Rogue Rider

“He what?”

Jillian crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling defensive, and maybe a little foolish. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Let me put it this way,” Limos said. “In five thousand years, he’s never fallen for a female.”

She gaped at Limos in disbelief. “Five thousand years. You want me to believe he’s five thousand years old.”

“Yep.” Limos went back to studying her fingernails. “I guess we didn’t tell you. Brace yourself. My brothers and I are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You probably heard about us in Sunday school.”

“I got kicked out of Sunday school before they got to that story,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel. “But yes, I’m familiar with the Four Horsemen. You’re saying that Reseph, the man I saved from a blizzard, is a biblical monster.”

“Well, no. I mean, the biblical prophecy is just one of two. We’re not all evil and creepy like you see on TV and the movies.” She frowned. “Mostly, we’re not. Anyhoo, you really didn’t save Reseph from a blizzard. He’s immortal. He would have survived.”

She thought back to his miraculous recovery after being frozen nearly solid. “Okay, so let’s say I believe you. Did the hypothermia affect his memory? Was that why he had amnesia?”

Limos winced. “This is where it gets tricky.”

As if the rest of it was all normal and easy? “I’m listening.”

Limos reached down her shirt and pulled out a gold chain with a circular pendant. “This is a Seal. As long as it’s whole, my brothers and I are neither good nor evil. There have always been two Horsemen prophecies… one human, one demon. The human prophecy, when it comes to pass, will put us fighting on the side of humans. The demon one would turn us evil.”

Jillian really didn’t like where this seemed to be going. “And the tricky part?”

“The demon prophecy was kicked off a little over a year ago. Reseph’s Seal broke.”

It took a few heartbeats for Jillian’s brain to work through what Limos had said, and when it all came together, her chest constricted.

“So… wait. All the turmoil the Earth went through, the demons, the plagues… all of it… it happened because of Reseph, didn’t it?”

“Yes. He turned into an evil bastard named Pestilence. He spent a year trying to break our Seals.” She chewed her bottom lip for a second. “There’s time for the gritty details later. Right now I need to ask you to help us.”

Jillian should have been a lot more horrified than she was, but she suspected that everything she’d just learned was too big to process. No doubt she’d freak out later.

“You haven’t answered my question about Reseph’s memory.”

“We stopped Pestilence. Thanatos drove a dagger through his heart and killed him. Sort of. It took away his power, anyway, and it stopped the Apocalypse. That’s why all of a sudden, everything went back to normal. Reseph went to a place called Sheoul-gra. It’s sort of a holding tank for demon souls. The problem was that, as Reseph, he remembered everything Pestilence had done. And it was bad. Really bad. Reseph went crazy, and our Watcher, an angel named Reaver, zapped his memory and sent him here to heal.”

Okay, now it was starting to process, and Jillian sank onto the couch, her legs unable to support not only her body, but the weight of everything she’d just heard. “This is unbelievable.”

“Yeah, well, believe it.” Limos plopped down on the coffee table across from her. “It looks like everything was going well until Reseph’s name hit the wrong channels. We had to get to him before someone who wants him evil again found him or before The Aegis showed up.”

“The Aegis,” Jillian murmured, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. “They’ve been here.”

“I’m sure they have. They want him imprisoned.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re extremist a**holes,” Limos snapped. “They don’t listen to reason, and anything they don’t understand, they prefer to destroy.”

Jillian nearly bolted out of her seat, as if she could somehow attack whoever was threatening Reseph. “They could destroy him?”

“No, but they think that if they can imprison him, or, probably, any of us, they can prevent death and destruction and crap.”

“Is that true?”

Limos hesitated, and Jillian’s pulse thudded in her ears. “Maybe, in Reseph’s case. Pestilence could be extremely dangerous if he returns. That’s why I’m here. Now that Reseph’s memory is back, he remembers all the shit he did. He’s going crazy. Hurting himself. It’s leaving him vulnerable to Pestilence. We need to bring him back, but we’re not getting through to him. We were hoping you could help.”

Overwhelmed by the massive scope of the information she’d just been given, Jillian wrapped her arms around herself, as if the body hug would contain it and help her make sense of it all.

“I don’t know what I can do. I’m just a… human.” A terrified human who had fallen in love with a biblical legend. The thought almost made her hyperventilate.

“Talk to him. Be with him. I don’t know. None of us know. This is uncharted territory. But when my husband was trapped inside his head after being tortured in hell, it took me to get him out.”

“Your husband was… tortured? In hell? Actual hell?”

“We call it Sheoul, but yep. Arik was there for a month. And he rocked it.” Limos grinned, fierce pride settling into her expression. “You met him when he was here with Kynan.”

Both of those men had come across as confident, efficient, and a little… scary. Now she wondered just how scary Arik truly was to have survived a month in hell.

Closing her eyes, Jillian took a deep breath, hoping for some time to let all of this settle. But if Reseph was in pain, there was no time. She had to help.

“You okay?”

Jillian lifted her lids. “No.” Not at all. She felt as if she was teetering on the very edge of hysteria, and all it would take was one more revelation from Limos, and Jillian would tip over. She eyed the female Horseman, needing an anchor to reality, but even her hairstyle seemed inconsistent with who she said she was. Who she’d been when she’d sat astride her stallion-thing, armed and armored like a warrior right out of, well, legend. “Why do you have a flower in your hair?”

“What, it’s not very Horseman-like?”

“It’s not what I would have expected, no.”

Limos huffed. “It’s a poison-spitting iris that dissolves flesh on contact.”

Jillian edged backward. “Seriously?”

“No.” Limos grinned. “I just like pretty flowers. I could remove your flesh myself. I’m great with a blade.”

Flesh removal? Oh, God. The reality of the situation was starting to sink in now. “And this…” Jillian swallowed sickly. “This is how you convince me to go with you?”

“Sorry. I probably need to work on my sales pitch.” Limos propped her elbows on her knees and leaned closer to Jillian, all business. “So… will you help?”

“Where…” Jillian blew out a breath in a rush. “Where will we go? Um… hell?”

“Greece. Trust me, none of us live in creepy places. Well, Reseph used to, but his cave was destroyed.”

Cave? He’d felt confined in her cabin and he’d lived in a cave? “Okay, I’ll do it. Take me to him. Beam me up or whatever it is you do.”

Limos bounded to her feet. “You’re handling this really well. You should have seen how Ares’s wife reacted when she first got introduced to our world and who we are.”

Yeah, well, Jillian had been given a painful introduction to the supernatural world when demons had attacked her in that airport parking lot. Reseph might be a Horseman, but in comparison, he was a kitten. Abruptly, she recalled the fight at the bar and the battle with the barn demon, and she revised that last thought. Kitten, no. Lion, yes.

She followed Limos outside. “Ares is married to a human?”

Limos bobbed her head. “Cara. She’s sort of a hellhound whisperer.”

Jillian stopped so suddenly she slipped on the icy porch and would have gone down if Limos hadn’t grabbed her, lightning fast, and lifted her upright.

“Hellhounds?” Jillian rasped. “D-demons?”

“Ah… yeah.” Limos took Jillian’s arm and dragged her off the porch. “Come on. Harrowgate is waiting.”

Traveling via the thing Limos called a Harrowgate was an unnerving experience, especially when Limos said that the Horsemen were the only beings who could take a conscious human through a portable gate without the human coming out on the other side… dead.

She stepped out with Limos, inside a circle marked by little flags outside a huge Greek-style mansion. Olive trees rose between huge Greek-style pillars and snow-white statues of Greek gods.

“I guess this is Greece?” Oh, Jillian, you’re a rocket scientist, you are.

“Yep.”

“Why are there little flags around us?”

“It’s the designated Harrowgate landing. At our houses we keep them marked off so people know not to enter. When a gate opens, it’ll slice into any living thing it touches.”

Jillian missed a step. Then she missed another—God, Limos must think she was drunk—when she noticed that there were a lot of people and… not humans… gathered around the mansion.

“Um…”

Limos waved her hand in dismissal and started walking toward the crowd. “Don’t worry about the females. They’re here for Reseph.”

Females? All those things were females? With some it was hard to tell. “What… what are they?” Please don’t say demons, please don’t say demons…

“Demons.”