Stygian (Dark-Hunter #27)

“You said I had a choice?”

Acheron drew a ragged breath. “The other is that I will erase your memories of everything. You’ll be free of all of this. All your pain. The past, the present. You can live as if none of this had ever happened to you.”

A blank slate. Thousands of years gone. It sounded so easy, but Urian didn’t believe even Acheron had those powers. He knew the gods better than that.

Besides, he was tired of it all. Life meant pain. It was brutal and it gutted everyone to their knees. And he was so sick of this. “Will you kill me if I ask it?”

“Do you want me to?”

At the moment, it was all he wanted. How ironic was that? He who’d taken so many lives in an effort to live one more day, to breathe one more breath, just wanted to finally expel his last and be done with it all.

But in this, his weakest, darkest moment, how strange that it was Xyn’s voice he heard.

Remember the precious cost …

Damn his dragon for making him see truth even now.

Weaker than he’d ever been in his life, he met Acheron’s gaze. And damn this son of Apollymi for making him into what he’d become, because he knew that by saving his life, Acheron had turned him into something else entirely. But he had no idea what he was now. “I’m no longer a Daimon, am I?”

“No. Nor are you an Apollite, exactly.”

“Then what am I?”

Acheron took a deep breath before he spoke again. “You are unique in this world.”

Unique. Wonderful. Just what he’d never wanted to be. All he’d ever wanted was to fit in, and now he stood out even more.

“How much longer will I live?”

Acheron shrugged. “You’re immortal, barring death.”

Urian curled his lips at what had to be the dumbest answer ever. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Most of life doesn’t.”

He wouldn’t argue that. The gods knew that he’d never been able to figure it out. Urian sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “Can I walk in daylight?”

“If you want, I can make it so. If you choose amnesia, I will make you fully human.”

Urian arched a brow at the most shocking thought of all. “You can do that?”

Ash nodded.

Yeah, only one born of a primal power could do that. Born of the light and dark. Not even Apollymi had the powers Acheron had.

Damn.

Urian laughed bitterly as he raked a cold look over Ash’s body and in particular where the tattoo dragon had gone. He knew exactly what that was. And what it meant. “You know, Acheron, I’m not stupid, nor am I as blind as Stryker. Does he know of the demon you carry on your body?”

“No, and Simi isn’t a demon, she’s part of me.”

With Simi being a Charonte demon, that was an understatement, since they bonded to their master and became a symbiotic life form. Acheron was full of surprises. No wonder Urian hadn’t been able to get a reading on him when they’d crossed paths in the past.

Urian’s gaze bored into his. “That I find most interesting of all. Poor Stryker, he’s so screwed and he doesn’t even know it.”

He moved to stand closer to Acheron. “I know who and what you are, Acheron Parthenopaeus.”

“Then you know if you ever pass your knowledge along I’ll make sure you regret it. Eternally.”

Yeah, he just bet Acheron would at that. Urian nodded. “But I don’t understand why you hide.”

Acheron shrugged. “I’m not hiding. The knowledge you carry can’t help anyone. It can only destroy and harm.”

Perhaps there was truth to that. Just like his powers of healing. Whenever people knew about them, they went crazy for them and there were limitations to what he could do. And when they failed, it got ugly fast. So like Acheron, he kept his powers hidden. For his own well-being as much as for others.

Urian winced as he thought back to all the lives of the people he’d loved who were lost to him. His children. His mother. His wives. Brothers and sisters. The humans and Daimons he’d killed for the right to continue living. “I’m through being a destroyer.”

“Then what are you?”

Urian let his thoughts wander through the events of this night. He thought about the aching pain inside him that screamed over the loss of his wife. It was so tempting to let Acheron erase it all, but with that he would lose all the good memories he carried, too.

Though he and Phoebe had only had a few years together, she had loved him in ways no one ever had. Touched a heart he had thought was long dead.

No, it hurt to live without her, but he didn’t want to lose all connection with her.

He fastened her locket around his neck as he realized that for the first time since he was a boy, his head was quiet. The only voice in it now was his own.

“I’m your man, Acheron. But I warn you now. If I’m ever given a chance to kill Stryker, I will take it. Consequences be damned.”

*

Stryker snarled in outrage as he found himself in the Destroyer’s throne room. “I was so close to killing them. Why did you stop me? How could you have pulled me back here?”

Still the demon, Sabine, held him back from Apollymi’s throne.

For once Xedrix wasn’t in the room with his mother, but Stryker didn’t have time to ponder the demon’s whereabouts. His thoughts were too consumed by hatred and vexation.

His mother sat on her chaise completely poised, as if she were holding court and hadn’t just destroyed all their years of careful planning.

“Do not raise your voice to me, Strykerius. I will not take your insubordination.”

He forced himself to level his voice even while his blood simmered in fury. “Why did you interfere?”

She pulled her black pillow into her lap and toyed with a corner of it. “You cannot win against the Elekti. I told you that.”

“I could have beaten him,” Stryker insisted. No one could stop him. He was sure of it.

“No, you couldn’t.” She dropped her gaze again and ran her hand elegantly over the black satin. “There is no pain worse than a son who betrays your cause, is there, Strykerius? You give them everything and do they listen? No. Do they respect you? No. Instead they shred your heart and spit on the kindness you would show to them.”

Stryker clenched his eyes shut as she voiced the very thoughts inside his heart. He’d given Urian everything. And how had his son repaid him? With a betrayal so profound that it had taken him days to come to grips with it.

Part of him hated Apollymi for telling him the truth. The other part thanked her. He’d never been the kind of man to welcome a snake to his bosom.

He still couldn’t get over the fact that Urian hadn’t trusted him, his own father. That his son honestly thought, after all these years, he couldn’t tell him the simple truth.

He’d remarried.

And now what had those actions done? Urian’s wife had gone trelos and attacked her own commune. Because she was human and couldn’t handle it. His son’s lies had forced him to commit even bigger ones to protect Urian.

You killed him for his betrayal. That was the lie Stryker would live with. Not the truth. That he’d done it to spare Urian from finding out that Phoebe had gone insane. Because that would kill Urian’s heart. He knew his son too well. And he’d never be able to watch what that would have done to his boy.

The anguish and self-hatred.

Stryker was already hated and loathed. Better he remain the monster they all thought him to be, than watch his son die slowly from his own recriminations.

Urian died for betrayal. Betrayal to the community and to him.

And Stryker would never do that to his mother. “I will listen to you, akra.”

Sighing, she cradled the pillow to her breast. “Good.”

“So what do we do now?”

She gazed at him with a small, beautiful smile. When she spoke, her words were simple, but her tone was purely evil. “We wait.”

*

Urian really didn’t feel like being here. In fact, this was the absolute last place he wanted to be.

Muppet’s house.

But he had nowhere to go. How pathetic was that? Eleven thousand years old and he was homeless. Friendless.

And the only family he had was this Viking piece of shit.