Lethal Rider

The skin on the back of Pestilence’s neck prickled, and he turned away from the ocean just as Harvester materialized in front of him. She looked like hell, but she somehow still managed to look extremely f**kable. He couldn’t wait for the Apocalypse to start so he could have her anytime he wanted.

She cut right to the chase, which he appreciated. “Your f**king ex-Watcher needs to die.”

“Gethel?”

“Who else?” she screeched. “I’m going to pluck her feathers and shove every one of them up her ass before I make a halo out of her skull.”

“I’d like to see that. Lemme know when tickets go on sale.”

Harvester practically shook with fury, her black wings quivering against her slender shoulders. “How did you know to trace Thanatos to Aegis Headquarters?”

He tapped his temple. “Brotherly intuition.”

“Bullshit.”

He heaved a sigh. “Okay, you caught me. I was tipped off.”

“By who?”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘whom’?” He shrugged. “I was never good at all that language-y stuff.”

Harvester, clearly lacking a sense of humor today, blew a gasket. She came a foot off the sand, wings spread, her eyes glowing red and her fangs jutting from her gums. “I don’t give a f**k! Who tipped you off?”

He had her on her back, wings crumpled beneath her, his hand on her throat, before the echo of her words faded from the salt air.

“You do not yell at me, you winged whore.” He inhaled, taking in her anger and her fear. The latter made his c*ck hard. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, or I’d school you on what a female like you should be doing with her mouth.” He dragged his free hand down her throat to her breast, where he flicked his thumb over the nipple. “When the Apocalypse starts, we’ll rule the world, make beautiful hellspawn, and drink the blood of virgins before we f**k them.” God, his dick was so hard it hurt.

“I’d sooner screw Reaver than you,” she ground out.

He nodded. “Good idea. We’ll both do him after Than’s Seal breaks.”

Harvester hissed and rolled out from under Pestilence. He stayed in the sand, stretched out, propped up on an elbow.

“Who? Who tipped you off? Answer me!”

“You’re a goddamned angel with a bone.” He fell back on the beach with a sigh. “Fine. It was Lucifer. No idea who he got the intel from. I actually thought it was from you. Came to him via a khnive.”

Khnives… nasty creatures that could be summoned as spies or messengers. Someone was fond of using them, as evidenced by the fact that dozens had been summoned to attack Limos’s husband, Arik, a few months ago.

Pestilence would love to know who to thank, but that was the thing about Apocalypses… so much behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

Harvester flashed out of there without so much as a thank you. The bitch. He’d teach her some manners once she was his.

Wouldn’t be long. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a tiny blue rattle. It was his gift to his unborn nephew. Pestilence figured that a baby who was going to have a dagger plunged into his heart just moments after birth should at least get a gift.

He shook the tiny toy, the sound giving him shivers of pleasure. I would give up everything, my very soul, to have just one human lifetime with a mate and children.

Thanatos’s prophetic words rang through Pestilence’s ears, a perfect accompaniment to the tinny noise of the rattle. Thanatos would have his child, and its death would cost him his Seal… and his soul.

Twenty

“You’re avoiding me, Limos.”

Limos, fully outfitted in her Croix viper Samurai-style armor and her raven hair woven into a thick braid, swung around to Regan, guilt plastered all over her expression. “Me? Nah. I’m just busy.” She gestured to the keep’s front door. “Hunting rats with Arik and the hellhounds. See? Busy.”

Uh-huh. In the twelve hours Than had been gone, Regan had been busy, too, dividing her time between his library, where she tried to find any information that might provide clues as to Yenrieth’s whereabouts, and cleaning. Not that Than’s keep needed to be cleaned. She just needed it to be in order.

So she’d been busy, but not so busy that she missed Limos’s odd behavior.

Regan set down her sandwich and milk on the table in front of the TV and turned back to Limos, who had inched closer to the door. “What’s going on?”

In Than’s absence, Limos and Arik were taking turns keeping an eye on her, and Cara had assigned a dozen more hellhounds to stay at the keep, so Regan doubted this was about her safety. Especially since Than’s vampires had kept their distance, either confined to their quarters or working in the outbuildings, and Regan was pretty sure Limos had taken a couple of them aside for interrogation—and to scare the undead out of them.

Pestilence hadn’t shown up either, which Limos was certain meant he was up to no good, and that was true enough. The news was full of his handiwork, from bacteria-contaminated water supplies to rapidly spreading plagues to freaking zombies in Malta and North Korea.

So despite the relative quiet at Than’s place, Limos was acting weird, and her avoidance was starting to make Regan suspicious.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Limos said brightly. “Really.”

Regan narrowed her eyes at the Horseman. “Did Eidolon say something to you in private?”

The doctor had come by for a checkup, and although he couldn’t touch her, he’d asked a bazillion questions. He’d been frank with her, warning her that this could be a difficult birth, but he swore to be there for it. For some reason, she had actually been comforted by the idea that the demon doctor was going to deliver the baby.

“There’s nothing wrong with the baby or Than or anything. It’s just…” Limos looked down at her bright green nails, which poked out of her fingerless gauntlets.

“It’s just what?”

Limos shifted her weight and looked at her other hand. “Shiny.”

“Limos!”

“Fine.” The Horseman dropped her hands to her sides and sighed. “Arik talked to Kynan. The Aegis recruited a cell of Guardians to come here, but it looks like Pestilence managed to break the encryption on the information he stole from your headquarters. He’s attacking Aegis cells all over the world, and the Guardians who were scheduled to come here were some of the casualties.”

Oh, God. As if all her nerve endings had withered, Regan went numb all over, and she sank onto the couch before her legs gave out.

Limos rushed over and took a seat next to Regan. “We didn’t want to tell you because you’ve got enough to deal with.”

“I’d rather know,” Regan said quietly.

“Okay, then. We’ll stop coddling you.”

“Good. Coddling doesn’t suit you.” Regan stared at the other woman, wondering if Limos’s concerned expression was a mere mask. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Nice?” Limos snorted. “I want to beat you with a Moraki bone stick.”

So much for the coddling. Somehow though, this was better. “Because of what I did to Thanatos?”

“I was pissed for a while,” Limos admitted. “But I don’t have a lot of room to judge, and as Arik pointed out, you were trying to save the world.” There was a beat of silence, and then Limos blurted, “I’m jealous of you. There. I said it. I want a baby.”

“You’re afraid to get pregnant until all of this is over, aren’t you?”

Limos nodded. “If my Seal broke while I was pregnant …” She trailed off, and when she spoke again, there was a note of anger in her voice. “I’m so jealous I could scream. I want a baby so bad, and you’ve got one you’re giving away.”

In an instant, Regan felt as if she’d been dragged behind a truck, leaving everything, including her emotions, scraped raw. She’d gone into this with skin like steel armor, thinking she could get pregnant and give up the baby unscathed. But she’d gotten one hell of a chink in her armor that night with Thanatos, and with every passing day, with every move the baby made, her armor eroded.

She loved the little pony so much it hurt. So much that she dreaded giving birth, because she’d have to somehow drum up the strength and unselfishness to hand him over to people who were far better suited to care for him than she was.

“It’s not that I want to, Limos.” She drew in a shaky breath. “It’s that I have to.”

“It’s what’s best. I get that,” Limos said. “But I think I’d do whatever it took to make sure that being with me was what was best.” She shoved to her feet, turning away quickly, but not before Regan spotted the telltale glisten of unshed tears in Limos’s violet eyes. “I have to hunt rats. Or whatever creepy things might be spying on the keep. Um…bye.”

Limos practically ran out the door, leaving Regan on the verge of tears herself. A suffocating heaviness centered in her chest. Could she ensure that keeping the baby was what was best? Once Pestilence was gone and the threat to the baby’s life was eliminated, could Regan give it a home?

Yeah, because a one-room apartment at Aegis Headquarters was a home. Okay, so maybe she could get a real apartment. Then what? The Aegis wasn’t exactly kid-friendly. There were no “bring your kid to work” days. And she might be confident in her ability to take down a sewer full of demons, but she didn’t know the first thing about raising a kid.

For all that she kept insisting that The Aegis was her family, she had no one to help her.

They need you because of what you can do for them. That’s the only reason they want you. When are you going to open your eyes and see that?

Maybe… maybe it was time for a change. Maybe, if they managed to avert the Apocalypse, she could build a life for herself and her child.

Her child. For eight months, she’d tried to refer to the life inside her as “the baby,” “the kid,” “the child.” She’d called it other affectionate names, but only in the last couple of days had she begun to think of it as hers.