But Limos had gone untouched. It hadn’t even been his hands that fastened the chastity belt around her waist. At the time, she’d been furious. Now she was very, very glad.
Problem was, it had taken far too long to get to the glad point. For hundreds of years rednd after she and her brothers had been cursed as Horsemen, she’d plotted to start the Apocalypse and take her brothers to her husband as her wedding gift. She’d been a demon in every sense of the word, living up to her upbringing, lying to everyone she met, including her brothers. She’d schemed, plotted, stabbed them in the back at every turn.
And they’d embraced her.
They hadn’t known that every word out of her mouth was a lie, that for centuries, she was behind all the horrible things that happened to them, from the deaths of their servants, to attacks by demons.
But eventually, they’d worn her down with their affection and their constant support and protection. And then one day she’d found Thanatos standing over the body of a slave who had died saving his wife from their master’s lust.
“Are you sad for that human?” she’d asked, her question almost a taunt.
“No.” Thanatos’s voice was hollow. “I’m sad that we will never know what it’s like to love like he did, or have someone love us like that.”
“We have each other.” Another taunt. She was a bitch. And she liked it.
“And I’m grateful beyond measure.” His yellow gaze lifted, and burned right through her. “But it’s not the same. Who would die for you when the time came, Limos?”
Something in that conversation had stuck with her, and later, she’d gone back to the scene, unsure why. She’d grabbed the slave owner’s wife and threatened the woman to see what he would do if given the choice of saving her life or his. He’d chosen his. He could get another wife.
In that moment, she’d realized that the marriage she’d chosen would offer the same results. She would be the queen of the underworld… and a brood mare that could be replaced.
Screw that. She’d killed the man and gotten a whole new outlook on life.
Arik’s warm palm massaged her neck muscles, which had grown tight at the memories she despised. His other fingers stroked her right arm, tracing the lines that formed Bones.
“Can he feel that?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Right now Arik was caressing the beast’s leg, and her thigh tingled in response. “He likes it. I think you might be one of the few people he won’t try to eat.”
“Good. Cuz that would suck.” Bones stomped his foot, letting Arik know he’d had enough, and Arik took the hint, settling his hand over hers. “You grew up in Sheoul, right? Raised by Lilith?”
Ugh. Not a subject she wanted to discuss. “Yes.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t pleasant?”
“It was horrible,” she murmured, and the fib spread through her with a familiar warmth. “But I escaped, and here I am. Now, let’s talk about you, because that’s much more interesting.”
And because if he was talking, she wouldn’t have to worry about lying.
Twenty
Arik did not want to talk about himself. Limos was much more interesting, but when she rubbed her palm in a slow circle over his chest, he fell into a lulling sort of trance and forgot why he didn’t want to talk.
Limos cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something?”
If that wasn’t a prelude to a question that was going to be hard to answer, he didn’t know what was. “You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer or that you’ll like what I say.”
She nodded, cleared her throat again. “Runa said you wouldn’t like yourself if you knew what you’d done to her, and Shade said your father was abusive, that you used to protect Runa and your mother.”
“So?” He knew he was being defensive, but this was one of the very few subjects he didn’t like to talk about.
“So… tell me.”
He eyed her sideways. “That’s not a question.”
“You sound like Ares,” she grumbled. “Okay, let’s try this. Where are your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Did you kill them?” She asked with such matter-of-fact innocence, as if killing your parents was a normal thing to do. What different worlds they’d grown up in.
“Suicide and cancer took them.”
Limos resumed the circling of her palm over his chest. The sensation was amazingly intimate. “How did you protect your mother and sister? I mean, you were a child, right?”
Seriously, he did not want to talk about this. But Limos worked him like a master interrogator, except she got him to talk with pleasure instead of pain. As her fingers traced a tingly path from one nipple to the other, he cracked like a thin-shelled egg.
“I ran interference,” he said, gruffly. “When my old man was beating on one of them, I pissed him off so much that he turned on me.” Oh, but that wasn’t all. By the time he hit his teens, he’d learned to bargain. I’ll get booze for you, if you stop hitting mom. I’ll score you some weed if you’ll lay off Runa. I’ll fetch that prostitute off Third and Division if you’ll stop making mom scream at night.
Eventually, he’d learned the art of threats, too. If you make mom or Runa bleed again, I’ll go to the cops. And finally, after three days of no food in the house because their dad had spent all the money on booze, Arik had hit rock bottom too. Go to AA and clean up right now, or I swear, I’ll make you feel everything you’ve done to us.
That had led to a physical altercats mur, I’ll ion between the two of them that had ended in Arik’s broken arm and his father’s missing teeth. And nothing changed. Not until Arik went to the “weird guy” in school, the one who always wore black, sketched skulls and pentagrams on his notebook covers, and said he worshipped the devil.
Runa always believed that it was their mother who had given their father the ultimatum that made him get sober and become a model father, but no, it was Arik and the weird guy, who summoned a demon and made a deal that Arik had regretted with every fiber of his being.
“How did you get out of that situation?” Limos asked.
For a long moment, he lay there, listening to the sounds of the thunderstorm puttering out and a hellhound howling nearby. Who would ever have thought that the eerie sound of a hellhound would be a comfort? But that was the world he was in now, one that had changed radically in the last couple of years, and even more in the last few days. Especially for him.
“This is one of those questions you won’t answer, isn’t it?” Limos sighed. Limos, who had become the biggest part of his new world. And hell, since her brother had claimed his soul, he supposed it couldn’t hurt to tell her it wasn’t the first time that had happened.
“How did I get out of the situation? I sold my soul to a demon who promised to make my father go sober and straight.”
Limos shot straight up, her raven hair falling forward to cover her br**sts, which was a shame. “You did what?”
“Yeah, it was stupid. But I was desperate. Convinced that the next time my old man got violent, he’d kill Runa or my mom.” He reached up to play with a strand of her silky hair. “It worked. He got sober and stopped beating the shit out of us and cheating on mom, but then he got lung cancer, and our mom committed suicide, so I sold my soul for nothing I guess.”
“How long?” Limos rasped.
“How long what? Until he died?”
“How long until the demon collects?”
“He already tried. Remember when I said I was bitten by a demon? That was his calling card. I was supposed to die, but Shade saved me.”
“What kind of demon?” She gripped his leg so fiercely he knew he’d have bruises by morning. “What species did you sell your soul to?”
“Charnel Apostle. Why?”
Limos jumped to her feet, startling him. “Get dressed.” She snatched her bikini top out of the sand. “Hurry. We have to find this demon.”
He tugged on his pants. “He failed to kill me. The contract is broken.”
“No,” she said, her voice laden with impatience, “it isn’t. Charnel Apostles never allow for out clauses.” She cursed in a few different demon languages. “Gah. That’s why Pestilence hasn’t killed you. I wondered about that, but now it makes sense.”
“Not to me.” He slipped on his shirt and helped her tie her bikini strings in the back while she lifted her hair. “Interesting tat.” He frowned at the set of scales, which he’d swear had been weighted differently the last time he saw it.
“We don’t have time for tats,” she said, spinning around to him. “My brother tethered your soul, but someone else has a claim on it. In order to get it for himself, he has to buy it from the other demon. Or, more likely, kill the dude. We have to get to that demon first.”
“How?”
She fiddled with her navel ring as she spoke, her words spilling like a dam had broken. “I’ve seen Gethel perform rituals to bargain for souls before. We need an angel. And some blood from everyone who participated in the summoning of the demon who took your soul.”
Arik shook his head. “That’s impossible. The guy who did it died in prison a few years ago. But that’s good news, right? It means Pestilence can’t find the demon, either.”
Limos’s creative curses blistered his ears. “No. Pestilence will be able to sense the holder of the soul he’s trying to claim. We’re screwed.”
“In more ways than one, I think.” He gestured down the beach at Thanatos jogging toward them. Thankfully, they were dressed, but the guy wasn’t an idiot, and if he had a single brotherly instinct, he’d… yep… the Horseman’s eyes narrowed as he approached, and Arik readied himself for Death Match: Part Two.
Fortunately, though Than gave Arik a look that spelled out L-A-T-E-R, he didn’t pull a big brother.