Enslaved (32 page)

“I’m thinking he needs a place to regroup. To figure out what to do next. He can’t do that when they’re on the run. They’re moving west. Toward where Maelea used to live. It’s worth checking, isn’t it?”

Thoughts of the redhead who’d been snooping in Maelea’s room at the colony pinged around in Titus’s brain, but this time the thoughts weren’t personal. Or so he told himself.

He pulled out his phone and dialed.

“What’s the story?” Theron said as soon as he answered the call.

“The redhead,” Titus said, looking at Orpheus and Skyla, who were watching him with curious eyes. “She was looking for Maelea. I need to talk to her. She might be able to help us figure out where Gryphon is taking Maelea.”

“I let her go.”

Disbelief and panic rushed through Titus before he could stop it. “You
what
?”

“She wasn’t here for Maelea,” Theron said matter-of-factly. “She was here for something else. Something we don’t need or want to get involved with. Where are you? What’s the line on Gryphon?”

Titus’s vision swam. Theron had let the female go. The first person ever whose thoughts he couldn’t hear. Though he knew she was someone he was better off leaving alone, he couldn’t stop the panic rushing through him.

Where
would
she
go? How will I find her? Why the hell did Theron let her go?

“Titus?” Theron said in his ear. “Where are you?”

His mind snapped back to the present. “Um…Idaho.”

“You’ve got a lead on Gryphon?”

“Yeah, we think so. Maybe.” Holy hell. What was he going to do about the redhead?

“Is Maelea still with him?”

He needed to pull his head out of his ass. He needed to focus on the here and now. He swiped a hand across his forehead. “It seems that way.”

“Tell me where you are and I’ll have Nick send men your way to help you search. There’s been a rash of daemon activity in the area, and the rest of the Argonauts are dealing with that.”

No way. Titus didn’t want Nick’s men in on their search. Not ever, if he could help it. Nick was still out for blood, after what Gryphon had done. “I’ll call when we know more.”

“Titu—”

He clicked off the phone and shoved it into his pocket before Theron could tell him what the hell to do.

“Who’s this redhead?” Skyla asked.

“A female who showed up at the colony looking for Maelea. Said she was a friend.”

“Maelea doesn’t have any friends,” Orpheus pointed out, his brow drawn low.

“Yeah, that was my thought,” Titus told him. “But she wanted to find her. For whatever reason. I didn’t get much out of her except that Maelea has property both in Seattle and up on Vancouver Island.”

Excitement flared in Skyla’s green eyes. “Where on Vancouver Island?”

“I don’t know,” Titus answered.

Skyla turned to the computer and pulled up a new search screen. “This might be our first break.”

Titus wasn’t so sure. Vancouver Island was a big place, and the redhead—Natasa—could just have been fucking with him to get him to back off.

The redhead…shit. He had to stop thinking of her. She was not his priority now. Gryphon was.

Or so he told himself.

Pushing aside thoughts of her that would only get him into trouble, he looked toward the computer screen. And prayed they found Gryphon before the jackass did something they couldn’t undo. “Let’s hope you’re right, Siren. Because if you’re wrong, the time we waste looking could just mean Maelea’s life.”

***

Atalanta paced the length of her hall. Outside, snow swirled and spit against the side of her ancient fortress, but she barely cared. The cold lived inside her. It was the only thing of comfort to her these days.

“This should not take so fucking long! I’m losing my patience with all of you.”

The archdaemon at the front of the pack—Stolas—bowed. “My queen, we will find him.”

“When?” she asked, stalking down the three steps to glare into his hideous eyes. “He’s killed all the daemons you’ve sent after him.”

“He’ll make a mistake.”

She ground her teeth, fought the urge to yank the sword from his scabbard and decapitate the bastard. Killing him wouldn’t help her find her
doulas
. If she didn’t get Gryphon soon, they’d run out of time to find the Orb before the six months Krónos had given her was up.

“Send more daemons.” She grasped the sides of her long, red robe and climbed back up to her throne, refusing to believe even for a second that she wouldn’t succeed. She would not go back to the Underworld. Not to be his slave. She was a god. And she was destined to command all. “Gather hybrids to join in the search.”

“My queen,” Stolas said, “the hybrids are unpredictable.”

She turned to glare at him. “Then make them predictable. I will have your head if you fail me here, Stolas.” Fear filled his eyes. She averted her gaze and looked out over the ten daemons behind him. “I will have all your heads.”

“My queen,” a daemon to the back of the pack said. “There is one avenue we have not investigated.”

Atalanta’s eyes narrowed. “Who said that? Come forward.”

The pack parted, and a daemon dressed in a long black trench coat moved to stand next to Stolas. One whose body and eyes looked…vaguely familiar.

“What is your name?” Atalanta asked. Where had she seen him before? And who had he been in the human realm before trading his soul for a second shot at life in the Fields of Asphodel?

“Naberus, my queen.”

Naberus…the name meant nothing to her. But then, daemons rarely took on names that resembled those they’d used as humans.

She didn’t miss the glare Stolas sent the newcomer. Or the smug expression Naberus shot back. He was challenging the archdaemon, and they both knew it. Something very few daemons even thought about, let alone attempted.

“Tell me what you know,” Atalanta said, shaking off the strange feeling that she knew this daemon from somewhere. “Or I’ll have your head now.”

“My queen,” Naberus said, “the Argonaut travels with a female.”

Atalanta cut her gaze to Stolas, whose eyes flew wide. “Why did you not tell me this?”

“I…I did not know for certain. I—”

“It is your job to know all.” She looked back to Naberus. “Who is she?”

Naberus shot a wicked smile Stolas’s way, then looked toward Atalanta. “Zeus and Persephone’s daughter. She goes by Maelea. The one who led the Argonauts to the Underworld to free your
doulas
in the first place. Sources confirmed this to me.”

Fire rushed through Atalanta’s veins. “What sources?”

Naberus shrugged. “Hellhounds I tortured.”

Fury raged through Atalanta. She flew down the steps.

Naberus didn’t move, but Stolas lurched backward and held up his hands. “My queen! Hellhounds lie. We’re not sure it’s her.”

She grasped his sword by the hilt, pulled it out of its scabbard, and stabbed him straight through the heart.

His eyes flew wide. He dropped to his knees at her feet. She pulled the blade free, arced back and decapitated the useless beast. His body slumped forward.

Looking toward Naberus, Atalanta barked, “Kneel. Quickly.”

Naberus did so without even an inkling of fear.

Atalanta tapped the sword against his shoulder and uttered the magical words that infused him with her powers as archdaemon. When she was done and he pushed to his feet, he’d grown at least a foot. And something in the way his glowing green eyes sparked hit her square in the center of the chest.

Slowly, still trying to figure out who he was, she handed him the sword. “Find her and you will find my
doulas
. And do it quickly. Or you will be my next victim.”

Naberus bowed with a sinister grin. “As you wish, my queen.”

***

The door slamming brought Max’s eyes open.

As footsteps echoed down the hall, he lay on his stomach in the dark of his bedroom, listening carefully. He’d been home in Tiyrns for several days. His dad came and went, as always, and his mom…she was freaking out, worried about what was happening in the human realm at the Misos colony. But because of him, she wouldn’t go back. Because his dad had ordered her to take him home.

Anger simmered under his skin. He wasn’t a baby. He didn’t need to be protected like one.

The door to his room creaked open. He slammed his eyes shut and lay still as stone, trying not to move a single muscle so they wouldn’t know he was awake.

“Zander,” his mother whispered from the doorway. “He’s asleep.”

Silence met his ears. He knew his parents were watching him. They were always watching, checking up on him. They didn’t trust him.

“Come on,” Callia whispered. “Let him sleep.”

The door creaked closed, but when he peeked, he saw they hadn’t closed it all the way. Light from the hall spilled into the room from a crack.

“Any luck finding Gryphon?” his mother asked in a low voice.

They’d moved away from his door, but Max could still hear them. And because they were talking about Gryphon, he listened closer.

“No, none,” Zander answered in a frustrated voice. “It’s like they all but disappeared.”

“He’ll turn up,” Callia said softly.

“When?” Zander asked. “He’s not stable,
thea
. Whatever the hell they did to him in the Underworld changed him. Every time I think about Max being there…”

“Max is fine,” his mother said.

“He’s not fine,” Zander tossed back, louder this time. When Callia shushed him, he lowered his voice. “He’s not fine and we both know it. Every day he grows more defiant. I can’t even talk to him anymore, and he’s angry all the time.”

“He’s struggling, Zander. We knew the transition wouldn’t be easy. We have to give him time.”

“And what if time doesn’t work? What if he gets worse? What if he ends up like Gryphon?”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do,” his mother said firmly. “Don’t even think that, Zander.”

Silence echoed like a hollow vat of nothingness from the hall, and Max’s heart rate shot up as he strained to listen.

“I never wanted this,” his father finally whispered from the hallway. “It’s not supposed to be this way.”

“I know,” his mother whispered back. Cloth rustled, and even without seeing them, Max knew they were hugging. His dad was always touching his mom one way or another. But not him. The only time his dad touched him was when he was mad, the way he’d been when he found Max in the tunnels of the colony. “We’ll make it work, Zander. Believe in that. Believe in us.”

A heavy sigh, followed by footsteps echoing down the hall, told Max his parents had finally moved away.

But in the darkness of his room, his heart rate didn’t slow.
I
never
wanted
this.
The words echoed in his head. Along with the ones his father hadn’t said:
I
never
wanted
him.

He swallowed hard and forced back the tears. His father thought Gryphon had become a monster because of his time in the Underworld. And now he was beginning to question whether Max was one too. He wanted to prove to his parents he wasn’t, but he didn’t know how.

He didn’t know anything except that he suddenly felt more alone than he ever had, even when he was in the Underworld. Because then, at least, he’d had the fantasy of a family who loved him to keep him company. Now he knew he didn’t even have that.

***

“
Delator
is not a word.” Gryphon stared down at the Scrabble board on the coffee table between him and Maelea, then shot her a look. Seated on the floor with the fireplace roaring at her back, she flicked him a
what
on
earth
do
you
mean?
expression that was so damn cute, he itched to wipe it from her mouth with his own.

It was hard to believe this was the same female who’d glared and scowled and plotted her escape every moment he wasn’t yelling at her. But things were different now. Ever since they arrived here a week ago, ever since that morning when he awoke and realized she cared for him, there’d been no more fear, no more animosity, no more anger. In its place there was nothing but heat and desire and need. A whole lot of need neither of them seemed to be able to sate.

“Yes, it is,” she said with a sexy little pout. “It’s Latin. A delator is an informant. All the Roman emperors used them.” She reached for letters from the table, flipped them over, and set them on her stand. “I met a few. Commodus had a special fondness for them. Used them to spy on his senators. Not a nice man, that Commodus. But he didn’t even totally trust his delators, and with good reason. They were a slimy, blood-sucking, greedy group of scum. That’s forty-three points for me.”