Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Acheron laid down the staff to pick up the toddler. “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right. We’ll find your mother.”
She shook her head. “Akra said the Simi’s matera is dead. Them evil Greek people killed the Simi’s mama. Now the Simi needs her akri to love her.”
Acheron rocked her gently in his arms as his mother’s shade appeared before him.
Simi stopped crying. “Akra, he says the Simi’s akri isn’t here.”
His mother smiled at them. “He is your akri, Simi.”
Acheron scowled at her declaration. “What?”
“Her mother was your protector, Xiamara. Like you, Simi is all alone in the world with no one to care for her. She needs you, Apostolos.”
He looked down at those large eyes that swallowed the demon’s small round face. Blinking, she stared up at him with the same trust and innocence of Apollodorus. And he was lost to that loving gaze that didn’t judge or condemn him.
“Bond with him, Simi, protect my son as your mother protected me.”
The thought of tying someone to him terrified Acheron. He didn’t want anyone enslaved to him. “I don’t want a demon.”
“Would you cast her out alone in the world?”
“No.”
“Then she’s yours.”
Before he could protest again, his mother faded away.
Simi snuggled against him and laid her head against his shoulder. “I miss my mama, akri.”
Guilt over what had happened with his mother’s demon he’d accidentally killed instead of Apollo, slammed into him at her whispered words as he held her close to him. But for him, her mother would still be alive to love her. “Where’s your father, Simi?”
“He died before the Simi was born.”
“Then I will be your father.”
“Really?” she asked hopefully.
He nodded, smiling at her. “And I swear to you that you’ll never want for anything.”
Her innocent smile warmed his heart. “Then the Simi has the best akri-papa in the world.” She hugged him tightly. “Simi loves her akri.” As soon as the words were spoken, she faded like his mother had done. But as she faded, his skin just above his heart burned.
Hissing, Acheron jerked up his tunic to find a small colorful dragon emblazoned on his skin. He touched it gingerly, and heard Simi’s laughter in his head. The tattoo inched its way up, toward his neck. Her motion on his skin tickled until she settled over his collarbone.
“Simi is a part of you now, Apostolos. While on your body, she won’t be able to hear you unless you call for her. But she will be able to monitor your vital signs. Should she sense you’re in danger, she will appear to you in demon form to protect you.”
“But she’s only a baby.”
“Even as a baby, she’s deadly. Never mistake that. The Charonte are by their very nature killers. She will be hungry and you’ll have to feed her often. If you fail to, she’ll eat whatever is near her … even you. Make sure she doesn’t get overly hungry. And the last thing you should know is that her kind age very slowly. Roughly one year of a human’s development equals a thousand years of theirs.”
That did not sound good. “What are you saying?”
“The Simi you have is over three thousand years old.”
Acheron gaped at the information. “Shouldn’t she be with another demon who can train her?”
“She’s the last of her kind. You are all she has in this world,
m’gios.
Take care of her. As you have said, you are her father now. You’ll be the one to teach her everything she knows.”
Acheron placed his hand over the tattoo on his shoulder. He was a father.…
But then how could he train and protect a demon daughter when he didn’t even know how to use his own powers?
June 26, 9527 BC
Styxx hissed as he was jerked off the banks of the River Acheron and slammed back into his body in Didymos. For a full minute, he couldn’t move. But once his eyes focused, he realized he was trapped beneath rubble. It felt as if every bone in his body was broken.
After a few more minutes, he was able to crawl out from beneath it and see the devastation that had been done to his homeland.
Just a few inches away from where he’d awakened was his father’s body. Frowning, he dug him out and saw the small silver obolos still clutched in his hand.
His father must have been in his room about to give it to him when he’d been killed. Grief choked him. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen his father in the Underworld. But it didn’t matter.
His father hadn’t withheld the coin, after all.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he whispered. “I should have been able to do something to stop this.” He had no idea what, but still …
Burning in utter agony, Styxx took the coin and placed it in his father’s mouth so that if he was on the banks of the river, he’d be able to cross and find Ryssa and Apollodorus.
“May Hades grant you both a palace in the Elysian Fields.” And as he rocked his father, he realized what had happened.
Acheron was alive again.
There was no other explanation. It was the only way he could be returned to life.
I have to bury my father.
And probably Ryssa and Apollodorus, too. He got up to find them and paused as he saw Artemis standing in what was once the hallway.
“What are you doing here?”
“You’ve done enough harm to Acheron. I will not allow you to hurt him further.”
Styxx laughed incredulously. “
I
have harmed
him
? Are you out of your mind? Look around you.” He gestured to the smoldering remains of his once great city. “Acheron caused the death of my sister, my father, my—”
“Enough! I refuse to allow you to wander the earth, looking for vengeance against him.”
Strangely, Styxx felt no desire for vengeance. There was only one thing he wanted. Only one thing left for him. And honestly, he was all right with that. “Fine, let me go to my wife and neither of you will ever have to worry about seeing me again.”
“Your wife?”
“The Princess of Thebes. Bethany.”
Artemis’s face blanched at the name.
Gods, no … anything but that.
Tears choked Styxx to the point he could no longer breathe. “She’s in Egypt,” he said firmly.
Artemis slowly shook her head. “Apollymi killed her, too.”
A full wave of tears blinded him at the news. “Apollymi!”
She nodded.
Throwing his head back, he roared in agony. His vision swam with the ferocity of his loss.
No, no, no!
“She’s not dead. Not my Beth. Not her. You’re lying to me!”
“I would never lie about that. I’m sorry, Styxx.”
But she wasn’t. She didn’t care. Why should she?
Raking his hands through his hair, Styxx did want blood, after all. He wanted to bathe in the blood of every god on Olympus. But none more than Acheron’s.
His fury overtaking him, Styxx ran at Artemis, intending to carve out her heart. But before he could reach her, he was snatched away by angry, shredding winds.
Everything went dark.
The next thing he knew, he was slammed against the white sands of a foreign beach. Stunned, Styxx turned around in the sand on his knees.
What the fuck is this?
Artemis appeared before him. “You’re on a Vanishing Isle in the Elysian Fields. I can’t afford for anyone to know about you or Acheron. You have everything you need here and people will come with food for you from time to time.” She dropped the chest from his room in front of him. “That should comfort you.”
Then she was gone.
Aghast, Styxx stared at that stupid chest.
That
was supposed to comfort him for the loss of his entire family and country?
For the loss of Bethany and their son?
Styxx bellowed with rage until his throat was raw and could produce no more sounds. He hadn’t screamed out like this since they’d tortured him in the Dionysion. And honestly, he’d rather go back to that than to live through this.
How could they take everything from him?
“I should have let the fucking Atlanteans beat you and the rest of the Olympians into the ground!”
He cursed the day he’d ever fought for Greece and her gods. Most of all, he cursed the day he’d been born twin to Acheron Parthenopaeus. That bastard …
Styxx stared out onto the horizon as he made a solemn vow. “You better pray, brother, that I never get off this island. If do … you will bleed for every tear you’ve given me. And I will rip out your heart and shove it down your throat for your mother taking my wife and son from me. Damn every single one of you!”
In all his life, he’d only ever wanted one thing.
Bethany.
And now all he wanted was death so that he could be with her in the next lifetime. But there was nothing left for him except eternity in isolated hell.
Eleven Thousand, Five Hundred and Thirty-One Years Later…
AD January 3, 2004
Exhausted and sweating, Styxx sighed as he dug in the wet sand to uncover his lunch. He’d already found two clams. One more and he’d be done for the meal. As he tried to lift the heavy sand, the wooden handle on his handmade shovel broke. He knelt down to finish digging it out with the rock blade then added the clam to the small handmade leather pouch where he’d placed the other two.
He washed the sand off his hands in the surf then headed back to the thatched hut he’d built centuries ago for shelter from the winds and harsh, unforgiving sunlight.
Tossing the shovel pieces by the door so that he could repair it later, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and went in and grabbed his last coconut. He’d need to gather more after he finished eating.
Styxx returned outside to start a fire for his meager meal.
But just as he reached his cooking pit, something bright flashed. With reflexes honed by thousands of years of unexpected and extremely vicious animal attacks, Styxx grabbed his spear and readied it for the fight.
Only it wasn’t a fur-covered predator.
This one walked on two legs.
Dionysus. Though he was a bit different from the last time Styxx had seen him, he remembered the bastard well from his brief imprisonment in Apollo’s temple on Olympus. The god of wine and excess had cut his long brown hair short and put streaks of blond through it. Dressed in clothes the likes of which Styxx had never seen before, Dionysus wore a well-trimmed goatee.
Styxx scowled at the god’s sudden and unexpected appearance. Was he hallucinating? Had something poisoned him while he’d been clamming? He hadn’t been bitten in a while, but …
It’d been thousands and thousands of years since anyone had come to his island for any reason.
Dionysus spoke, but he couldn’t understand him. The god stepped closer.
Suspicious as hell, Styxx backed up and angled the spear for the god’s heart.
The Olympian stopped moving and held his hands up. “Sorry. I forgot to use ancient Greek. I’m a little rusty with it. Can you understand me now?”
Ironically, it took Styxx a few heartbeats to remember it, too. He’d long stopped thinking with words. With no one to talk to and no more voices in his head, only pictures had kept him company for countless centuries.
He nodded.
Again the Olympian said something Styxx didn’t understand. He took a step.
Styxx pressed the point of the spear against his chest in warning.
Frustrated, Dionysus flung his hands out and sent a blast through him. Styxx dropped the electrified spear as he was lifted off his feet and thrown against the ground so hard it jarred every bone in his body.
His ears rang to the point of pain.
“Now can you comprehend what I’m saying?” the god growled.
“I hear you.”
Dionysus closed the distance between them.
“Don’t come near me!” Styxx snarled, shooting away from him. He was done with all of them.
Dionysus’s eyes turned a dark, sinister red. “I’m trying to help you.”
Styxx snorted. “No god has ever helped me. Go fuck yourself.”
He arched an arrogant brow at that. “Wow … that’s mighty brave of you. But you know, rather than fuck myself, I could tell Apollo where
you
are. He thinks you’re long dead. After all this time, you’d be like a new toy to him again. And I’m sure he’d love that loincloth look on you, especially combined with those incredibly defined muscles. Damn, you were hot before. Now…” He bit his lip as he raked a lecherous smile over Styxx’s body. “You grew up well, boy.”
Styxx’s blood ran cold at the threat.
“Or,” Dionysus continued, “you could hear me out, and put an end to your hell completely. Which would you rather?”
“I’m listening.”
Dionysus folded his arms over his chest. “The world has changed a great deal since you were last in it. One of the things that peeves me most is that the Greek pantheon has basically fallen into absolute obscurity. We’re such a joke that even Disney makes cartoons about us. We have a few believers left, but by and large, we are forgotten. And I’m a bit nostalgic for the old days when people made sacrifices and fed my powers.… A little over a month from now, the portal between the human world and Kalosis will be thin enough to breach.”
Styxx was well aware of a prophecy he’d been hoping would come to pass. It was the only hope he had of ever leaving this repulsive prison. “The Destroyer can be freed from captivity.”
If Apollymi was free again, she’d end the world and Styxx with it. Or better yet, he could drive his Atlantean dagger straight into that bitch’s black heart for what she’d done to his wife and child. He always knew there’d been a reason he’d hung on to the one he’d taken during his war there. As a human, it’d been his paranoia of Archon or one of the others coming after him that had prompted him to keep it.
Now it was the promise of revenge. An Atlantean dagger was the only weapon he knew that could kill one of their gods.
But he didn’t understand why Dionysus was here. For him. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“To open the portal, we need the blood of a true Atlantean. Not an Apollite, but one born of Apollymi’s people and her blood. And there’s only one left on the planet.”
“Acheron.” It was the only explanation.
Dionysus inclined his head to him. “See why I need you?”