Little did she know, she'd done that the minute he'd first seen her fighting the Daimons, and she'd been doing it steadily ever since.
Stryker had finally managed to calm himself. At least on the outside.
Inside he was still seething.
Damn the Destroyer and her lies and damn Acheron Parthenopaeus for his honesty.
If it was the last thing he did, he would rid the world of both of them. But he had to move carefully.
Strategically.
If the Destroyer ever learned that he'd been the one to give Aima to Desiderius so that the Spathi could wound Acheron, his life would be meaningless. No, he'd have to move with great skill to defeat them both, and he would.
Eventually.
The air around him sizzled with a request from Desiderius for a bolt hole so that the Spathi could return from New Orleans to the realm of Kalosis, the Atlantean hell realm.
Here there was no light. It was perpetually dark and dismal. Up until the night he had slain his own son, that hadn't bothered him.
Now it did.
Stryker held his hand out and opened the portal.
Desiderius returned, still a bodiless mist.
Stryker curled his lip at the incompetent Daimon. There had been a time once when he'd held the Daimon in regard, but Desiderius's failure against a simple Dark-Hunter and his human paramour had left Stryker completely disgusted with the being.
If it wasn't for the fact that he didn't want to bring himself under the fire of the Destroyer, he wouldn't have even allowed Desiderius this one chance to return to corporeal form. But in exchange for Desiderius wounding Acheron, Stryker was willing to reincarnate the Daimon.
"I thought you were going to-"
"What am I up against?" Desiderius asked as his faceless, formless essence flickered in the dimly lit chamber.
"You know what you're up against."
"No," Desiderius said. "What was that substance you gave me that took down the Dark-Hunter leader?"
"It's of no concern to you. Your only concern is to bring me the child."
"I don't understand why."
Stryker laughed. "And you never will. Bring me the child or I will blast you into oblivion."
If he didn't know better, he'd swear the ghost actually sneered at him.
"I was blasted out of the bitch's body by Acheron. They are now guarded. I need another body."
Stryker paused as he heard Daimons shrieking from outside his hall. No doubt Apollymi's Charontes were still seeking the one who had stolen the Aima from her.
None of them would look to him for it. They wouldn't dare.
In truth, he was in no mood to play any longer. His mother, the Destroyer, had said to wait.
He was through waiting.
The day he had spilled his own son's blood to appease the Destroyer was the day he had started to notice some things.
And when his mother had bade him to bring her the little child of a former Dark-Hunter and a human sorceress, he had realized something. That child, known as Marissa Hunter, held in her hands the very balance of the universe.