Viper took a deep breath as he looked Alexion over. "I only have one question. If you're not Ash's destroyer, why are you here?"
Alexion's answer was dry and sarcastic. "To make friends and influence people."
Viper frowned as Danger laughed.
"The influencing people is true," Alexion said stoically. "But I really don't care about friends. What I do care about are the DarkHunters. Kyros and Stryker are right about—"
Danger cleared her throat, interrupting him as she recognized from previous DarkHunter encounters where this particular speech was heading: disaster.
Alexion might understand people's emotions and actions, but he didn't know how to talk to them. "Did we not have a discussion about the 'or else' bit?" she asked him.
He gave her a peeved stare. "Okay, then what do you suggest I say?"
She patted him playfully on the stomach. "Watch and learn." She turned toward Viper. "How long have you known Ash?"
"Like you, since the night I was made a DarkHunter."
She nodded. "Right, and what did Ash tell you the night you met him?"
Viper fell silent for a minute as if he were reliving the event in his head. "Basically, he said that he was there to show me how to survive."
"Right. And if he meant that then why would he send someone out to kill you now?"
She saw the truth in Viper's eyes as he realized it. "He wouldn't."
"No, he wouldn't." She touched his arm sympathetically. "Don't feel bad. I forgot that part myself, but that is the spiel Ash gives every DarkHunter when he first meets them. Then he spends the next few weeks teaching us how to fight and how to live. More than that, we get all the money we can spend, great homes, and servants. If we were just his expendable pawns, in his army, why take such good care of us?"
Viper laughed darkly at that. "You're right. I gave my loyalty, blood, and sweat to the Spanish armada and they didn't give a damn what I ate or where I slept. And my pay stunk."
She nodded.
"The only DarkHunters I have ever killed were the ones who preyed on humans," Alexion said emphatically. "That is the only thing Acheron will not stand for. And it's the reason I'm sent in. If you're willing to leave the humans alone and let bygones be bygones, so is Acheron. You can go home in peace. But if you think that he's lying to you and that you can do whatever you want to the humans without fear of retribution, then you go home in pieces."
Danger saw Viper's eyes flash at the threat. She half expected him to attack Alexion again.
To her relief, he didn't.
After a few tense seconds, Viper stepped back. "Kyros is calling together the DarkHunters in the area the night after tomorrow. He says he has something to show us about Acheron that will prove his guilt above everything else…" He looked at Alexion. "I won't be there."
Danger smiled. "Good man."
"I try most nights." Viper inclined his head to them. "I better go. We're now short one DH in Memphis, and Danger is draining the shit out of my powers. Not to mention, the last thing I need is to breeze the dawn."
She nodded. "Vaya con Dios, Sebastian," she said, using Viper's real name.
"Hasta la vista, francés." He looked at Alexion. "Y tu, weirdo."
Alexion laughed. "Adios, mi amigo."
Danger watched as Viper returned to his car. As he drove away, a deep sadness claimed her.
Euphemia was dead…
The pain of the thought ached deep inside her. "How many more DarkHunters are they going to kill?"
Alexion came to her and held her close. "It'll be all right."
"Will it?" She held on to him as morbid thoughts and grief for her comrades poured through her. "What bothers me most is that they got to her in Memphis. How could Stryker attack there and be here to—"
"Bolt-hole," Alexion said, interrupting her. "He can command them any place and any time. One minute he can be here at your house and in the next, Moscow."
"Then how do we stop him?"
He gave her a tough stare. "You don't. That's my job."
"And if you fail?"
"Not an option. We'll get him. I promise."
And yet even as he said those words, Danger had an awful premonition that they wouldn't. She felt something cold and sinister deep down inside.
Good didn't always win. She knew that better than anyone.
Ash paced the floor of his throne room restlessly. His emotions in turmoil, he tried to block out the images that haunted him.
"I will not interfere." It was a mantra he'd been chanting all day, and yet how could he not?
The lives and well-being of people he cared about hung in the balance.
He held his hand out and the monitors on his left flashed images of his human life. The horror of it all. The humiliation. The pain and terror. And all because two women had sought to "save" him.
He wouldn't do that to Ias. To interfere with fate or human free will…
It was disastrous.
"Acheron?"
The monitors went blank and he froze as he heard a voice in his head that he wasn't expecting. "Savitar?"
"How many people you got in this head of yours that you have to ask that question?"