Dream Warrior (10 page)

Asmodeus looked at Delphine, and his eyes widened again, this time in appreciation and interest. “Oh, hello, me lovely, we haven't met.” He flashed her a charming smile as he kissed her tenderly on the hand. “Asmodeus, demon extraordinare, at your service. Any service you may require, especially those that involve nudity and adjoining body parts joining other people's body parts.”

“Asmodeus!” Jericho snapped. “You don't see her, do you hear me?”

He jumped back as if something had electrocuted him. “Completely blind, Minor Master. Hearing is intact.” He put his hands out as if feeling for furniture. “Is there anyone here besides the two of us? No? Good. I'm leaving now unless Minor Master has another preferably nonpainful task for me.”

“You're dismissed.”

“Cool beaners.” Asmodeus vanished.

Delphine frowned at Jericho. “He's not right, is he?”

“Yeah, I think Noir may have hit him on the head one time too many and way too hard.” He faced her. “So would you like to join me for something to eat?”

“As long as it doesn't involve the entrails of demons, I might be persuaded.”

“Demon entrails have no appeal for me, either. Zeus's are another matter.”

She wrinkled her nose at the mere thought. “Ew.”

He held his hand out to her.

Delphine hesitated, wondering if she should be doing this instead of finding a way to M'Adoc and Deimos, but she couldn't get near them without Jericho. Maybe food would predispose him to a better, more amicable mood.

Against her better judgement, she took his hand in hers.

As soon as she did, he teleported them back to New Orleans, to a small dark alley at Exchange Place. It looked to be early evening, but it was hard to say for sure since time on earth moved differently than it did in other realms. What might seem like fifteen minutes in Azmodea might be a year on earth. A slight exaggeration, but …

She looked around the deserted alley that had closed and boarded-up shops. What a strange place to choose. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but this wasn't it.

“What are we doing here?”

He changed his clothes into a pair of jeans, a black shirt and dark hair before he started toward the street. “Going to eat. What? You got Alzheimer's?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No, but I don't see a restaurant around here.”

He gave her a “duh” stare. “If I put us inside the restaurant, people might scream and freak. Not to mention, it has a Web cam there that makes it even harder to just poof inside. Damn modern people and their wizard's tools,” he said sarcastically. “I miss the days when we could just kill and roast a chicken, huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “You really can't help being an asshole, can you?”

“I probably could, but it's not worth the effort. Gods forbid you might actually take a liking to me. Then where would we be?”

“I have no idea, but I might be willing to risk it.”

His eye turned dark. “You don't ever want to see what's inside me, Delphine. It's not pretty.”

Delphine reached up to touch the scar that ran out from under his eye patch.

He caught her hand in a fierce grip. “I didn't say you could touch me.”

“No, you didn't. Sorry.” She pulled her hand from his and watched as he walked stiffly to the street and toward a restaurant called Acme Oyster House.

Delphine followed even though her heart was heavy with guilt over eating while her brethren were suffering.

Win him over and you can save them.
What else could she do? So long as she lacked her god powers, she was at his mercy.

She winced as she finally understood the true horror of all he'd been through. It was so hard to be without the powers that had been a part of her almost the whole of her life. To be at the mercy of others. How had he stood it?

The world was terrifying like this. And it gave her a whole new appreciation for the humans who inhabited this place. Especially since they were the prey for so many more powerful beings.

She paused at the door while the hostess grabbed their menus and looked around at the gathered people. People who had no idea that Jericho was a god and she his prisoner …

The hostess seated them at a table in front of the window that looked out onto the street. Even though there were TVs playing and people talking, she could still hear the music from Bourbon Street, which was just a few feet away.

How she wished Deimos and the others could be here now and not in whatever holding cell Noir was using for them.

“Is something wrong?” Jericho asked.

She glanced at him and sighed. “I'm worried about my friends. It seems wrong to be eating while Noir is torturing them.”

Jericho set the menu down to give her a stern glare. “First of all, you don't want me to get too hungry. Ever. I'm an even worse bastard than normal and having starved for centuries, I'm not about to deprive myself again when I don't have to. Second, let me tell you something about your
friends.
Deimos held me down while I was branded and then took me to the human realm where I was left with nothing. No clothes, no money. Not a damn thing to call my own. Hence the aforementioned starvation.”

She cringed at what he described.

But he took no mercy on her. “A hundred years later, M'Ordant”—one of the leaders of the Oneroi who had been her mentor—“dumped me inside a Spartan prison camp and told the commander I was a traitor to their people. You don't really want to know what the Spartans did to people they thought betrayed them. D'Alerian”—the third leader with M'Adoc rounding out the crew—“had me put inside a Turkish prison in the fifteenth century where I was impaled after being tortured for three weeks.” His face was stoic, but the pain in his eye was excruciating. “So you'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them right now. At least no one's shoving a sharp spike up their asses.”

Her stomach shrank at the horrors of his past. “You were impaled?”

His expression turned to chiseled stone. “You know the worst part about impalement? You don't die immediately. You hang on bleeding and aching as the spike works its way slowly through your body until it pierces some major organ. Pray to the gods you worship that you never know what that feels like.”

But he did.

She looked away, unable to cope with the emotions that filled her. How could they have done that to one of their own? Then again, they'd been even crueler to others for reasons every bit as petty. It was why she'd done her best to stay off all their collective radar.

Her throat tight, she felt a tear slide down her cheek.

Jericho froze as he saw the sparkle in the cande-light. Without thinking, he reached out to touch her wet cheek. “Tears?”

She brushed his hand aside and wiped her cheek. “I'm sorry for what was done to you. I really am.”

Tears …

For him.

No one had ever cried for him before. And when she met his gaze, her hazel-green eyes glistened from the ones yet to fall. Something inside him snapped painfully at that. He made her feel pain. How could that be?

No, it wasn't possible. It was another trick meant to weaken him. Ruin him.

He growled low in his throat. “What are you doing?”

She looked confused by his question. “Nothing. Sitting here.”

He grabbed her wrist in his hand. “Are you playing me?”

“Playing you how?”

He tightened his grip. “I swear to you if you're trying to seduce me to your side, I will kill you. And it'll take a lot more than fake tears to sway me.”

She snatched her hand away from his hold. “Are you really that cynical that you don't think anyone could feel bad for the way you were treated?”

He didn't answer.

Delphine was aghast at him and his inability to understand compassion. Dear gods, with the lack of emotions he had, he should have been an Oneroi himself. “Fine, then. I'll be a total bitch since that's all you can take.” She flipped her menu open and started reading.

Jericho wanted to be angry and offended, yet he somehow felt …

Wrong.

He actually had to bite back an apology.

For what? He'd spoken the truth. He didn't want faked emotions that were designed to weaken him.

What if they weren't?

What if she was being honest and they were real?

Don't go there, fool. You know better. The very person who birthed you couldn't feel pity or compassion for you. How could a stranger?

It was true. He was nothing to her, and she was …

His reason for suffering.

He glanced at the menu, then looked back at her. Her brow was furrowed as she read and a lock of blond hair fell into her eyes. Her gaze was completely focused on the food. For some reason he couldn't fathom, he had a desire to brush that stray piece of hair back into place.

What is wrong with me?

“How did you grow up?” he asked before he could stop himself.

Her scowl made a deep impression on her forehead. “Pardon?”

“Your family. What were they like?”

Delphine started to tell him it was none of his business, but the sincerity in his eye kept her from it. He seemed to be genuinely curious, and she didn't want to anger him again. She actually liked their more calm discussions. Few though they were.

“I knew nothing of my real father.” It was something she'd never really talked about before. Mostly because no one ever asked or cared. “Arikos said my father was one of the Skoti who seduced my mother in her sleep.” And a part of her still wished he'd come forward to claim her once she'd joined their ranks. That was the human side of her that at least wanted a face to put with her mysterious procreator. It would have been nice to have known which of the thousands of them had fathered her.

But she didn't want to dwell on that. “My mother was a gentle woman. Lovely.” A tiny smile played at the edges of her lips as she remembered the beauty of her mother's face and the tenderness of her touch. She'd truly loved her mother, who had never once raised her voice to anyone. It didn't mean her mother didn't stand up to people. She just did it in a calm, sweet way that Delphine had always admired.

“She used to make these honey cakes that were so good they would melt before you could even swallow them.” She closed her eyes as her throat tightened with the part of her heart that still ached over the fact that her mother was no longer with her. “I asked her once what her special trick was to make them like that. She told me it was the love she had for me that she put into them.” Delphine blinked away tears at the thought.

How could she still miss a woman she hadn't seen in centuries? And yet there would always be a part of her that missed her mother and her mother's kind heart and gentle soul.

“Did you have a stepfather?”

She nodded. “He was a good man. A blacksmith. I used to take drinks to him while he worked, and he would make up funny stories to entertain me.” She even had the crude silver heart he'd made for her when she was a girl that bore his smith's mark. She kept it in a small box in her room on the Vanishing Isle. Even with muted emotions, she had loved them greatly, and that spoke more of them than it did her. The fact that they could make her feel what they did …

A part of her was sad that she hadn't possessed a completely human heart to give them all the love they'd deserved in return.

Jericho looked away from her wistful face, wishing he could relate. But the world she described was nothing like his childhood. His parents had seldom been kind and the two of them had fought ferociously.

“And siblings? Did you have any of those?”

She shook her head. “No. It was just me. I think it's why they doted on me the way they did.”

“And were they good to you?”

Delphine scowled suspiciously. Not that he blamed her. He was being nosy, but he had to know if he'd done right by her.
Please tell me I didn't suffer without reason.…
He needed to hear that he'd spared her more misery, though he wasn't sure why it was so important to him. All he knew was that a part of him would die if she'd been harmed in any way by his actions.

“Why do you care?” she asked.

“I'm curious.”

Still, suspicion hung heavy in those hazel eyes. She wanted a real reason, but he couldn't give it to her. “Yes, they were very kind to me. Even though we were poor, I never wanted for anything. I think since they couldn't have any more children, they lavished all their love on me.”

Jericho didn't know why that made his heart lighter, but it did. He'd chosen well for her parents.

Good.

She took a sip of water. “What about you? Did you have a good relationship with your parents?”

He snorted before he could stop himself. But why hide the truth? It wasn't like the whole of Olympus didn't know what kind of family he had. “My mother is the goddess of hatred and my father the god of warcraft. My sisters were the goddesses of force and victory, my brother the god of rivalry. Let's just say those personalities don't lend themselves to a calm, peaceful home. Any time things started to go too smoothly, Zelos was there to stir everyone up and get us going at each other's throats.”

And those were the good memories. His father had spent his childhood making them all “stronger.” His mother filling them with hatred because in her words, “Love is fickle and it will betray you. But hatred lasts forever. It gives you strength and it will never leave you cold.”

The fact that the other gods, including Zeus, swore on his mother and then were terrified to break those oaths for fear of her wrath, pretty much said everything there was about his mother's “dainty” personality.

Her idea of tucking her young into bed had been to throw him into a lava pit and watch as he almost drowned.