The hound directly in front of them chuckled.
It chuckled. Holy hell.
“Damn it,” Skyla muttered. “This is not good.”
“No shit,” Orpheus tossed back. Damn it, what the fuck was going on?
Maelea’s entire body shook as she backed into Orpheus. But this time she didn’t seem to mind being close to him. “What—what do we do?”
Five bloodthirsty hellhounds against him, Skyla, and the quivering Ghoul Girl. He was a fierce fighter who knew a little magic. Even without his daemon, he and the Siren could probably survive these odds if they worked together, but not Ghoul Girl. They’d lose her in a heartbeat.
And he wasn’t about to lose her. Not when she was the key to everything.
He thought of the lake behind them, a good hundred yards down the sloping grass. “You got a boat?”
Maelea swallowed hard. “Y-yes. A power boat. It’s stored in the boathouse.”
“You thinking about making a run for it?” Skyla asked in a low voice, her bow poised to shoot.
The injured hound growled low in its throat.
“Thinking about it,” Orpheus muttered as the monsters slowly moved forward, forcing them back several steps and onto the grass.
He glanced behind him, toward the boathouse. They’d never make it. Even injured, those hounds could run like the wind.
“You have something Hades wants,” the hound to the left growled in a voice that was half man, half beast.
Oh, fucking fantastic. It could speak.
Orpheus reached into his pocket and pulled out the earth element. The one Queen Isadora had found and given to him months ago. Just before he’d left Argolea to find that warlock.
The monsters drew to a stop.
Skyla darted a look at the glittering quarter-sized diamond in his palm. The one stamped with the symbol of the Titans. “What the hell?”
All five beasts stared with rapt attention at the element he held. At the element that fit in one of the four chambers of the Orb of Krónos. Though the element held a special kind of power Orpheus had yet to tap, it wouldn’t be fully useful until all the elements were joined with the Orb. Then the powers would combine and the bearer of the Orb would be stronger than Hades. Stronger, even, than Zeus.
And the monsters in front of him knew that.
Orpheus closed his fingers over the element and squeezed, harnessing the Medean powers bequeathed by his mother. He hadn’t played with the element much since Isadora had given it to him, and he had no idea what to expect, but he wasn’t against harnessing every shred of magic from it if he could.
But nothing happened, aside from the element growing warm in his fist.
The lead hound moved forward and growled. “We’ll take that from you now, Argonaut.”
The word Argonaut echoed in Orpheus’s head. And he thought of his brother, Gryphon, confined to the Underworld because of that damn warlock. Of the moment Gryphon’s Argonaut markings had appeared on Orpheus’s skin. Of the real Argonauts, who didn’t give a shit about him or what had happened to his brother.
His anger harnessed a flash of power. Medean magic shot down his arm and erupted through the earth element in his hand.
The ground shook in a violent blast of energy that knocked Orpheus back two feet. A hellhound shot forward with a snarl and a snap of its jaws. Maelea screamed. Skyla shouted something he couldn’t make out. The other hounds howled in unison. And a roar that sounded like Hades himself rushing up from the center of the earth echoed everywhere.
Chapter 7
“Orpheus!”
Skyla lost her footing as a chasm split open between them and the hounds. She hit the ground with a grunt. One monster launched its massive body toward Maelea with a snap of its jaws. On her back in the wet grass, Skyla aimed her bow at the hellhound sailing through the air.
Its bloody teeth caught Maelea’s arm. She screamed. Skyla fired, heard the hound cry out in agony, pulled another arrow, lined up another shot, and fired again. Before she could get to her feet, Orpheus was on top of the hound, driving his blade deep into the beast’s flesh.
More snarls and growls echoed from across the chasm as the shaking died down. The other four hellhounds paced back and forth, waiting for their chance to strike. The bleeding hound lay dead at Orpheus’s feet.
“You will pay, Argonaut,” one hound growled across the distance.
Shocked, Skyla looked at Orpheus, who was shoving the earth element back into the front pocket of his jeans. Holy Hades. He already had one of the four sacred elements. No wonder Athena hadn’t told her who he really was.
“Go fuck yourself!” Orpheus shouted.
Two hellhounds barked out their protest with a snap of their massive jaws.
Orpheus sheathed his blade in a scabbard at his back and bent next to Maelea. “How bad is it?”
Tears filled Maelea’s eyes as she cradled her bloody arm against her stomach and shook her head.
Orpheus lifted her in his arms, then peered at Skyla across the damp grass before he hustled toward the boathouse. “If you’re coming, you’d better haul ass, Siren. They’re going to figure out how to cross that gap pretty quick.”
Skyla shot their seething enemies a quick glance before realizing that escaping with Orpheus was her only choice at the moment. With her bow and arrow still in hand, she ran after him and caught up on the dock outside the boathouse. He kicked the door in with his boot. The little bit of light shining in from the watery opening at the end of the boathouse reflected the word Olympian painted across the side of the nineteen-foot motorboat.
“Fitting.” She tossed her bow into the boat as Orpheus dropped Maelea in a seat and searched compartments.
“Where are the keys?” he asked Maelea.
“Hanging in the second compartment. There.”
Skyla untied the boat and threw the rope in. She jumped in the back, picked up her bow and arrow. Outside she could hear the snarls and growls of the monsters as they raced across the grass. “Um…anytime would be good.”
“Goddamn it.” Orpheus opened panels and slammed them shut. The sound of claws racing along the dock outside echoed in the air.
“Orpheus?” Skyla readied her bow, aimed for the door.
“Found them!” Keys jingled as Orpheus jumped behind the wheel.
The outer door shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Now!” Skyla screamed.
The boat’s engine roared to life. Orpheus punched the throttle. The hounds rushed into the boathouse. Skyla fired one arrow, readied the next shot just as the boat tore out of the boathouse and cut across the water.
She fell backward into the seat behind her. Water sprayed her face. When she found her footing and pushed up, the hounds were already pacing the end of the dock, their glowing red eyes tiny points of light far off against the shore.
They motored out of Union Bay and into Lake Washington. The dashboard lights highlighted Orpheus’s sandy brown hair blowing in the breeze as he maneuvered the boat through the glassy water as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
To keep from staring at him, Skyla moved to check Maelea’s arm. Looking at him made her wonder about that element. Where he’d gotten it and what he planned to do with it. And what else about him was the same as Cynurus.
Maelea jerked her arm back from Skyla’s touch. After arguing with the girl for five minutes, Skyla finally gave up and sat on the other bench.
They slowed as the lake came to an end. “Through there.” Maelea pointed toward a dock with her good arm. “There’s a park.”
Orpheus killed the engine and brushed past Skyla to tie the rope to the dock. A rush of heat swept over her skin where he grazed her, followed by a chill that left her with gooseflesh.
“How bad is the arm?” he asked, helping Maelea out of the boat.
“It’s—it’s fine.” Maelea wrapped her good arm around her bad.
“Let me see it.”
“No, it’s fine.”
When he grasped her hand and tugged it away from her body, moving the sleeve out of the way to have a look, she protested again. “I don’t need—”