His gaze went to Kody before his jaw dropped. “Bethany?” She was the Atlantean goddess of wrath.
“No. I’m her daughter.”
Appearing even more confused, Dagon sheathed his sword and straightened his clothes. His expression said he was struggling to make sense of everything, and not quite able to do so.
Xev sheathed his sword and wiped at the blood on his own face. “How long have you been held, brother?”
Dagon rubbed at his scarred wrist. “Since the reign of Etana.”
Menyara sucked her breath in sharply.
By her reaction, Nick knew it had to be a long time ago, but unfortunately, history wasn’t one of his better subjects. Though, to be honest, he was quickly learning. “When was that?”
Menyara sighed heavily. “Almost five thousand years ago.”
Wow! Nick wheezed at the realization while Dagon winced. “Dude! What’d you do? That takes being grounded to a whole new level! Jeez, I’m so glad my mama can’t hear that one. She might get ideas I don’t need her to.”
Simi’s eyes widened. She made a sharp squeak as if she finally put two and two together. “That was you what done that with Zeus and them Arcadians and gots into all that trouble? Ooo, I remember that. That was so bad for you, but so nice for you to do! You the Simi’s hero.”
Nick arched his brow. “You, what? What’d he do?”
It was Menyara who answered. “He’s the one who taught the ancient king Lycaon how to save his cursed sons and use sorcery to merge their blood with that of animals and create the race of Were-Hunters.”
Shocked to the core of his being, Nick stared at Dagon. He’d always wondered how Lycaon had learned to do something that powerful.
Back during the human lifetime of Acheron, the Greek god Apollo had become enraged at the race of beings he’d created and named after himself – the Apollites – for their queen ordering the death of his mistress and child. To retaliate for it, Apollo had cursed everyone born of the Apollite race to die horribly at age twenty-seven, the same age his mistress had been when they slaughtered her.
The Atlantean goddess Apollymi had stepped in and showed a handful of Apollites how to survive the curse by taking human souls into their bodies and using them to artificially elongate their lives. Once those so-called Daimons had begun preying on humanity, and to protect mankind, Apollo’s twin sister Artemis had created the Dark-Hunters to hunt them down and kill them before the human soul inside them died, and free it so that it could go on to its eternal resting place.
For thousands of years, that had been the order of things. A small number of rogue Apollites became Daimons and were put down for their murderous needs by Dark-Hunters like Kyrian and Acheron.
Until an innocent Arcadian king, Lycaon, had unknowingly taken an Apollite bride. She’d given him two sons before she died tragically on her twenty-seventh birthday, per Apollo’s curse.
Grief-stricken, the king had turned to his gods for help and they had refused him. So the legend said he’d begun using the darkest of magic to merge the life force of the strongest animals with that of the Apollites until he found the two best matches for his sons.
With each experiment that started with two creatures, an Apollite and an animal, it produced an Apollite who could shift into an animal – a so-called Arcadian. And an animal who could take the form of an Apollite – a Katagari. Two separate humanlike races who were no longer condemned to die on their twenty-seventh birthday. Instead, they were imbued with extreme psychic gifts and a much slower rate of aging. One that allowed them to live for hundreds of years.
For his hybris in thwarting Apollo’s will, Lycaon was cursed by the Greek gods. They demanded that he kill the creatures he’d created, including his own sons. When he refused, the Were-Hunters he’d made out of desperation to save his children were condemned to know no peace. For the rest of time, the Katagaria and Arcadians were doomed to be at war and to fight until no more of their kind were left.
It was a war that still continued, and it was why Stone and Alex, as well as other Were-Hunters in Nick’s school, were constantly going at each other.
Nick had always wondered how Lycaon had learned that dark magic to create a whole new species. Now he knew. The answer for it stood in his living room.
Dagon.
Even as a god himself, Dagon definitely had a set to defy the others of his kind. Not many cells in the head, but a huge set in the trousers. “Are you serious? You gave that knowledge and ability to Lycaon?”
Dagon gave a subtle nod. “And like Prometheus, I was punished for it.”
Xev frowned. “Why would you help an Arcadian king?”
“Why ever do you think, cousin? He implored my Shala. She cried. I acted.”