He looked at Ann, a small, beautiful blond Daimon female, and nodded. "The demons are no longer welcomed here. We extended our hands in friendship and they repaid us in bloodshed." Little surprise really, a demon was a demon. He should have known better than to think they could ever combine forces with the gallu. "But that's all right. What we lack in numbers we make up for with vicious and cunning. We are Daimon and we are Spathi. Now let us show those bastards what we can do."
His men shouted in approval.
Savitar laughed behind him.
Stryker cast him an angry glare. "You find something funny, Chthonian?"
"Yeah, I do. I find it hysterical that your new lease on life is named War."
He gave Savitar a look to let him know what he thought of him-not much. "At least I have a lease."
"True, but you do know what the problem with a lease is?"
"What?"
"They usually run out sooner than later. And if you're not paying close attention to the fine print, you always get burned."
"You're not scaring me."
"Don't want to scare you. But if I were you, I wouldn't leave my women out in the open too long while I trifle down here. War has a nasty way of spilling over into peaceful areas, if you catch my meaning."
A bad feeling went through Stryker. Surely War wouldn't . . .
Of course he would.
His heart hammering, Stryker knew he had to get to Medea and Zephyra before it was too late.
ZEPHYRA LOOKED UP FROM HER DESK AT THE sound of a light tapping on her door. "Come in, love," she said, knowing by the sound of it that it would be Medea.
Sure enough, she pushed the door open to peer into the room. "Am I disturbing you?"
"No, baby. I was just straightening up a bit."
Medea arched one brow at that. Zephyra couldn't blame her. She was, after all, horrifyingly tidy on her worst day. But it was a ner vous habit she had. Whenever things were confusing, she had a compulsive need to clean what she could.
"How's our guest?" she asked, trying to distract her daughter from that bold scrutiny.
"Eyeing a couple of the priestesses for dinner. I've already warned him that they're off the menu even though he thinks they'd be quite tasty."
"Good. I don't want to fight Artemis on that."
Medea entered the room and closed the door. "You still love him, don't you?"
"Love who?" she asked, trying to make light of the question. "Davyn? I don't even know him. The only thing I love about him is his absence."
"My father."
She hated how pointed Medea could be at times. "I don't love him, either," she said dismissively. "I can barely stand his presence."
"And yet you light up every time he looks at you."
Zephyra put a stack of papers into the garbage can. "Don't be ridiculous."
Medea stopped her as she started for her desk again. "I know you, Matera. You've always been very calculated and cold. For centuries I've worried that my stupidity had killed something inside you."
She frowned at her daughter. "What stupidity?"
"Living with the humans. Being naive enough to think that so long as we didn't harm them, they wouldn't harm us. I still remember what you said to me a few weeks before they attacked us. 'You can't tame a wolf and expect it to lie before your hearth in harmony. Sooner or later, the nature of the beast sets in and it does what its instincts tell it-it kills.' I thought then that you were talking about us, but you weren't. And after we were attacked-after you were almost killed trying to save me-something inside you died. That piece of sympathy for others. The ability to have mercy."