Keras (Guardians of Hades #7) - Felicity Heaton Page 0,1

his father, Hades, god-king of the Underworld, had banished from his realm centuries ago?

Exiling them to the mortal realm, just as he had banished Keras and his brothers here when the Moirai had foreseen a great calamity involving the gates between the Underworld and the human one.

For two centuries, Keras had been forced to live in this world, waiting for the enemy who would bring about the calamity to finally make themselves known.

Two centuries of hell.

This daemon would pay for every year of his exile, every hour, every minute.

Every second.

Keras rolled the sleeves of his black dress shirt up his forearms as he stared the daemon down, assessing him.

Waiting.

Beyond the towering male who had at least five inches on Keras, had to stand around seven-foot tall, Ares hurled a ball of fire that cut across the night-time panorama of Paris that stretched below the hill of Sacré-Coeur.

It blasted two daemons, sending them flying. Their shrieks rose above the sounds of the battle raging around him.

The male before Keras kicked off and dropped his shoulder, slammed into Keras’s stomach and lifted him off the ground. Keras grinned and reached his right hand down, gripped the back of the fiend’s neck and sank short claws into his flesh. The wretch grunted, the same pained sound bursting from Keras’s lips as his back hit the flagstones and the daemon landed on top of him.

Keras didn’t release him, not even when the male reared back and smashed a fist into his face, hitting him hard enough that he actually felt it.

Instead, Keras called on his shadows.

They poured from beneath him, eager to feed, hungry to join the battle. They were never satisfied.

Neither was he.

The two lizard-like males ran at him, joining the fray as they nimbly dodged his shadows, twirling to evade each sharp slash of them as they lashed at the daemons, keeping them away from the one they had decided to protect.

That male bore down on him, grinning to reveal razor-sharp fangs.

The light of victory in his dark eyes.

Foolish male.

Keras dragged the daemon towards him. The male resisted, straining to maintain his position atop Keras, but it turned out he wasn’t strong enough after all. Keras gritted his teeth, his muscles clamping down on his bones as he yanked the male down to him, so they were nose to nose.

“Who sent you?” he whispered, malice lacing his deep voice as the darker side of his blood writhed faster, eager now, anticipating what was to come.

The daemon managed to shake his head.

Keras sank his claws in deeper, ripping a grimace from the male.

“Who sent you?” he repeated, his tone gaining darkness as his shadows finished tearing apart the daemon’s two comrades and turned towards him.

They rose up around the daemon, who flicked fearful glances at them as they circled him, snapping at the ground beneath Keras, waiting for his next command.

“Speak and I will spare you.” Keras held back his smile, kept his green eyes fixed on the male even as they wanted to grow hooded, the pleasure that coursed through him at the thought of obliterating this daemon almost too much for him to conceal.

He searched the male’s eyes, seeking the answer there instead. The world dropped away as he fell into the daemon’s mind, as he sifted through wave after wave of memories, seeking the one he desired to see.

A face shimmered into being in the darkness.

Tropical blue-green eyes.

Blonde hair.

Feminine.

The furie—Meadow.

Keras seized hold of the memory, and snarled when it slipped through his grasp and he found himself staring up at the night sky, at the faint pinpricks of stars that blanketed it.

He looked to his left, at the daemon as he tumbled across the pavement and struck a wall.

“We talked about this.” Ares loomed over Keras, a shadow in the darkness in his black jeans and T-shirt. The heat that shimmered over his big body caused the stars to wobble, his brother’s ability to command fire manifesting itself as his mood blackened and his control slipped. Flames lit his brother’s dark eyes with sparks of crimson and gold. “No more probing minds. Not after last time.”

Keras frowned at him, not hiding his anger for once as it surged through him. He pushed onto his feet and glared at his younger brother, staring right into his brightening eyes.

“We did talk about this.” He tipped his chin up. “I believe you know what I said.”

That Ares had no place ordering him around.

He was the firstborn of Hades. The leader of their side.