Stryker shrugged nonchalantly. "Why bicker over split hairs?"
"True. After all, we have much larger grudges against each other than that."
Stryker's eyes turned dark, his expression deadly. "Then you refuse?"
"No. War has to be stopped, and it will take the whole of us to do it."
"The whole of who?"
Before Ash could answer, Nick appeared beside them.
Curling his lip, Stryker stepped forward to attack him.
Ash forced Stryker back and put himself between the two. "Think of your daughter. You kill him, we're screwed and she's dead."
Stryker cursed. "Fine. But once War is put down, I'll be after the two of you again."
Grinning snidely, Ash let go of Stryker and stepped to the side of the two men. He held his hand out. "Works for me. For the ones we love, today we're allies. Tomorrow we resume our natural order of mortal enemies. Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely for all of us, have we an accord?"
Nick covered his hand with his own. "I'm in."
Stryker hesitated. "For Medea." He placed his hand over theirs.
Tory gave a light laugh. "What a freaky alliance this is. So what do we do now?"
Ash didn't hesitate with his answer. "You stay here."
She growled at him. "Acheron-"
"No arguments, Sota. I swear, it'll be fine."
"We've had this macho discussion before, and you normally lose."
It was true, he did have a hard time saying no to her, but for all that, she was more than reasonable, which was why he loved her. "And I know you're fully capable of holding your own. The gods know, I'm not strong enough to stand against you for long, but in this, I need a clear head which means I need you out of harm's way."
"Fine. But anything goes wrong and I'm coming in."
"Nothing's going to go wrong."
She looked at Nick and then Stryker before she returned her gaze to him. "You are such an optimist. My Spidey-sense is tingling all over the place."
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "That's from eating the ice cream. Relax."
Danger snorted. "Relax. Trust me. It'll be all right. Isn't that how I ended up dead?"
Ash grimaced at the reminder. "Stop feeding her anxiety."
Simi perked up at his comment. "Anxiety. The Simi's never eaten that before." She looked at Danger. "Is that tasty?"
"Not really."
"Oh. Maybe we should put barbecue sauce on it. Everything's better with barbecue."
Ash shook his head. "And on that note, we're going to plan our strategy."
Tory moved to his side. "That I can do."
Yes, she could. Taking her hand, Ash led her and the others to Savitar's office where they could outline their attack and share what each knew about War and his weaknesses.