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There was no regret. Not. A. Bit. Ares had been right. It felt good to get rid of monsters, and hell if she was going to waste her life feeling bad about it.
Vulgrim, whose eyes had always seemed so tiny for his big head, stared at her, his eyes now the size of saucers. “That,” he rumbled, “is one scary ability.” He grunted. “I like it.” He leaped to his feet. “Now go inside. Hide yourself!”
Cara careened off the doorjamb and the walls as she bolted toward the fallen angel. He’d somehow managed to roll under the coffee table, where he was working his bound wrists against the leg in a desperate attempt to fray the ropes. He saw her coming, and he hissed like a correred lion.
“Behind you!”
Instinctively, Cara dove to the side, barely avoiding the swipe of a massive, clawed hand. Whatever was chasing her let out a pissed-off snarl. Hot breath blasted the back of her head, and she nearly gagged at the fumes. The door to the bedroom was just ahead—
“Don’t touch her! She’s mine.” The voice froze her marrow. Pestilence. “And someone drag that angel to Sheoul.”
The scaly thing chasing her ignored Ares’s brother, and even as she stumbled through the bedroom door, she turned, saw the monster go down beneath the hooves of Pestilence’s evil stallion. She slammed the door and locked it, but two seconds later, it crashed inward, and thousands of pounds of horse and warrior filled the room. Somewhere in the house, Zhreziel screamed. Inside her head, Cara screamed, too. She should have transferred the agimortus, because the fallen angel was being dragged to Sheoul, where his soul was going to be ruined anyway.
The fear Cara had experienced at the hands of men who had robbed her house and the Guardians who had believed she was a demon paled in comparison to the sheer, icy terror that wracked her body now. She trembled as Pestilence swung down off the horse, his armor clanking and dripping a disgusting black substance as well as fresh Ramreel blood.
“Seems you’re bonded to a hellhound,” he said, his deep voice rumbling right through her soul. “That means that killing you isn’t going to be as easy as running you through with a sword or slitting your delicate throat.”
“Shame, that,” she said, surprised at how she didn’t sound nearly as afraid as she felt.
“I have him, you know. Your hellhound. He fought me and my men, but even now, he’s being transferred to my lair.”
She shook with fury so intense her teeth rattled. “Let him go, you soulless bastard.”
Pestilence struck out, nailing her across the face with the back of his hand. “Do you kiss Ares with that mouth?” He smiled. “How does he feel about you being bonded to a hellhound, anyway?”
“That hellhound is keeping me alive.”
“Stupid bitch. You’re dying. All I need to do is chain you up and wait for it. But that’s not nearly as satisfying as torturing you. And see, the strange thing about these pain-in-the-ass hellhound bonds is that I can’t just chop off either your head or his. For some reason, you end up with the same protection we Horsemen have. No weapon can go through the spinal cord. Weird.” He frowned. “I tried to chop off your hellhound’s head, anyway. It’s not fatal. But it hurts like a mother.”
“You sick, twisted asshole,” she rasped.
“Sticks and stones.” He reached out and wrapped his gauntleted fingers around her throat, and even though her gift was still engaged and pumping enough power to light up a grid the size of New York City, Pestilence didn’t even flinch as he lifted her off the ground. Her breath became searing whips of fire in her throat as she grabbed his wrists and tried furiously to fry him with her power. Nothing. The bastard was immune.
“Let’s head to my place.” His fangs flashed as he looked her up and down. “And then, little human, I’m going to see how sweet you are.”
Twenty-one
Ares, Limos, and Thanatos had fallen into a trap. One designed not to catch them, but to keep them busy.
Ares had known the moment he materialized in the war zone—the very place where the most recent plague had drawn Thanatos. Turned out that Pestilence and his demons had manipulated the governments of Croatia and Slovenia into war after convincing Slovenian leaders that the Croatian military had manufactured and distributed the disease that killed thousands of Slovenians.
Demons, all ter’taceo in positions of prominence, had incited things further by gathering thousands of Croatians and Slovenians into camps deep inside Hungary and taking away everything from clothes and water to food. They’d created a famine of everything. Their actions were an attempt not only to spark international war, but also to distract Limos.
It worked, and the thing that sucked was that large-scale tragedies were like evil power plants for Ares and his siblings. As long as they remained on site, the juiced-up high rocked them like an orgasm mixed with co**ine, and no one could—or wanted to—unplug from that.
But Ares had to. Which meant taking out the people in charge of each side of the conflict.
Now, a day after Ares had been sucked to the bloody battlefields, he stood over the body of the Croatian general he’d killed and wondered how long it would be before he had to return to put down the guy’s replacement. He’d already taken out Slovenian military leaders—both had been demons in human suits. Made him wonder how many of the military’s upper echelon were Pestilence’s bitches.
The tent flap peeled back, and speak of the asshole…
Pestilence sauntered inside, bloody fangs exposed in his creepy smile, Harvester on his heels. “Bet you were just thinking about me.”
“Evil doesn’t agree with you, brother.”
“It absolutely agrees with me. You know what else agrees with me? Cara.” He flicked his tongue over one fang. “Tapping that? Sweet.”
Ares lunged, prepared to rip his brother’s throat out. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like fuck. He slammed his fist into Pestilence’s neck, and his brother fell back, but he kept his feet under him. “If you hurt her—”
“Oh, I hurt her.” Pestilence fired back with an industrial-strength slug to Ares’s temple. Stars twinkled, birds tweeted, and bells rang to the tune of I’m Getting My Ass Kicked.
Pestilence was definitely drawing on the power of evil, was far stronger than he’d been before his Seal broke. Head still spinning, Ares grabbed the metal chair in the corner, spun, and brought it down on Pestilence’s skull. The chair crumpled like a tin can, tearing one of the legs, and without missing a beat, Ares snapped off the hollow leg and jammed it into his brother’s throat, taking a core sample out of Pestilence’s flesh. Blood spewed out of the pipe, splashing the inside of the tent in gore, and Ares swore he saw Harvester smile.
A crimson tide bloomed in Pestilence’s eyes, and he swept his arm in an arc, connecting with Ares’s shoulder and sending him crashing through the side of the tent. Before Ares could get to his feet, Pestilence was there, kneeling on Ares’s chest and digging his fingers into his throat. Agonizing pressure on his windpipe closed it off.
“You’re coming with me, brother,” Pestilence said, his voice a nasty snarl. “You’re going to watch me break your Seal, but first, I’m going to make you very sorry that you tried to get in my way.”
Pain shattered Ares’s skull, and all went black.
Man, Reseph loved a good party.
Jimmy Buffett was singing praises to the almighty margarita, the sun was hot, the ocean blue, a pig was roasting in a pit, and women were swinging their bikini-covered h*ps in an invitation that would give a blind man his sight back.
Limos worked the portable bar she brought out for the bashes she held at her Hawaiian beach house. She always invited the locals, who thought she was a Paris Hilton type, a young heiress living off her wealthy parents’ money. Which explained why she was rarely at the beach house; Limos claimed she had a dozen homes all over the world and spent her time between them.
Reseph sat back against the palm tree, downed half his margarita, and wondered if he should take the hot blonde who was falling out of her swimsuit top into the water for a little below-the-waves action. Emmalee liked it the way he liked it… which was every way. But she got a little extra excited when there was a risk of getting caught, or when she knew someone was watching.
“Brought you a refill.”
He looked up as Limos poured more margarita-on-the-rocks into his glass from a pitcher. “Thanks, sis.” He popped his sunglasses up and scanned the crowd of around fifty, mostly humans. There were a few demons present, but as ter’taceo, they were disguised even to most other demons. “Wish Ares and Than were here.”
Li sighed, plopped down beside him, and took a huge gulp from her pitcher. “Than said he’d be here, but Ares…” She shrugged.
Yeah, Ares rarely came to these get-togethers, and when he did, he had to hang out on the porch and watch from afar. Getting too close to the action caused too many fights to break out. “Did you even invite him?”
“No.”
Ares probably knew about the party, but at least this way, he didn’t have to go through the torture of refusing.
“Is someone going to start up a volleyball game soon?”
One black eyebrow arched. “You feeling the need to beat up a ball?”
He waggled his brows. “I want to watch all the bouncing boobs.”
Limos slugged him in the shoulder. “You have not changed at all. Still the perverted playboy you were when you were human.”
Yeah, he’d been that. The “son” of a powerful Akkadian priestess who claimed a virgin conception by a god, Reseph had been raised to be a spoiled, irresponsible bed-hopper. By the time Limos had found him at the age of twenty-eight, he could have had fifty children by as many women. Fortunately, his priestess “mother” had been well-versed in mystical medicine… to the extent that Reseph suspected that she’d possessed some demon DNA in her background.
Thanks to skullwort, a demon herb that ended pregnancies in females and rendered males sterile for weeks at a time, he’d never had to deal with losing a child the way Ares had. Nor would he.
He could party all he wanted to.
A curvy brunette bent over and bared her br**sts to him, and nope, that never got old.
Limos just shook her head. “You’re impossible.”
“Hey.” He assumed his best offended tone. “I can’t help it if the females love me.”
“Whatever.” Rolling her eyes, Li shoved to her feet, brushed sand off her sundress, and gestured to the hog pit. “It’s time to carve. Make yourself useful.”
He grinned as she tromped away, feet kicking in the loose sand. Man, he loved his life. He really did. It sucked that his siblings didn’t have it as good as he did, though. They were lonely, either by circumstance or by choice, and though Reseph did his best to provide companionship, it wasn’t the same as being able to let loose with someone who wasn’t related.
Wishing he could do more for his sister and brothers, he stood, turned, and nearly bumped into a breathtaking redhead whose green eyes were windows to a good time. She gave him a naughty smile, took his hand, and gestured into the lush forest. Well, the roast pig needed to cool anyway, right? Right. Cracking a grin of his own, he led the female to a private little cove, where he took them both as close to heaven as he’d probably ever get.
Pestilence sat up with a hiss. Fuck, he hated sleeping. Hated how that sentimental idiot he’d been would leak into his dreams with memories of the good old days. Screw that. He was having so much more fun now. He winced at the tug in his groin, palmed his hard cock, and remembered he had a juicy little morsel of a human all chained up, tenderized, and ready, if not willing, to take care of the issue.
“My lord.”
Pestilence groaned at his Neethul lieutenant’s drawl and swung his legs over the side of the stone slab he slept on. He’d long since given up on beds, which got really f**king nasty when bloody, and he wasn’t one for those rubber piss-protectors. Much easier to hose off rock, and really, comfort wasn’t an issue, not when he only needed about an hour of rest a day.
“What?”
“Your brother is stirring.”
“Good. And Cara?”
“The human is as you left her.”
Which meant she was na**d and huddling in a cage. Excellent. Time to grab her and show Ares why it was much, much better to be on the broken side of the Seal.
Ares came to in a fog, his muscles taut, joints stretched. His first attempt to lift his head was an epic failure. He might as well have tried to lift a bowling ball with a rubber band. The second try met with success, even if it took effort to keep from dropping his chin to his chest again. At least his eyes worked, well enough to allow him to see that he was in a small room that was clearly a crude, underground prison cell. Rolling his neck, he looked up at his bound wrists. The rope that held them together had been hooked to an iron ring in the ceiling.
He frowned. Rope couldn’t hold him, so why would his brother even try? Smiling, he jerked his wrists.
Nothing happened. Okay, so the rope was definitely enhanced with demonic enchantments, but it still shouldn’t be able to hold him.
Unless Cara was nearby.
His gut twisted even as he became aware that the familiar draining sensation gripped him. She was definitely very close, and as long as she was, he was severely handicapped. Making matters worse, a copper ring circled his horse glyph, preventing Battle from being released.
A scream rang out, chilling his blood, and he had to force himself to breathe.
The door flew open, and Pestilence entered, shoving Cara, who was na**d and bruised, inside. She stumbled and fell to the straw-strewn dirt floor, and then she scrambled into a corner. Black, murderous rage scorched him from his skin to his bones.
