Something strange was going on. In his gut, he knew it.
Now that he thought more about it, Nick wouldn't have breached Sanctuary without a damn good reason. The Cajun might be a lot of things, but he'd never been a turncoat.
"Boy, what have you gotten yourself into?"
"We have a problem."
Acheron froze as Urian materialized directly in front of him. Thank the gods he'd pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms before he came into the kitchen to get his wife the bowl of Chunky Monkey ice cream she'd been craving. Otherwise Urian would now be blind and he'd be even more pissed at the interruption. "Were you raised in a barn?"
A loud knock sounded on the back door.
Acheron rolled his eyes at Urian's sarcasm when it was obvious Urian had thrown the sound as a "screw you" to him. Lucky for you, I just had great sex with my wife that put me in such a happy place not even your assholishness can disturb it. Otherwise Urian would have been a flaming stain on the wall. "What's up?"
"Dev's not on crack."
Acheron licked the back of the spoon before he set it in the sink. "Never thought he was.... Ketamine maybe, but never crack. Why did you?"
Urian watched Ash return the ice cream carton to the freezer. "I just came away from a chat with one of my old friends." A term Urian reserved to describe one of the Daimons who still served his father. At one time, Urian had been Stryker's right hand. But that had been before Stryker had cold-bloodedly murdered Urian's wife and cut Urian's throat, then left him for dead. And to think, Urian was such a rotten bastard that he carried a grudge against his father for that.
Yeah...
Stryker was seriously lacking a screw in his drawer.
"He told me that the Daimons are able to take gallu demon souls into their bodies and that Stryker is converting his army with their blood."
Acheron froze at those words. The Sumerian gallu powers were intense. The ultimate in evil, one of them in a Daimon's body would make one hell of a weapon. More than that, gallu bites turned the victims into mindless drones. One could make thousands.
Crap. A Daimon would now be able to make more of their kind.
Ash could take one down without breaking a sweat, but a normal Dark-Hunter...
That would be bloody indeed. If not fatal.
"What's Stryker planning?" he asked Urian.
He gave Ash a stare that doubted his mental functionality. "What he's always wanted. To kill my grandfather and subjugate the humans."
Ash returned the "duh" expression. "I didn't ask for the goal, Urian. I've known that. What I need is the game plan. Why is he converting his people?" Ash's phone rang. He started to ignore it until he saw it was from Ethon.
What now?
Sighing, he looked at the bowl of melting ice cream on the counter. Tory hated ice cream soup. He refroze it then flashed it upstairs to where she waited in bed for him while he answered his call. Good thing his wife was used to his weirdness and would understand why he didn't deliver it himself.
However that didn't stop the fact that he felt like whimpering over the interruption of what he'd planned on doing with the ice cream and his wife....
Some days his job seriously sucked. Why couldn't humanity clean up after themselves?
Ungrateful bastards.
He flipped open his phone.
"Nick is working with the Daimons," Ethon said without preamble.
"Nice hearing from you too, Spartan. Care to tell me why you think this?"
"'Cause the little shit tried to kidnap Sam out of Sanctuary. He was there in all his glory, offering her up to our enemies." Ethon continued speaking after that, but Acheron didn't hear a single word of it.
Instead he saw images in his head that he couldn't quite place. Something was profoundly wrong with this entire scenario. He knew that Nick was tied by blood to Stryker, but Nick had been fighting that bond....
Had something happened to put him back under Stryker's command?
No. No way. Nick was too stubborn for that. Not even Ash could control him.
He hung up the phone and met Urian's curious gaze. "Get over to the Charonte Club and ride herd on Dev and Sam. Anything comes at her, I don't care who or what, you protect her."
"Okay. What's going on?"
"Just do it." Ash didn't explain himself to others. Ever. He honestly had no idea why Stryker would want Sam, but whatever the reason it had to be diabolical. Stryker didn't move without purpose and precision. And because Stryker's actions directly affected Ash, he couldn't use his powers to see what the hell the bastard was doing.
Urian vanished.