by Larissa Ione
“You Aegi are full of surprises,” Ares murmured.
Arik had found that statement to be true enough. “So why did Pestilence send his spies to attack? I mean, if he wants me dead, can’t he do it himself? If he’d come with a few of his minions, I could have been toast by now.”
“You’re right.” Limos frowned. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it was your charming fiancé?” Arik asked, but she shook her head.
“That doesn’t make sense either. I doubt he knows that Pestilence owns your soul. Satan would want you dragged to Sheoul to die, so he could have your soul. He’d lose it if you died here.”
“So what you’re saying then, is that there’s a new player in town.”
Ares nudged one of the khnive bodies with his foot. “A new player who wants you dead.”
Thanatos whistled. “Sucks to be you, human.”
Man, there were days you just shouldn’t get out of bed.
Sixteen
No more creepy demons attacked Arik and Limos on their way back to the house, and when Arik saw Kynan standing on the huge wraparound deck at the front of Limos’s house, he rethought the not-getting-out-of-bed thing. Limos disappeared to give them a moment as he folded Kynan into a bear hug and practically lifted him off the deck. Ky gave him a few manly pats on the back, and they broke apart, Arik grinning like an idiot.
“Man,” he breathed. “It’s so great to see you.”
“Ditto. You gave us a scare.” Kynan clapped him on the shoulder. “You look good. Shade and E did you right.”
“Speaking of Shade—”
“He and Runa are on their way,” Kynan interrupted.
“Good.” Arik sank down on one of the bar stools that cozied up to the bamboo mini-bar. The east decking was set up with tables, the bar, and a hot tub, and Arik wondered how much partying Limos did here. “Runa’s probably been a little worried.”
“A little?” Kynan snorted. “I think the only thing keeping her together has been all the time she spends in Underworld General’s daycare.”
Arik had forgotten that UG had a daycare run by Runa and a couple other in-laws of his, Serena and Idess. That was some weird shit. A hospital run by demons, with a nursery run by a werewolf, a vampire, and an ex-angel. There was a book or TV show in there somewhere.
Arik propped one heel on the stool rung and leaned back, letting the sun hit his bare skin. “I’ll bet the hospital has been busy.”
“Everything has been busy. It’s bad, man.” Kynan dragged his hand through his hair. “The Aegis is overextended, and we’ve lost nearly ten percent of our Guardians in assassinations and battles with demons. We even lost an Elder. Decker took his place.”
Arik’s eyes shot wide. “You made Decker an Elder? He isn’t even an Aegi.”
“He is now.”
Arik rubbed the back of his neck, stunned at this new turn of events. “Wow. The Aegis has a really intensive selection process, doesn’t it?’
“Ha-ha.” Kynan shook his head. “We had a few candidates shortlisted, but we decided to take someone from the R-XR.”
“Why? You already had us, well, him, as a consult.”
“Yeah, but as an Elder, we can share more sensitive information with him, and when he’s sworn to keep something secret, he has to.”
“You mean, keep something secret from the R-XR.” Arik hated all the secrecy crap. How the hell were they supposed to solve the end-of-the-world puzzle when the players wouldn’t share their pieces?
Ky shrugged. “So… now that you’re back…” he trailed off. “You are back, right?”
Arik looked up at a seagull soaring overhead and wondered how to respond. This was something he didn’t know how to answer. His mind was still scrambled, Pestilence held the deed to his soul, he could alert to spies like a bird dog, a gob of people were trying to kill him, and then there was the… whatever it was… going on with Limos.
“Look,” Ky said, interrupting Arik’s musings, “if you need time off, a vacation… therapy… it’s understandable. Hell, it’s required. But the world situation isn’t getting any better. The Apocalypse took a break, but it’s knocking at our door again. We need you, man.”
“Trust me, I want to kick some demon ass. But I’m not sure leaving right now is a good idea.”
“What, you want to stay here?”
Fucking idiot that he was, yeah, he wanted to stay. Because hey, nothing like self-torture to make one’s life complete. “My soul is in danger. If I die, I become Pestilence’s soul-bitch. Long story, but if he decides he wants me dead, I’m probably safest here. Our best defense against an evil Horseman is another Horseman.”
“Fuuuuuuuuck.” Kynan scrubbed his face. “I could use a double shot of whiskey right now.”
“I’m sure Flicka keeps hard liquor behind the bar.”
“Flicka?”
“I don’t want to say her name.”
“So you’re calling her horse names?” Ky cocked a dark eyebrow. “I can’t wait to see how she reacts to Mr. Ed.”
The slatted-wood double doors that opened to the deck from the living room swung wide, and Arik leaped to his feet as Runa stepped out, Shade at her side.
“Sis!” As Arik moved toward her, Shade put his big body in the way, menace all but leaking from his pores. What the hell was that about?
Runa, seemingly unconcerned by her mate’s reaction, went around him and threw herself into Arik’s arms.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“Yeah.” His throat closed up a little. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
She pulled back so he could see her face. “You know it’s me, right?”
“Ah, yeah.” What the hell?
“You on the up-and-up?” Shade asked. “Because you pull any shit like you did last time, and I will gut you. Runa won’t stop me this time.”
“Shade!” Runa scolded. “He’s fine.”
“Overprotective, much?” Arik glared. “And what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Hey, everyone, why don’t we give Arik some time to rest?” Limos, changed into a bright blue sundress, hurried outside, her smile so fake and unsteady that it was obvious she was trying to keep Shade and Runa from answering Arik’s question.
“No deal, Secretariat. I don’t need any rest.” He swiveled around to Shade, knowing the demon would give it to him straight. People who didn’t give a shit about you were always the most honest. “Answer me.”
“Arik, this isn’t necessary.” Limos took Arik’s arm to lead him away, but he didn’t budge, and Shade didn’t seem inclined to listen to her either.
“Let me refresh your memory.” Shadows writhed in Shade’s dark eyes, and he poked Arik in the chest with one finger. “We were here yesterday. You beat the shit out of Runa. Broke her cheekbone, smashed her nose, and fractured three ribs.”
The ground shifted beneath Arik’s feet. “That’s not possible. I would never—”
“It’s okay, Arik,” Runa said. “You were out of your mind. You didn’t know what was real.”
“No way.” He shook his head, as if he could shake loose his memories. “I can remember my locker combination from boot camp, so I would have fucking remembered laying my hands on my own sister.” Just saying those words made his stomach turn inside out.
“There are a lot of things you can’t recall.” Limos moved toward him, and something inside him got all shivery in anticipation of her touch. She had a healing effect on him, as evidenced by the way she’d brought him out of the hellish existence inside his own head.
But right now, he didn’t want to be healed. He wanted to remember.
He wheeled around, slapping his palms down on the deck rail. Runa joined him, her caramel-honey hair blowing in the breeze.
“Arik, everything is fine. I shifted and healed most of it, and Eidolon healed the rest. No damage was done.”
It was nice of her to try to console him, but he knew better. She’d
suffered so much as a child, and being beaten had to have brought back memories best left buried. And wait… buried… when he’d been at the engagement party for Cara and Ares, Cara had told him about how Ares had used his special skill on her when they’d first met.
“He erased my memories so I wouldn’t freak out,” she’d said. “Which, of course, I did the moment he unlocked them.”
“Son of a bitch.” He sputchourn around to Limos. “You erased my memories, didn’t you?”
“No.” She said it so easily, so convincingly that he wanted to believe her, but something was off. A flare in her eyes, or a twitch of muscle, or maybe it was just the same hinky sense of unease he’d felt whenever his father told him something Arik wanted desperately to believe.
I’ll be there for your ball game, I promise. This Christmas, we really will have presents. I swear I’ll quit drinking.
Yeah, Arik’s bullshit meter was pegged at the max.
“You want to try that again, Horseman?” Please, please tell me the truth. If she said no again, he’d take it. He’d believe it, just like he’d believed his dad all those years ago. But when she just stood there, his heart sank. “You did it, didn’t you? What else am I missing in my head?”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Son of a bitch. Of everything that had been done to him over the last month, this was what felt like the biggest violation.
He turned to Kynan. “I was wrong. I don’t want to stay here. Let’s go.”
* * *
It had been three days since Arik had gone. The house felt empty, which was weird, because Limos had never thought of her house as being empty. But then, maybe that was why she had the other, public villa on the other side of the island, where she always had a party going on.
She didn’t like empty.
She also didn’t like Sheoul, with its claustrophobic atmosphere, sinister vibes, and hazy light, but here she was, riding Bones along a path in the Horun region, sandwiched between Ares and Than as they followed a lead on Sartael.
Thanatos had managed to squeeze some information out of Orelia, his demon tattoo artist, and if her intel was to be believed, the Dark Lord’s right-hand man was leading Sartael around by the nose and using him as a bloodhound. With the end of days on the horizon, Satan and Lucifer were in a scramble to locate ancient objects of magic and power that could be used in the final battle. Apparently, they’d just procured a mystical dagger rumored to have belonged to Charlemagne, and they were now on the hunt for the Spear of Destiny.
Limos and her brothers were here to stop them—and convince Sartael to help them find her agimortus.
All of them were on edge as they went from one underworld city to the next, and it didn’t help that the hellhound accompanying them, Gore, kept nipping at Bones’s heels. Bones was not happy at all, and it took every drop of concentration she had to keep him from attacking the canine.
“I hate this place,” she muttered.
Thanatos scowled at her. “Then you shouldn’t have come,” he said, and Ares nodded in agreement.
She didn’t argue, because they were right. But with Arik gone, she’d fallen back into her old self-destructisel
Except that wasn’t true, was it? Only after Arik was gone had she realized that being with him gave her a similar high. Similar, but better, because it was a pure, feel-good sensation that didn’t make her hate herself.
I’ve got to get Arik back. Her brothers turned to stare at her. Oops, she’d spoken out loud. “What? I don’t trust The Aegis or R-XR to keep him safe.”
Always the warrior, Ares returned his sharp gaze to the landscape as he spoke. “Have you contacted Kynan?”
“He won’t tell me where Arik is.” She patted Bones’s ebony neck, unsurprised when he growled in irritation. “And since he’s charmed, I can’t torture it out of him.”
“It’s probably not a good idea to torture the people we’re supposed to be working with,” Ares said wryly.
“It’s a good idea,” she protested. “As long as I don’t get caught.”
“I’m cool with kicking Guardian ass,” Thanatos chimed in.
It was often hard to tell when Than was being serious, but in this case, he was a little too enthusiastic about the prospect of bloodying up a Guardian, and she wondered if his resident Guardian was the reason for his attitude.
“I have to do something.” She shooed Gore away as he crept up on Bones again. “Too many people want Arik dead, including whatever asshole sent the khnives.”
“I’m curious about the khnives too.” The deep, resonant voice from behind them made all their mounts whirl and the hellhound snarl.
“Lucifer,” she hissed, and before the demon’s name was even fully out of her mouth, Ares had thrown open a Harrowgate and Than had launched a dagger. The blade caught the tall, black-haired fallen angel in the shoulder, but he just laughed, his pure crimson eyes glowing like laser beams.
“Your husband is looking for you, Limos. It’s time for you to go to him.”
Gore went low, belly to the ground, lips peeled away from razor sharp teeth and ears flattened against his skull, but wisely, he didn’t make a move. Lucifer could snuff him with no more than a snap of his fingers.
“She’s not going anywhere.” Ares crowded Battle against Bones in preparation to bulldoze them into the Harrowgate.
“Where is Sartael?” she asked.
“Funny you should ask. He just completed an assignment for me.” Lucifer snapped his fingers, and a winged man dropped from the sky, landing in a crouch next to him.
The male raised to his full, seven-foot height, his dried-blood-red leathery wings rising high above his bald head.
“What?” he snarled, and Limos got the distinct impression that he was less than happy to be dealing with Lucifer.
“Meet the Horsemen,” Lucifer said, his voice all silk and slime. “Pay extra attention to the female, since your next assignment will be to locate her agimortus.”
Limos snorted to cover up the fact that her heart had stopped. “Yeah, good luck with that, Sarty. You can’t find what hasn’t been hidden or lost, and I’ve already found it.”
Oh, that lie felt good. The orgasmic jolt was mild; she didn’t get much of a physiological kick out of lying to scumbags. It was just awesome to screw with Lucifer in general.
“You’re rusty, Limos. The Prince of Lies will want his Princess of Lies to have skills befitting the title.” Lucifer smiled, his blackened lips cracking. “Speaking of which, I have an offer for you. Go to the Dark Lord, and I will call off my minions.”
Bones pawed at the ground, wanting a piece of the demon, and Limos was right there with him. “A, you could use some ChapStick. B, what minions?”
“The ones who are awaiting my signal to bring Arik to me, now that Sartael has found him.”
She smiled. “Now who’s lying? Sartael’s power in the human realm is limited to finding demons and demonic artifacts.”
“Silly, stupid girl,” Lucifer drawled. “Arik’s soul belongs to a demon. Therefore, he’s a demonic artifact.” Limos’s oh-shit meter topped out, then blew the lid off at Lucifer’s next words. “And I’m going to deliver him straight to your husband.” Lucifer’s boneless gait brought him even closer, and she forced Bones to dig his hooves into the earth to keep Ares from shoving them through the gate. “You should have been his a long time ago, Limos. You have played very loose with the terms of your contract, and he is not… pleased.”
Her heart ricocheted around her chest as if seeking a way out. If her brothers knew how loose, they’d toss her to Lucifer themselves.
“And your mother…” Lucifer affected a sad expression. “She’s so disappointed in you. She raised you to be more responsible.”
Thanatos eased Styx closer to Bones. “How irresponsible of Li to not want to enter into an arranged marriage with the most evil being to have ever existed.”
“Limos is the envy of every female in the underworld. She knew what he was when she agr
eed to be his mate,” Lucifer pointed out.
That was true. Oh, God, was that ever true. She’d been promised to him as an infant, but had willingly stood before him to pledge her intentions later, as a teen who was fully aware of what she was doing.
But she’d changed her mind, and it was all crashing down on her now, and she wondered when she’d be crushed under the weight of the fallout.
“She didn’t agree.” Ares’s voice dripped with disdain. “This was forced on her as a child, against her will.”
Oh, fuck. She tensed up so hard that Bones groaned at the pressure of her thighs against his ribs. Lucifer’s head swiveled around slowly, creepily. The sinister smile on his face was something right out of a horror movie.
“Is that what she told you?” Throwing his head back, Lucifer laughed.
In a sudden, blind burst of panic, she cast a Harrowgate next to Lucifer, using it as a weapon. It sliced into him like a giant blade, severing his left arm, shaving his shoulder from his torso.
The sound he made, one of pain, fury, and hatred, blasted her ears with such force that her eardrums burst. Pain exploded in her head, and a chorus of yelps and shouts said it was torture on her brothers and the hellhound, too. The ground rumbled, and Lucifer morphed into a dinosaur-sized monster, a black, scaly thing with grotesquely misshapen limbs and exaggerated teeth and genitals. It raked the hound with its claws, ripping gaping wounds the length of Gore’s body.
Before she could react, Ares and Battle rammed her through his gate.
Limos and Bones came out in Ares’s courtyard. And they weren’t alone. Bones spun as Sartael burst out of her Harrowgate. He leaped for her, and though Bones caught him in the ankle with his teeth, the fallen angel managed to knock her out of the saddle. They hit the ground and rolled, throwing punches and slashing with weapons.
His hand came around her throat, and he slammed her head hard into a rock. Bones screamed in fury, and his hooves filled her vision. Wet, cracking noises became one with Sartael’s shriek of pain as Bones’s feet went right through his back and out his chest, pinning him in the sand.