Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Read online

  Daimon

  Guardians of Hades Series Book 6

  Felicity Heaton

  Contents

  THE GUARDIANS OF HADES SERIES

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  About the Author

  Also by Felicity Heaton

  Daimon

  Daimon is ice. His heart is frozen by it. His body caged by it. And he likes it that way. But the sexy sorceress that storms into his life and declares herself a part of his team in his battle against the daemon uprising is determined to melt the ice that has shielded him for centuries, and he’s powerless to stop the burning need she ignites in him.

  Even when he’s sure it’s only a game to her.

  Cassandra has a sword hanging over her, a duty she has no choice but to perform and one she’s been putting off for years. Her latest excuse? Helping a band of immortal brothers with a war that might mean the end of this world if they fail. Her delaying the inevitable has nothing to do with the gorgeous Greek god who keeps rebuffing her and everything to do with saving the world. He’s a nice distraction and nothing more. She keeps telling herself that.

  Even when she’s sure he’s a danger to her heart.

  As things heat up in the battle to save the mortal world and the Underworld, will Daimon’s icy heart be able to withstand the fiery witch who can scorch him with just a look?

  THE GUARDIANS OF HADES SERIES

  Book 1: Ares

  Book 2: Valen

  Book 3: Esher

  Book 4: Marek

  Book 5: Calistos

  Book 6: Daimon

  Book 7: Keras – Coming Fall 2020

  Discover more available paranormal romance books at: http://www.felicityheaton.com

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  Chapter 1

  This wasn’t going well.

  Daimon slipped a throwing knife from the holster that sat against his ribs over his navy roll-neck long-sleeve, and funnelled his power into it before sending it flying at the daemon running right at him across the dewy moonlit grass of Hyde Park. The small blade hit its target, nailing the human-looking male in the chest. Ice immediately spread outwards from the point of impact and the male grunted and went down clutching his chest as glittering frost flowers rapidly covered it. His skin darkened, turning mottled in the low light, appearing almost black.

  Beside Daimon, his older brother Ares unleashed a wave of fire at another two daemons, driving them back, and tossed a fireball at a third.

  They had expected this.

  What they hadn’t expected was that it would take so long to close one of the main gates.

  Behind him, Valen grunted and muttered a black curse in the mortal tongue. The scent of his brother’s blood hung heavily in the damp autumnal night air. Worry ran through Daimon, and not only him. Ares flicked a concerned glance over his broad shoulder, the fires of the Underworld raging in his eyes, making them glow in the darkness.

  Eva bit out something in Italian. She had stopped speaking English around five minutes ago, when Valen had announced the gate was resisting his attempt to seal it and had decided to spill more of his blood in the hope it would speed the process along since twenty daemons had descended on them.

  “I’m going to need more,” Valen gritted, his voice tight and speaking of the frustration Daimon could feel in him.

  As well as the pain.

  “Too risky,” Ares answered as a whip made of fire appeared in his right hand and he narrowed his gaze on the trees that enclosed one side of the area around the gate. Daemons spilled from them, cutting across the paths and the grass, heading right for him. He grunted as he lashed out at the daemons with the flaming whip, driving them back and stopping them from reaching Valen. “You sure you’re using the right wards? Or doing them right? I mean, we all know how shitty your wards are.”

  Valen chuckled, the sound out of place given the graveness of the situation. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. My wards are beautiful.”

  They weren’t. Valen had never bothered to apply himself when it came to studying wards. Their father, Hades, the god-king of the Underworld, had gone as far as calling them bad. It took a lot for their father to admit to a fault in any of his sons, let alone point it out to the entire family.

  “You’re definitely using the right ones?” Daimon didn’t take his eyes off the daemons as they made another attempt to get past him and Ares, breaking into four teams of four and coming at them in one wave.

  The longer this war to protect the gates between the mortal realm and the Underworld went on, the more organised the daemons were becoming. He swore the enemy were training them, teaching them how to fight as a unit—turning them into soldiers.

  He had to admit he’d preferred it when the daemons had been lone wolves, only a few of them reckless enough to succumb to the lure of breaching a gate and entering the Underworld—a realm they were forbidden to enter.

  Just like Daimon and his brothers.

  Only unlike the daemons, he could go home once this war was done.

  He drew down a breath and threw his right hand forwards as he summoned his power. The dew on the grass became a thousand tiny ice needles that flew through the air and hammered into one of the daemons, taking him down. The female daemon who had been running beside that wretched male shrieked as she was caught by a few of the small spears of ice, her ear-splitting cry piercing enough that Daimon flinched and his next wave missed their target.

  “Exactly as Cal told me.” Valen huffed and water sloshed as he moved, a reminder to Daimon to keep his distance from his brother since standing in the Round Pond was the only way for Valen to get close enough to the gate to spill his blood on it. The last thing Daimon wanted was to accidentally freeze the small lake. Valen grumbled, “And Keras hammered home around thirty times.”

  His violet-haired brother wasn’t embellishing that.

  Keras, their oldest brother and self-appointed leader, had sat Valen down on one of the cream couches in the Tokyo mansion and gone over the wards at least three dozen times. In the end, Valen had stepped, a term they used for teleporting since it only took a single step for them to travel great distances, to escape another round of which wards went where.

  It wasn’t that Keras didn’t trust Valen to get it right, it was that this was important.

  Since the enemy had revealed they were in possession of two of the Erinyes, goddesses who had the ability to siphon powers and who strengthened that power by passing it between them in a cycle, and those Erinyes had gotten their hand
s on the ability to command the gates Daimon and his brothers protected, they had been on red alert.

  The gates were the focus of their mission, the reason Hades had banished Daimon and his brothers to the mortal world two centuries ago, after the Moirai had foreseen a great calamity, one where an unknown enemy would breach the gates between the mortal realm and the Underworld, fusing the two into a new hellish realm.

  It had come to light that he and his brothers were more than just protectors of the gates though.

  They were bound to them in blood, a bond forged at the time of their birth, one gate created for each of them.

  Cal had managed to close their twin sister’s gate in Seville, and had gone over everything he had done, using wards, a sort of spell, to seal it and conceal it, stopping it from opening and rendering it safe from the enemy.

  With the enemy able to open the gates thanks to the power the Erinyes had stolen from Marinda, Cal’s girlfriend and the third Erinyes, and the fact the enemy seemed bent on breaching at least one gate before that power faded, Keras had decided they needed to act.

  Closing the gates was dangerous, because it meant there were fewer gates to share the power that flowed between them all, and that would make them more unpredictable and harder to command, but it was a necessary risk.

  And the only path open to them.

  It would not only give the enemy fewer gates they could hit, but it would mean that the enemy couldn’t split him and his brothers up as easily.

  Valen had volunteered to seal the London gate, which was bound to him, and Cal had volunteered to close the main Seville gate. Cal was there now with Keras, Marek, and Caterina, Marek’s girl-fiend as Valen called her because she was a hybrid, a human who had been given daemon blood by the enemy in an attempt to take down Marek.

  Everyone had thought sealing a main gate would be as simple as closing the twin gate had been for Cal.

  Apparently, everyone had thought wrong.

  Ares took out another two daemons, bringing their numbers down but still not enough to satisfy Daimon. He imbued another two knives with his ice and let them fly. One of them buried to the ring-shaped hilt in the forehead of a female daemon, and the other slammed into the throat of the male behind her.

  Valen bit out a ripe curse.

  Daimon didn’t take his focus away from the daemons charging towards him.

  Ares looked back at their brother and swore too.

  That didn’t sound good.

  Daimon risked a glance over his shoulder as he sent a thicker spear of ice flying at the closest daemon, cleaving the male in two at the waist.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he spotted what his brothers had.

  More daemons, sprinting towards them from the other side of the Round Pond, a shadowy mass of them silhouetted before the elegant red-brick and sandstone Kensington Palace.

  The new horde of daemons split into two groups as they reached the far end of the pond, coming at them from both sides.

  Above the water, the flat disc of the gate shimmered in a rainbow of colours, chasing back the darkness. The thick rings rotated slowly in opposing directions, all of them chasing around the central violet circle. Glyphs encircled each band, smaller ones that filled the gaps between them, and larger ones inside the ring. The power of the gate hummed in the air, inside him, drew him to it with a promise that on the other side was home.

  Home.

  A place he wanted to go more than anything.

  There, his power was under his control, would no longer shimmer over his skin in a way that felt like a curse. Here, he couldn’t touch anyone, not even his brothers, without risking killing them with his ice, or severely maiming them at the very least. Here, he was alone, even within the circle of his brothers.

  The blood Valen had spilled on the gate absorbed into it, the colours that danced across its surface and curled into the air like faint smoke brightening again.

  It was beautiful.

  Beautiful and vulnerable.

  Daimon’s stomach swirled as the daemons closed in, the foul coppery odour of them filling the air, drawing out his darker side. He wouldn’t let them near the gate.

  He closed his eyes, drew down a slow breath that filled his lungs, and focused his power, calling on it. His blood chilled and he shuddered, huddling down into the tall neck of his long-sleeved sweater and his ankle-length black coat, trying to keep that cold at bay.

  It never worked.

  It was always there, always part of him in this world, a constant presence that drained him emotionally.

  He flicked his eyes open and swiftly raised both of his gloved hands.

  Around him, his brothers and the gate, hundreds of clear shards of ice shot from the earth and the water to form a circular wall forty feet tall.

  Daimon sagged forwards and Ares came to check on him as Valen muttered an oath.

  His older brother ghosted a hand over Daimon’s spine, the warmth that emanated from him giving Daimon a brief reprieve from the cold. Ares shared his problem. His brother’s power over fire had manifested in this world, meaning he couldn’t touch anyone without the risk of burning them.

  Or at least he hadn’t been able to until Megan, a Carrier with the ability to heal, had come into his life. Megan was immune to Ares’s fire, and could withstand Daimon’s ice, and he and his brothers had surmised she was closer to her demigod ancestors than most Carriers.

  “Can you get it done?” Daimon pressed his hands to his thighs and ignored the way the frost on his leather gloves spread onto his black jeans.

  “Give me a minute.” Valen went back to work, holding his arm out over the gate and closing his eyes as his blood spilled onto it. Beside him, Eva, his brother’s mortal assassin girlfriend, shifted foot to foot, concern shining in her rich blue eyes.

  “I’ll handle these guys.” Ares straightened and broke away from Daimon, heading for the few daemons that had ended up within the ice wall.

  Daimon wanted to help him, but he needed to focus on the wall. Where it touched the water, it was in danger of melting, was weaker and vulnerable. The daemons had already figured that out and were beating it with fist and claw, attempting to break through. He focused there, summoning more shards of ice to reinforce it.

  Wishing Esher was here.

  His brother would have used that water to his advantage, would have drowned all the daemons in a heartbeat.

  Daimon looked at the gate and fought the urge that suddenly sparked to life inside him.

  Esher was on the other side of that gate, in the Underworld, hunting for one of the enemy who had slipped through the gate in Paris. He was alone. Lost to his other side. Daimon rose to his full height and drifted towards the gate, pulled to it as his heart filled with a need to find Esher.

  Pain bloomed inside him, searing his bones in multiple places where an injury didn’t exist on his own body.

  It existed on Esher’s.

  Daimon could feel them, the depth of the bond they had forged over the centuries relaying not only the pain his brother felt, but the anger and frustration.

  The rage.

  The other side of Esher, the savage and cold one that had been born in the darkest of times, was firmly in control. Daimon could feel that too. He needed his brother back with him, not only because he needed to know he was safe and because he was worried about him—missed him.

  He needed him back so he could bring him back.

  Esher had confessed to him once that he feared that other side of himself, that he loathed it. Daimon could only imagine how his brother was suffering now, a slave to his darker side, driven to hunt and not rest until he had secured his prey.

  The wraith.

  Eli.

  If they could get their hands on him, they might be able to find out who was behind this attempt to breach the gates. Once, they had believed it was purely the work of daemons, but then they had discovered a Hellspawn, what he and his brothers called the species of daemons who had been allowed to r
emain in the Underworld after the last rebellion against Hades, was involved, and now there were goddesses on the enemy side.

  Where did it end?

  Someone was behind all of this, and all they had to go on was that it was a female.

  Their father had sent them a long list of possible enemies currently residing in the Underworld, far too many for Daimon’s liking. Discovering which of them, if any, were behind everything would take too long. It was quicker to get their hands on the wraith and make him talk.

  An ominous creaking noise drew Daimon’s gaze to his left. His eyes tracked the jagged fault line spreading up the ice from a point where several daemons were clawing at it. Was he imagining it, or were there even more daemons now?

  “You guys got this?” Valen said.

  “Sure.” Daimon readied himself, shoring up the wall of ice but aware it wouldn’t hold, not against that many sets of claws.

  The daemons’ black blood streaked the clear ice, the foul stench of it filling the air. Disgust rolled through him and he curled his lip.

  Ares grunted in response from the right side of the pond as he slammed a daemon into the pavement that encircled the water.

  “Good, because I’m not sure I can do this.” Valen sounded tired now, and when Daimon fixed his senses on his violet-haired brother, he felt it too. “Not without a little more juice.”

  Daimon looked back at him.

  Valen’s golden eyes glittered, glowing in the light shining from the gate as he raised one of his blades.