The sound he made, one of pain, fury, and hatred, blasted her ears with such force that her eardrums burst. Pain exploded in her head, and a chorus of yelps and shouts said it was torture on her brothers and the hellhound, too. The ground rumbled, and Lucifer morphed into a dinosaur-sized monster, a black, scaly thing with grotesquely misshapen limbs and exaggerated teeth and ge**tals. It raked the hound with its claws, ripping gaping wounds the length of Gore’s body.

Before she could react, Ares and Battle rammed her through his gate.

Limos and Bones came out in Ares’s courtyard. And they weren’t alone. Bones spun as Sartael burst out of her Harrowgate. He leaped for her, and though Bones caught him in the ankle with his teeth, the fallen angel managed to knock her out of the saddle. They hit the ground and rolled, throwing punches and slashing with weapons.

His hand came around her throat, and he slammed her head hard into a rock. Bones screamed in fury, and his hooves filled her vision. Wet, cracking noises became one with Sartael’s shriek of pain as Bones’s feet went right through his back and out his chest, pinning him in the sand.

Limos scrambled out from under him, grateful that the hell stallion’s hooves had missed her. As her burst eardrums knit back together, she crouched next to the fallen angel.

“Following me was stupid, Sarty.” She patted his bald head. “Because now that I have you, I’m going to make you tell me where Arik is, and then you’re going to help me find my agimortus.”

He laughed… well, sort of coughed, since his mouth was full of blood. “I’m going to take you to your husband. And I’m going to strip your human’s skin off his body while he watches the Dark Lord f**k you until you tear in half.”

“You are disgusting.” She looked up at Bones. “Make him hurt a little.”

Bones bared his razor-sharp teeth and took a bite out of the angel’s shoulder. Flesh ripped away with a curious zipping noise. Sartael screamed in agony.

“Now, you piece of shit,” she purred. “Agree to help me, or next time Bones goes for something more tender. He’s always loved Rocky Mountain Oysters. I guess we’ll call them angel oysters, yes?”

“I’m going to see you fry,” he ground out. “I’m going to tell your brothers how you stood before the Dark Lord and begged him to take you as his bride. How you promised to bring your brothers to him as wedding gifts. How you stood motionless, your thighs dripping with your lust, ah yto s the chastity belt was placed around your waist.”

Her throat went as dry as the sand under her feet. “You weren’t there. You don’t know.” Except his details were spot on.

“I was the hellrat chained to Lucifer’s wrist during the ceremony. I spent almost five thousand years as a rodent—punishment for letting another angel f**k your mother before I could. I was supposed to be your father, you whore. I was supposed to be the princess’s father.” He smiled grimly. “Now I will be the princess’s bedmate when her husband is through with her.”

Cara called out, and Limos looked up to see her running toward them. In the same instant, flashes of light penetrated the evening shadows as two Harrowgates opened up several feet in front of her. Limos’s past was closing in on her, choking her, coming at her like a plane in a spiral death dive.

Crying out, she brought her sword down across Sartael’s throat, silencing him, and his ugly truths, forever.

Than stepped through one gate, dragging Gore with him. The hellhound could barely stand, was gushing blood like a waterfall. Ares exited through his own gate, leading a limping Battle.

Cara ran straight to the animals, and even as they collapsed onto the ground, she laid one hand on each. From all around, dozens of hellhounds moved in, silent as shadows, and fell upon the dead angel. Quickly, before Bones started a fight, Limos called him to her, and he dissolved into smoke before winding around her arm.

Cara’s healing gift slammed into the animals, and in minutes, their wounds had sealed.

“What the hell happened back there?” Than barked at Limos. “And why did you kill Sartael? He was our best shot at finding your agimortus!”

“I know.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie. “He threatened Arik. I freaked.” Another truth.

“You freaked?” Thanatos’s words dripped with skepticism. “You never freak. Not like that.”

Ares helped Battle to his feet as Cara finished with the hound. “And why does Lucifer think you participated in your betrothal willingly?”

“Because he’s an idiot.” Yet another truth. Before her brothers could question her further, she changed the subject. “We’ve got to get to Arik. Now. Lucifer wouldn’t lie about knowing where he is.”

Ares fed Battle a sugar cube. “Yeah, well, we don’t know where he is.”

“I’ll bet Runa does,” she said, throwing a gate. “And I’m going to make sure she knows exactly what’s going on with her brother.”

Because if there was one thing Limos knew something about, it was how far one sibling would go to protect another.

Or betray one.

Seventeen

In hindsight, Arik figured he should have had Kynan take him to his apartment. Instead, he’d asked Ky to take him to R-XR headquarters, which had been a colossal mistake. They’d immediately rushed him to medical for a full exam and every kind of test known to both human and demon science. Then he’d been isolated for questioning and another battery of tests, this time to assess his mental health.

He should have known he’d be held prisoner—he’d helped draw up the SOPs for any military member who had been captured and held by demons.

The questions were endless, repetitive and, sometimes, ludicrous. Are you sure you didn’t give up any sensitive information? Yes. Did any demon possess you? No. Were you impregnated? Jesus, he hoped not. Did you grow attached to any demon? No.

As long as Limos didn’t count, damn her.

When the interrogators moved past his time in Sheoul and started on his time with Limos, Arik became a lot more selective in what he told them. No way in hell was he going to share how he’d been in a constant state of lust around her, or how he’d been so afraid to eat food that he’d only eaten when he thought she was bringing him dog food. Or how he still refused to say her name.

Or how she’d f**ked with his memory.

He also left out the part where Pestilence drank him like a milkshake, forced Arik to drink him in return, and gave him the curious side-effect of being able to sense spies and kill them with a touch.

The R-XR would have him splayed open on a dissection table for that one.

The upside to all the questioning and tests was that it kept his mind off what he’d done to Runa. Shade’s words kept clanging in his head, a brutal thump against the inside of his skull that he deserved. He’d sworn to protect Runa. He’d sworn to never become the monster their father had been. And what had he done? Become the monster who used to haunt her dreams until Shade took them all away. Now Arik wondered if he’d reversed all Shade’s progress.

It didn’t matter that he’d attacked Runa while he was out of his mind. Their father had often delivered his most brutal beatings while out of his ever-loving mind, three sheets to the wind. It wasn’t an excuse, and Arik wasn’t going to make excuses for himself, either.

Man, he needed a vacation, but that particular line of thinking always took him to a tropical beach that looked suspiciously like Hawaii, complete with a certain raven-haired Horseman. Not that he was taking a trip anytime soon; he’d been released from the R-XR medical facility and put into one of the Fort McNair dorms, and though he was free to come and go within the facilities, he still wasn’t cleared to leave the base.

Which sucked. He was a soldier, and the human race was at war. He needed to do something. Needed to fight for his team, which was Team Human, not Team Horsemen. Sure, they were on the same side, but definitely not on the same team.

Except ze=Surit had felt great to fight next to Limos against the khnives, hadn’t it. She’d had his back, and their moves had been in sync in a way he hadn’t experienced with anyone but Decker.

He caught himself rubbing his chest, as if trying to soothe his aching heart, and what the hell? Had demon Alcatraz turned him into a lovesick puppy? Annoying.

A pounding on his dorm door jolted him out of his pathetic musings, and then Ky and Decker strode in before he even had a chance to tell them to come in. He forgave them because he really needed to get his mind off Runa and Limos. And because they brought beer.

Decker pulled a bottle of Bud out of the six-pack and tossed it to Arik. “You can take the redneck out of the country…” Arik said.

“… but you can’t take the Bud away from the redneck,” Kynan finished, and Decker shot them both the bird.

“The way I see it,” Decker drawled, “you can drink warm water from the tap, or you can drink an ice cold Budweiser.” He held up the six-pack, minus one, dangled it in front of Kynan.

“Yeah, yeah. Give me the damned beer. But don’t think I’ll spontaneously start watching NASCAR or something.”

“I’m telling ya, you’d love the short-track racing,” Decker muttered, tossing him a beer.

“Only if the drivers are demons,” Kynan said.

Decker shrugged. “There’s been speculation about the Busch brothers. They ain’t right. And Jimmy Johnson. He wins too much for it to be natural.”

Rolling his eyes, Kynan took a seat in one of two chairs, and Arik took the other. Like old times, Decker threw himself on the bed and sprawled out like he lived there. Their friendship had been an easy one… sure, there had been moments of tension, but didn’t every relationship have them? It hadn’t even occurred to Arik that he’d need more in the way of relationships, not when he had good friends and a tight military community around him.

So yeah, everything felt the same. Natural. And yet… there was the sense that something was missing.