Theron shook his head then focused in on Zander. “T tracked them to the colony.”
“Shit,” Zander muttered. “What the hell are they doing there?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll need to go in carefully, pick a location well enough away so the bastards can’t sense us.”
“I’m coming too,” Callia cut in.
“No,” Theron said. When she flicked him an irritated look, Theron gentled his tone. “No, Callia. It’s too dangerous. Until we know what the scene is like, you stay here. But I want you ready at the Gatehouse. If it’s safe and we need you, Z will come back for you. If not…we’ll figure out a way to get Gryphon back to you ASAP.”
That didn’t seem to appease Callia, but she nodded, then turned to Zander. The two exchanged quiet words while the other Argonauts muttered among themselves. And watching, Orpheus had the distinct impression he was systematically being shut out.
His jaw clenched. “I’m going with you.”
“No,” Theron said without looking his way. “We can handle this on our own.”
Fuck that.
The muscles in Orpheus’s eyes constricted, and though he fought it, he couldn’t stop what was about to happen. Callia glanced his way and gasped. Several of the Argonauts turned to look. But before his eyes shifted to complete glowing green, he closed them tight and flashed out of the castle and straight to the portal.
Screw the Argonauts.
In this case he was lucky the Council had replaced the Argonauts with the Executive Guard. It took him microseconds to hit the Gatehouse, pull up the hood of his invisibility cloak, and sail right past the morons and through the portal.
The Council thought they knew best, that they didn’t need the Argonauts to protect their realm, that the Executive Guard could do it just as well by standing guard. They didn’t have a clue what kinds of evil lurked on the other side of the portal. But Orpheus did. He knew because he lived it every damn day.
Since he’d been at the half-breed colony only days before, he knew the coordinates in the remote Oregon wilderness, and it was easy to open the portal just beyond the cave’s entrance. A flash of light erupted as he stepped through, then sizzled and popped into nothingness.
He lowered the hood of his cloak, stood where he was, his eyes and ears adjusting to the sights and sounds around him. The Douglas firs were eerily quiet, the light from the full moon illuminating the thin layer of fresh snow on the forest floor with a surreal gray light. A whisper of frigid air ran down his spine, prickling the hair on his back, and the scents of earth and pine and decay filled his nose. That and blood. Lots of blood.
The daemon in him pushed forward, but he fought it back, thankful this one time his heightened senses would draw him to what he was looking for. He moved through the forest without a sound, like the dark shadow he knew he was, and reached the edge of the clearing moments later. It was just as he’d remembered days ago—wide, snow-covered, and bloody. Except this time it was empty.
The storm the last two days had covered the battle from before, when the daemons had overrun the colony, so he knew this blood was fresh. As he moved over the meadow, he studied the footsteps in the soft powder, stopped to examine the blood sprays and other fluids he found staining the ground. He knelt down, ran his bare fingers over one wide patch of red, and brought the blood to his nose to sniff.
“Not exactly a winter postcard, now is it?”
Nick. Orpheus recognized the voice of the half-breed leader. Though Nick Blades and the Argonauts didn’t exactly get along, Nick and Theron had formed some sort of alliance in the war against the daemons and aided each other whenever necessary.
Orpheus looked up at Nick’s shaved head and scarred face. A highly trained warrior, he was dressed in boots, thick black pants, a heavy black military-type sweater, and his signature fingerless gloves. It was easy to see this Misos was built like the Argonauts and was just as deadly. But unlike the Argonauts, Orpheus considered Nick an ally. Usually. Today he was too juiced to think of anything other than finding his brother.
He sensed the portal open and close in the woods behind him, so he knew the Argonauts weren’t far behind. As he went back to checking the ground, a pair of boots stopped just at the edge of his vision.
“Daemon?” Theron asked.
Orpheus rubbed the blood off on his pants, rose, and looked around the barren meadow. “No. Argolean.”
“My men killed four daemons in the woods on the way over here,” Nick informed Theron, “but we haven’t seen anything else.”
“Skata. Fan out,” Theron announced to the rest of the guardians. “Z, you and Phin keep an eye out for the bastards. I don’t want any surprises while we check the scene.”
No one said a word as they worked. A handful of Nick’s men joined the search. Minutes later, Cerek’s voice rang out near the tree line. “Over here!”
Orpheus followed Theron and the others to where Cerek stood holding a knife of some kind. Theron reached for it with gloved hands.
“It’s Demetrius’s,” Cerek said, pointing to the letter D carved into the handle.
“Yeah.” Theron turned it over, looked up and around the battlefield again. “There should be bodies. If they got hit by daemons when they came through the portal, D and Gryphon should be here. Even if the motherfuckers recognized Isadora.”
“We’re in the right spot,” Titus announced, studying the screen in his hand. He tapped it with his finger. “Gryphon’s medallion is going off right”—he turned to the left and faced the trees—“here.”
Orpheus glanced up and around while the Argonauts and Nick discussed what could and couldn’t have happened. He saw nothing but snow and trees, a few shrubs here and there, rocks, and an old-growth, moss-covered log that looked like it had dropped twenty years ago and was now home to rodents and snakes.
Come on, Gryph. Where the hell are you?
He scanned the tree line again, taking in every boulder, every tree trunk someone could hide behind, every—
His gaze swung back to the old-growth log. And his heart picked up speed as he headed that way. Someone call his name but he didn’t turn. His senses kicked in the closer he got to the log and he smelled blood again. This time fresh. And very, very Argolean.
He bounded to the top of the log, at least six feet off the ground, and looked down. Dread welled in his stomach at what lay on the other side. “Shit.”
He dropped to his knees beside his brother. Gryphon lay with his torso tilted at an odd angle, perched against the log. Blood oozed from various cuts over his face and arms and legs and seeped through what was once his white shirt.
“Dammit, Gryph.” When the guardian shivered, Orpheus whipped off his cloak and tucked it up around his brother’s shoulders.
“You…” Gryphon’s teeth knocked together. “Don’t look so…happy to…see me.”
“I’m never happy to see you, dumbass.” But there was no heat in Orpheus’s words, and as he worked his gut churned with urgency.
Damn it, he needed Callia, like now. Orpheus wasn’t a healer, but even he knew Gryphon had taken a blade to the ribs and had already lost too much blood. Yeah, he was an Argonaut and as such healed faster than most, but there was no telling what Apophis’s energy had done to him.
Footsteps and voices echoed as the others came around the log. “We’re gonna get you home, brother,” Orpheus whispered.
Theron dropped down on Orpheus’s right. “Hey, Gryph,” he said softly. “How you doin’, buddy?”
“Never better,” Gryphon breathed as another shudder racked his body. He looked up at the others, his voice no more than a whisper. “You guys make a helluva lot of noise. Thought you were never gonna…find me.”