Ignoring Sasquatch’s dig, Phoebe clapped Shanus on the arm while the two councilmen led him inside. Then she and Kat went to get her sister and Chris.
The expression on Cassandra’s face said that her sister wanted to claw out her eyes for letting them take her large hairy boyfriend. “What’s going on?”
Kat let out a tired breath. “They’re taking Wulf into custody to make sure he doesn’t hurt any of them. Come on, they have a doctor inside waiting for you.”
Cassandra hesitated as she looked in the direction where they’d vanished. “Do you really trust them?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I trust Phoebe. I think.”
Kat laughed at that.
Phoebe didn’t find it funny at all.
Cassandra scooted out of the truck and let Kat lead her and Chris into the cave while Phoebe stewed over her sister’s response, especially given the fact that it was her husband who’d just put his life on the line to save them all. How dare they!
Ungrateful bastards all!
But she managed to be a little compassionate. After all, her sister was pregnant and she was the last surviving member of her family. “Don’t be afraid, Cassie. We all know how important you and your baby are. No one here will hurt either of you. I swear it.”
“Who are we?”
“This is an Apollite community.” Phoebe led them deeper into the cave, past the hired human contract mercenaries who guarded the entrance during the daylight hours. “One of the older ones in North America.”
Making sure everyone was inside and it was safe, Phoebe placed her hand against the Coil Stone, where a spring release opened the elevator door.
Chris gave an exaggerated gape. “Holy hand grenade, Batman, it’s a bat cave!”
Phoebe smirked at the college-aged guy with dark hair who looked like the Dark-Hunter’s much smaller kid brother. He was actually really cute in a very wholesome, innocent kind of way. Oddly enough, he was growing on Phoebe.
Had he not been a Squire to her enemy, and if they’d met under another set of circumstances, she could have seen them being friends. He was likable and friendly. Even funny at times.
Sasquatch, on the other hand, she wanted to stab every time she glanced in his direction. And it took everything she had not to cut his head off.
Gah, Cassandra! Just … damn!
“Oh, come on!” Chris glanced around their group like an exuberant kid. “Someone other than me has to see the humor in this?” He looked around their unamused three faces, then deflated. “Guess not.”
Cassandra entered the elevator first. “What about the men I saw outside? Who are they?”
Phoebe tried her best not to think about the group who’d met them. “Those are our ruling council. Nothing can be done here without their direct approval.”
Kat and Chris joined them. The door to the elevator closed.
“Are there any Daimons here?” Chris asked as Phoebe pressed a button to start the elevator on its long descent to the facility where she lived.
“The only Daimon in this community is me. They allow me to live here because they owe Urian for his help. So long as I don’t draw attention to myself or their existence, I’m allowed to stay.” She waited for one of them to make a nasty comment about that, but wisely, they kept their mouths shut.
However, she knew her sister well enough to see the mistrust in Cassandra’s eyes. Her sister was afraid of her.
So be it. She’d risked everything for Cassie. Everything.
And she hadn’t even had the decency to say, Thank you. You and your husband might be Daimons, but how kind and generous of you to risk your lives, for your husband to kill people he considers family, and for you to hand your throats over so that I and my baby and idiot Dark-Hunter Sasquatch can survive tonight. Really, was that too much to ask? A basic, simple thank-you?
Figured, right? Phoebe had forgotten how selfish her sister could be.
When the doors opened, Cassie gasped at something Phoebe had gotten used to long ago. But she remembered the first time Urian had brought her here in 1990. It did look like something out of some science fiction movie. Everything was fashioned like some Isaac Asimov or Larry Niven future city. Made of steel and concrete, the walls were painted with brilliant murals of bright landscapes awash in sunshine that their kind had never seen except in pictures.
Urian spent a lot of time when he was here staring at this one piece in particular. And going through her old photos of her with her family, asking her what sunshine felt like.
That was when it hurt most.
Because she was part human, up until she’d become a Daimon, she had some tolerance to sunshine. She couldn’t sunbathe or swim. But she could take a few minutes outside without becoming dust.
Urian couldn’t. And so Phoebe had done her best to make him understand what used to piss her off because she’d never realized how lucky she had it. Not until she met the boy who had never seen daylight at all. To this day, his story about trying to see a glimpse of the sun with his brother Paris brought tears to her eyes.
Damn her sister if anything had happened to him.
Wiping at her eyes, Phoebe stepped out of the elevator, into the central area that was roughly the size of a football field. From the center atrium, there were corridors that led to the other areas and centers of the facility.
This main part was the hub of Elysia and held most of their shops and vendors, with the exception of restaurants. Being Apollites, they didn’t need any.
“The city is named Elysia.” Without slowing her gait, Phoebe led them through a handful of residents who had paused to stare at them. “Most of the Apollites here live their entire lives below ground. They’ve no desire to go topside and see the humans and their violence. Nor do they wish to see their kind hunted.”
Once they’d passed through her people, Chris cleared his throat to get her attention. “What do they do with the Daimons?”
“No Daimons are tolerated here since they require a steady diet of human or Apollite souls. If an Apollite decides to go Daimon, they’re allowed to leave, but they can never return here. Ever.”
Kat arched a brow at that. “Yet you live here. Why?”
“I told you, Urian protects them. He was the one who showed them how to build this place.”
“Why?” Kat pressed.
Phoebe stopped and turned to give Kat a measuring stare as she fought the urge to slap her and Cassandra both for their continued mistrust, which was ridiculous at this point. What more did she have to do to prove herself to them? Light herself on fire? “In spite of what you might think of him, my husband is a good man. He only wants what’s best for his people.” Phoebe’s gaze went to Cassandra. “Urian was the first child to ever be born a cursed Apollite.”
Technically second, since his twin was the firstborn, but close enough. And as psycho as Stryker was, it was a fact that he’d tried his best to keep from Urian for years. He’d even lied to both of his sons about when they were really born so that they wouldn’t know.
Until their brother Archie had cruelly told him the truth one day when they’d been fighting as boys. At least I wasn’t the first one born cursed, Uri! That tells you how bad even our own grandfather must hate you!
The news had hit Urian like a sledgehammer and he’d never told a soul that he knew the truth.
Not until Phoebe. He’d only shared his shame with her.
Cassandra gasped. “That would make him—”
“Over eleven thousand years old.” Phoebe finished the sentence for her. “Yes. Most of the warriors who travel with him are that old. They go back to the very beginning of our history.”
Chris whistled low. “How is that possible?”
“The Destroyer protects them,” Kat said. “Just as the Dark-Hunters serve Artemis, the true Spathis serve her.” She sighed as if the conflict pained her just as deeply. “Artemis and Apollymi have been at war since day one. The Destroyer is in captivity because Artemis tricked her into it, and she spends all her time plotting Artemis’s torture and death. If she ever gets out, Apollymi will destroy her.”