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  Hunt of the Gods, an Areios Brothers novel by Amy Braun

  Copyright © 2019 by Amy Braun

  Cover Design & Map © 2019 Deranged Doctor Design

  All rights reserved.

  978-1-77340-007-5 - Ebook

  978-1-77340-006-8 - Print

  Learn more about Amy’s writing at www.amybraunauthor.com.

  To contact Amy, email her at [email protected].

  Printed in the United States of America

  More From Amy Braun

  AREIOS BROTHERS

  Storm of the Gods • Hunt of the Gods

  CURSED

  Demon's Daughter • Dark Divinity • Damnation’s Door

  DARK SKY

  Crimson Sky • Midnight Sky • Obsidian Sky •

  Amber Sky (Prequel e-novella) • Smoke Sky (Prequel e-novella)

  STANDALONE NOVELS AND NOVELLAS

  Path of the Horseman

  Needfire

  For my brother, for being a brother,

  and for Hank, because he’s Hank.

  ZEUS

  King of the Olympians, God of Thunder and Justice

  Descendants: Storm scions

  Element: Air

  POSEIDON

  God of the Sea and Earthquakes

  Descendants: Water scions

  Element: Water

  HADES

  King of the Underworld, God of Death and Wealth

  Descendants: Dark scions

  Element: Aether

  HERA

  Queen of the Olympians, Goddess of Marriage

  and Empires

  Descendants: Empire scions

  Element: Water

  ATHENA

  Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy

  Descendants: Craft scions

  Element: Fire

  ARES

  God of War and Bloodshed

  Descendants: War scions

  Element: Fire

  APOLLO

  God of Prophecy and the Arts

  Descendants: Light scions

  Element: Air

  ARTEMIS

  Goddess of the Hunt and Wildlife

  Descendants: Hunter scions

  Element: Earth

  HERMES

  God of Travel and Language

  Descendants: Wayfare scions

  Element: Air

  APHRODITE

  Goddess of Love and Beauty

  Descendants: Love scions

  Element: Water

  HEPHAESTUS

  God of Fire and Metalworking

  Descendants: Forger scions

  Element: Fire

  PERSEPHONE

  Queen of the Underworld, Goddess of Death

  and Spring

  Descendants: Sorrow scions

  Element: Aether

  DEMETER

  Goddess of the Harvest and Grain

  Descendants: Harvest scions

  Element: Earth

  DIONYSUS

  God of Wine and Chaos

  Descendants: Vine scions

  Element: Earth

  HESTIA

  Goddess of Hearth and Home

  Descendants: Hearth scions

  Element: Fire

  TWO AGAINST ONE. I’d faced worse odds, but I wished my opponents hadn’t known me so well.

  Selena rushed toward me, launching a punch at my head. I blocked the hit with my forearm, leaving myself wide open to Liam’s rush of fire.

  I pushed Selena away and gathered my own fire, shoving it out of my hand and overwhelming Liam’s magic. He didn’t have as much raw power as I did, but he knew how to manipulate it in ways I could only dream of.

  I yanked my fire back and felt a sharp tap on my kidney. I glanced over my shoulder at Selena. She stepped back to keep her distance from me, and I could see the wicked glint in her eyes. It made my heart skip, but I focused on my priorities.

  I felt heat rushing toward my back, so I ducked and twisted before it could touch me. As I moved, I swung my leg out and hooked Selena’s foot. She tripped and landed on her back on the blue mat. A short gasp escaped her lips.

  Another blast of fire rocketed toward my chest. I jumped away from the fire streaming from my brother’s palms then brought up my hands. I sent out a sharp burst of magic and watched his eyes widen. Liam stepped back, but I had released a controlled amount of flame. It was never meant to touch him, let alone hurt him. It was only supposed to distract him while I rushed through the flames and tackled him to the floor.

  “Godsdamn it all,” he wheezed out.

  I pushed away from him and started to stand up when another body crashed into my back. I nearly lost my balance. For a lean, willowy woman, Selena packed a hell of a hit.

  She tried to swing and flip me, but I never let her gain the momentum. I had nothing but respect for powerful women, but I also had a lot of pride. I wasn’t going to let myself be thrown around by a one-hundred-pound woman.

  Frustrated, Selena wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my hips, trying to force a submission hold.

  “If I had a knife,” she whispered in my ear, her soft voice sending a shiver through my skin, “you’d be dead.”

  I grinned. She was right. Over the last two months, I had come to know Selena. I knew she was fast, smart, and lethal with blades. If she’d had one, the fight would have been over before it started.

  “But you don’t.”

  I grabbed the arm locked my throat and wrapped my other hand around her back. It was an awkward movement, but I had a long reach and was stronger than Selena. I pulled her off my neck and swung her to the ground. Then I dislodged her as carefully as I could, not wanting to twist her arm or bruise her, then dropped her to the floor beside Liam.

  Selena huffed and propped herself up on the cold gym floor. Then she pursed her lips and glared at me. Liam mimicked her, seated cross-legged on the floor with a look that promised brotherly retribution.

  I smiled at both of them. “Anyone up for a rematch?”

  Liam narrowed his sharp blue eyes. “If we hadn’t been at this for two hours already, I’d kick your ass.”

  I laughed. “You haven’t kicked my ass in over a year, and even then, it was because you cheated.”

  “You weren’t watching your footwork. If you trip, that’s your own fault.”

  I smiled and shook my head then turned my eyes to Selena. She drew her long legs off the mat and tucked them under her.

  My fingers went to the brand on my neck. I’d taken more of Athena’s elixir to hold off the effects of the Sýmfono Polémou—the War Pact I’d made with Ares. I’d made it to save Liam when Ares threatened to kill him if I didn’t kill Selena in exchange. I’d made the Pact but tricked Ares and helped Selena escape instead.

  With Athena’s elixir and sheer will, I’d been calm and relaxed around Selena, happy even since she’d moved in with us a couple of months previous. But paranoia was my ugly companion since Ares could take control of me through the War Pact and force me to murder someone I cared about.

  And the thought of hurting Selena, who’d saved both my life and my brother’s life, who’d all but begged to stay with us when she was evicted, who’d never let her broken powers
hinder her, who’d spoiled us at home when she didn’t have to, who was in front of me, stretching with catlike grace, pulling her shirt taut against her flat stomach and her soft—

  Liam teased through the blood bond, completely disrupting my focus. Which was probably a good thing.

  I glared at my brother, who stood and smiled smugly. As if to prove him wrong, I returned my gaze to Selena, acting as though she hadn’t affected me. She’d freed her long hair and was combing her fingers through it. The motion was hypnotizing.

  “Selena?”

  She looked up at me.

  “Another round?”

  She smiled softly and shook her head. “I’m with Liam on this one, Derek. Two hours is long enough.”

  I frowned. “Not even some weapon sparring?”

  Liam and Selena froze, and their smiles turned to frowns.

  “What?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “You’re planning on using Ki̱demónas again?” Liam all but spat the name. He didn’t like that I could use Ares’s spear, not because he was jealous, but because it was another connection to Ares that he saw as hazardous to my health.

  I didn’t entirely disagreed with him, but I couldn’t have given up the spear. It had bonded with me through blood and fire and had left Ares when I’d called it. And the spear was powerful. It would be a useful weapon to have on our side, even if using it worried Liam.

  “I was,” I admitted. “But we can use bokkens instead.”

  “You said that last time.”

  I sighed. This is going to get ugly.

  “I can’t give up the spear, Liam. It won’t let me. So I might as well work with it and see what it can do.”

  “I agree,” Selena said, acting as the voice of reason as she so often did. “But I don’t think it’s safe to test it here.”

  My heart gave a sudden lurch. “You think I would let myself hurt either of you?”

  “Of course not, Derek. But the spear was meant for an Olympian’s hands, not a human’s, and it’s intimidating when you use it.”

  I hesitated to respond. I understood the power of intimidation and had used it more times than I could count, but always against enemies, never against people I loved and cared about. But I also knew how they saw me when I fought. I never held back. With all the powers I had at my disposal, it was easy to see why they might be uncomfortable around me.

  I’d just thought—hoped—that Selena had gotten past that.

  I couldn’t lie and say the spear hadn’t changed me in combat. It made me stronger, faster, energized, almost like being caught in my Berserker Rage, but without the numbness to pain. I came to the edge of my control, but I never lost it. I would never do anything to hurt Liam or Selena.

  Their uncertainty wounded me.

  “You control one of the most dangerous weapons in the world, Derek,” Liam added. “Ares has carved through entire armies with that thing.” Liam folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t want it messing with your head.”

  “It’s not.”

  He frowned. I knew he wanted to keep fighting me. If Selena weren’t with us, he might have. But after two months of being roommates, he’d come to see her as a big sister, and he wanted to make proud.

  So he settled into his comfort zone and made a horrible joke.

  “You’re right. It’s not the spear making you crazy. It’s all those gag-inducing smoothies you drink.”

  I rolled my eyes, pretending I hadn’t seen anything else in his gaze.

  He knew I was keeping something from him. Lately, he’d been prodding me about it but not outright asking because he didn’t know exactly what I was hiding.

  Every day, I woke up and swore I would tell them. I would explain the truth of how I defeated a manticore when neither Ki̱demónas nor my fire would have saved me. I would let them absorb the information, then ask them to work with me to figure out how to handle it.

  But then I would come downstairs and see them in the kitchen or the living room—which had been converted into Selena’s bedroom—and hear them laughing. I’d see Selena’s teasing smile and Liam’s animation as they compared the merits of comic book superheroes against one another or debated about which TV soap opera would be improved if one of the characters were a harpy.

  I would see that happiness, feel it grow in me, and realize my secret would destroy it. I would shake the foundations of what they knew and understood and then watch that happiness dissolve into anxiety. Or worse, genuine fear of me.

  I didn’t know how to break it to them gently, so I didn’t say anything.

  A light ringing came from the bench by the lockers on the right wall. We glanced at Selena’s cell phone as it chimed. She sighed and padded off the mats to the bench. While she answered it, I strode to the opposite side of the room.

  When I’d bought our house, I’d made it as different from our original home as possible. I’d added more windows, laid hardwood floor instead of cold tile, bought comfortable if cheap furniture, and decorated with random bric-a-brac to make it seem more like a home than a prison.

  But I’d kept the design of the training room and the armory. The back wall held the dozens of weapons my father had collected over the years. Liam and I used kopis swords and combat knives, but Thomas had collected everything from medieval shields to wakazashi. There were crossbows, longbows, battle-axes, tridents, spears, tomahawks, broadswords, katanas, morning stars, maces, scimitars, and a dozen weapons in between. If it was sharp and could kill, Thomas had owned one. Even if we never used them in the real world, Liam and I still trained with these weapons. Descendants of Ares had to know how to use every kind of weapon. That was one of the few useful things my father had taught me.

  The floor was mostly covered with navy-blue training mats. Punching and boxing bags were in the far-left corner with the dartboards and targets. Weights and strength machines were on the far right. Training dummies were in the right corner closest to the door.

  I grabbed a wooden Wing Chun dummy and carried the branched training post back to the middle of the mats. Liam watched me as I picked up a wooden bokken from beside the weight pile.

  “Change your mind about another round?” I asked, twirling the wooden sword.

  Liam stifled a laugh. “Yeah, right. Pretty sure if I unfold my arms, they’ll fall off.”

  I grinned and shook my head. My brother loved being dramatic.

  Selena ended the phone call and walked back to the middle of the mats. She used a white hand towel to wipe the sweat from her face and neck. Strands of pale blond hair clung to her throat and cheeks.

  I found myself wanting to touch them and her. Not for the first time, either.

  “That was Thea,” she said grimly. “She’s got a lead on the Trident in Santa Monica.”

  I frowned.

  Technically, it was good news. The Trident of Poseidon was among one of the many items Zeus had commanded us to recover. Along with it, we needed to find the third Trinity Weapon—Hades’s Helm of Darkness—and the three remaining Cronus Shards: His Eye, Mind, and Sickle. All the Weapons and Shards had vanished sometime before the Re-Emergence, that sweet time over thirty years ago when the Greek gods had been myths, and no one believed they would awaken and reclaim the world as their personal playground.

  Part of the world, anyway. Their strength had waned greatly during their two-thousand-year slumber after defeating and imprisoning the Titans, and the only place they seemed to find any semblance of power was California, so they made it their new kingdom.

  Though we were constantly aware of Zeus’s task, we’d been fairly relaxed because there was no direct threat anymore. Finding the remaining Shards and Weapons was a priority, yes, but at the moment, nothing was trying to kill us. Alsator Gage and his accomplice, the light scion Darius, were dead. Athena had been vindicated, if arrested by the gods. Any other dark scions or rogues who were working to capture the Trinity Weapons and the Cronus Shards in the hopes of opening Tartarus and releasin
g the Titans were either being exceptionally cautious or had given up on the crusade. We had room to breathe.

  And that was what worried me. It was a huge relief to not have to fight anyone to get to a Weapon or a Shard, but following leads and retrieving the magical items seemed too easy.

  Not that getting the Heart of Cronus had been easy—it had been guarded by the monstrous half-woman, half-spider Arachne—but something felt off, and it worried me.

  But it might have just been me since Liam’s eyes lit up like fireworks.

  “Ooh, Santa Monica? Now? Just in time for the Union of the Seas!”

  I closed my eyes and sighed slowly. Of course Liam would be excited about going to Santa Monica. The Union of the Seas was a fertility festival held every year to honor Poseidon, a god notorious for his sexual appetite.

  I tried not to think too hard about the festival or how Liam would be flirting hopelessly with Selena’s best friend, Thea. He swore up and down that he didn’t have a crush on Poseidon’s stunning heir, but it was hard to believe him when he blushed every time he said her name.

  Selena nodded. “We’ll have to be on the lookout for Poseidon. He’s not very fond of me.”

  It was Athena, Selena’s foremother, that Poseidon didn’t like, but I wouldn’t put it past the god attempt to hurt Selena. Past grudges had been carried through the centuries. Ares fired Liam and me simply because we’d stopped him from killing Athena. Poseidon wouldn’t have forgotten any of his grudges with the goddess.

  “I’ll call her and Mason. Thea owns a boat shop where we can meet and talk. We should probably leave tonight or tomorrow if we can.”

  “Agreed,” I said. It wasn’t like we had any other plans. “Thanks, Selena.”

  She left the basement a moment later. I practiced a couple of swings against the wooden dummy, rewarming my well used muscles.