"You!" Amanda screamed and started for the door.
Cliff caught her. "Not so fast."
"How could you?" she asked Cliff. Then she turned to glare at Desiderius. "I don't understand why you're here. How?"
Desiderius sighed. "Please don't make this any more cliche than it has to be. It's bad enough that I had to stoop to such a primitive ploy to trap Kyrian. Now you expect me to dump my entire plan on you so you can escape and kill me?" He shook his head. "You know, I watch bad movies, too."
Suddenly, she felt Desiderius in her thoughts. Felt him goading and prying into her memories. Her head ached and swam as bizarre images played through her mind. Images of Desiderius embracing and caressing her. Of his breath on her neck.
Worse, Amanda felt the barriers of her mind collapsing under the pressure of his fierce mental onslaught.
"She is as you promised, Cliff." His voice came at such a faint distance. Like a vague whisper on the wind. "Her powers are pure, virtually untouched."
"I know. It's what drew me to her the first time I met her." Cliff smiled. "And with the information we gathered on how Kyrian fights from that night in the alley, we should have no trouble defeating him."
Desiderius paused as he looked upon the lesser beast. He considered humans to be the lowest of low. They were, after all, only food for the gods.
The only thing below them were mongrels such as Cliff. Half Apollite, half human, the sniveling coward had served his uses.
All in all, he should be grateful that Cliff's Apollite father had died before he could impart the real truth of the boy's heritage to him.
As for Cliff's human mother...
Well, she had been a tasty morsel.
Desiderius had always known having a mongrel for a pet would one day pay off. All the years of having to rear the vile creature didn't seem so repulsive now.
And when Cliff had found this little sorceress in his own office, Desiderius had bided his time waiting for Cliff to expose and develop her psychic powers before Desiderius took her soul and her powers along with it.
But she had been resistant.
Who could have guessed the outcome of all this? After Cliff had panicked and broken up with Amanda over her sister's behavior, Desiderius had known he would have to act quickly to claim the sorceress before she escaped their clutches.
As soon as Cliff told him how close the twins were and how often Cliff had been inside Tabitha's home, Desiderius's plan had formed.
When he had handcuffed Amanda to the Dark-Hunter, he had pretended to confuse her with her sister, hoping Amanda would panic and use her powers to kill the Dark-Hunter to protect Tabitha. He'd never dreamed she would reach into her powers to protect the Dark-Hunter.
Not that it mattered.
Now with the channel open, she was ripe for the plucking.
"You will bring me over now?" Cliff asked. "Make me immortal, too?"
"Absolutely."
Amanda barely registered the sight of Desiderius walking over to Cliff and taking him into his arms. She saw his fangs flash an instant before Desiderius sank them into Cliff's willing neck.
Her head swimming even more, she felt herself floating toward the floor. Too late, she realized her thoughts were no longer her own.
Kyrian paused in the heart of the French Quarter looking around as his long black leather coat billowed around his legs. Tourists lined Bourbon Street, walking around, oblivious to the danger. Some of them paused as they caught sight of him dressed in black, wearing his sunglasses because the garish lights hurt his eyes.
He could hear the cacophony of jazz, rock, and laughter mixing in the cool winter winds.
Numbing his mind to the distractions, he reached out with both his powers and his technology and still he had no sign of Desiderius.
"Dammit," he snarled.
He rubbed his aching shoulder where Tabitha had attacked him.
As he massaged the pain, the image of Amanda replaced her sister's. He saw her laughing face the way she'd been last night draped over him as she made the tenderest of love to him. No one had ever touched him so deeply.
"Because I love you."
Those words seared his heart. More so because he had heard her feelings in her voice. She meant them in a way no woman had ever meant them before.
She loved him.
And he loved her. Loved her so much that inside he wanted to die knowing he couldn't have her. The Fates were cruel bitches. He'd learned that centuries ago. And yet on this cold night, that one basic fact burned inside him.
Come to me, Amanda, I need you.
He flinched at the thought.
"Don't think about it," he whispered, knowing it was futile.
If he could have one single wish...
He forced the thought away. He had a mission to accomplish. He must stop Desiderius.
His phone rang. He pulled his cell phone off his belt and answered it.
It was Talon. "Ash wanted me to tell you something weird is going down. The Daimons are attacking in droves tonight. I've nailed ten so far and he's on the tail of four more. He wants you on your toes."
"Tell Gramps not to worry. Everything is quiet in the Quarter."
"All right, just don't get jacked out there."
"Don't worry. I can handle myself."
"By the way," Talon said. "Eric is with Tabitha. He said she's loose in the Quarter, hunting Desiderius, too."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"I wish. Ash was tailing her in the Garden District, but had to let her go when he spotted a group of Daimons after tourists."
Kyrian hung up at the same time his tracker hummed. It signaled that there were Daimons nearby. Grabbing his tracker from his coat pocket, he trailed their neural activity to a side alley a block away.
He entered the darkened area to find six Daimons attacking four humans.
"Hey!" Kyrian called, distracting them from their victims. He smoothed back the edge of his coat and pulled out his retractable sword. Pressing the stone on the hilt, he extended it out to its full five-foot length.
"Tell me," Kyrian said to the Daimons as he twirled it around himself, "have you ever seen a pissed-off ancient Greek general?"
The Daimons passed a wary look among themselves.
Kyrian fell into his crouch with his sword held in both hands as he sized them up. "It's not a pretty sight. Really."
"Get him!" the leader called and at once they rushed him.
Kyrian caught the first one with a parry that caused him to explode into powder. He twisted around like a graceful cat and caught a second one with an upper cut to the middle. The Daimon gasped and vaporized.
Before Kyrian could rebound from that attack, one of the Daimons caught his sore arm and clawed the sword from his grasp. Kyrian twisted and caught him with the toe of his boot. He too evaporated.
Another one caught him about the waist and rammed him back against the wall.
The other two closed in.
He kicked at the one on his waist at the same time the two approaching him vaporized.
He saw Tabitha standing on unsteady legs. "Eat steel, you vampire dogs," she said as she tossed a throwing star at Kyrian.
Stunned by the fact she had tossed it to him as protection and not to harm him, he caught it in his hand and used it to kill the last Daimon.
By the time he reached Tabitha, she was kneeling on the ground. Her neck was bleeding steadily, her face pale. Kyrian tore part of his shirt to make a compress, then dialed for an ambulance.
"Eric?" she asked, her voice strained as she tried to see into the darkness where the other victims lay. "Is he dead?"
"I'm right here, baby."
Eric staggered over to where they were. He fell down beside Tabitha and gathered her into his arms.
"She's not going to die," Kyrian assured him.
Eric nodded. "I tried to tell her not to come out tonight. That it was going to be bad. She doesn't listen."
"It runs in the family."