by Larissa Ione
Battle writhed on his skin, impatient to run.
“Out,” Ares commanded, and a heartbeat later, the tattoo on his arm turned to mist, expanding and solidifying into a giant blood-bay stallion. Battle nudged Ares with his nose in greeting—or, more likely, for sugar cubes.
“You forgot this.”
Always ready to live up to his name, Battle bared his teeth at the Sora, who stood in the tavern doorway, her tail wrapped around the hilt of a dagger, which she dangled playfully. The blatant invitation in her sultry smile told Ares that she’d plucked the weapon from him herself, but he knew that. He didn’t leave weapons behind. Ever.
Of course, he never got shit lifted, either. The female was good. Real good. And even though he wasn’t normally into demons, he had to admire her talent. No wonder Reseph liked this one so much. Maybe Ares would make an exception to his no-demons-that-look-like-demons rule…
Grinning, he started toward her… and stopped dead.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled in warning. With a furious scream, Battle reared up, and from out of the forest of shadowed trees, a buffalo-sized hellhound leaped through the air. Ares shoved the female out of the way, a stupidly protective instinct left over from his failed family days… and fuck, he needed to get his head out of his ass because he’d almost ended up between snapping jaws.
Ares and his sibs were immortal, but hellhound bites were poisonous to the Horsemen, causing paralysis, and then the suffering really began.
He dove to the ground as Battle struck out with a powerful hoof, hooking the other animal in the ribs and sending it tumbling into the tavern door. The fucking hound recovered so quickly that Battle’s blow might as well have been a flea bite, and it targeted the Sora, who scrambled backward on her hands and knees. Her terror was palpable, like little whips on Ares’s skin, and he had a feeling this was her first experience with a hellhound.
Hell of a way to pop that cherry.
“Hey!” Distract. Rolling to his feet, Ares drew his sword. Provoke. “I’m over here, you piece of shit mongrel.” Terminate.
Anticipation gleamed in the hellhound’s crimson eyes as it swung around, melting into an inky blur of evil. Ares met it head-on, with three hundred pounds of armored weight behind his blow. The satisfying crunch of steel meeting bone rent the air. An impact tremor shot up Ares’s arms, and a massive jet of blood spewed from the hound’s chest.
A bloodcurdling snarl ripped from its throat as it launched a surprisingly effective counterattack, slamming one huge paw into Ares’s chest. Claws raked his breastplate, and he flew backward, plowing into a stone summoning column. Pain lanced his upper body, and then the hellhound was on him, its jaws snapping a millimeter away from Ares’s jugular.
Foul breath burned Ares’s eyes and frothy, stinging saliva dripped on his skin. The beast’s claws tore at his armor, and it took every ounce of Ares’s strength to keep the hound from ripping out his throat. Even with Battle striking at the canine’s body, the creature did its damnedest to get a mouthful of flesh.
As hard as he could, Ares jammed his sword into the animal’s belly and yanked the blade upward. As the beast screamed in pain, Ares rolled, twisted, and brought the sword around in an awkward arc.
Awkward or not, the strike cleaved the hound’s head from its shoulders. The thing fell to the ground, twitching, steam hissing from its gaping neck. The spongy ground drank the blood before it could pool, and hundreds of blackened teeth sprouted from the dirt, clamped onto the hound’s body, and began to chew.
Battle whinnied with amusement. The horse’s sense of humor had always been perched on the gallows with the crows.
Before the earth could claim the beast, Ares wiped his blade clean on its fur, giving repeated thanks to whoever was listening that the hound hadn’t bitten him. The horror of a bite was never-ending—the paralysis didn’t stop the pain… or the ability to scream. Ares knew firsthand. A hundred years ago, he’d spent two weeks being fed upon, experiencing every excruciating bite that tore flesh, ripped apart organs, and snapped bones. With his ability to regenerate, he could have spent eternity feeding the entire pack. The torture had finally ended when his siblings destroyed the hellhounds and rescued him.
He frowned as a thought spun up. The vile canines were predators, killers, but they generally hunted in packs, so why had there been only one?
Ares glanced over at the tavern door. The Sora had disappeared, was probably pounding shots of demonfire in the bar, and hey, wasn’t it great that no one had bothered to come out and help? Then again, no demon in his right mind willingly tangled with a hellhound no matter how much love they had for the slaughter—and most demons loved to slaughter.
Light flashed, and twenty yards away in a copse of black, twisted trees, a summoned Harrowgate shimmered into existence. Ares sheathed his sword as Thanatos emerged, throwing menacing shadows where there should be none. Both he and his pale dun mount, Styx, dripped with gore, and the stallion was breathing through bubbling blood.
It wasn’t an unusual sight, but the timing was too coincidental for Ares’s liking. “What happened?”
Thanatos’s expression darkened as he took in the dead hellhound. “Same thing that happened to you, apparently.”
Shit. “Have you heard from Reseph or Limos?”
Thanatos’s light yellow eyes flashed. “I was hoping they were here.”
Ares threw out his hand, casting a Harrowgate. “I’ll go to Reseph. You check on Limos.” He didn’t wait for his brother’s reply. He spurred Battle through the gate, and the warhorse leaped, his big hooves coming down on a rocky shelf that had been scoured smooth by centuries of harsh wind and ice storms.
This was Reseph’s Himalayan hideaway, a giant maze of caverns carved deep into the mountains and drenched in ancient magic that made it invisible to human eyes. Ares dismounted in one smooth motion, his boots striking the stone with twin cracks that echoed endlessly in the thin air.
“To me.”
Instantly, the warhorse dissolved into a cloud of smoke, which twisted and narrowed into a tendril that wrapped around Ares’s hand and set into his forearm in the brown-gray shape of a horse tattoo.
Ares barged inside the cave entrance, and he hadn’t gone a dozen steps when he froze, locked up hard as an electric current of ten-thousand-volt alarm shot up his spine.
Time to dance.
He was already in a dead run when he drew his sword, the metallic sound of a blade clearing its scabbard like a lover’s whisper during foreplay. Didn’t matter that he’d just engaged an enemy, he loved a good battle, craved the release of tension that hit him with the force of a full-body orgasm, and he’d long ago decided he’d rather fight than fuck.
Though he had to admit that after a good brawl, winding down with a lush, sultry female couldn’t be beat. Maybe he’d head back to the tavern after this and find a War Monger after all.
Adrenaline pumping hotly through his veins, Ares took a sharp corner so fast he had to skid into a change of direction, and then he burst through the doorway to Reseph’s main living area.
His brother, his hand wrapped around a bloodied ax, stood in the middle of the room, which was painted in a fresh, dripping coat of blood. He was panting, his shoulders slumped, head bent, white-blond hair concealing his face. Behind him, a hellhound lay dead, and in the corner, a very much alive one let out a gravelly snarl, its mouth a mass of sharp teeth.
Fuck. Reseph had fallen victim to a paralyzing bite.
The beast swung its shaggy head toward Ares. Red eyes glowed with bloodlust as it gathered its hind legs under it. Ares calculated the distance to the target in a millisecond, and in one quick motion launched a dagger that impaled the hellhound in the eye. Ares pressed his advantage, heaving his sword in a side swing that caught the creature in the mouth, slicing its bottom jaw clean off. The hound howled in agony and fury, but Reseph had already injured it and, weakened, it stumbled and fell, allowing Ares an opportunity to run his blade str
aight through its black heart.
“Reseph!” Leaving the sword impaled in the animal, Ares ran to his brother, whose blue eyes were wild, glazed with pain. “How did they get in?”
“Someone,” Reseph groaned, “had to have… sent them.”
That much was becoming clear. But very few beings could handle or control a hellhound. So if someone sent the beasts, that person was serious about putting Ares and his brothers—and maybe Limos, too—out of commission.
“You should feel special,” Ares said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “You got two hellhounds, and I got only one. Who’d you piss off?” Gently, Ares wrapped his arms around Reseph’s chest and lowered him to the ground.
Reseph sucked in a gurgling breath. “Seal. My… Seal.”
Ares went cold to the core, and with trembling hands, he tore away Reseph’s T-shirt to expose the chain around his neck. The Seal hanging from it was whole, but when he palmed the gold coin, a vibration, dense with malevolence, shot up his arm.
“This…” Reseph spoke between gritted teeth and rattling breaths. “This isn’t… good.”
No, it wasn’t.
The countdown to Armageddon had begun.