Acheron (Dark-Hunter #15)(65)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ignoring them, Ash finished looking through the book, but he couldn’t find anything other than the Atlantean dagger that could be important. But given that, why would a human in a car be after it?

No human would understand its significance . . .

And no nonhuman would have made this kind of mess and left it. They’d have simply attacked and tortured Tory until she told them where to find it.

It was baffling. But what else could they want?

More importantly, how far were they willing to go to get it? It was one thing to break into a house. Would they kill for it as well?

Ash stood up. "I’m going to walk around outside for a bit and check things out. I’ll be back."

Tory nodded. "We’ll save you some pizza."

Ash didn’t comment as he left the house and used his powers to leave New Orleans and venture to Savitar’s island where the sun literally never set. Magical in nature, the island constantly moved around the world as Savitar searched out the "perfect" wave.

As expected, Savitar was lying on his back on a surfboard out in the water, staring up at the clear bright sky as the waves rocked him.

Unlike the omniscient Chthonian, Ash wasn’t a water baby. He hated surfing and lying under the sun. But he also knew that when in Rome . . .

He popped himself onto a board beside Savitar who laughed when he saw him sitting on the longboard. "You look so out of your element."

"I am out of my element. Much like you in a Seattle Goth club."

Savitar gave him a wry grin. "I’m never out of my element, Atlantean. And it must be dire indeed to get you in shorties and on a board. One day I’m actually going to get you to say ‘Rad four-mill steamer, dude!’ "

Crossing his arms over his chest, Ash laughed. "Not likely."

Savitar tsked at him before he returned to staring at the sky. "I’ve heard that before. So what brings you here, Grom?"

Ash ignored the surfing term that was usually reserved for kids under fifteen. Only Savitar could get away with calling him a youngster. "There’s a woman-"

"Isn’t there always?"

Ash chose to ignore the sarcastic comment. "She’s being pursued by someone and I don’t know who."

Savitar arched a brow as he floated one heavily tattooed arm in the ocean. "Then you know I can’t tell you anything."

Those words and his condescending tone set Ash’s temper on fire. "Dammit, Savitar, don’t play this game with me. Her life is in danger . . . maybe."

Savitar grabbed Ash’s board and snatched him closer. "Like you, I won’t tamper with fate."

"Bullshit. You tamper with fate all the time."

He shoved Ash’s board away from him. "But I won’t tamper with yours. Ever."

Ash cursed as he paddled back to Savitar’s side. "Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be the final fate of the world and to have no control over your own?"

"Sure you do, little brother. Every decision you make causes your fate to unfold or to change. Have I taught you nothing?"

Savitar was right, but it wasn’t that simple. Especially not when there was another person’s life involved.

What would it take to make the Chthonian care?

Ash narrowed his eyes. "They’ve uncovered an Atlantean dagger."

Savitar sat up on the board to glare at him. "I hope you’re planning to destroy it."

"I have to get it first. But that’s the plan." Ash returned his hostile glare tit for tat. "Can you please, just this once, give me some insight into the future?"

Savitar shook his head. "You know what the Fates decreed for you. Through your own actions you will be saved."

"That could mean anything."

Savitar was silent for several heartbeats before he pierced Ash with a sinister look. "All right. I’m screwing with things here, but I’ll tell you this much. It’s not the dagger the thieves were after in her house. There’s another journal her people found."

Ash cringed over that bomb. "Ryssa’s?"

He nodded. "It’s not the one Soteria showed you. This one was found yesterday by one of her buddies. And it was written after Ryssa became Apollo’s mistress. In it is the truth about him and Artemis and their need for blood. It also tells how to kill them."

Ash felt sick. Yeah, that would cause a global annihilation that would impress even his bloodthirsty mother. "And me? Am I in it too?"

Savitar sighed. "Trust me, you don’t want that in the hands of anyone else."

Ash’s gut tightened. "Where is it now?"

"I can’t tell you that."

Ash flashed himself to Savitar’s board so that he could tackle him. Unfortunately, Savitar popped himself and the board out from under him and appeared on the other side of Ash’s abandoned board before Ash could grab him.

"Hitting me changes nothing."

Ash swam to his board and glared at Savitar. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

"You of all beings know how fate works. What happened to you as a human happened because everyone from your parents on down tried to circumvent what was supposed to be-which ultimately was the destruction of the Atlantean pantheon. There was no changing that prophecy. But the way you suffered was completely unnecessary. Had your parents embraced their true destiny, you would have been saved years of torment. Fate will not be denied. We can sculpt it, but in the end we’re all pawns to our final destinies. Good, bad or indifferent."

Those words offered him about as much comfort as one of Artemis’s beatings. "I’m going to be exposed, aren’t I?"

"I don’t know. You planning on dropping your pants around me? If so, warn me first. I don’t want to go blind."

Ash pulled himself up on his board. "You know what I mean. After all the battles I’ve fought to save the world and all the sacrifices in dignity and blood I’ve paid to set free so many Dark-Hunters, they’re all going to know that I’m nothing but a pathetic whore, aren’t they?"

Savitar’s look was sharp and angry. "You have never been pathetic."

But they both knew he’d been a whore. That at the end of the day he was still one. Ash wanted to scream at the injustice of it all.

You can’t outrun your past.

His own words were coming back to bite him. "How long do I have before I’m found out?"

Savitar let out a long, tired breath. "There are three outcomes for your journey, Apostolos. In one you’re exposed and you lose everything, even your life, and your mother destroys the entire world in a fit of anger. In the other, you’re exposed and the Dark-Hunters turn on you and Apollo’s enemies destroy the god, then they wreak untold horrors on mankind as they enslave and abuse them . . ."

Ash hesitated to even ask for more. "And the third?"

"In one word, grisly."

Ash cursed. "So no matter what I do, the world is f**ked?"

"I didn’t say that. There’s always hope, Apostolos. Of all men, you know that. It’s only when you stop trying to affect the outcome of your life that you’re truly defeated. What will come will come. It’s how we deal with the shit in between that shapes us."

Ash snorted at his words. "You don’t deal with anything, Savitar. You sit out here in the sun, catching waves, spewing bullshit philosophy you don’t follow."

"You’re right. I gave up trying to affect my destiny a long time ago. But that’s because every time I tried to change the future, I f**ked it up worse. Eventually the rat gets tired of pulling the lever and sits down in his corner to lick his wounds. So if you’re ready to hang it up and come sit on the beach with me-"

"I’m stuck fighting."

"You’re stuck fighting." Savitar lay back down on his board. "But you’re welcome to come share my beach any time you get tired of the brawl."

Ash let out a long sigh as he considered it seriously. "Save me a spot. If this blows up in my face, I’ll be back with my tail forever tucked between my legs." Because deep inside he knew the truth-he’d been through enough ridicule. He couldn’t stand to see the people he loved look at him the way Ryssa had when she’d found him in the stew in Didymos. Even though she’d loved him and had forgiven him, the disappointment in her eyes was still seared into his soul.

He couldn’t take that again.

"Wave’s coming," Ash warned his mentor.

He didn’t move as Savitar popped up on his board with one perfect flip.

The moment the wave struck, Ash returned to New Orleans. Water sports had never been his thing. He preferred freefalling through the air or speeding on the ground.

And he hadn’t been a spectator in over eleven thousand years. If he’d learned anything in his godhood, it’d been to fight until they dragged him down.

Even then, he didn’t know how to not keep battling.

There was another journal out there. Fine. He was going to find it and make sure no living human or other being ever read it.

CHAPTER 7

Ash paused as he entered the house to find the three women lined up and . . . singing to . . . dear gods, anything but this.

"Fergilicious."

All he needed was for Simi to be here and off-key with them since it was her favorite song and he’d spent the better part of the last year cursing whoever was dumb enough to introduce that song to a hormonal teenaged demon. Worst part? Simi wanted him to call her Similicious.

Yeah, like that would ever happen. He’d sooner become a Calvin Klein underwear model.

"C’mon, Ash," Kim called. "Join us."

He looked at her with horror filling his soul. "Oh hell no. Not enough beer in the world to make me sing ‘I’ll put your boy on rock, rock.’ "

The women laughed so hard, Kim collapsed on the couch while Pam and Tory roared.

"So did you find anything?" Tory asked after she finally sobered.

"A broken headlight on the car across the street and two street-lights that are out." Ash picked up Tory’s cell phone and held it out to her. "I actually need you to call your people and ask them if they found another journal."

Tory gave him a droll stare. "Believe me, if they’d found something as monumental as that they would have told me immediately."

"Even if they’d done it right before they were taken into custody?"

"Then the government would have it."

"Tory, please, just humor me. I’ve got a bad feeling."

As she reached for the phone in his hand, it started ringing. By the tone and the look on her face, he could tell she knew who it was before she answered.

"Hey Bruce, what’s . . ."Her voice trailed off as her face lost color.

Ash put his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

"Oh my God. No . . ."

He exchanged a confused look with Pam until he listened to the other end of the conversation.

"It was awful, Tory. We’d just been released maybe an hour when I got the call that he’d been mugged-just like Nikolas-on his way into his flat and was in surgery."

"What are the doctors saying?"

"They don’t know. It’s not looking good. But what’s scariest is that the guys who ran him down, rifled through his bag and pockets . . . like they were looking for something in particular. They didn’t take any money or his watch. Nothing . . . Harry said they were asking him questions as they beat on him, but since his Greek isn’t fluent he couldn’t understand what they wanted. They just kept beating the shit out of him until he lost consciousness."

Tory glanced up at Acheron, becoming suspicious about all of his "feelings." They were so unerringly accurate that she wondered if he might not be a part of them. "Did any of you happen to find another journal during the dig?"

"Earlier in the morning, just before the police arrived, we’d hit the mother lode of artifacts."

"But was there another journal?"

"It wasn’t as well preserved as the one you have, but yeah, there was another book and get this . . . it wasn’t wet. It’d been sealed in an airtight container that was inside a wood chest inlaid with gold. It looked like someone had stashed it there out of fear or something."

"Where is it now?"

"I don’t know. Last I heard, Dimitri had it."

"I need you to find Dimitri and get that book to me."

"Why? It’s not like anyone can read it."

"Yes, they can."

"Who?"

She looked up at Ash and wished that she could see the eyes he kept hidden from the world. "A man here in the States."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. He’s the one who told me that there were probably more of them to be found and he’s the one who got you guys out of jail. Now listen, my house was broken into and it appears they were looking for something, too. My friend says it’s the journal. I don’t know the truth, but until we do, you guys be really, really careful and keep me posted on Harry and Niko."

"Will do, Doc."

She turned off the phone and looked up at those dark sunglasses that she suspected hid a lot more than just his eye color. "What’s going on, Ash?"

He rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip. "You’ve found a crucial piece of history and there are factions out there who are willing to kill for it."

No, it had to be more than that. It had to be. "Look, this isn’t the Mummy. It’s not like a teenaged girl’s diary could resurrect the dead or anything. It’s just the story of her innocuous life. What on earth could an ancient girl have known that would be worth killing someone over?"