Entwined (36 page)

She refocused on Atalanta. “Tell me how to find you.”

Simon sat in a high-backed chair in the formal living room of the home he shared with his daughter. On his lap he held a scrapbook his wife had put together before her death. On the table in front of him, the untouched glass of brandy reflected the low lights in the room.

He flipped the page and looked at a picture of Callia as a young girl, digging in the dirt behind their house. Another showed her with jam all over her smiling face. Yet another was of her opening gifts on her sixth birthday. Page after page of pictures of her life filled the book. Pictures of her with her mother. Of her with him. Of her alone.

She was alone now, wasn’t she? And it was all his fault. Tears burned the backs of his eyes. Tears he had no right shedding. Because of his desire to make her his daughter by virtue, if not by blood, he’d taken away everything she’d ever cared about. A true father wouldn’t do that. A loving father would have put her needs first.

A knock at the door brought his head up. But he didn’t rise. He had no desire to move. The knocking turned to a rapid pounding.

“Simon, open this goddamn door!”

Lucian. Simon exhaled and closed his eyes. He had no interest in dealing with the Council right now. Didn’t care what their punishment for his lies was going to be. Did it even matter anymore? He’d already lost the only thing that had ever meant anything to him. Every time he thought of the look of utter betrayal on Callia’s face when she realized what he’d done…

“Have you gone deaf?” Lucian asked from the doorway.

Too late Simon realized Lucian was already standing in his living room. The blasted servants had left the door unlocked.

“You look like you’ve gone a round with Hades,” Lucian
said. Still dressed in the traditional
chison
, he moved around the couch toward Simon. “Get up.”

Simon leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. “Go away. Whatever the Council has decided, I’ll face it tomorrow. Right now…right now I just want to be alone.”

Lucian’s footsteps stopped in front of Simon’s chair. “Lou-kas is missing.”

“He’s a grown
ándras
. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

“No, Simon. You don’t understand. Loukas disappeared after the confrontation in the Council chambers. A sentry with the Executive Guard told me he crossed through the portal shortly after the Argonauts. And he used the same coordinates.”

Slowly, Simon’s eyes came open and he stared up at the leader of the Council. “Why would he go to the human realm now?”

Lucian locked his jaw.

An odd sense of unease washed through Simon. He pushed up from his chair to stand before Lucian. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Lucian was roughly the same height and age as Simon, but he’d always been more confident. A true leader who knew what their people needed. Tonight he seemed rattled. His thin lips pressed into a tight line. Finally, he said, “Ten years ago he passed through the portal much the same way. Only that time he followed you and not the Argonauts.”

Little links clicked into place in Simon’s mind. Questions he’d always wondered about but hadn’t wanted to find answers to. “He followed me to find Callia.”

Lucian nodded. “She was betrothed to him. He didn’t believe your story about her being sick in the human realm.”

Suddenly, everything made sense. “When he found out she was pregnant, he went to Atalanta. He brought her to that village in Greece.”

“Yes. You have to understand that Callia’s affair and pregnancy, with an Argonaut no less, when she was betrothed
to my son and the future leader of the Council would have been an embarrassment none of us would have recovered from easily.”

Fury filled Simon’s veins. “You knew.”

Lucian’s spine stiffened. “Oh, get real, Simon. You’re not blameless in this. You made the deal with Atalanta. You traded your daughter’s life for that child’s. No one forced you to do that. Don’t pretend to be all high-and-mighty now.”

“There never would have been a deal to make had Lou-kas not gone to Atalanta in the first place.”

“That doesn’t change the past. Nothing does. We can only worry about the present. I’m here because I think Lou-kas might have gone into the human realm again to find Atalanta.”

Simon’s eyes grew wide. “Why?”

“Because he didn’t realize the child could possibly still be alive. So long as it lives, Callia will not bind herself to him. And that, I’m afraid, is the only thing my son wants.” Lucian’s shoulders seem to drop. “He believes it’s what he deserves. He believes she’s his by right.”

Four hundred years. For most of his life Simon had gone along with the status quo. He hadn’t questioned the customs and laws the Council said were beneficial to their world, because they hadn’t pertained to him. And when he’d joined the Council, he’d turned a blind eye to right and wrong in favor of politics. His wife had challenged him on the laws more than once. Had told him progress and life would bloom from the
gynaíkes
in their land and not its leaders. But he hadn’t listened. He’d scoffed at her ideas—at ideas he’d known she’d picked up from her time serving the king. They’d argued about it. And eventually the distance between them had driven her into the arms of another.

He’d been hurt and betrayed but—after her cleansing ceremony—had taken her back. Though their relationship had never been the same, the child she’d borne had become
his whole life. The child he’d raised and molded and sheltered and repressed. The child he’d deserved. The child who had been his, by right.

Sweat beaded on his neck and slid down his spine. “You think he’ll go to Atalanta and make her another deal? To kill the child? What could he possibly offer her in return?”

Unease crept over Lucian’s face. “The Argonauts. And the half-breeds. If the Argonauts went to the colony, if Loukas followed them…”

“Dear gods…”

“Exactly.”

Simon’s eyes shot to Lucian’s. “Why do you care? You worry not for the half-breeds, for the Argonauts.”

“No, I don’t care for either. But death is not the answer. My nephew, you remember, is an Argonaut. While I don’t agree with what the Eternal Guardians do, I’ll not have Gryphon’s blood or the blood of the others on my hands.”

Urgency pulsed through Simon’s veins. Urgency and, he hoped in some small way, redemption. “We need to find Loukas and stop him.”

“Orpheus is waiting for us at the portal. He knows where the half-breed colony is located. If we go now, we might get there before it’s too late.”

Callia’s heart raced as she cleared the hidden tunnel that led into the caverns of the colony. Frigid air whisked across her cheeks as she pulled on her gloves. The nearly full moon illuminated the clearing and forest beyond with enough light to make her trek toward Silver Hills, where she hoped to find a means of transportation, easy to see.

She’d left Isadora and Casey sleeping. They’d both been exhausted and disappointed after nothing came of their “attempt” with the orb. Callia had been a wired mess until they both dropped off.

She pressed her gloved hand against the sat phone in her pocket. When she got close to town, she’d contact Zander. Have him trace her signal. He’d be pissed, but she was confident he’d be able to track her. And she was 100 percent certain Atalanta wouldn’t kill her. Not if Zander found their son before the demigod decided she didn’t need both her
and
Maximus.

Maximus.
Max. Warmth rushed through her chest. Her son had a name. And now she had a face to go with that name. Renewed determination surged in her veins. She checked her compass once, then moved toward the trees.

She made it ten feet before an arm shot out of nowhere and snagged her by the neck. Callia gasped, tried to scream, but the hand clamped over her mouth prevented any sound from escaping her throat. One strong arm closed tightly across her middle and jerked her back against a warm, solid body.

Fear lurched up her throat. She struggled, but was held firm.

“You kept me waiting,
syzygos
,” a voice breathed in her ear. A voice she knew all too well. “I warned you not to do that.”

Syzygos.
Wife.

Her heart rate shot up. Loukas. Here? Now? What the hell did he think he was doing?

“Did you think you could escape me?” he growled. “You tried once before, but I brought you back. And I’m getting really fucking tired of doing this.”

Callia went still as stone, and for a second her brain flashed blank.

A roar sounded in the trees around them, bringing her mind back online like a power grid juicing up. Callia’s eyes grew wide as a sea of daemons spilled out of the trees and charged the tunnels that ran into the colony.

No…

“They’re going to die,” Loukas breathed in her ear. “Every one of those vile half-breeds you seem to love so much. All because of your indiscretions.”

No, no, no…

Callia struggled but couldn’t break free of Loukas’s grasp. On the far side of the clearing, Atalanta emerged dressed in the same bloodred robes Callia had seen earlier. At her side, she pulled Max along by a rope. When she reached the edge of the trees, the demigod stopped, looked their way and smiled.

Callia’s heart lurched into her throat and she screamed beneath Loukas’s hand.

“Did you really think she’d play by any sane rules?” he whispered in her ear. “She lured you out for me. The princess, the Argonauts, your
lover
and that stain you call a son will all be annihilated in one fell swoop. But not you. No, you’re going to live. With me. Where you belong. And trust me,
syzygos
, this time, you will remember.”

Zander stopped midstep on the frozen path. A searing ache lit off in his chest, drawing his focus and shutting down his
other senses. Theron and Cerek’s conversation with Nick drifted out of earshot. His vision dimmed until he no longer saw Phineus and Titus in the trees to his right and left scouting the area around them. The frigid air drifted to the back of his mind until all he felt was a condensing panic that told him they were headed in the wrong direction.

Nick had landed the helicopter in a field four miles back and they’d been hoofing it since to avoid alerting any daemons in the area they were coming, but somehow he suddenly knew any daemons lingering here were the least of their worries.

“What’s wrong, Zander?”

Theron had stopped and was now studying him with that intense expression their leader was known for. Nick and Cerek were doing the same.

“I—” His chest squeezed tight, cutting off his words. This sensation was different from the rage he was accustomed to. It was deeper, more personal, and this time, insistent. Telling him…telling him
something
. But he couldn’t figure out what. He turned a slow circle, looked through the trees but saw none of the forest around him. “Something’s not right.”

“How do you know?” Nick asked with a get-real expression.

“Because I feel it,” he tossed back, still looking out at the trees. “They’re not here. They’re—”

Pain shot up his arm and into his neck, as if someone had hooked him with a half nelson and twisted hard. And in his head he heard Callia’s voice. Calling him.

That rush of insistence morphed to urgency. “Callia’s hurt,” he whispered. Then louder, “There’s trouble at the colony.”

Zander brought his hands together. When his pinky fingers touched, the markings on his forearms and hands glowed a brilliant white just before the portal opened with a pop and sizzle.

“Aw, fuck,” someone muttered. “He’s opening the portal. The daemons know for sure we’re here now.”

Theron took a step toward him. “Zander, wait—”

He didn’t. Because only one thing mattered now: Callia needed him.

Isadora jolted from sleep. Her eyes flew open. She pushed up on her hands just as a roar shook the living room of the lodge.

Beside her on the couch, bleary-eyed and sleepy, Casey did the same. “What…what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Isadora rushed to the window and peeled back the curtains. The sight that met her eyes tore a gasp from her chest.

“What?” Casey said, hurrying over. When she reached the window and saw the daemons below, raiding the colony, her hand flew over her mouth. “Oh, God.”

“We have to get out of here.” Adrenaline pulsing, Isadora whipped around and scanned the room for a weapon. Where the hell was Gryphon?

Her eyes landed on the sofa she and Casey had fallen asleep on, moved to the coffee table where the orb, now nothing but a cold piece of metal, still lay, then to the other couch, where Callia should be. “Sonofabitch, she’s gone.”

“Where would she have gone?” Panic filled Casey’s voice.

“I don’t know. I—”

The door to the living room crashed open. On instinct, Isadora pushed Casey behind her. Gryphon and—holy hell—Demetrius, in all his evil charm, charged into the room. When had Demetrius gotten here? Had Gryphon called him?

“Princess,” Gryphon announced in an I-mean-business tone, “we have to get you back to Argolea. Right now.”

This time Isadora wasn’t about to argue. She wanted out of here too. Except…“Callia’s missing. We can’t go without her.”

Gryphon and Demetrius exchanged glances, and just as Gryphon opened his mouth to answer, loud footsteps pounded down the corridor toward them.

“Get back!” Demetrius yelled, whipping around and drawing his blade.

Isadora’s heart lurched to her throat. She backed Casey against the wall and held on to her sister as her pulse beat like wildfire beneath her skin. A body flashed in front of the door, and two glowing green eyes appeared just as Demetrius shifted to attack. Around Demetrius’s massive shoulders, Isadora caught sight of the rest of the body in the shadows.

She shoved away from Casey and dashed between the Argonauts to put herself between Demetrius and the door. “No!”

“Hades. Princess,
move
!”

“No, Demetrius. Don’t! It’s Orpheus.”

Orpheus chuckled at her back. “And here I thought
you
didn’t care, Isa.”