"What time is it?"
"It's eight-thirty, hon," Kat supplied.
Michelle looked back and forth between them. "You said you guys would go back to the Inferno with me, but if you don't feel like it..."
Cassandra caught the disappointment in Michelle's voice. "No, no, it's okay. Let me get dressed and we'll go."
Michelle beamed.
Kat looked at her suspiciously. "Are you sure you feel up to it?"
"I'm fine, really. I didn't sleep well last night and I just needed a nap."
Kat made a rude noise. "It's all that Beowulf you and Chris were reading. It sucked all the energy right out of you. Beowulf... incubus... same thing."
Now that was just a little too close to home for Cassandra's comfort.
She laughed nervously. "Yeah. I'll be out in a few minutes."
Cassandra shut the door and turned back toward her crumpled clothes.
What was going on here?
Was Beowulf really an incubus?
Maybe...
Brushing the ridiculous thought aside, she picked up her clothes and added them to the laundry hamper, then dressed herself in a pair of jeans and a dark blue sweater.
As she prepared to leave, a strange tingle ran through her. Something was going to happen tonight. She knew it. She didn't have her mother's psychic powers, but she did get strong feelings whenever something good or bad was going to happen.
Unfortunately, she just couldn't tell which one it would be until it was too late.
But something was definitely up tonight.
"Welcome to kolasi," Stryker said under his breath, speaking the Atlantean word for hell as he surveyed the leaders of his Daimon army that was ever ready to attack at his command.
For eleven thousand years, he, as the son of the Atlantean Destroyer, had led them.
Handpicked by the Destroyer herself and trained by Stryker, these Daimons were all elite killers. Their own brethren referred to them as Spathi Daimons. A term that had been bastardized by both the Apollites and Dark-Hunters who didn't understand what a true Spathi was.
Instead they applied the term to any Daimon who fought them. But that wasn't right. The true Spathi were something else entirely.
They weren't the children of Apollo. They were Apollo's enemies, just as they were the enemies of the Dark-Hunters and humans. The Spathis had long ago forsaken whatever Greek or Apollite heritage they might have had.
They were the last of the Atlanteans and were proud of it.
Unbeknownst to the Dark-Hunters and humans, there were thousands of them. Thousands. All far older than any pathetic human, Apollite, or Dark-Hunter dared dream. While the weaker Daimons lived in hiding on earth, the Spathis used laminas or bolt-holes to travel from this realm to the human one.
Their homes existed in another dimension. In Kalosis, where the Destroyer herself resided under imprisonment and where the lethal light of Apollo never shone. They were her soldiers.
Her sons and daughters.
Only a very select few of them could summon the laminas on their own-it was a gift the Destroyer didn't bequeath often. As her son, Stryker could come and go at will, but he chose to stay near his mother's side.
As he had for the last eleven thousand years...
All this time, they had planned well for this night. After his father Apollo had cursed them and left Stryker and his children to die horribly, Stryker had embraced his mother willingly.