"Why not? What does it matter anyway? We can't live together. Acheron will never allow it. "
"He's not stopping Cael."
Ravyn paused as he considered that. She was right. "Have you any idea what living with me would entail?"
She wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something foul. "If you're like most men, it probably means dirty underwear and socks on the floor. Toilet seat left up at night. You eating all my peanut butter and not telling me. But," she said in all seriousness, "you better not expect me to clean out that cat box. Erika needs chores, too."
He was stunned by her. She could always find humor in everything.
"Your life will be in constant danger."
"Excuse me? Do you have amnesia? Did you miss the last four dozen attacks on us? And that's not counting the doorjamb that almost decapitated me."
"Susan, I'm serious."
"So am I. I mean, yes, I would rather have had time to fall in love with you and I'd really like for you to be human. But no one's perfect. Granted most men are dogs and not cats... and I am allergic to you-"
He cut her words off with a kiss. "Look, we don't have to settle this right now. I'm asking you for the rest of your life. Literally. There's no such thing as divorce in our world. We have three weeks to act on this. So I want you to really understand what you're signing on for, okay?"
"Okay, but let's not forget that in three weeks, we could be dead or in jail, which for you would probably mean death anyway."
"True."
Susan let him pull her into his arms. She honestly wasn't sure about this, and she was glad he was giving her time to think it over. But she couldn't let him be alone and not have any shot for making a human connection again. That was just wrong and cruel. Especially given how kind he'd been to her through all this.
Still, they had a long way to go and it was getting scarier by the minute. She didn't know what tomorrow would hold. She only hoped that for them, there was a tomorrow, period.
"What do you mean, they got away?"
Trates sighed as he faced the human bastard he'd rather suck dry than deal with. But Stryker wanted this human alliance even if he thought it was completely stupid and beneath them. So here he was, playing nice with the chief of police when what he really wanted to do with Paul Heilig was rip his throat out and drink in his putrid soul.
"We had them trapped in an alley when Acheron showed up and killed every Daimon there. Now we're going to lie low until he leaves."
"Bullshit! You promised me my-"
"Listen to me, human," Trates sneered through his clenched fangs. "You don't want to mess with this Dark-Hunter. He's not like the others."
"They're still bound to the night and when something lives perpetually on the dark side of the moon, all you have to do is drag it into daylight to kill it."
Trates held his hands up. "I'm just here to tell you what Lord Stryker said. You do what you want. It's your funeral." He turned to summon the portal to return to Kalosis.
But as soon as he had his back to Paul, the chief of police ran at him.
Trates hissed as he felt a deep, biting pain in his heart. Gasping, he looked down to see a small sword blade piercing his chest... right through his Daimon's mark.
Paul jerked his sword out an instant before the Daimon exploded into gold powder. "You're wrong about that, Trates. It's your funeral. "
And soon there would be a lot more of them. If Stryker was too big a coward to do what was necessary to protect his children, then that was his loss. But Paul wasn't the same.
He'd already lost his wife to one Dark-Hunter, he wasn't about to lose his sons. No matter what it took, he was going to keep them safe.
Ravyn Kontis still lived and as long as he did, Paul could hear his wife's voice calling out to him to avenge her. And as long as a single Dark-Hunter roamed the streets of his city, his sons were at risk.
That he couldn't allow.
Pulling his cell phone off his belt, he called his deputy chief. "Hey, I need a search warrant."
"For?"