And the gate.
A great twisting orb of fire swept past it as his older brother, Ares, hurled his hands forwards, unleashing his power. It struck one of the daemons but the others were swift, easily dodging the attack. Marek wasn’t sure what species they were. Right now, they appeared as human as he did, but there was a chance they had another form. Some were scaly and lizard-like beneath their human skin, and some could transform into beasts, and others resembled the images of vile horned and winged demonic creatures that humans equated with the word.
Marek despised those ones most of all.
Ares looked back over his wide shoulders, his tawny hair tumbling loose from the thong that held the top half of it back. “He good?”
Marek was beginning to wish people would stop asking him that.
“Think so,” Daimon replied before Marek could answer for himself. “Got his illusion cherry popped so we get to interrogate him later about what he saw.”
The way Esher glared at Daimon, his eyes darkening dangerously, said that wasn’t going to happen. Marek glared at him too, because he was damned if he was telling them anything about what he had seen. His past with Airlea was his business and his business alone.
“It was a joke. Sheesh.” Daimon stepped, appearing beside Ares.
The two of them joined forces, Daimon launching spears of ice at the daemons to drive them back from the gate as Ares formed a wall of fire around it to protect it. As much as Daimon and Ares fought and bickered, they were a formidable pairing.
Esher looked down at Marek, and he could read what his brother wanted to ask him.
“I’m fine.” He dusted his knees off and huffed. “Give them hell.”
Esher grinned, flashing the sharp tips of his canines, but didn’t rush off to join the fight.
He casually lifted his left hand and curled his fingers into a soft fist.
Behind him, three daemons suddenly went down, convulsing violently.
Daimon was quick to teleport. Ares wasn’t so fortunate.
Esher tightened his fist and the three daemons exploded, spraying black blood everywhere. Ares released a wave of fire, catching most of the blood before it could hit him, but the rest rained down on him, splattering his face and soaking into his T-shirt.
He tossed Esher a black look as his jaw set hard, the muscles in it popping beneath his tanned skin.
Daimon didn’t miss a beat. He slowly raised his arms, his face etched with concentration as he reached deep below the dry earth with his power, drawing what moisture there was there to the surface. As his hands hit shoulder level, shards of ice shot up from the earth beneath two of the stunned daemons. The daemons shrieked and wailed as the glistening clear blue spears continued to rise upwards as Daimon gritted his teeth and strained to draw more water up, lifting them high into the air, and fell silent as a dozen smaller spikes of ice suddenly burst outwards from the main shard, ripping them apart.
Ares grinned and dodged as a daemon came at him, clearly enjoying tangling with them as he kept them from the gate.
Marek frowned as he realised the other brother he could sense hadn’t moved.
His gaze tracked right, towards the gate, and he froze as it landed on Calistos.
His youngest brother’s blond ponytail whipped around, the tails of his long black cotton coat flapping in the tempest that spun around him as he stared at the flat disc hovering a few feet above the earth in front of him. The dazzling vibrant colours of it reflected in his eyes as the concentric glyph-laden rings of the gate rotated lazily, flaring occasionally as it waited for a command.
Marek’s gaze leaped back to Ares. “You brought Cal? What the hell were you thinking?”
That earned him a scowl from Ares.
Marek ignored him and focused on Calistos. “Cal, look at me.”
Calistos didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge him as he stared at the gate, transfixed by it.
His eyes slowly darkening to black.
“It wasn’t my damn idea.” Ares broke away from the remaining few daemons, leaving Esher and Daimon to deal with them. “You messaged all of us!”
Marek cursed himself for that. He hadn’t been thinking. He should have been thinking.
Calistos started shaking his head, slowly at first as Ares hurried to him, but he was frantic and clawing at his hair by the time Ares finally reached him, blasting straight through the gate and disturbing the concentric rings. Ares stepped the second he had Calistos in his grip, but Marek knew it was too late.
By the time they landed wherever Ares was teleporting them, Calistos would have succumbed to the darkness of his past and the night they had lost his twin sister.
And he wouldn’t remember it or any of what had just happened.
And it would kill him.
“Damn it,” Marek muttered beneath his breath, fury burning in his veins, all of it directed at himself.
Calistos suffered enough as it was because of the amnesia. He didn’t need his own brothers triggering it for him.
Marek forced himself to focus on the gate as Daimon and Esher handled the remaining daemons.
If Ares and Daimon were a formidable pairing, then Esher and Daimon were a nightmare made flesh for any enemy that stood in their way. Esher preferred to use his power over water to make use of the abundant amount of it available in the cities when he fought, but here in the valley, the earth was baked dry from the summer heat and it hadn’t rained in more than a month.
Not that it was a problem for Esher.
He had developed a rather disturbing ability to command liquid in any form, and he liked nothing more than exerting that power on his foes.
Another shriek pierced the night and Daimon swept his hand across the air in front of him. A wall of ice shot up from the earth to protect him, blue one moment and black the next, drenched in foul daemon blood.
“Rein it in,” Daimon snapped. “I won’t forgive you if I get even a drop of that shit on me.”
“Rain it in?” Esher grinned.
The skies suddenly opened, rain pelting the earth from a cloud that hadn’t been there a moment ago, sending the scent of it into the air.
Daimon smiled slowly.
Over the daemons, every drop of rain became a tiny ice spear. Two of the daemons tried to run, but there was no escaping the torrent as more clouds built above Marek, spreading to block out the stars as they started to emerge.
Marek focused on the gate and watched as the concentric rings gradually slowed and the disc shrank, the colours losing their brilliance as each band disappeared. When it was the size of his fist, it disappeared with a violent purple flash that made him flinch.
Silence suddenly fell around them, the rain ceasing as quickly as it started.
“The illusionist?” Marek held the gate closed as he jogged over to his brothers to survey the dead daemons.
All of them were male, and young. The enemy was recruiting. What had they offered these daemons to make them willing to risk their lives by attacking a gate?
The ranks of the enemy Marek and his brothers had fought in the past had revealed someone had offered them a slice of the realm that would exist if they succeeded in their plan to merge the Underworld with the mortal one.
Had these foolish daemons been offered the same?
Or had they merely wanted to go through the gate to the Underworld?
Many daemons craved that, even though they had never set foot in that realm. None of them were old enough to have lived in the time before Hades had banished the daemons from it after the last uprising. It didn’t stop them from feeling as if the Underworld was where they belonged, and where they should be allowed to live.