Apparently the demon didn't share Danger's need for silence while watching TV.
Satisfied the demon wasn't going to eat her Squire, Danger headed back to the guest room. She opened the door quietly, expecting to find Alexion still on the bed.
Her jaw went slack as she found him at the writing desk, making what appeared to be notes.
"You okay?" she asked, entering the room slowly.
He nodded as he continued to write.
Danger moved closer only to realize he was writing in Greek. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
She frowned at his curtness. There was something very different about him now. He was like he'd been the first night they'd met. Curt. Unfeeling. Distant.
Even the air around him was cold.
"Hey," she said, reaching out to stop his hand. It, too, was icy cold. "What happened?"
He looked at her, stone-faced. "I'm not here to make friends, Danger. I'm here to deliver an ultimatum. I need you to call together the DarkHunters on this list."
He handed her the top sheet of paper. "I can't read—" Before she could finish the words, the writing changed from Greek to English.
Whoa. That was impressive.
She saw that he was still jotting things down. "What's that over there?"
"My own personal list."
Her frown deepened, especially after she glanced over the names on her paper and found one in particular missing.
"Where's Kyros?"
Alexion didn't answer.
Danger grabbed his hand and waited until he looked at her. "What is going on with you?"
"I'm getting down to business. If Stryker was telling the truth, and in this I believe he was, I only have three days to get to the DarkHunters who are on the fence and convince them to side with Acheron."
"And Kyros?"
His eerie green eyes were dull and as cold as his skin. "I'm writing him off."
She shook her head in disbelief. "You can't do that. You were friends."
"Yes, we were friends. Now we're enemies."
She was aghast at his words. "How could you—"
"I don't have anyone in this world I can trust," he said harshly, cutting her deeply that she was included on the list after everything she had done for him. Dear Lord, she had even given him her trust and that was something she did for no man.
"I should never have tried to save him," Alexion said. "Artemis is right, compassion is for the weak."
"So that's it?" she asked, disgusted by his sudden turnaround. "You're going to give up on your best friend?"
"I'm not giving up. I'm dying. I have a soul inside me that will have to be freed in—"
Danger narrowed her eyes two seconds before she pulled the dagger out of her boot and plunged it straight into Alexion's heart.
He burst apart.
Chapter 17
Two seconds later, Alexion was back in human form, standing before Danger, who waited with her hands on her hips.
He patted his chest as if he couldn't believe he'd returned. He reached out and placed a hand on her desk.
"Soul inside you all gone now?" she asked.
He nodded slowly.
"Good. Now you can stop being a total jerk." She turned to leave.
Alexion grabbed her and pulled her to a stop. He couldn't believe that he had his body back. "How did you know to do that?"
"I didn't. I was only guessing. But it was something I thought of while I was downstairs talking to Rafe. The first rule of being a DarkHunter is to stab the soul's host to free it. Stryker said that you had to kill yourself, which would cause you to die permanently—he conveniently left out what would happen if anyone else 'killed' you."
Alexion was still aghast. It was true. Whenever a DarkHunter stabbed a Daimon and their body burst apart, the stolen souls always returned to their resting places.
She laughed bitterly. "I'm a staunch Catholic. My mother used to excel at sins of omission. Growing up with her, I learned early on to listen to what she said, not what I heard. And most of all, to pay attention to what she didn't say. Since Stryker put the soul into you during your mid-poofing, I was betting that another poof such as the one caused by an outside person stabbing you would release it. Why else would he have said you had to stab yourself?"
Alexion was completely stunned on so many levels that he didn't even know where to begin. Part of him wanted to choke her, but another was impressed by the fact that she had correctly deduced Stryker's logic.
"I wasn't being a jerk," he said sullenly, returning to her earlier insult.
She stared at him dryly. "Yes you were."
"No," he said honestly, "I'm only being what I am. I'm here to—"
"What you are, Alexion," she said, interrupting him, "is a caring man."
He shook his head in denial. "I'm the Alexion. My only goal is to protect Acheron."
She placed her hand to his cheek. "It wasn't a cold, unfeeling entity that slept with me last night and it wasn't an unfeeling 'other' that looked hurt when Kyros betrayed him. You are still human."
"No," he insisted emphatically, "I'm not."