by Larissa Ione
He looked very similar to the man she’d seen in her dream, the one who had tried to grab her when she was in the basement with Hal. Even odder, no one around her seemed to notice him. Soupy fog choked the streetlights and darkness had fallen, but it wasn’t that dark.
Gripping her cell phone tighter, she took a step back, alarm growing as the man came closer. In an awkward but lightning-quick move, he surged forward and grasped her shirt. Fear closed in on her, suffocating and ice cold as he slapped his palm against her chest. A burning sensation nearly ripped her apart, but she couldn’t scream through the pain.
Somehow, she wrenched herself away and slammed her fist into his face. As if he weighed no more than her own hundred and thirty pounds, he flew backward several yards, hit the pavement, and skidded into a light pole. She didn’t ponder how easy it had been to toss him like that, nor did she wait for him to get up. Spinning around, she scrambled toward the nearest pedestrian, but… something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
The pedestrian wasn’t moving. No one was moving. Every vehicle, every person had frozen.
In midstride.
A blinding light flashed… a camera? Had she wandered onto the set of a movie? Or some kind of reality TV prank? Her mind flipped through several scenarios, none of which really made sense, and then her mind went utterly blank when a massive white horse appeared from out of nowhere, its eyes blazing a reddish-orange fire. On its back was a knight, his armor streaked with black, the joints oozing blood.
For a crazy moment, Cara was glad to see him—a knight. It meant this really was some sort of production… right?
Sure, the special effects were abnormally great. The blood looked real. The pain on the arrow-guy’s face was spot on. The evil and cruelty in the knight’s ice-blue eyes couldn’t be more genuine.
And when the knight put a second arrow into the man who had grabbed her, the thud, the spray of blood… all so incredibly real.
“Will you die already?” The knight almost sounded bored as he nocked another arrow. His long platinum hair fell forward to conceal his expression, but dark amusement rolled off him in an oily wave Cara felt on her skin.
Please let this be a movie set. Or a dream.
The pincushioned man stumbled onto the sidewalk, bumping into the motionless people and scattering them like bowling pins. They fell hard, their bodies so stiff they might as well have been mannequins.
The knight released the arrow, nailing the guy in the back. Grunting, the unarmed man went down to his hands and knees, but kept crawling, leaving a trail of blood. Cara barely restrained a cry of horror.
Another horse and rider appeared from out of a giant oval of light in the center of the road. And this time, there was no vague sense of familiarity about the man sitting atop the horse. She knew exactly who it was.
Jeff. Her first, oddball, thought was that he’d gotten her voice message. Her second thought was that it was weird that he and his bay stallion wore some sort of leather armor, and though Cara couldn’t be certain, she thought they were both even larger than the first horse and rider.
The blond horseman grinned at Jeff as his stallion reared on its hind legs. Jeff’s “No!” rang out, but with an ear-shattering scream, the white beast came down on the arrow-pierced guy’s head. Bits of bone and gore sprayed the animal’s legs, a light pole, the front of some old lady’s dress.
Cara cried out, but neither man seemed to notice. Jeff swung his sword at the blond, who drew a blade of his own.
Stark terror coursed through her, making her tremble as she backed away. Desperate to avoid their attention, she eased down the sidewalk. All around her, the normal world was eerily silent except for the violent sounds of battle; curses, metal striking metal, the snorts and screams of stallions drawing blood.
Cara risked a glance back, but the sight of the horses dancing in the dead man’s remains as they slashed at each other with teeth and hooves curdled her stomach.
Nausea sluiced through her, bringing her to a halt in an alley between a tea shop and a bakery. Her dinner of pork pie, mash, and carrots was in serious jeopardy. Swallowing repeatedly to keep it all down, she forced her feet to move again.
Once her stomach was stable, she ran in an uncontrolled, blind sprint. She had no idea how far she’d gone when she rounded a corner and nearly bowled over a man with a walking cane. Already on edge, vision blurred by panic and unshed tears, she overcorrected, whirling into the street and slamming into a car.
The driver honked, and though Cara had nearly been turned into roadkill, she laughed. Sure, it was hysterical laughter, but the world was moving again.
“You all right, missy?” A middle-aged man stepped off the curb and came toward her, eyeing her with concern. Eyeing her as if the only thing wrong with the universe was her.
Not even close. Her smile was as shaky as her voice. “Yes. Thank you.”
He nodded and continued on. Everyone continued on. As if nothing had happened. Her cell phone rang, startling her enough to jump.
It was her therapist. Perfect timing. “Larena. It’s good to hear from you.”
“Sorry I didn’t call you back sooner. I got your message, though, and I can tell you what I think the black dog and cage mean.”
“Dog and cage?” Cara’s brain was still skipping like an old record, and it took a moment to translate Larena’s words. “Oh, right. I asked you about the dream.” Larena might be a therapist, but she’d also become a friend. A totally unconventional one, but it worked for Cara, and Larena was the only one she trusted with all her deepest and darkest.
Well, not all. Larena didn’t know the extent of Cara’s unnatural ability. People—even friends and family—had a tendency to keep you at arm’s length when you were a freak.
“Are you all right? You don’t sound so good.”
Cara dragged her hand through her tangled hair. “I—” just saw a man killed, two knights appeared out of thin air, and time stopped. But other than that, I’m fine! Someone must have slipped acid into her tea at dinner. That was the only explanation. But what could explain all the other stuff that had happened at her house?
Insanity, a chipper voice in her head chimed in. That would explain it.
“It’s nothing a hot bath won’t cure. Okay, so what’s up? Larena?” she prompted, when her friend hesitated.
“You said the dog was growling. That could mean you’ve got some sort of inner turmoil going on. You feel caged and trapped. The fact that it’s a black dog suggests danger.”
Danger. No kidding. Larena’s words drew her sharply back into focus. She’d come here chasing a freaking dream, and had gotten herself into a nightmare.
A rowdy group of twenty-something men exited the pub behind Cara, and she moved aside to avoid being trampled. “What about horses? And knights fighting? Any significance to that?”
“Ah… I’m not sure. I’d have to research it,” Larena said. “Maybe you should make an appointment.”
One of the men bumped her, didn’t acknowledge it with either a “Sorry,” or a “Screw you,” and Cara glared. The jerk… oh… oh, Jesus. She lurched backward, nearly dropping the phone.
Stubby black horns pushed up out of the man’s dark hair, and he had no skin. Only exposed muscle and bone was visible in places his clothing didn’t cover. Cara blinked, and the man appeared normal again, laughing with his buddies and disappearing into another pub.
“Cara? Hey, you there?”
“Yeah,” she croaked. She closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. Time was moving and no one looked like a demon. Life was good. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I’ll call for an appointment next week.”
“Do that. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Cara shoved the phone into her bag and got her bearings. The B&B was only a few blocks away, thank God. Drizzle had begun to fall, her head was pounding, and her nerves were shot. Time for a sleeping pill and twelve hours of shut-eye. Maybe tomorrow all of this would prove to be one big nigh
tmare. In fact…
She clicked the photo icon on her camera to view the pictures. She wasn’t sure if she hoped to see the now-dead man or not. Confirmation that the battle she’d seen had been real, or confirmation that she was crazy? Seriously, which was more preferable?
Holding her breath, she waited for the last photo she’d taken to pop onto the screen, and nearly cried with relief when the picture revealed only a street full of cars, buses, and people. No bleeding man with an arrow sticking out of his chest. No Jeff dressed like a Dark Ages warrior.
She tucked her cell in her jacket pocket, and by the time she’d walked the six blocks to the B&B Cara had convinced herself that nothing she’d seen was real, that she wasn’t loony, and that she was never drinking anything she hadn’t poured with her own hands again. Inside the nineteenth-century home, Cara waved to the sweet fifty-something lady who owned it and mounted the stairs to her room. It was tempting to fall into bed with her clothes on, but she managed to peel out of her jeans and sweater. Wearing nothing but her underwear—she rarely wore a bra—she dug through her suitcase for her pajamas.
Straightening, she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
And screamed.
In the center of her chest, between her breasts where the arrow-pierced man had touched her, was a brand. Welted, bright crimson lines formed a shield and sword… the tip of which lay over her heart.
It had all been real.
“Damn you, brother,” Ares breathed. “Damn you.” Ares widened his stance and raised his sword—broken off at the tip—and braced for another round of who-can-hurt-who-the-most. Fortunately, his armor and weapons had rehardened now that Ares’s agimortus was no longer nearby. For a few tense moments, he’d been sure his sword would shatter under Reseph’s blows, or worse, that his brother would land a lucky stroke that would cut through his weakened armor as if Ares were wearing nothing more protective than a Hanes wife-beater and tighty-whiteys.
Reseph grinned, revealing blood-streaked teeth. “Touchy. When’s the last time you got laid? Just wait until your Seal breaks… demon females will fall at your feet in worship.”
Ares gripped the sword hilt tighter. He’d known that the destruction of a Seal would be catastrophic, but he truly wasn’t prepared for the evil that had been unleashed—especially not in Reseph.
“You can fight this,” Ares said. “Let me take you to Reaver—”
Reseph’s laughter rumbled up from deep in his chest. “The angel can’t help. You know that what’s done is done.” He ran his tongue along the length of his blade, catching a drip of Sestiel’s blood. “Being evil is way more fun than walking the boring-ass line we straddled for five thousand years.”
Ares glanced down at the smashed—and now decapitated—fallen angel on the street. Normally, only another angel could kill an angel, but the Horsemen were exceptions to the rule. Fury tripped through him as Sestiel’s body began to dissolve. There would be no second chances for Sestiel—as an Unfallen, his soul couldn’t return to Heaven, and instead, he’d now suffer in Sheoul-gra, the demon-soul holding tank, for all eternity.
Furious as Ares was at Sestiel’s fate, he kept his voice even, unwilling to give his brother the satisfaction of seeing him riled. “You must be so disappointed that you didn’t break my Seal.”
Reseph’s eyes flashed unholy crimson. “It’s only a matter of time. I’ll find that human whore Sestiel transferred it to, and then you’ll join me on the side of win.” He swung up onto Conquest, his stallion. Battle snapped his teeth, but Conquest danced out of the way of the strike. “Because evil will win, Ares. Good has far too many limitations.”
A portal opened, and in a whoosh of air displacement, Conquest and Pestilence were gone.
Shit.
Ares glanced around the city—York, England. He’d recognize it blindfolded. Bloody battles had been fought here over the centuries, and he’d been drawn to them all.
He inhaled the layers of odor, from the ancient stench of chamberpot sewage and slaughter house waste to the modern scents of auto fumes and Earl Grey tea. Swirling throughout was the faint funk of hellhound that had clung to Sestiel.
Automatically, Ares fingered his Seal. Sestiel had transferred the agimortus before he died, and Ares had no doubt it had been transferred to Cara—she had been the only human able to see what was happening, which was a side-effect of being bonded to a hellhound… but the big clue had been how his armor and weapons had returned to normal strength after she took off. But where had she gone? He wondered if she’d located her hell beast.
And if she truly understood what had happened to her.
He swung around in the direction she’d gone. All around him, the membrane separating Ares’s plane from the human one began to crack as the concentration he needed to maintain the quantamun fragmented. Select beings like angels and the Horsemen used the supernatural plane to move amongst humans at a different frequency, a million times faster than their eyes could see. Once it collapsed, he’d be visible to the humans.
A portable Harrowgate opened, and smoky shadows billowed out, followed by Thanatos. “What happened?”
“Reseph killed Sestiel, but not before the angel transferred the agimortus.”
“That’s good news. Why so glum?”
“Because he transferred it to a human.” A vision of Cara, shot through with one of Pestilence’s arrows, flashed in his head. And that was a best-case scenario. “Our Watchers said the agimortus isn’t meant to be borne by a human. It’ll kill her.”
Thanatos adjusted the weapons harness criss-crossing his plate armor. “What the hell was Sestiel thinking?”
Ares swallowed a curse. He’d been so busy hunting Sestiel that he’d not filled in his brother and sister on the hellhound crap. Quickly, he brought Than up to speed.
Than let out a low whistle. “Hellhounds don’t bond with humans. In all our time, I’ve never heard of one.”
“Tell the hellhound that,” Ares said sourly. “You got anything helpful, because I could use some good news.” He supposed it was good that Pestilence couldn’t sense Cara, but then, neither could Ares.
Styx tossed his head, and Than reached down to pat the stallion’s neck until he settled. “I did squeeze some information out of another of Reseph’s minions. He hasn’t located Deliverance, but he’s got demons digging up ancient burial grounds all over the world, and in a lot of places we’ve already been over while seeking Limos’s agimortus.”
Fan-fucking-tastic. It had taken centuries to even figure out what Limos’s Seal-breaker was. They’d finally determined that somewhere in the world was a small cup or bowl that, if drunk from, would break her Seal. They’d never found it.
Thanatos was the lucky one—his virginity was the Seal. Though if that could be called lucky… Ares shuddered.
“We’re too fractured,” Ares said. “We don’t have the manpower to search for Limos’s agimortus, locate Deliverance, and protect Cara. We’ve got to focus.”
“Cara then?”
He nodded. Even though her very presence would weaken him, he had to find her and keep her close. “She’s the priority, but I have a way to locate her. After that, we need to do everything within our power to protect her.” Ares exhaled on a long breath that was visible in the icy air. “I know myself too well, Than. If she’s killed and I go evil, nothing on this earth can stop me from wiping out every last remnant of the human race.”
Eight
Cara didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. In a daze, she’d called down to the B&B owner for an extra blanket, showered, tried to scrub the weird mark off her chest, and when that didn’t work, she’d put on pajamas and tried to call Larena again, but it figured that she was unreachable.
She sat on the creaky bed in her rented room and stared at the TV. BBC was covering rivers in Africa that were running red with poisonous algae, but Cara barely heard any of it. She was too numb, her mind disconnected from her ears. The last time she’d felt like this was after the bre
akin.
After she’d killed the man.
The official coroner’s report had cited heart attack, but she knew the truth. She’d seen a heart attack firsthand, when her father had collapsed in front of her.
God, she missed him. He’d loved her even if he’d been wary of her ability. All she’d have had to do was call, and he’d have been on the next plane out of the States.
His death, just one month before she’d moved to South Carolina, had crushed her. She’d only started to get her life back together when, four months after that, the men had broken in.
And now this. She’d finally lost her hold on reality.
Her cell phone rang, and she grabbed it off the nightstand. “Larena?”
“No.”
The deep, resonant voice echoed through her ears and brought an instant surge of both relief and anxiety. “Jeff?” she whispered.
“Where are you? I need to see you.”
See her? “This is going to sound crazy, but I saw you… or thought I saw you. Earlier. On a horse—”
“Cara, listen to me.” His voice was no-nonsense, sharp, commanding, and she couldn’t have put down the phone if she wanted to. “You’re in danger, and I have to find you. Your message said you were in England. Where?”
She shouldn’t say anything. She knew it. But at this point, she was desperate, with no one to turn to, and he was the only link she had to whatever was going on with the dog. “I’m at a B&B in York.” She fumbled through the bedside drawer for the brochure and gave him the address.
“Thanks.” He hung up before she could ask any more questions.
Now what? Even if he caught a plane right now, it would be late tomorrow afternoon before he could get to York. And did she truly expect any answers from him?
A knock on the door had her leaping off the bed. Calm down, just breathe. It’s just the extra blanket.
