Acceptance.
She had confused him, aggravated him, and made him deliriously happy.
When she had died, she had taken him with her. He had survived physically, but not his heart.
It had died that day too.
And he'd never thought to desire a woman that way again. Not until he had felt the warmth of a graceful artist's hand on his skin.
The mere thought of Sunshine was enough to make him feel sucker-punched.
"Get her out of my head," he said between clenched teeth. He would never again let himself be open to so much excruciating pain. He would never again hold someone he cared for in his arms and watch her die.
Never.
He had been hurt enough in his life. He couldn't stand any more.
Sunshine was a stranger to him and she would remain that way. He didn't need anyone.
He never had.
Talon froze as an odd noise on the wind intruded on his thoughts. It sounded vaguely like a Daimon feeding...
He pulled his Palm Pilot out of his jacket pocket and opened up his tracking program. Designed to pick up traces of the Daimons' elevated neuron activity that came from their psychic abilities, the tracking program allowed Dark-Hunters to pinpoint any concentration of Daimons after dark. During the daylight hours while the Daimons rested, their brain activity was too human for the trackers to be of any use.
But once the sun set...
Those little brains of theirs started snapping and humming.
Talon frowned at his findings.
It showed nothing and his Dark-Hunter senses didn't pick up a Daimon either, but his gut instinct was off the radar.
He headed toward a dark alley. A woman stumbled out, falling against him. Her eyes were glazed as she glanced up at him. There was a small bite wound on her neck that was healing even as he looked at it and the collar of her blouse held traces of blood.
"Are you okay?" he asked as he righted her.
She smiled a smile that was delirious and vague. "I'm fine. Never better." She stumbled away from him and headed into the building to his right.
In that instant, he knew what had happened.
Unmitigated rage descended on him as he stalked farther into the alley where she'd been. He saw the dark shadow and knew it in a heartbeat.
"Damn you, Zarek. You better lay off the feeding crap while you're in this city."
Zarek wiped the blood away from his lips with his hand. "Or what, Celt? You going to hit me?"
"I'll rip your throat out."
He laughed at that. "And kill yourself in the process? You don't have it in you."
"You have no idea what I'm capable of. And you better pray to whatever god you worship that you never find out."
His expression pure evil, Zarek smacked his lips in a way Talon knew was designed to piss him off thoroughly.
It worked.
"I didn't hurt her. She won't even remember it in three minutes. They never do."
Talon moved to grab him, but Zarek caught his hand. "I warned you not to touch me, Celt. No one touches me. Ever."
Talon shrugged off his hold. "You swore an oath, just like the rest of us. I won't have you preying on innocents in my town."
"Oooo," Zarek breathed. "How cliche, little partner. Wanna tell me to be out by sunup, or better yet, this town ain't big enough for the two of us?"
"What is your problem?"
Zarek started past him.
Unwilling to let him prey on someone else, Talon shoved him against the wall. His own back throbbed viciously as if he'd been slammed against the wall too, but he didn't care.
He wasn't about to let Zarek have free rein over the lives of innocent people.
Zarek's eyes flared with hatred. "Let go of me, Celt, or I'll rip your arm off. And you know what? I don't care if I lose both of mine in the process. That's the difference between us. Pain is my friend and ally. You fear it."
"Like hell I do."
He shoved Talon away from him. "Then where is it? Hmmm? You buried your pain the night you left your village in flames."
Talon paused at the words, wondering how Zarek knew that, but his anger overrode it as he thought about Zarek judging him. "At least I don't wallow in it."
Zarek laughed at that. "Do I look like I'm wallowing? I was having fun with her until you showed up." He licked his lips again as if resavoring the feeding.
"You should try it sometime, Celt. There's nothing like tasting human blood. Haven't you ever wondered why the Daimons feed before they take human souls? Why they don't just kill the human quick? It's because it's better than sex. Did you know you can see straight into their minds when you do it? Feel their emotions? For one instant, you actually bond with their life force. It's one hell of a high."
Talon glared at him. "Nick's right, you are psychotic."
"The correct term is sociopathic and yes, I am. But at least I have no delusions about myself."
"Meaning?"
He shrugged. "Take your meaning wherever you can find it."
The man was disgusting. Insufferable. "Why do you have to make everyone hate you?"
Zarek snorted at that. "What? You want to be my friend now, Celt? If I clean up my act, will you be my buddy?"
"You're such an asshole."
"Yeah, but at least I know what I am. I have no pretensions. You don't know if you're a Druid, a Dark-Hunter, or a playboy. You lost yourself a long time ago in the dark hole where you buried the parts of you that once made you human."
Talon was aghast at such a low, self-serving life-form trying to play sage with him. "You are lecturing me on humanity?"
"Ironic as hell, isn't it?"
Talon's jaw ticced. "You don't know anything about me."
With his silver claws flashing, Zarek slowly pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lit it with an old-fashioned gold lighter.
Putting the lighter back in his pocket, he took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaled the smoke, then cast Talon a sardonic, lopsided sneer. "Ditto."
With one last, parting grimace, Zarek walked slowly away from him, out of the alley and back toward the street.
"Lay off the feeding, Zarek, or I will kill you myself. I swear it."
Zarek raised his clawed hand and flipped him off without breaking stride or looking back.
Talon growled low in his throat as Zarek vanished into the night. How could Acheron stand dealing with him? That man could try the patience of a tree.
One day, Artemis was going to have to put Zarek down. In truth, Talon was astounded the order for Zarek's execution hadn't already been handed out. But then maybe that was why Artemis had sent him here. In Alaska, Zarek was on his home turf where he knew the terrain better than anyone and he would be able to avoid an executioner.
Down here, Zarek was at the mercy of Acheron, who knew these streets like the back of his hand. If the order came down, Zarek would have nowhere to hide.
It was definitely a thought.
Talon shook his head to clear it of Zarek. The ex-slave was the last person he wanted on his mind tonight.
His cell phone rang. Talon answered it to find Acheron's thick Atlantean accent.
"Hey, I'm down on Commerce Street in the Warehouse District. There's a murder scene here that I would like to confer with you about."
"I'm on my way." Talon hung up and headed to where he'd left his motorcycle.
It didn't take long to grab his bike and make his way over to the scene. Cops were everywhere, questioning witnesses, marking off the area, and taking notes and pictures.
A large crowd of locals and tourists had gathered to watch the spectacle.
His eyes aching from all the bright police lights, Talon parked his bike and made his way over to Acheron, whose hair was now blond.
Jeez, the man changed hair colors more often than most people changed socks.
"What's up, T-Rex?"
Acheron grimaced at the nickname, but didn't comment. He inclined his head toward the body that had been draped with a body bag, but not yet sealed up. "That woman died barely an hour ago. Tell me what you feel."
"Nothing." As soon as the word left his lips, Talon understood. Whenever someone died, their soul lingered for a brief time before it moved on. There was only one exception to that-when the soul was captured and trapped by someone else. "It was a Daimon kill?"
Acheron shook his head no.
"Is she a new Dark-Hunter?"
Again the no shake. "Someone fed on her until they drained the life out of her and could steal her departing soul. Then they ripped her apart with something like a claw. The police are trying to convince themselves that it's an animal, but the depth and precision of her wounds are too precise."
Talon went cold. "Claws like the ones Zarek wears?"
Acheron turned his head to stare straight at him. All Talon could see was himself in the dark lenses. "What do you think?"
Talon ran his hand along the edge of his jaw as he watched the police work over the area. This was disturbing.
"Look, T-Rex, I know you have a soft spot for Zarek, but I have to tell you that I found him having lunch a few minutes ago outside of a club. It looked like he was enjoying himself a little too much, if you know what I mean."
"So you think he killed this woman?"
Talon hesitated as he remembered what Zarek had said when he had caught him with the woman in the alley. I didn't hurt her. Was that an admission he had hurt someone else or was it a statement that he never hurt the women he fed on?
"I don't know," Talon answered honestly. "If you're asking me if he's capable, I'd definitely say yes. But I sure would hate to consign a man to Shadedom without more evidence."
Shadedom was the hellish existence that came to any Dark-Hunter who died without a soul. Since they no longer had a real body or a soul, their essence suffered eternity trapped between this plane of existence and the next. It was said to be the most grueling torture imaginable.
"So what do you think?" Talon asked. "Do you believe he did it?"
A slow smile slid across Acheron's face, but he didn't answer the question. The hair on the back of Talon's neck rose. Something about all this just didn't seem right.
For that matter, something about Acheron didn't seem quite right either.
Acheron took a step away from him. "I'll go talk to my good buddy Zarek, and see what he says."
Talon frowned. This definitely wasn't right. Acheron never referred to anyone as his "buddy."
"By the way," Acheron said. "How are you doing? You seem tense. Uneasy."
He was. It was like someone had opened a floodgate on his hormones and emotions, and he wasn't sure how to close it again.
But he didn't intend to burden Acheron with that. He could control himself.
"I'm fine."
Talon glanced away from Acheron for a second to watch the arrival of the coroner. "By the way, T-Rex, what happened to your nose stud and..." His voice trailed off as he turned back and saw nothing but empty space.
Talon looked about.
Acheron was gone. The only trace of his presence was two bloody shoe prints that marked the concrete where he'd stood a second ago.
What the hell?
Acheron had never done that before. Man, this night was getting stranger by the hour.
"... there's a disturbance on Canal Street. At Club Running wolf's..."
Talon's heart stopped at the words he overheard from a police scanner.
Sunshine.
Every instinct he possessed told him it involved her. He ran for his bike and quickly headed back toward the club.