He picked up his pace and finally reached the peak of the grassy incline. She was already at the fence some thirty yards below, nothing more than a shadow climbing up and over the chain link like a seasoned cat burglar. Where had this female trained? With the Argonauts themselves?
He shoved that thought aside and followed. Darkness pressed in, but the eerie orange lights spaced every so often across the vast parking lot made her easy to see. That and his heightened night vision, now that they were out of the chaos of the concert.
He was over the fence in moments, this time easily weaving through cars in the lot. She didn’t look back, but his highly attuned hearing caught every pound of her heart and each push and pull of air in her lungs as she ran toward the trees.
The music faded to a dim thump. The crowd’s screams died in the background. His boots crunched across the pavement, then turned quiet as he moved from asphalt to forest floor to mix with the scents of earth and moss wafting on the air. Did she think she could outrun him? Hide in the trees? It didn’t matter that she could trace her roots back to Zeus himself. The female was about to learn there was no hiding from him. Not when she was the key to his getting what he needed most.
Douglas fir rose up around him. In the distance, the White River gurgled over rocks and downed limbs. He slowed when he saw her standing in filtered moonlight twenty yards away, still as stone and staring into the darkness as if she were nothing more than a statue.
For a second, he wondered if she’d been frozen in place by some sort of dark magic. His brother Gryphon possessed that gift—the ability to freeze those around him for miniscule seconds—but Gryphon was now dead, his soul rotting somewhere in Hades, all thanks to Orpheus. No way his brother had cast any kind of power from the other side, and not once in three hundred years had Orpheus come across another with the same gift. Which meant something else had stopped her. Or spooked her more than he had.
The familiar darkness he’d sensed earlier stirred his daemon within. Anxious to get to her before it did, he stepped cautiously toward her, was just about to tell her who he was so they could end this idiotic game of chase, when a voice at his back drew him to a stop.
“Step away from her, daemon.”
He turned—as did his target—toward the blond in the goth boots, who stood near a cluster of trees.
His quarry gasped. He reached out and wrapped his hand around her upper arm before she could get away. The female was nothing but skin and bones. Though she was definitely quick.
She struggled, but he held her firm and dragged her toward his chest. To the blond he growled, “Go back to the concert, woman.”
But before he could send the blond packing, Orpheus realized something besides him had spooked the female in his arms. Sonofabitch.
He whipped around, spotted the three massive males walking their way. His target tensed, sucked in a breath. Orpheus cursed his dumbass luck and pushed her behind him. He wanted to tell the blond to run, but there was nothing these dogs liked better than a chase. He’d take care of them, then her.
“Look what we have here,” the one in the middle said. All three wore sunglasses, even though it was night. But Orpheus didn’t need to see their eyes to know they were glowing. He could feel it. Just as he could feel his own eyes begin to glow in response.
Damn it. And damn his target for running straight for them.
“Looks to me like he has plenty to share,” the one to the left said, the one with the shaved head and double gold hoop earrings. “We’re hungry too, brother.”
Oh, Orpheus didn’t doubt these three daemons were hungry. Atalanta, their leader, may be trapped in the Fields of Asphodel, but her new breed of daemon—monsters who looked human but weren’t—lived on. And they needed to feed to regain the strength they were no longer getting from the Underworld. What Atalanta didn’t know was that she couldn’t control hybrids the way she could her army of ordinary daemons. They weren’t brainless soldiers. They were part human, and as such retained that human characteristic that all the gods hated—free will.
Yeah, Orpheus knew that better than anyone, didn’t he? Cursing his luck all over again, he scanned the trees, focused on his senses. Didn’t pick up any other threat around them, which meant these three dickheads were alone.
“Look, guys. The chick and I were just about to get nice and friendly, so why don’t you just turn right around and go find some unsuspecting sheep to toy with. I’m sure that’s right up your alley.”
“Come on, man. You don’t need two. We’ll take the blond.” The leader licked his lips and stepped forward.
Skata. Stupid human with her stupid curiosity. Behind him he heard the female he’d been chasing shuffle backward. She obviously knew what they faced, but the human probably didn’t. In a minute though—unless he figured a way out of this mess—she was going to discover just what kind of nightmare she’d wandered into.