“You do,” the copián said. “Braith, Verlyn, Cam, and Rezar were the first of our kind. They set the perimeters for the worlds and designed the portal gates between them. It’s how they trapped Apollymi in her realm—by her own blood and design. It’s why her son is the only one who can free her from her realm where she was imprisoned by her own sister and brother for crimes they imagined, that she never committed.”
Ah, finally she understood. Because Apollymi was the ancient goddess Braith. One of the very gods who’d first set the gates.
Medea gaped. Holy shit … literally. No wonder the ancient Atlantean goddess was so pissed off all the time.
Now it made sense. That was how Apollymi had been able to open the portal originally and bring Stryker through it. How she controlled it to allow the Daimons to come and go, while keeping everyone else out.
Apollymi was one of the creators of it.
Medea had always wondered about that. No wonder Apollymi spent hours in her garden at her mirror pool, watching the human realm.…
She was one of the first portal guardians.
Brogan gestured toward them. “As you can see, their presence disturbs the balance. This isn’t their world and they shouldn’t be here. We have to return them before they’re discovered by the others and chaos ensues.”
Two lights shot out of his torch. They streaked up like the stray magick blasts had done earlier, and circled around the old copián to land on each side of him. There they twisted up from the floor to create two tall, lean, linen-wrapped plague doctors. With wide-brimmed cavalier hats, they stared out from their long-beaked, black linen masks from shiny ebony eyes. Soulless eyes that appeared to be bleeding around the corners. Even the linen was stained with their blood.
It was an eerie, macabre sight that made the hair on the back of Medea’s neck rise. And given the creepy Charonte and gallu demons and Daimons who called her realm home, that said a lot.
“What are those?”
“Zeitj?gers,” Falcyn whispered to her.
Another term she’d never heard before. “What do they do?”
“Guard time. But mostly they steal it.”
Was he serious?
“How do you steal time?”
Falcyn laughed. “You ever been doing something … look up and it’s hours later and you can’t figure out where the time went ’cause it feels like you just sat down?”
Yeah, of course. Everyone knew that feeling.
She nodded.
“Zeitj?gers,” he said simply. “Insidious bastards. They took that time from you and bottled it for their own means.”
“Why?”
“So that we can sell it.” The copián glanced to his companions. “Time is the most precious commodity in the entire universe. The most sacred. And yet it is the most often squandered. From the moment of our births, we’re only allotted so much of it. And for even an hour more, there are those who are willing to give up anything for it.” An evil smile curled his lips. “Even their immortal souls.”
A chill went up her spine at the way he said that.
The copián stepped down to approach Medea. “Surely a child of the Apollite race can understand that driving desperation better than most.”
He was right about that. Nothing like being damned to only twenty-seven years for something you didn’t do to make someone realize just how precious life was.
Even more so while watching everyone around you die long before their time.
For one more breath, her people were willing to take human lives and destroy their immortal souls. Her one saving grace was that her mother had sacrificed her own soul to save Medea from having to make that choice.
Because the sad truth was, Medea had been too much of a coward to do it. Unlike Urian and her father, she hadn’t been able to destroy a single human soul for her own salvation. She’d been content to die as Apollo had decreed. Honestly, she’d thought that it wasn’t her place to do that to another living being. That humanity was innocent and undeserving of such a horrendous fate.
It wasn’t until the humans had robbed her of the ones she held most sacred that she’d lost her own soul in the process and learned not to care. It wasn’t just her child they’d killed that day. It was her compassion and ability to feel empathy for anyone else. If they were incapable of respecting her loved ones, be damned if she’d respect theirs.
That was a two-way street.
So she’d become the monster they thought her to be. And had been on a centuries-long quest for survival ever since. Putting the good of her race above theirs. Humans could all rot as far as she was concerned.
Nothing else mattered. On that cold winter’s day, they’d become parasites to her.
No. Worse than that.
They’d become food.
The copián cocked his head in such a way that she half expected his elaborate headdress to fall off. Yet it stayed perched perfectly atop his head, as if part of his body. “You’ve heard the expression ‘living on borrowed time’?”
“Yeah.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “We’re the ones you borrow it from.”
Oh yeah, that sent chills over her entire body.
He swept his sinister gaze over them. “My price is simple. An hour from each of you and I’ll open the portal.”
“An hour?” Falcyn sputtered. “How ’bout I just rip some heads off all y’all until you yield?”
The copián smirked. “You could do that, but you can’t open the portal without me.”
“Sure I could find someone.”
“You really want to chance it?”
Falcyn’s expression said he was willing to gamble.
The copián tsked at him. “So very violent from an immortal who can spare an hour with no problem whatsoever. Think of it like those humans who donate spare change for charity. An hour is but a penny, and you have a jar full of them just sitting in your home that you’ll never use. Why not give one to someone who really needs it? Why be so selfish?”
“Because you’re assuming they’ll use it for good, when I know for a fact that most people who barter with you don’t have kindness in their hearts.”
“True, but sometimes that trash they take out on their way to the grave is a service in and of itself, is it not?” He cast a pointed stare toward Urian, whose gaze narrowed dangerously as the old bastard struck a tender nerve with the former Daimon who’d once made his meals off the worst sort of humanity so that he could elongate his life.
Blaise sucked his breath in sharply. “Word of advice when dealing with these two? I wouldn’t go for the twofers on the insults. Even with the zeitj?gers as backup. I mean, let’s face it. They’re not being peaceful at the moment because they don’t know how to be violent … however, I’ll be the first to say have at it if you can get us out of here. You can take two hours from me.”
The copián scowled at Blaise. “Two?”
“Yeah. One for me and one for Brogan. I’ll pay her fee.”
She gasped at his offer. “Why would you do that?”
Blaise shrugged. “Being stuck here has been punishment enough for you. As noted, I won’t miss two hours out of my life. I’d have just wasted them in a movie theater, anyway. And this way, I get to do something useful with them and be a hero to you. That’s a loss I can live with.” He winked at her. “Besides, I don’t intend to leave here without you.”