Lethal Rider

Eight

“Regan!”

Thanatos watched helplessly as she went down and lay motionless. He’d released his souls to destroy the frost demons, but he’d wanted to kill the beasts himself. Instead, he was engaged in battle with Reseph, who had grown much more powerful in the last eight months.

Reseph—Thanatos still had a hard time thinking of him as Pestilence—sat atop Conquest, his ice-blue eyes gleaming with bloodlust. Both horses were bleeding, gashed from teeth and hooves, and Than had taken a glancing blow from his brother’s sword across his temple, but Reseph remained uninjured.

“Your Aegi whore doesn’t look so good,” Pestilence said. “Pregnant chicks are so fragile. But you know they put out.”

Thanatos didn’t dare go to her aid. Not while Pestilence was here. “What do you want?”

“I was hoping to rail your woman and then kill your son, but you went and fucked that all up.”

The question of whether or not Pestilence had known about Regan’s pregnancy was now answered. “How long have you known?”

“That the whore was knocked up? For a lot longer than you.” Pestilence winced. “Ouch. That must hurt, huh?”

Fucker. “If you so much as touch either of them, there will be no saving you from me. Now get off my island.”

Pestilence grinned. “You got it, bro.” He threw open a gate. “Later.”

That had been too easy. Pestilence was definitely up to something, but right now, Than’s priority was Regan, and the second Conquest carried his brother through the gate, Than was off his stallion and at Regan’s side.

Gripping her shoulder, he shook her gently. “Regan. Hey, can you hear me?” She didn’t stir, and fear clogged his throat. Her normally tan skin was white and ice-cold, her lips blue. The frost demons hadn’t ripped into her with their claws or teeth, but their breath could freeze a living thing into a solid block of ice in seconds.

“Styx. To me.” The stallion poofed into smoke and settled on his forearm as he scooped Regan into his arms and opened a Harrowgate. He stepped out inside Underworld General’s emergency department. Which was in chaos.

The hospital was brimming with injured demons, so many that nearly every inch of space was taken up by bodies. Outside the sliding glass doors that led to the underground parking lot, more patients waited to get in. Jesus … there had to be two hundred demons in the parking lot, some lying in pools of blood. Medical staff were running around wildly, overwhelmed and clearly exhausted.

These people would not be able to help, and Regan didn’t have time to wait. Cursing, he turned back to the gate inside the emergency department, but froze when the ambulance bay doors slid open and a tall, black-haired vampire strode inside. His face was familiar, but that wasn’t what tripped Thanatos like a taut wire.

The vampire was a daywalker. Damn. How? Thanatos had spent countless centuries searching the world for them, and although he knew a handful of them existed in the wild, blending in with the nightwalkers, they generally laid low, not wanting Thanatos to get wind of their existence.

No, Than was, to many daywalkers, their personal nightmare.

This one walked into the hospital with an arrogant gait, seemingly not worried that Thanatos would find him. And when the daywalker halted mid-stride and met Than’s gaze, there was no fear there. Curiosity, but no fear. The other male broke eye contact first, and made a beeline for a female in scrubs.

Later. Than would have to solve the mystery later. He stepped into the Harrowgate and gated himself back to his keep. Regan flopped like dead weight in his arms as he ran inside and shouted for his vamps. Artur was there in a heartbeat.

“Warm some blankets and tea, and start a fire in my bedroom. Hurry!”

While his servants scrambled to obey, he whisked Regan to his room. Gently, he placed her on the bed and then stripped her of her damp clothing. He angled his body to prevent the vampires starting the fire from seeing her as he removed her bra and left her only in her underwear. He wasted no time in tugging up the blankets and then stripping himself and climbing into bed with her.

He eased behind her, his chest plastered to her ice-cold back. It was like snuggling up to a slab of beef in a meat locker. Viktor entered with two lightly warmed blankets, which Than draped over her bare skin before resettling the covers over her.

“Bring more warm blankets in fifteen minutes,” Than said. “And contact Ares or Limos to get a doctor from Underworld General here.”

Viktor nodded and slipped from the room, leaving him alone with Regan.

He wrapped his arms around her, letting one hand drift up to her throat so he could monitor her pulse, which was too sluggish. Her breaths were too shallow. Worry washed over him like a tsunami, first crashing in one big swell, then rippling through him and piling more fear on top of the first wave.

“Dammit, woman,” he muttered. “You just had to run off like that.”

Briskly, he rubbed her shoulders, working his way down her arms. His fingers brushed her belly, and his breath hitched.

Somehow, it seemed like a violation to touch her there, which was ridiculous, given that he’d touched her everywhere else, and besides, the baby inside was his. Was the child okay? Had the cold and the fall affected it even worse than they had affected Regan?

Shoving aside the sense that he would be doing something wrong by touching her, he lay his hand on the taut skin just below her navel. For a long moment, all he felt was cold. Then, movement. Something rolled against his palm—a foot, maybe.

Fierce pride bubbled up inside him. Obviously, Regan was pregnant, but it truly hadn’t sunk in until now. He was going to be a father. He was going to have a son.

Terror tangled with the pride and joy. What if he sucked as a father? What if he couldn’t protect his child? He’d been there the day Ares had lost his sons, and he could still remember Ares’s screams, could remember how long it had taken for him to recover.

And if they didn’t neutralize Pestilence, he’d forever be a danger to Than’s son. Regan was right about that, even if he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it at the time.

He tugged Regan closer so he could wrap his arm around her and his son, shocked by the intensity of what he already felt for the child. He’d always wanted kids, had wanted to pass on the kind of love his parents—the humans who’d raised him—had showered him with. The kind of love he hadn’t gotten from his demon mother or the angel who had sired him.

If he could create and raise a child who was decent, who didn’t cause pain and suffering the way Thanatos had, then maybe some of his life would make sense. Would mean something. And maybe, just maybe, a child would give him something to fight for. He’d grown so numb to the human world around him, but this baby was already a bright spot in his foggy gray world.

What color eyes would he have? Would his hair be fine and silky like Regan’s, or thick like Than’s? Would he have Regan’s rounded cheeks, or his high, sharp cheekbones? Not that any of it mattered. The child would be perfect regardless of who he took after.

There was a tap at the door, and Viktor entered with two more warm blankets, which Than used to replace the others. Regan’s skin was starting to feel less icy, but she still wasn’t stirring.

“Come on, Regan,” he said into her hair. “Show me some of that fire inside you. Show me what you’re made of. I won’t let you die. No one is allowed to kill you but me.” He meant that last as a joke, but it wasn’t funny, was it? He’d been prepared to kill her a few hours ago, and if he’d succeeded, if he hadn’t come out of his death-fury …

Shit. He could have made the biggest mistake of his life.

It was reminder that he needed to work harder at keeping his temper in check. Because he would prove to Ares that he wasn’t a danger to his own child. He would never be a danger to those close to him.

The scorpion on his neck stung him, calling him out. You killed the man who raised you as his son. You’ve murdered friends. You slaughtered a servant today when jacking off didn’t relieve your urge to kill. You kill everyone.

You. Are. Death.

“Have you found any suitable sites for a new headquarters?” Kynan spoke to Valeriu via a teleconferencing app on his iPhone.

Now that their location had been compromised, moving as quickly as possible had become their top priority. The non-evil Horsemen might be allies—although that designation was a little questionable in Thanatos’s case—but if their Seals broke, they could wreak some catastrophic havoc with their knowledge of the current Berlin headquarters’ location.

“I’m looking at one in Scotland now. It’s a castle with connections to the Templars, and it features an extensive network of underground passages. I think it might be our best bet. How are you guys doing there?”

Kynan glanced at Chad, Malik, Zachary, and Ian, who were listening in on the conversation from where they were sitting around the conference table. “Decker just landed in DC to meet up with Arik for some sort of military project. Lance and Omar are on a flight back here from Australia. Takumi and Juan… I don’t know where they are. They’re supposed to be coordinating a strike against Pestilence’s demons in the Philippines, but I haven’t heard from them.” The Aegis message symbol was flashing on his phone though, so he might have word from them when he was done with this conference.

“Any news about Regan?”

Ky blew out a breath. “I haven’t heard from her. Ares texted me on his way to a battle somewhere. He found them at Thanatos’s place. Regan’s fine, but I’ll head there as soon as I can. See if I can talk him into letting me bring her back.”

“What about your in-laws? Anything from them?”

Ky nodded. “The war between the born wargs and the turned ones has escalated. Their Council has dissolved, and—”

“And we care about werewolf fallouts… why?” Ian interrupted.

“Because,” Val replied, “their Council is as old as we are. If they can break, anyone can.”

Ian rolled his eyes. “We’re not animals. We can govern ourselves.”

“It’s not just about that,” Kynan said. “We care because the born wargs have aligned themselves with Pestilence. They’re looking to start the Apocalypse. My brother-in-law, Con, managed to bring the turned wargs together and get them on our side.”

“So it starts,” Chad mused. “The underworld is organizing and starting to take sides.”

Kynan braced his elbows on the conference table. “It’s only a matter of time before those who can walk hidden in the human world start a war against humans.”

“It’s not a matter of time,” Val said. “In the last hour, I’ve gotten dozens of reports of organized forces all over the world attacking embassies, police stations, military installations.”

“They’re going to start an Apocalypse without the damned Horsemen.” This was exactly what they’d been afraid of. The true, Biblical or Daemonica Apocalypse wouldn’t start, but the technicalities hardly mattered. If they saw decades or even hundreds of years of war between humans and demons, it would feel apocalyptic enough. Kynan stood. “We need to contact all Aegis cells and start emergency recruiting.”

He thumbed the Aegis symbol flashing on his phone’s screen, and when he brought the cell up to his ear, Regan’s whispered voice, saying she was heading to the Harrowgate outside Than’s keep, sent his pulse into critical overdrive. Shit. The message was old—A bloodcurdling scream from outside the conference room cut into his thoughts, and half a second later, it was joined by more screams, shouts, and gunfire.

“What the fuck?” Chad leaped out of his chair and threw open the door.

The next few seconds were a blur of blood and gore, as Chad rocked backward and hit the floor, an arrow piercing his eye and blowing out the back of his skull. Pestilence stalked inside, his armor splattered with blood and bits of flesh and hair, and when Ian swung at him, the Horseman swatted him aside as if he was a fly.

Outside the room, the sounds of battle escalated. Kynan drew his stang and went after Pestilence, but the big male ducked out of the room and was gone.

“Ian! Zach!” Ky helped Ian to his feet. “We’ve got to protect the artifact chamber.” The tens of thousands of items The Aegis stored there—some historical or religious, some imbued with magical or demonic powers—could become devastating weapons in the hands of someone like Pestilence.

The three of them sped down the hallway, their path impeded by demons and fighting Guardians.

“They released the prisoners.” Kathy, Regent for one of the Frankfurt cells, dropped a spindly Croucher demon with a roundhouse kick to the throat before stabbing it in one of its three eyes with the silver end of her stang.

That explained all the pissed-off demons, many of whom they’d re-captured after they’d escaped containment with the vampires who attacked Regan.

A Cruentus demon, an ugly motherfucker that lived to kill, rounded the corner ahead and came at them at a lumbering run. Ky and Ian met it, both of them slicing deep into its skeletal chest. Its claws struck out, raking Ian across the abdomen. Blood welled, but the cuts were shallow, and only pissed off Ian more.

“Kynan!” The shout came from behind, and he whirled just in time to see Pestilence bury his fist in Zach’s gut and brutally rip out a bloody mass of organs.

Smiling, Pestilence left the dying Elder and strode toward Ky and Ian. Kathy, who had dispatched the Croucher, did her best to become a part of the wall, but as Pestilence walked by, he casually slammed his palm into her throat, killing her instantly.

He hadn’t even looked in her direction.

“Run,” Ky snapped, giving Ian a shove. “I’ll stall him. He can’t hurt me.”

“He can’t,” came a deep, dark voice, “but I can.”

Kynan didn’t need to turn to know that a fallen angel was standing behind him. Didn’t need to turn to know that while he planned to fight until he couldn’t fight anymore, the angel was going to win.