Cass pouted. “I don’t feel like drinking anymore. You’re no fun.”
She aimed that at Daimon, but Valen answered.
“I’m more fun than you can handle.” That earned him a smack around the back of his head from Eva. He looked at her as she wriggled off his lap, caught her around the waist as she twisted away from him and pulled her back onto it. “I don’t want to play with the bitch-witch, baby. Let’s wait till she’s gone and then sneak some ambrosia from the bottle and get wicked.”
“The bottle is sealed with a spell.” Cass tipped her chin up, and Valen reacted like she had announced the end of the world was coming.
Daimon looked out at the garden.
Which it probably was.
The otherworld flashed over the present, the future of this world should he and his brothers fail in their mission. The Moirai had made sure they knew what fate awaited the realms if the enemy won, taunted them with visions of it. Beyond the crumbling walls of the mansion, buildings burned, the sky blazed orange, and harrowing screams cut through the thick smoky air.
Many in this world believed the Underworld was hell.
Hell was what awaited both this world and his one if he and his brothers failed.
“It doesn’t look great, does it?” Valen sobered, his deep voice turning serious as he stared in the direction Daimon was.
“It got better a little while ago, but now it’s worse. I figured we were winning. Now I’m not sure.” Cal sounded worried.
Marek gripped his shoulder. “We’re winning. It’s in a state of limbo right now. We just need to score another victory and it will get better again. You’ll see.”
Cal looked up at him and nodded.
Daimon found it hard to believe that, even when he wanted to.
“Are you sure you don’t need a sip of ambrosia?” Cass drew his focus to her and he frowned as she waggled the bottle she now held in her hand.
He sighed, muttered, “Not going to happen.”
And stepped.
Chapter 5
Cass set down the bottle of ambrosia she had taken great pains to get her hands on, one that had cost her a small fortune. It had seemed like a good plan at the time, but Daimon was determined to resist her.
She had to admit it was getting annoying now.
The more he fought her, the more she wanted to tear down that wall he had built around him, and the more it became about something other than using him as a nice diversion.
Or at least, she was beginning to realise this infatuation of hers was becoming dangerous.
It had all the hallmarks of something else, something she couldn’t afford to indulge in.
Marek took hold of Caterina and Marinda, and Cass didn’t wait for him to teleport with them. She summoned a spell that was draining to say the least and cast it, disappearing in a wink of crimson light.
Cool air buffeted her as she appeared on the rooftop of a skyscraper in the middle of the Ginza district of Tokyo, carrying the scent of the city and Daimon. Snow and spice. He smelled of it, roused memories of the desolate lands that had been her home for the first sixty years of her life, before she had found the courage to strike out on her own and leave the coven to live in warmer climes.
Only rather than chilling her as those memories did, Daimon’s scent stirred heat in her veins.
“Since when can you teleport?” Daimon glowered at her from his position near Keras, his arms folded over his chest as he leaned against a block-shaped construction that had vents on all sides of it.
“Since always.” She looked at the blue sky and pursed her lips. “Well, since I learned the spell. I don’t remember how long ago that was, but I don’t think you were asking for specifics.”
Marek appeared with Caterina and Marinda, and Ares quickly followed them, curls of black drifting from the shoulders of his black T-shirt as he stepped forwards, towards Keras.
“How come you complained so much about being left behind the other day then?” Daimon’s white eyebrows lowered over icy eyes, narrowing them. “Why not just use the spell then?”
Partly because she had wanted to be picked for the team. Partly because when she hadn’t been picked, she had decided to sulk about it and take it out on him when he returned.
“Perhaps I was waiting for you to see my value and do the gentlemanly thing of teleporting me with you?” It seemed like a safe answer, one that would get a reaction from him.
He huffed.
Before he could speak, Ares said, “Are you two a thing?”
“No,” Daimon snapped and pushed away from the wall. He cast her a black look and stomped away from her, towards the other end of the roof. “Never.”
“Never is a long time,” she murmured, hearing another’s voice in her mind as she uttered those words. “Just like forever.”
Daimon looked over his shoulder at her, frowned, and then carried on walking.
Eric had said them to her, before Marinda had been born, when Cass had told him it was foolish to fall in love with someone who would only end up dying. He had turned to her and asked her if she had ever been in love.
She had responded with never.
He had told her that never was a long time and things would change, and one day she would fall in love and realise what he had—that true love was forever.
Cass had countered that forever was a long time too—a long time to be stuck with the same person.
Eric had shaken his head, his look one of despair, and had given up trying to convince her that love was worth the risk and that forever was better than never.
Cass smiled as she looked at Mari, crossed the expanse of roof between them and looped her arm around hers. “That one is a might prickly with me.”
She glanced at Daimon’s back. His shoulders stiffened.
“Because you prod and poke him,” Mari said, her French accent adding a lightness to her words that wasn’t really there.
Eric might not have been Marinda’s biological father, but the two had ended up with similar personalities. Mari was one of those sweet, forever kind of hearts too.
Cass preferred things to be more for now than forever.
Keras, Marek, Ares and Daimon stopped in a line and Keras looked back at her and Mari.
“The gate is over there. We can’t get any closer without influencing it. The rest is down to you.” Keras’s cold green eyes settled on Mari.
She nodded and drew down a deep breath that had Cass squeezing her arm, unable to hold back the need to reassure her.
Cass led her past the brothers, deciding to pick the route furthest from Daimon, just to irritate him. She hadn’t missed how he had looked when she had spoken of drinking ambrosia with Keras. She sidled close to the black-haired man who was a clone of his father, held a fathomless darkness in him that always warned her away from him.
And as predicted, Daimon’s gaze instantly seared her.
He didn’t like her near his only single brother.
She noted that and continued walking, the power that emanated from the hidden gate luring her towards it. When it buffeted her as strongly as the autumnal breeze did, she halted and looked at Mari.
“You’re up.” She released Mari’s arm and took two steps back, but refused to go any further, just in case Mari needed her.
The wind caught ribbons of Mari’s golden hair as she stood in the middle of the rooftop, her back to Cass. Tokyo stretched around her, a million buildings crammed together into one sprawling claustrophobic space bathed in fading evening light. She swore she could see all of the city from up this high, and it stretched for miles. Endless in all directions. A sea of rooftops with sparse patches of green.
She missed home.
Not the coven in Siberia, but her home in the Aegean.
It was quiet there, filled with long sunny days and few people to bother her.
Plus, everyone there adored and respected her.
Mari moved, pulling Cass back to the present as she raised her hands bef
ore her and her head lowered slightly. Cass waited, staring at the point where the power of the gate felt strongest and on high alert, just in case something bad happened.
She lined up a series of spells.
It always paid to be prepared.
Violet light flickered just beyond Mari, and Mari stretched her arms out towards it, her entire body tensing and then beginning to shake as she grunted. The pinprick of light glittered as it hovered a few feet above the flat roof of the towering building, but didn’t expand into the central disc of the gate.
Mari’s shoulders shook as she strained.
Cass focused on her and swore under her breath. This was taking too much out of her. She broke towards her, ignoring the muttered comments coming from their audience, and took hold of her.
“That’s enough.” Cass gripped her arm and lowered it for her, wrapped her other one around Mari’s waist as she sagged, breathing hard. She looked back at Keras. “Satisfied?”
He nodded. “Hopefully the enemy has also lost their ability to command the gate. Do you feel you would be able to open it if there were two of you?”
Mari wearily lifted her head. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
Cass’s gaze drifted to Daimon.
His ice-blue eyes slowly widened, his eyebrows rising as his lips parted.
But he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking beyond her.
Cass whipped around to face that direction. Violet-black clouds billowed outwards from a point near the edge of the rooftop, sparking with green and purple lightning that chased between them as they expanded to fill an area five feet wide by seven feet tall.
A portal.
She grabbed Mari’s wrist and shoved her behind her, pushing her as she quickly backed away from the opening portal, heading towards the brothers and Caterina. Daimon appeared in front of her together with Ares.
“It can’t be the wraith.” Frost glittered on Daimon’s gloves as he curled his hands into fists.
“Gates are shut to traffic.” Ares didn’t take his eyes off the portal. “No way for Eli to get out of the Underworld. It’s them.”
“That’s worrying,” Mari said from behind Cass, and Cass couldn’t agree more. “I lost my ability to cast a portal and they still have it.”
Meaning there was a chance they could still open the gate? Cass glanced at it, a brief look to check that it wasn’t forming. The flicker of violet light had disappeared, leaving no trace of the gate behind, other than the power she could feel humming in the air and in her bones.
In the split-second she took her eyes off the ball, daemons poured from the portal. Ares and Daimon leaped into action, launching into the midst of them. Several of the human-looking males hissed and grunted as the waning light of day hit them, causing wisps of smoke to rise off their clothes. The rumours about daemons were true then. Most of them couldn’t handle sunlight without getting burned.
They backed off towards the portal, their gazes seeking shadows. The rest surged forwards to meet the brothers.
Marek swept past her, rushing to join his brothers as they fought to hold back the daemons, stopping them from nearing the gate. Caterina followed hot on his heels. Cass watched as the hybrid cast a barrier in front of the brothers and the stronger daemons slammed into it. Blue hexagonal glyphs appeared in a wave and disappeared.
A curious power. Effective too.
But it cost Caterina.
She wobbled on her feet and Marek turned back to her, grabbed her wrist and spun her so her back was to his.
Together, they fought a wave of daemons as they piled around the edges of the barrier, breaking left and right. To the right, they ran right into Daimon and Ares, who were combining ice and fire with devastating effect, ravaging the enemy forces.
Cass cursed when something caught her eye and looked to her right, to the other side of the roof, beyond where the gate was located.
Violet-black smoke boiled there, writhing and spreading.
Another portal.
She wasn’t surprised when the two other Erinyes stepped out of it, looking like twins, a perfect reflection of Marinda with their blue-green eyes and blonde hair twisted into a Greek plait across the tops of their heads. These two wore form-fitting black clothes though, leather pants and tanks that showed off their figure.
Cass had always tried to get Mari to dress a little more like her, a little more provocatively to make the most of her figure. Cal would have a heart attack if he saw Mari dressed like her half-sisters.
Shadows rushed across the rooftop, snapping at the black tar and each other, sapping the warmth from the air as they passed Cass. She shivered and watched, fascinated as they rose up from the ground and launched at the Erinyes in a malevolent wave. The two furies broke apart, leaping over the sharp spikes of the shadows and rolling under others, evading them all. The points of the shadows slammed into the rooftop, piercing it before they dissipated.
Another wave of shadows rocketed towards the two.
Cass lent them a hand, launching several spells, twisting spears of red and gold that shot through the air, aimed at points where she hoped the Erinyes would be foolish enough to leap into their paths.
One of the Erinyes managed to evade them all, but the other wasn’t as fortunate. She cried out as a spear sliced through her left calf and hit the roof.
“Sister!” the second Erinyes shrieked and launched towards her, faster than Cass or Keras’s shadows could track. She pulled her fallen sibling up just as a shadow reached them, and the injured one gasped as it stabbed into the roof where she had just been.
The two Erinyes turned as one towards the gate.
That violet light flickered brightly again.
Everything and everyone went still, all eyes shooting to the gate.
Time seemed to slow as Cass summoned more spells to her fingertips, her breath hitching as she waited for the gate to expand.
Only it didn’t.
A thick earth wall shot up before her, a dome that swept over the point where the gate was located, obscuring her view of the Erinyes. The rich brown mud baked in an instant, small cracks forming across it.
“Tell me you all just saw that too?” Ares grunted as he backhanded a daemon and sent him flying across the roof into two more, knocking them over the edge. They screamed as they fell to the road far below and then silence.
“I saw it,” Daimon offered.
“How can they cast a portal so well but their ability to command the gate has weakened just as mine has?” Mari kept her eyes on the dome covering the gate, her fingernails turning into short claws as she spread her feet shoulder-width apart.
A warrior’s stance.
It was still unsettling seeing her sweet, kind-hearted Mari transforming into a vicious, battle-hungry furie.
Violet shone in Mari’s eyes, edged with black.
Caterina muttered something in Catalan and turned with Marek, her back still plastered to his. He finished off the daemon she had been fighting, snapping the man’s neck with nothing more than a well-aimed uppercut with the heel of his right hand.
“Blood,” Caterina hollered as she lashed out at another daemon, driving the female back with her sword. “Eli gave me a cocktail of blood. It gave me powers.”
She grabbed the daemon by her hair and shoved the female’s head down fast as she brought her knee up hard. It cracked against the daemon’s forehead and Caterina released her, letting her crumple to the ground.
“What if they have more of that blood?” Caterina looked at Keras, Ares and then Mari.
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Marek turned with her again and she shoved her right hand forwards, driving the sword through the eye of a male daemon.
Ares bit out a black curse.
“So now the enemy can siphon powers from blood?” Daimon raised his hand and five shards of ice shot up from the rooftop, impaled the daemons he had aimed them at and lifted them into the air.
The wretched humanoid thing
s struggled, desperately clawing at the ice protruding from them, causing black blood to roll down the slick surface to the roof.
“We will find out later.” Keras sent a wave of shadows racing over the dome and Cass’s gaze followed them, because she wasn’t sure what he was aiming at.
The Erinyes.
The two blondes were coming over the top of the dome, the one on the left falling behind as she limped.
“Complete the mission. Grab her,” she bit out from between clenched teeth.
The furie on the right nodded.
They were talking about Mari.
Cass grabbed hold of her and pulled her back when she went to launch forwards, held on to her and refused to let go, weathering a hiss as Mari turned on her, her violet eyes flashing dangerously.
Daemons surged towards them from her left, driving Ares and Daimon back towards her, and more poured through the portal, into the falling night.
Two daemons made it past Ares, snarling and snapping sharp teeth as they lunged in her direction.
Daimon appeared between her and the vicious creatures, threw his left hand forwards and sent two spiralling daggers of ice at them. The one on the left went down shrieking. The one on the right nimbly dodged the attack.
“Stay close,” Daimon growled.
“I have this,” Cass countered and unleashed her own attack, a spell designed to freeze blood. “I don’t need protecting.”
The twin bolts of blue shot past Daimon as he turned icy eyes on her. “I’ll decide that.”
He swept his right arm up and before her spell could connect and prove that she didn’t need him watching out for her, three spires of ice shot up from the rooftop, impaling the daemon in his thigh, stomach and shoulder.
Cass glared at Daimon as black blood oozed down the jagged clear ice.
“I had that.” She pulled Mari closer to her. “Snegovik.”
He scowled at her but said nothing, because he was a snowman. Cold as ice. Standing alone in this world. Bringer of brief joy followed by despair and misery.
Perhaps that was a little too harsh, but he had ruined her fun. She had been about to prove she could handle herself, maybe even make him see that she could fight on the frontlines if she chose to, and he had spoiled it.
Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Page 5