Eternal Rider (29 page)

This time the exchanged glances were between Arik and Kynan. “So her death is what will break your Seal, and no doubt Pestilence wants her dead,” Arik said.

“Which is why we’re guarding her, Einstein.” Limos didn’t even bother looking at him. She was too busy studying her toes, which were painted the same pink and yellow as her fingernails. Apparently, she was the ADD Horseman.

“We have a little problem, though,” Ares said. “Humans aren’t meant to bear the
agimortus
. It will kill them. But
she bonded with the hellhound you have in captivity. It lends his life force to her, which is buying time. But every time you hurt the animal, it weakens her.”

Kynan let out a juicy curse. “I’ll arrange for its release.”

Arik eyed the vamps near the hearth. “I assume you’ve made sure your, ah, minions are no threat to Cara.”

“Our staff is loyal,” Ares said tersely. “They understand the consequences of betrayal. But every other demon in the underworld is a danger to her.”

“Not every demon.” Kynan’s blue eyes became chips of ice.

A muscle twitched in Ares’s jaw, as though he was fighting the urge to mouth off. “The majority then,” he ground out. “They want out of Sheoul and they crave dominion over humans. You can’t trust any of them.”

Yeah, Arik felt about the same way. Even though his own sister was a werewolf who was mated to a demon, he hadn’t ever gotten over his prejudice.

Kynan’s body went bowstring taut, and before the guy went off in defense of his wife, his in-laws, and his unborn child, Arik stepped forward. Which hurt like fuck. Fuck with broken ribs.

“So what else can we do, besides letting the hellhound go?” Arik took a couple of shallow breaths. Still hurt like fuck. “We could help guard Cara.”

“Having our demons and your demon killers in close proximity isn’t ideal. What we could use is a fallen angel. One who hasn’t entered Sheoul.”

“Ah.” Arik gave up trying to be all manly and wrapped his arm around his chest to keep his rib cage from splitting open. “We have tons of those to give out.”

Limos tapped her flip-flopped foot in annoyance. “Pes
tilence has been slaughtering them left and right. I estimate that there are only about half a dozen remaining. He’s determined to bring about the Apocalypse, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”

“Yeah,” Arik drawled, “we were unclear on that. Glad you set us straight.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Kynan said quickly. “What about your Seals? How can we prevent them from breaking?”

Thanatos snorted. “Don’t worry about mine. It will never break.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have complete control of it.”

Arik frowned. “So what could break it?”

“That’s not for you to know.” The shadows flitting around Thanatos seemed to grow more agitated. What
were
they? “Let it go.”

Touchy. Arik nodded at Limos. “What about you, Bonecrusher?”

Limos grinned. “Still feeling the power of my thighs, are you? Keep taunting me, and I’ll do it again. Only I won’t stop until your upper body is nothing but lung marmalade.”

Now there was a horrific image he’d take to his grave. “You going to answer my question?”

She shrugged one tan, curvy shoulder. “Nope.”

Thanatos regarded his sister with amusement before turning back to Ky and Arik. “Limos’s
agimortus
is an object. It’s a small ivory bowl. Any Horseman who drinks from it will break her Seal.”

“Seems like an odd requirement,” Kynan said. “Why is that?”

“We don’t know,” Limos replied, but the way she said it, with a slight trail-off at the end of her sentence, left a question mark in Arik’s mind. She might not know, but he had a feeling she had a theory.

“I’m assuming it’s well guarded, at least,” Kynan said.

There was a lot of weight shifting and sheepish expressions. “What?” Arik looked between the Horsemen, lingering for an extra second on Limos. It really was a great view. “It’s not being guarded?”

“We don’t know where it is.” Thanatos’s admission was delivered with a stare that dared Ky or Arik to snark back.

Arik snarked. “Oh, that’s great. You lost it? Pestilence could be toasting to success with it as we speak.”

Limos shook her head, making her long black hair swish in a shiny wave. “We didn’t lose it. It’s never been found.”

Kynan scrubbed his hand over his face. “We need to get the hellhound situation handled. Do you guys have email? Can you shoot us all the info you’ve got on this bowl?”

“And how do you think you can find it if we haven’t been able to?”

“We may have access to information, maps, histories, that you don’t. It can’t hurt.” Arik paused. “So… are we going to work together? Or are you going to be stubborn until we’re all doomed to Armageddon?”

There was a long, strained silence, and then Ares nodded decisively. “We work together. But no one else is to know the locations of our residences.”

“Deal.” Kynan handed Ares, Thanatos, and Limos cards with his information on them. “Unfortunately, no one in The Aegis but me can travel through Harrowgates,
so we can’t deliver the hound to you, and I can’t transport a cage of that size on my own. Call me in an hour and I’ll have coordinates to the Aegis facility where we’re holding him.”

Ares nodded. “There’s one more thing.” He slid questioning glances at both Limos and Thanatos. Limos inclined her head sullenly, but Thanatos tensed up. If his jaw got any tighter, teeth were going to break. “Besides Limos’s bowl, Pestilence is seeking a dagger. We call it Deliverance. It resembles a miniature sword with a horse head as the pommel. Its eye is a ruby. The dagger was forged in metals from a rock that fell from the sky and was tempered in hellhound blood. We helped The Aegis craft it after we were cursed, and we entrusted them to keep it, but it was lost.”

“It doesn’t sound familiar,” Kynan said, “but I haven’t gone through even a tenth of our histories. Why is it important?”

“You asked how we could be stopped. The dagger is the only thing on Earth that can destroy us, and only if wielded by another Horseman.”

Realization dawned, and Arik whistled. “That’s why you wanted The Aegis to hold it. You didn’t want one of you to go evil and destroy the dagger before it could be used.”

“Yes. Deliverance was meant to be returned to us if one of our Seals was broken.”

“And Pestilence wants it so you guys can’t have it to kill him.”

Ares gave a sharp nod. “I believe Pestilence is torturing Guardians to get it.”

Kynan cursed. “That explains our missing Guardians.”

“He delivered one of the bodies to me this night. I’ll have Reaver take it to you.”

“Thank you.” Kynan inclined his head. “If there’s nothing else, we’ll get to work.”

Arik and Kynan strode out of the keep. The second the heavy wooden door closed, Arik hugged his ribs and groaned. “Fuck, that bitch is strong.”

Kynan’s mouth twitched in mild amusement. “You know how to pick ’em.” He slapped Arik on the shoulder. “Since I have to knock you out to move through the Harrowgate, I’ll take you to Underworld General. Eidolon can heal you.”

The idea of letting a demon fix him made him ill, but he was in too much pain to argue. Besides, Shade, Eidolon’s brother, had already healed him once. Saved his life, in fact. And the damned demon never let him forget.

“Let’s do it.”

After Kynan and Arik left, Cara took a seat at the table, and one of the vampires—holy crap,
vampires
!—brought her a ham sandwich and hot tea. Free of orc-weed, he assured, when she asked. She still had the leather-bound book Ares had given her before they left his place,
A Guided Tour of Sheoul
, which, though apparently written by a reasonably articulate, intelligent demon, was seriously creepy. But she was learning a lot, even if, so far, she hadn’t found anything that might help her understand hellhounds or the
agimortus
.

As she nibbled at the sandwich, she listened to Ares and his siblings argue about The Aegis, hellhounds, daggers, Pestilence, fallen angels… they were all over the place, like marbles on glass. And even though Cara was in the middle of it all, she felt like a serious outsider.

“You guys can feel free to ask my opinion,” she called out.

Ares strode over and pushed the uneaten portion of the sandwich closer to her. “We haven’t had to include anyone else in any decisions in a long time.” It wasn’t much of an apology, but from Ares, it was a lot.

She glanced at his brother and sister, who were pretending—badly—to not listen. “Look,” she said, lowering her voice, “I’m sorry for earlier. You’ve been trying to protect me, and I insulted you.”

Flickering light from the fire played on Ares’s face, throwing shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, and the flames danced in the black of his eyes. “You despise violence and those capable of it, don’t you?”

Cara sipped her tea to buy time. How could she explain that what she despised was what
she
was capable of. “Yes,” she said simply, because nothing else would come.

His hand dropped to his scabbard, his long fingers stroking his sword’s pommel like a lover, and the
agimortus
, which had been tingling already, kicked up a notch. “You despise me.”

“Not you.” She liked him too much. Even now, her skin was tightening as if his fingers were caressing her instead of the sword. “I despise killing.”

The sound of grinding molars joined the crackle of the fire, and then he drilled her with a stare so fierce she recoiled. “Tell me about the person you killed. Was it an accident?”

Whoa. He was as subtle as tank. “Y-syes.”

“Self-defense?”

Her heart skittered in an erratic rhythm. “Yes.”

“Then stop punishing yourself and everyone else who does what they have to do.”

So easy for him to say. He’d had thousands of years to
stop punishing himself. If he ever had. “How many people have you killed?”

“Tens of thousands. And not all in self-defense.” His eyes held her captive, when she would have stumbled backward. “Yeah, you’re shocked. I’m a warrior, Cara. So go ahead and look at me with contempt, but you’ll thank God that I’m there when the werewolf is at the door. Because I’ll kill it, and I’ll never regret it. You can sit back and be appalled, but at least you’ll be alive, your hands will be free of blood, and it’ll be because of me.”

He wheeled away, but she snagged his armored elbow. The leather was surprisingly soft, and she wondered how it was supposed to protect him. “Wait.”

His entire body went taut. “I live to serve,” he said sarcastically, and God, that was it, wasn’t it? No one had ever treated him as anything but a warrior, so how was he supposed to see himself as anything different?

“You’re right,” she admitted. “And I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I don’t mean to judge you, but I see more in you than a killing machine.”

“How nice for you,” he said. “But you’re wrong. I can’t afford to be anything else.”

Her heart bled for him, that he believed that about himself. “Yes, you can.”

He laughed, as if what she’d said was beyond ludicrous. “Are
you
going to give
me
life lessons? What the fuck does a human with the lifespan of a gnat know about a five-thousand year-old demon?”

“What is your problem?” She shot him an irritated glare. “Why do you have such contempt for humans?”

“They die.” He bit out the words viciously. “You love them, and then they die. That’s what’s going to happen to
you, Cara. You’re going to die, and then I’m going to—” He snapped his mouth shut so hard she heard the crack of teeth.

“You’re going to what?” The question tangled on her tongue, because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear.

His gaze skipped away. “I’m going to go evil.”

His answer chafed, for some reason. Had she wanted him to say he’d be sad? Ridiculous. But… okay, yes, she did. She wanted
someone
to be sad she was dead. The mark on her chest buzzed as her anger sparked. Ares spun around again, but oh, hell, no. She wasn’t finished with him yet.

Impulsively, she shoved him. Hard. Right into the wall. “You do not get to walk away from me like that. Not again. This is my life we’re talking about. I’m not a delicate little flower, nor am I a child. I’m a woman with no family and stuck in a strange world, so even if you have to pretend to care whether I live or die, that’s what I want. And if I want to have sex, it’s not your place to tell me I can’t handle it. And—”