Right now, Arik was rattling like a baby’s toy.
“That was fucking Pestilence. How the fuck is he here? He’s supposed to be dead, Ky. I was there. I saw it happen. What if he’s still evil? He can’t start an apocalypse, but he’d still be like a lion in a sheep pen. He could kill millions with plagues alone… holy shit… how the fuck are we going to take him down?” Arik paused in his tirade to take a breath and slammed his fist into the vehicle’s hood, denting the cold metal. “We’ll break into Aegis HQ and grab some qeres—”
“Arik—”
“I’m not letting that fucker near Limos—”
“Arik.” Kynan grabbed the other man by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Listen to me. If it’s really Reseph, we have to be smart about this.”
“If? I’d know that son of a bitch if he was wearing a spacesuit and covered by a motherfucking burka. He blackmailed my wife, nearly broke me in half, and forced me to drink his blood. He owns my soul, Ky. He owns my goddamned soul.”
Yeah, Kynan wouldn’t be overly calm right now if he were Arik, either. Releasing his friend, Kynan dug his cell phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed Ares.
“What’s up, human?” Ares said.
Kynan kept a watchful eye on Arik, because the dude looked ready to launch into orbit. “I need you to get everyone to your place. Arik and I’ll be there in half an hour.” He disconnected before the Horseman could ask questions. This place was too public, and Arik was too… well, fucked up.
“C’mon, buddy,” Kynan said. “Let’s hit the Harrowgate. Your in-laws will know what to do.”
“What if they don’t? That fucker can’t be allowed to roam the earth, Ky. We thought he was gone. We were moving on with our lives. What now?”
Kynan wished like hell he could answer that.
Reaver strode into Ares’s Greek manor and wasn’t even a little surprised to find Limos mixing margaritas behind the bar. Now that the Apocalypse had been averted, every day was a party for her. What he was surprised about was that she handed out the drinks to everyone, including Reaver, but didn’t take one for herself.
Then again, she’d been busy lately, drawn to the starvation epidemics around the world. She’d always said that when others were going hungry, she couldn’t keep food down.
“Hey, Reaver.” Ares, who was pinned to the couch by a young hellhound lying on his lap, downed his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t suppose you know what this is about.”
“What… what’s about?”
Thanatos, sitting on the arm of the chair Regan was perched in, looked up from the cradle he was rocking with one foot. “Kynan called. Said to gather everyone here.”
“Looks like I have good timing.” Reaver moved over to the cradle, where Logan was sound asleep and Cujo was sitting, one shoulder propped against the frame. “I hope The Aegis isn’t causing trouble. What have he and Arik been working on?”
“Some rogue demon tearing up a town somewhere,” Limos said in a bored tone. No, a single demon wouldn’t even make the Horsemen blink. At five thousand years old, they’d learned to separate the big problems from the small ones, and it took a lot for them to consider anything a big problem.
“How’s everything else?”
Ares scratched the inky black lap hound behind the ear, and the thing made a guttural sound Reaver could only hope was a happy noise. “I’m not sure. There have been some odd rumors floating around Sheoul, rumblings about Pestilence’s old buddies trying to regroup. And Cara is worried about the hellhounds. A bunch have gone missing, and more disappear every day. She won’t let Hal out of her sight.”
Odd. Only someone very powerful would mess with hellhounds. Reaver made a mental note to check with Eidolon, head of Underworld General Hospital, to see if he was aware of a fatal hellhound virus running amok.
Kynan and Arik burst through the front door. Arik went immediately, wordlessly, to Limos and folded her against him.
“Arik.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “What is wrong with you?”
“Let me cut to the chase.” Kynan peeled off his leather jacket and tossed it over the back of one of the chairs. “Your brother is back.”
Reaver’s lungs seized, and oh-shit adrenaline flashed like fire through his veins. His secret was about to become not-so-secret, and not in the way he’d wanted.
Ares came to his feet, dumping the hellhound on the ground. “That can’t be. He was destroyed. We saw it.”
“How can you be sure?” Than asked Kynan, and Reaver didn’t miss how he’d angled himself closer to the cradle, as if expecting Pestilence to pop out of thin air and grab his son.
Arik kept his arm around Limos. “We were hunting a Soulshredder in Colorado. We found what we believed to be the epicenter of the attacks, a woman living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Then we discovered that a stranger appeared around the time the attacks started, a male named Reseph. We saw his picture. It’s him.”
Kynan nodded. “We believe he’s staying with the woman.”
Limos swallowed sickly. “Staying, or holding her hostage? Is he Pestilence, or is he Reseph?”
“We don’t know,” Arik said, “but the fact that there’s a Soulshredder killing people around him doesn’t look good for him being Reseph.”
“Soulshredders were Pestilence’s favorite demon to use to terrorize humans,” Limos breathed. “Oh, God. If he’s Pestilence—”
“He’s Reseph,” Reaver muttered, and all eyes turned on him.
“You knew about this?” Ares asked, his voice going low. “You knew he was alive and walking around with humans and you didn’t tell us? How long have you known?”
Reaver hated that Reseph’s existence had been revealed this way, but he had no one to blame but himself. “I’ve known since the day Thanatos stabbed him in the heart with Deliverance. I’m the one who got him out of Sheoul-gra.”
Stunned faces stared back at him. Finally, Arik broke the silence. “I hope to fuck you have a good explanation for this, because angel or not, I want to kick your ass right now.”
“You’re out of line, human,” Reaver said, maybe a little too defensively. “I don’t do anything without a good reason.” He just hoped his reason was good enough. “I went to Sheoul-gra to make sure Reseph’s soul was secure. He still has a part to play when the Final Days come. The Daemonica’s prophecy may have failed, but there’s still one more to play out.”
“We know that,” Thanatos ground out. “Get to the part where you turned him loose.”
“Patience,” Reaver snapped. “I’m not one of your servants.” He calmly rolled up his sleeves, giving himself a chance to find the right words. “I went to Sheoul-gra. But I didn’t expect to find Reseph the way he was. He wasn’t… a soul. He was himself.”
“Himself?” Ares asked. “As who? Pestilence or Reseph?”
“Reseph. But he was broken.”
Limos pulled away from Arik. “What do you mean, broken?”
“He was Reseph. But he remembered everything he did as Pestilence.”
“Oh, God,” Limos whispered. “How awful.”
Kynan cursed. “I don’t understand what the deal is. So he has to take responsibility for murdering millions of people. Why is this a problem?”
“I’m wondering the same thing, myself,” Arik said. “So what if he remembers what he did?”
“You didn’t know Reseph,” Limos said. “Neither of you did. You only knew him as an evil monster. But before his Seal broke, he was fun, happy, and he never intentionally hurt anyone. If he knows all of the things that happened at his hand, it’ll kill him.”
“And that’s what he was doing,” Reaver said. “He was harming himself. I’ve never seen such self-torture in my life.” Well, what he could remember of his life, anyway. “His mind was fractured.”