Page 17

17

August 3, 1753

S imi screwed her face up as she sat on the corner of a dirt road, watching the humans travel to and from a bustling port town called New Orleans. Akri had told her that the Adarian Malachai had chosen to call this place home, though he was hiding somewhere around the town.

“Sim?”

She looked to her right at the sound of a familiary voice. “Thorny!”

Akri-Thorn was up on a big horsey, dressed in clothes that reminded her of the pirates who haunted the street around akri’s home. He even had on one of the funny triangle hats.

“What are you doing here?” they asked each other at the same time.

Laughing, akri-Thorn dismounted so that he could stand beside her. “I left a group of my Hellchasers not far away, and I was coming to check on them. You?”

“Akri’s putting a new Dark-Hunter here. Talon. Well, Talon not new. He an old Dark-Hunter. But he new to this place.”

“Understood. Why aren’t you with them?”

She made a face at him. “Boring.”

He arched a brow. “Isn’t sitting here, watching people ride by also boring?”

“Not if they’re bringing food. You’d be amazed at the new spices the Simi has discovered by watching humans. Especially here. They have something called hot sauce. Simi has always loved her peppers, but this is something completely new and yummy! Have you tried it?”

“No, but if you recommend it, I will.”

“You need to, akri-Thorn. It’s amazing. The Simi is now putting it on everything.” Cocking her head, she laughed at the waterfall of lace that fell from his neck. “Though it might be hard to eat it with all this material. You look like one of them … what are they called?”

“Macaronis.”

“That’s it. Macaroni.”

“Well, unlike your akri, I don’t like dressing like a peasant.”

She gaped at his words. “Did you really insult my akri?”

“No. Just the way he chooses to dress.”

Simi tsked at him. “The Simi would be upset at you excepting for the facts that I knows akri thinks it’s funny when you say things like that.”

“And speaking of peasants …” Thorny’s voice trailed off as he looked past her.

Simi turned to see what had taken his attention away. It was akri-Shadow.

That made sense. As did the comment about peasants. Akri-Shadow wore black knee breeches and a loose white shirt and open black vest. His hair was also loose around his shoulders. Unlike the other people around them, akri-Shadow reminded her more of someone who’d just woked up and rushed out of his house.

Simi, herself, was in a striped, yellow-and-pink dress and wearing a crisp kerchief. Akri always said she looked like a little doll when she wore these clothes. She wasn’t sure about that, but the human peoples seemed to like it when she dressed this way, and they treated her well and gived her a lot of extra food. So while it wasn’t her favorite clothes, she liked that everyone was nice to her.

“Did you lose a bet?” Thorny asked akri-Shadow as he joined them. “Or did someone steal the rest of your wardrobe?”

Shadow gave him a peeved glare. “Just don’t. Have you heard what’s going on?”

“If you mean that Adarian is loose here, yes. I heard.”

“No. The Greek god, Dionysus has fathered a baby with an Apollite.”

Thorn arched a brow at that. “Interesting. Why would he be so stupid?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Shadow glanced to Simi. “Cam is also scheming to breed a new Malachai to kill Adarian, which is the main reason I’m here.”

Simi widened her eyes at that. Cam was one of the original primal gods. Akra-Apollymi hated her awfully. Not that the Simi blamed her. Cam had done terrible things to akra’s Monakribos. And Cam hadn’t been particularly nice to the Simi’s family either.

“Cam wants to kill Adarian?” Simi asked.

Akri-Shadow nodded. “She has some warped notion that she can breed a new Malachai who will break the cycle and usher in an era of peace.”

“Or end the world,” akri-Thorn inserted. “Let’s not forget the other part of that prophecy.”

“That’s why I’m here to let you know. And why I’m planning to tell Acheron, too, as soon as I find him. We need to stop her.”

“But can we?” Thorny asked.

Simi chewed her nail as she considered that. “Akri won’t interfere. His whole life was made an awful big mess when them gods tried to stop the prophecy of his birth. He won’t ever try to stop someone else’s ’cause he says it makes everything messy and worser.”

Akri-Shadow looked incredulous. “So, we do nothing and wait for a Malachai who is even more powerful than Adarian? Am I the only one who thinks that’s a profoundly bad idea?”

Thorn let out a long sigh. “Simi’s right. Everything I know about Acheron says he’ll sit on the fence and do nothing to stop Cam’s plan.”

“What about you?” Shadow asked.

“Every time I’ve gone up against the Malachai, I’ve had my butt wrung out. Even with my army, I’m not strong enough to defeat him. Are you?”

Shadow shook his head.

“Then what do we do?”

“Tell the Malachai what Cam is doing?” Simi suggested.

Both men turned toward her with bugged eyes.

“No!” Akri-Thorn had the same tone akri used whenever she asked if she could eat a pesky human or the heifer goddess. “You can’t go near him, Simi. He’ll destroy you.”

“What if he be reasonable? Won’t he like to know that Cam is plotting evil against him?”

Akri-Shadow scoffed. “He’s not reasonable. Trust me. Reasonable was never part of his genetic composition.”

Thorn agreed. “What he said. Adarian is one of the most psychotic Malachai in history.”

Simi wasn’t so sure, but she wouldn’t argue with them. The one thing she knew about male types … they didn’t listen.

Especially when they had their minds made up.

“Okies.” So she left them to argue with each other while she quietly slipped away.

The smartest thing would probably have been to listen to them and go find her akri. Or go back home to their temple in Katateros where akri-Lexi waited.

But the Simi didn’t really listen well, either. It’d always been a flaw. She was what akri called pig-headed. And her pig-headedness tooked her to where she felt the big demons were nesting outside New Orleans in the bayou.

Ironically, not that far from where the new Dark-Hunter was planning to live.

Not that she blamed Adarian for picking this place. There was feeling here of something from another realm. Like Azmodea, only different, and it didn’t have all them smelly demons flying around, either.

This would be the kind of power that could feed a Malachai and keep him strong.

Wrinkling her nose, she decided to use her wings even though akri didn’t like for her to do so in daylight. Or in the human realm. But the ground here was squishy and wet. And the Simi liked her dainty boots. The last thing she wanted was to get them wet and ruin them.

Besides, things slithered in the brush. Snakes and other creatures that she wouldn’t mind roasting and eating. Even the gators could be tasty if cooked right.

But for once she wasn’t hungry.

She was just curious.

“Here, Mally, Mally … Where you hiding?”

Fire blasted in front of her.

Simi pulled up short and blinked slowly. Was that supposed to scare her? If so, the Malachai had a lot to learn about Charonte demons. “That you, Adarian?”

“What do you want, Charonte?”

Simi froze as details about him came to her. It was something that didn’t happen all the time. A power she’d inherited from her mother, but one she didn’t understand. It was a broken power. Because her matera had died when she’d been young, she’d never learned to really use it.

But it gave her pieces of information about people or creatures.

Right now, it told her that Adarian already had a son …

One hidden that he knew nothing about.

A Greek god one.

No …

“Answer me, Charonte. Why are you here?”

Simi blinked at his ferocious growl. “The Simi was only curious. You’re related to the Simi’s akri. So the Simi wanted to see what you looked like. And so I see you. Now I go. Bye!” She teleported to her room in Katateros before he could do anything.

And there in her room, she sat on her bed as she tried to think about what she’d just learned.

The Malachai had a son he didn’t know about.

A son akri-Thorn didn’t know he had neither.

Should she tell?

Akri would say no. Leave things as they were because knowledge hurt people. Prophecy was bad. It’d caused her akri to be thrown out of his pantheon before he was born, and tortured horribly.

It’d killed her matera.

And all those actions had been for nothing. In spite of everything the gods had tried, Akri’s birth had still caused them mean old Atlantean gods to die …

Well, they weren’t dead, but they were no longer alive or in power. All of them were in stasis and gone. Akri had replaced them just as the prophecy said. His birth had been the end of them.

All their efforts to stop it had done nothing except hurt akri.

And her.

So, tell no one.

Because it would change nothing.

This would be her secret. She would leave the Malachai alone and hope that he would not harm anyone she loved.