"The Happy Hunting Ground." If Trates wouldn't tell him where Ravyn was hiding, he knew one person who would.
"Cael?"
Cael paused as he heard Acheron's voice behind him. He turned around on the sidewalk to see him walking through the night's mist. There was something really spooky about Acheron. There always had been.
He'd first met Acheron on September 15, 904, on a cool night much like this one in Cornwall. Cael had been covered in the blood of an entire raiding party of Vikings that night. The fires he'd started had singed his hair and blistered his skin.
But he hadn't cared. All that had mattered had been avenging his wife, brother, mother, and sister who had been slain by the Vikings.
Even after all these centuries, he could still see Morag's beautiful freckled face, hear the gentle lilt of her voice as she called out his name. With hair redder than the sun and a smile every bit as radiant, she had been his entire world.
Her and his baby sister who'd been on the brink of adulthood.
Corynna had held eyes so blue they rivaled the sky and a laugh so musical that it should have belonged to a songbird.
And his father had sold them all into slavery to save his own life. But the Vikings hadn't wanted slaves. They'd wanted victims to practice on. Bound in chains, Cael had watched helplessly as every one of them had been tortured and killed for fun while their cries of pain and pleas for death had echoed in his ears.
Not even his own death had been able to silence their agonized voices. It hadn't erased the sight of them being beaten and dismembered. There were times even now when he came awake, shaking from the memory of it.
Acheron had appeared to him after he'd taken his vengeance on those who'd preyed on his family, and had shown him, a simple peasant bastard, how to fight the Daimons and how to live again when he had nothing in this world worth living for.
He owed everything to the Atlantean leader of the Dark-Hunters. Had Acheron not shown him how to put the past behind him and go forward with his life, he'd have never made it to this time and place.
Never made it to Amaranda.
Through her, he'd found the one thing he'd thought was lost to him forever.
Love.
Most of all, she gave him solace, peace, and acceptance. She was his haven in a harsh life that had been nothing but violence and fighting until the day she'd entered it. And he would do anything to hold on to that and to her.
Except hurt Acheron. Cael was nothing if not loyal, and he hated being torn between the two people he loved most in this world.
He offered Acheron a lopsided grin and used a greeting from one of Acheron's favorite cartoons. "Greetings, O Great Gazoo. How nice of you to join us here on planet Earth again."
Ash rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Barney. How's Betty and Bam Bam doing?"
"Great, if I could only get them away from Wilma and Pebbles. Those women are nothing but trouble."
"Nah, they're good women. It's the ones in red who are always the downfall of good men."
Laughing, Cael extended his hand to Acheron. "Ain't it the truth, my braither?"
Ash reached out and took his hand. Cael went to clap him on the back, only to have him move out of reach.
Cael didn't miss the grimace Acheron quickly hid. "You okay?"
Acheron shrugged his shoulders as if trying to alleviate something uncomfortable. "I hurt my back earlier. It'll be all right though."
Cael nodded. "It's good to be immortal, huh?"
"Some days, anyway."
They grew silent as they stood out on the open street, in front of a small coffee shop where a group of college students were lolling about, studying and talking while music filtered out of the store. Cael wasn't far from home, but he had no intention of taking Ash there. He'd always kept as much distance as possible between his boss and his wife.
Acheron knew things that no one had a right to know and it always chilled him.
"Did you need something?" Cael asked.