by Larissa Ione
The bitch. He had no idea how she knew about his memory loss, but she loved needling him about how he couldn’t remember his life beyond events that led to his fall. Oh, he’d known things about Heaven and history and people, but he couldn’t remember the details of his existence before he’d met Patrice Kelley, the woman who had eventually convinced him to break such a critical rule that he’d been cast from Heaven.
Neither could anyone else. Even the Akashic records, the ultimate Heavenly database that contained the knowledge of everything, revealed nothing. It was as if Reaver had been erased.
“That was just a warning,” Harvester continued, her voice a deep purr. She was enjoying this. “Your love of breaking rules is well known. Don’t even think about finding loopholes to help the Horsemen.” She smiled, flashing fangs. “See, I have some Heavenly contacts, and I’ll make sure that the next time you fall, there will be no redemption. Only fire and pain.”
With a delicate wave, she flashed away, leaving Reaver alone on the ice, bleeding and shaken. He couldn’t afford to fall again. Doing so meant bypassing the earthbound, in-between stage and going straight to Sheoul, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
So no, Reaver wouldn’t break rules. But he would find a way to pay Harvester back. And when the Final Battle came, she would be the first demon he destroyed.
Harvester flashed herself to her opulent apartment in the Horun region of Sheoul… and screamed. Screamed until her throat went raw. Screamed until her blood slave, a huge male werewolf she called Whine, covered his ears and went to his knees.
When her voice finally went out, she took a few calming breaths, poured herself a shot of Neethul marrow wine, and downed it. The outrageously expensive liquor, made by the demon slave traders, burned like liquid fire and then sat in her belly like a lump of coal. The agony only lasted a moment, and then came the payoff, several minutes of orgasmic ecstasy so intense she had to lean on Whine as she shuddered through the pleasure.
When it was over, she sank down next to him, partly because her legs wouldn’t support her, and partly because she needed to feed. Silently, because he wasn’t allowed to speak unless she told him to, he tilted his head to the side, exposing his jugular. The shackles around his ankles clanked as she shifted to sink her fangs into his neck, and it occurred to her that her chains might be invisible, but she was just as much a prisoner to her fate as he was.
Frustration made her rougher than she normally would be with Whine, and he jerked with each of her vicious pulls on his vein. But dammit, the last two days had been hell… no pun intended. Her fury—and thirst for revenge—was why she’d destroyed his cave. She’d needed to strike back, even if the blow was a minor one.
The problem? Reaver. She hadn’t known the do-gooding angel was in the caves when she’d collapsed the mountain. She could have told him the truth when he’d attacked her, but he wouldn’t have believed her, and worse, she’d have been left trying to explain why she’d wanted to demolish Pestilence’s old residence in the first place.
And now, if Reaver didn’t keep his big mouth shut, Pestilence would find out that she’d been the one to destroy his cave.
She shuddered, remembering how, after he was through with her in that Mexican villa, he’d crouched over her naked, broken body and whispered roughly in her ear.
That was just a taste of what I will do to you next time. You answer to me now, not the other way around. Remember that. Piss me off again, and I’ll rip you a new asshole and then fuck it. And that’s just the foreplay.
Oh, she hated him. Right now, she and Reaver couldn’t do much more than monitor the Horsemen’s activities and report back to their bosses, and anything they did do to help or any information they provided had to be cleared first by said bosses. Information such as how Ares’s agimortus could be transferred to humans… that tidbit had been okayed for revealing just yesterday. Why, she didn’t know. She’d learned long ago that she, along with most every other being in the universe, was nothing but a game piece.
Now she just had to figure out how to play. Because as terrified as she’d been at times over the thousands of years she’d been in Sheoul, it was nothing compared to how afraid she was right now. Armageddon was right around the corner, and for the first time, she wasn’t sure if her life in hell would be worse if evil lost… or if it won.
Five
Still torqued from the conversation with Reaver and Harvester, Ares knocked on Cara’s front door and waited. And waited. Just as he raised his fist to knock again, he heard footsteps, and then a muffled, “Who is it?”
“Name’s, ah, Jeff.” That was a common human name, wasn’t it? “I wanted to check on the dog I dropped off last night.” She wouldn’t remember the dog, thanks to his memory deletions, but it would be interesting to see how she handled this.
Silence. More silence. Then, finally, came the metallic clicks of the multitude of locks being manipulated. The door cracked open, but only as far as the chain would allow. Those chains were ridiculous. Any normal-sized male could force the door, and Ares wasn’t normal. He could break it with his pinky.
“Dog?”
Put her at ease. Smile. Create explanations for everything that seemed odd this morning. “Yeah. You know, the injured dog I brought you last night.”
Her eyes flared in what he suspected might be recognition. He hoped to hell not. His mind-wipes might not be as effective as Than’s or Limos’s—she could actually replace memories—but they still did the job. Maybe the hellhound bond had affected his ability.
“Who are you?” she asked. “You’re not from around here.”
“I’m thinking about moving here. Staying with cousins in town until I find a place. They told me you’re a vet.” He hoped he’d gotten that detail right, and that all the stuff in her office was actually hers.
“I’m not,” she said with a strange hitch in her voice. “Not really.”
What was that supposed to mean? He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to look nonthreatening. Should have gone for the flip-flops. “Look, it’s not my dog, so if it died, you can tell me. I just figured I’d pay you for his care and apologize for waking you and leaving him on the lawn. I didn’t think you were going to open the door to a stranger in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, thank you. Um… I’m afraid the dog didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
“S’okay. Didn’t think he would. He was bleeding pretty bad.” He pulled a wad of money out of his pocket. “What do I owe you?”
Cara eyed the cash as if it were food and she was starving. Remembering the bills on her coffee table, he prepared himself for an outrageous quote. “You don’t owe me anything,” she sighed, surprising the shit out of him. “Thanks for coming by.”
He shrugged. “I appreciate you trying.” He shoved the money back in his pocket and recalled what she’d said on the phone. “Weirdest thing. I dreamed about that damned dog last night. He was in a cage, howling like he wanted to tell me something.” He turned, took one step off the porch, and smiled when he heard the chain clank on the door.
“Wait. You… dreamed about a dog? A black dog? The dog you brought to me?”
He swung back around. “Yeah. Why?”
“Because,” she said softly, “I did, too.” The door creaked wider, but she still stood behind it and peeked around, as if using it as a shield. “In my dream he was in a basement. You, too?”
He widened his eyes in mock surprise. “Yeah. What else do you remember?”
Reluctance bled into her body language, the way she gripped the door so hard her knuckles turned white and worried her bottom lip. “The cage was in the center of some sort of big circle. With symbols.”
Restraining glyphs to keep him from flashing out of the cage and from crying out for help from his pack. “Were there symbols on the cage, too?”
She nodded, her wet hair falling forward to conceal her cheeks. He wished she’d step out from behind the door so he could see what s
he was wearing. Not that it mattered. But she seemed like the jeans and sweatshirt type, and he wanted to see if he was right. That, and he’d love to know what her extremely fine ass looked like in denim.
“So we both dreamed the same thing,” she mused. “What do you think it means?”
“No idea. But with any luck, we won’t dream of caged dogs again tonight.” It was a lie, because he needed her to dream. At this point, she alone could lead him to Sestiel.
“That would be nice.” She had a musical, soothing tone to her voice, and Ares found himself hoping she’d keep talking. “Hey, do you have a phone number where I can reach you? Um, you know, in case I have any questions about the dog or anything?”
Bullshit. She wouldn’t have questions about the dog. But he’d established a connection with her, had given them common ground in the form of a mystery, and any normal human would want to solve why two complete strangers would have the exact same dream.
He covertly fished a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and tucked it under a business card with his cell number. Why, he wasn’t sure, except that he knew she needed the money and he had plenty of it.
She finally came out from behind the door, and he allowed himself a long, slow visual ride down her body. Hell yeah, he’d been right about her clothes, and the plain gray oversized sweatshirt and well-worn jeans looked great on her. She had hips made for a good grip, thighs meant to crush a male between them, and sexy, dainty feet that would lock tight behind that male’s back. He’d bet his left nut that she had sensitive ankles.
“Thanks.” She took the card, but scowled at the money. “I said—”
“Take it. If you don’t, I’ll leave it on your porch with another hundred.” He might do that anyway. And fuck, when did he become a walking, bleeding-heart charity? Maybe when he’d been sizing her up for sex and all his blood drained out of his head.
She offered him a tentative, hesitant smile that jacked his temperature a few degrees. He’d had his mouth on those lush lips, and damn if he didn’t want to do it again. It had been his first taste of a woman in forever, and he wanted more.
“Thank you.” She scratched her phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. He made sure his fingers brushed hers, a lingering, yet “innocent” touch that made her lips part on a gentle, startled inhalation of breath.
Her hands were so damned soft. He had no doubt she’d be soft everywhere.
“Feel free to call me anytime.” He feigned a shy smile. “Maybe sometime we could go out for a drink or dinner?”
Wrong thing to say, because she skittered backward, deeper inside the house. “I, uh, I don’t think that would be a good idea, but thank you.”
“You married? Have a boyfriend? Girlfriend?” All good things to know, since he was going to have to get a little more involved in her life at some point, if he wanted information from her. He didn’t need interference or questions from a jealous lover.
“No,” she said, and the answer pleased him more than it should. “I’m just not feeling social.”
He had to wonder what had happened to her to make her so reluctant to accept his offer. Granted, he was a stranger, but no female had ever resisted his advances. One of the few bennies he’d gotten from his sex demon mother was an irresistible sexual magnetism that only succubi could resist. Even human women who became violent in his presence threw themselves at him. They just did it while wanting to kill him.
Cara’s resistance was trauma-related… the evidence was in her mannerisms and speech, but mostly, it was in her eyes. What had put those tortured shadows there?
Fuck it, there was nothing Ares could do about it anyway. He started down the steps again. “If you change your mind, you have my number.”
She frowned down at the card he’d given her. “Where do you live?”
“Greece.” He shot her a wink, and he swore she blushed. “If you ever want to visit, I have lots of room. You’d love it. White sand, blue sea… it’s so beautiful you’ll swear you’ve been there before.”
Because she had.
Cara watched Jeff saunter away, her belly fluttering madly, her palms sweating around the business card and money, but for once, it wasn’t fear that made her so jittery. The man was hypnotically gorgeous… and without a doubt, he was the person kissing her in the weird dream/memory she’d had.
So even though she didn’t remember him bringing the dog to her, clearly, her brain cells had taken detailed notes. You just couldn’t completely forget a guy who stood well over six-and-a-half feet tall and radiated confidence, power, and sex. Oh, yes… sex. She might not have had sex in years, but she remembered it, and feminine instinct told her that one night with Jeff would be better than all other nights in her past combined.
And his smell, the masculine, spicy fragrance that had wafted from him might as well have been an aphrodisiac. Common sense told her she should be terrified, but her hormones were trying to beat her fear into submission.
A shiver of appreciation wracked her as she gazed after him, unable to tear her eyes away from his graceful, rolling gait. His tan cargo pants hugged his butt in an obscenely nice fit, and his back muscles formed a symphony of movement under his shirt. In the sunlight, his brown hair glinted with reddish highlights, and she could only imagine the number of women who had run their fingers through those messy locks while arching beneath that spectacular body.
Regret was a bitter lump in her throat that no amount of swallowing was going to clear. The hottest man she’d ever seen had asked her on a date, and she’d reacted like he’d offered to murder her. Would it really have been that bad to accept? To maybe meet him somewhere public, so she’d have her own vehicle and there would be no pressure?
As if Jeff sensed her eyes on him, he slowed, and her heart kicked into a higher gear. In an agonizingly unhurried motion, he turned his head to look over his shoulder at her, a long lock of hair falling over his forehead and one eye. Their gazes met. Tangled. Awareness washed through her in a hot, liquid rush of oh… my… God. No man had ever affected her like that, especially not from just a look.
His mouth tipped up in a cocky, sensual smile, as if he knew what she’d been thinking… and knew he could give it to her like she’d never had it before. Sweet baby Jesus, she nearly choked on her own tongue.
And what in the world was she doing standing in her doorway ogling a complete stranger when she needed to be… what, not paying bills?
Before she made an even bigger idiot of herself, she started to close the door, and then she blinked. Jeff had disappeared. She hadn’t seen a car, and she hadn’t even considered that he might be walking back to town, and now he was… gone.
Chalk it up to all the other weirdness.
Yeah, good plan, except that Jeff had accounted for almost everything. The dog, the grass stains, the blood.
But that didn’t explain why she’d drunk so much vodka that she couldn’t remember any of it. Or why they’d both dreamed the same thing.
Or what she’d done with the body of the dog—it had to have died, or she would have put it in one of the kennels next to the house, and they were empty.
At least the feeling that someone was watching her was no longer with her, but Cara still felt the unwelcome buzz of fear slithering over her skin. Something had happened last night to make her drink, but what? She’d never defaulted to the bottle, and if her father’s death and the night of the break-in hadn’t done it, nothing would.
She did her best to not think too hard about either the mystery of last night or Jeff and his incredible body as she cleaned her office. When she finished, she sank bonelessly to the couch, where the television was blaring the same old, same old. Mysterious diseases were cropping up like wildfires, water in at least four rivers and three lakes had become polluted with poisonous organisms, and six countries had declared war on each other, completely out of the blue. The United States government was trying to decide how involved it wanted to get, and the military was gearing up
for possible deployment.
The world was going to hell in a handbasket, as her dad would have said, even as he packed his bags in preparation to move out with animal rescue groups to war-torn areas.
Slamming her hand down on the remote with more force than was necessary, she shut off the TV. She used to love the idiot box, had bought a top-of-the-line Sony theater system back when she still had money. And ambition. Almost everything in the house, in fact, was “the best.” Her drive to succeed and never settle had been a source of pride for her.
But all of that had died two years ago, along with the intruder.
Numbly, she plodded to her bedroom, where she curled up on her bed. The moment her head hit the pillow, sleep took her.
Help me!
“Hal!”
Cara shook her head. Rubbed her eyes. Wondered if she should be as aware as she was that this was a dream. Once more, she was floating around the dark basement with the caged dog, but this time, everything was more familiar. She even knew the pup’s name was Hal. Short for Halitosis.
Find me.
And again, the animal seemed to be one bark short of a dog. “I’ve found you.”
Hal’s red eyes glowed brighter, and his hackles snapped up. He looked like some prehistoric monster ready to tear right through the fabric of reality and destroy everything in his path. Go.
“I just got here—”
She broke off, dazzled by a bright light and the sudden appearance of a familiar blond man. When he saw her, his eyes went wide, and he lunged. His hand brushed her arm as she twisted away.
Go! If he catches you, you will be trapped here without your body. Go through the ceiling!
Without her body? Okay, that didn’t sound good. The world blurred and her body seemed to break apart as she shot upward and passed through stone, cement, and wood, and then suddenly, she was outside in the blinding light of day, and the house she’d just come out of was behind her.
