He should have stood up for her. He cursed low as he stroked her cheek, as she continued to stare straight ahead of her, across the busy car park. He was weak right now, still recovering from his injuries, but he should have defended her.
Protected her.
He looked down at himself, at the bandages and dressings that covered his healing wounds, and at the crimson and black that stained her clothing—his blood and daemon blood. She had helped him, and he should have helped her. She had been afraid, and he had allowed his father to go ahead and wipe her memory.
He should have fought.
Esher had fought their father, had gone against him and had gotten what he wanted.
Cal’s courage had failed him.
Or maybe he just wasn’t as insane as his older brother.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He grimaced. No guesses needed to know who it would be and why they were messaging him.
He pulled his phone out, slowly, guilt fusing with anxiety inside him, a sickening sense of anticipation that set him on edge. He turned the screen towards him and grimaced again as he spotted his oldest brother’s name at the top of a very short message. Keras was pissed.
The message was three words.
Meeting. Tokyo. Now!
Apparently, his father had sent a Messenger as predicted, only he had sent it to his brothers.
The worst part about having six older brothers? Having seven mothers. It wasn’t as if there were centuries between them. Hell, there was less than forty years between him and Daimon, the second youngest. Cal was over seven hundred and sixty years old. Didn’t stop them from treating him like a kid though.
They were overprotective and overbearing.
Had been ever since they had lost his twin sister.
Pain struck across his skull like lightning and he flinched and rubbed his forehead, cursed low as that agony spread through him, condensing in his chest. He held himself together through sheer will alone, breathed through the pain and the fear, reaching for the other side. The pain slowly passed, the impending sense of doom lifting with it.
He hated that he couldn’t even think about Calindria without fear of blacking out. He wanted to remember her, needed to remember the good times, because right now he was on the verge of stepping off into the darkness and he knew he wouldn’t come back.
The abyss beckoned.
Offered oblivion and an end to his pain. His suffering.
The only hope he had left in this world was the hope that through death he might be able to see her again.
The woman beside him murmured something. He stared at her, silently apologising again for everything he had done, and how she was going to feel when she came around, her memories of him stolen from her.
Would she feel as lost as he did whenever he blacked out and couldn’t remember anything? Would she hate that feeling as much as he did?
He hated that he had inflicted it upon her.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered again, lingering now, unable to bring himself to part from her while she looked so lost, so vulnerable.
He forced himself to take a step back and break contact with her.
Her stunning eyes gradually gained awareness.
Calistos stepped, a term he and his brothers used for teleporting, leaving her before she noticed him. Darkness embraced him, a cool and comforting touch as he passed through his connection to the Underworld to emerge on the other side of the planet in Tokyo.
He had barely touched down in the elegant formal garden of the ancient Japanese mansion before Ares, his second eldest brother, was collaring him. His brother’s hand briefly closed around the back of his neck, the scalding heat of it warning him that Ares wasn’t happy. It worked in Cal’s favour.
Ares’s power over fire had manifested when they had been banished to the mortal world, meaning his brother couldn’t touch anything without risking setting it aflame, especially when he was in a bad mood.
Which was around ninety percent of the time.
The only one who was apparently immune to his power was Megan, his wife, a Carrier who had inherited the power to heal from her ancient Hellspawn ancestry.
“Move it. You’ve got some fucking explaining to do.” Ares moved up behind him, a wall of heat that had Cal moving towards the wooden porch of the Edo period single-storey building despite the fact he wanted to run in the opposite direction.
Mostly because in his current mood, Ares wouldn’t be allowed into it. Esher would see to that. Esher protected the mansion that was his home as fiercely as he protected his family.
“Shit, man, you royally fucked up.” Valen greeted him at the door, his violet-haired brother grinning like a fool. The puckered scar tissue that ran down his jaw and neck pulled taut as that grin widened. “Good luck.”
Valen slapped him on the back as Cal kicked his boots off and entered the building, stepping into the long rectangular room that made up the communal area of the mansion.
To his right, Esher sat with Aiko on one of the cream couches in the modern TV area, holding her tucked close to him on his lap, fussing over her. Aiko murmured sweet things to him in stilted English, soothing him, increasing the guilt Cal felt. Apparently, his little trip to the Underworld had reminded his brother of when Aiko had been killed, and how he had fought to bring her soul back to the mortal world.
Great.
Esher was on edge enough as it was these days, without Cal adding to his burden. All Esher could think about was hunting the wraith, Eli, one of the ranks of their enemy. It was taking all the power Aiko had over his brother to keep him from losing control and surrendering to that need.
To his other side.
Thankfully, it appeared two of his brothers had found reasons not to attend his trial.
Although he could have lived without Keras being present.
His judge, jury and possible executioner towered before him, his backdrop a beautiful manicured garden of topiary and gravel framed by the white paper panels that had been pushed open to reveal it, an immaculate vision that suited his oldest brother.
As always, Keras wore perfectly pressed black slacks, expensive polished black leather shoes, and a crisp black dress shirt. If his brother had been worried about him at all, it didn’t show in the hard lines of his sculpted features or the sharp edge to his green eyes.
“You want to explain what happened?” Keras said, deep voice as calm and smooth as an ocean on a still day. His brother was just as unpredictable too. He schooled his features well, hid his emotions from everyone, but sometimes, just sometimes, he reacted.
Like when Cal was rubbing him the wrong way, which was pretty much every day.
Cal shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
Keras’s green eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember. How convenient.”
Cal glared at him. That was a low blow. Forgetting things was never convenient for him. He despised that he couldn’t recall what had happened before he had come around on that hospital gurney surrounded by a few too many curious mortals.
“Easy,” Ares murmured from behind him, and Keras levelled a black look on him that warned him to stay out of this.
Cal knew his brothers well enough to know that wasn’t going to happen. Ares would have his own choice words to say to him about what he had done, but he wouldn’t let Keras go too far, or strike low blows meant to wound.
“Try to remember, because our father is… furious.” Keras managed to pick a word that perfectly conveyed what Cal had felt coming from their father.
Probably because Cal could feel it coming from him too.
Cal cocked his right hip, rubbed his jaw with his left hand, ignoring the dull, sore ache in his arm, and pursed his lips. “I met a really hot girl. Bee-u-tiful.”
“Calistos,” Ares said, the warning in his tone aimed at him now. “You know the rules. We all agreed to them. Hellspawn are involved with our enemy, so whenever we go to a gate or it calls us, we go together. Just admit you went to a gate, a
dmit you messed up.”
Hellspawn was the name he and his brothers used for the breeds of daemons that Hades had allowed to remain in the Underworld after the last rebellion, when he had exiled all from the species who had been involved in the uprising and closed the gates to them. Hellspawn were allowed to come and go as they pleased with their father’s consent, travelling through the gates between the Underworld and this one.
Well, almost all the Hellspawn breeds were allowed to travel freely through the gates with Hades’s permission.
Since Keras had sent a Messenger to Hades about the possibility a necromancer was involved with their enemy, Hades had stopped giving permission to that breed, closing the gates to them and trapping them either in the Underworld or the mortal one.
Their father had also dispatched several of his legions to seek out the necromancers and bring them in for questioning, and every god and goddess allied with him was on the look out for them too.
So far, none had turned up.
“I have better things to do than this, so it would be appreciated if you would just fess up,” Valen put in. “I’m no saint, but even I agree that taking backup to the gates is the smart thing to do. The enemy knows we’re the keys to those gates now, and they know the only way to open one is to have us near it, so that means we work as a team. Safety in numbers and all that shit.”
Things had to be bad if Valen was going along with things rather than acting out and playing the rebel.
“Why didn’t you message for backup?” Keras moved a step towards Cal, a casual move but one that sent a cold chill shooting down Cal’s spine.
He preferred a little distance between him and his oldest brother when he was in a mood, and Keras was in a mood. He could see it now, building in his green eyes, a storm looming in the distance but rapidly growing stronger.
The sort Cal loved to unleash on the world.
He didn’t want to answer his brother’s question. To answer it, he would have to attempt to remember. Only pain lay that way.
“There must have been a powerful enemy involved.” Valen moved around him, casting golden eyes over Cal’s bare chest and ruined black combats. “Several of them. You were in bad shape. Father’s Messenger relayed that much.”
Valen placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder, and Cal shrugged it off, because seeing worry in his brother’s eyes was unnerving. He preferred the fuck-you-all brand of Valen. This new, softer version freaked him out.
“Try to remember.”
Cal looked at Keras as he spoke those words, catching in his eyes how much his brother needed him to explain, and therefore at least attempt to remember. Hades hadn’t just sent a Messenger to inform his brothers of what had happened in the Underworld. He had sent a request for information, one Keras needed to fulfil.
Hades wanted to know what had happened.
Their father had been on edge since Keras had sent the Messenger to inform him of their suspicions about a necromancer being involved. Keras had to send regular reports to him now, sometimes more than once a day depending on their father’s mood. Cal could understand why both Keras and their father were so insistent on getting every scrap of information available to them, because anything could be a clue as to who was involved or what the enemy planned to do next.
Cal sucked down a deep breath. He was doing this then. No question about it. His father wanted the details, and as much as it pained Cal, both physically and emotionally, he would do his best to provide them.
“Fine,” he grated and went to the couch that stood with its back to the main area of the room. “At least let me sit down in case I pass out. I’ve had enough knocks for a lifetime tonight.”
He slumped into the seat, leaned back against the soft cushions and closed his eyes, ignoring Esher’s muttered words about dirtying the cream material.
He focused inside of him instead, on the darkness of his mind, conjuring an image of the first thing he remembered on coming around. The white room. The humans. The beauty, staring at him from the doorway, fascination mixed with fear in her striking eyes. He remembered speaking to her.
Cal forced himself to go backwards, denying the need to roll forwards and replay everything that had happened with her. He remembered pain. Incredible pain. Jerky movements. Someone lifting him. The paramedics?
He pushed back further, and gritted his teeth as fire spiderwebbed across his skull, red veins of it that he could almost see as it burned his mind, bringing darkness in its wake. He struggled against it, stretching for the memory that felt just out of reach, hoping this time he would be able to recall it all without the abyss devouring him.
The darkness roared up on him, a towering black wave that threatened oblivion, but he pushed back against it and a faint image flickered in his mind, and a feeling went through him.
He popped his eyes open and let everything go, releasing it in a rush of breath as he sank deeper into the couch.
“Well?” Ares knelt beside him, concern in his dark eyes, his overlong tawny hair mussed and pulled from the leather thong he wore it tied back with. His brother dropped his hand to his black jeans-clad knee. “Did you remember anything?”
Cal nodded.
While he couldn’t recall what had happened to him between fighting a horde of daemons and waking in that hospital room, he could remember a few things.
Like where he had been.
“Seville. I was at the twin gate.” The one that had been bound to his twin sister before he had been forced to seal it shut and close it down, leaving him feeling as if he had lost her all over again. “A lot of daemons showed up. I think I ended up teleporting to get away from them.”
His brothers exchanged sympathetic glances. Would they be so sympathetic if he told them what else he had remembered?
He hadn’t fought back.
In that moment, he had felt so empty, so hollowed out, that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to fight the daemons.
He had wanted to die.
Death wasn’t the answer. Keras was right about that. Dying wouldn’t reunite him with Calindria. To see her again, he needed to find whoever had her soul and discover the location of it. He had to live.
But it was so hard to do that.
The daemons had caught him at a low point, when the pain of closing the gate linked to her had been too raw and too much for him, opening him to the thought of escaping it all by letting oblivion claim him.
Part of him hated that he had sunk this low, that he had craved death, because Keras was right about another thing too.
Calindria wouldn’t want it.
She would want him to live.
He just wasn’t sure he had the strength left in him to do that.
Chapter 3
Something was wrong.
Marinda slowed her step as that feeling hit her again. It wasn’t the first time it had happened since she had found herself standing in the hospital parking lot, covered in dried blood and unable to remember how she had gotten there or what had happened.
An early autumnal breeze kicked up, swirling the first leaves to fall as she paused on the riverside path. She wrapped her arms around herself, drawing her black coat closed over her mulberry jumper, attempting to keep the chill off her even when she knew it came from inside her.
From fear.
The staff at the hospital had explained things to her, and the police had questioned her for close to an hour about how she had come to be taken hostage by a man they believed was a drug addict. She hadn’t been able to tell them anything. She didn’t remember the man who had apparently used her as a human shield to aid his escape, a man who according to the doctors and staff had been gravely injured. It had explained all the blood she had found on herself.
After the police had gone, a doctor had checked her over and diagnosed that shock and fear had combined to make her forget such a stressful encounter and that she was fine.
Marinda didn’t feel fine.
She felt… different.
&nb
sp; It felt as if something had changed. In the world? In her?
She wasn’t sure.
Maybe she just felt as if something was wrong because she wanted to be home again, needed the safety and security that came with being around her father, in the house she had grown up in. Maybe she just missed him.
Or maybe she felt unsettled because it had stirred an old feeling inside her.
That she was different.
Every time she had told her father that she felt different from everyone else, he had always given her a hug and told her that she only felt that way because she had never had a mother.
She needed that hug right now, needed to hear those words and feel the reassurance they offered flow through her like warm sunshine to chase the darkness away.
She started walking again, trying to focus on the breeze that played through the trees that towered along the Quai de la Seine as she headed towards her apartment from the Conservatoire.
Maybe everything just felt wrong because she had returned to Paris early this year rather than remaining in Semur-en-Auxois for the entire summer to help her father with the shop. Maybe she just really missed him.
She stilled as a thought struck her.
There was no practice this weekend and she felt as if she was ahead of the game now, prepared for the next year of study. It was only a couple of hours on a train to Montbard, the nearest station to her small town, and from there just a hop in a taxi to her home. She could be there before it was dark and could spend the entire weekend with her papa.
Buoyed by the thought of seeing him again, and getting that hug, she hurried to her apartment, following the winding streets that led away from the river to the redbrick building that had seen better days. She avoided the elevator, had done since it had broken down with her in it last year, and tackled the four storeys of stairs to her floor.
Marinda made a list of things she would need as she strode along the corridor, as she slid the key into the lock on her door and twisted. The delicate harmony of a violin greeted her as the door opened.
“You’re back early.” Colette lowered her instrument and neatened the haphazard spikes of her pixie cut on the side where her violin had been. “Did you forget something?”
Calistos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 5 Page 3