The saddest part of life was when you manifested your own fears by your actions or inactions. Perhaps that was what karma actually was, in the end. Not some great, mystical force that came out of the blue to strike someone down without warning.
Rather a by-product of someone’s own stupidity or cruelty where they sought to harm another that boomeranged around to take them down instead.
Because that was what this would be tonight. The humans had feared his kind. Had they not lashed out and attacked his innocent mother needlessly, then he and his brothers would have left them in peace. But because they had attacked in their own vicious stupidity, he and his brothers would slaughter them in a manner far worse than anything they had envisioned or feared.
There would be no quarter.
No mercy.
Only blood and screams.
Theo grabbed Urian’s arm to stop him. “Are you sure we should be doing this? It’s the last thing Mata would want. She’d be horrified if she knew what we were planning in her name. You know how she felt about violence.”
Urian glanced past his shoulder to meet Archie’s gaze. For the first time, they were united. “If you don’t have the stomach for this, Theo, go home. I’m not leaving this realm until I’ve tasted the blood of every human who participated in this, and if any of the others get in our way … fuck them.”
He looked back at Theo. “Decide.”
Theo swallowed and glanced to his own twin. “Alki?”
Alkimos shook his head. “I’m with them in this, adelphos. But you follow your conscience. I won’t judge you.”
Theo refused to give up as he sought to win more to his cause. “Atreus? Patroclus?”
They both patted his shoulder. “We’re going,” they said in unison.
Theo sighed heavily. “I can’t do this. Killing to survive is one thing. This is vengeance. It won’t bring her back. And I can’t shame her memory in this manner.”
Urian forced himself not to sneer at his brother’s newfound religion—Devout Cowardice. “Perhaps, but it will make me feel better, and it is justice. That is what she deserves for what they did to her.” And with that, he summoned a portal for his brother. “Go home.”
Nodding, Theo stepped through.
Urian glanced to his brothers. “Anyone else?”
United for this blood quest, they stood fast.
“All right.” Urian closed the portal home so that no one else would find them until it was over.
More to the point, no one could stop them.
Then he used his powers to locate the place the flames had shown him. A small, sleepy human village where the cowards had run back to, thinking themselves safe and protected. Far away from any Apollite’s or Daimon’s reach.
As if.
Instead of killing a Spathi, the humans should have learned a few things about them first.
One, they valued family above all. To attack one invited the group to come for you.
Two, you only had one shot. You’d best make it count. Because when they got up, and they would, there would be no stopping them.
The humans had made their strike and withdrawn.
It would be their last mistake. In the end Urian didn’t care what his brothers did tonight. He had no intention of policing their actions. It wasn’t his place. Right and wrong made no never-mind to him. Not now. Not where his mother was concerned. The humans had forfeited their right to any form of mercy the moment they had failed to police their own. The moment they had set foot on his mother’s farm and laid a single cruel hand to her flesh and taken her property.
Just as they had punished his mother for helping her family and shielding them, he felt the same for any human they might happen upon.
They were all guilty by their births to human mothers.
He was Apollo’s grandson, after all.
Let there be blood. Let there be chaos.
Most of all, let there be vengeance.
Therefore when Urian kicked open the front door of the first attacker he tracked down and they threw in the torches to burn them out into the street where they waited to kill them, he felt nothing about the screams of that man’s family. He heard nothing and saw nothing other than the huge beast of a bastard who had beaten his tiny mother.
That was the brute he seized. The brute he showed his fangs to.
“Daimons!” the man shouted, trying to escape and fend Urian off.
Urian laughed. “You wish. A Daimon would just want your soul.”
But he wanted so much more. Blood vengeance. He wanted to make the man suffer long and hard. To listen to him scream and whimper for mercy until his throat was raw and bleeding.
Urian used his powers to snap the human’s legs in multiple places. He wanted him to suffer as much as possible and to beg and cry, until the human was sick from it.
He grabbed the man by his hair and pulled him up so that he could bare his fangs. “That’s it, human. Cry and beg me. I want to hear your pleas until you’re hoarse from our beatings and you choke to death on your own blood and bile.”
The man screamed out even louder as his son ran through the streets to escape his brothers. With his powers, Urian trapped him and Archie caught the screaming boy up in his arms.
*
Urian froze the moment he came through the portal to find his father seated on this throne, staring at him with a lethal glower.
Yeah, that could melt arctic stone.
His father didn’t move until all of them had arrived through the portal and were standing in the hall in front of him. Then he came off his throne like a lethal predator out of a frightening crouch.
Except Urian wasn’t afraid. Not even a little. Honestly, he was still too grief-stricken to care.
In a deadly mood, his father closed the distance between them. Urian felt the blood rolling off his armor. It dripped from the nasal guard of his helm and landed in a bright splatter pattern on the cold tile at his feet.
Still, he didn’t move or flinch as he met his father’s gaze levelly.
His father stopped in front of him and pulled the helm from his head. He swiped at the guard with his thumb, then placed the blood on his tongue to taste it. Licking it clean, he arched his brow as he realized it was human. “The least you could have done was taken a few Daimons with you to collect the souls.”
Urian narrowed his eyes. “I would have gutted anyone who possessed any part of them. So long as my mata lies dead, so do they. No part of them should survive. Not even for a heartbeat.”
With respect shining in his eyes, his father inclined his head to him. “Noted.”
Archie bowed his head. “Are you angry at us, Solren?”
Their father scanned them in turn. “What do you think?”
One by one, his brothers mumbled an apology.
“I’m sorry.”
“Forgive me, Solren.”
Until his father locked gazes with Urian. “Have you no apology for your actions?”
Urian shook his head. “I’m not sorry. At all. The humans attacked what was mine and I retaliated with enough force to let them know that we will not tolerate their unprovoked assault on our people anymore. Besides, I would not have my mother’s Shade wandering the banks of the Acheron lamenting that her sons didn’t love her enough to see her properly avenged. I sent her to the underworld with more than enough coins to pay Charon’s fare, and with enough blood to fill the cups of any god who demands it.”
His father let out a long, tired sigh, then turned toward his sons. “Go … get cleaned up and see to your families.”
As Urian started to leave, his father stopped him.
“Urian?”
He dreaded the stern lecture he was sure was about to start, but he withheld his reaction from his father and forced himself to appear stoic. “Aye, Solren?”
His father scowled as he studied the bloody helm in his hand. A tic worked furiously in his jaw as he returned it to Urian. “You do me proud, but…” He shook his head and growled.
Those words and his reaction confused him. What was his father trying to say? “But what?”
His gaze turned dark with warning. “Be careful of the demon that drives you so. I was hoping your Xanthia would help to take the edge from it. Instead, you seem to be even more hostile lately. It concerns me.”
Some nights, it did him, too. “I’m fine, Solren.”
“Are you?”