Lethal Rider

“Wrong,” Thanatos snarled. “You die.” He swept his scythe in an arc like a golf club, shearing off the top half of the vampire’s skull. Blood and brains splattered on the wall, and suddenly, the demons all melted away.

He turned to Regan to assure himself that she was okay, but the bewildered expression on her face said that everything was not okay.

“The vampire’s tattoo,” Regan whispered, as she stared first at her hand and then at Thanatos. Oh, shit, she’d touched Markus’s tattoo…“The scroll. Oh, my God.”

Don’t say it, Regan. Do not say it.

“You.” Regan looked at Than as if he’d grown a new head. “Bludrexe. Sheoulic for Blood King. Oh, my God, it’s you.” She stumbled backward, catching herself on a blackened pillar. “That’s why the author of those scrolls is so angry at you. A fallen angel didn’t father the vampire race. You did.”

Eighteen

Regan was still reeling from what she’d seen and felt in the vampire’s tattoo. Everything suddenly made so much sense. Now she knew why the daywalkers could touch her—they were Thanatos’s creations.

They were his blood. In a way, they were his children.

He stood over the mosaic of himself, crimson rivulets dripping down his face, breaths sawing in and out as if he’d run a marathon. “Regan…”

Ares sheathed his blade and moved close. “What’s going on, Than?”

“This isn’t something I can discuss.” Thanatos’s voice was a low croak. “And what you’ve already heard can go no further than these walls.”

“Thanatos.” Regan put her hands over her belly to stop the trembling. “These vampires are trying to kill me and our son. I think it’s time we found out what’s going on.”

For a long time, Than just stood there, his head hanging loosely from his broad shoulders. Finally, he sank against a pillar and stared up at the tiled ceiling. “After we were cursed…”

“We all went nuts,” Ares said. “You’ve never spoken of what you did.”

“That’s because I couldn’t. You asked me about my fangs… I got them with the curse.” He blew out a long breath. “I needed blood. I don’t remember much about those first few years, except that I was hungry. I went on a rampage, taking blood from humans… I ravaged entire villages. What I didn’t know is that those I drained past recoverable blood loss but not to immediate death suffered with fever for days before dying … and then they rose as vampires. Daywalkers.”

“His hunger is his burden,” Regan murmured. “From your prophecy. We always wondered what that meant.”

Than nodded. “Now you know.”

“Damn,” Limos breathed. “I always assumed it was your hunger for knowledge. You’re always scouring the globe for books and crap.” She flicked a glance at the mosaic of Than on the floor. “So did you create all daywalkers, or can they reproduce?”

“That’s the thing,” Than said. “Only I can create daywalkers. But the daywalkers… they created the nightwalkers.”

“Holy f**k,” Wraith blurted, and Regan nearly jumped. She’d forgotten he was there. Probably because he was lurking in the shadows. “So you’re kind of my … grandfather.”

Thanatos glared.

Wraith held up his hands. “Chill, Gramps. I don’t want to sit on your knee or anything.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Limos asked.

“He couldn’t,” Ares said. “With our Seals broken, we could have used that information to turn the vampires against him, or to hurt him through them … a lot of possibilities.”

Thanatos nodded. “Harvester warned me to keep it a secret from everyone, including my siblings. Only angels and fallen angels are allowed to create new species. Unauthorized species would be destroyed.”

“So you made up a legend about how vampires were made,” Wraith mused. “And it wasn’t entirely a lie, because you’re part angel.”

“How’d you keep the daywalkers quiet?” Ares asked.

Regan stared at the dead daywalker, whose body was still intact since he was on Sheoulic soil, and realization dawned. “The tats,” she said. “They’re wards of a sort, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.” Than wiped blood from his brow, leaving behind smooth, healed skin. “I had them all marked with a silence ward so none of them could speak of their origins. The problem is that there are daywalkers in the wild. Wildings, we call them. I’ve tried to gather them all, but there are hidden clans. Some don’t want to have to make the choice of serving me or being destroyed.”

Wraith snorted. “Imagine that.”

“It’s a high price,” Than admitted, “but the alternative is that the entire vampire species could be eradicated if the truth of their origins gets out, and that includes hybrids like dhampires and half-breeds like you.”

“I’m not exactly a half-breed.” Wraith said. “More of a freak of nature. But my mate is fangy, so my lips are sealed.”

“It might not even matter now.” Than’s voice was dour. “The wildings seem to be rebelling and taking my staff with them. Once the Apocalypse breaks, all old rules go out the window, which is probably what they’re counting on.”

Limos kicked the vamp’s body. “I wonder if Pestilence has something to do with the rebellion.”

“He seems to have his fingers in all the pies,” Than said.

Ares looked down at the scene depicting Thanatos with the vampires. “I’m surprised Harvester has kept your secret. It’s not like her to be nice.”

“No doubt there’s a reason,” Limos said, her voice dripping with acid. “So what about your nightwalker servants? Do they know your secret?”

Thanatos’s eyes closed, and Regan slipped her hand into his. This must be hard for him, but she could only imagine that there was also a measure of relief that he could finally share his burden with his siblings. When Thanatos opened his eyes again, he gave her a grateful look.

“They know. They were all created by daywalkers and somehow found out, either because they were bitten during the day or they learned the truth from a wilding. They’re tattooed with the same nondisclosure spells.”

Regan returned to the scrolls and very carefully unrolled one. Although she couldn’t read this particular Sheoulic language, she could feel the emotions rising out of the ink. These were definitely related to the texts that had been deciphered at Aegis Headquarters.

“Can anyone read these?”

Ares arranged the scrolls in the order they belonged. “Most of this is about the author’s vampire life after his turning. Boring shit. Guy was so emo. Christ, Than, you couldn’t have turned someone less whiny?”

Thanatos flipped his brother the bird.

Ares fingered the last scroll. “But this one … This one speaks of our father. The angel’s name was Yenrieth, who the other, darker angel called a Lamb.”

Regan frowned. “But in Biblical writings, isn’t the Lamb thought to be Jesus?”

Ares tapped his fingers. “I think the female angel was using it as an insult, but then she talks about …” Ares hissed and stepped back so fast she thought the scroll had burned him.

Limos and Than both moved forward. “What is it?”

“I read that wrong,” Ares said. “I must have.”

“Why?” Thanatos asked. “What’s it say?”

“The angels fought. They fought about Yenrieth’s children and their Seals. And how Yenrieth… shit.”

“Shit, what?” Thanatos came up behind Regan and gently tucked her next to him, as if preparing to brace her for what was coming. Or maybe to brace himself.

“How Yenrieth needed to quit running and accept his fate.”

“And what, exactly, is his fate?” Limos asked, her violet eyes narrowed into slits.

Ares turned to them. “In the Book of Revelation, when it talks about the Lamb, it’s talking about Yenrieth.” He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “If the Daemonica’s prophecy fails, we still have to worry about the Biblical End of Days.” Ares looked from Limos to Than. “And our own father is destined to break our Seals and start the Apocalypse.”

Thanatos didn’t take Regan back to his place right away. He needed sunshine and fresh air, open spaces and the smell of the ocean.

He also needed some time alone with Regan to gauge her intentions regarding the new information he’d just given her. If she told The Aegis what she’d learned, they could see to it that thousands of their enemies were destroyed in one snap of an angel’s fingers.

Ares’s beach was the perfect, safe place to have a little chat.

They stepped out of his Harrowgate into warm, white sand. Regan smiled into the breeze, her cheeks glowing in the sunlight.

“Where are we?”

“Greece. Ares’s island. Thought you might like a change from the frigid weather at my place.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “And you figured I’d be more likely to promise to keep your secret if I wasn’t feeling imprisoned and on the defensive.”

“That too.”

With a sigh, she walked over to the water’s edge and sank down on one of the stone benches Ares had dotted the shoreline with, where she took off her shoes and let the waves lap at her toes. “By keeping this information from The Aegis, I’d be betraying them.” Even as his blood began to boil, she continued. “But you’re my son’s father, and I can’t betray him, either.”

“Quite the dilemma,” he growled.

“Quite.” She patted the seat next to her, and he sat, liking being with her like this, even if the topic of the moment wasn’t the most pleasant. “What do you know about your father?”