Esher swallowed. Hesitated. Nodded.
“Did you get anything out of him?” Marek eased into the room, allowing Megan to reach Ares and blocking Esher’s path.
Megan hesitated as she reached for Ares’s hand.
His older brother noticed her at last and paced away from Keras, heading out into the night. Megan trailed after him. She would get his brother’s mood back under control, but Daimon wasn’t sure it would stop Ares from tearing Keras a new one.
“Calindria,” Keras whispered just as Daimon had been about to escort Esher out for some air too. Everyone fell silent, an air of expectation settling over the room. Keras buried his face in his hands and his back shuddered as he inhaled. “I saw her. All grown up. Locked in a cage… Somewhere in the Underworld. A hellish domain.”
“She’s grown up?” Cal sank to his knees in front of Keras. “How is that possible? A soul doesn’t grow up… does it?”
Cal looked at Marek.
Marek shrugged. “It shouldn’t, but we don’t know the particulars of what the wraith and the necromancer did to her soul.”
“She can feel everything,” Keras murmured and everyone looked at him. Cold slithered down Daimon’s spine as Keras continued, “She can feel it as if she’s flesh and blood. I saw it.”
“That can’t be right.” Cal’s voice hitched, breaking as he threw a panicked look at everyone before settling his stormy blue eyes back on Keras. “It has to be a lie. Something he showed you to hurt you. It has to be a lie. The daemon couldn’t enter the Underworld until he went through the gate, and Esher was on his tail the whole time, so he couldn’t have been there because Esher would have seen her too and she couldn’t have been grown up like me…”
Marek placed a gentle hand on Cal’s shoulder. “She’s been dead a long time, Cal. It’s possible the wraith saw her when she was grown, long before we were sent to the mortal world. He might have managed to slip into the Underworld before.”
“No.” Keras spoke that word in a calm tone but it seemed to crack like lightning, shaking the room. He lifted his head and looked at Cal. “I don’t think it was a memory belonging to the wraith. I think it belonged to the necromancer.”
“Eli took his blood?” Daimon didn’t want to believe that.
“Maybe. It wasn’t Eli. It was someone else’s memory.” Keras scrubbed a hand over his face, sat up and leaned back, sagging against the wall as his hands fell into his lap. “It was real though.”
“You think it was recent?” Daimon flicked a glance at Cal, keeping an eye on him.
His youngest brother stared straight ahead and looked as if he was struggling, his eyes wide and unfocused. Daimon had his hands full with keeping Esher on the rails. He wasn’t sure he could handle both Esher and Cal going off them.
“I’m not sure.” Keras pushed forwards and took hold of Cal’s shoulders and Cal looked at him. “We will find her.”
Cal nodded, the movement jerky. When he didn’t stop nodding, Keras kneaded his shoulders.
“Don’t think about it for now,” Keras murmured, fatigue laced with concern in his deep voice. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
Cal shook his head this time. “No. I want to know these things.”
He might want to know them, but he was having trouble handling them without passing out. His brother’s affliction had been slowly improving over the past few weeks, since they had dealt with the necromancer and Cal had discovered that Calindria’s soul was still out there, giving him a chance to save it and guide it to the Elysian Fields where she could rest.
He had managed to remember some things about what had happened to him and Calindria all those centuries ago without passing out.
“That’s not good.” Marek’s bass voice rolling over the room had everyone looking at him, and then in the direction of his gaze.
Black blood trickled from Eli’s nose and ears.
The wraith stilled.
Rubbed his fingers over his lip and brought it away, staring at the blood.
He smiled and then coughed, spraying more blood across the floor. It rolled down his chin and coated his teeth as he looked at Keras.
“This isn’t over,” Eli calmly said and coughed again, sending more vile black blood oozing down his chin. His violet eyes brightened dangerously as he stared hard at Keras, his voice dropping to a hiss. “I am not the last.”
The wraith lurched forwards, vomiting blood, his entire body shaking so hard he rattled the cage as he clawed at the bars on the floor of it, hands slipping around in the oily black liquid.
“Cass!” Daimon leaped over Cal and shoved past Marek, hitting the doorway of the building as quickly as he could. “Need a healing spell.”
Cass twisted away from Mari, Megan and Ares. Her eyes widened and she hurried to him.
“Godsdammit, Keras!” Ares boomed and rushed after her.
Daimon looked back at Eli.
Too late.
The daemon lay in a pool of his own blood, his eyes fixed on nothing.
He was gone.
Esher roared and grabbed the cage, shaking it hard, as if that would revive the dead daemon. Aiko tried to calm him, clinging to his arm and speaking to him in Japanese, fear and panic written across her face as she kept her eyes locked on Esher’s profile.
Ares levelled a black look on Keras, accusation in it that had Keras lifting his green gaze to him. Keras’s eyes darkened, a warning in them to his second in command, one that was apparently enough to have Ares backing down. Ares huffed and scrubbed a hand over his tawny hair, mussing it as his fiery gaze shifted to the dead daemon.
“Damn it,” he muttered, echoing the feeling Daimon had as he looked at the wraith.
Keras had pushed too far and now their shot at getting valuable information from the daemon was gone. It wasn’t like Keras to be so impatient. He looked back at his brother, trying to figure out what was wrong with him recently. Keras refused to meet his gaze, pushed to his feet and strode out into the waning night.
The wraith’s final words rang in Daimon’s mind.
They knew there were others on the enemy’s side, but it still felt like an ominous announcement.
The Erinyes were still alive, and if the two females had their way and got their hands on Cass, Esher would probably get his wish too—Eli would be alive again, reanimated by the enemy and Cass’s dark magic.
Daimon fixed his senses on her as she came to stand beside him, needing to know that she was safe.
He would keep her that way.
He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Esher stiffened, locking up tight.
“What’s wrong?” Daimon went to him and hovered his hand over his brother’s back.
Esher didn’t take his eyes off the daemon. Didn’t move a muscle.
“Penitence,” Esher whispered.
Nemesis was summoning him for punishment. Daimon couldn’t imagine what kind of torment he would receive as retribution for all the rules he had broken. Esher wouldn’t be strong enough to survive it, not without losing himself to his other side again.
“I’ll go,” Daimon said.
And stepped before Esher could stop him.
Chapter 31
Daimon landed beneath a dim shaft of light, surrounded by infinite darkness. He peered through the weak light, hating the way it stole his vision, making it hard to see into the shadows.
He wasn’t alone.
From those shadows, a haughty feminine voice echoed.
“You are not the one I summoned.”
“But I am the one you’ll punish.” Daimon stood his ground when a delicate foot clad in a blood-red sandal emerged from the darkness, followed by the soft sway of layers of sheer black fabric.
Nemesis’s scarlet eyes drilled into his face as she sashayed from the shadows, her face a placid mask that gave away none of her feelings.
Her eyes revealed them all.
She wasn’t happy that he had taken Esher’s place.
> “So loyal to your brother,” she murmured and banked right, skirting the edge of the light, her gaze assessing him as it raked over him, sending a cold shiver down his spine. “I always did love that about you, Daimon.”
He shuddered at the sound of his name uttered on her vile lips.
He wanted to tell her to get on with things and announce the punishment he would receive for his brother’s apparent crimes, but knew better than to rush her. Rushing her normally ended with her doubling the punishment.
He preferred to keep the number of lashes in the four-digits area not push them into five.
He tracked her with his senses as she moved behind him, aware that moving would be a mistake. He had to endure this leisurely perusal of him, even if the feel of her eyes on him sickened him. She had always enjoyed tormenting him like this, always pointed out how handsome she found him, had even gone so far as propositioning him once.
Because the bitch was aware that in this world—the Underworld—his ice was no longer a problem and he could touch without hurting someone. She played on that, thought to goad him into surrendering to his base needs and letting them get the better of him, slaking a thirst for physical contact that he was denied in the mortal realm.
It was just another form of punishment.
She appeared to his right and he slid his gaze that way, tracked her as she moved around him and concealed the shudder that wracked him as she licked crimson lips.
Beneath the sheer layers of her onyx robe, her nipples beaded.
When she raked her gaze down him this time, it remained at his feet.
Daimon looked down at the thick metal ring just a few inches in front of his boots.
Metal of the gods.
He cursed that infernal ring, recounting all the times he had been bound to it, how it never moved even when he thrashed and tried to break free of it.
He swallowed and dropped to his knees before it.
Sucked down a fortifying breath as he held his hands out to it.
“Let’s not rush.” Nemesis drifted into the beam of light and it reflected off the gold filigree that formed a corset over her stomach, cinching the black layers of her dress in to reveal her curves.
Cold skated over his flesh as she ran her hand over his shoulders and he closed his eyes as she crouched behind him, her fingers easing down his spine.
“We would not want to bloody this.” She stroked the hem of his top and he dutifully lifted his arms above his head as she pulled it up. “There’s a good boy.”
He scowled at her over his shoulder when she finished removing his top.
She leaned towards him, her crimson hair brushing his bare skin, her breath cold against his ear as she whispered, “Now, now. Best keep that temper in check lest I decide a different sort of punishment for you.”
She skimmed her palms across his shoulders and her hands shook as she sucked in a trembling breath.
He didn’t want to imagine the vile things she was contemplating, tried to shut them and the sudden spike of fear that lanced him out of his mind. She wouldn’t violate him like that. The terms of his punishment were hers to set, but it would overstep a line and his father would have her head.
She brushed her lips across his left shoulder.
Daimon clenched his fists. She wouldn’t.
She chuckled into his ear. “So tense. I would have thought you would be more relaxed these days.”
He wanted to look at her and demand what she meant by that, but he knew the answer in his heart.
She knew about him and Cassandra.
Which was strange.
She had never taken an interest in any of their lives before now. He had never realised she could see such things from her domain in the Underworld.
Rich brown leather snapped around his wrists and jerked him forwards as the straps attached themselves to the heavy metal ring.
Nemesis stroked two fingers down his spine and murmured, “How many lashes are adequate punishment for breaking an exile, entering the Underworld without permission, and murdering hundreds of people here in your father’s domain?”
Daimon really didn’t want to know the answer to that.
“I would have given Esher twenty-thousand at the very least.”
Daimon closed his eyes and bowed his head, fighting the urge to ask her to give him less than that, to use the attraction she felt towards him to bargain with her.
Her lips feathered across his ear. “Perhaps… ten thousand?”
Gods, that was still too many. A few thousand with her barbed metal whip was bad enough, always had him close to blacking out. Part of the terms of penitence was that he had to remain awake for it all to utter an apology, one for each lash of her whip. She would be forced to wait for him to heal and wake again, and would no doubt increase the number of lashes.
Keeping him here in her realm for longer and longer.
She loosed a soft moan as she caressed his shoulders, as she lowered her hands down his back and then under his arms. Her breasts pressed against his back and he bit his tongue as she raked nails over his bare chest.
“It has been so long since I have been with a man,” she whispered into the shell of his ear.
“No.” Daimon jerked backwards as much as he could with his hands bound to the ring, attempting to dislodge her.
She chuckled and nipped at his earlobe. “Would you really get a say if I decided your punishment would be to service me?”
He wouldn’t, but someone else would. “Father would have your head.”
She sighed. “Unfortunately… that is true. Fifteen thousand lashes it is.”
“Fifteen?” He twisted his head towards her, his cheek colliding with her lips. “You said ten.”
“You were insolent.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and edged backwards, rose onto her feet and rounded him, standing so close that he had to tilt his head back and look up at her to keep his eyes on hers.
Just the way she liked it.
She liked having him and his brothers on their knees.
At her mercy.
“Kiss me, and I will halve that number.”
He scowled at her. “No.”
She inspected her nails, a dark edge to her crimson eyes. “So loyal to your little sorceress. She has you well under her spell.”
He wanted to ask her what that was supposed to mean too, but held his tongue, because there was no mistaking the emotion that surfaced in her eyes as they shifted back to lock with his.
She was jealous.
He lowered his gaze to the metal ring and his bound hands, focused on it instead of her, hoping she would get the message that he was done talking. He could see where things would go if he let her have her way. She wanted to turn him against Cass, would probably say anything to get him to break up with her, spouting lies about her that were bound to involve his enemy and her being a member of them. Cass wasn’t. She was loyal too—loyal to Mari, and to him.
The gritty black floor bit into his knees through his jeans as he waited. Seconds stretched into minutes.
Nemesis finally huffed.
A whirr cut the thick air and he gritted his teeth, adrenaline coursing through him as he braced himself. He grunted as the metal whip cut down his back, catching his spine.
Muttered his first apology.
She struck him again, forcing another from him, and then again, this one catching him from his left shoulder all the way down to his right hip. He arched forwards, barely stifling the cry that rose up his throat.
Apologised again.
Daimon tried to keep count of the lashes as she hit him over and over, focused on Cass to help him bear the pain of each strike, filling his mind with something pleasant to counter the torment.
But the pain began to win, blurring his thoughts as his entire body ached, heat throbbing across his back and his shoulders in sickening waves as blood rolled down his skin and drenched his jeans.
As sweat stung the lacerations.
Neme
sis stopped.
They weren’t done.
His head was a little foggy and it was near impossible to focus, but he swore she had only delivered two thousand lashes.
Was she giving him a breather? It wasn’t like her. She had whipped him close to four thousand times once without giving him a break.
He grimaced and clenched his teeth as she drew her fingers across his shoulders, fire rolling in their wake as she caught each deep laceration.
She rounded him and he looked up at her, found her staring at her fingers.
At his blood.
A distant look in her crimson eyes.
“Such power in something so…” She didn’t finish that sentence, just lifted her fingers to her lips and tasted his blood, her tongue darting over her fingertips. Her eyes rolled back and she moaned.
That was a first.
She had never tasted his blood before.
He frowned at her, a glimmer of suspicion forming inside his weary mind, pushing through the pain and the fatigue that wracked him.
Her gaze dropped to meet his.
She seemed strangely upbeat. He would go as far as saying she was a little giddy about something. It wasn’t there on the surface, on her placid features, but it was there in her eyes as she towered over him.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Nemesis leaned over, her breasts threatening to spill from her black dress, and stroked his cheek.
Daimon stared into her eyes. “Can we get on with this? I have somewhere I need to be.”
He knew he was pushing it, but he wanted to be away from her. Far away from her. Something wasn’t right about her today. She was always strange, but she had never tasted his blood before and had never been like this. Was it because of Cass?
Or something else?
That feeling that it was about something else only worsened as she smiled.
As she peered deep into his eyes, a sick satisfied edge to hers.
“Oh… sweet Daimon… you are not going anywhere,” she murmured, voice dripping honey even as it sent ice skating down his spine.
He reared back, breaking contact between them, and frowned at her. “What do you mean by that?”
Her crimson smile only widened.
Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Page 28