"Then how do you feed?"
"He literally opens a vein, drains his blood into a cup, and gives it to me to drink. I know it's disgusting. I know you're horrified. But if I don't feed, I return to what I was and I don't know if it's true or not, but Artemis claims that if I return to a Shade, there's no way to bring me back again."
She thought about that until she remembered something he had told her yesterday. "But you said you were different from the other Shades. Do they drink blood too?"
"No. Acheron brings them back another way."
"And that would be?"
"I don't know. Acheron never shared that secret with me, probably because he knows I'd want to kill him for the injustice of it."
She couldn't blame Alexion there. Ash really had screwed him up. "So how did he learn this other way?"
He sighed. "About three hundred years after he brought me back, he met a..."-he hesitated as if searching for the right word-"teacher who taught him how to use his god powers. Savitar is the one who showed Acheron how to bring back the dead without using blood for it. But it was too late for me. Because I live off his blood, he and I are bonded much like two classic Hollywood vampires."
Now they were back to being gross again. "So he has to feed from you too?"
"No. Well, actually I guess, in theory, he could. But I think he'd rather die than feed from a man."
Oh, yeah, like the alternative was any better. "So he feeds off women? Stryker was right, he is a Daimon."
"Calm down," Alexion said, taking her hand in his. "He's not a Daimon or an Apollite. And he doesn't prey on people. He only feeds from one person and she's not human either."
And in that instant she understood who. "Artemis."
He nodded.
Everything made sense now. No wonder Acheron put up with all of them. He really had no choice. "So neither one of you can eat?"
"We can eat. We just don't have to. I don't eat out of habit. Since I can't taste food, it's rather futile."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because you do need food to fuel your body, and I want you to live a long and happy immortality."
"You summoned me, akri?"
Stryker turned away from his window, which looked out onto the city in Kalosis where daylight never shone. The lights there sparkled like diamonds in the darkness, while his people lived in fear of the gods who had cursed them and the one god who had saved them.
Being one of the first who was cursed, he, unlike the majority of the others here, knew what it had once felt like to have sun on his skin. He remembered the time when he'd loved his father, Apollo, when he would have given his life for him.
And then in a fit of anger over a Greek whore, his father had cursed the entire race he'd created. Every Apollite adult, every Apollite child... even Apollo's own son and grandchildren had been cursed so that they could never walk in daylight again.
Stryker's wife, who had been Greek, had been spared the curse. But his sons and daughter hadn't.
Strange how after eleven thousand years he couldn't remember what Dyana had sounded like, but he still recalled his daughter's precious face. She'd been lovely until the day she had died on her twenty-seventh birthday, cursing her grandfather's name as she disintegrated into dust. To his eternal pain, she had refused to turn Daimon and be saved.
His sons hadn't. They had followed in his footsteps and had sworn allegiance to Apollymi, the Atlantean god who had shown them how to feed on human souls so that they didn't have to die. For centuries his family had been virtually intact.
Until his aunt Artemis had created her damned Dark-Hunters.
One by one, his sons, her blood nephews, had been destroyed by the Dark-Hunters she sanctioned.
Except for Urian...
The pain of that thought was enough to drive him insane. He wanted his son back with a need and grief so strong that it was crippling.
Now it was just him. He, alone, was left. So much for his dreams of eternity spent with his family.