Lethal Rider

by Larissa Ione

  “We’ve had a copy of the Toreign for centuries, but we didn’t procure a Torran until a couple of months ago, so we’re only now uncovering useful info.” Ky rubbed the back of his neck. “So anyway, inside the Torran, we found a passage relating to the Horsemen and the Apocalypse. It says, ‘First cry weakens the heart … a plunge of the blade ends it.’ Basically, we think that the baby’s birth will turn Pestilence mortal for a short period of time, allowing ‘the blade,’ Deliverance, to kill him.”

  Deliverance was a dagger forged thousands of years ago as a weapon against the Horsemen—the only weapon believed to hold the power to kill them. Unfortunately, as they’d learned eight months ago, the blade wasn’t effective against Pestilence.

  “That’s why you came to headquarters the night I was attacked by the vampire. To discuss rousing Thanatos so he could be there for the baby’s birth,” she mused. “So what about the part of his prophecy that mentions the Doom Star?”

  “Some of us believe the Doom Star is Halley’s Comet. The comet has been associated with everything from godly messages to the devil’s tool to the Star of Bethlehem. We think that if Pestilence isn’t killed at the baby’s first cry, the next opportunity won’t happen until Halley’s Comet next appears.”

  She could predict where this was going. “And I’ll bet it won’t show its comet-y face anytime soon.”

  “The year twenty sixty-one.”

  Jesus. By then there might not be much of a world left to save. She considered everything Ky and Decker had told her. “Why didn’t you guys tell me any of this sooner?”

  Kynan wiped a trickle of blood from his temple with the back of his hand. “You’ve got enough to deal with. We didn’t want to get your hopes up before we got everything figured out.”

  Regan didn’t like being kept out of the loop, but at this point, it hardly mattered. Not when the world was collapsing around them.

  Something beeped, and Ky dug a cell phone out of his pocket. After pushing a button, he propped the phone on Than’s desk, and both Lance and Val offered greetings over the speaker.

  “Are we clear to talk?” Val asked.

  “Right now there are only Aegi in the room,” Ky said.

  “Good,” Val said. “What’s going on on your end?”

  Regan sat up. “I was about to tell these guys to take me back with them. You’ll all need my help—”

  “The best thing you can do right now is stay safe,” Kynan said. “Never thought I’d say this, but I think you’re better off here with Than.”

  Regan’s stomach rolled. “What? Are you kidding me? I can’t stay here.”

  “Kynan’s right,” Decker said. “As much as I hate it, we can’t risk moving you around.”

  “Yes, you can.” Her voice cracked. “You have to.” You’re going to pleasure me. Whenever I want. Every. Single. Night. Oh, God. “I can stay at a regional headquarters.”

  “Regan.” Kynan’s military bark snapped her to immediate attention, and she realized she’d been panicking. Babbling. “If Thanatos can sense the baby, he can find you. We can’t risk him coming for you and Pestilence tracking him.”

  “He’ll agree to not go after me. He’ll understand.”

  Arik snorted. “Thanatos? Understand? Have you even met him?”

  “I agree,” Kynan said. “If you were Gem, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight. He’s not going to let you go.”

  “This place is crawling with vampires,” she reminded them. “And in case you forgot, one of them tried to kill me.” Yes, Thanatos had explained that the vamp hadn’t been his, but right now, she’d take any argument to get away from here.

  “Tried,” Decker said. “You could have killed him with your power. You can defend yourself.”

  Did she dare tell them that her defensive ability had failed? Maybe it was just a fluke. And it wouldn’t change anyone’s mind, anyway. Ultimately, they were right. As much as she hated to think it, she probably was safest here, at least for now.

  Val’s voice crackled over the airwaves. “This will also put you in a unique position to study the daywalkers.”

  “Yeah,” Lance chimed in. “Give you something useful to do.”

  She glared at the phone as if Lance could see her expression. “As if gestating a baby that might save the world isn’t enough?”

  She could almost hear Lance’s shrug. “Once the kid pops out, you’ll be dead weight again.”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Kynan said.

  Decker shoved to his feet as if ready to go through the speaker and kick some ass. “You’re such a dick.”

  “It’s okay,” Regan said. “We’re all stressed.” But damn, Lance had struck a nerve.

  Oh, she was used to his clumsy barbs, but this one was actually spot on. She’d never felt as if she had as much to offer as the other Elders, and she suspected that her abilities were the only reason she’d been promoted. That, and the fact that Lance had once told her that they wanted to keep an eye on her. The soul-sucking ability was dangerous, and they wanted her leashed.

  “Fuck you,” Lance muttered. “I was just trying to make sure she had something useful to do. Don’t want her going the way of her Mama.”

  The room exploded in curses, so many insults flying at Lance that Regan couldn’t separate them. She wasn’t her mother. Yes, she may be giving her child up for a better life, but she wasn’t going to kill herself. Even in the first two months after that horrible night with Thanatos, when she’d nosedived into such a deep state of depression and guilt that she could barely leave her bed, she hadn’t thought about suicide.

  Granted, she might have considered dropping back into the fighting ranks again after the baby was born, because dying in battle wasn’t killing yourself, right? Not if dying wasn’t the goal, the way it had been for her mother.

  Her stomach turned over again, threatening to spill, and she shoved to her feet and brushed past Limos, who was just entering the room. “I…um…I need to go.”

  Decker moved toward her. “Regan?”

  “I’m okay.” She held up her hand to hold them off. “I just need a minute.”

  With that, she ran as fast as she could to the bedroom, where she dashed into the bathroom and lost her last meal.

  Eleven

  The tap on the bedroom door came as Regan finished brushing her teeth with one of the spare toothbrushes she’d found in Than’s master bathroom cabinet.

  “I really don’t want to talk to you, Thanatos,” she called out, realizing how stupid it was to say that before the sentence was even out of her mouth: Thanatos wouldn’t have knocked. He’d have barged in like a pissed-off bear awakened from hibernation.

  She put away the toothbrush as Decker’s muffled voice came through the door. “It’s not Thanatos.”

  “Oh.” She waddled into the bedroom and sank onto the bed. “Come in.”

  Decker slipped inside, silent as a ghost. For a big guy, he was remarkably agile. Then again, so was Thanatos… agile in ways her body warmed to think about.

  “You okay?” Decker asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t let Lance get to you. I think his mama’s milk was curdled.”

  She sighed. “It’s not Lance. It’s everything. I feel so useless. I should have been there today. I could have helped.”

  “Sounds like no one could have helped. You’d have just gotten yourself killed.”

  Her breath shuddered out of her. He was probably right, but that didn’t lessen the guilt of not being with her colleagues when they needed her. It also drove home the fact that the crisis was worse than she’d been willing to admit.

  “You know, all this time, even when things looked like they were at their worst, I never doubted we’d beat Pestilence and stop the Apocalypse.”

  “We will,” Decker said fiercely. “We’ll find a way.”

  “I’m not so sure anymore.” It hurt to say that, and part of her couldn’t believe she had said it. Defeat had never been an option for
her. She’d fought for her very life from the day she was born. Now it seemed as if fighting might only drag out the inevitable. “With headquarters compromised, Pestilence has not only hamstrung us, he’s crippled our ability to organize and command, not to mention that this has to be a huge blow to every Guardian’s confidence.”

  “Stop.” Decker sat down next to her. “We have to maintain hope.” He looked down at her belly. “And that peanut in there is hope.”

  She offered him a thin smile. “You’re one of the only people besides Kynan who can say that without cringing.”

  “Because it’s a baby. It’s not a monster, no matter what anyone else thinks.”

  “Thank you.” She eyed the bed pillows and fought the urge to straighten them. “Not to be rude, but … is there a reason you’re here?” No one but Suzi had ever bothered to keep Regan company.

  “That’s what I’ve always liked about you,” Deck said. “No bullshit.” He sobered, and she braced herself for whatever was coming. “I wanted to give you a heads up on a call Kynan just got from Sammara in the Tech Department. She ran a check of headquarters’ computers.”

  Alarm bells clanged in her skull. “Don’t tell me Pestilence got our personnel records.”

  “He did.” Decker’s tone was weary, his eyes tired. “And worse, he got the locations of every Aegis cell worldwide.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she rasped. “The slaughter is going to be off the charts.”

  “The good news is that the information is encrypted,” Decker said. “We have time, but maybe only a matter of days.”

  And after that, Guardians could very well become an endangered species.

  Thanatos stalked into his library and went on instant alert. Arik and Limos were on the couch, and Ky was draped bonelessly in one of the armchairs. Someone, probably Arik, had found Than’s med kit and tended to Kynan’s wounds, but he was the grayish color of a dead bile slug, and he clearly needed medical attention.

  But where the hell was Regan? “Where is she?” The question came out as more of a bark, but Thanatos didn’t give a shit if he sounded hyper and grumpy, and maybe a little too freaked out that Regan was missing.

  “She’s in the bedroom,” Limos said calmly. “I think she had to puke.”

  Thanatos started out the door, but Arik called him back. “Don’t, man. Give her a few minutes. She just lost a bunch of colleagues and friends, thanks to your brother.”

  “My brother. Not me.”

  “Idiot.” Arik beaned Than in the chest with a pencil. “You’re five thousand years old and still don’t know anything about humans.”

  Than looked down at the pencil and considered kabobbing his brother-in-law with it. “Because I don’t hang around with humans.”

  “Just trust me on this,” Arik said, and Limos nodded in agreement. “Your brother, who you want to save, just destroyed Regan’s world. You’re probably the last person she wants to see right now. Well, second to last. Pestilence wins first place.”

  Than still didn’t understand why he should be held responsible for Pestilence’s actions, but he’d listen to the human, since Arik knew Regan better than he did. Which rankled.

  Limos leaned forward on the couch, bracing her forearms on her knees. “These guys just filled me in on some important shit about your prophecy.” She blew out a long breath. “Damn, Than, there might be an end to all of this in sight.”

  Than listened as Ky laid out the prophecy about the baby’s cry—and the fact that burying Deliverance in Pestilence’s heart while it was weakened would kill him. Made sense … but Than didn’t like it. He didn’t want to kill his brother. He wanted to save him.

  “What about the Halley’s Comet Doom Star thing?” Than asked. “I found something in one of my shrines that indicates I can save him by using Deliverance at a particular time. What if that’s what the Doom Star part of the prophecy is about?”

  Ky rubbed his eyes and swore. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Arik said. The comet won’t return to Earth until twenty sixty-one. We can’t wait that long.”

  The easy way Arik said it, as if waiting to save Reseph wasn’t even an option, pissed Than the hell off. Yeah, he got it. He did. Dicking around for half a century waiting for a damned comet while Pestilence ravaged mankind and demons warred with each other wasn’t exactly an option. But dammit, Reseph was Than’s brother, and the male he’d once been deserved a little more respect.

  Instead of knocking Arik across the room, Than swung around to Kynan and held out the book he’d fetched from the vault in the dungeon where he kept his most priceless items. “It’s a history of angels. I flagged some passages about qeres.”

  “Damn.” Kynan took the book. “We don’t even have this. Where did you get it?”

  “Found it in a burial chamber outside Babylon.”

  Ky cocked a dark eyebrow. “Long time ago.”

  “You could say that.” Than glanced at everyone as he spoke. “It says qeres incapacitates angels, which you know. But it also lists one of its ingredients. ‘Poison like the hounds of hell.’”

  “You think it’s made of hellhound saliva?” Arik asked.

  “I don’t know. But if it works like it, qeres could, potentially, work on us.”

  Limos’s head whipped around. “Pestilence. We could use it on him.”

  “Exactly. He’s become nearly immune to hellhound venom, but qeres has other properties. He may be vulnerable to it.”

  “And then what?” Kynan smoothed his long fingers over the leather binding. “You incapacitate him, but what if the effect is only temporary? We don’t have much of the stuff, and once it runs out, there’s no way to hold him.”

  “What about Regan?” Limos asked. “Her power held you for a few minutes. Maybe it would work on Pestilence.”

  The reminder made Than twitchy, not because he’d been held immobile and helpless, but because all he could think about was Regan on top of him, her naked body undulating, her panting breaths matching his as they neared orgasm.

  “Even if she can hold Pest while in freaking labor,” Arik said, “what then? If we miss the incredibly narrow window of the baby’s cry, Deliverance won’t kill him. Then we definitely have to wait for the comet.”

  Thanatos’s pulse pounded in his temples at the thought of killing his brother.

  “What if we freeze him?” Arik asked. “You know, like Han Solo.”

  Thanatos shot Arik an are-you-kidding-me look. “Yeah … carbonite freezing machines might be a little hard to come by, given that we don’t live in the Star Wars universe.”

  “Ass,” Arik muttered. “I’m talking about ice. Flash freeze him with liquid nitrogen or something.”

  Limos toyed with the orange flower in her hair. “Even if you could lure him into a trap like that, he’ll unfreeze in minutes.”

  Kynan shifted in his chair with a wince. No doubt his massive injuries were agonizing. They were also leaving blood all over Than’s furniture. “So what we’re left with is trying to hunt him down and incapacitate him while we wait for your son to cry.”

  Son. Than wondered if he’d ever get used to hearing that. “Yeah, and you wanna explain why the fuck you believed this evidence you found that said my kid would save the world?”

  “Because Regan inspected the scroll your brother planted for us to find,” Kynan said. “At the time, we didn’t know it was a setup, but Regan discovered that the author believed the prophecy they wrote.”

  Thanatos picked up Reseph’s iPod for no other reason than to remind himself that the male who had loaded the mp3 player with country music would hate himself for what Pestilence was doing. “So we know Pestilence didn’t write it. It was his trick to take my virginity.”

  “And that’s what’s so weird about the situation,” Ky replied. “He thought it was a trick, but the author thought it was true, and it might be true after all. So did the author believe your son will save the world because they know something we
don’t? If that’s the case, they may be working against Pestilence rather than with him.”

  Thanatos really wanted to have a chat with this mysterious author. “We have to find whoever penned the baby prophecy. Have you talked to Reaver or Harvester? Maybe they can provide some insight.”

  Limos tucked herself more fully against Arik. If she got any closer she’d be up his nose. “The last time I talked to them… what, a month ago? They said they didn’t know anything. Or if they do, they aren’t talking because it’s against their stupid Watcher rules.”

  “And don’t get them in the same room together,” Arik said. “Christ, we had to rebuild half of Limos’s party house after our last conversation with them.”

  “Why?”

  Limos studied her nails, painted yellow and pink today. “They got into a fight. It was like two jumbo jets colliding in mid-air.”

  Harvester and Reaver had never been fond of each other, but they didn’t usually get physical. “What were they fighting about?”

  “Dunno.” Arik lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They didn’t say a word. We were talking to Harvester, and Reaver showed up and they went at it.”

  “And that’s the last time anyone has seen them?” Than asked.

  “Yep.”

  Those damned angels. Yeah, the Horsemen could summon them, but that didn’t mean they’d arrive in a timely manner. They seemed to delight in showing up only at their own convenience. Did Reaver know about Pestilence’s attack on the Aegis? Did he even know Regan was pregnant? Speaking of which, she’d been gone too long for his comfort. And, wait…“Where’s Decker?”

  “He went to check on Regan—” Limos hadn’t even finished her sentence before Than was halfway down the hall.

  Insane, possessive anger clawed at him as he threw open the bedroom door. The sight of Decker sitting so close to Regan spiked Thanatos’s anger meter up to critical. Before he knew it, he had his fist in Decker’s T-shirt collar and had thrown the human across the room. In the next instant, Regan was on her feet, putting her body between them.