Bedeviled

by Sable Grace

  “So we stop hunting them altogether?”

  Geoffrey, especially, should know better. He was, or had been, a full-blooded Vamp. Weaning him off humans had been even more difficult than weaning Kyana.

  “Not altogether. Some will want to join the Order if given the chance. They’ll be weaned under supervision, just as you were. Others will be given a choice—continue being hunted, or enjoy their lives by signing a treaty.”

  “You expect those who’ve lived and hunted in the dark to follow our law just because they signed their name on a piece of paper?”

  Ryker gave her a look that suggested she might possibly be a little bit stupid. “Whoever signs it will be blood-linked with a group of tracers. Those tracers will be able to find the ones who sign under them any time, any place. They’ll know the minute they have broken the laws of the treaty, and they will be found and dealt with.”

  Kyana’s face must have shown her disbelief because Ryker’s took on an expression of irritation. “We don’t have all the kinks worked out yet. But at least our way, most Dark Breed will be unable to hide.”

  “Kinda like human pedophiles,” she muttered. “That doesn’t stop them from preying on children either.”

  Ryker sighed. “This was supposed to be a relaxing evening.”

  “Since when did you and Geoffrey become bosom buddies, anyway?” she grumbled.

  “We’re not. We just find ourselves in the same boat at the moment.”

  “And Silas is in that boat too, I guess? What does he think about all this?”

  “All he cares about is passing on Poseidon’s power to the right Chosen and getting back to his meaningless life.” He tossed the empty skewer down and leaned back, folding his arms over his chest. “What were you thinking, sleeping with him? He’s . . . Why would you . . .”

  “What makes you think I slept with him?”

  Ryker’s scowl deepened. “He told me. Several times.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Six months isn’t a long time ago. When he could talk again, he told me you were the best he ever had.”

  “What do you mean, when he could talk again?”

  He shrugged and made his way over to her swing to drop beside her.

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Kyana reached up and cupped Ryker’s jaw, forcing him to look at her. “If it helps, he isn’t the best I’ve ever had. Judging by how you know your way around my body, I’m guessing you were no virgin before me either. Virgins aren’t that good at screwing.”

  That thought soured her mood. She’d never pictured Ryker screwing someone else, and she suddenly had the urge to do real violence to someone.

  “Don’t say that.” Ryker pulled her into him and she laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Don’t say what?”

  “That I screwed you. I didn’t screw you.”

  She liked the way the words sounded on his lips. She liked the naughty little tingle they set off inside her. She rubbed his thigh and nuzzled his neck with her nose.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it cheapens whatever this is between us. I’m not Silas. I don’t want to be—what did he call it?—I don’t want to be a booty call.”

  She rose onto her knees, sending the swing into motion, and straddled him, locking her gaze on his. “What exactly do you want, Ryker?”

  He kissed her nose, her cheek, her lips before pulling away. “Whatever you’re willing to give me tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll want more.”

  “And the day after that?” She slipped her shirt over her head and reached behind her back to unfasten her bra, loving the way his gaze dropped and his tongue flicked across his lips.

  Her bare breasts in his face, he cupped one. “Hmm . . . what?”

  “I said, what about the day after tomorrow? What will you want then?”

  He tightened his arms around her back. “Everything, Ky. I’ll want everything.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As the sun peeked out of the orangey sky outside Ryker’s bedroom on the morning of Haven’s trial, Kyana strolled naked to the window and watched it rise. He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her hips as he pressed his groin against the small of her back. He was ready again, and as much as she wanted to turn around and wrap her legs around him, she couldn’t. Now that Haven’s cleansing had been going on for nearly two full days, her trial could take place at any moment.

  Kyana had spent more than a day wrapped up with Ryker in his bed, trying to stop thinking about what was to come and desperate not to go crazy in the meantime. But the time for play was over. Reality had stepped back up to take its place in her world, and she was going to greet it with the biggest damned sword she could find.

  “Can I borrow your shower?” she asked, turning in his arms to offer a kiss to his stubbled chin.

  “So long as you don’t mind company.”

  “We don’t have time for that.” She nudged him gently away, but the image of Ryker slippery with soap and water made her naughty regions ache. “I’d never have guessed you would be so insatiable.”

  “Only for you.”

  Though she’d never admit it, she liked the way he looked at her at times like this. As if she was the center of his universe—the princess he was meant to save from the dragon. She didn’t often enjoy being a damsel in distress for any knight, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t wish, for one moment, that it was as easy and simple as a fairy tale.

  “I know you’re preoccupied with what’s going on with Haven, but don’t get so lost in it that you forget other crucial matters. Like tonight.”

  “What’s tonight? National orgasm festival?” she teased, knowing precisely what he was referring to but not wanting to go there.

  Ryker wouldn’t take a hint if she’d wrapped it in a bow and covered it with naked Nymphs.

  He took her face in his hands, his expression serious and solemn. “You’re going to have to go to Artemis soon. She’s going to need to prepare you for what’s coming at sunset.”

  She blinked. “Prepare me? We’ve already completed the ceremony. I thought it was just a waiting game now for my old powers to die out completely and hers to take over.”

  The sympathy shining in his eyes conjured a big cloud of dread over her head.

  “It is, but Artemis can help ease the transformation like Hades and Poseidon did for Geoff and Silas. Like Zeus will for me when my seven days are up. You saw what Silas went through before Poseidon arrived to assist with his change. I don’t want you to go through that too.”

  Damned right, she’d seen what Silas had gone through. The convulsions that had overtaken him, the eerie stillness that had passed as though he’d died for an instant before Poseidon’s blood had revived him. She’d been hoping that experience was solely for Vessels, not Chosen.

  She swallowed and worked her way out of his arms to head to the shower. She didn’t want Ryker to see the fear she knew was in her eyes. She wasn’t afraid of pain or of becoming a goddess. She was afraid of losing the powers she’d known for two hundred years. Afraid of changing and becoming someone else. A stranger.

  “You okay?”

  She paused at the bathroom door and without looking back, said, “I will be. I always am.”

  Geoffrey stood outside Haven’s cell and watched her dark silhouette rock with frantic motion in the corner. He didn’t trust her. Not by a long shot. But by the gods, when the sentinels told him she was begging to see him again, he hadn’t been able to stay away. He’d come to her just after she’d been brought in, and she hadn’t seemed to recognize him. It had broken his heart, devastated him to see her like that. The chance to see her normal just one more time before her trial had brought him back here now.

  No matter what Haven had become, he couldn’t simply stop caring for her just because her fate had taken a wonky course.

  “Geoffrey?” Her voice seared through the last of his defenses, and h
e took another tentative step forward.

  “Lass,” he heard himself say. “What have you done to yourself?”

  Her shadow shifted, grew larger as it crawled toward the invisible barrier separating them. Then he was looking down into green eyes that had once been blue, but had now mingled with the yellow that came from the Dark Breed inside her. “You came.”

  The way she drew out the word came sent a chill over his arms. There was a serpentine quality to the way she spoke, as though she still hadn’t become accustomed to maneuvering her tongue around her new fangs.

  “What do you want, lass?” He knelt, staring at her through the sporadic blue flashes of energy that held her prisoner. “What can I do to fix you?”

  He could do nothing, he knew, but damn, he wished he could.

  She dug her nails into the earthy wall and clawed her way to her feet, swaying a little as she faced him. “They purged me, Geoff. I’m going to be better soon. I feel it already.”

  The hope in her voice tightened his chest. Kyana hadn’t been fighting all this time for nothing. Perhaps all hope for Haven wasn’t lost . . .

  “Sit with me, Geoff. Please?” She fell to her knees in a heap and began to sob, peering up at him through filthy hair and dirt-smudged skin. “Hold me until they come for me. I’m too frightened to be alone.”

  “I can’t do that, love. The purging is too fresh. You’re still a risk—”

  “Please, Geoff. His voice. I hear it . . . everywhere.”

  He froze in his intent for retreat. If he turned his back on her now, he’d be the worst sort of asshole. Just because she’d been purged of Cronos’s possession didn’t mean he couldn’t find another way to make her crazy.

  “You have a key,” she whispered. “All the gods do. You could open the cell to come in and lock it again. I wouldn’t be a danger . . . I just want to be held.”

  He didn’t turn around. He couldn’t. If he looked at her now, he’d weaken.

  “I’m so scared, Geoffrey.”

  “Blimey.” He pressed his palm to the wall and squeezed his eyes closed. “Haven, love, you’re killing me. I can’t open that gate. You’re too—”

  “All right,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I . . . understand.”

  His heart in his throat, Geoffrey closed his eyes to block out the image of the pain in hers. “I’m sorry—”

  “You look different,” she said, her voice hiccupping. “Still beautiful, but different.”

  She lifted a hand as though to touch him, but as it neared the barrier, she withdrew it. “There’s silver in your hair. Just above your ears. A trait of Hades? I never met him, you know.”

  “Haven—”

  “It’s okay, Geoff,” she repeated. “I just didn’t want to be alone. But I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine.”

  He truly was a damned idjit. He was actually considering ways of going to her safely. He was a god now. Above such things as love when duty was supposed to reign over everything. But turning his back on Haven at this moment felt wrong. If he walked away and didn’t offer her whatever comfort he could before her trial and possible execution, he’d never forgive himself for abandoning her.

  “Guard!” he bellowed, slipping the five-pointed key from his robe.

  A sentinel appeared, and Geoff handed him the key. “I don’t want this back until I’ve exited and the gate’s been locked again. Understand?”

  The sentinel gave a nervous glance at Haven and nodded.

  “Open the gate and lock me inside.”

  “My lord—”

  He cut off the sentinel’s protest with a sharp, reprimanding glare. “Do it.”

  And with obvious reluctance, the sentinel obeyed and Geoffrey stepped inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kyana tugged Ryker’s robe around her and stepped out of the bathroom, relieved to find his bedroom empty. She strode through the glass doors and onto the bedroom deck, her thoughts so chaotic, she wasn’t sure how to piece them together. Her own changes. Haven’s fate. Ryker. When had her life become so damned complicated?

  She leaned against the rail, letting the salty sea breeze soothe the skin Ryker had made so sensitive with his stubbled face. Her arms and legs were tender, her breasts throbbing. His stamina as a lover was unrivaled in her experience—every touch intentional, every kiss deliberate. Being with him was perfect, was right.

  But knowing that didn’t make her fears go away. She’d been worried about growing bored and leaving him, when truthfully, the real fear came with that situation turning the other way. She’d protected her heart for so long. Was she willing to risk breaking it for maybes and might bes?

  That was something else she’d have to contemplate later. Today, she had to focus on her other worries. Namely, Haven.

  Haven was likely to go to her grave today, the very thought of which made Kyana so ill she wanted to crawl back into bed and stay there. Aside from the possibility of losing her best friend, Haven would take the location of the trident with her.

  Without that trident, the world’s waters were dying a slow, painful death. Even Below, where the sea was only a mirror of the Earth’s, the turquoise surface was beginning to look as though it had been dusted with soot, when just yesterday it had been clear and beautiful and untouched. Would Silas be strong enough to right the problems, even if he did get the trident back?

  Feeling the prickling sting of someone staring at her, Kyana glanced over her shoulder to find Ryker leaning against the glass door frame behind her. He was studying her with those intense blue eyes, and she shivered under the thick robe.

  “Feel better?” he asked, a slow smile crinkling his mouth.

  Her stomach and legs turned to goo as she remembered how those lips felt on certain very tender places of her body.

  “A little,” she breathed, closing her mind to the memories. Turning back to stare at the horizon, she shivered as her cold, wet hair settled against her cheeks. Ryker leaned beside her at the railing and tucked a stray curl behind her ear.

  After several minutes of staring into space, he said, “Worried about today?”

  As far as questions went, it was a dumb one. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’ll be at your side. Through everything that hits us today.”

  She smiled despite herself. Doubts aside, she liked hearing that. Liked knowing she didn’t have to go through any of this alone. “Thanks. But nothing’s hitting us today. It’s all going to hit Haven.”

  The worries that had weighed on her all night finally spilled off her tongue in a rambling mess. “I’m still worried, Ryker. Whether Haven is locked up or not, we still have to consider Cronos a threat. She can’t be the only being in the world that can raise him. We don’t know what he is capable of because he’s the only god who’s died and tried to come back. We don’t know what connections he has to you now, or to Geoffrey, or to any of his original children. He is Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, all wrapped up in one scary-as-hell package.”

  “Stop worrying.” Ryker sighed and pulled her into his arms. “I’m not supposed to tell you—anyone—but the ring, Zeus’s staff, and Hades’s amulet . . . they’re all safely tucked away in the Underworld. Even if Cronos came after one of us, he wouldn’t be able to touch the remaining Eyes of Power. Zeus made sure they were locked up tight, and since no one can cross into the Underworld without Hermes or Geoff, they’re safe.”

  She pushed away so she could look up at him. “And if you need them? How are any of you going to be strong enough to fight Cronos without the conduits?”

  He shrugged. “Geoff gives them back to us.”

  Kyana took a deep breath, blessed relief filling her for one blissful moment before shattering into a million pieces that tore at her insides. “You . . . there’s no way Haven can know they’re in the Underworld, is there?”

  “I don’t see how she—”

  “Cronos. Could Cronos know?”

  “Kyana, you said yourself there’s no way to know what
Cronos is capable of. But what does it matter. Even if he knows, he can’t cross into the Underworld.”

  “Unless he uses Geoff. What if Cronos finds some other way to get to them now that Haven’s been purged?”

  “You can’t seriously think Geoff would be that stupid. I’m not his biggest fan but—”

  “But nothing. We just need to make sure he stays the hell away from her.”

  “Ky, stop. She’s purged. Whether Geoff stays away from her or not right now won’t matter.”

  Kyana wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t seen Haven since the purging had been complete. How could they even be sure it had worked? “Okay,” she said. “All right. But I want to see her. I want to make sure the purging worked. If I see that it has, I’ll stop worrying that we put Cronos’s Vessel so close to the damned things he wanted all along.”

  “If it will make you feel better, fine. But don’t work yourself up over this, Ky. Don’t make trouble where there isn’t any.”

  She glared at him and tugged the tie of the robe tighter at her waist. “If the conduits are in Geoffrey’s domain and Cronos knows that, what exactly do you think he’ll try to do, Ryker? He’s already tried to kill me several times through Haven. Why would Geoffrey be any different?”

  The stone-faced glare he’d been directing at her chipped away. “You think he’s in danger?”

  “I think he might be if he gets too close. She was weak while she was being purged and a threat to no one. But what if it didn’t work? She could be susceptible to Cronos again.”

  She walked back inside Ryker’s bedroom, where the scent of their cardio Olympics still hung heavy in the air. She tossed off her robe and searched the room for her clothes. “Have you talked to Geoffrey since Haven’s capture?”

  “No, I’ve been a little distracted.” His gaze fell to her bare breasts but she didn’t move to cover them.

  “There are still several hours before the trial. I want to make sure the sentinels know to keep Geoff out of the prison until then. Hermes too. If Cronos has a backup plan, we have to be prepared.”