The Darkest Kiss

In his left hand he held the black Scythe of Death, a weapon Lucien would have loved to seize and use on the cruel god, for it could cleave the head from an immortal in only an instant. As Death incarnate, the Scythe should have belonged to him, anyway, but it had disappeared when Cronus was imprisoned. Lucien wondered how Cronus had managed to find it—and if he could find Pandora’s box so easily.

“I do not like your tone,” the king finally replied, deceptively calm. A timbre Lucien knew well, for he used it himself while trying to keep his emotions under control.

“My apologies.” Bastard. Despite the weapon, Cronus did not look powerful enough to have broken free from Tartarus and overthrown the former king, Zeus. But he had. With brutality and cunning, proving beyond any doubt that he was not someone to antagonize.

“You met the wild and elusive Anya.” Whisper-soft now, the god’s voice drifted through the night, yet it was a lance of power so strong it could have felled an entire army.

Lucien’s dread increased a hundredfold. “Yes. I met her.”

“You kissed her.”

His hands clenched—in headiness at the memory, in fury that the passionate moment had been watched by this hated being. Calm. “Yes.”

Cronus glided toward him, as silent as the night. “Somehow she’s managed to evade me for many weeks. You, however, she seeks out. Why is that, do you think?”

“I honestly do not know.” And he didn’t. Her attention to him still made no sense. The ardor of her kiss had been faked, surely. And yet, she’d managed to burn him, body, soul and demon.

“No matter.” The god reached him, paused to stare deeply into his eyes. Cronus even smelled of power. “Now you will kill her.”

At the proclamation, Death rattled the cage of Lucien’s mind, but for once Lucien wasn’t sure whether the demon did so in eagerness or resentment. “Kill her?”

“You sound surprised.” Finally releasing Lucien’s gaze, the god brushed past him as though the conversation was over.

Though it was only the barest of touches, Lucien was knocked backward as if he’d been hit by a car, muscles clenching, lungs flattening. When he righted himself, trying to catch his breath, he wheeled around. Cronus was walking into the darkness, soon to disappear.

“If it pleases you,” he called, “may I ask why you want her…dead?”

The god did not turn as he said, “She is Anarchy, trouble to all who encounter her. That should be reason enough. You should thank me for this honor.”

Thank him? Lucien popped his jaw to quiet the words longing to burst from his lips. Now, more than before, he wanted to cleave the god’s head from his body. He remained in place, though, knowing just how brutal the gods’ retribution could be. He, Reyes and Maddox had only just been released from an ancient curse where Reyes had been forced to stab Maddox every night and Lucien had been compelled to escort the fallen warrior’s soul to hell.

The death-curse had been heaped upon them by the Greeks after Maddox had inadvertently killed Pandora. How much worse would the Titans’ punishment be if Lucien assassinated their king?

While Lucien did not care what they would do to him, he did fear for his friends. Already they had endured more torment than anyone should know in a hundred lifetimes.

Still, he found himself saying, “I do not wish to do this deed.” I will not. Destroying the beautiful Anya would be a curse all its own, he suspected.

He never saw Cronus move, but the god was in his face a heartbeat later. Those bright, otherworldly eyes pierced Lucien like a sword as his arm extended, the Scythe hovering before Reyes’s neck. “However long it takes, warrior, whatever you have to do, you will bring me her dead body. Fail to heed my command, and you and all those you love will suffer.”

The god disappeared in a blinding azure light, gone as quickly as he’d appeared, and the world kicked back into motion as if it had never stopped. Lucien could not catch his breath. One flick of Cronus’s wrist and he could have—would have—taken Reyes’s head.

“What the hell?” Reyes growled, looking around. “Where did she go?”

“She was just here.” Paris spun in a circle, scanning the area and clutching his dagger.

You and all those you love will suffer, the king had said. Not a boast. Absolute truth. Lucien fisted his hands and swallowed a surge of bile. “Let us go back inside and enjoy the rest of the evening,” he managed to get out. He needed time to think.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Paris began.

“No,” Lucien said with a shake of his head. “We will speak of this no longer.”

They stared at him for a long, silent moment. Eventually, each of them nodded. He didn’t mention the god’s visit or Anya’s disappearance as he strode past them. He didn’t mention Cronus or Anya as they entered the club. Still he didn’t mention them as the men scattered in different directions, their gazes lingering on him in puzzlement.

When Reyes tried to move past him, however, he held out a restraining hand.

Reyes stopped short and glanced at him in confusion.

Lucien motioned to the table in back, the one he had previously occupied, with a tilt of his chin. Reyes nodded in understanding, and they strode to it and sat.

“Spill,” Reyes said, reclining in his seat and staring out at the dance floor as casually as if they were merely discussing the weather.

“You researched Anya. Who did she kill to earn imprisonment? Why did she kill him?”

The music was a pounding, mocking tempo in the background. Strobe lights played over Reyes’s bronze skin and dark-as-night eyes. He shrugged. “The scrolls I read gave no mention of why, only who. Aias.”

“I remember him.” Lucien had never liked the arrogant bastard. “He probably deserved it.”

“When she killed him, he was Captain of the Immortal Guard. My guess is Anya caused some sort of disaster, Aias meant to arrest her, and they fought.”

Lucien blinked in surprise. Smug, self-serving Aias had taken his place? Before opening Pandora’s box, Lucien had been captain, keeper of the peace and protector of the god king. Once the demon had been placed inside him, however, he’d no longer been suitable and the duty had been stripped from him. Then he and the warriors who helped him steal the box had been banished from the heavens altogether.

“I wonder if she means to strike at you next,” Reyes said offhandedly.

Perhaps, though she’d had the opportunity to do so tonight and hadn’t taken it. He would have deserved it, though, no doubt about it. When they’d first come to earth, he and his friends had caused nothing but darkness and destruction, pain and misery. They’d had no control over their demons and had killed indiscriminately, destroyed homes and families, brought famine and disease.

By the time he’d learned to suppress his more menacing half, it had been too late. Hunters had already risen and begun fighting them. At the time, he hadn’t blamed them, had even felt deserving of their ire. Then those Hunters killed Baden, keeper of Distrust as well as Lucien’s brother-by-circumstance. The loss had devastated him, shaking him to the core.

Understanding the Hunters’ reasoning had no longer mattered, and he’d helped decimate those responsible. Afterward, though, he’d wanted peace. Sweet peace. Some of the warriors had not. They’d desired the destruction of all Hunters.

So Lucien and five other warriors had moved to Budapest, where they had lived without war for hundreds of years. A few weeks ago, the remaining six Lords had arrived in town, hot on the heels of Hunters who had been determined to wipe Lucien and his men from the world once and for all. Just like that, the blood feud reignited. There would be no escaping it this time. Part of him no longer wanted to escape it. Until the Hunters were eliminated completely, there could be no peace.

“What else did you learn about Anya?” he asked Reyes.

The warrior shrugged. “As I mentioned outside, she is the only daughter of Dysnomia.”

“Dysnomia?” He worried two fingers over his jaw. “I do not remember her.”

“She is the goddess of Lawlessness and the most reviled immortal among the Greeks. She slept with everything male, no matter if he was wed or not. No one even knows who Anya’s father is.”

“No suspicions?”

“How could there be when the mother in question had several different lovers each and every day?”

The thought of Anya following her mother’s path and taking multiple men to her bed infuriated Lucien. He hadn’t wanted to want her, but want her—desperately—he had. Did. Truly, he’d tried to resist her. And would have, until he’d realized who she was and rationalized that she was immortal. He’d thought, She cannot die. Unlike a mortal, she cannot betaken from me if I indulge in her. I will never have to take hersoul.

What a fool he’d been. He should have known better. He was Death. Anyone could be taken. Himself, his friends. A goddess. He saw more loss in a single day than most endured in a lifetime.

“Surprised me,” Reyes said, “that such a woman could produce a daughter who looks so much like an angel. Hard to believe pretty Anya is actually wicked.”