As they neared the three men, who were obviously the law in the village, the eldest of the three turned and nodded to Hades. “Found him lurking in the shadows between the pub and market.
Scared a few of the young ones, and then he ran.” Turning, he patted another man on the shoulder. “David chased him over here.”
A familiar scent lingered in the air. Kat knew that smell well. Salt and seawater.
She brushed past Hades and pushed between the men. One of them, David, grabbed her arm.
“Don’t be foolish, woman.”
Kat turned her fiery gaze on him. She saw him flinch and blink back surprise. “I suggest you let me go.”
David glanced at Hades, who nodded. “Do it. You’ll live longer.”
The man snatched back his hand and took a distancing step away. Kat sneered and rushed to the cloaked form huddled near the ground, shivering.
“Kat…” Hades warned.
“I know what I’m doing,” she snarled. Reaching out to the form, she touched the hood on the cloak and pushed it back.
Leucothea stared up at Kat with tears streaming from her big brown eyes.
“I’m sorry.” The girl sobbed into Kat’s shoulder.
Sighing, Kat gathered Leucothea in her arms and stroked her hand over the dark growth on the girl’s nearly bald head. “What in hell are you doing here?”
The lawman turned to Hades. “You know this girl?”
Nodding, Hades flicked the safety on his shotgun. “Yeah, marshal, I do.”
The marshal shook his head and rubbed a finger over his mustache. “All right.” Sighing, he motioned to the mumbling crowd. “Show’s over, everyone. Go back home or to wherever you were going.”
As the crowd dispersed, Kat pulled Leucothea to her feet and wrapped an arm around her. She was still shaking, and Kat could hear her teeth clacking together. Mary stepped up next to them, took off her extra wool cloak, and wrapped it around Leucothea.
“The poor girl is freezing,” Mary commented as she took up a position on the other side of Leucothea. Kat didn’t want the woman here, but she appreciated the kind gesture of the extra warmth for the young Neried. The girl was like a fish out of water, literally. Kat didn’t know how she had managed to stay alive as long as she did in the dropping temperatures of the north.
They followed Hades back to his house.
“Are you going to answer me, Thea?” Kat questioned.
“I followed you,” Leucothea answered, her words stuttering from the shivers wracking her frail body.
“Yeah, I got that part. Why?”
“Because I thought I could help you.”
With a shake of her head, Kat squeezed Leucothea closer to her as they walked to Hades’ cabin.
She should have expected something like this from the girl. She remembered, too well, the night she had left the Neried village of Atlantis.
Leucothea had been near inconsolable as Kat packed her belongings into her duffel bag. Kat had tried to calm her down, but she had screamed and even threw a rather large clay pot at Kat’s head. The pot missed. Shattering against the wall. But a small shard had nicked Kat in the cheek.
When Kat had touched the shallow wound with her fingertips and saw the beads of crimson there, she remembered why she was leaving in the first place. She finished packing in silence and left within minutes without saying good-bye to the girl.
“How did you track me on my bike?”
Leucothea reached into a pocket in her cloak and pulled out a small black box with a gray screen and a metal button no bigger than a ten-cent coin. A red light blinked rapidly on the map that radiated from the screen.
“With this. Damian gave it to me last time I saw him. He thought I might be able to use it one day.” She slid it back into her shroud. “I put the tracer on your bike the day before you left. And then I stole one of Nemo’s solar carts and followed the red blinking light to your bike parked just outside of town.”
Kat shook her head but almost smiled at the girl’s ingenuity.
When Hades opened the door to his cabin, Kat and Mary ushered Leucothea into the kitchen. Kat sat her down in one of the chairs and turned to ask Hades for something hot for her to drink. But Mary was already there, lighting the stove and setting the metal teapot on the burner.
“A hot spot of tea will do her good,” Mary chattered, seemingly comfortable in Hades’ kitchen as she filled a cup full of various herbs.
Kat sat in the chair facing Leucothea while Hades brought out a thick fur blanket and wrapped it around the girl.
“Thanks, Hades,” Leucothea said as she smiled up at him.
He smiled back and patted her on the head. “It’s all right, kid.”
“It’s not all right,” Kat growled. “You could have been killed out there. Where the fuck is your head, Thea? You have no training for this shit. You’re a young, inexperienced girl with no fucking clue of what’s out there!”
Mary gasped. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
“Shut up. You don’t know her or me or what’s going on here,” Kat snarled at Mary.
Mary straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin in defiance. “I know Hades.”
Kat sniffed. “Not as well as you’d like, I suspect.”
Mary gasped again. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
Leucothea sat up straighter. “I’m not a child you know, Kat. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Kat turned her gaze to Leucothea. “Someone needs to tell you because you’re following me around like an immature brat who’s just looking to get killed.”
“Who do you think you are, speaking to everyone like that?” Mary questioned, her hands on her hips.
Kat stood up and leaned over the table toward the woman. “Once again you have no idea what the fuck is going on. I suggest you shut your yap before I shut it for you.”
“Kat, you’re being a bitch,” Leucothea whined.
“Shut the fuck up,
all
of you!” Hades’ voice boomed through the kitchen like thunder.
Kat swiveled toward Hades. She’d heard that tone before. It meant he was very near to losing his patience. On the outside, he always seemed so in control, unfazed, but she knew he had a ticking time bomb of violence planted inside him just like she did.
It just took a lot longer to burn his fuse.
He put his arm around Mary’s shoulders and steered her toward the door. “Thank you, Mary, for your help, but it’s time for you to go home while you still can.”
Mary gazed up at him wide-eyed and in shock, but she didn’t say a word as he ushered her out the door. She managed to squeak a hurried good-bye before he shut and locked the door behind her.
When he came back to the table, his eyes flashed like blue flame, and his jaw clenched in anger.
“You. Sit. Down.” He pointed his finger at Kat. “And be quiet for ten minutes, at least.”
She could tell he was teetering on an edge, and she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to see him fall off it. She couldn’t predict what he would do, and that unnerved her a little. Enough so that she sat without another word.
The teapot whistled. Hades took the kettle and poured three cups of tea. He set them on the table; one for each of them.
Looking only at the table, Leucothea cradled her cup in her hands and took a dainty sip. Kat followed her lead and drank. The hot, honeyed liquid warmed her instantly. She risked glancing up at Hades. He was drinking his tea, watching her over the rim.
“There. Is everyone calm now?” he asked snidely.
“Yeah, I guess,” Kat conceded, not wanted to admit that she missed and needed Hades’
levelheadedness.
“We will have our tea and then decide what to do about the situation.”
Kat downed the rest of her tea in one gulp. “I’m taking Thea back to Atlantis, is what!” She slammed the cup onto the table.
“I’m not going back. And you can’t make me.”
“I can, and I will.”
Leucothea pushed back her chair and stood. “You know, you were a lot nicer to me when we were sleeping together.” With that, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, shuffled into Hades’ bedroom, and shut the door behind her.
Kat closed her eyes and let her head fall back in defeat. She was hoping that would never have come up. That Hades would never know. Damn Leucothea for bringing it into the conversation.
And damn me for letting that one night happen.
Kat opened her eyes when she heard Hades push back his chair. She knew even before she looked that he was staring at her. Probably trying to figure out why he ever loved her.
Except, when she did glance at him, he wasn’t glaring at her as she thought but was glaring at his hands folded calmly in his lap. “I don’t want to ask, Kat. I really don’t.”
“It was one night.”
He looked up at her then, and she witnessed a cascade of emotions in his eyes. The anger she could handle. It was the disappointment and betrayal she saw there that clenched her heart in a viselike icy grip.
“She’s so young and totally in awe of you, Kat. She would do anything for you.”
Kat put up her hand in defense. “Whoa, it wasn’t like that. I would never force her into anything.
What the fuck do you take me for?”
“Then what was it like?” He stared at her, into her, as if he was searching for the answers in her soul.
Kat could’ve told him to stop wasting his time. Her soul was long gone.
Sighing, she lowered her gaze and set her hands on the table. “When the hungers came, I was usually prepared. I’d dealt with them before. Using Nemo’s meditation techniques, I was able to keep them in check.” She leaned forward in her chair and rubbed her hands over her face. “One night everything changed. The hunger was so intense I could barely function. I remember barricading myself in my hut and crawling around on the floor screaming and yanking out my hair. The next thing I knew, Thea was there stroking my face with a wet cloth.”
Kat closed her eyes and flashes of that night popped in her mind. She tried to push them away.
Not because she was ashamed of that night of extreme passion, but because the clawing hunger inside tried to push to the surface once more, urging her to take without thought.
“I tried to push her away. Told her to run. But she wouldn’t go, wouldn’t leave me to deal with it on my own.” Kat sighed and leaned back in her chair. “And I’m sorry, Hades, but I’m glad she didn’t leave. I needed her that night. I wouldn’t have made it with my mind intact if she hadn’t been there to give me release.”
Hades stood and turned away from her to brace himself against the counter. She watched his back, the way his shoulders tightened, and knew he was angry and hurt. Damnit! She hated this part about relationships. So problematic and unnecessarily messy. That’s why her relationship with Damian had lasted a long time, because there weren’t any complicated emotions like jealousy. They came and went as they pleased. No one’s feelings were ever hurt.
In the end they managed to separate quite amicably. If you discounted the vampyre issues. Like Damian biting her and transmitting the Dark Dweller virus to her after he had contracted it from Darquiel, his current lover.
“Did you take her blood?” Hades asked, his voice a low, gruff timbre.
“No.”
He turned and met her gaze, a dangerous burn in the blue of his eyes. “Have you taken blood?”
“Does it matter?” she countered.
Although the pain etched in his face was almost unbearable to witness, Kat refused to turn away from his intense gaze. This was why she had left. Because she couldn’t stand to see that look of uncertainty on his face. The uncertainty that she might turn on him and take his life. That the disease racing around in her body would win, and she would turn into a Dark Dweller. A sadistic, twisted, bloodthirsty vampyre that thought of nothing but satisfying its own hungers, be it sex or blood. The very creatures they had fought against together in the darkest bowels beneath the Vanquished City.
He turned from her and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, Kat. I don’t want it to.”
No, she didn’t want it to matter either, but it did. And probably always would. Things had changed between them, things beyond repair.
She rubbed her face again. “Me neither.”
“Do you want something more to drink?”
“Yeah, but no more fucking tea. Just give me the bottle of whiskey.”
With a chuckle, Hades turned around with the bottle in his hand and two glasses. “You read my mind.” He sat back down and poured two shots, sliding one to Kat as he picked up his and saluted. “To getting absolutely shit-faced.”
Kat laughed and touched her glass to his. “I’ll drink to that.” She tossed back the alcohol in one gulp. It burned on the way down, but she reveled in the sensation. Reminded her that she was still alive and, at least partially, human. She set down the glass with a distinctive clink.
Smiling, Hades went to pour her another. As quick as the wind, Kat grabbed the bottle to stop the pour. Her heart started to hammer in her chest, and she could feel a lump forming in her throat.
“We’re in trouble.”
The presence of Dark Dwellers surged over her like an oil slick. Thick and sticky, it stuck to her mind and made her stomach flip over in revulsion. The sensation was very strong. More than one Dweller was nearing the village, with thoughts of feeding on their minds.
Wide-eyed, Hades set down the bottle and jumped up from his chair. “Is it Baruch?”
She shook her head. “No, but he sent an army in his place.”
She thanked God silently that it wasn’t Baruch approaching them. If it had been, she would be more than sick to her stomach. She would be trembling with fury and a heavy dose of desire. She wouldn’t want to, but it would be there. Baruch had that power over her even now.
Hades started to pull boxes of shotgun shells from his cupboards. “These people are not equipped to fight Dark Dwellers. They have no fucking clue what they’ll be up against.”
Kat stood, grabbed her own gun, and reloaded with the ammunition Hades had provided. “I know. I’m sorry. I never thought they’d find me. Not here anyway.”
“They must have followed you psychically.”
Kat shook her head. “I’d have felt them along the way.”
A voice sounded from the bedroom. “They must’ve followed me.”