I looked, and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales. He’d known Famine was female, but he hadn’t thought she’d be so hot.
Damn, this was real, wasn’t it? Arik was standing in a room with three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“It’s pretty awe-inspiring, isn’t it,” came Thanatos’s deep, dry voice, and Arik blinked.
“What?”
“Your jaw was open and you were gaping like an idiot at them,” Kynan said, a little louder than he really needed to.
“Tool,” Arik said under his breath. He nodded at the seated female. “Who’s she?”
“Not your concern,” Ares said, his voice as icy and forbidding as the landscape around them.
Thanatos put a restraining hand on his brother’s shoulder, and Arik wondered how close he was to getting his ass kicked.
Limos moved closer, her flip-flops slapping the floor, her off-the-shoulder muumuu swishing around slim, shapely ankles. “You two have a lot of balls coming here.”
Kynan gestured to Arik. “He does. I’m charmed. Nothing can hurt me. Or my balls.”
“Really?” Limos came at Kynan, swung, and Ky didn’t even flinch. The female Horseman’s swing went wild, and she stumbled, nearly fell. “What the hell?”
“Told you. I can’t be harmed.”
She jammed her fists on her hips. “That’s annoying.”
Limos was like nothing Arik would have expected. No, he’d been thinking more of a mannish Amazonian-type warrior. This female was ultrafeminine, had breasts that made her dress a fucking work of art, and she didn’t look as if she could handle a weapon if she had to. Maybe she’d get scarier once her Seal broke.
“So why are you here?” Ares asked. “Reaver said you wanted to help, but The Aegis hasn’t been on our side for centuries, and I don’t even know what the R-XR is.”
Arik studied the brown-haired warrior. His expression revealed nothing, and neither did his flat eyes. But somehow Arik knew he was lying about not knowing about R-XR.
Kynan cleared his throat. “We know that Pestilence has been loosed. We want to discuss how to stop him.”
“If we knew how, we’d have done it already.”
“So you don’t want to usher in the Apocalypse?” Arik asked.
That earned him murderous glares from the three of them. Ares clenched his fists as though imagining Arik’s neck in their grip. “We want to prevent our Seals from breaking and stop Pestilence’s rampage. But even if we knew how to stop him, we wouldn’t tell you.”
“Because we could use the knowledge against you.”
Limos snorted. “Aren’t you a brain surgeon.”
Arik ignored that. She might be hot, but he wasn’t into smartass immortal women. “We can still help to prevent your Seals from breaking.”
“How much do you know about our situations and Seals?” Thanatos folded his arms over his broad chest, code for, say the wrong thing, I dare you.
Kynan picked up on the body language as well, and he kept his voice even, businesslike. Arik hoped Ky knew more than he did about what might be the “wrong thing.” “Honestly, not much. We have a copy of the Daemonica, so we’ve read the prophecies, but they’re pretty obscure and aren’t a lot of help.”
“So you need information from us.” Ares studied them, the cold calculation in his gaze measuring them for deception. And maybe for a coffin. “Why should we trust you? Why should we believe that you don’t want to destroy us?”
“Because,” Kynan said, “the ranking members of The Aegis know the history we’ve shared, and if you’ve paid any attention at all to the way The Aegis has changed in the last few years, you know that we’ve become more moderate.”
“We don’t need your help.” Limos imperiously waved her hand in dismissal, her long pink and yellow-painted nails flashing. “Be gone.”
Arik didn’t think. He reacted. “You fools!” He seized her wrist to stop her from walking away. “We have resources and—”
Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, with Limos straddling him while holding a dagger under his left eye. Ares and Thanatos were on either side of him, both leveling swords at his throat. Ares’s huge boot was on his forehead.
“Ares.” The hushed, shocked voice came from near the fireplace. The unnamed woman. “Please. Don’t kill him.”
“I’d appreciate it if you left him alive, as well.” Kynan’s words were casual, but Arik knew him well enough to recognize a rare note of concern.
“Here’s the thing,” Limos said, in an eerily chipper voice. “Don’t touch me.” For emphasis, she squeezed her knees, which were parked on either side of his ribs, and the air whooshed out of his lungs. Pain was a blistering firestorm in his upper body as his ribs cracked. He gritted his teeth, refused to make a sound, but yeah, he got the message.
The brothers backed off as suddenly as they’d attacked, sheathed their blades, and Limos leaped to her feet. Then, with a shit-eating grin, she offered her damned hand.
“S’okay,” he wheezed. “Floor is surprisingly comfortable.”
Kynan cleared his throat again. “If we’re done with the ball-busting, maybe you could tell us what it’ll take to earn your trust.”
There was a long pause, and then Ares said, “Give us the hellhound.”
Kynan tensed. “What makes you think we have a hellhound?”
Smart move, not denying that The Aegis had the beast. A lie would compromise the trust Kynan wanted to build.
“Doesn’t matter.” Ares’s hand flexed over the pommel of his sword, as if he was still wanting to draw blood. “But we want it.”
Arik sat up. Not without difficulty and a lot of pain, but he thought he managed to not look too pathetic. “Why?”
“Because they’re so cuddly and cute,” Limos purred, her violet eyes glinting with mischief. Chick was weird.
Kynan jammed his hand through his hair. “We can’t give up the hound.”
“Give us the fucking dog or we take it.” Frost formed on Ares’s words. “And we will take it.”
“You’re bluffing,” Kynan said. “You don’t know where we’re keeping it.”
Inky shadows billowed up from the floor around Thanatos’s feet, and for a heartbeat, Arik swore he saw faces in the murky depths. “We will know soon enough.”
Brittle tension winged through the air, thickening with each silent second. Arik pushed to his feet, clenching his teeth to keep from grimacing. Ares’s hand now gripped his sword hilt. Thanatos had settled into a fighting stance, and Limos was standing there twirling a strand of glossy black hair. Somehow, she made the innocuous gesture seem dangerous. Like she could strangle him with that single lock.
The other female was gripping the book with white-knuckled ferocity and worrying her lower lip.
Unease wound its way through Arik’s veins. This shit was going to go critical, and fast. “Maybe if we knew why the animal is so important to you, it would be less of an issue for The Aegis.”
Ares locked gazes with Arik, and he got the impression the dude had been given the job of War for a reason. There was a general in that big body, someone who knew not only how to fight, but how to win at any cost.
“The hellhound is mine.” Everyone swung around to the female who had been so quiet. “I’m connected to him.”
“And who are you?” Kynan asked.
“She’s the woman your Aegi were going to torture to get information about the hellhound they’d shot.” Ares moved to stand next to her, and though he didn’t touch her, there was a definite protective quality to his posture.
Kynan scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about… wait.” He zeroed in on the woman with such intensity that Ares bared his teeth. “In South Carolina? Three nights ago?” When she nodded, Kynan exhaled slowly. “A Guardian died that night. They said you were a demon—”
“Cara is no demon,” Ares said. “Your Aegi are idiots.”
“Hal—the hellhound… he killed your Guardian,” Cara said. “He was protecting me from them.”
Protecting her? A hellhound? Now Arik had heard everything. “I don’t understand how all of this ties together.”