The Japanese woman stroked his arm. “Megan should be comfortable. Ares should be comfortable. I have an idea.”
He glanced at her and his eyebrows knitted hard as she released him and walked away. His gaze tracked her. Enyo’s did too. Mostly because she couldn’t take her eyes off her.
The brothers were all dressed similarly, wearing dark shades and plain modern clothing of jeans and T-shirts or shirts. Even some of the women in the group were dressed in such a manner. With the exception of two of them.
The witch, Cass, wore a slinky black dress that had a long slit up her thigh.
And the Japanese woman wore black and white striped stockings, a purple and black plaid pleated short skirt, and a neon pink T-shirt with violet skulls printed on it.
Enyo had never seen anything quite like her.
She went into a room beyond the low dining table to Enyo’s left and re-emerged with a flat red package.
“A fire blanket?” Daimon rolled his ice-blue eyes. “You’re as bad as each other.”
The woman pouted, her fine eyebrows furrowing above her dark chocolate eyes.
Esher growled and bared fangs at Daimon. “Aiko’s idea is a good one.”
Daimon raised his hands again. “Fine. Aiko’s idea is a good one.”
He muttered something else beneath his breath, and Esher looked as if he wanted to growl again. Aiko came to him and he shifted his focus to her instead, swept his knuckles across her cheek to clear her black hair from it and smiled down at her.
Looking proud.
Keras’s family had always been interesting.
It appeared the addition of the women had only made it even more interesting.
Esher suddenly stiffened and growled.
“Daemons.”
“Here?” Valen looked around him.
Daimon shot him a look that asked if he had lost his mind, or perhaps insinuated he was stupid, because Valen glared at him, lifted his right arm and rolled his hand upwards, extending his middle finger at the same time.
With his other hand, he typed on the screen of his own phone. “Calling it in.”
When Esher, Daimon and Calistos teleported, Enyo realised where the daemons Esher had sensed were.
She followed them, appearing on the rooftop of a neighbouring building in the heart of a cluster of skyscrapers in the centre of Tokyo.
Where the sun weakly beat down on her, not strong enough to take the chill from the air but strong enough to deter daemons. The breeds that had been banished from the Underworld, and even some of the ones who had been allowed to remain, were sensitive to sunlight. Exposure to it had a tendency to kill them if they didn’t seek the shadows.
“It is daylight,” she hollered to the brothers.
“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious,” Calistos said. “I don’t think they got the memo though.”
She frowned at him, tempted to put him in his place, but her gaze strayed beyond him when he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Over the rooftop where the gate was hidden, someone had cast a shadowy dome.
“That’s new,” Daimon muttered.
Esher slid him a look. “Are we sure they didn’t get their hands on any of Cassandra’s blood?”
“Look, magic isn’t something you just absorb… well, it is… but they’d need to know the spells.” Daimon shrugged, his voice losing conviction as he added, “Which I’m guessing they’ve been working on since we last saw them.”
That didn’t sound good.
“Holy shit, is that—” Calistos cut himself off when Esher suddenly disappeared. He looked at Daimon, who teleported too, and then at her. He hiked his shoulders, raising the hem of his black T-shirt. “Guess we fight.”
He disappeared too.
Enyo looked at the mass of shadows clouding the top of the next building, attempting to peer through them to see what the brothers had.
A lot of daemons swarmed the rooftop.
She stilled as she caught a flash of blonde hair and a face that looked eerily familiar.
The woman looked like the one who had been pursuing Calistos in the mansion.
It dawned on Enyo.
The furie.
She had heard that the brothers had one on their side, and that the other two were with the enemy. This woman had to be the remaining one of those two Erinyes.
A goddess of the Underworld.
Anger surged through Enyo’s blood, as hot as fire, roused by the thought that goddesses of that realm were turning against it and the god-king who ruled it.
Shameful, despicable creatures.
Power flooded her and she turned her sights on the woman, the world narrowing down to only her as she fought to hold herself back, to resist the pressing urge to leap into the fray and deal with the traitorous goddess.
This wasn’t her battle to fight.
The blonde froze and looked at her.
Their gazes collided.
Fear washed across the female’s features and she pivoted away from the gate as it began to open. She sprinted across the flat roof, and Enyo’s gaze leaped ahead of her, desire to know where the female was going filling her.
Violet-black smoke billowed near the edge of the roof, sparking with green lightning.
The female leaped into it.
One of the brothers swore.
Esher grabbed two daemons and both males shuddered, their eyes rolling back in their heads. He cast them aside, hurling them into the other daemons. “Are they testing our response time?”
Daimon unleashed two spears of ice. The first buried itself in the stomach of a female. The second clipped the shoulder of a male and sent him toppling over the edge of the roof.
Daimon raised his hand and paused, locking up tight. “Maybe they’re seeing how many they can lure away from the fucking mansion.”
He disappeared in a swirl of black smoke.
Esher and Calistos remained. Lines bracketed the corners of Calistos’s mouth as he swept his hands upwards, sending several daemons flying into the air. They broke through the shadows and entered the light, their screams filling the air as the rays of the sun struck them and their skin instantly began to blister.
Fear washed over her.
Coming from Calistos.
He wanted to return to the mansion too, was afraid for his furie just as Daimon had feared for his sorceress.
“Go,” Enyo said as she leaped across the gap between the buildings.
Calistos whirled to face her, surprise washing across his features, lighting his stormy-blue eyes. He nodded and teleported just as she landed beside Esher.
Esher glanced at her.
Nodded too.
He kicked off and she followed him, supplying only back up, never engaging the enemy herself. She dealt with the ones Esher maimed and left to bleed out, telling herself on repeat that she was only doing her duty as a goddess of war—claiming the dead from a battlefield.
He made swift work of the daemons, impressively vicious and efficient as he cut through them, using his power over water to make them bleed and his short claws and fists to deal blows meant to weaken.
Power suddenly pressed down on her, so intense she struggled to get air into her lungs and was forced to stop moving.
Her eyes widened as the shadows began to bend, to part, writhing violently as if they were attempting to resist.
When resistance was futile.
She pressed a hand to her chest, her heart labouring as the sense of power in the air grew stronger.
Perhaps she had been wrong.