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“Release her.” Ares’s deep voice was warped with rage.
A sudden vision of herself, decapitated and disemboweled, the hound feeding on her corpse, flashed in her head. She’d always possessed an empathic ability to sense an animal’s emotions, but this went beyond feelings. She was reading the animal’s thoughts, what he wanted to do to her. Another flash went through her brain, of Ares, screaming silently, his body mutilated, his bones shattered as a pack of hounds fed on him. Around his neck, his Seal was broken, and across the dark space was Pestilence, smiling.
The hellhound’s plans for her and for Ares kept coming. Swallowing bile, Cara fought to keep from vomiting.
The mark on her chest flared hot, and her gift, usually buried deep, rushed to the surface. It wanted to kill, was somehow connected to the agimortus, and she had a sickening feeling that as powerful as her ability used to be, it had now gone atomic.
“Release her,” Ares growled, “or I swear to you, I’ll skin you alive and spend weeks making you die.”
It wasn’t a threat. He’d do it, and a wave of dizziness came over her at the savagery winging through the air. She had to do something. Anything. Her hand tingled as her power condensed in her palm.
Violence is for those who don’t have the intelligence to find another way.
Right. Okay… think. She sifted through what she knew about hellhounds… which was nothing. But she’d saved one’s life. Could she tell this beast that? She’d never communicated with an animal before, at least, not with words, until Hal. But that had been in her dreams. Would it work with a hellhound she wasn’t bonded to?
Tentatively, she smoothed her hand over the wiry fur on his shoulder. “Hey, big fella. Let’s calm down, okay?”
She heard the buzz of Ares’s voice and the deadly rumbles in the hound’s throat, but she ignored all of it to focus, praying he’d tune in to her wavelength. Almost instantly, the beast stilled, and his memories ran through her head like a movie on fast-forward. So much data downloaded into her brain that she couldn’t process it, could only take in the scenes involving Pestilence, Ares, and even Hal. So much death and destruction…
A howl pierced her eardrums in a painful boom. He flung her across the room, and the floor came at her in a rush. Thanatos moved like a cat, scooping her up before she hit the tile. The sound of furniture breaking and bodies thumping against walls broke through the ringing in her ears.
Thanatos had barely set her on her feet when she twisted around to see Ares on the floor, his armor crumpled, his broken sword beneath the hellhound’s hubcap-sized paw. Thanatos shoved Cara behind him and lunged for the hound, his blade coming down in an arc.
The blow would have severed the beast’s head if the hound hadn’t suddenly disappeared.
Thanatos tore out of the room, shouting for Vulgrim and calling for a search of the property. When Ares didn’t immediately stand, Cara offered her hand to him. “Are you okay?”
He ignored her offer and exploded to his feet. He let loose a tirade in a language she didn’t know as he gripped her shoulders and yanked her close. “Did he hurt you?” His voice was harsh, clipped, and Cara moderated her own in hopes of calming him.
“He wanted to at first, but no.”
“How did he find me?” He released her, jamming both hands through his hair over and over. “How the f**k did he—”
“Your brother,” she murmured. “Pestilence told him how to find you. And me.”
“How do you know?” His question was more of a demand, his cold gaze that of an interrogator.
“He told me. I’m not sure how, but he told me. He—his name is Chaos—wants you dead.”
“I’m aware of that,” he barked. “The feeling is mutual. So why didn’t he kill you?”
“Because Hal is his son.”
His expression turned thunderous. “He’s what?”
“They were chasing Sestiel when The Aegis shot Hal. That’s how he ended up at my house. I didn’t get much more than that from him, but I think he’d planned to kill me… until he learned that his pup is bonded to me.”
“Son of a bitch.” Ares swept up his broken sword and hurled it against the wall. When he swung back around to her, every part of his body reflected his anger, from the way his brows punched down over flashing eyes to his clenched hands to the way his feet were spread wide in an aggressive fighting stance.
And yet, there was a sensual electricity in the air, and the longer they faced off, the more intense it became, until the air grew thick and hot, and her body flushed with sudden fever.
His gaze darkened dangerously… and then it dropped, traveling down her body as if mapping every curve. “You’re wearing my shirt. Take it off.” His voice was low, husky, little more than a rumble of thunder.
She stiffened. “Maybe I should have asked, but you were gone, and I didn’t have anything else to wear.”
“Take. It. Off.” Ares’s nostrils flared, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I need you na**d.”
Oh. A serious case of cottonmouth stole her voice. But anger gave it back. “Don’t order me around. You’ll get nothing from me like that.”
Too late she realized she’d thrown a gauntlet, and this was not a man to back down. Her challenge lit up his eyes, and he moved toward her, big shoulders rolling with every silent step. Her heart went ballistic, and with it came a zing of excitement, a growing desire to let him do what she thought he was going to do.
I need you na**d.
Wait. Need. Not want.
I need you to shut up and strip. Her attackers had said that. One of them, anyway. She could never remember which.
The agimortus throbbed, and though she was getting a load of that pleasant sensation she’d gotten the last time Ares was near, a suffocating tightness clamped around her chest. What if her power surfaced at the wrong time? Ares said he was immortal, unkillable, but she’d seen what her ability could do. Terror shrunk her skin.
“Stay away from me!” Blindly, she swept up a clay bowl off his dresser and heaved it. Ares was nothing but a blur as he knocked it aside with his forearm and lunged with the grace of a pouncing panther.
A scream escaped her as she scrambled backward. Her foot caught on the towel she’d dropped to the floor. She stumbled into a wooden chest, and the floor fell away beneath her. Arms closed around her and jerked her up just before her head hit the floor.
“Ares!” Thanatos’s roar vibrated the very air, and with a snarl, Ares tucked her against his chest and whirled to face his brother, two powerful, lethal animals readying for combat.
Cara might as well have been a rag doll with the way her feet hung off the floor. The jersey had ridden up uncomfortably high, allowing her bare butt to feel the impressive bulge behind the fly of Ares’s pants and probably exposing a lot more than she wanted anyone to see, but the two brothers were too engaged in their stare-off to notice.
“Let her go, man,” Thanatos said, his voice now a soothing, silky drawl. “You need to get to the pub. Or find yourself a brutal, bloody war.”
Ares’s muscles twitched, his grip loosening slightly.
“That’s it,” Thanatos continued. “Go take care of yourself. Limos is fetching a sorcerer to lay wards around the house. No hellhound will get inside again.”
There was a heartbeat of hesitation, and then Ares peeled away from her. “Sorry… I wouldn’t have… fuck.” His skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat and his eyes were wild, reminding her of a trapped animal, or of one in pain, terrified, and not understanding what had happened to it. She couldn’t have imagined Ares being terrified or trapped, but there was something going on inside him, a vulnerability she doubted he could name, and it bit right into her heart.
“Ares,” she murmured, in the voice she used with Hal, “it’s okay.”
He focused on her, and gradually, the feral light in his eyes faded, darkening to a smooth ebony. At the same time, the agimortus buzzed more urgently, becoming a tether that compelled her toward him. It tugged on her skin, walked a line between pleasure and pain as she stepped closer to Ares. He jerked as if she’d slapped him.
“I have to go.” He stalked out of the room without looking back, leaving her with Thanatos.
She wanted to go after Ares, but all she could do was breathe deeply, unable to shake the notion that they’d been skirted by a hurricane. “What… what was wrong with him?”
Thanatos’s expression gave away nothing, but he stared at her with a predator’s interest, and it struck her that maybe the hurricane hadn’t passed. Maybe only the eye had. “His demon half was pulling his strings.”
Demon half? She didn’t want to know. “Why?”
His pale eyes dropped to her bare legs, and she resisted the urge to tug the jersey down. There was a tormented hunger in his gaze she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to. “How much has he told you about us?”
“Pretty much nothing.”
The tendons in his neck strained, making the tattoos dance. “Cover yourself.” He turned away.
“Gladly.” While he was examining the wall, she stepped into her pajama bottoms. “So what’s the story?”
He didn’t turn back around. “Short version: Our mother was a succubus demon, our father was an angel. With the exception of Limos, we were raised on Earth as humans until we learned the truth. We didn’t take it very well, and our actions led to mass human casualties. As punishment, we were cursed to be the keepers of the Seals of Armageddon. And with that honor came side-effects, hints of what we will be once our Seals break.”
“And Ares’s side-effect is…”
“Humans get aggressive and fight in his presence. In turn, he’s affected by human turmoil. When mankind is at war, or there are large-scale conflicts going on, he’s drawn to them. He’s compelled to fight, needing the physical release. Fight, or… because mommy dearest was a sex demon, he needs to have sex. And when it gets bad, he has a hard time controlling himself.”
Didn’t it figure that the thing she feared and hated the most was violence, and the Horseman she was stuck with was violence personified. “So where did he go?”
“To find a female or a fight.”
Oh. A twinge in her chest at the thought of Ares with a woman freaked her out a little. She wasn’t jealous… had no right to be. So why did the image of his na**d body entwined with another woman give her heartburn?
Change the subject. Fast. “And, ah, who are you? What Horseman, I mean.”
Thanatos swung around. “Death.”
Cara swallowed. Audibly. “As in, the Grim Reaper?”
He snorted. “That poser. He deals with evil souls. He guides them to Sheoul-gra, which is sort of a demon holding tank, until they can be reborn. I won’t be escorting souls anywhere. I’ll be doing the killing that releases the souls from their bodies.”
She considered that. She also noticed that she hadn’t batted an eyelash at the fact that the Grim Reaper was real. “So, Ares has all those issues to handle. What is it that you have to deal with?” Besides tattoos that seemed to move in 3-D.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“I see.” She studied Thanatos, trying to get a read on him, but the tall warrior was even harder to pin down than Ares. His face wasn’t quite as cruel, his eyes not as calculating, both of which probably made him more handsome. But there was definitely a darkness in him, and she sensed that it ran so deep that no amount of excavation could uncover it all. “So it’s okay to spill your brother’s secrets, but not your own.”
Inky storm clouds brewed in his eyes, and all around him, shadows she swore hadn’t been there before writhed. The brand between her br**sts flared hot, and it took everything she had to not step back. “I told you because you’re going to be stuck with him, so you need to understand why he behaves the way he does. You don’t need to understand me.” He stalked toward the door, but halted at the threshold. “What I’ve told you tonight isn’t for outside ears. If you tell anyone, you’ll answer to me, and not as Thanatos. As Death.”
A lick of fear lashed at her heart, but she met his gaze, refusing to flinch. “I can’t be allowed to die.”
“That’s the thing about living for as long as I have and being drawn to great suffering,” he said in a voice as cold as a grave. “I don’t need to kill to cause misery. I excel at making people beg for death.”
Ares was f**king wired. He sat astride Battle, his entire body cramped with tension, his panting breaths burning hot in his throat. What the f**k had just happened?
Before he’d burst into the room to find the hound about to rip Cara’s throat out, he’d been crazed with lust. Then he’d been crazed with rage that had only intensified when, in Cara’s presence, he’d been vulnerable to the hellhound. His armor had softened, his sword had shattered, and he’d lost his ability to predict his opponent’s next move.
The hound had gotten one up on him, and if not for Thanatos…
Mother. Fuck.
Not since his “human” days before the curse had Ares felt so helpless. Oh, he’d been pretty damned helpless when he’d been paralyzed for weeks by the hellhounds, but that was different. No one had been relying on him for protection. But this time… had Thanatos not been there, Ares would have been bitten, and Cara could have been killed. She’d said the beast didn’t harm her because she was bonded to his pup, but hellhounds were deceptive, not to be trusted, and he wouldn’t believe any information gained from the bastard.
