She moved onto her hands and knees and shuffled to the edge of the roof, not trusting her legs. Her head was fine, wasn’t spinning as it did whenever Marek teleported her, but her body felt weak, as if she had just used up every drop of energy in it in one go.
The lights along the promenade made it difficult to see the beach. She focused on the sand in the direction she thought she had been. The lights seemed to dim and the beach brightened. Another power? She peered deeper into the shadows and stopped when her heightened sight revealed Marek where he still stood on the sand, his back to her.
Her chest tightened, as painful as her throat as she rubbed it and looked at him.
Her mind whirled again, replaying everything that had just happened as she struggled to catch up. One moment she had been in heaven, wrapped up in his arms and the heat of his body against hers, lost in the moment, and then she had been in hell, chilled to the bone by how Marek had reacted to her.
Flooded with despair and hurt that cut her so deep she wasn’t sure she could recover from it.
Did he think this was easy for her?
She wanted him so much, and even though she knew it was impossible now that he was aware of what she was becoming, she still wanted him.
But he hated what she was becoming—a daemon.
He had shown her that tonight, giving her a terrifying, and up close and personal look at the hatred that burned inside him. Her ability to see emotions had chosen that moment to reveal his, showing her the darkness of his feelings in a black aura laced with crimson and green, colours she presumed signalled fury, loathing, and disgust. She wished that power had remained on the fritz, sparing her to a degree. Hearing the hatred in his voice and seeing it in his eyes had been bad enough.
And she hadn’t been able to stop herself from reacting, lashing out at him just as he was lashing out at her, a vain attempt to protect her own feelings even when the damage had already been done.
She kept rubbing her throat, trying to ease the pain that burned in it.
For the first time in her life, Caterina truly hated the world.
Because tonight it had hit her that she bore the blood the man she was falling in love with despised above all else.
That she was becoming one of those things he had fought.
She sank against the low wall that edged the roof, all hope bleeding out of her as something else dawned on her too.
Marek would never allow her near him again.
How was she meant to fulfil the task the man had given her if Marek hated her now?
How was she meant to save her brother?
To rid herself of this damned blood?
The tears she had been holding back burned her nose and stung her eyes, but she still refused to let them come. She refused to give up, even when she desperately wanted to do that.
She had been so afraid when she had been cut tonight and had seen her blood was darker than before, almost as black as the liquid had been in the syringe. She had feared Marek would notice it when he had inspected the cut, had been terrified of showing it to him, even when she had known he would insist and wouldn’t rest until he had checked the wound.
When he hadn’t noticed the change in colour, she had been so relieved.
Had thought everything would be fine.
She curled up and stared at him, wishing it had been, wishing he hadn’t somehow discovered what she was when he had been kissing her of all things. She could understand his reaction, even when she didn’t want to, when she wanted to be furious with him for lashing out at her.
Daemons were his enemy.
She couldn’t blame him for thinking she was one of them.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
She watched him as he turned to look around him, the need to go to him so strong that she had to hold the wall to anchor herself, had to keep telling herself that it would be a mistake. He wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.
And she couldn’t tell him everything anyway.
If he learned who had done this to her and what they wanted her to do, he would hate her even more.
It didn’t stop her from wanting to go to him.
He ran his hands over his hair and his broad shoulders lifted in a deep sigh.
How had she ever thought she could do this?
She couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
She didn’t want to hand Marek over to that man and the woman who had been with him. She couldn’t bear the thought of doing it, or the thought of what they might do to him. Being the instrument of his downfall, seeing him suffer because of her, would destroy her.
He heaved another long sigh and then disappeared.
Caterina slumped against the wall, resting her chin on it as she stared at the dark sea.
But what choice did she really have?
It was Marek or her brother.
Only one of them would survive this.
And that broke her heart.
Chapter 15
Marek had forced himself to sleep on everything before bringing it to his brothers. Now, dawn was coming and he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, had paced through the night, tormented by what he had done to Caterina, enraged by what she had done to him.
He huffed and stalked into the open-plan kitchen next to the living room, poured himself a glass of juice from the refrigerator and downed it. Wearing a groove in the terracotta tiles of his floor wasn’t going to solve anything. He was getting nowhere, had gone in circles about Caterina all night. He was finding it harder to think straight now than he had after she had disappeared from the beach.
He needed to speak with his brothers.
He had written a message to that effect and had almost sent it three times, but each time his thumb had hovered over the send button, he had thought about Caterina and what his brothers would do to her if they discovered what she was.
Which tied him in knots.
He was meant to hunt her kind, defending the gates from them, protecting his home from them.
Why couldn’t he hate her as he hated the other daemons?
His heart supplied that he knew the answer to that question—because Caterina was different.
Wrong.
She didn’t affect him like other daemons did. When he had been with her, he hadn’t felt that strange sensation in his gut that warned him when a daemon was near him, and she hadn’t smelled like a daemon when she had been cut.
Which gave him hope.
Hope that Caterina had been telling the truth and that she was somehow infected.
He just wasn’t sure if that was possible.
He pulled the phone from his pocket, brought up the message and hesitated over the send button again. Was it better he took this to everyone, or just one of them?
One brother questioning him sounded infinitely more palatable than having six brothers questioning him.
He immediately discounted Keras, in case his older brother had finally reacted to Enyo visiting him and was in a foul mood. Ares seemed like the best choice.
Although Ares would tell him what he already knew in his heart.
It was best he took this to all of his brothers, just in case it had something to do with their enemy.
Just in case?
It had all the hallmarks of their enemy, there was no use denying that. He didn’t want Caterina to be a daemon, and he didn’t want her to be working with his enemy, but when had he ever gotten what he wanted?
He pressed send on the group message, pivoted on his heel and went to his bedroom. He grabbed the T-shirt from the clothes still draped over his bed, went into the en-suite and stripped off his ruined shirt. He tossed it in the bin and washed his chest. The cuts were all healing now, little more than scars.
Were Caterina’s wounds healing as rapidly?
He meant to think about the one on her arm, but instead was hit by an image of her throat, black with bruises, spotted with blood where his claws had pierced her.
Marek
leaned over the sink, gripped the edges of it and squeezed his eyes shut.
He had dealt her more than just those physical wounds if she had been telling the truth and she was somehow infected with daemon blood. He had dealt her emotional blows too, ones that had hit their mark, cutting her deeply judging by the hurt that had been in her eyes and how she had verbally lashed out at him.
Would she ever forgive him?
He wasn’t sure he would deserve it.
“Marek?” Ares’s deep voice boomed from the living room.
“Just a minute.” He splashed cold water onto his face and steeled himself as he dried off, as he donned the T-shirt and ran his fingers through his hair.
He should have called this meeting hours ago, before he had twisted himself in knots that were so tight and tangled that he couldn’t see the ends to pull to loosen them, or had any hope of freeing himself from them.
He wouldn’t mention Caterina. He would keep his brothers from her.
But if she was a daemon?
He didn’t want to think about what would happen then.
Ares was in the kitchen when Marek found the courage to emerge from his bedroom. His big brother bent over the refrigerator, humming to himself as he picked through the contents.
“Looking for anything particular?” Marek leaned his backside against the rear of the dark cream couch that stood near the fireplace with a matching armchair, facing his brother.
“Anything high in carbs.” Ares grinned as he glanced at Marek, but there was an edge to his dark eyes that spoke of pain. Possibly agony. “Megan is on a health kick. No pizza.”
Marek shuddered at the same time as his brother. “That is sacrilegious.”
Like most of his brothers, Marek craved pizza like a fiend, although he shared Valen’s love of pasta too, and enjoyed the local cuisine. He could never get enough of Iberico ham and chorizo, and some of the seafood in Spain was to die for.
But pizza.
Pizza was godly.
“I told her that.” Ares shrugged his broad shoulders, rolling them beneath his black dress shirt, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his equally dark jeans as he leaned near the sink, giving up his search. “She doesn’t care. Something about watching her weight. Which means I get to suffer, because she’s cranky as hell and I get an earful if I dare to bring pizza home since she refuses to eat it.”
“An enforced diet. Have you tried eating it before coming home?”
Ares rolled his eyes. “She can smell it on me. Reacts like I’ve been with another woman or some crazy shit like it.”
Valen appeared and slumped into the armchair. “What’s up?”
“Discussing Ares’s new diet plan.” Marek twisted to look over his shoulder at his younger brother.
“Megan is on a diet, so I am too,” Ares grumbled. “No pizza.”
“Shit, that sucks.” Valen mussed his violet hair and sank deeper into the chair as he yawned. “Have you tried convincing her you two can just work off the calories?”
“Believe me, it’s our main source of exercise.” Ares grinned now and folded his arms across his chest. His expression sobered. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
The door beyond the fireplace opened and Daimon poked his head around it.
“I thought you would be outside.” Daimon shut the door behind him, leaving frost glittering on the knob that rapidly turned to dew. He pulled down a breath and sighed it out, his eyes closing and a blissful look crossing his face. “Damn, that feels good. How many BTUs is that?”
Marek had cranked up the air conditioning after he had worked up a sweat pacing a trench into the tiles and had forgotten to turn it down.
Before he could answer his brother, Daimon continued.
“Esher isn’t coming. Moon and all that.” His white-haired brother waved at the ceiling. “It’s been a rough night.”
“Not a problem. I should have thought about it before messaging everyone.” Marek was doing that a lot lately, messaging before considering all the angles.
First, he had summoned Calistos to the Seville gate, and now he had probably made Esher feel bad for not being able to leave Tokyo. The full moon wreaked havoc on his brother, pulling at his powers as fiercely as it did the sea, only it turned Esher unpredictable and dangerous.
Or at least more unpredictable and dangerous than usual.
“Is Aiko watching him?” Marek nodded when Keras and Calistos appeared and was surprised when Keras bowed his head in return, a very civil greeting.
Still not mad with him?
Something was definitely up.
“Yeah, but I promised I wouldn’t be long.” Daimon drifted to the AC unit, his pale blue eyes expressing all the pleasure he took from having it blast cold air directly on him.
The Tokyo mansion didn’t have such a luxury, and the city was in the grip of a heatwave.
Daimon was probably melting while he took care of Esher.
Marek wanted to offer to let him go back to Esher, but he had the feeling his brother would wave him away. He was enjoying the reprieve from the heat too much. Of course, Daimon would be cooler in Tokyo if he wasn’t wearing a roll-neck long-sleeved navy top, leather gloves and black jeans.
Old habits died the hardest.
Like reacting badly to the presence of a daemon.
Marek cleared his throat, lined up what he wanted to say and waited for Calistos to get comfortable on the couch. His youngest brother looked tired, his blond hair in disarray as he stacked all the pillows at one end of the sofa and lay back on them. His blue eyes were stormy as he looked up at Marek, as he scrubbed a hand over the stubble coating his jaw and sighed.
There were numerous healing cuts on his face and neck, and a bandage around his left arm, peeking from beneath the sleeve of his khaki T-shirt.
Keras had a few scratches of his own, including one that darted down his cheek, almost perfectly in line with the neatly clipped angle of his sideburns. That cut sliced into his black hair too, above the slightly pointed tip of his ear.
Keras’s green eyes narrowed on him, a silent warning to get on with it.
“I don’t have any fresh intel on our possible Hellspawn problem.” It seemed like a good place to start, although it had Daimon, Keras and Ares frowning at him. He didn’t give them a chance to start asking why he had summoned them for a meeting. “I have a question, and I need you all to answer it.”
“Marek has a question?” Daimon’s white eyebrows shot up and he looked to Ares. “How is that possible? Marek knows everything.”
Marek scowled at his younger brother.
“Not everything. He never said he knew everything. He knows most things.” Ares moved past Keras where he still stood in the centre of the room, his green eyes fixed on Marek.
That earned Ares a black look too. “I’m being serious.”
“Of course you are… because you’re asking for help, and it’s weirding me out.” Valen used his boots to push some magazines along the wooden coffee table and rested his feet on it.
“It’s weirding you out?” Calistos tipped his head back to look at Valen upside down. “I never knew him before he attained the knowledge of the ages through rigorous and tedious reading. I’ve never known him when he was learning shit.”
“This is serious,” Marek snapped, and regretted it when everyone fell silent and stared at him as if he had sprouted another two heads.
Daimon and Ares looked as if they weren’t sure how to handle his outburst.
“This is serious.” Valen looked from Calistos to Daimon, his tone mocking, laced with faux shock. “Quick guys… hit the books! They’re just in there. Off you go. I’ll wait here.”
He jerked his chin towards Marek’s office.
Keras sighed just as Marek was about to lose his temper.
It was enough to have the rest of his brothers turning deadly serious.
When Keras sighed, everyone behaved themselves. Even Marek. It was the same effect Hades h
ad when he sighed, because that simple sound was laced with exasperation and a hefty dose of danger even when it was done lightly, what would be a regular sigh for most people.
It was a warning that if things continued as they were, someone was liable to lose their head.
And that someone wasn’t Keras.
“Continue.” Keras waved his hand towards him.
“Is it possible for a human to turn daemon?” Some of the hardest words Marek had ever had to say, and he watched his brothers closely as they left his lips, gauging all of their faces, waiting for a reaction.
Keras arched a single black eyebrow. “Perhaps. A vampire can turn a human, infecting them with blood to force a transition from human to vampire.”
Marek schooled his features, holding back the scowl that wanted out as his brother spoke casually about vermin and without even a shred of disgust in his voice.
“A daemon can be born of a corrupted soul.” Keras’s eyebrow lowered and both of them knitted above his green eyes. “I have never considered it before, but it might be possible for that corruption to occur while the soul is still within a living vessel.”
“A living vessel,” Marek murmured, the knots twisted inside him pulling tighter as he thought about that.
For humans infected by vampires, death was the catalyst of their transformation.
What if it was the same for whatever infected Caterina?
“What’s this all about?” Calistos sat up and hit him with a worried look. “Do you think daemons are trying to recruit humans by doing something to their souls?”
Marek looked at all of his brothers, deeply aware of how far south this might go but needing to tell them more, because he needed them to convince him that Caterina had been telling the truth.
“I ran into a mortal female during some patrols.” He left out the fact he had been in Barcelona and he hadn’t been hunting for daemons, because that way led to more questions, and he needed to keep everyone’s focus on Caterina and her possible problem. “Yesterday evening, I met her again. She had been sick since the night before that, and had told me it was nothing, possibly just influenza.”
“What happened?” Ares inched closer, coming to stand beside Valen where he still lounged in the armchair.
Marek: Guardians of Hades Series Book 4 Page 16