Might not work. Might even get him killed faster. Honestly, he couldn’t blame Ruyn if he chose not to answer. Or kill him on arrival. But Urian was really out of options.
He pricked his finger and hoped the blood was enough to summon his brother-in-law while they closed in.
“Kill the bastard of Apollo!”
Urian scoffed at those words. For one thing, he wasn’t a bastard, he was quite legitimate. Second … “Why?” he snarled, unsheathing his sword. “Not like I love him, either.”
Their answer came as a mass attack.
Bloody wonderful. Kill him for a piece-of-crap grandparent he hated. That was just all kinds of wrong.
Summoning his powers, he really regretted not wearing Xyn’s armor right now. He should have gotten over his feelings and remembered that he was a warrior and it was enchanted.
And that he liked having his balls attached to his body.
A light flashed beside him. He turned to attack, intending to kill whatever it was that had decided to join their party. Then he hesitated and pulled back as he saw Ruyn manifesting there.
Thank the gods, he finally had some reinforcement.
It took Ruyn less than a minute to assess the situation.
And Urian’s stupidity that had caused it. With a sardonic grin, he shook his head. “Brother, it appears to me that you seriously picked the wrong day to carpe your diem.”
“Better than allowing my diem to get carped. So are you going to stand there, admiring my posterior, or lend us a hand with it?”
“Rather it should be a certain finger I lend you, mate.” Growling, Ruyn hefted the two axes off his back and angled them at the ready. “It’s a good thing I like you. Anyone else would be my first victim.”
Urian snorted. “Too bad you don’t like a few more. Am thinking some friends with you wouldn’t have been a bad thing.” He used a god-bolt to blast the Apollite closest to him and swung with a sword at the next. Times like this, he wished he had his father’s or Xyn’s ability to transform into a dragon. They could use the firepower right about now.
Sadly, those powers were beyond his scope.
Ruyn scoffed at his words. “Bah, friends. Who needs them? They just drink your beer and ruin a perfectly good rotten mood by trying to cheer it.” He took the heads off three Apollites with one stroke.
Urian was impressed. He had to slaughter his enemies the old-fashioned way. With his hands and magick.
The worst part was that he still didn’t know why this group was after him or what they wanted. What had he done? Normally, he only drove his brothers to homicide. And that was on purpose.
Ducking as he struck an artery and blood sprayed across his face, Urian licked his lips. At least he was getting fed. Ruyn was not so happy about that part of this. Unlike Urian, Ruyn wasn’t an Apollite. He and Sheba had shared a mother, not Apollo’s blood or the curse.
So Ruyn kicked and twisted his way through them. Urian held his own better than he’d have thought, given their number. Until a barrage of arrows flew at them.
Ruyn deflected the ones aimed at him with his axes.
Urian wasn’t so skilled. While he could catch a single one, he couldn’t catch more than that without dropping his sword. Had he been more experienced, he might have been able to use his telekinesis to deflect them or some other trick.
Sadly, he wasn’t his father.
And three of them embedded in his chest.
With a staggering amount of pain that brought back a fierce round of déjà vu, he fell to one knee. Get up, damn it!
He couldn’t. The best he could manage was to pant.
One of them kicked him to his back. Urian rolled toward him as he went to stab him, knocking the bastard off balance and tripping him. That only drove the arrows in deeper and caused more pain to rip through his body. Groaning out loud, he thought for a moment that he might pass out from the agony of it.
Somehow he managed to rise. The man in front of him was a Daimon who had the nerve to laugh at his pain.
Pain he knew wouldn’t last much longer. Any heartbeat and he’d black out.
Turning toward Ruyn, he saw his brother trying to make his way closer to help him.
But there was only one way to make it through this. And he wasn’t about to let some slimy, crappy Daimon get the better of him. Not like this. I won’t die on my knees …
With an evil grin, Urian turned back toward the Daimon. Then he sank his fangs into the bastard’s throat and ripped it open.
The moment he tasted that blood, he understood what his brothers had tried to tell him. The shot of adrenaline to his system was unnerving. It literally felt as if he’d gone to sleep and been jolted back awake by something fierce and frightening.
Only now he was more alive. More alert. In tune with the very universe itself.
He heard more. Saw more.
Felt more.
Including a whine in his skull that was deafening. For a moment, he thought he might go insane from the intensity of it. Like a high-pitched squeal embedded deep in the center of his brain that only he could hear.
“He’s a Daimon!”
Those words rang and echoed in his ears loud enough to cause him to flinch. More than that, their attackers instantly stood down. They literally stepped away and withdrew.
Why?
Ruyn scowled at him. “Now while I like to think I’m an awe-inspiring beast whose battle skills are such that it causes my enemies to tremble and flee at the very mention of my name, that’s just a story I tell women to get myself laid.” He gestured at the now-behaving group with his bloody axes. “That shit is surreal and just doesn’t happen except in braggart tales and old men’s fantasies. What’d you do, Urian?”
He sputtered. “I don’t know.”
The one who’d first called for Urian’s head spat blood on the floor. “There’s no need to kill him. He’s dead now.”
Ruyn made an impressively foul face. “While his stench might suggest a dead body, he’s always smelled that way. Bastard looks live enough to me.”
The man rolled his eyes. “He’s a Daimon. We’re out to end the line of Apollo. Once the last of his Apollite brood is dead, our curse is lifted.”
Now it was Urian’s turn to frown. What the hades did he mean by that?
“That true?” Ruyn asked him.
“Not that I know of.” Urian glared at the leader. “Where’d you hear that stupidity?”
“From the oracle of Helios. She swore to us that it was the truth. When the last of his Apollite children are dead, then there won’t be a curse left on us.”
Urian curled his lip at that. Since when had the oracle ever once in the history of oracles spoken that plainly? When the sun rises in the east, the sun will have risen in the morning or after the battle a mighty kingdom will fall, nay—shit was all anyone could ever get from an oracle. They spoke in useless riddles that would be true no matter what so that they hedged their bets, and you interpreted them into whichever you wanted it to be the truth.
He’d never understood why anyone would listen to an oracle.
The Apollite on his right jerked his chin at Urian. “Hey? Can’t he take us to the rest of his family so that we can finish them?”
Urian groaned at another stupid epiphany. Especially as all the others realized he was right.
“Shite,” he and Ruyn mumbled under their breaths at the same time.
“I got the asshole on the left,” Ruyn said.
“Better yet, I got a portal.” Urian opened it fast and grabbed him.
Only instead of landing in Kalosis, Urian hit the ground on the precipice of a mountain unlike anything he’d ever seen before. And no sooner did he land on it than the bottom collapsed out from beneath his feet.
Urian felt himself falling fast and furious. What the hades was this?
Convinced he was dead, he didn’t even have time to pray. There was nothing to grab onto.
Until he slammed into the cold, jagged ground so hard it jarred his teeth. Rattled and momentarily dazed, he dangled over what had to be a thousand-foot drop. His heart hammered so hard, he was amazed it didn’t rip out of his chest. He latched onto the only thing that kept him from falling.
One massive trunk of an arm.