Acheron froze feeling the shockwave rupture through his body. For a split second, his mind was blank. All the voices inside his head stopped talking. It was as if the moment he truly looked down at Lexidren and met her eyes, that he was lost within her. Forget the fact that she didn't have a soul, her entire being was aching for him. Calling to him…hers' was the only voice that he could hear now. It was begging for him to dip his head down and gently kiss her. It was all he could do to take a small breath and step back from her body angrily. If what she said was true, and being Acheron he had a very definite feeling that it was, then Artemis had lied to him. She'd lied worse to him now than she ever had before and he would make her pay …he …HE … had a soul mate. He'd had a soul mate for the last twenty some years. He glanced down at her with those eerie swirling silver eyes to catch her mouthing something to Kyrian behind him. His right eye twitched.
"Help?" she'd mouthed to him. Confused, Lexi didn't know how to deal with Acheron the way she assumed, or hoped, his old friend did.
"Little girl, I can see what you're saying." She froze and looked up at him to catch him watching her. A vibrant red girl fell in her eyes.
"Well, can you at least say something to me then?" He hadn't realized he'd been silent for well over ten minutes just letting the shock of things settle over him.
"You need to go back to wherever you were stationed." She blanched. Lexi drained of all color, which was saying something because she was paler than the moon, and her shoulders dropped a little bit. There was suddenly a heavy knot within her stomach and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. For how many years now she'd been trying to deny Artemis to find Acheron…and it hadn't mattered. After the shockwave that had split through them both, it didn't matter. He didn't want her. He didn't care. She should have known better. Shoving Ash away she blustered past them both and headed down the street towards her Harley. She grabbed her Oakley sunglasses and shoved them on stubbornly to hide the tears that were threatening to spill forth from her eyes.
"You just gonna let her leave like that?" Kyrian asked him shaking his head. "Ash I know you better than that, I just watched you shiver as if she was touching your soul." Ash snorted turning an icy glare at his friend.
"I don't have a soul." He put his own sunglasses on. "Simi, take human form." From beneath his biker jacket, Simi moved forward from a hazy blur to a beautiful black haired female wearing a plain purple skirt and a lacy black corset. She carried her favorite coffin purse on her arm tilting her head like a bird towards Ash she frowned.
"My Akri upset, why my Akri upset?" she asked "Did that heifer goddess hurts you?" he shook his head.
"No Sim. Take care of Marissa while I'm gone alright?" she nodded and moved to stand beside Kryian, she loved watching after Marissa his eldest daughter.
"Where are y…." Kryian stopped talking as Ash disappeared suddenly sighing. That was just like Acheron, disappear before you could even ask him a question.
Lexi drove her bike hard and almost out of gas before she hit a small out of town hotel. She swerved into the parking lot with the screeching tires of a demon, and parked it yanking her keys out of the emission. She walked into the old run down office part of the flat one floor hotel and shook the gentle rain off herself bouncing curls. The man behind the counter looked scared when she came in, taking her clothing options and sunglasses (at night), taking in a sharp breath he straightened.
"One room." She said before he could even ask, she slammed a shiny credit card on the table and waited for him to give her the keys. He crossed himself with a catholic cross when she took the keys and turned around leaving without even pausing she told him to charge a tip to the credit card and any food she ordered as well.
Lexi opened the shitty hotel room door and shut it behind herself seething. She'd let her heart rule her being, and she'd now been ripped apart. It was more anger than anything else, anger that Artemis had been right. She remembered what the bitch goddess had said to her painfully, "He can't love you and he wouldn't anyway. So don't bother." She bit her lip and slung her jacket off onto the chair by the door and kicked her boots off while sitting on the bed. Her eyes stung when she took off the sunglasses but it wasn't from the moonlight outside shinning in through the window. For the first time in years, Lexi wanted to sob. She felt so betrayed by her own heart. Why had she even hoped for any moment that anyone could mean anything to her? She turned on her side snarling to herself frustrated. She hated herself at this moment more than she'd ever hated herself before. Not even when she'd died was she more mad than she was for her own stupidity.
Those who let the heart rule their actions, were dead.
Simply put she'd already known that. In fact, most Dark Hunter's would shit themselves if they had an inkling of what Lexi really was. Artemis had screwed up making her, she wasn't supposed to exist and yet Lexi's soul had screamed so loudly at her death, Artemis had no choice but to answer her. Pure rage had taken her over when she'd died, rage at being taken advantage of. Being raped. Lexi let the tears from earlier slid down her freckled cheeks. They were warm and comforting, things she'd never known. She had been too young to truly experience love. Sure, she'd had slutty encounters, but that wasn't much and high school relationships sure as hell didn't count. She pulled the pillow over her head as she cried thinking about her past. A past she'd shut out so long ago…
The darkness was all consuming on the night that lacked a moon, and yet Lexi prowled the corner pockets of an old vineyard that had long since been used. She could smell them. The diamons that resided here, they were bloated on magic and sated with lust for souls. She had to fight with herself from growling, which would have alerted them to her presence. She needed to keep her calm. A calm that for a large female cougar was less than normal. Her tail swished behind her angrily as she found them sitting within a large mansion living room around a table sipping wine laughing. Tonight they'd killed her den. Her entire group was gone and all because of her Arcadian bearings while they had been Katagarai…she should have been there. She was pissed. Born as a bastard cub her den had hated her, but she'd served them. She'd loved them…and they were dead. That wouldn't stand. She would kill them. All of them.
She waited until they're senses were dulled and they're guards were down. She stalked behind the house and slinked through the long mahogany doors which they'd left open. They were talking in slow lumbered voices, planning another attack on New Orleans. She growled before she could stop herself, she knew her cousin den living under Dante was there, not that she'd ever met him, but she would not see them lost. They shot to their feet in the dim candle light and on man clad in black leather pants and a silk wine shirt walked into the room. He grinned, his long canines shinning in the moonlight that poured in from within the window.
"Well, look, one survived." Stryker chuckled crossing his arms over his chest. "Come for revenge pretty little kitty?" she snarled hissing loudly baring her own fangs at him her fur bristling.
"What should we do with him akri?" a commanding general of Stryker's asked glaring at Lexi. "Kill it?" he asked smirking. Stryker shook his head.
"Nail it down, have what you want from it, and skin it. I want this one's stupid brave pelt on my mantle at home." She burned and saw red at his words. He wanted a pelt? He could choke on his own dark hair when she ripped it off his head and shoved it down his throat. She growled and lunged at him her muscles bunching in her hind legs but she felt a cold dread fill her when a bolt of lightning hit her square in the chest. She fell to the floor in human form withering changing back and forth between cougar and human. Her eyes watered from the pain, he wasn't just a fucking diamon! He was a god. She wanted to hurl, cuss, spit, scratch, fight…oh god just to fight…
By the time she was able to gain a hold of her human base form she'd been tied down. Her wrists were bleeding and she growled deep within the back of her throat pulling at them. Instantly three males grabbed her arms and a leg snapping her back down on the bed; She snarled and pulled kicking and yanking, anything to get away and out of their grasp. They held her down violently and with the strength of anyone who was not a regular diamon. The general stood in front of her stark naked on the bed.
"You're not going anywhere." He chuckled bending over her on the bed. She snapped biting his arm when he reached for her face and he cussed pulling his arm back raking it across her cheek. Her vision blurred and she realized she was weak, they'd fed on her already…she could feel the dull ache in her shoulders and neck where they'd bitten her. Part of her was missing, part of her that wanted to fight more than she was, a piece of her soul had been taken. Horror stretched across her being as he settled himself between her thighs and looked over her face grabbing her chin to make her look at him.
"You shouldn't have tried for revenge…because now you're going to die." Pain exploded between her legs and against her neck, he was violating her and she knew it. She wanted to push him out of herself and off, but he had already begun to drain her life force completely. She knew she would die now…and when the last breath poured from her body, the general finished destroying it with a vicious stroke that jerked her lifeless body. He'd sated himself with soul and lust…and her soul should have entered his being…
But Artemis froze as she heard the loudest ear-pinching screech she'd ever listened to enter her chambers on the winds of Olympus. A young girl's soul was bellowing beyond the realms of death and there wasn't much time before it would be lost. Artie could feel it. She hesitated knowing the soul was Arcadian…knowing it was being taken by a diamon….she couldn't help it. She summoned the soul to her chambers and from the diamon's body before it was trapped. As Lexi stood ethereally before a slender short red haired woman, she sucked in a breath tilting her head feeling her power.
"So, You want revenge do you?" Artie had said to her…but that was before she'd realized what Lexi's soul held…before she truly looked at her…before she knew she belonged to Ash.
She sighed as the memories washed over her, only to find sadly that she was still alone, still desperately in love with a man she barely knew, and still without the revenge she'd been promised against Stryker. She growled burying her face deeper in the pillow, if only it could smother her. She'd take that welcome reprieve from being an Arcadian Dark Hunter any day. Her eyes held tightly shut, warm tears still flowing, Lexi forced her body to sleep. She'd need it for the travel back home the next night, barring she didn't try to kill herself by opening the curtains in the morning. She sighed and drifted off into a fitful nightmare of what was her past…as Acheron slammed the doors to Artemis's temple wide open his angry glare pinning the goddess.
"ARTIE!" he snarled his eyes changing red.