It missed.
The Daimon laughed again. "Let's see if the Roman general dies crying for his human love the same way the Greek did."
Tabitha couldn't breathe as she heard those words. Kyrian wasn't dead. He wasn't.
"You liar!" she snarled.
She turned to watch Valerius fight the Daimon as more of them came running from the stairs. They swarmed into the room like angry ants.
Two of them grabbed her. Tabitha slugged them, but her blows seemed to glance off them without fazing them at all.
Valerius broke free from his opponent to hand her one of his swords.
She took it from him before she turned to face three Daimons. She stabbed the one nearest her, but he didn't explode.
He smiled at her instead. "You don't kill the servants of the goddess, human. The Illuminati aren't typical Daimons."
She swallowed her panic before it defeated her. "Valerius? What goddess are they talking about?"
"There's only one goddess, you pathetic fool. And it's not Artemis," the Illuminati said an instant before sinking his teeth into her neck.
Tabitha cried out from pain.
Suddenly, she was thrown away from them. She looked to see Valerius engaging the Daimons.
"Don't you touch her."
The Daimon tsked at him. "Don't worry, Dark-Hunter, before she dies, we'll all sample her blood. Just as we did her sister."
Tabitha screamed as pain racked her. "Damn you!"
Another Daimon seized her from behind. "Of course we're damned. The Spathi wouldn't have it any other way." He backhanded her, knocking her off her feet.
Tabitha tasted the blood on her lips, but she wasn't daunted. She wasn't about to let them get away with this.
As she stumbled away from the Daimon toward her sword that had skidded to the foot of the stairs, she glanced upstairs and froze. Horror consumed her.
Kyrian lay at the top of staircase, his body on the landing while his head rested on a step, his right arm fully extended. A bloodied Greek sword had fallen halfway down the stairs. His sightless eyes were open and a small trail of blood ran from his lips. But it was the gaping wound in his chest that held her transfixed.
They had killed him.
A few feet away from his body, two bare, feminine legs peeked out from under the hem of a pink nightgown in the doorway of the nursery.
And then she saw Ulric stepping over Amanda's body with a crying Marissa in his arms as he started for the stairs.
"Daddy!" the toddler wailed as she fought against the tight hold the Daimon had on her to reach her father. Pictures flew from the wall into Ulric, who paid them no heed.
"Daddy, Mama, get up." Marissa pulled the Daimon's hair and bit at him. "Get up!"
"Amanda! Amanda! Amanda!" Tabitha didn't know who at first was calling her sister's name as terror filled her. It wasn't until she couldn't scream anymore that she realized the hysterical shrieks were hers.
Grabbing her sword, she ran up the stairs for the Daimon. He knocked her back. She slipped on Kyrian's blood and went tumbling back down.
Valerius caught her from behind before she fell the whole way.
"Run, Tabitha," he breathed in her ear.
"I can't. That's my niece and I'll be damned if he's going to get her without a fight."