Dream Warrior (Dark-Hunter #17)(3)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

And as much as it sucked, Jericho needed this job. As the world became more modern, it was getting harder and harder to find people who could make fake IDs at a reasonable price and who were willing to let him live off the grid.

Other immortals were allowed to accumulate wealth, but that, too, was beyond him. Any time he tried to save even a dollar, Zeus cleaned him out. One catastrophe after another.

So had been his existence for so many centuries that he no longer even bothered to count them.

He was nothing and he would never have anything again. Not even dignity.

Sighing, he went back to work, hating himself and this life.

You could change that….

It had to be bad for Zeus to send someone to ask for his help.

You could be a god again….

The dream of that thought tormented him. It was tempting except for one thing. He’d have to look at the very beings who’d turned their backs on him and left him to this pathetic state. Every one of those bastards had ignored him.

Every one of them.

Or worse, they’d tortured him.

Every single night. For thousands of years, the Dolophoni-the children of the Furies-and the dream gods had come to him and killed him. And every morning, he was resurrected to live this miserable existence right where he’d left off the night before.

Over and over. Bloody and violent. No matter how hard he tried to fight them off, he held no powers against them. They gleefully held him down and beat him or carved him to maximize the pain of his sentence. Every organ in his body had been torn out of him so many times that the pain was seared into his DNA. He dreaded every night and the horror it would ultimately bring.

Just last night, two of them had cut his heart out. . . Again.

At the end of the day, he would never forgive what had been done to him. So what if something was threatening the world? If the world was to end, then at least he’d have some peace.

Maybe this time he’d actually stay dead.

Delphine returned to olympus so she could spend the rest of the day researching her latest target. For hours, she watched him work in solitude. While the other men joked and laughed with each other, he kept to himself. Bitterly alone. Every now and again, she’d see him look up at the others and their camaraderie with a glint of longing so potent it made her ache.

They ignored him as if he were invisible.

At six-thirty, he washed up after the others were finished and leaving. He pulled his coveralls off, tucked them into a beat-up black cloth backpack that he slung over his shoulder and headed out on an older-styled motorcycle.

He stopped briefly to go into a small grocery store on a corner where he grabbed a loaf of bread, chicken salad spread, a paperback novel, and a six-pack of beer. Without speaking to a single person, he paid for it, tucked it into his backpack and went home to a tiny one-room efficiency apartment. The place was so rundown even the scuffed, chipped linoleum floor dipped in the middle. She wondered how the building kept from falling down around him.

It had to be the most depressing thing she’d ever seen.

There was no furniture whatsoever. Not a single piece, or even a TV or computer. Worn blankets were pinned to the windows for curtains, and his bed was only a threadbare sleeping blanket on the floor with a single pillow that was so old and flat he might as well not have it. Next to that, he had one additional pair of shoes and a small stack of clothes and one old wool jacket.

That was it.

Her heart clenched as she watched him open a beer, then wash the coveralls in the sink before he hung them up to dry in the rundown bathroom. Brushing his hand through his dark hair, he went back to the kitchen- which had no stove and only a filthy old refrigerator- to make a single sandwich out of the bread that had been flattened in his backpack. He ate it in silence while sitting on the sleeping blanket, reading his book.

Every now and again, he’d look up expectantly at any sudden sound. Once he was sure it was nothing, he’d return to his reading.

Just after midnight, he sighed and stared up at his ceiling. "Where the hell are you, ass**les? You scared or something?"

He waited as if he really expected an answer. Glaring furiously, he put the book on the floor and pulled his tank top off to show her a chest rife with horrendous scars. She would think them battle wounds, but they were so jagged and torn that they appeared to be where his vital organs had been viciously ripped out of his body.

"Fine," he said, his tone filled with disgust, "just don’t leave too big a mess in my place. I’m sick of having to clean up blood first thing in the morning and don’t f**k up my book. I’d like to finish it for once." He turned out the lights and went to sleep.

Alone and in total solitude.

Who had he been talking to?

He’s gone insane from his punishment…. Hephaestus had warned her of his delicate mental state. Obviously the god was right.

Delphine sat in the darkness, waiting for Cratus to reach the dream state-which took forever, since he seemed to be fighting sleep. It was as if he was waiting for someone to attack him and he wanted to be alert when they did.

As she waited, all she wanted to do was comfort him and she didn’t even understand why. She’d never felt a compulsion like this before.

Probably because she knew what it was like to feel isolated from the world-granted, not as much as he was, but she still remembered the desolate feelings of her former life. As a young woman, she’d lived among the humans and had thought herself one of them. Even then she’d known something wasn’t quite right with her. She’d never felt emotions the way other humans did.

It hadn’t been until her teen years that her powers had fully manifested. She’d been so afraid of rejection or hostility from her family and friends that she’d held it in and told no one about her vivid dreams and frightening powers.

Until the Dream-Hunter Arik had shown up in her dreams and explained to her who and what she really was. Explained that her mother had been seduced by a sleep god, which had resulted in her birth.

To this day, she owed her sanity to Arik. He alone had explained to her how the Oneroi-the gods of sleep-had been created to help mankind with their dreams. Night after night, he’d visited and trained her until she had control of her powers. And once she was able to channel them, he’d taken her to the Vanishing Isle, where her kind lived, and had introduced her to the other gods.

There for centuries they’d been friends.

Even though Arik had eventually gone Skoti- turned into the evil dream gods who preyed on humans as they slept-she’d still been grateful to him for his guidance. So much so that she’d never pursued him in the dream realm to fight against him as she’d done other Skoti.

But Cratus had no one to protect him . ..

A fact that became brutally apparent an instant later when the air around him surged. Delphine started to go in, but an inner sense told her not to.

Something bad was about to happen.

She could feel the evilness of it. The fierce power went down her spine, painfully, and it froze her to the spot.

In the blink of an eye, one of the deadliest of all creatures materialized over his sleeping form. At first glance Azura appeared small and frail. But appearances were most deceiving. The very heart of evil, she was deadlier than any creature except for her brother and sister. Her skin was blue to mirror the icy coldness of her heart. Her hair, eyes, eyelashes and lips were snow-white. Dressed in a black leather halter top and pants, she knelt down by Cratus’s side.

Delphine tried to transport in, but couldn’t.

Azura looked back over her shoulder and smiled as if she knew Delphine could see her. "You will all perish," she said softly before she reached out to touch Cratus on the arm.

He came awake ready to battle.

Azura dodged his hands. "Calm yourself, Titan. I’m not here to harm you."

Cratus froze as he found himself in the presence of one of the original gods of the universe. The only problem was, she was concentrated evil. Granted, she wasn’t quite as sinister as her brother, Noir, or sister, Braith, but she gave him a good run for his money.

"What are you doing here?"

She smiled. "You know what I’m here for, baby. I’ve come to make you an offer you won’t want to refuse."

He sneered at her. "I’m not interested in fighting for the gods."

She patted him gently on his face. "Sweetie, you so greatly underestimate us." She dropped her hand to his arm.

Cratus hissed in pain as the words his mother had placed there burned like fire. The agony was so fierce that he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He wanted to shove her away, but even that was impossible.

She whispered in the first language of the universe and as she did so, he felt his will slipping. His sight dimming.

Then the pain was gone, and his heart was as empty as the sty he called home.

"Follow us, Cratus, and you will serve at the right hand of the masters. No one will ever be able to turn you again."

He wanted to tell her no, but the part of his heart that resisted was closed and sealed. Instead he saw all the centuries of his suffering. Felt all the degradations he’d been through, starting with Zeus pinning him to the floor with his lightning bolts.

As the son of Warcraft and Hate, he wanted revenge.

No, he burned for it.

"Come with me, Cratus, and we will make Zeus beg you for mercy."

"I live in a world where if something seems too good to be true, it always is."

She gave him a sweet, placating smile. "Not this time. You will have all the power you want. All the money you could ever imagine. No more crawling to a boss you loathe. No more being tortured on the human plane. No more having to fight with the gods who cursed you to this." She leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "Revenge…"

Revenge.

She nuzzled his cheek with hers. "Take my hand, Cratus, and I’ll take you far away from this misery to a place where you will never again want for anything."

Don’t do it. There was more to this than what she told him. There always was. He knew it deep inside and yet as he lay there, all he saw was the past. The unending cycle of misery that Zeus had given him.

If nothing else, at least Azura would kill him and put him out of this suffering.

He had nothing to live for. Nothing.

Dying was easy. He’d done that every night for thousands or years. But to have one minute free of what his life had been… He would take it.

His gaze burning into hers, he nodded. "I’m yours."

Laughing, Azura took his hand. "Then come, my precious warrior. Let us rain fire and destruction on the Olympians and humans. The final war has begun."

CHAPTER 2

Delphine staggered back in horror. She tried her best to flash into Cratus’s room to stop them.

She couldn’t. Azura had her blocked and wasn’t about to let her in.

"No!" she shouted at them. But it was too late. They were gone from his apartment, and he was now in the hands of ultimate evil.

What were they going to do?

How could this have happened?

Most of all, why couldn’t she have stopped it from happening? She shouldn’t have waited for him to go to sleep. She should have let him know she was here and stayed on him no matter his protests. They should have kept him in their sights until he caved.

But that was neither here nor there. Would’ves, could’ves, should’ves didn’t change the fact that Cratus would now fight against them.

Damn.

There was only a tiny handful of gods who could draw power from the Source and most of them had already defected to Noir’s side. Out of the ones left on their side, none could touch Noir’s skill. Only Cratus had been strong enough to fight against them. Worse, she’d now have to face Phobos and Zeus with her failure.

She’d be lucky if they didn’t kill her.

But she wasn’t a coward. Things had unraveled and she needed to let them know as quickly as possible so that all of them could adequately prepare for the war that was coming.

And their inevitable defeat.

Look on the bright side. You’ll most likely be dead in a few minutes instead of imprisoned for eternity.

Swallowing, she wanted to run and hide. To find one place of safety in the world.

If only she could. But there was no safety now. Noir and Azura were back, and they wouldn’t stop until they had all of them in chains.

Until they had the world of man conquered.

Her heart thundering in fear, she left her small room to travel to Olympus. To the hall of the gods, where Zeus and the others usually gathered at this time of day to eat, gossip and plot. As a demigod, she’d mostly avoided the place. She’d never felt welcomed there. The gods had their cliques and she tried to stay out of the line of fire, especially since so many of them had horrific jealousy issues. She’d heard of lesser gods being turned into all kinds of monsters for no other reason than one of the gods happened to look at her while his wife was present. Not wanting to become a gorgon, deformed spider or some other such, Delphine had avoided the place at all costs.

Until today.

Swallowing a fear a Dream-Hunter shouldn’t be feeling, Delphine pushed open the doors to see over three score gods gathered there. Apollo played on his lyre while Aphrodite and Ares shared a bowl of ambrosia. Hermes was with Athena, playing a game of chess with miniature live pieces.

Zeus rested contentedly on his throne while Hera sat beside him, talking to Persephone. It was a cozy scene that she really hated to disturb.