Lethal Rider

by Larissa Ione

  “In a heartbeat,” he said quietly. “I would give up everything, my very soul, to have just one human lifetime with a mate and children.”

  The skin on the back of Pestilence’s neck prickled, and he turned away from the ocean just as Harvester materialized in front of him. She looked like hell, but she somehow still managed to look extremely fuckable. He couldn’t wait for the Apocalypse to start so he could have her anytime he wanted.

  She cut right to the chase, which he appreciated. “Your fucking ex-Watcher needs to die.”

  “Gethel?”

  “Who else?” she screeched. “I’m going to pluck her feathers and shove every one of them up her ass before I make a halo out of her skull.”

  “I’d like to see that. Lemme know when tickets go on sale.”

  Harvester practically shook with fury, her black wings quivering against her slender shoulders. “How did you know to trace Thanatos to Aegis Headquarters?”

  He tapped his temple. “Brotherly intuition.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He heaved a sigh. “Okay, you caught me. I was tipped off.”

  “By who?”

  “Shouldn’t that be ‘whom’?” He shrugged. “I was never good at all that language-y stuff.”

  Harvester, clearly lacking a sense of humor today, blew a gasket. She came a foot off the sand, wings spread, her eyes glowing red and her fangs jutting from her gums. “I don’t give a fuck! Who tipped you off?”

  He had her on her back, wings crumpled beneath her, his hand on her throat, before the echo of her words faded from the salt air.

  “You do not yell at me, you winged whore.” He inhaled, taking in her anger and her fear. The latter made his cock hard. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, or I’d school you on what a female like you should be doing with her mouth.” He dragged his free hand down her throat to her breast, where he flicked his thumb over the nipple. “When the Apocalypse starts, we’ll rule the world, make beautiful hellspawn, and drink the blood of virgins before we fuck them.” God, his dick was so hard it hurt.

  “I’d sooner screw Reaver than you,” she ground out.

  He nodded. “Good idea. We’ll both do him after Than’s Seal breaks.”

  Harvester hissed and rolled out from under Pestilence. He stayed in the sand, stretched out, propped up on an elbow.

  “Who? Who tipped you off? Answer me!”

  “You’re a goddamned angel with a bone.” He fell back on the beach with a sigh. “Fine. It was Lucifer. No idea who he got the intel from. I actually thought it was from you. Came to him via a khnive.”

  Khnives… nasty creatures that could be summoned as spies or messengers. Someone was fond of using them, as evidenced by the fact that dozens had been summoned to attack Limos’s husband, Arik, a few months ago.

  Pestilence would love to know who to thank, but that was the thing about Apocalypses… so much behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

  Harvester flashed out of there without so much as a thank you. The bitch. He’d teach her some manners once she was his.

  Wouldn’t be long. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a tiny blue rattle. It was his gift to his unborn nephew. Pestilence figured that a baby who was going to have a dagger plunged into his heart just moments after birth should at least get a gift.

  He shook the tiny toy, the sound giving him shivers of pleasure. I would give up everything, my very soul, to have just one human lifetime with a mate and children.

  Thanatos’s prophetic words rang through Pestilence’s ears, a perfect accompaniment to the tinny noise of the rattle. Thanatos would have his child, and its death would cost him his Seal… and his soul.

  Twenty

  “You’re avoiding me, Limos.”

  Limos, fully outfitted in her Croix viper Samurai-style armor and her raven hair woven into a thick braid, swung around to Regan, guilt plastered all over her expression. “Me? Nah. I’m just busy.” She gestured to the keep’s front door. “Hunting rats with Arik and the hellhounds. See? Busy.”

  Uh-huh. In the twelve hours Than had been gone, Regan had been busy, too, dividing her time between his library, where she tried to find any information that might provide clues as to Yenrieth’s whereabouts, and cleaning. Not that Than’s keep needed to be cleaned. She just needed it to be in order.

  So she’d been busy, but not so busy that she missed Limos’s odd behavior.

  Regan set down her sandwich and milk on the table in front of the TV and turned back to Limos, who had inched closer to the door. “What’s going on?”

  In Than’s absence, Limos and Arik were taking turns keeping an eye on her, and Cara had assigned a dozen more hellhounds to stay at the keep, so Regan doubted this was about her safety. Especially since Than’s vampires had kept their distance, either confined to their quarters or working in the outbuildings, and Regan was pretty sure Limos had taken a couple of them aside for interrogation—and to scare the undead out of them.

  Pestilence hadn’t shown up either, which Limos was certain meant he was up to no good, and that was true enough. The news was full of his handiwork, from bacteria-contaminated water supplies to rapidly spreading plagues to freaking zombies in Malta and North Korea.

  So despite the relative quiet at Than’s place, Limos was acting weird, and her avoidance was starting to make Regan suspicious.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” Limos said brightly. “Really.”

  Regan narrowed her eyes at the Horseman. “Did Eidolon say something to you in private?”

  The doctor had come by for a checkup, and although he couldn’t touch her, he’d asked a bazillion questions. He’d been frank with her, warning her that this could be a difficult birth, but he swore to be there for it. For some reason, she had actually been comforted by the idea that the demon doctor was going to deliver the baby.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the baby or Than or anything. It’s just…” Limos looked down at her bright green nails, which poked out of her fingerless gauntlets.

  “It’s just what?”

  Limos shifted her weight and looked at her other hand. “Shiny.”

  “Limos!”

  “Fine.” The Horseman dropped her hands to her sides and sighed. “Arik talked to Kynan. The Aegis recruited a cell of Guardians to come here, but it looks like Pestilence managed to break the encryption on the information he stole from your headquarters. He’s attacking Aegis cells all over the world, and the Guardians who were scheduled to come here were some of the casualties.”

  Oh, God. As if all her nerve endings had withered, Regan went numb all over, and she sank onto the couch before her legs gave out.

  Limos rushed over and took a seat next to Regan. “We didn’t want to tell you because you’ve got enough to deal with.”

  “I’d rather know,” Regan said quietly.

  “Okay, then. We’ll stop coddling you.”

  “Good. Coddling doesn’t suit you.” Regan stared at the other woman, wondering if Limos’s concerned expression was a mere mask. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Nice?” Limos snorted. “I want to beat you with a Moraki bone stick.”

  So much for the coddling. Somehow though, this was better. “Because of what I did to Thanatos?”

  “I was pissed for a while,” Limos admitted. “But I don’t have a lot of room to judge, and as Arik pointed out, you were trying to save the world.” There was a beat of silence, and then Limos blurted, “I’m jealous of you. There. I said it. I want a baby.”

  “You’re afraid to get pregnant until all of this is over, aren’t you?”

  Limos nodded. “If my Seal broke while I was pregnant …” She trailed off, and when she spoke again, there was a note of anger in her voice. “I’m so jealous I could scream. I want a baby so bad, and you’ve got one you’re giving away.”

  In an instant, Regan felt as if she’d been dragged behind a truck, leaving everything, including her emotions, scraped raw. She’d gone into this with
skin like steel armor, thinking she could get pregnant and give up the baby unscathed. But she’d gotten one hell of a chink in her armor that night with Thanatos, and with every passing day, with every move the baby made, her armor eroded.

  She loved the little pony so much it hurt. So much that she dreaded giving birth, because she’d have to somehow drum up the strength and unselfishness to hand him over to people who were far better suited to care for him than she was.

  “It’s not that I want to, Limos.” She drew in a shaky breath. “It’s that I have to.”

  “It’s what’s best. I get that,” Limos said. “But I think I’d do whatever it took to make sure that being with me was what was best.” She shoved to her feet, turning away quickly, but not before Regan spotted the telltale glisten of unshed tears in Limos’s violet eyes. “I have to hunt rats. Or whatever creepy things might be spying on the keep. Um…bye.”

  Limos practically ran out the door, leaving Regan on the verge of tears herself. A suffocating heaviness centered in her chest. Could she ensure that keeping the baby was what was best? Once Pestilence was gone and the threat to the baby’s life was eliminated, could Regan give it a home?

  Yeah, because a one-room apartment at Aegis Headquarters was a home. Okay, so maybe she could get a real apartment. Then what? The Aegis wasn’t exactly kid-friendly. There were no “bring your kid to work” days. And she might be confident in her ability to take down a sewer full of demons, but she didn’t know the first thing about raising a kid.

  For all that she kept insisting that The Aegis was her family, she had no one to help her.

  They need you because of what you can do for them. That’s the only reason they want you. When are you going to open your eyes and see that?

  Maybe… maybe it was time for a change. Maybe, if they managed to avert the Apocalypse, she could build a life for herself and her child.

  Her child. For eight months, she’d tried to refer to the life inside her as “the baby,” “the kid,” “the child.” She’d called it other affectionate names, but only in the last couple of days had she begun to think of it as hers.

  Hers and Thanatos’s.

  Could she do it?

  Her stomach growled, tearing her away from thoughts that were probably dangerous to be having anyway. There would be no future for anyone if the most pressing matter, stopping the Apocalypse, didn’t take precedence.

  She settled the plate on her lap and turned on the TV … and immediately wished she hadn’t. Breaking News. A Pakistani military unit had discovered hundreds of dead bodies—all impaled on giant stakes. The images weren’t graphic, but even the grainy, fuzzed-out pics showed Regan all she needed to know.

  The scene looked exactly like the memory she’d read in Than’s tattoo.

  Something flashed on the screen, something that froze her heart mid-beat. Hand shaking, she rewound the feed to rows of stakes and broken bodies on the ground. But what drew her attention was the shadow to the right of the picture, a shadow in the shape of a man on a horse.

  “Thanatos.” Limos’s gasp came from over Regan’s shoulder.

  “He wouldn’t—” Regan cleared her throat of the hoarseness. “He didn’t—”

  “Of course he didn’t,” Limos said, but there was a tremor of doubt in her voice.

  The giant wooden door burst inward, and Thanatos stormed inside, his armor dripping with blood and gore, his eyes burning an unholy gold flecked with crimson.

  “Shit.” Limos yanked Regan out of her chair and tucked her behind Limos’s back. “We have to get you out of here.”

  Too late for that. Thanatos let out a furious snarl and stalked toward them, sword drawn, expression a mask of murder.

  It was the same expression she’d seen on his face before he slaughtered his best friend.

  From out of nowhere, Arik charged, slamming into the Horseman and knocking him off balance. “Go!” he shouted to Limos, and then he was airborne, knocked off his feet by Thanatos’s meaty fist.

  “Run, Regan,” Limos barked. “Outside. I’ll gate you out of here.” Thanatos lunged, and their swords met in a deafening clang of metal on metal.

  “No,” Regan yelled. “Stop!”

  No one heard. Thanatos and his sister were a whirlwind of blades and armor. His strength was countered by her speed, and with each blow, both Horsemen grew more savage, their strikes aimed for necks, heads, eyes.

  There could be no winner here… only pain.

  Limos danced gracefully out of the sweep of Than’s blade. As his sword plunged downward, she thrust the tip of her blade beneath one of the plates that protected his side. He yelped in pain, blood rushing down his flank in a gruesome stream.

  “Stop it!” Regan screamed.

  Thanatos rounded on her, eyes blazing, and she suddenly regretted not following Limos’s advice. He moved toward her slowly, his gaze holding her rooted to the floor. Her hand crept behind her back, to the Aegis dagger he’d returned to her. He didn’t miss the action, and his lips lifted in a nasty snarl.

  Even as she freed the blade, he was on her, his big body pressing her into the wall. A lifetime of training came back to her in an instant, and she brought the dagger up, leveling the tip just under his jaw.

  “It’s coated in hellhound saliva, Horseman. One nick, and you’re a statue.”

  A low, pulsating purr rose up in his chest. His hands, which had been gripping her shoulders, shifted, one up to cup the back of her head, while the other took a slow slide over her clavicle and lower, where it stopped between her breasts.

  “Do it, Regan.” His voice was a tortured rasp. “Please, cut me.”

  “Why?” He’d been immobilized for over eight months. For him to ask for more of it, for him to make that kind of sacrifice … it left her reeling.

  “I told you that you woke a sleeping demon, Aegi. My sex demon half is…raging.”

  She swallowed dryly. “You don’t want to kill me?”

  He dipped his head, nearly driving the blade into his jugular, and closed his mouth over her throat. The softness of his lips was a stark contrast to the stinging scrape of his teeth followed by the soothing laps of his tongue. Her entire body went loose and rubbery. And hot. Very, very hot.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she noted his hand leaving her chest, and then his armor was gone and he was pressed against her, bare-chested with his erection pressing into her belly through the fly of his pants.

  “Does that feel like I want to kill you?” he whispered against her throat. And then he went stiff, his lips peeling back from his teeth. “Don’t do it, Limos.”

  From over Than’s shoulder, Regan caught a glimpse of Limos easing up behind him, her sword poised to strike.

  “Limos—” Regan tried to warn her off, but it was too late. Thanatos shoved his own blade in a reverse thrust, catching Limos in the neck.

  Limos stumbled back, clutching her throat. Cursing Than to hell, Arik caught her.

  “Get out.” Than’s voice was a lethal rumble, but he was kissing Regan’s throat as he spoke, and his hands were roving over her body with the kind of care one would use while handling a newborn kitten.

  Regan caught Limos’s pained gaze. Go. I’ll be fine.

  The female Horseman inclined her head in a nod, and then she allowed Arik to help her out of there. Limos would be fine, Regan knew, but she’d be sore for a while.

  Thanatos nipped her earlobe and flicked his tongue over the tiny bite before sucking it between his lips. Lower, his hand cupped her breast as his thumb swiped across her nipple, and even through the fabric of her blouse and bra, the pleasure was luxurious.

  “Cut me.” One hand came up to wrap around hers where she still held the dagger to his throat. “Last chance.”

  She opened her palm, and the blade clattered to the floor.

  Twenty-one

  “Fuck.”

  Thanatos’s harsh curse should probably have frightened Regan, but her body was on fire, and the only thing h
e’d done was throw gasoline on those flames.

  He swept her into his arms and strode down the hall, his mouth on hers, his teeth nipping at her lips. He kicked the bedroom door closed and in three strides, was at the edge of the bed. Despite the barely leashed power radiating from his body, he placed her so gently on the mattress that she could have been made of the most delicate crystal.

  By the time she’d pushed herself up on one elbow, he’d ripped—literally—his pants off. The wound on his thigh had already knitted closed and was now hidden behind a gorgeous medieval lion tattoo. It didn’t matter how many times she’d seen him naked … each time she couldn’t help but stare. His body was a work of masculine art.

  Slabs of sleek, toned muscle rippled under a tapestry of tattoos on deeply tanned skin. From his neck to his toes, he was a living, breathing tablet of history, emotion, and sex.

  Silence stretched in the half-dozen feet of space separating them as he stood, chest heaving, his hands fisted at his sides, his head bowed. Still, he watched her through slitted eyes that smoldered.

  “I need to see you.” His voice was harsh, as smoky as his gaze.

  A serious case of nerves made her stomach churn. “I’ll put on my nightgown,” she said, as she fumbled around on the covers for it.

  Thanatos took a single, heavy step closer. “I have missed eight months of seeing my son grow inside you. Don’t deprive me of another day.”

  A wild series of glorious shivers skittered over her skin. God, what a wonderful husband and father he’d have made if fate hadn’t cursed him the way it had. He would have been there for every second of her pregnancy if she’d asked him to be—and probably even if she hadn’t. Most women would kill to have that kind of interest and devotion.

  Most women. Regan had never considered the idea that she’d have a relationship or a family outside of The Aegis. So maybe it was her hormones messing with her brain, or maybe it was her biological clock ticking, or maybe it was the fact that so many of her Aegis family members had died recently, but she was suddenly wondering what being in a relationship would be like.