Well… hell, he could at least give her a reasonable explanation for her memory loss. He scrounged around the kitchen until he hit paydirt in the form of a shot glass and a dusty bottle of vodka. After dumping the contents in the sink, he wetted a washcloth and returned to her.
She was curled up on her side, her long hair covering her face. At some point, she’d knocked papers off the coffee table—mostly overdue bills, from what he could tell. For a long moment, he looked at her, wondering if he should shed the armor that helped shield him not only from weapons, but from strong emotion. The hard leather, fashioned from Gerunti demon hide, was a favorite of several demon races that made their living as slave traders, assassins, and mercenaries, none of whom could afford weakness of any kind—and emotions were weakness. But Ares had learned long ago that sometimes a warrior gained a unique perspective by losing the armor.
When you understood what your enemy was feeling, you understood how to hurt him most effectively. Or, in circumstances like this one, if you let yourself see the world the way your target did, you could revise your strategy to take advantage of her situation.
Tossing the bills aside, he feathered the pads of his fingers over the crescent-shaped scar just under his jawbone on the left side of his neck, and his armor melted away, leaving him in black BDU pants and a black tee. These were his everyday clothes, what felt most comfortable to him. But for some reason, he felt naked now, as if he needed the leather armor.
For what? Protection against the sleeping human female?
He shook his head to clear it. Pestilence’s mind-fucks must really be messing with him.
Cara stirred, turning her slightly rounded face up to him. Her eyes were swollen, and an angry bruise in the shape of a handprint marred her cheek. Anger he wouldn’t have felt had he been armored up made his skin flush hot.
Those Aegis sons of bitches. He should have taken the time to tear them apart. Ares understood the need for ruthlessness: War was not pretty, and The Aegis was engaged in a mission to save mankind. But torturing noncombatants, especially women, was not in the field manual. Not when there were much easier and better ways to get information.
He silently cursed them as he used soft, light strokes to wipe away the smudges of dirt from Cara’s face and hands. He lingered on her fingers. Slim, strong, with square nails coated with clear polish. He’d always had a thing for nice hands, and images bloomed in his mind, improper ones involving her touch on his body. He sensed that she’d have a light touch, her caresses tentative, and for some reason, that appealed to him.
Something different, he supposed. His dick was on board with the something-different thing, and he shifted to make space in his pants as he finished with her hands, turning her gold pinky ring around so the tiny ruby sat properly. So feminine, like everything about her. Even her pajamas, while not the sexiest things he’d ever seen, made her seem softer, more fragile, and he cursed The Aegis yet again as he used the washcloth to mop up the streaks of blood that had dried on her throat. The wounds themselves, obviously made by a sharp blade, had sealed, and thanks to the hellhound bond, would be healed within hours. So would her bruises and scrapes. But he couldn’t be certain how complete the mind-wipe had been, and he couldn’t do anything about the dirt and grass stains on her pajamas.
When the last drop of blood and dirt had been swabbed away, he withdrew—and froze when her hand shot out to grasp his wrist. Her eyes were open, but they lacked the terror he’d expect to see in someone who had just woken up to a stranger hovering over her.
She was still asleep.
She tugged at him, drawing him closer, as if she wanted comfort, or protection.
“Shh.” Ares smoothed his fingers through her hair and used his thumb to close her eyes, and in a few seconds, she was snoring daintily. He turned on the TV in case she was the type to fall asleep while watching, and allowed himself a smile as he nodded in a silent farewell.
After locking her doors and windows, he headed back to the vet office. Reaching under his shirt, he palmed his Seal, hoping to get a bead on Sestiel. Nothing.
Normally, this would be the point at which Ares would curse up a storm. But he had an ace up his sleeve in the form of that little human female. Taking one last look at her, he opened a gate and flashed out of there.
But he’d be back.
Three
Pestilence had always liked Mexico. When he’d been Reseph, he and Limos had partied for days in various towns, from tourist traps to remote villages where the locals had called them brujos, viewing them as magicians of sorts, even though he and his sister never revealed any of their secrets… except for their longevity. Reseph and Limos had been visiting the villages for decades, had known many of the elders when they were toddlers.
Now he stood in the center of one of those mountain villages, watching as the last of the locals, a twenty-something male, writhed at his feet, trying desperately to suck air through his constricted windpipe.
“Nice work.” Pestilence looked over his shoulder at Harvester. The female fallen angel, one of the Horsemen’s two Watchers, studied Pestilence’s handiwork with a critical eye. “How long did it take these people to realize you weren’t here to bring them gifts?”
“Not long.” When Pestilence arrived, the children had come running, expecting candy, and the adults had set about preparing a feast fit for a king. Reseph had never appeared without offerings for the poor farming community, from gifts of livestock and crates of medicine, to books and shoes for the children.
So when he’d shot the first arrow through the first heart, shock had frozen the entire population.
Until he’d grabbed a teenage girl, sunk his fangs into her throat, and injected a demon strain of hemorrhagic fever that spread through the village in a matter of minutes. The guy at his feet was the last one to die, his final, gurgling breath coming as his eyes dissolved in his head.
Harvester knelt next to the body and dragged her fingertip through the mud formed in the dirt by the man’s leaking bodily fluids. “This is what, your fourth plague in Mexico alone?” The fallen angel’s expression was hidden by her long black hair, but Pestilence could read displeasure in the stiff set of Harvester’s shoulders. “All tiny, isolated villages. Just like in Africa, China, Alaska.”
“I’ll hit larger populations soon,” Pestilence said, unable to keep a note of defensiveness out of his voice. “I do have a plan.”
Harvester unfurled to her full six and a half feet, coming eye to eye with Pestilence. “Lies. You’re wiping out everything that reminds you of your old life. Punishing humans for your kindness.” The angel sneered. “Now that your Seal is broken, you need to get your ass in gear while the underworld is swelling with momentum.”
“Aren’t you and Reaver supposed to be impartial?”
She snorted. “Hardly. Each of us is here only to make sure the other plays fair. Reaver wants to stop this Apocalypse, and I want to see it begin. I might not be able to help you directly, but I can work behind the scenes, and I can certainly root you on.” She studied her black-lacquered nails. “I can also get pissed at your dicking around. There’s talk of adding more Watchers to keep an eye on you and your siblings now, and I don’t plan to share my job with anyone, so get moving.”
“I’m working on it. I slaughtered Batarel—”
“Not before she transferred Ares’s agimortus!”
Pestilence fisted Harvester’s tunic and yanked her so close that their breath mingled. “I have my minions hunting Unfallen to the ends of the earth. I’ve slaughtered six in the last two days. Scores have entered Sheoul to escape me. Even if I don’t find Sestiel soon, he won’t have anyone left to transfer the agimortus to.”
It sucked that the agimortus couldn’t be transferred to fallen angels who entered Sheoul and went from a toe-the-line Unfallen to an evil True Fallen. A True Fallen would likely sacrifice his life to break Ares’s Seal.
Harvester’s skin grew mottled, shot through with inky veins, a
nd her green eyes swirled with ruby streaks. Leathery, black wings rose from her back. “Fool,” she spat. “The agimortus can be transferred to a human. If Sestiel grows desperate, he has billions of potential hosts at his disposal.”
“And you didn’t mention this before… why?” he ground out.
“That,” she said, “is not for you to question.” Her wings lifted even higher and spread wide, the effect no doubt calculated to make Pestilence quake in his boots before her awesome evilness. As if.
He wondered how much force it would take to rip a wing off a fallen angel. “I hope he does transfer the agimortus to a human. I can kill a man as easily as a fly.” He tightened his fist, gathering the fabric of Harvester’s tunic and turning it into a noose. “Won’t be as enjoyable as killing a fallen angel, though.”
She hissed. “Of the four of you, you were always my least favorite. I was sure that once your Seal broke and you became Pestilence, you’d stop being a wastrel and would put some effort into making a name for yourself. Clearly, I was wrong.”
Pestilence gnashed his teeth. “I intend to prove myself to the Dark Lord as the worthiest of my siblings. When the Earth and Sheoul become one, I will have first choice of the realms.” Yep, it was written that following the Apocalypse, the demon realm would spill over into the human one, and the whole kit and kaboodle would then be divided into four quadrants, with varying amounts of water, food, land, and populations of humans and demons. The Horseman who proved to be the best would get first pick and turn his region into a paradise of misery and pleasure.
Pestilence would be that Horseman.
Harvester grinned, her fangs glinting wetly. “You can’t truly believe that. Ares will win, just as he wins everything.”
With a roar, Pestilence slammed the fallen angel into the side of one of the shanties. The impact blew a hole through the wood, and they both staggered into the building. “I’m not allowed to kill you,” he snarled, shoving her against a support beam, “but I can make you wish you were dead.”
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” She whipped one veiny wing around his back and sank the clawed tip into the back of his neck. Pain shot up his spine and ricocheted around the inside of his skull, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction of a sound. “You’ve always been jealous of Ares.”
Not always. It wasn’t until after Reseph’s Seal broke that the great Ares had gotten under his skin. Ares had been a masterful commander as a human. Ares had never lost a battle. Ares was the original of the Greek god of the same name. Blah fucking blah.
It was Pestilence’s turn. He was going to hurt Ares where it mattered—those servants he cared so much about. Hell, yes, Pestilence was going to make a name for himself. He would be the most feared of the Horsemen. Long after the Apocalypse ended, his name would be spoken with reverence. With awe. With fear.
He reached behind his back and caught Harvester’s wingtip. With a twist of his wrist, he snapped the bones in her wing. He cut off her screech by ripping into her throat with his teeth. Blood spilled down her chest, coating him with sticky warmth.
No, he couldn’t kill her. That was against the rules. But he could stop just short of it.
And he could make sure that the initial tales of his reign of terror came from a firsthand account.
Help me.
The voice came to Cara as she floated in a dark, cold room, her body a misty shadow. Below her, a dog howled from inside a cage, its glimmering red eyes watching her every move. She moved closer, unsure how, since she was hanging in the air, but in any case, she was suddenly eye to eye with the canine.
Find me.
She started. The voice had come from the dog. Not an actual voice, but more of a thought inside her head.
“Who are you?”
I am yours. You are mine.
Mine? Yours? This was so weird. She put her face right up to the cage, oddly unafraid of the creature inside. It was clearly a puppy, but something about it radiated lethal power and danger. Its fur was so black it seemed to absorb what little light entered the room from behind closed shutters on a single, tiny window, and its teeth looked as if they should be inside the mouth of a shark rather than that of a dog.
She searched for a lock… heck, a door on the cage… but found nothing except odd symbols etched into the bars. The entire cage sat inside a painted circle on the cement floor. “How do I release you?”
You must find me.
So… this dream dog-thing was a little dimwitted. “I’ve found you.”
In the other world.
He was definitely not right in the head. Says the person talking to the dog.
“Who put you here?”
Sestiel.
Who was Sestiel? She floated up and looked around what appeared to be a basement. The walls had been built with layers of stone, suggesting older construction. She drifted to a set of dusty shelves, which held only a few label-less cans, a broken pencil, and a glass flask half-full of clear liquid. Oddly, the flask wasn’t dusty. She reached for it, only to have her hand pass through the bottle and the shelves.
Maybe this wasn’t a dream. Maybe she was a ghost. But how had she died? Her memory was a black hole.
A distant pounding startled her, and she spun around to the dog. “What was that?”
What was what?
The pounding came again, a dull knock, growing louder, and she felt herself being pulled toward the sound, her body stretching like taffy. Something soft cradled her body, and light flooded her eyes. She blinked, her surroundings coming into sharp focus, and she sat up.
Her living room. She was in her living room, on her couch. The weird dream faded, replaced by real-life confusion. She’d obviously fallen asleep on her couch, but… why was there a glass and an empty bottle of vodka on her coffee table? She didn’t drink, not a drop since the break-in two years ago. She’d learned that life was fragile, full of surprises, and she didn’t want any of her senses—or reflexes—dulled by anything, including medications or alcohol.
Unease rolled down her spine as she ran her hands over her face. Her skin felt tender, and as she dragged her fingers down to her mouth, the unease doubled. Her lips were swollen, inflamed.
As if she’d been kissed.
A sudden image of an impossibly huge man holding her against him popped into her head, and whoa, that had to have been part of a dream, because no one was that big. Or handsome. A vision unfolded in her mind of him lowering his perfectly shaped mouth to hers. She could practically feel his warm tongue stroking her lips, and it was so real that her body flamed hot.
A pleasant flush spread over her skin, but when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, she suddenly went from oddly aroused to feeling as though someone was watching her. Forgetting her swollen lips and the dream man, she whipped her head around, but there was no one there. Damn, she was sick of this paranoia, but that didn’t stop her from scanning every corner twice.
Satisfied that there was no one in the room, she ignored the lingering sensation that eyes were on her to focus on the TV, which was blaring some breaking news about a deadly malaria outbreak in Siberia. Since Siberia wasn’t exactly a malaria hotspot, the disease was a big deal, made bigger by the fact that experts had never encountered this particular strain.
“The Siberian outbreak is only one of dozens of odd occurrences of highly lethal plagues striking populations all over the globe,” the anchor was saying. “Religious leaders everywhere are citing end-of-the-world prophecies, and scientists are advising people to use common sense. As one researcher at the World Health Organization puts it, ‘People screeched about Armageddon during the last swine flu outbreak. And before that, it was the bird flu. What we’re seeing is nature rebelling against insect control chemicals and antibiotics.’ ” The journalist’s expression was grim as he looked into the camera. “And now we go to the Balkan peninsula, where rising tensions—”
Cara turned off the TV. It seemed like lately the news was all bad, full of disease,
war, and growing panic.
She stood, feeling a little wobbly… and what the heck? Her pajamas were filthy, as if she’d rolled around in a barnyard. Two different colors of dirt smeared her pjs, and there were grass stains on her sleeves. And was that… blood… on her top?
Heart pounding wildly, she patted herself down, inspecting for injuries, but other than a kink in her neck she could probably blame on the lumpy couch, she felt fine.
If losing her mind could be considered fine.
The sound of a vehicle engine broke into the cacophony of her jumbled thoughts. Grateful for the distraction, she drew aside the front window’s heavy curtains. The mailman’s Jeep pulled away, which explained the pounding that had woken her up. She went to the door, relieved that all the locks were in place. But still, why was she filthy? Had she sleepwalked? And sleep-slammed a dozen shots of vodka?
Caffeine. She needed caffeine to figure this out. The spiderwebs in her brain seemed to be catching all her thoughts and tangling them up so they couldn’t form a coherent explanation for any of this.
She worked the locks, being careful to check the peephole before unhooking the chain, and then grabbed the box and rubber-banded mail the mailman had left. The letters turned out to be bills. Lots of them, and all of them with yellow or pink slips inside.
Well, electricity and running water were luxuries, weren’t they?
The box, containing her only indulgence—gourmet coffee—she left unopened. She’d have to send it back. Now that she’d been laid off from her part-time job at the library, she could no longer afford even that one small thing, not with bills piling up, no job prospects in the tiny town, and no buyer for the house in sight. Heck, she might have to give up even the generic grocery store grind.