Talon frowned. He wondered briefly how Ash knew Sunshine was with him, but the man's powers were nothing if not scary. "I thought you told me to stay away from her."
"Things have changed."
Talon bit back a moan as Sunshine nuzzled his nipple with her teeth. Keeping her here was far from a hardship. "Are you sure I'm not needed tonight?"
"Yes." Acheron hung up.
Talon tossed the phone aside and looked at Sunshine with a devilish grin. This night just got a whole lot better.
It was near midnight when Ash left Club Runningwolf's.
Where the hell was Talon? He should be out on the streets, patrolling.
Ash had been trying to reach him for hours.
He called Nick again only to find out that Nick had neither seen nor heard from Talon either.
This was so unlike the Celt. He could sense that Talon was all right and not hurt, and if he wanted to, he could track Talon down. But Ash had never been that intrusive with his powers. Having been hunted and stalked, he couldn't bear to do that to anyone else. Not unless it was a dire emergency.
Free will was not something he would tamper with lightly.
As Ash returned the phone to his jacket, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
"Look how helpless she is..."
"Yes, but she's strong enough to feed us all."
The voices whispered through his mind much like Spider-Man's spidey-sense...
And the wall-crawler thought he had super powers.
Pah-lease.
Ash closed his eyes and located the source of the voices. Four male and two female Daimons were in an alley off Royal Street. He started for his motorcycle, then stopped himself. There was no way he'd reach them in time by conventional means.
Glancing around, he made sure no one could see him, then he gathered the ions in the air around him. He let his body disintegrate into nothingness and used his powers to bend the physics of time and matter.
Unseen, he whispered through the city, straight to the alley where they had a woman cornered. She stood cringing, surrounded by the Daimons, her arms wrapped about her.
"Please don't hurt me," she begged. "Just take my purse and leave me alone."
The tallest Daimon raked his hand through her hair and smiled evilly. "Oh, this won't hurt. Not for long anyway."
Acheron solidified. He summoned a shield for the woman, to protect and confuse her. In her mind, she would see and remember an unknown figure scaring her attackers away.
In reality, he whistled.
The Daimons turned toward him in unison.
"Hi," he said nonchalantly as he walked toward them. "You Daimons wouldn't happen to be planning on sucking the soul of an innocent human, now would you?"
They looked at each other, then started to run.
"Oh, I don't think so," Ash said, throwing another shield up behind them to keep them from fleeing the alley. "No Daimon gets out of here alive."
They hit the invisible wall and rebounded off it.
"Man," Ash said, feigning a cringe. "It really makes you feel for the bug on a windshield, doesn't it?"