Red Demon (4 page)

“On your knees before me, Daphne? After so many years? That is the right place for you.” He shifted slightly on the throne, leaning forward so that their eyes met. “But it does not change the Spartans’ fate. I am only beginning to toy with them, sister. Only beginning to reveal the cracks in their pitiful foundation. Your precious king? I suspect he’s feeling a bit
older
, recently. And older still with every passing day.”

She wrestled to keep her voice calm. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I’m sure you will learn soon enough. Perhaps it is your beloved you should ask?” Ares studied his fingernails absently. “He already suspects the truth.”

She felt her blood run cold, her skin prickle with dread. Hadn’t Ares mentioned something similar, that day by the river two months earlier when he’d wrenched her away from Leonidas, forcing her to become invisible to him again? What had he said then? She tried desperately to recall the god’s exact words.

“I cannot ask him.” She shook her head slowly, maintaining a steady gaze on her brother’s cruel face. “Leonidas and I have no relationship. Not anymore.”

She’d ended their relationship after the battle in Hades, fearing that Ares might use their love as an excuse to hunt the king down. And she’d cried herself to sleep every night since.

“Oh, come now.” Ares licked his lips as if tasting the remnants of a delicious fruit. Rising from the throne, he took her hand, pulling her to her feet. “You are finally visible to your noble king, just as you prayed for over the past thousands of years. Surely the nubile bloom of love has not wilted already?” He pressed a hand to his lips in a feigned display of shock. “Or, perhaps it is the brave
commander’s
rose that has wilted? Is the old man unable to satisfy you, dearest Daphne?”

She reached to slap him without thinking, furiously defending Leonidas against such a rude insult—and their broken relationship against the cruel slander. She’d have been at Leo’s side right now had she not been protecting him from Ares’ jealousy and vengeance.

As her palm nearly connected with Ares’ cheek, he seized her wrist, twisting it harshly. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sister.”

“Half sister.” She squirmed in his grasp, desperate to be free, but he spun her hard against his chest.

He pinioned her close, and a long lock of his golden, silky hair fell across her cheek. “Oh, Daphne, you are my greatest disappointment, don’t you see? Not the Spartans. Not even your precious Leo. You.”

He brushed his lips against her ear, his breath smelling like overripe wine. “And it is because of your disobedience that the Spartans will—no, they must—be punished.” His wet mouth grazed her cheek. “And it is because they turned upon me that they shall be eliminated.”

Then, with a harsh shove, he sent her sprawling out of his grasp and across the polished floor. He barely noticed, railing at her furiously.

“Consider their pitiful human frailties! The way they moon and long for love as if they did not have the very power of the
gods
in their blood,” he thundered, raising a proud fist toward the peak of Olympus. “I made them lords among men, sired by my eternal power!” He lowered his voice contemptuously as he paced the floor. “I made them glorious. Far more glorious than they’d been at Thermopylae. The fools. They could have had any lover they craved, any creature they lusted for . . . male or female, human or immortal. Oh, but even
that
was not noble enough for your—”

Ares pulled to a full stop, the rest of his sentence dying on his lips. He smiled in cryptic amusement, as if he hid the cleverest of secrets.

She stepped toward him, knowing instinctively that his clever secret was dangerous, deadly. “For a god, your thoughts certainly wander, my lord.”

“My thoughts are as strategic and precise as ever.” His calculating tone chilled her. “Especially regarding your old king.”

“Please tell me what you intend to do. To Leonidas. The Spartans.”

He answered by raising both arms, a cyclone forming between them, whipping at her gown, tearing at her hair. The wind intensified; the floor beneath her feet seemed to split wide-open.

“You must . . . tell . . . me. . . .”

Her outcry was already lost in the grist of time and changing space, and then pure darkness engulfed her.

A
ri had survived more battles than he honestly remembered. Had died and been brought back to life after what was arguably history’s most famous conflict. Yet throughout that long, eternal tide, he’d never actually found himself at war with a
literal
battlefield.

Until now.

Standing on the opposite side of Savannah’s West Jones Street, eyeing his quarry, he reminded himself that the four-story brownstone was nothing more than a physical structure. A dwelling that had stood for more than one hundred years, a brick-and-mortar home where Emma’s mother happened to currently live.

But it was hers
, another voice argued.
You courted Juliana inside those same walls.

No wonder he could practically feel his knees knocking together. The reaction was enough to make him duck his head in shame: he, a brave Spartan warrior, one of Leonidas’s most daring and bold, felled by a
woman
. And a dead one, at that.

The live oaks along the street created wavering shadows in the dark, mirroring his mood. Their limbs swayed overhead, as if reaching toward the heavens themselves. A gale had hit the barrier islands earlier in the evening, causing sudden surges of wind as a hurricane built strength much farther off the coast. Not unusual weather for the low country in late October, but the heavy, sporadic gusts of wind haunted him nonetheless.

It had been on a night much like this one that he’d seen Juliana for the last time. They’d thought it a simple storm that late-August night, the sweeping, sudden breezes pleasant after weeks of blazing heat. How wrong they’d all been, he especially, and about everything he held true.

Suddenly it was the twenty-first century again, Emma shoving him in the center of his back. “Come on, Ari,” she scolded. “Get it over with. You’ve spent two months avoiding this moment.”

He grunted at her. “Yeah, Lowery, Juliana may be your great-great-aunt, but it’s not
you
she wants to talk to.”

“Why so scared, big guy?” Emma moved in front of him, staring up into his eyes. Much as he adored the woman, he could’ve done without the familial gaze.
Blasted heredity
, he thought, trying to avoid the ethereal blue of her eyes that were so much like Juliana’s own as she continued. “You’ve faced down legions of Persians, battled demons and Olympian gods. What could ever intimidate you?” She gave him a playful slug in the arm. “Huh, Petrakos?”

“Uh, maybe one little fact.” He widened his eyes dramatically, raising his voice. “That Juliana’s a freaking
ghost
? Nothing like getting a phone call from the dead to shake things up a little.”

Emma waved him off. “Puh-lease. It’s my mama who’s been calling you, not Juliana.”

“And who keeps on calling me, persistent female that she is.” He dropped his voice lower, muttering, “Must run in the bloodline.”

“Heard that. But you know you love me.” Emma linked arms with him, undaunted. Hers was truly a brave, conquering soul. From the moment he’d first met her on Tybee Island two months ago, they’d been good friends. Probably in large part because of how much she loved River. Best friends by proxy, and all that.

He resisted her tugging grip. “Hold up. Really. I’m still not so sure about all this.”

River appeared on his other side, the pair of them bounding him like the bun around some highly reluctant Oscar Mayer wiener. “Ari, man, what’s the harm in just hearing what Juliana’s got to say?” River gave him a shove of his own, and Ari had to admit, the duo took newlywed tag teaming to new levels. He also knew they were only here, shoving his ass toward the cobblestone street, because they loved him. Best friends were funny that way.

“I think we already covered this problem in the car.” Ari sulked, keeping both feet rooted to the sidewalk. He really was not going to take another step closer to that soul-sucking pit of a brownstone across the street. This was as close as he cared to get.

During the drive over, he’d given River and Emma a highly abbreviated account of his affair with Juliana, leaving out all the maudlin pain and heartbreak parts. He just couldn’t go there with either one of them, not tonight. Even though he’d played his cards close, there’d been a moment in the car when he suspected River understood far more than he was letting on.

River scowled up at him. “I thought you said you’d loved the woman.”

“Yeah, but Juliana isn’t exactly someone I’ve been hoping to hear from, like an old friend looking me up on Facebook. Got it?”

River smacked him on the back of the head and started across the street. “Aristos, troops are rolling out. Man up or pussy out.”

The words hit Ari in the gut like a battle charge—just as River had known they would. A challenge to his bravery and manhood motivated any Spartan into action.

“Fine,” Ari groused. “But if it gets too weird, I’m out of there.”

 

“Aristos! You’ve come to see me at last.” Cecilia Lowery, smelling of perfume, patted his cheek affectionately. “About time, too. Juliana is proving to be quite . . . persistent.”

Ari shivered at the statement but didn’t let on that he was afraid of what Juliana might want to say. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry about the delay.”

He heard Emma laugh as she followed him inside the house. “Such a polite young man,” she muttered under her breath.

He turned and gave her the evil eye, mouthing the words
shut up
.

He couldn’t help it if he talked trash to demons but grew polite around his elders. He’d have thought Emma, with her Southern manners, would appreciate that he’d been raised right.

As the trio filed through the main doorway into the hallway, Cecilia kissed her daughter and then embraced River, her new son-in-law. Words were exchanged, but Ari didn’t hear them; he was too focused on the skin-tingling energy that swept across his entire body the moment he entered the house.

There hadn’t been this kind of palpable electricity when he’d last visited the house more than two months ago. He’d come here with Emma then, shocked to realize that she was Juliana’s great-great-niece. Yeah, there’d been that cryptic communication from the spirit realm, the one where Cecilia brought out their family photo album. It contained a sepia print of him and Juliana standing together at a party in this very house, a photograph taken back in 1893. Juliana looking eternally beautiful in the high- necked Victorian dress with its intricate lace. He in that ridiculous suit she’d loved so much, the tailored one with the vest and shiny brass buttons he’d always thought might pop loose at any moment because of how big he was.

Now he kept that photo in his bedside table drawer, battling the urge to pull it out almost every night before sleep. And every morning when he woke. And anytime he went in the room to so much as change his socks. The damned picture burned a hole in his consciousness, creating a compulsion for Juliana that seemed to intensify with every passing day—and every new call from Cecilia.

“I’m supposed to give you this photograph,” Cecilia had told him at the time. He’d been blindsided enough as it was, but then she’d lobbed an even more powerful mortar—she’d asked whether he’d loved Juliana. Talk about being set up from the other side of death’s veil. He’d admitted the depth of his feelings for Juliana, confessing that he’d loved her more than any other woman he’d known throughout his immortal years. Including his onetime wife back in Sparta, although thankfully none of them had pressed
that
point.

He’d had a question of his own in return, had been burning to know—was it Juliana herself who’d supplied Cecilia with the question about his affection? Unfortunately, at that time Cecilia couldn’t respond with certainty.

However, in the days and weeks since that visit, Juliana had asserted herself more specifically to Cecilia, wanting Ari to know that she was the one who’d reached out to him that day. Not only that, but she’d continued summoning him through Cecelia to this very house—this same parlor that they now gathered in—ever since. A parlor that remained eerily similar to how it had been when Juliana owned the brownstone.

Sure, the times had changed: No more Victorian furnishings filled the high-ceilinged room; no more Chopin wafted from the music room down the hall. Beneath the new furniture and well-kept rugs, however, his imagination easily supplied images from his past—the way the rooms had appeared back in 1893. The year of his torrid love affair with Juliana Tiades.

“Have a seat, why don’t you, Aristos?” Cecilia urged in a warm tone, indicating the large sofa. Emma and River found spots on the smaller settee across from him.

Ari complied, sinking deep into the plush cushions, and wondered how fast he could beat a retreat if things grew too bizarre. Nervous and unsettled, he raked a hand through his nearly shoulder-length hair. He’d grown it longer in the past month, as he always did each year when fall approached; by midwinter it would fall loose across his upper back.

He fixed his gaze on the antique rug beneath his boots, feeling jumpy and eager to leave. That same burst of electric energy that he’d sensed the moment he entered the hallway kept buzzing all over his body, wrapping about him, working to burrow beneath his skin. Which wasn’t just disconcerting, but annoying as hell, too, because the fiery sensations were affecting him intimately. Far
too
intimately. Arousal speared him low in the groin as if someone were actually touching him there, and he felt his cock stir and twitch in reaction.

Was it Juliana seducing him that way? Hell, was she with them even now, having a laugh by pleasuring him while none of the others could see?