Immortal Rider

The very idea made her ill, but again, this wasn’t about her. She’d never suffered, especially not at the hands of her own father. Hell, she’d never even met her father.

For a moment she wondered if Arik’s father was alive, and then realized that Shade would never have allowed the man to live, and yet another stirring of jealousy went through her at what Runa had that Limos never would.

Shaking off the useless self-pity, she entered Arik’s room again. He was still out cold, sprawled on the bed as if he were sleeping off a wild bender. Right now, it didn’t seem as if he’d ever come out of the hell that he was living with inside his skull.

She sank down on the bed beside him and offered what little comfort she could, smoothing his shirt and brushing his hair off his forehead. She’d done the same for her brothers when they’d been injured in battle, hoping they’d find peace in her touch. Sure, they regenerated quickly, but if the injuries were bad enough, they suffered in misery for hours, even days while they waited.

This sucked. She felt so helpless. No matter what she did, things continued to get worse for Arik. Though… wait… maybe she could help. If he never remembered hurting Runa…

Yes. Smiling, because she could finally do something for him, she thumbed open his eyelids and stared into his glassy eyes. Very carefully, she reached into Arik’s mind with hers and snipped the pesky memory of striking his sister away. Unlike Ares, she couldn’t restore the missing memory, but she wouldn’t need to.

Runa’s visit was something he was better off never remembering.

Eleven

Kynan sat in the conference room at The Aegis’s Berlin headquarters, his head spinning. His mind was still trying to wrap itself around the information revealed in one of the three scrolls he’d brought to his fellow Elders with the other treasures in the vault Limos had taken him to.

The little artifacts had, so far, turned up nothing, but one of their historians was still researching their origins and could yet discover something useful. Similarly, two of the scrolls had been accounts of battles with demons—interesting, but ultimately, not great archaeological finds.

But the one scroll… Jesus. If what it said was true, it could alter the course of human history.

“So.” Valeriu, an elder who was distantly related to Kynan by marriage, lifted his glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. They’d been studying the scroll nonstop, searching for related texts in their libraries, trying to hash out some of the most cryptic phrases. “We think this could be the key to stopping the Apocalypse. But do we want to risk an Aegi’s life on a hunch?”

Malik, who had fought demons for thirty years throughout the Middle East before being promoted to the Sigil, shook his head. “I do not like it. We have asked Guardians to do things we knew might end in their deaths, and they understand that danger comes with the territory. But this…”

Lance, a Canadian who lost his fashion sense somewhere in the 80s, spun a coffee stir stick on the table. “The Guardian would be a volunteer. She’ll know there’s no guarantee of success.”

Yeah, and that was assuming they’d get a volunteer for this secret plan. What they were going to reveal to the Guardian waiting outside the room was going to knock her on her ass.

Fuck. Ky didn’t like any of this. Life had been much less complicated when he was nothing but a soldier on the Aegis’s front lines. He’d been in charge of a large cell of Guardians, but mainly, he fought demons. Kill or be killed. Simple shit.

Now he was manipulating fate and lives, and none of it sat well with him.

Valeriu leaned back in his chair and stared at the painting depicting a battle between angels and demons. “We have to have faith that this will work.”

“Faith?” Decker, who was usually easygoing, sat in his chair, stiff as a board, his hand skimming back and forth over his blond high-and-tight. “Faith is for people who want to believe in something they can’t prove. I could have faith that I’m invisible, but that wouldn’t make it true.” He shook his head. “You people are making me nervous. You’re dealing with magic and prophecy and shit none of us understand.”

“And you think the military could do any better?” Malik asked.

“I didn’t say that.” Decker’s Southern accent grew more pronounced as he grew more agitated. “But you have no safeguards in place. Until you—we—do, you shouldn’t put a plan in motion.”

Decker had a point. The military’s paranormal unit dealt in the same things The Aegis did, but because it was the military, the R-XR had strict procedures to follow, a chain of command that didn’t allow for deviation, a firm distrust of magic, and safeguards on top of safeguards. The Aegis relied on what the military feared—magic—and had a tendency to act more spontaneously.

Which could be a good thing… or could be very, very bad.

Right now, the R-XR was preaching caution in every move, insisting that now was not the time to be rash. The Aegis took the opposite tack—with Armageddon on the horizon, there was no time for slow and careful.

“All I’m saying,” Decker said, “is that maybe we should concentrate on finding out what Thanatos’s Seal is instead of this cockamamie backup plan.”

“He won’t tell us.” Lance shook his head. “So unless you can translate his weird prophecy, we don’t have a lot to go on.”

Ky ran his fingers over the page in the Daemonica, the demon bible, that outlined the four prophecies for the Horsemen—the four prophecies that would turn them to evil. The Aegis now understood three of the four. Thanatos’s was the wildcard, and all the Horseman would say was that his Seal was in no danger of breaking.

Behold! Innocence is Death’s curse, his hunger his burden, a blade his Deliverance. The Doom Star cometh if the cry fails.

What. The. Hell.

“We don’t have a choice,” Val said. “It’s now or never. Humans are dying by the hundreds of thousands. The R-XR itself has calculated that if Pestilence continues the way he has, in a year, half the world’s population will be dead. Our plan is a Hail Mary move for sure, but it’s all we have.”

“For the record,” Decker said, “I don’t support it.”

For the record, neither did Kynan. But Reaver was MIA and not available for advice, and The Aegis was going to move ahead on this, with or without Kynan’s approval. Ky might as well be there to make sure no one got hurt.

Lance snorted. “Funny hearing a military guy being so squeamish.”

The light blue in Decker’s eyes turned icy, and before tempers went out of control, Val cleared his throat imperiously. “Bring in Regan.”

Kynan refilled his coffee mug while the only female Elder was called into the meeting. She entered, her dark braid hanging over her shoulder, the ends frayed, and he knew she’d been toying with it while she waited outside the conference room. She took a seat, her model good-looks in no way taking away from her natural warrior aura. She was a fighter through and through, literally born into The Aegis.

“Okay,” she said, in her smoky voice. “What is this about?”

Malik cast her a grim look. “First, you must keep this secret, even from the other Elders.”

Regan frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“What we’re about to tell you can’t get out,” Val said. “Of course we trust all our Elders, but the fewer people who know our plans, the less chance of being discovered. Once the first part of the plan has been carried out, we’ll let the other Elders in on what’s going on.”

Lance gestured at the scroll with his coffee stir stick. “This document was discovered in an ancient Aegis vault. We believe that it may hold the key to stopping Pestilence.”

“And what do I have to do with any of this?” Regan asked.

E snt aveveryone exchanged glances. Just when Kynan thought no one was going to speak, Malik chimed in, his voice as grave as the look he was giving her. “Kynan and Arik have been our middlemen for dealing with the Horsemen. But, obviously, Arik can no longer function in that capacity.”

“So you want me to play Horsemen jockey.”

Val choked on his coffee, and Kynan came close to doing the same on his own tongue. “That,” Val wheezed, “is incredibly accurate.”

Regan huffed. “Spit it out, people. What are you saying?”

“We need you to be more than just a middleman. We’ll arrange for you to stay with one of them.”

“Who?”

“Thanatos,” Kynan said.

Lance jumped in before Ky could soften the coming blow. “And we want you to seduce him.”

Regan sucked in a harsh breath, and her normally bronze skin turned pale. “You… what?”

“You need to get him into bed.”

She shoved to her feet. “What the hell is that scroll? Some sort of Aegis romance novel? Underworld erotica? Screw you all.”

“I told you she wouldn’t do it,” Lance said. “She hates men.”

“Just because I shot you down doesn’t mean I hate men, you a**hole.”

Lance’s face turned red. “You turn down everyone.” He glanced around the table. “Have any of you ever seen her with a guy?”

No, Kynan hadn’t, but he didn’t give a shit about her love life or lack of it. “Calm down, both of you.”

“I just don’t understand why it’s so important that I climb into bed with… with… a Horseman.” She practically shuddered out the last word.

“Because,” Val said quietly, “that’s the only way you’ll get pregnant with his child.”

Pregnant. Her colleagues wanted her to get pregnant with Death’s kid.

Regan’s first instinct was to start yelling. Or to maybe storm out of the room. But twenty-five years in The Aegis had given her more discipline than that, and she tamped down her angry instincts the way she’d been taught since the day she’d come to the demon-hunting organization as a newborn infant still covered in her mother’s birth blood.