by Larissa Ione
His entire body shuddered. “I-I’m… sorry.”
“No,” she rasped. “Don’t be. None of this was your fault.”
His head fell forward, and his hair spilled into his face. “You don’t… understand,” he whispered. “I’m sorry… to… to… disappoint you.” His grip tightened on hers with so much force that she gasped. “You must be so disappointed that Deliverance didn’t kill me.”
His head came up, his eyes glowing red, and he yanked the dagger out of his chest as if it were nothing but a sliver.
Holy mother of—
Another of Arik’s knives hit Pestilence’s hand. Deliverance fell out of his grip, the blade spinning. Limos snatched the dagger out of the air and scrambled to her feet, nearly bowling over her brothers. Pestilence moved in a blur, armoring up. Within a heartbeat he had a sword in his hand and was swinging it at her head. Than shoved her out of the way, and she heard the distinct sound of metal crunching into bone. Thanatos stumbled and hit the crystal, Pestilence’s blade lodged in his skull.
Ares attacked Pestilence with a vengeance, and suddenly, the cave came alive with snarls, as a horde of demons seemed to crawl up through the crystals below. Wraith leaped into the fray while Arik produced another throwing knife from his boot and took out one of the scaly beasts as it skittered up a crystal.
“Go!” Ares tossed her the cup. “Get out of here!”
She wanted to stay and fight, but Arik was still in danger, and she had to protect her agimortus. Cursing in frustration, she threw a gate. The portal shimmered like a sparkly curtain, waiting… and she didn’t even realize she was hesitating until Arik tackntince led her, forcing them both through the gate to land in the sand outside her house.
Yes, they had Deliverance and her agimortus, but somehow, none of what had happened in that chamber felt like a win.
Twenty-two
Arik’s heart was jackhammering so hard and so fast that his ribs hurt. Or maybe the ribcage pain was from Pestilence’s killer right jab. Or it could be from Deliverance’s hilt jamming into his chest.
Carefully, he eased off of Limos and started to help her to her feet, but when he looked into her moonlit eyes and saw the horror pooled in them, he sat down beside her.
Her bloody hands clutched Deliverance in a white-knuckled grip, and her pale face was streaked with tears.
“I tried to kill Reseph.” Her thin voice was barely audible over the crash of the waves on the beach.
“Hey.” He pried the dagger out of her hands and stabbed it into the sand. “You did what you had to do.”
“You don’t understand. I wanted him dead, Arik.” Her eyes were wild, her nostrils flaring as she fisted his collar in some sort of crazed desperation. “I want my brother dead.”
Arik stroked her hands, using his touch and his voice to soothe her. “That’s because he’s not your brother. Not anymore, and you know that.”
Limos looked at the dagger he’d jabbed in the sand. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Calling me out on things even I don’t know.”
“You know.” He drew her against him and cradled her head against his chest. “You just lie to yourself.”
“Of course I do,” she said quietly. “I do it to everyone else, so why not to myself?” She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, then jerked in alarm as a gate opened a yard away.
Ares stepped out, bloodied, one eye swollen shut, one arm dangling uselessly at his side. “We’re all okay,” he said, before Arik or Limos could ask. “Wraith took Than to Underworld General.” He glanced at Arik, as if needing to explain. “He’ll heal on his own, but the damage was extensive, and we can’t let him be weakened for long.” He sank down on his haunches next to her and put his hand over hers. “You did what you had to do.”
She nodded. “But why isn’t Pestilence dead?”
“I don’t know, but this failure is catastrophic. Deliverance was our only way to stop him. And it gets worse.”
“How can it possibly get worse?” Arik asked, and then realized he really didn’t want to know.
Ares wiped a trickle of blood off his cheek. “Chaos showed up and took a bite out of Pestilence.”
“Don’t tell me he’s immune to hellhound poison,” Limos ground out. “Do not tell me that.”
“No, not immune, but damned near. He went still for all of five seconds. He’s growing stronger, Limos, and I’d be willing to bet that it won’t be long until even a hellhound bite won’t affect him at all.” He cursed in Sheoulic, and Arik understood every one of the nasty words. “Where the fuck are Reaver and Harvester? We need them now more than ever before, and they’ve gone MIA.”
“This is all my fault,” she murmured. “My fault. Maybe I didn’t get the dagger in the right spot. Maybe—”
Arik squeezed her hand. “You nailed him dead center in the heart. You couldn’t have had better aim. This is not your fault.”
“Arik is right.” Ares took the dagger and made it disappear into his armor. “I’m going to go to UG.” He nodded at Arik. “Take care of her.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I will.”
Once Ares was gone, Limos slipped the leather thong attached to the cup around her neck and over the top of her Seal pendant. Arik gathered her in his arms and carried her into the house, surprised she didn’t fight him. Neither did she resist when he stripped her and put her into a hot shower. He left his clothes on, not wanting to accidently cut off any protruding body parts if he came into contact with the deceptively beautiful pearls, and when he was done washing her, he tucked her into bed.
“Join me?” she asked, and yes, he planned to, after he took his own shower.
He washed quickly, and when he got out, he found Limos out on the deck, dressed in a pink, fluffy robe, looking out at the dark ocean. He tugged on a pair of shorts and joined her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
She looked up at the starry sky, a faraway glimmer in her eyes. “About you.”
“What about me?”
“I owe you everything, Arik. Without you, we never would have found my agimortus.” She suddenly flew into his arms, her body so tight with tension it broke his heart. Seeing her so vulnerable fired up his protective instincts like nothing else could.
This woman had been willing to go to hell for him. Literally. She was prepared to give up everything to join her husband and spend eternity in misery, just to save Arik’s soul.
“No,” he croaked. “I owe you. What you were willing to do for me… that was the most unselfish act in history, I think.”
She laughed bitterly. “You have no idea how selfish I am.”
“You’ll never convince me.”
For a long time they stood like that, the warm night breeze blowing around them. It was strange to think that it was December, nearly Christmas. He was so used to snow at this time of the year. The thought gave him visions of log cabins, snapping fires, a decorated tree, and Limos, naked on the floor in front of it. Only in this fantasy, instead of the chastity pearls, she was wearing a big red ribbon.
He had to find a way to make it happen. There had to be a way to break her contract and that damned gold chain. Because after everything that had gone down since he’d gotten out of hell, and especially after tonight in the crystal chamber, he wasn’t going to give her up.
“Arik?” Propping her forehead against his chest, Limos slid her hands up and down his back. “Remember how I said it was my fault that Deliverance didn’t kill Pestilence?”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
She pulled away a little and looked up at him. The silver moonlight reflected in her eyes, turning them into frosted purple glass. They were remarkable. She was remarkable.
“I need to tell you something. Something I can’t even tell my brothers, but maybe you can help. The R-XR or The Aegis… I don’t know. Because I do think I’m
the reason the dagger didn’t work on Pestilence.”
Arik hated that she blamed herself, and though what he really wanted to do was take her into the bedroom and make her forget everything but how her body responded to him, he sensed that she needed to get something out in the open.
“Go on.”
“Remember how The Aegis lost Deliverance a few hundred years ago?”
He scowled, wondering where this was leading. “Yeah… and they don’t even know how they lost it.”
“That’s because they didn’t lose it. I stole it.”
Limos waited for Arik to get angry. Freak out. Give her a disapproving look. Something. Instead, he merely watched her. With unflappable patience. “I’m guessing there’s an explanation.”
“Yes,” she replied, “but it’s one you won’t like.”
“Try me.”
Somehow, his calm, nonjudgmental reaction was worse than if he’d flown off the handle. At least then she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting mad. As it was, the longer he showed faith in her, the worse it was going to be when she let him down.
She could stop now, make up some cover story, but what if she was right and Deliverance didn’t work because of what she’d done so long ago? Arik might be able to help. God, she hoped so.
“Remember how you pointed out that I turn self-destruct seheight=ive sometimes?” That still rankled. It might be true, but she didn’t like being so transparent to anyone. Not even Arik. “Well, around the time the Templars were falling into disfavor, the world was in turmoil. The various crusades had left the Middle East in crisis, and in Europe, crops were failing thanks to what scientists now say was a climate change. By 1300, the people were starting to starve.” She shivered despite the warm temperature, remembering how dark that time had been for everyone, including herself.
“I fell into a self-destructive depression, and all I wanted was for the Apocalypse to start. There was talk of it among humans, the first major fears about it since Christianity had taken root. Since then, every generation thinks they’re ushering in the end of days, but this was really the first time there was a mass consensus, you know?” No, of course he didn’t. He hadn’t been there. It was weird talking to someone so… young. “So anyway, I was all gung-ho for it to happen and get over with.”
“So you stole the dagger?”
“Yep. Took it from the Templars. The Daemonica said that Reseph’s Seal would break first, so I figured that if I had Deliverance, I wouldn’t have to worry about Ares or Than trying to kill Pestilence. So I kept it until 1317, when The Aegis, blaming me for the Great Famine, performed a spell that summoned me.”
Arik frowned. “Wait… if they… we… can summon you, why did Kynan have to use Reaver to contact you guys a couple of months ago?”
She turned away and gripped the railing so hard that her fingernails left dents in the wood. “Because I destroyed the knowledge of summoning after that.” She glanced over at Arik, but his expression was still carefully neutral. “See, they captured me by freezing me with hellhound venom, and I had Deliverance on me. They took it, and they spent a week or so torturing me for information. Eventually Reseph found me. He never got angry often, but when he did, very little could stop him. He killed every Guardian in the keep where they’d held me. When he finished, I had to admit that I’d stolen Deliverance, and now that The Aegis had it back, I was worried the account of it would show up in their records.”
She’d lied to Reseph about why she’d taken the dagger, though. She’d told him she hadn’t trusted The Aegis to keep it safe, and Reseph, being so trusting, had believed she’d taken its security into her own hands.
“So what did you do?”
“We searched out every Aegi who knew of my connection to it, and we… took care of their memories.”
He stiffened, because yeah, sore subject. “I see.”
“It took some time, but with Reseph’s ability to go back farther into someone’s memories than any of us, we took care of almost everyone involved. The problem was that the person who ultimately got the dagger went into hiding with it. Now we know that he altered its use so it could be used to kill Ares’s agimortus in order to save him.”
“Why just Ares’s?”
“He’s the only one of us with an agimortus that is an actual person.”
He nodded. “Okay, so what does this have to do with Pestilence not dying when you stabbed him?”
An ocean-scented breeze washed over her face, and she took a moment to enjoy the whisper of wind caressing her face and teasing her hair. She’d spent a relatively small amount of time living in Sheoul, but the dark, claustrophobic experience had been carved into her very soul, and every day she spent out in the open like this was a gift, and she treated it as such.
Finally, she turned back to Arik. “I think the side-effect was that it rendered it useless to kill a Horseman. There’s just no other explanation for why it didn’t affect Pestilence at all.”
Limos could practically see Arik’s wheels spinning as he considered everything she’d told him. His powerful body was so beautiful in the moonlight, and though she ached to touch him, she sensed that he was in military mode, his mind working on a solution.
“Where did the engraving on the hilt come from?” Arik asked. “Was it always there, or was that added later?”
From death comes life.
“When we originally forged Deliverance, the Guardian who helped enchant it had a vision. Those words appeared to her, and she insisted that they be carved into the handle. That’s why Than believes that Pestilence can be turned back. He thinks that he can do something to make it happen, because Deliverance is specifically mentioned in Than’s prophecy.”
He cocked his head to the side, studying her for so long she began to fidget. “What?” she finally asked. “Do I have food on my face or something?”
He chuckled, and then sobered. “I’m just glad you told me.”
“You don’t hate me?”
The two feet of space between them closed in an instant, and he dipped his head, brushing his lips lightly over hers. “There’s your answer,” he said, stunning the hell out of her. “I think you should have told your brothers, but I get it. I’ve kept things from Runa.”
“Like?”
He exhaled slowly. “Like the fact that I sold my soul to a Charnel Apostle in order to save her life.” He squeezed his eyes shut, but doing so didn’t hide his pain from her. “She’s dealt with so much, and she carried horrible guilt with her until Shade took it.” He opened his eyes. “I can’t tell her about that either. She’d blame herself.”
“How does Shade take guilt away?” Because she could really use a dose of that magic.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” He grimaced. “There are things I do not want to think about my sister doing.”
“Oh. Sex.” Okay, so she didn’t want any of that. Not with Shade. But if Arik wanted to sex her out of her guilt, that would be another story.
“Sort of.”
Sort of? There was no such thing as TMI for her, but Arik obviously didn’t want to go certain places when it came to his sister.
“About Runa…” Now, this was a place she didn’t want to go, but for the first time in her life, she felt like she could. Like she could talk about something she’d done without the fear that she’d be hated. Arik’s reaction to the truth about her past—granted, he still didn’t know the worst of it—had given her a new confidence, and a new desire to come clean, if only to him. “There are no words in Sheoulic for ‘I’m sorry,’ ” she began. “So I grew up without them. Once, when I tried to find the right words, the person I wanted to use them on was punished. I’ve had a hard time saying them since, so please believe me when I say I’m sorry I messed with your memories. I had no right to do it.”
“No, you didn’t.” His voice was hard, but not unkind. “But I get why you did it. You wanted to protect me, just like you did when you offered to give yourself up to Satan.”
His big chest expanded on a deep inhale as he reached out and caressed her cheek. “Just promise you won’t do it again.”
She smiled, even though none of this was funny. “Which one?”
“Either. That bastard can’t have you.” Growling, he dropped his hand, and it clenched into a fist, as if he was preparing to go a few rounds with her fiancé. “Nothing is iron-clad. There’s got to be a way out of your contract.”
She snorted. “Sure there is. You can take my virginity.”
Oh, she wasn’t serious, but just thinking about it made her ache for it. Made her desperate to have Arik on top of her, making love to her the way a male should. To have him between her legs like that, his muscles flexing, his skin glistening with sweat… God, she could only imagine the places he’d take her.
“There’s one hell of a catch in that particular out-clause.” He frowned. “Wait, how did you say your chastity belt can be removed?”
“It can’t. Not by anyone but my husband.”
He considered that. “The spell infused in the belt and contract… were those the exact words used? Did it say ‘husband,’ or Satan?”
“Husband.” She drew in a harsh breath. “But Harvester drew up the contract. She wouldn’t have left a loophole like that.” Limos paced the length of the deck, her bare feet making no sound, even if her mind was clacking like an old typewriter as she tried to untangle her marriage contract and Deliverance’s failure. The only thing she was sure about was that she needed help. “I need to talk to Reaver.”
“Do your Watchers disappear often?”
“Sometimes. But when we really need them, they’ve always shown up. Ares and Than haven’t had any luck, but I’ll give it a shot.” She stopped at the far end of the deck and closed her eyes, calling out to Reaver in her mind.
Reaver, our Heavenly Watcher, I require your presence. She repeated the official words of summoning, and then added, Like, now. We’re in trouble, Reavie-Weavie.
Arik’s hands came down on her shoulders, and she allowed herself to lean into him. He slipped his arms around her waist and held her like that as they gazed out over the moonlit ocean. His strength surrounded her, easing her, giving her comfort—and a connection—she’d never had before.