there’s no reason to even think about the past again.”
The singsong tones of his words seemed to hang in the air, even as he said good-bye and left the room. And alone, Callia turned to look out the window again toward the Aegis Mountains, which were now completely hidden by clouds.
Something of great value. The myth drifted into her mind again. That past her father was so ready for her to forget was the only thing left that she valued. That and the memory of a love she’d once known and the child she hadn’t. She could sacrifice a lot of things, herself included, but never the memory of either of those. And not her father, not Loukas, not even the reality that Zander was marrying another could ever convince her to do so.
“Holy fucking Hera.” The air seemed to leave Titus’s lungs on a gasp as he and Zander stood in the center of what used to be a small town high in the Cascade mountain range and stared at the destruction.
One dirt road led into the isolated settlement. No cars or vehicles could be heard through the trees. Around them everywhere, dead bodies littered the ground. But they weren’t just Misos. There were humans, half-eaten and mutilated, scattered throughout the carnage as well.
“Fuck me,” Zander said as he took it all in. The rotting carcasses, the blood-stained ground. The stench of death.This was much worse than any scene he’d come across in over eight hundred years.
Atalanta’s wrath was growing—and innocent lives were paying for it. When she’d still been confined to the Underworld, her daemons had hunted Misos to send their souls to Tartarus as payment to Hades for Atalanta’s immortality. But thanks to Casey and Isadora, Atalanta was no longer immortal. Now she was determined to create as much suffering as possible in her need for vengeance against the Argonauts. All because she’d been banned from the group millennia ago.
Zander thought the body near his feet had at one time been a human woman, but it was now nothing more than mangled flesh and organs. His stomach rolled. The daemons also killed to feed. Theron had warned that the daemons would become more aggressive and start hunting humans as well as Misos in their need to regain the strength they were no longer getting from the Underworld.
Now, as he looked out at the gruesome sight around him, Zander believed it. He also knew the war had shifted for good. For hundreds of years he’d roamed this earth thinking he was protecting humans. Now he was doing it for real.
Across the bloodied field, he spotted Theron talking with a man as big as he was, waving his hands and pointing off toward the tree line. Nick, Zander realized as he and Titus drew closer, the leader of the half-breed colony in this part of the world. Zander had met Nick before, a week ago, when he’d been sent to the Pacific Northwest with Titus to run patrol in these mountains. So far his interactions with the half-breed had been limited, but there was a whole lot about Nick that just didn’t add up.
His size, for one thing. He was bigger than all the other half-breeds, and definitely far more aggressive. He was never seen without fingerless gloves and he also had a long scar that ran down his left cheek and disappeared into thecrease of his mouth. The jagged ridge wasn’t the result of a claw or even a blade like the daemons used. It had come from something else. Some kind of weapon Zander had never experienced before.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing about Nick. There was something about him that screamed human and Argonaut all at the same time, something not even Theron seemed to know how to explain. And since that combination was completely impossible, it made the situation that much weirder.
Theron motioned over Zander and Titus. Nick didn’t bother to glance up or acknowledge them, just smoothed a map out on what looked to be a door strung between two sawhorses. The muffled cries of Misos checking for survivors floated on the air.
The singsong tones of his words seemed to hang in the air, even as he said good-bye and left the room. And alone, Callia turned to look out the window again toward the Aegis Mountains, which were now completely hidden by clouds.
Something of great value. The myth drifted into her mind again. That past her father was so ready for her to forget was the only thing left that she valued. That and the memory of a love she’d once known and the child she hadn’t. She could sacrifice a lot of things, herself included, but never the memory of either of those. And not her father, not Loukas, not even the reality that Zander was marrying another could ever convince her to do so.
“Holy fucking Hera.” The air seemed to leave Titus’s lungs on a gasp as he and Zander stood in the center of what used to be a small town high in the Cascade mountain range and stared at the destruction.
One dirt road led into the isolated settlement. No cars or vehicles could be heard through the trees. Around them everywhere, dead bodies littered the ground. But they weren’t just Misos. There were humans, half-eaten and mutilated, scattered throughout the carnage as well.
“Fuck me,” Zander said as he took it all in. The rotting carcasses, the blood-stained ground. The stench of death.This was much worse than any scene he’d come across in over eight hundred years.
Atalanta’s wrath was growing—and innocent lives were paying for it. When she’d still been confined to the Underworld, her daemons had hunted Misos to send their souls to Tartarus as payment to Hades for Atalanta’s immortality. But thanks to Casey and Isadora, Atalanta was no longer immortal. Now she was determined to create as much suffering as possible in her need for vengeance against the Argonauts. All because she’d been banned from the group millennia ago.
Zander thought the body near his feet had at one time been a human woman, but it was now nothing more than mangled flesh and organs. His stomach rolled. The daemons also killed to feed. Theron had warned that the daemons would become more aggressive and start hunting humans as well as Misos in their need to regain the strength they were no longer getting from the Underworld.
Now, as he looked out at the gruesome sight around him, Zander believed it. He also knew the war had shifted for good. For hundreds of years he’d roamed this earth thinking he was protecting humans. Now he was doing it for real.
Across the bloodied field, he spotted Theron talking with a man as big as he was, waving his hands and pointing off toward the tree line. Nick, Zander realized as he and Titus drew closer, the leader of the half-breed colony in this part of the world. Zander had met Nick before, a week ago, when he’d been sent to the Pacific Northwest with Titus to run patrol in these mountains. So far his interactions with the half-breed had been limited, but there was a whole lot about Nick that just didn’t add up.
His size, for one thing. He was bigger than all the other half-breeds, and definitely far more aggressive. He was never seen without fingerless gloves and he also had a long scar that ran down his left cheek and disappeared into thecrease of his mouth. The jagged ridge wasn’t the result of a claw or even a blade like the daemons used. It had come from something else. Some kind of weapon Zander had never experienced before.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing about Nick. There was something about him that screamed human and Argonaut all at the same time, something not even Theron seemed to know how to explain. And since that combination was completely impossible, it made the situation that much weirder.
Theron motioned over Zander and Titus. Nick didn’t bother to glance up or acknowledge them, just smoothed a map out on what looked to be a door strung between two sawhorses. The muffled cries of Misos checking for survivors floated on the air.
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