Julian hedged a bit. "Not exactly. If they turn Daimon, they will drain the blood from humans, but it's not the blood they're after so much as the human soul."
She arched a brow as a tingle went down her spine. Kyrian hadn't been joking about that aspect of them. Great. "Why do they need to steal our souls?"
"Apollites only live thrice nine years. On their twenty-seventh birthday, they die a very slow and painful death in which their bodies literally disintegrate into dust over a twenty-four-hour period."
This time she cringed visibly at the thought. "How horrible. I guess the moral of this story is not to tick off the god of plagues."
"Yeah," Julian said grimly. "To avoid their fate, most Apollites kill themselves the day before their birthday. Others decide to go Daimon. As Daimons they cheat their sentence by taking human souls into their bodies. So long as they maintain the soul, they can live. But the problem is the human soul can't live in an Apollite body and it starts to die almost as soon as they take it. As a result, the Daimons are forced to continue preying on humans every few weeks to sustain themselves."
Amanda couldn't imagine how horrible it must be for the people killed by the Apollites—to lose both their life and their soul. "What happens to the souls that die?"
"They're lost forever. That's why we have Dark-Hunters. Their job is to try and find the Daimons and free the souls before they expire."
"And they volunteer for this?"
"No, rather they're drafted."
Her frown deepened. "Drafted how?"
Julian took another drink of tea. His gaze fell to the floor and she saw a strange light in his eyes as if he were remembering something out of his own past. Something painful.
"When someone suffers a horrible injustice," he said, his tone low, "their soul makes a scream so loud that it resonates through the halls of Olympus. When Artemis hears it, she goes to the one who cried out and offers them a bargain. For a single Act of Vengeance against those who wronged them, they will swear allegiance to her and fight in her army against the Daimon predators."
Amanda breathed deeply as all the information swam in her head. "How do you know all this?"
Julian looked up and his gaze scorched her with its vivid intensity. "Because my soul made that sound the day my children died."
She swallowed at the hatred and pain she saw in his eyes. It was so raw, she hurt for him. "Did Artemis come to you and offer you the bargain?"
"Yes, and I refused her."
"Why?"
He looked away. "I needed vengeance against another god and I knew she couldn't allow that."
Amanda knew the story of Julian's entrapment inside the book all too well. But what interested her more was Kyrian. "Kyrian traded his soul for vengeance against his wife, didn't he?"
He nodded. "But don't judge him too harshly."
"I'm not," she said honestly. She didn't know what Kyrian had been through, but until she did, there was no way she would hold his decision over his head.
"Tell me, Julian, is there any way for Dark-Hunters to get their souls back?"
"Yes, but almost no one succeeds, and each test is unique to every Dark-Hunter."
"Which means you can't tell me how Kyrian might be freed."
"Which means I have no idea how he might be freed."
Amanda nodded until her thoughts went to another matter. "Do Dark-Hunters have to drink blood, too?"
"No. Since they began as humans, they don't have to. Plus, if they had to worry about finding blood, it would interfere with their ability to track the Daimons."
"Then why do they have fangs?"
"In order to effectively track and kill the Daimons, they were given the same animal characteristics. The fangs are part and parcel of what goes with it."
That made sense to her. "Is that why the sunlight is deadly to Dark-Hunters too?"
"Sort of, but in the case of the Dark-Hunters it's more a matter that they serve Artemis, the goddess of the moon, and are an anathema to Apollo."
"That doesn't seem fair."
"The gods seldom are."
Hours later, Kyrian sat in his car, damning his treacherous thoughts. He could still see Amanda. Hear the sound of her soft, gentle voice. Feel her body against his and her soft breast in his hand. It had been so long since he'd wanted a woman like this. He thought he'd banished that part of himself the night he'd become a Dark-Hunter.
As the centuries passed, he'd felt only an occasional stirring for a woman, but he'd learned to control it. Learned to bury it. Now those long-forgotten needs had been awakened by the touch of a temptress who was lethal to his well-being. Thoughts of her distracted him. Tormented him.
He wanted her in a way that bordered on desperate.
Why? What was it about her that he craved so much? He knew nothing about her except that she had a great sense of humor and held incredible grace under fire. And yet he yearned for her as he had for no other woman. Not even his wife. It made no sense.