He was dressed for battle in his leather armor, his sword at his left hip. Trailing behind him was an ox of a hellhound. Limos hated the beasts, whose bites could incapacitate her and her brothers, leaving them paralyzed and vulnerable. Any weapon coated in their saliva could cause the same damage. Limos knew that firsthand. But Ares’s wife, with her gift of animal whispering and healing, had charmed the damned things, and was bonded to every hellhound in existence. Thanks to the bond, she was now immortal, and all of the beasts held a powerful desire to protect her and Ares.
“Hey, bro,” she said. “What’s up? Where are Cara and Rath?”
Ares’s black eyes heated at his wife’s name, momentarily replacing the icy glint. “She’s home, nursing a newborn hellhound pup. Pestilence killed its mother. Rath’s napping.”
Rath was their adopted kid. Literally… kid. He was a baby Ramreel, a goatlike demon whose father had also been murdered by Pestilence.
“What’s going on?” Thanatos studied Ares as though trying to decide if he should armor up as well.
“Our brother has recovered from the blow we dealt him,” Ares’s voice, cold and hard, rang with anger. “A swarm of locusts is sweeping across New Zealand, the worst plague they’ve ever seen.”
Limos frowned. “A plague could point to Pestilence’s hand, but it’s still a natural occurrence.”
“Not when the locusts are eating animals and people too.”
Eew. “I was hoping it would take him more terae him mime to regroup.” There were a number of reasons for that, but foremost was the fact that when Pestilence wasn’t causing chaos, Ares and Thanatos didn’t fight. Ares wanted Pestilence dead, and Thanatos wanted to repair his Seal.
Unfortunately, Pestilence was in possession of the only weapon capable of killing him, and no one had found a way to repair his Seal. Hell, they didn’t even know if it was possible. Thanatos was running on nothing more than a theory and hope.
“So was I,” Ares said. “But tension in the Balkans is flaring up again, and so are battles in the Middle East. I just got back from a nasty one.” Ares, as the Horseman who would be War when his Seal broke, was naturally drawn to battles, could sometimes be kept away from home for days, weeks, even months during the worst of the fighting. Fortunately, thanks to Cara’s bond with the hellhounds, his Seal was safe—unless either Limos’s or Thanatos’s Seals broke.
“Dammit,” Than breathed. “I’d been sensing an upswing in deaths, but nothing I could pinpoint.”
“That’s because the battles are scattered right now, mostly skirmishes, and the death rates are fairly low. Pestilence might be working his next attempt at an Apocalypse in gradual measures. Fly under our radar for a while. He’s definitely up to something.” Ares reached over and scratched the hellhound under the chin, and Limos didn’t think she’d ever get used to that. “You guys make any headway in locating Arik?”
Limos nodded. “We were just heading out to Erta Ale to search. Wanna join us? There might be some fighting.”
“Then hell, yeah. I’m there.”
Limos touched her fingers to the crescent-shaped scar on the left side of her neck, and her Samurai-style armor snapped into place. Thanatos followed suit, his bone-plate armor clacking as it folded itself onto his body.
Time to ride.
Nothing.
They’d found freaking nothing but scorching lava, noxious gasses, and lung-choking ash near the Erta Ale hellmouth. Inside the entrance, they’d discovered the gnawed-on skeletons of half a dozen humans and tunnels that broke off into more tunnels. After a full day of combing the caverns, Ares and Thanatos had been compelled to another of Pestilence’s wars, and Limos had to change her game plan.
She threw a Harrowgate to her place, intent on gathering a team of her servants to help her. As she stepped out onto the warm Hawaiian sand outside her home, another gate flashed, and that son of a bitch, Pestilence, burst from it on his white stallion.
“Hey, sis.” In a clang of metal armor, he swung down from Conquest and called the horse to him. Conquest poofed into a wisp of smoke and slipped under his master’s gauntlet to settle on his arm. “I have a job for you.”
Her fingers flexed over the scabbard at her hip, the desire to run him through with her blade stronger than it had ever been. “If you think I’m going to do anything for you can go f**k yourself.”
Pain flickered in his ice-blue eyes, startling the hell out of her. “I know I’ve been a bastard, Li. I can’t help it.” His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at the ground, his platinum hair concealing his face. “My dreams… man, my dreams mess with me. I remember how I was. I… miss that.”
She took an involuntary step toward him. “Reseph?”
“I need help.” With a jerky, uncoordinated movement, he grabbed his head as if it pained him, and his voice cracked. “Cure me… please.” He inhaled a strangled breath. “Deliverance… under… my armor. Kill… me. I’m begging you.”
“We’ll help you, I swear,” she said, reaching for him.
His hand snapped out, grasping her wrist so tightly she felt the grind of bones. “You sentimental fool.” His head came up, a menacing crimson glow lighting his eyes. “Reseph is dead.”
She hissed, anger and pain ripping her right down the middle. She had her sword out and was swinging it before Pestilence could release her. Blood sprayed as the blade hacked into his neck. He stumbled backward, slapping his palm over the gaping wound.
“That,” he said, in a freakishly calm voice, “will cost you.” He jerked his head as if working out a kink, and the laceration sealed up, a hell of a lot faster than the same wound would have responded before he’d gone evil. He’d gained strength when his Seal broke, his ability to draw on the power of Sheoul boosting all his abilities, but bloody hell, she hadn’t thought he’d gotten that resilient. “Like I was saying, I have a job for you.”
“I’m not doing anything for you.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I found an ancient vault that once belonged to The Aegis, and I want you to tell them about it.”
All her internal alarms went off, clanging loudly in her skull. “What’s in this vault?”
“Harmless historical relics.”
“Nope. Sorry. I’m not leading Aegi to a bunch of fake artifacts.”
Pestilence blinked innocently. He could get away with that when he was Reseph. Now… not so much.
“Fake?” He shrugged. “Nah. They’re real. Most of them. And the vault truly is an Aegis hiding place.” He opened a Harrowgate. “Come with me.”
“How stupid do you think I am? We could come out in Satan’s bedroom, for all I know.” Shudder.
He rolled his eyes, as if her distrust was completely unwarranted. “Cast your own gate and link it to mine then.”
“I have things to do.”
Abruptly, Pestilence’s demeanor took on a new cast, and he snarled. “If you don’t want to regret confiding in me about your part in The Aegis’s loss of Deliverance soghtliveran long ago, you’ll do this.”
“Blackmail, brother? Wow, you really have sunk low.”
“Says the girl who has been lying to her family about some really important shit.”
Damn him. With a curse, she cast her own gate over the top of his. They would both enter the now-single gate, but she could back out if she didn’t feel safe.
They went through, Pestilence first, and when she stepped out into a dusty cavern lit by hovering balls of mystical fire, it appeared he hadn’t been lying. At least, not about all of it. They were definitely in some sort of manmade tunnel, and her built-in GPS told her they were somewhere in Egypt.
She shivered. She’d never liked Egypt, and the claustrophobic closeness of the walls tightened around her chest like a python.
“Where are we?”
“A forgotten crypt. Some formerly important dude is entombed in a chamber behind us.” Pestilence knelt at the base of a chest-freezer-sized stone box, and although the lid probably weighed five hundred pounds, he lifted it as though it was made of paper. “Take a look.”
Easing up to the box, she peeked inside, where a dozen pieces of ancient jewelry, coins, and clay figurines lay on top of a pile of dust. Very carefully, she picked up one of the figures. The clay rendition of a plump woman was cracked, the piece of cloth tied around its legs was brittle.
“Nice job with this,” she murmured. “You missed your calling as a counterfeiter. What’s its purpose?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“You’re such an a**hole.”
One blond eyebrow shot up. “After the things you’ve done, you have the gall to call me an a**hole?”
“Just get to the point,” she gritted out. “What do you want?”
“Bring an Aegi here. Tell them you discovered the vault in your search for your agimortus.” Pestilence tossed something at her feet. Dogtags, she realized, when she bent to pick them up. Arik’s dogtags, caked with blood. “You’ll do it, or next time I bring you his eyes.”
She clutched the metal chain and tags so hard her palm hurt. For some reason, this little piece of Arik made everything so real, so tangible. It was as if she could feel his pain in the blood smears. God, if she’d been stronger, if she’d resisted Arik and her attraction to him, she wouldn’t be in this mess, and he wouldn’t be in pain.
Shame sifted through her, but she couldn’t afford to give in to it. Whatever Pestilence was up to was bigger than Arik’s agony, and she couldn’t let on that she felt anything for him.
“Do what you have to do to Arik,” she said, her voice strong and sure, even if she didn’t mean what she said, even if inside she was aching. “I won’t help you.”
“Then I hope you’re prepared to face Ares and Thanatos after I tell them of all your deceptions.” He bared his fangs. “And yes, I know. Our mother told me everything.”