Kratos swallowed at her promise. Three weeks ago, he’d been one of the Oneroi. A servant of the gods who protected humans and immortals while they slept. Then Satara had summoned him in her dreams and had turned him Skoti. She’d seduced him with her body and made him crave emotions like a drug. Now he couldn’t stand the emptiness of his existence. He only wanted to feel, and he was willing to do anything to keep his newfound emotions.

She was right. His kind didn’t prey on Daimons, and if they were half as enticing as her then he would have a banquet at his fingertips.

And all he had to do was feed the Dark-Hunter’s anger and grief. Simple.

“It’s a deal, Satara. You give me what I need and I’ll give you what you want.”

She smiled. What she wanted was simple. Nick Gautier’s loyalty and the baby Marissa. With those two things, she could bring down both the Greek and the Atlantean pantheons.

Then she would be a god and she would make Apollymi look weak.

And Nick, Acheron, and Kratos would be her eternal slaves, as would all of mankind.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Where Angels Fear to Tread

1

From humble beginnings come great things.

Zeke Jacobson rolled his eyes as he read the strip of paper he’d just fished out of his broken fortune cookie. “Well, you can’t get more humble than me,” he muttered as the phone rang.

His stomach clenching in dread of the latest complaint, he picked up the receiver and glanced around his pale gray cube walls. This drab soul-sucking hellhole was where he spent an average of fifty hours a week in absolute effing misery. There were times when he swore he could hear his life ticking away with every swipe of the second hand on the Transformers clock his sister had given him years ago.

Optimus Prime stared at him from his perch next to Zeke’s gloomy gray monitor, mocking him with a childhood memory of how he’d thought his life would be once he was a grown-up.

This was definitely not his dream.

He sighed and reached for his vat of Tums. “Good afternoon. Taylor Transportation. Claims Division. Zeke speaking. How may I help you?” The worst part of the job? He sometimes heard those words even in his sleep.

The irate woman on the other end laid into him over the fact he’d rejected her dubious claim that their delivery truck had mowed down her mailbox and kept going. If she’d spoken to the driver the way she was speaking to him, she was lucky the driver hadn’t mowed her down first.

Her voice held that high-pitched nasal quality that went down a man’s spine like a shredder. “You’re a pathetic idiot if you don’t believe your driver did that.”