He’d helped make it all possible. He and, in no small way, his twin brother had brought it all to pass.
He entered the doorway that would be the entrance into his future…his bride awaited.
Litha welcomed him into their bed with outstretched arms.
“My Lord Geb,” she called to him.
He winced. He’d been called many names over the eons. Amun, Heh—those were the most recent and not the most significant. He had done nothing to halt the progression of names, of titles and labels, for they’d meant nothing to him. People would call him what they wanted, for he’d never given his true name, and he had no cares about it. Until now.
“Call me Daemon,” he whispered to her, leaning into her upon their soft lovers’ bower.
“Daemon,” she sighed, helping him remove his vestments and jewelry.
She unbraided his long blond hair—done now in the style of her people—stroking her fingers against his scalp as she freed each long lock.
“Tell me you love me,” he pleaded.
“I love you, My Lord,” she said, and it was tragic that he had to ignore the blind, religious fervency in her voice. The love she professed, was it for him as a man or for him as a god and her royal superior? He would not dare think on it.
He would make her love him. Him, Daemon. The man, not the god. He vowed it to himself and to her.
Daemon closed his eyes and let her hands work their magic in his hair. Dragging her scent deep into his lungs, he let the love he felt for her flood through him completely, warm and safe and beautiful. He’d never been so truly content as he was here, in this one gentle moment.
Now he knew, there could be no doubt, that he had been waiting for this moment his entire life. And all of it had, indeed, been worth the wait. Worth the effort, worth the risk.
He rolled her in the sheets and pillows, reveling in her soft, nude skin. Her legs were smooth and plump. Her belly was a rounded mound of downy softness. Even the shaven baldness of her scalp—skin bared to more comfortably carry her ornate wigs—was perfect and beautiful wholly feminine. Her breasts were sweet and large and full. Her nipples long and hard and perfect.
Daemon moved down her body, impatient love and anticipation built up to a boiling point. Though he wanted to make it last, he feared he might yet lose control.
“My love, my love,” he breathed between her legs, tasting the salty sweet essence of her with a glad rush in his heart. Here, the perfume of her—herbs and incense and womanly musk—was stronger, making him dizzy and weak with animalistic hunger.
He rose over her, looking down into the limpid dark pools of her eyes and hooked her legs around his back.
“Tell me again that you love me,” he demanded.
“Yes, My Lord,” she panted, eyes glazed with passion.
Unable to wait another moment, he came into her, rending her maiden’s flesh so that she cried out and scratched at his back. How he wanted to lose himself in her. But he loved her, so he made it last. He held himself back as long as he could, stroking his cock in and out of her until she was moaning and crying beneath him.
He worshipped her face with his kisses. Worshipped her body with his, and gloried in each and every response he wrung from her. Every sigh, every moan and groan and sob, he took into himself like sacred treasures to hold and save forever.
The earth shook about them—his iron hold upon his powers was slipping—and a crack appeared in the floor beside their bed. Daemon closed his eyes and sank into her with a fierce thrust of his hips that made the lands of Egypt quiver and shake. Litha came with a surprised cry, her pussy squeezing him with merciless, rhythmic spasms that made him want to scream his lust and excitement aloud.
“Brother, don’t do it,” a voice cried at his back.
But it was too late. It had been too late the first moment he’d seen her…
He let himself go, wanting so much to have her, hold her, make her his completely. He came with a groan, shuddering over her. Filling his woman, his Litha, with his seed, his essence, his love.
His poison.
“No,” Tryton screamed, agonized to witness Daemon’s fall.
Litha, his woman, his one, gasped and went limp in his arms.
But Daemon was not worried. He would bring her back, he knew he could.
“Daemon, stop, you don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Leave me be, brother,” he growled. “Go back to your ocean kingdom, your Atlantis, and let me rule here in peace for once! I have all well in hand here.”
“You don’t understand. This won’t work—”
“Silence,” he roared, hating the cool feel of Litha dead in his arms, but still confident that he could bring her back.
Tryton came and sat on the edge of the dishabille that had been his marital bed and clasped his shoulder in a strong, supportive grip. “I will aid you as I may,” he offered.
Daemon smiled, never so thankful as now for his brother’s never-ending loyalty and strength. Tryton may be trying to him at times with his scholarly ways…but Daemon loved him, despite it. Or perhaps because of it.
Daemon’s hands were shaking. Litha’s flesh was growing colder by the minute…time was weighing on him. His love needed him and he must go to her…
“Hold her. I’ll be back,” he said and disappeared, Traveling to that other side—that strange realm where human souls wandered before moving on to their proper destinations across eternity.
Her scent and her taste were still with him, the feel of her on his skin and in his mind. He searched for her, certain that he could track her easily enough. Doubtless, she would have waited here for him, in confusion but with all faith that he would save her. He looked and looked…
But she was nowhere to be found.
He searched everywhere, for time immeasurable, calling out her name, screaming it when there was no answer, no response, no trace of her to be found…
When he finally returned, the palace was no longer there. Indeed, it seemed that time had sped up. Forty years had passed here on the plane of the living. Egypt had moved on without him. There were more temples now. More gods with his face, and even more without. There was glory and there was riches.
But—such sorrow!—there were also more slums, more poverty, more filth. More disease and dissent. He had not been here to save his children from their follies and their fragility.
Somehow, he couldn’t find the strength to care too much. Nothing mattered to him anymore but…
He went in search of his Litha’s remains, ready to try one last desperate attempt to bring her back to him. And when he found her, a wrapped bundle of linen in a stone mausoleum…he wept for all that he had lost. All that he had destroyed.
But no—he may save her still. He must. He would.
Calling to her, he gave her form all the strength he possessed to give, calling her back from the grave. Back from death.
“Please, Litha, my love, my heart,” he wept.
How flawed he was. How wrong he had been all this time.
Litha awoke and his heart rejoiced. He held her to him, mindless to the changes in her, the wrongness of her. When he pulled back, he gasped and staggered back, away from the demon he had wrought from the flesh.
It wasn’t Litha…it was a thing. A monstrosity. A beast wrought of old flesh and dust and bone and death. There was no soul, no mind, no feeling there within her. There was only hunger…a hunger he understood, even as it terrified him. That he could have created this—he screamed his failure and his pain to the heavens and the cry echoed out over all the lands.
When he killed Litha a second time, he lost what was left of his sanity and fell into the abyss of lonely, raving madness.
* * * * *
“You interrupted me, brother. This is all your fault,” he spat at Tryton.
“Daemon, where have you been all this time?” Tryton exclaimed as his brother appeared within his home.
“If it hadn’t been for you, your coming bet
ween us that night, I could have reached her in time.”
Tears flooded Tryton’s eyes, those golden orbs full of such pity and pain and understanding. Daemon hissed and turned away from the sight of them.
“Humans are more complicated than rabbits or fish or serpents. You should have known that. You might be able to resurrect animals but not humans. Not Litha.”
“Don’t you dare say her name!”
Tryton shied away from Daemon’s rage. And well he should have. All Daemon could think of anymore was revenge. Revenge and killing and then, blissfully, his own death.
The ground split around the room, and Tryton’s home rocked on its foundation with bruising, roaring violence.
“It’s your fault she’s dead,” Daemon shouted over the din.
“No. No, I never wanted that. I meant only to warn you,” Tryton protested. “The human body and heart are not so easy to call back from the abyss. It takes so much love—”
“See what your meddling has wrought, damn you,” Daemon spat, unwilling to listen to more, and Tryton’s humble house exploded about them.
The great island of Atlantis rocked on its foundation. Hundreds of people ran from their homes as the Earth surged beneath them, frightened and alarmed, each wondering what was amiss in their perfect kingdom on the sea.
Daemon raised his arms and called upon all his strengths. Graveyards opened up about the land. Earth and flesh and bone and death combined, until an army of deformed beasts walked the night, intent only on feeding their insatiable hungers for energy, raw and bright. Energy that only humans could provide…
People died. Everywhere. And the Earth surged into chaos. Mountains crumbled. Islands fell.
“Stop it, Daemon,” Tryton screamed, seeing the destruction caused by Daemon’s pain, feeling it all through the world like a wound open and bleeding. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
But Daemon was lost in his madness and his heartbreak and there was no turning back for him.
Atlantis trembled beneath them. Tryton, seeking only to save his brother now, used his power to combat and overwhelm Daemon’s.
The seas surged and drowned out the monsters Daemon had brought into being across the world. A flood of rain washed down to cleanse the land of the dead and rotting golems he had raised, but sadly, not all of them were felled.
Tryton felt his failure echo back to him over the miles of the world.
And so he tried harder, flooding the Earth with his efforts, even as Daemon tore the land apart with his.
He went to his brother and took him in his arms amidst the chaos. “I love you, Daemon. Do not let yourself be lost to me…let your woman rest. Let your love for her live on forever in memory. Give her and yourself peace.”
Earth and Sea met in a horrible crash that ate the world. Atlantis fell, sinking beneath the surging waves.
The world shattered and was reshaped, overwhelmed with the ravages of the might and power Tryton and Daemon unleashed upon it.
Daemon felt his brother’s arms around him, but he could not let her go. His Litha. Forever dead, forever gone. He slipped against the current of Tryton’s love, unable to grasp it and save himself…
“I sought to kill my pain,” he whispered. “But here I have given birth to more… You should never have come between me and Litha.” He let go of Tryton and fell into the abyss that waited for him, the darkness and the quiet, the captivating endlessness of insanity…
Tryton’s last words faded to an echo in his mind.
“I’m sorry, Daemon…”
But truth to tell, Daemon no longer blamed him, his apology had been unnecessary, his guilt unfounded. It hadn’t been Tryton’s fault, any of it. No. Daemon blamed himself…his arrogance and his pride had made him a fool. All that was left to him now was pain and grief and rage—at himself.
Eternity swallowed him whole, in his lonely, unforgiving grief, and his brother was gone from him.
Chapter Eighteen
“What will we do with them?” Emily asked Obsidian softly.
It seemed a time for softness. Here, back in the Shikar realm, with the infamous Lord Daemon held within a prison awaiting punishment, time and reality seemed a little fuzzy at the moment.
“I do not know,” he admitted finally, wearily.
“He’s paid enough, I think,” Steffy said, echoing all of their thoughts. “It’s not his fault that the Daemons got out of control. He withdrew all support from them once he found Lazarus.”
“Yes, Lazarus…” Edge mused. “How astonishing that we should all have such tangled fates as this.”
“I never knew Tryton had a brother.” Cinder sighed heavily. “I never would have guessed that he kept such a past as his a secret…he is truly an immortal.”
“He is our leader still. He has not changed. I will follow whatever path he commands us to take next. The Council can go off themselves for all I care—”
“The Council hasn’t decided where they stand on these issues yet. Do not judge them too harshly too soon,” Obsidian warned.
“But the Council will no doubt command Tryton to destroy Daemon. After all, whether he intended to or not, Daemon is directly responsible for the Horde War, the Daemons, all of it. And after they have passed judgment onto Daemon, they’ll do the same with Tryton for all his deceptions. The Council can be unforgiving—they might even go so far as to banish Tryton.”
“Banish him from the world he built after the cataclysm? I don’t think so, Edge.” Emily shook her head. “Antiquated and stern the Council may be, but without Tryton there is no Council, no Shikar world at all. We need him, now more than ever before. Surely they will see this as well, and act accordingly.”
“But Daemon will be executed,” Edge insisted.
Emily sighed heavily. “I hate this. All of it. It’s just too much. I don’t want Daemon dead—I never thought I’d say that about the Lord of the Horde himself, but there it is. He has punished himself enough over the years. And he never meant for the Daemons to thrive as they did.”
“In my opinion he more than redeemed himself with the resurrection of Lazarus,” Steffy said. “It’s too bad that he learned the secret of resurrection—the combination of psychic power and pure love—too late. But it is good that he learned it with Lazarus, and that he healed a little because of it.”
“How does Cady feel about all of this?” Cinder asked, looking about for her.
Obsidian frowned, realizing that she was missing. “Where is Cady?”
“Oh shit,” Edge spat.
“No. She wouldn’t.” Obsidian’s eyes widened and his heart sped up double time as he realized, of all people, she would be the one to dare whatever she wanted.
“Oh hell,” Cinder said with a slow smile.
They rose as one—Obsidian, Edge and Emily, Cinder and Steffy—and made for the door.
* * * * *
Cady reached for the enchanted latch on the cage. A cage Grimm himself had fashioned to hold monsters, imbuing it with magic unimagined to prevent any and all escapes.
But as her fingers fell upon the lock, it opened of its own volition and she gasped, stepping back. Daemon stepped through, towering over her as he emerged from the prison.
“Stop it, Father,” Lazarus called from behind him.
Daemon, his movements as slow as the glaciers over mountains, turned to his son and nodded. He stepped away from Cady and looked about the room as if only just rousing from a deep sleep.
“He’s not your father,” Cady snapped at him.
Lazarus smiled at her. “He is the only father I know. The father of my flesh, if not my soul.”
“You look so much like Dad. You don’t need to remember him, Armand, all you have to do is look in the mirror.”
Lazarus put his hands around her upper arms, shaking her gently. “I am your brother in spirit, but my love and my life I owe to my father. Daemon gave me a new birth, a new beginning. He killed the Daemons who ended me and resurrected me from their
ashes to live again, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. He took the pain of my death from me and raised me free of worry and disease and weakness. I have no real memory of my life before he came into it. He is my father now.”
“He made the Daemons that killed you, don’t you see that?” Cady ignored Daemon’s eyes on her as she spoke to her brother—a brother she’d thought long dead and buried. Her heart had broken and mended so many times tonight she didn’t know what to feel, what to think, what to do. On the one hand she was grateful to the Lord of the Horde for the return of her brother, but on the other she hated him for taking him in the first place.
“He has paid, so much you cannot guess,” Armand—Lazarus—told her. “He never meant for our family—or anyone else—to die at the hands of his mistakes. Long before saving me, he had turned away from all the experiments, the trials, error after error. Indeed, he sat unmoving in his crypt for centuries before he felt my death through his bond with the remaining monsters. He shook himself free of lethargy and undeath to save me from my own and raise me to be strong, as his son. He does not deserve your condemnation. He has condemned himself enough already.”
Cady shook her head, letting the tears fall. “I missed you so,” she whispered.
“I watched you. I knew you. Father never let me forget you.”
She swallowed hard and caught her breath, schooling her emotions. “I want you to stay here, with me and my family. I want my son to know you. I want my future babe to know you. I want to learn all about you and your adventures,” she smiled through her tears.
Lazarus nodded. “I would like that very much.”
Cady turned from him and looked at Daemon, so still and so unreachable even as he watched their reunion in silence. “I know how you can reclaim your place among our people,” she told him.
Finally a response. Daemon frowned his question.
Cady smiled and nodded. “I promise, when you return, you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Now hurry and listen,” she cocked her head, “I can hear the others coming and I don’t want them to stop you. Not yet…”
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