It was now going on two years after the hurricane and still there were closed businesses—businesses that had been here for years, and in some cases, centuries. There were entire areas of the city that looked as if the hurricane had just blown through.

Most of his friends were either dead or relocated. People he’d known for decades.

In one heartbeat, everything had changed.

Nick gave a bitter laugh at the thought. He, personally, had changed more than anything else. No longer human, he wasn’t even sure what he was anymore.

The only thing that kept him going was his furious need for vengeance on the ones he blamed for this catastrophe.

He moved his hand to scratch his neck then froze as he felt the bite mark there. By taking a blood exchange, Stryker had made him his agent. If Nick obeyed the Daimon lord then Stryker would give him the means to destroy the man who’d ruined Nick’s life … and his town.

Acheron Parthenopaeus. At one time, they had been best friends. Brothers to the bitter end. Then Nick had made the mistake of sleeping with a woman he hadn’t known was Ash’s daughter.

Ash had torn him apart over it.

That he could handle. What had made them enemies was the night Nick’s mother had died right after that, and Ash had allowed it. Unlike the other immortal beings who made New Orleans home, Nick knew the secrets that Ash carried. He wasn’t just the leader of a group of immortal warriors who served the goddess Artemis, and protected mankind from the vampiric Daimons who ate their souls.

No … Ash was a god in addition to leading the Dark-Hunter army for Artemis. He had the power to do anything he wanted. He could have saved Nick’s mom or at least brought her back from the dead the way he’d saved Kyrian Hunter and his wife Amanda. But Ash hadn’t done that. He’d turned his back on Nick and left Cherise Gautier dead.

Nor had Ash saved this city from the storm. Up until the night Nick had slept with Simi, Ash had loved this city more than anything. That Ash would never have allowed New Orleans to suffer.

But that was before they’d become enemies. Before Nick had taken the wrong woman home.

Now Ash hated him so much that he’d taken everything from Nick.

Everything. Nick winced as he thought about Didymos—the island where Acheron had been born in ancient Greece. The island that Ash had sent to the bottom of the sea in a fit of anger very similar to the one he’d had when he sent Nick through a wall.

“Nice house.”

Nick looked up as the driver’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Sighing, he stared at the Bourbon Street mansion that had been his home since his graduation from high school.