Two seconds later, Alexion was back in human form, standing before Danger, who waited with her hands on her hips.
He patted his chest as if he couldn't believe he'd returned. He reached out and placed a hand on her desk.
"Soul inside you all gone now?" she asked.
He nodded slowly.
"Good. Now you can stop being a total jerk." She turned to leave.
Alexion grabbed her and pulled her to a stop. He couldn't believe that he had his body back. "How did you know to do that?"
"I didn't. I was only guessing. But it was something I thought of while I was downstairs talking to Rafe. The first rule of being a Dark-Hunter is to stab the soul's host to free it. Stryker said that you had to kill yourself, which would cause you to die permanently-he conveniently left out what would happen if anyone else 'killed' you."
Alexion was still aghast. It was true. Whenever a Dark-Hunter stabbed a Daimon and their body burst apart, the stolen souls always returned to their resting places.
She laughed bitterly. "I'm a staunch Catholic. My mother used to excel at sins of omission. Growing up with her, I learned early on to listen to what she said, not what I heard. And most of all, to pay attention to what she didn't say. Since Stryker put the soul into you during your mid-poofing, I was betting that another poof such as the one caused by an outside person stabbing you would release it. Why else would he have said you had to stab yourself?"
Alexion was completely stunned on so many levels that he didn't even know where to begin. Part of him wanted to choke her, but another was impressed by the fact that she had correctly deduced Stryker's logic.
"I wasn't being a jerk," he said sullenly, returning to her earlier insult.
She stared at him dryly. "Yes you were."
"No," he said honestly, "I'm only being what I am. I'm here to-"
"What you are, Alexion," she said, interrupting him, "is a caring man."
He shook his head in denial. "I'm the Alexion. My only goal is to protect Acheron."
She placed her hand to his cheek. "It wasn't a cold, unfeeling entity that slept with me last night and it wasn't an unfeeling 'other' that looked hurt when Kyros betrayed him. You are still human."
"No," he insisted emphatically, "I'm not."
She stood up on her tiptoes and pulled his head down so that she could kiss him. The coldness of his skin immediately vanished as he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her blind.
She could feel his heartbeat increase as his tongue swept against hers.
Danger pulled back. "You're not unfeeling or uncaring. I doubt if you ever have been."
Alexion's head spun at her words and his reaction to her kiss. It was true. Around her he was completely different. He found himself feeling things that he hadn't felt in untold centuries. Until the moment she had entered his life, he'd begun to doubt he could ever really feel again.
With her, he did.
How could this be?
"There can never be anything between us, Danger."
"I know." He heard the pain in her voice. "I'm a big girl, Ias, and I can take care of myself. But you... you need to can the destroyer act around me. I don't like it."
He frowned at her words. "Why did you call me Ias?"
"Because Ias is the man who considers a demon his daughter and it was Ias who woke me up tonight with a rose tickling my cheek."
"But I'm also the Alexion."
She offered him a smile that melted the iciness of his entire existence. "There's a tough side to all of us. Be grateful; it was my tough side that nailed you with the dagger a few minutes ago."
He laughed at that, then sobered. "I don't know what to feel when I'm around you."
"Yeah, I'm confused too. I can't believe that I'm about to help you hang my friends."
"I'm not trying to hang anyone, Danger."
"No? Then what's with the list of hopeless you have over there?"
He glanced to the paper where he'd been writing. "That's not a list of names. It's a list of rules for Keller so that the demon doesn't eat him."
She laughed at him. Leave it to Alexion to think of that one. "I knew I should have studied Greek in school."
Grateful that he was almost back to "normal," she took his hand in hers. It was still warm. "Are we friends again?"
"Yeah, I think we are."
"Akri!"
Ash rolled over in his bed as he heard Simi running down the hallway outside his room in Katoteros. She burst through the door, then launched herself at his bed.
He woofed as she landed on him then sat heavily on his chest. "I was sleeping, Sim."
"I know, but I heard Alexion calling out again. The Simi wants to go see him, akri. Lemme go! Please."
Ash felt the all too familiar knot in his gut as he fought himself not to allow her that wish. But he couldn't.
The last two times he'd let Simi out without him had been disastrous. In Alaska, she'd almost died, and in New Orleans...
That was something he still couldn't think about without his temper erupting.
"I can't, Simi."
"Why not?"
He sighed heavily. "I can't tamper with his fate. You know that. This is his time and if I answer him I will probably do whatever it is he asks. So for all our sakes, I've turned his voice off in my head and I would advise you to do the same."
She pouted as she pulled the sfora out of her pink coffin-shaped purse. "At least make this work so's I can see him."
"No."
She growled at him. "But what if he gets hurt? What if he dies?" Her face blanched. "You can't let him die, akri. You can't. The Simi loves her Alexion."
He reached up to brush her long black hair back from her face. "I know, edera," he said, using the Atlantean endearment for "precious baby." "But his fate is in his hands, not mine. I won't alter it."
Her pout increased. "You control fate. All fate. You can make everything all right. Please do it for your Simi?"
That was easier said than done. He was a living example of the disaster that came from trying to interfere with someone's destiny. His entire life both as a man and a god had been destroyed because of people who meddled with his "fate." He would never do such a thing to someone else. "Sim, that's not fair and you know it."
"Not fair is hearing Alexion in my head and not being able to help him. He don't sound right, akri. I think them peoples is being mean to him. Let the Simi go eat them."
Ash closed his eyes and tried to see the future for Alexion so that he could give Simi some peace.
But there was nothing to be seen except black mist. Damn. He hated that he couldn't see the fates of his loved ones, any more than he could see his own.
He considered calling Atropos, who was the Greek goddess in charge of cutting the thread of life that governed humans. She would be able to tell him if Alexion would die. But he knew better than to summon her. She hated him passionately.
None of the Greek Fates would ever tell him anything of the future. They had turned their backs on him centuries ago. To them, he was long dead and forgotten.
"We will just have to wait and see what happens."
Simi blew him a raspberry, then got up to leave.
She slammed the door on her way out.
Ash rubbed his head as the sound echoed in the room. Since his emotions weren't tied to the Mississippi Hunters, he knew which of them would live and who would die. That saddened him greatly, and all he could do was hope that Alexion was able to sway them away from their destinies in time.
Only their free will could alter what he saw for them.
That was why he'd sent Alexion to Danger. Since the day he'd started training her, he'd had a soft spot for her. The small Frenchwoman covered her tender heart with a coat of arsenic to keep others away, but he knew what she hid from others. She was a good woman who'd been dealt a bad hand. The last thing he wanted was to see her dead. And yet he knew in his heart the futility of wishing for what could have been.
Danger's days were extremely numbered, and unless a miracle happened, there was nothing any of them could do to help her.