Page 15 of Eternal Rider (Lords of Deliverance 1)

Ares planted his fists against the armrests and pushed his upper body off Cara. Ah, damn. That shit was not cool. She’d been drugged, was drunk on orc-weed, and he’d known the instant she’d touched his mouth with her finger that he should stop her.

Instead, he’d been curious to see what she’d do. He hadn’t thought she’d kiss him. And when she had… it had been the sweetest kiss he’d experienced in, well, ever. Her mouth had been hungry, her tongue slick and hot, and it had lit a fire inside him he’d thought had been long since doused.

And when her fingers dug into the back of his neck, the fire had flamed out of control. His warrior instincts had demanded that he move in, go on the offensive, and conquer. He had her under him in a heartbeat, his body hard, straining, his mouth tasting willing, sexed-up female.

Now he was covering her, his arousal pressing against her core, his chest tight with uneven breaths. And she was asleep.

Get off her, dumbshit.

The back of his neck prickled with the sensation of being watched, and he whipped his head around to the source. Vulgrim stood in the doorway between the dining area and the great room, his tiny, piggish eyes bright with speculation and curiosity. No doubt. Ares rarely brought females here. And when he did, they didn’t spend time making out in the living room. They weren’t usually drugged to unconsciousness, either.

Yeah, this looked real good.

“What?” he snapped, as he shoved off Cara. He resisted the urge to explain that this wasn’t a roofie-in-the-drink thing. Ares could have any female he wanted. He didn’t need to drug them, and it wasn’t his servant’s business, even if he had done it to have sex with the human.

“I see you’re… busy,” Vulgrim said, his usually flat voice dripping with amusement. “I’ll clean up later.”

“Do that. And tell Torrent to keep a better eye on Rath.” Not that he minded the little furball in the house, but if Pestilence found the baby Ramreel by himself… God, Ares didn’t even want to go there in his thoughts.

He scooped Cara into his arms. Her top splayed open, the ripped-off buttons and torn fabric completing the perverted fuck-her-while-she-sleeps scenario. Excellent.

“I hear Rohypnol is even better than orc-weed, sir,” Vulgrim called out as Ares carried her down the hall.

“I have a torture room in the dungeon,” Ares shot back, and he was only half-kidding. Damned demon.

Problem was, the demon wasn’t half as afraid of Ares as he should be, and as much as Ares wanted to regret allowing Vulgrim and family into Ares’s inner circle, he couldn’t. He didn’t like demons, but Vulgrim was different and had been since the day Ares had rescued him from certain death as a kid.

In his arms, Cara stirred, snuggled against his chest, and wrapped her arms around his neck. A curious warmth filtered through him, something he couldn’t quite identify, but it was… nice.

There is no room for tenderness in our world. Warriors fight. They fuck. They kill. That is all. His father’s voice—the voice of the human male who had raised him—still clanged around in Ares’s skull after all this time. As a toddler, Ares had been beaten for showing too much kindness toward animals and slaves. His gentle side had literally been battered out of him by the time he was ten. He’d gotten the message loud and clear. Don’t get attached to anyone or anything, because possessions were easy to lose, power was fluid, and living things died easily.

No shit. He’d forgotten that lesson eventually, and his family had paid for his failure. In blood.

Cara began to snore, delicate rumblings he tried to find unattractive. Not cute. Nope, not cute at all. He told himself that over and over as he carried her to one of his five bedrooms, choosing the master suite. It had a bathroom, the biggest bed, and in the corner, a chair where he could sit and watch her if he needed to. It also sat at the edge of the cliff and boasted the best view, best sea breeze, a patio, and was nearly inaccessible from the outside.

He laid her on the mattress, had to peel her fingers off his neck, and did his best to avert his gaze from her gaping shirt as he drew a sheet over her. Okay, maybe not his best. Ah, hell, the effort was pathetic. He needed to get her new pajamas. Immediately.

With a soft sigh, she curled on her side and snuggled into the sheets. A twinge of jealousy pricked at him. He didn’t remember ever nestling into a bed like that—it was such a human thing to do. But then, even when he’d believed he was human, he’d felt disconnected, as if he didn’t belong. He’d gone through the motions of getting married, having a family, and enjoying life, but he’d always known deep down that something wasn’t right. That he was meant for something bigger, and he didn’t need or deserve human comforts or feelings.

He realized he’d been hovering over Cara, lost in his thoughts, his hands cradling her head because he had no pillows on the bed, his fingers stroking her smooth cheek. Hissing, he jerked away with such force that he threw himself off balance and had to catch himself on the chair before he landed on his ass. Son of a bitch. Both the stumble and the drifting thoughts were clumsy, uncharacteristic, and as much as he wanted to blame the agimortus… okay, yeah, he’d blame it. No way was a woman making him addled, no matter how beautiful she was.

Snapping himself back into warrior mode, he assigned guards to the patio, the roof, and within sight of each of the windows. Once he was satisfied that nothing, not even one of Pestilence’s rats, could sneak into the room, he texted Limos and Thanatos. Both arrived within an hour, and he met them in the great room.

“Tell me you have the human,” Thanatos said, by way of greeting.

He was dressed for battle in his demon-bone plate armor, and his boots boomed like thunderclaps as he strode across the floor. He’d pulled his pale hair back with a leather thong, but the two thin braids on either side of his temples tapped loosely against his face as he walked. In his hand was an icy can of Mountain Dew. He was addicted to the stuff.

Limos entered behind him in orange board shorts, a yellow, orange, and blue Hawaiian print tank top, and floral flip-flops. She even had a yellow flower tucked into her black hair. She was such a girl.

“Hey, bro.” She patted Ares on the chest as she walked past him. “What’s up?”

“I have the human. She’s sleeping.”

“Good.” Than tossed back half his soda. “Are you having trouble with her?”

More than you know. “If you’re asking if she’s combative in my presence, no.”

“What about the effect the agimortus has on you?”

Ares clenched and unclenched his fists. Of everything he’d been saddled with when he’d been cursed to be a Horseman, the loss of powers and potential weakness was the one that chafed the most. “When I fought Reseph in York, my armor and sword failed, but I haven’t needed to make use of any of my skills since grabbing Cara.”

Liar. His reflexes had been slow in the hotel, the proximity to her dulling his ability to sense impending danger. But he couldn’t admit his failings, not even to his brother and sister. He could list all the logical arguments—that it wasn’t his fault, that it wouldn’t have happened with anyone else, yadda-yadda. But bottom line? It was humiliating.

Li shot him a skeptical look, as if she wanted to offer him supernatural Viagra for his agimortus issues, but wisely, she kept her trap shut. “How’s she dealing? She can’t be happy to suddenly be the underworld’s most wanted dead.”

“She’s dealing about as well as she can.” He moved to the wet bar near the fireplace. Tequila had a way of replacing the raw burn of shame with its own brand of fire. “For now, at least.”

“Is she showing signs of weakness?” Li’s violet eyes lit up as Ares ducked behind the granite counter. “Yes, please. Something fruity.”

“You want an umbrella, too?” She flipped him the bird. One of these days, his sister would learn to like proper drinks, not sugary girly crap. “No weakness that I can tell yet. The bond with the hellhound is going to keep her strong for a little while. We need to find the animal, though, because if it dies, so does she. I have a place for us to start—a street in York, and we can go door to door if we have to. We also need to hunt for a fallen angel so Cara can transfer the agimortus, and we’ll have some breathing room.”

Limos sighed. “I’ll go home and pack some things. You need at least one of us here to help you protect the girl.”

“Good. I’ll go after the mutt. Than, you hunt for an Unfallen. I’d start at the Temple of Lilith. I found Tristelle there.” Ares hoped she had been stupid enough to stay.

“Done.”

“I hope so. She said that there were only a dozen or so fallen angels left. They’ve all either been killed by Pestilence or entered Sheoul to escape his blade.” When Than let out a raw curse, Ares couldn’t agree more. “Any other news?”

Thanatos tossed his can into the garbage. “Reseph tried to convince one of my vamps to slip an aphrodisiac into my drink.”

“Ares is quite fond of the orc-weed,” Vulgrim called out from the kitchen, and yeah, there was a set of chains in the dungeon with his name on them.

Limos scowled. “What did your demon say?”

“Nothing,” Ares muttered. He lobbed an ice cube at Than, who was frowning, clearly trying to puzzle out what the Ramreel was blabbing about. “Obviously, Reseph’s plan didn’t work?”

“I suspected he’d try to get to me through my staff, so I warned them that I had a stake waiting for anyone who betrayed me.”

Li studied her alternating pink and yellow nails. “You’d better avoid the Four Horsemen pub. Apparently, Reseph stopped in and promised an eternal place at his side after the Apocalypse to anyone who could get you on your back. The females are already looking for chains that can hold you. There are even a few males who plan to get in on the action.”

“Nice.” Thanatos’s eyes glinted like canary diamonds.

Ares splashed rum in the blender for Limos’s girly drink. “Do you see now that we have to destroy him?”

“I said no.” A brief flicker of shadow darkened the area around Than’s feet. “We’ll find another way. Reaver offered to help.”

Limos rolled her eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I hear that,” Than muttered. “But technically, he won’t be helping. He suggested bringing representatives from The Aegis to meet with us.”

“Meet with us? They probably want to kill us.” Limos had had a nasty run-in with a group of Aegi a couple of hundred years ago, and they’d informed her that killing Horsemen would prevent the Apocalypse. Somehow, they’d known about the effects of a hellhound bite and had shot her with an arrow coated in hound saliva. They’d kept her paralyzed for a full week before Reseph rescued her, and though what they’d done to her couldn’t match Ares’s own experience with hellhound paralyzation, it had still taken her weeks to shake it off.

Yeah, Aegi were, technically, the good guys, but they were definitely not friends.

Ares added fresh strawberry daiquiri mix and ice to the alcohol. Yuck. “If they are still up on our vulnerability to hellhound bites, we could be walking into a trap.”

“Or they could help us,” Than said. “I hate to agree with Reaver, but at this point, we can’t afford to turn down any offer of assistance. Besides, they might be able to help us get our hands on Deliverance before Reseph gets the dagger.”

“I don’t like it.” Limos tapped her foot, making her flip-flop slap on the floor.

Ares considered their options, and unfortunately, they didn’t have many. “We need to talk to them, but we’ll do it on our terms. Than, tell Reaver we’ll meet with them at your place.”

“What,” Limos said, “a whole freaking squad of them?”

Ares shook his head. “There are three of us, so we’ll allow no more than three of them. Cara will be with us, and I can’t risk her safety.”

“How will they get there?”

“That’s Reaver’s problem.” Ares flipped on the blender.

“I still think this is a mistake,” Limos said, after the noise stopped.

“Li, we’ve been searching for your agimortus for thousands of years, with no success. If we haven’t found it by now, we never will. But The Aegis has assets we don’t. We don’t have a choice. Reseph has the backing of evil now, including their resources. If he finds your agimortus before we do—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. But I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either, but—” A scream cut Ares off.

Cara. He tore off down the hall, Than and Li on his heels. He burst through the double doors into the bedroom, where Cara was sitting up in bed, her eyes wild, face drawn. Her fingers clutched the sheet so tightly to her chest that her knuckles were white.

“Ares,” she gasped, and then her mouth dropped open at the sight of Than, his sword in hand, and Li, who had armored up in her Croix viper-skin samurai-style tunic and breeches. Ares had, at some point, suited up as well, and his armor creaked as he strode across the room.

“These are my siblings.” Instinctively, Ares scanned every inch of the room before putting his back to the wall next to each window, where he peered out into the night. His Ramreels were standing at attention, undisturbed. “What happened?”

“Someone took Hal.” Cara inhaled raggedly. “They hurt him.”

Thanatos sheathed his weapon, the slice of a blade sliding into its housing cutting through the tension in the room. “Hal?”

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