Page 78 of Dance With the Devil (Dark-Hunter 3)
But then he too had been a fool for love. Love made fools of everyone. Gods and man alike.
Still, he couldn't believe Zarek had let Astrid go any more than he could believe Astrid had left.
Och mensch!
Artemis materialized before him. "How is this possible?" she railed. "Never in the entire history of her life has she judged a man innocent!"
He looked at her calmly. "Only because she's never before judged an innocent man."
"I hate you!"
He laughed bitterly at that. "Oh, please don't get my hopes up. You almost gave me a hard-on with that thought. At least tell me this time your hatred will last more than five minutes."
She tried to slap him, but he caught her hand. So instead she kissed him, then tore away from his lips shrieking.
Ash shook his head as she vanished again.
She would calm down in time. She always did.
But he had other things to worry about at the moment.
Closing his eyes, he breached the distance between Olympus and the human world.
There he found what he was looking for.
Zarek jerked his head up to find himself in the middle of a white and gold room. It was huge, with a gold-domed ceiling embossed with wildlife scenes. The room was encircled with white marble columns and in the center sat a large ivory settee.
What surprised him most was to see Acheron standing in front of the settee, staring at him with those strange swirling silver eyes.
The Atlantean had long, golden-blond hair and looked strangely vulnerable-which for Acheron was an impossibility. He was dressed in a pair of tight black leather pants and wore a long-sleeved black silk shirt that had been left unbuttoned.
"Thank you for Simi," Acheron said, inclining his head toward him. "I appreciate what you did for her when she was wounded."
Zarek cleared his throat, rose to his feet, and aimed an angry glare at Acheron. "Why did you fuck with my head?"
"I had to. There are some things people are better off not knowing."
"You let me think I had killed my own people."
"Would the truth have been any easier on you? Instead of the old crone's face, you would have been haunted by the face of a young woman and her husband. Not to mention you would have had the knowledge to kill any Dark-Hunter who got in your way, including Valerius, and had you done that, I wouldn't have been able to save you. Ever."
Zarek flinched at the mention of his brother. As much as he hated to admit it, Ash was right. He might very well have used his knowledge to kill Valerius. "You have no right to play with people's minds."
Acheron's agreement stunned him. "No, I don't. And believe it or not, I seldom do. But that's not why you're really mad, now is it?"
Zarek tensed. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes you do, Z." He closed his eyes and cocked his head as if listening to something. "I know every thought inside you. Just as I did that night you slaughtered the Apollites and Daimons after Taberleigh. I tried to give you peace of mind by eliminating your memories, but you wouldn't take it. I couldn't stop your dreams and M'Adoc wouldn't help. For that I apologize. But right now you have a much bigger problem than what I did to you when I tried to help."
"Yeah? What's that?"
Acheron held his hand up and projected an image from his palm.
Zarek's breath caught as he saw Astrid weeping. She sat in a small atrium with three other women who were holding her as she cried.
He walked toward the image, only to remember he couldn't really touch it.
"It hurts so much," she sobbed.
"Atty, do something!" a blond woman said, looking at the redheaded woman who appeared to be the eldest. "Go kill him for hurting her."
"No," Astrid wailed. "Don't you dare. I'll never forgive you if you hurt him."
"Who are those women with her?" Zarek asked.
"The three Fates. Atty, or Atropos, is the one with red hair. Clotho is the one with blond hair holding Astrid, and the dark-headed one is Lachesis, or Lacy."
Zarek stared at them, his heart breaking at the pain he'd caused Astrid. The last thing he had ever wanted was to hurt her. "Why are you showing me this?"
Acheron answered his question with one of his own. "Do you remember what I said to you in New Orleans?"
Zarek looked at him wryly. "You said a lot of shit to me then."
So Acheron repeated it." ' The past is dead, Z. Tomorrow will become whatever decision you make.' "
Acheron's gaze burned into him. "With Dionysus's help you blew it that night in New Orleans when you attacked the cops, but you bought yourself another chance when you saved Sunshine." Ash indicated Astrid. "You have another crucial choice here, Z. What will you decide?"
Acheron closed his hand and the image of Astrid and her sisters vanished. "Everyone deserves to be loved, Zarek. Even you."
"Shut up!" he snarled. "You don't know what you're talking about, Your Highness." Zarek spat the title out. He was so sick of people lecturing him when they were ignorant of what he'd been through.
It was easy for someone like Acheron to tell him about love. What did a prince know about people hating him? Despising him?
When had anyone ever spat on the Atlantean?
But Acheron didn't speak.
At least not with words.
Instead, an image came into Zarek's mind. One of a blond teenager in chains in the middle of an ancient Greek home. The boy was bloody while being beaten.
He was begging those around him for mercy.
Zarek's breath caught as he recognized the youth...
"I understand you in a way no one else can," Acheron said quietly. "You have a rare chance, Z. Don't fuck it up."
For the first time ever, he listened to Acheron. And he looked on him with a newfound respect.
They were far more alike than he could have guessed and he wondered how Acheron had found the humanity that had abandoned Zarek so long ago.
"What if I hurt her?" Zarek asked.
"Do you plan on hurting her?"
"No, but I can't live here and she-"
"Why don't you ask her, Z?"
"What about her mother?"
"What about her? You were willing to fight Artemis for Thanatos. Isn't Astrid worth just as much?"
"More." He met Ash's gaze with fired determination. "Where is she?"
Before Zarek could blink, he found himself in the atrium Acheron had shown him.
Atty looked up with a hiss. "No man is allowed here!"
The one Acheron had called Clotho started to attack him. But she pulled up sharply as Acheron appeared beside him.
Zarek ignored them as he concentrated on Astrid who sat there with tears in her eyes, staring at him as if he were an apparition.
His heart pounding, he walked over to her and knelt down before her chair.
"Stars aren't supposed to cry," he whispered so that only she could hear him. "They're supposed to laugh."
"How can I laugh when I have no heart?"
He took her hand into his and kissed the tip of every finger. "You have a heart." He placed her hand over his. "One that only beats for you, princess."
She offered him a trembling smile. "Why are you here, Zarek?"
He brushed the tears from her cheeks. "I'm here to collect my rose, if she'll come home with me."
"Don't even go there," Atty cried. "Astrid, please don't tell me you're going to listen to that drivel?"
"He's a man, baby sister," Lacy chimed in. "If his lips are moving, he's lying."
"Why don't the three of you stay out of this?" Acheron said.
Atty stiffened. "Excuse me? We're the Fates and-"
A sideways glare from Acheron cut her off midstream.
"Why don't we leave them alone?" Atty said to her sisters. The three of them hurried off while Acheron watched Zarek and Astrid with his arms folded over his chest.
Zarek still hadn't taken his gaze off Astrid. "You going to be a voyeur, Ash?"
"Depends. You going to give me something to look at?"
"If you keep standing there, I am." He looked over his shoulder then.
Acheron inclined his head to him and turned around to leave. As he did so, the breeze caught a portion of his shirt and blew it back, showing a flash of one shoulder.
Zarek started at the red welts it revealed. Welts he knew from experience came from a whip.
"Wait!" Astrid said, stopping Acheron. "What about Zarek's soul?"
Acheron stiffened ever so slightly before he called out, "Artemis?"
She shimmered in beside him.
"What?" she snarled back.
He nodded toward them. "Astrid wants Zarek's soul."
"Oh, like I care, and what is he doing here anyway?" She narrowed her eyes at Astrid. "You should know better than to bring him here."
Ash cleared his throat. "I brought Zarek here."
"Oh." Artemis calmed instantly. "Why did you do that?"
"Because they belong together." He smiled ironically. "It's fated."
Artemis rolled her eyes. "Don't even go there."
Astrid came to her feet. "I want Zarek's soul, Artemis. Return it to him."
"I don't have it."
They were all stunned by her words.
"What do you mean you don't have it?" Acheron asked, his tone sharp and angry. "Don't tell me you lost it."
"Of course not." She looked over at Zarek and Astrid, and if Zarek didn't know better, he'd say she looked embarrassed. "I never really took it."
All three of them stared at her in disbelief.
"Come again?" Ash asked.
Artemis curled her lip as she looked at Zarek. "I couldn't take it. That would have involved my touching him and he was disgusting back then." She shuddered. "There was no way I would have put my hand on him. He smelled."
Open-mouthed, Acheron looked at Zarek. "You lucky bastard." Then he turned back to Artemis. "If you didn't touch him, how has he been an immortal Dark-Hunter all this time?"
Artemis gave him a haughty sneer. "You don't know everything after all, now do you, Acheron?"
He took a step toward her and she squeaked, putting more distance between them.
"I injected him with ichor," she said quickly.
Zarek was stunned. Ichor was a mineral found in the blood of the gods that was said to make them immortal.
"What about his Dark-Hunter powers?" Acheron asked.
"Those I gave to him separately, along with the fangs and such so that you wouldn't realize he wasn't like the others."
Acheron gave her a tired, repugnant stare. "Oh, I know I'm going to hate the answer for this one. But I have to know. What about the sunshine, Artemis? Since he has his soul my guess is he was never banished from daylight, was he?"
The look on her face confirmed it.
"You bitch!" Zarek snarled, rushing toward her.
To his surprise, it was Acheron who stopped him from reaching her.
"Let me go. I want to rip her throat out!"
Astrid pulled him back. "Leave her alone, Zarek. She has her own problems."
Zarek hissed at Artemis, baring his fangs.
Fangs that instantly vanished.
Zarek ran his tongue over his human teeth.
"A gift," Acheron said.
Zarek calmed a degree and then even more when he realized Astrid had her arms wrapped around his waist. Her front was tight against his back so that he could feel her breasts against his spine.
Closing his eyes, he savored the feel of her.
"You are free of Artemis, Zarek," Astrid said in his ear. "You've been judged innocent and you're immortal. Tell me, what do you want to do with the rest of eternity?"
"I want to go lie on the beach someplace warm."
Astrid's heart caught at his words. She'd foolishly thought he would say something about her.
"I see."
"But most of all," he said, turning in her arms to face her, "I want to piss off everyone."
"Everyone?" she asked, her heart breaking even more.
"Yeah," he said, granting her a rare smile. "The way I figure it, if I leave you, only me and you are unhappy. If I take you with me, everyone but us is pissed, especially that mangy thing you call a wolf. That has serious appeal for me."
She arched a brow at that. "If you're trying to woo me with that one, Prince Charming, you've-"
He stopped her words with a kiss so supreme that her toes curled. Her heart pounded.
Zarek nipped her lips, then pulled back to stare down at her. "Come away with me, Astrid."
"Why should I?"
His gaze burned into hers. "Because I love you, and even if I'm lying on the sun itself I'll be freezing there without you. I need my star so that I can hear laughter."
Laughing with excitement, she gave him an "Eskimo" kiss. "Bora Bora, here we come."
Zarek finished her words off with a real kiss.
A really l-o-n-g one.
