Immortal Rider (LD2) (23 page)

“I’m telling ya, you’d love the short-track racing,” Decker muttered, tossing him a beer.

“Only if the drivers are demons,” Kynan said.

Decker shrugged. “There’s been speculation about the Busch brothers. They ain’t right. And Jimmy Johnson. He wins too much for it to be natural.”

Rolling his eyes, Kynan took a seat in one of two chairs, and Arik took the other. Like old times, Decker threw himself on the bed and sprawled out like he lived there. Their friendship had been an easy one… sure, there had been moments of tension, but didn’t every relationship have them? It hadn’t even occurred to Arik that he’d need more in the way of relationships, not when he had good friends and a tight military community around him.

So yeah, everything felt the same. Natural. And yet… there was the sense that something was missing.

You miss Limos, idiot
.

Fuck, he was screwed.

“So,” Decker said. “You look pretty good for being in hell’s belly for a month.”

Arik downed half his beer. “I don’t recommend it as a vacation spot.”

“You okay?” Kynan asked, his voice low, gaze serious.

Arik was tired of that question. There’d been way too much doom and gloom and
are you okay
.

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Runa wants to see you. Said you aren’t returning her calls.”

“Been busy.” Busy avoiding her.

Ky got the hint and didn’t push the issue. Decker didn’t either, took a swig of beer and changed directions, bless his little ole redneck heart. “So… what possessed you
to kiss a Horseman and earn yourself a ride on the long black train?”

Man, sometimes Decker needed a translator. “Long black train?”

Kynan beaned Decker with his bottle cap. “It’s from one of Decker’s country songs he forces me to listen to. Something about a train to hell.”

“Yeah, well, there’s no train. Just big, thorny arms.” Arik shut down that memory and downed the rest of his beer.

“Well?” Decker tossed him another cold one. “Why’d you do it? I didn’t think you swung that way.”

“I kissed the
female
Horseman, you idiot. I’m not gay.”

“Duh. I know you’re not gay.” Decker propped himself up on an elbow. “I was talking about supernaturals. I didn’t think you walked on that side of the tracks.”

Kynan snorted. “Train metaphors aside, if you saw Limos, you’d walk there too, Deck.”

Arik sighed. “You two meatheads here for a reason?”

“You have something better to do?” Kynan asked.

“No, but you didn’t come here to bring me beer and sit around taking up space. So you’re either here to gauge my mental fitness, or you’re here to bring me up to speed on Aegis and R-XR shit. Which is it?”

“Both,” Decker admitted, falling into pro mode. He came across as a big, slow hick at times, but Arik wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t an act. The guy was sharp as a stang blade at times.

Arik sat forward in his chair. “What’s up?”

Kynan kicked his booted feet up on the desk. “When you were with Limos, did she give you any information about her
agimortus
?”

Arik filled them in on the stuff about the Isfet demons, which was all new to Kynan. “Damn,” he breathed. “All we’ve had to go on are the lines in the
Daemonica. A Horseman, should he drink from the Cup of Deception and Lies, will loose Famine to ravage the earth
. Did she give you anything about Thanatos?”

“They’ve been tight-lipped about him,” Arik muttered. “The world is screwed. Unless you brilliant minds have come up with some sort of plan while I’ve been at Disneyland.” Kynan and Decker exchanged glances, and Arik got a bad feeling in the base of his gut. “What? What are you guys not telling me?”

“Did Limos give you any insight into Thanatos and his… ah…” Kynan trailed off as if looking for the right word, which was strange, because the guy rarely beat around the bush.

Decker rolled his eyes. “What do you know about his sex life?”

Arik froze with his beer an inch from his lips. “His sex life?”

“Yeah. You know, what’s he into? Men? Kinky shit? Dangerous shit? Or is he like you and all vanilla?” Decker delivered the last bit with a teasing smirk.

As if he was one to talk. The dude had dated the same sweet, missionary-only girl since high school until last year when he couldn’t take lying to her about his job anymore, and broke up with her. It had come down to keep lying or leave the R-XR. Decker had chosen his career, and Arik couldn’t blame him. Now was not a good time to lay down weapons, for sure.

“Do I look like I’m the guy’s confessor? How the hell should I know what he’s into? And why are you
asking?” Arik eyed the two males, who were squirming like schoolboys who’d been caught with their hands down their pants.

“Because we sent Regan to seduce him.”

Arik choked on his beer. “Regan?” he wheezed. “She’s got the feminine wiles of a rabid cactus.”

Decker frowned. “I don’t think cacti can contract rabies.”

Kynan shot Decker an are-you-kidding-me look before turning back to Arik. “Listen, this has to be kept between us. It doesn’t leave this room. Only a handful of Elders know.”

Still floored, Arik sighed. “Okay, I give. Thanatos said you’d sent her, but he thinks it’s because The Aegis wants to fill in historical blanks or something. Why did you send her to sleep with the guy?”

“Because we need her to get pregnant,” Kynan said.

Arik blinked. Hard. “I… don’t think I heard you right.”

“Yeah, you did,” Decker said, his voice going all sorrowful Eeyore. “Fucking sucks, too, cuz I think she might have been sweet on me.”

Kynan drained his beer, and then he explained the situation, which amounted to prophecy, blah, blah, immortal child saving the world, blah, blah, from Death comes life, blah, blah, and a whole lot of buzzing in Arik’s ears because most of what Kynan was saying didn’t compute.

Regan the ice queen was sacrificing herself to bed a Horseman, while Arik couldn’t bed the one he wanted to.

He was about to ask Decker to toss him another beer when Kynan’s cell rang, and at the same time, Decker’s went off. Outside, klaxons blared in shrill alarm.

Decker peeled the curtain away from the window.
“We’re under attack. Fuck. How the hell could demons get on base? It’s warded.”

“Son of a—” The sound of gunfire joined shouts and screams, but the soldiers would have no way of knowing that bullets were useless against most demons.

The highest ranking officers on base were in the know about demons, but for the most part, the soldiers here
weren’t
aware of the existence of underworld creatures. All the soldiers were doing was angering the demons with their piddly little bullets.

Arik tore open the door as the demon horde swarmed toward the dorms.

“We are so fucked,” Decker muttered, even as he reached under his jacket for a stang. Kynan did the same, tossing one to Arik.

“You guys ready?” Ky said.

Arik tested the gold end of the S-shaped blade, drawing blood on his thumb. “Let’s send these fuckers back to hell, where they belong.”

Limos, Ares, and Thanatos gated themselves right into hell on earth. Literally.

Thousands of demons swarmed Arik’s military base, ripping through the soldiers as if they were made of tissue paper. Gunfire and screams filled the air, and the cloying scent of blood and bowels churned in Limos’s nostrils. Guiding Bones with her knees, she cut down demons as she searched for Arik, while Ares’s great sword cleaved bodies in half. Thanatos’s long-handled scythe sliced heads from shoulders.

Bones, who viewed every battle as an all-you-can-eat
buffet, bit the head off some smallish thorny creature and chomped down on it like a normal horse would eat an apple.

“There!” Thanatos pointed toward a huge, boxy building where Kynan, Arik, and a blond male were slashing at their attackers with stangs and daggers. The fighting was bloody, dirty, and Arik, in his black BDUs, was death on legs. His movements were purposeful, economical, and with a few spins, slashes, and kicks, he’d laid out six huge demons like they were scarecrows. The boy could
fight
.

So. Hot.

Then the tide changed. A duo of fallen angels flashed into the fight from nowhere and tag-teamed Arik, one slamming him to the ground while the other zapped him with some sort of power that had him convulsing, blood shooting from his nose.

Limos had had it up to her chin with fucking fallen angels. She hadn’t made Sartael suffer enough, but she’d make up for that now.

With a roar, Limos charged, kicking Bones into a dead run. They bowled over demons and humans alike, and she didn’t care. No one hurt her male.

Her male.
There was no use in denying it any longer. She’d viewed Arik as hers since the first kiss. He’d been right, and he’d called her on it; she’d wanted that kiss. She’d wanted
him
. And Limos had always considered what she wanted to be hers.

Bones smashed into one of the fallen angels, crushing him beneath his hooves as he tore at its wings with his teeth. Limos was a whirl of blades as she leaped from the stallion’s back and made the remaining fallen angel bleed from two dozen wounds before he even knew what hit him.

Gunfire rang out at close range, and Bones screamed, rearing up and splashing blood from a baseball-sized hole in his side. It healed almost instantly, but she knew it hurt like hot hell. A bullet pinged off her armor, and dammit, the stupid humans couldn’t tell friend from foe. Arik came to his feet, his eyes blazing with fury. At first, Limos thought the anger was directed at her, but when he charged at a soldier whose M-16 was trained on her… well, she melted a little.

Another set of fallen angels interrupted her mushy appreciation at Arik’s defense of her, one hitting Kynan so hard against the side of the building that when he crumpled to the ground, his arm was skewed in an unnatural angle, the end of the broken bone jutting out of his skin.

“Arik!” she yelled. “We have to go!”

He wheeled around, his fists tangled in the soldier’s shirt. “I’m not leaving.”

She ran to him, followed by Bones, who struck out at demons that tried to attack her flank. “The demons are here because of you. If we go, they’ll go. It’s the humans’ only chance.”

Arik only hesitated for a second before cursing and shoving the stunned soldier away. “Let’s do it.”

Limos opened a gate, grabbed Arik’s hand and Bones’s reins, and darted through the portal. Their feet hit the warm, white sand on Ares’s Greek island, a hundred yards from where she’d killed Sartael. She so did not want to be reminded of that incident, and she prayed Ares and Thanatos would let it go.

“Son of a bitch,” Arik snapped. “How did the demons get on base? It’s warded.”

“Not from underneath,” she said. “And not from the kind of power Lucifer wields. Once the demons came up from below, they disabled the wards, which is how we and the fallen angels got in.”

“Lucifer?”

She nodded. “He told me he’d found you and was going to grab you. Those demons had to be his, and trust me, your people have never come up against anything like him before. And the fact that he can extend his power into the human realm means that the barrier between realms has been compromised. It won’t be long until it falls and every demon in Sheoul will escape.”

“I thought the Seals had to break for that to happen.”

She dug a piece of elk jerky out of Bones’s saddlebags and fed it to him. “The more powerful Pestilence becomes, and the more human earth he claims in the name of Sheoul, the weaker the barrier becomes.”

“That’s fantastic.” Arik carefully tucked his stang in his pants pocket. “So why are we here?”

“Cara sent hellhounds to my island to root out anything that could potentially be a threat or a spy hoping to learn where you are. I need to check with her to make sure it’s clear before I take you back there.” She sighed. “I just hope the helldogs don’t eat any humans.”

Arik gave her that stare that said “dumbass” without words. “Yeah. That would be a bonus.”

She held out her arm. “Bones, to me.” The stallion, his jaws still working on the jerky, dissolved into smoke and settled into her skin without protest.

“Then what?” Arik asked, as he wiped away a stream of blood on his temple. “You gonna take me back to your house and lie to me some more?”

She started toward the front door. “I’m sure you’re a pillar of truth, Arik.”

“I’ve never stolen someone’s memories and lied about it.” Arik fell into step beside her, his combat boots making heavy thuds on the pavers.

“Oh, right. So holier than thou. You’re saying you’ve never lied? Do you tell everyone you meet who you are and who you work for?”

“That’s different. My job is beyond top secret.”

“And what do you tell the women you meet? Do you have to lie to them about your job? About who you are? Do you fuck them with all those lies between you?” When he stiffened, she snorted. “That’s what I thought.” And worse, she was so freaking jealous about it.

“There’s a huge difference between lying to hurt someone and omitting information to protect someone.”