Entwined

Chapter Seven

“My patience grows thin with your lack of progress, Thana-tos.” Atalanta drummed her fingers on the thick wooden table. “The North American Misos colony should be extinct by now.”

Thanatos fought from growling in response. They were seated in the dining room of the Canadian lodge that was now their headquarters, at opposite ends of the fifteen-foot table. Between them, spires of candles perched within twisting arms of metal illuminated the room and cast flickering light over Atalanta’s pale, disgusted features. Outside the dark windows, clouds moved over the waxing moon, and in the distance a lone wolf howled.

To his right, the boy cleared his throat and reached for his goblet.

Thanatos glanced sideways, hatred brewing in his veins. Oh, yeah, the kid may be enjoying his little reprieve from that dungeon he called a room, but he’d be there again soon enough. Thanatos would make sure of it.

“Do you have nothing to say to me?” Atalanta asked, her icy voice cutting through the fantasy taking root in his mind.

The daemon imagined all that creamy flesh melting from her bones. She was mortal now, which meant she could be killed. But she still had godlike powers, and there was nothing she didn’t see or control.

His eyes slid down the long, slim column of her throat and hovered on the heavy chain around her neck. The gold links disappeared into the vee of her bloodred robe, but Thanatos knew what rested between her flawless breasts. He’d seen the pendant once when it had slipped from her cleavage.

“Maximus,” Atalanta said firmly. “Leave us now, yios. The servants have prepared a room for you in the west wing.”

“Yes, matéras.” The boy pushed back from the table, wiped his mouth and walked toward Atalanta. Slowly, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

Thanatos’s hatred burned hot and vile all over again. He could move quickly. Before either realized it, he’d be at the other end of the table and their fragile bodies would be in those flames. Burning, their bones splintering until they were nothing but ash…

“Thanatos!”

His gaze jerked back up. Atalanta was on her feet and moving quickly around the table, straight for him. The boy was nowhere to be seen.

Thanatos stiffened and pushed to his feet.

She stood almost as tall as he did, at nearly seven feet, and she loathed weakness in her soldiers, which was why he’d learned never to show even a hint of fear in her midst. “I will not tolerate insubordination!”

He spread his feet in a defensive move in case she attacked and tried to keep the contempt from his voice when he said, “The North American Misos are getting aid from the Argonauts. One of our hunting parties decimated a key settlement just yesterday, and any stragglers are being rounded up and disposed of as we speak.”

She stopped a foot from him. “How many half-breeds were killed?”

“At least sixty.”

“Sixty is nothing. There are three times that many hiding in the mountains there.”

“We’ll find them.”

She walked to the fireplace and stared into the writhing flames. “You said the Argonauts came to their aid?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re searching for those stragglers as well. Such a bunch of do-gooders, those repulsive Argonauts. No,” she said, her voice growing oddly calm. “This is your chance to take several of them out.”

“Me?”

She glared at him over one bare shoulder. “Yes, you, Thanatos. Are you not my archdaemon? Are you suddenly too good to fight?” Her voice hardened in a way that sent a warning flash to his brain. “Find the stragglers and you’ll find the Argonauts. Use the half-breeds as bait if you have to, but kill the Argonauts. And then destroy what is left of their miserable colony.”

A strange sense of foreboding settled in Thanatos’s chest. She was eyeing him as if he were nothing. Like any ordinary daemon. Like he was…expendable.

Him? Expendable? Daemons were a dime a dozen. He should know. He killed the weak ones himself before they could get him killed in battle. But he was the archdaemon now, not simply a grunt. As they stared at each other, his mind skipped to the training field today, and the way she’d been whispering with Phrice on the sidelines, like the shit-for-brains daemon had anything worthwhile to say. Then to the scene with Maximus, and the ease with which the puny boy had bested Zelus with only his blade.

Had she been interviewing Phrice to be his successor? Were they scheming against him? As disturbing as that thought was, though, it wasn’t the one that concerned Thanatos the most. The question suddenly pinging around in his mind was one of much greater importance. Namely, were they all ultimately dispensable once Maximus relinquished his humanity and finally took his place at her side?

He eyed the chain around her neck again with a growing sense of doom and thought of the pendant. Of the circle. About his future. Or what little he instinctively knew was left of it.

Atalanta turned to face him. Behind her, flames licked up the massive stone fireplace, backdropping her in a sea of orange and red and blistering blue he wished would devour her whole.

“I’ve reached the end of my patience with you, Thanatos. Kill or be killed. That is our motto.”

Kill or be killed.

She would kill him first chance she got, he realized as he stared at her. He could read it in her black-as-night, soulless eyes. To her, he was already dead.

He bowed his head slightly even though the monster in him despised the weakness it portrayed. But he was already planning. Planning how to mete out his justice and win.

“As you command, my goddess.”

Zander rubbed a hand over his wet hair as he peered into the forest with its towering spires of Douglas fir and Western hemlock.

Demetrius, crouched on the forest floor where he’d been studying prints left in the soft earth, looked up and pointed. “They’ve turned north.”

A light rain fell, steaming off their heated bodies, their breaths like smoke in the damp air. The three of them—Zander, Demetrius and Titus—had been running for the last four hours, trying to catch up with the daemon party stalking the band of Misos who had escaped the destruction of their village. So far they’d come across nothing but tracks. But they were fresh, and Demetrius, known for his tracking skills, was sure they were closing in.

“They’ve gone off the fucking path,” Titus said.

Demetrius pushed up on his knees, the long duster he always wore flapping in the slight breeze. “All that will do is slow them down.” He gestured to the thick underbrush, a dense mass of Oregon grape, salmonberry and saplings all struggling for light. “They’d need a hatchet to cut through that shit. And every broken limb and downed seedling just screams, ‘Here we are, come and get us.’”

Other than the water dripping from leaf to leaf in the thick canopy above, the forest was silent. Eerily so. As if it too knew the evil sweeping through it.

Zander looked through the trees toward the mountains beyond. “They’re heading that way for the caves, right? Maybe they’ve already reached them.”

Demetrius scowled. “At the speed they’re traveling, and with young, they’ll never make it. The daemons are almost on top of them. They’ll catch them by the bridge for sure.”

Zander’s stomach pitched at Demetrius’s blunt revelation. This was war. He knew that. There were always casualties. But children…

Titus studied his handheld GPS. “If we swing around to the east and head back at the fork in the next trail, we might be able to cut off the daemons before either party reaches the bridge.” His gaze lifted, locking first on Zander, then on Demetrius. “I know, probably for shit, but unless either of you has a better idea, it’s our best option.”

Zander checked the extra knife he kept strapped to his thigh, and then they set out again, picking up their pace and streaking through the forest. Demetrius led the way, with Zander in the middle and Titus at the rear. It was nearly an hour later when they made the turn at the trail fork and headed back north. In the distance, the sound of rushing water filled the silent void of the forest, which meant they were getting close to the ravine and the lone bridge that crossed it. They pushed on, picking up their speed.

Don’t let us be too late…

A shrill scream sounded through the trees. Demetrius, the fastest of the three, tore off the path and sprinted into the woods. Zander and Titus followed. As they drew near, roars drowned out the crash of waves against rock. Followed by the horror-filled shrieks of females and young alike.

Demetrius was already engaged by the time Zander and Titus reached the edge of the trees. His weapon clashed against flesh and bone. Snarls and snaps and more screams rose in the late afternoon air as he sliced out with his blade and decapitated one daemon, then moved on to the next.

The forest opened up to a wide bank of sedimentary rock that seemed to tumble off into nowhere. Far below the ledge, a river swirled and twisted. On the opposite side of the ravine, the mountains rose in all their splendid glory, a promised hiding place for the Misos, linked only by a rickety wooden footbridge missing planks and supported by decaying rope.

Zander counted at least eight daemons advancing on the group, not including the two Demetrius had already taken out. Six Misos females shielded at least a dozen young in a semicircle, their backs to the ravine. Their only weapons were rocks and twigs, except for one gun—though even that was useless against monsters like these. And the female holding the gun was shaking so much she was more likely to hit one of her friends than the daemons themselves.

And then there was the fact no one was protecting all those young from the ravine mere steps away at their backs.

“Get back from the edge!” Zander yelled.

“Zander!”

Zander whipped around at the sound of Titus’s urgent voice and realized he was the only one not kicking ass. Adrenaline surging, he yanked his parazonium from the scabbard at his back and ran toward the seething daemon closest to the group.

He sliced, kicked out, swiveled to avoid claws and teeth. Around him snarls and screams filled the air, mixed with the clap of blades striking flesh and bone. But the daemons were relentless. When they fell they got up; when they took a blade they kept going. The only thing that stopped them was decapitation, but it had to be done at just the right angle. And cutting the head off a seven-foot monster with the strength of Heracles wasn’t exactly easy.

The daemon he was fighting swiped at him with razor-sharp claws. Zander twisted out of the way. The daemon swung again, this time catching the edge of his jacket. A ripping sound echoed, and fire crept across Zander’s back. Zander reached for the knife strapped to his thigh and threw it end over end. It plunged deep into the daemon’s chest. The beast howled. With his blade in the other hand, Zander swung out and around, slicing into the daemon’s side.

The beast stumbled but didn’t go down. With a roar, he backhanded Zander across the face, sending him to the ground. Zander hit the rocks hard. The wind left him on a gasp. Sweat and blood dripped down into his eyes.

Screams echoed behind him. He turned his head just enough to see another daemon advancing on the group. A child, no more than eight or nine, stood shaking, clutching the leg of one of the females, blue eyes wide with fear.

Zander scrambled to his feet. “Titus!” he hollered over the fight. “Get them across that bridge!”

Titus, ten feet away, swung his parazonium from the daemon he’d just decapitated and paused to look toward the group. His eyes grew wide, as if seeing the young for the first time.

“Go! Now!” Zander yelled as he charged the bloody daemon seething in front of him. This one was too close to the children. He couldn’t risk getting them across himself.

The monster’s claws caught Zander’s arm, but he barely noticed. He thrust his parazonium out and around. The blade met soft flesh and sank in deep. When the daemon roared and fell to his knees, Zander popped the unholy with his elbow to knock him back. In the split second the monster swayed, dazed, Zander swung and sliced, sending the beast’s head rolling across the hard ground.

“Everyone across the bridge!” Titus yelled, his boots eating up the distance between the fight and the group’s only path to safety. “Right now. Hustle already!”

Zander swiped at his eyes with his forearm and took one quick look toward the group to make sure they were safe. The females’ eyes were all wide with fear, but they urged the young toward the bridge. All but the one with the gun. She stood still as stone, the whites of her eyes visible all around her irises, the weapon in her hand shaking as if she were in the middle of a magnitude-ten earthquake.

Skata. Zander didn’t have time to worry about her. Three more daemons had emerged from the woods and saw their victims’ impending escape. Instead of attacking Demetrius, engaged in battle with another daemon and closest to them, they changed direction and charged.

“Demetrius!” Zander yelled. The Argonauts were outnumbered, outmatched, and there was no way they could protect the Misos unless Titus got them onto the other side of the ravine and cut the bridge’s ropes. Which then left two against one, two, three…seven.

Holy fucking Hera.

“Titus! Get them across now!” Zander wrapped both hands around his weapon, drew in a deep breath and put himself between the advancing daemons and the bridge. If he made it out of this—when he made it out of this—he was never taking life for granted again. He’d seen the future in those eyes a moment ago. A future that wouldn’t exist for any of them unless he and his warrior kin did their job right here and now.

“Go back to hell, you motherfuckers!” He lifted his blade high over his head and coiled to pounce.

A scream echoed behind him, followed by an odd popping sound. Before he could strike, fire rushed through his shoulder and lower back. He had a moment of What the…? then the parazonium flew from his hands and clattered on the cold rocks, out of his reach. His hands jerked out to catch it, but they seemed to be moving in slow motion. Then he was falling, falling…going down face-first even as the daemons were closing in.

“Zander!”

“Zander! No!”

He wasn’t sure why everyone was suddenly screaming his name, but he didn’t really care. As the ground rushed up toward him at light speed, he had only one last thought.

Just when he’d finally decided he had something to live for, it looked as though the gods had granted his death wish.