Lethal Rider ( Lords of Deliverance 3)

They reached the top of the cliff, and Ky unlocked the little Volvo. “When we get done here, do what you can to keep Lore from doing something crazy. Once I gauge the situation at Than’s place, taking Lore there might be a good idea. They’ll want any help they can get locating Pestilence.”

They piled into the car, and Ky floored it, tearing up the road to get to headquarters. Wraith’s oddball observations about the countryside kept Kynan level, which was, he suspected, Wraith’s goal. The demon might be a pain in the ass, but he was a lot more astute than people gave him credit for.

Ky parked at the base of the castle grounds, and he and Wraith wasted no time in jogging through the late morning gloom and into the damp castle, and what perfect timing… the very assholes he’d been seeking were gathered around a pile of books in the makeshift front office. And oddly, there were a dozen Guardians standing sentinel throughout the room, heavily armed.

“Who wants to explain what happened with Regan?”

Juan closed the book he’d been poring through. “Hello to you, too, Morgan.”

Lance wheeled around, his swollen, bruised face going purple with rage when he saw Wraith. “You brought a demon to our headquarters?”

“Do you really want a pissing match to see who’s made the most egregious offense to The Aegis lately?”

Takumi stiffened with a wince. Someone had beaten these guys senseless, and Kynan popped Regan a mental high-five. “We did what we thought was necessary.”

“And you thought it was necessary to cut open Regan and kill her innocent baby?”

“Innocent?” Lance scoffed. “It’s a demon.”

Wraith snorted as he unzipped his backpack. “See, Ky, this is why I always want to kill all your friends.” He pulled out a glass vial filled with green liquid. “No offense.”

“Trust me, none taken.” Kynan glared at the four men in front of him. “You guys want to explain why you didn’t consult the rest of the Elders before you changed our plan?” He doubted anyone would mention getting possessed or something, but it was worth a shot.

“We told you earlier. Tried to.” Omar gave Kynan a sad look, as if he felt sorry for him. “You and Valeriu are too blinded by your relationships to the demons to consider other options. And despite Decker’s pledge of allegiance to the Sigil, he’s still a member of the American military, and some of us don’t trust him.”

“There is something seriously wrong with you,” Kynan said, his temper mounting.

He nodded sharply at Wraith, who grinned as he flipped the vial into the air. Lance dove for it, but it hit the stone floor and shattered before he could catch it.

A sickly brown mist exploded through the room, shifting and writhing as if it were alive. Ten seconds later, it disappeared.

“What the f**k was that?” Juan shouted.

Wraith dropped his pack to the floor. “A revealing elixir. It would have made anyone suffering a magical enchantment glow like they took a swim in nuclear waste. None of you are glowy.” He shrugged. “You’re douche bags, though.”

Lance whipped his head around to Kynan. “You thought we were compromised by a spell?”

“Why else would you have pulled such a stupid stunt?” Kynan shot back.

“Bastard.” Lance came at him, although he should have known that doing so was useless. As long as Kynan was wearing Heofon, the amulet around his neck, he was impervious to harm.

Wraith moved in a blur, and in an instant, had his teeth buried in Lance’s throat. The Guardian sentinels sprang into action, firing their crossbows and hurling weapons, but Wraith, the recipient of a similar immunity charm, was protected.

After a few seconds, the demon disengaged his fangs and shoved Lance away. “He’s not possessed by a demon. He’s just naturally a dickmunch.”

“You thought we were possessed, too?” Lance’s voice was strangled, his eyes bugging out of his head.

“I hoped so,” Kynan said. “God, I’d hoped so.” Kynan’s temples throbbed with anger, and his skin felt tight, scoured raw by their betrayal. “What in God’s name made you think you were doing the right thing?”

“We didn’t think we were. We knew it.” Juan gestured to one of the guards, who disappeared down a hallway. “We were given new information that led us to believe that the prophecy isn’t about stabbing Pestilence in the heart, but stabbing the infant. We’re certain that will destroy Pestilence.”

“Who gave you the new info?”

“A trusted source,” Lance said. “Unlike all the clues we’ve been patching together over the years that turned out to be false or planted or just wrong, this is real.”

Kynan couldn’t believe this. What kind of f**king Kool-Aid had these morons drunk? “You’re wrong. The infant is Thanatos’s agimortus. Killing the baby will break Thanatos’s Seal. You should have come to me and Val with this. We could have worked it out.”

“We can’t trust you or Val anymore. You’ve led us down a path that failed. Working with demons? Forming an alliance with werewolves? Making peace with vampires in trade for intel? What part of the fact that we’re demon slayers are you not understanding?”

“It’s called changing tactics and turning enemies into allies. It’s called progress, Juan. Making alliances in unlikely places.”

Lance, his palm slapped over Wraith’s bite wound, snarled. “We like the old ways. Since the day you came along, involved in that demon hospital and married to a goddamned monster, things have gotten worse, and now we’re on the verge of an Apocalypse. Thanks a f**king lot.”

Married to a goddamned monster? Crimson fury cut a scalding swath of rage across Kynan’s field of vision. “You son of a bitch.” Kynan barely recognized his own voice, warped and molten with the depth of his anger. He lunged at Lance, but Wraith seized him around the waist and dragged him back.

“Dude.” Wraith spoke in a hushed tone into Kynan’s ear. “Check up. I’m all for ripping these f**ks to shreds, but eyeball your perimeter, man. Something bad is going down.”

Kynan sucked air through clenched teeth, desperate to take chunks out of Lance, but as the demon held him tight, Kynan noticed four new guys entering the room, each holding a flask … but one also held a furry baby Slogthu demon, a tiny silver charm Ky had seen before but couldn’t place, and a dagger, all of which he handed to Takumi.

“What is this?” Kynan demanded. “What the hell are you doing with that demon?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Leave it to you to be concerned about a damned demon.” He gestured to the four newcomers. “And these are our new Elders.”

“New…what?” Kynan glanced at the new Elders. Two had been on The Aegis’s short list for future promotion to the Sigil. The other two were Regents, the heads of individual cells, one in Toronto and one in Rio de Janeiro. “You can’t promote new members without a unanimous vote from every Elder, and you know that.”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “That’s the thing. We did get a unanimous vote, because you, Val, Regan, and Decker are no longer welcome in the Sigil.” He made an encompassing gesture with a sweep of his arm indicating the eight men standing in a semi-circle in front of Ky and Wraith. “We are the Sigil. And you … you are no longer welcome here.”

“You can’t do this.”

“We can. And we have.” Takumi’s gaze dropped, as if maybe this didn’t sit entirely well with him. “Sentinelium angelicus expellum.” He plunged the dagger into the little demon.

“Motherfuckers!” Wraith shouted.

The four flasks flashed, glowing as brightly as the sun. Pain pierced Kynan’s brain. Wraith grabbed his head, and as the agony drilled them both, Kynan stumbled backward, overcome by a driving need to get out of the castle. He and Wraith were shoved by an invisible force as the eight Elders advanced, the glow forming a wall in front of them.

“What the fuck,” Wraith growled, voicing Kynan’s thoughts exactly.

They staggered out the doors, and once the fresh air hit them, the pain stopped, although Ky’s brain felt bruised, as if he’d gotten clocked by a heavyweight boxer.

Lance and the others halted at the threshold. “Don’t come back. Headquarters is now warded against your angelic charms.”

“How? How did you do this?”

“You aren’t the only one with an angel friend.” Lance smirked.

Kynan wanted to knock the cockiness off Lance’s face. An… angel friend? Who—“Harvester.” Now he remembered where he’d seen the silver charm Takumi was holding. Harvester had worn it on a necklace. “Jesus Christ, she’s a fallen angel. She’s evil. You killed a baby demon and used black f**king magic in your ward. Do you know how wrong that can go?”

Lance’s expression grew amused. “It’s called changing tactics,” he mocked. “Making alliances in unlikely places.”

“You shortsighted idiots! There’s a f**king Apocalypse coming. We can’t afford to fragment like this. Not now.”

“You’ve given us no choice,” Juan said.

“So this is it. You take over headquarters, bring in new Elders, and banish anyone who doesn’t agree with you.”

“We’re the new Aegis,” Omar said. “Or, the way we see it, the original Aegis. We’re taking back the old ways.”

“You won’t win,” Kynan said. “We won’t let you.”

Lance spread his arms. “Look around you, charmed boy. We have all the toys. We’ve already won.”

Kynan’s temper snapped, and he started for Lance, intending to beat him to a pulp, but before he reached the threshold, he ran into an invisible wall that felt as solid as a steel barrier. Wraith grabbed him before the crushing head pain could take hold.

“You know what, buddy?” Wraith said. “They aren’t worth it. Not now. But later …” He jabbed his finger at Lance and bared his fangs. “You’re mine. And dude, I play with my food.”

Thirty

Regan felt so damned useless. While Ares took off for Sheoul in an attempt to send a message of warning to Hades about Pestilence’s possible ability to get into Sheoul-gra with Idess, Thanatos tried to summon Reaver. Regan… she took a shower. Thanatos had been adamant that the hot water and steam would make her feel better.

It had felt good to wash away the smell of the Aegis ship and the salt water, but when she stepped out of the shower, she was still tense. As she dried off, she tried her best to calm herself, because the cramping pains in her belly and back seemed to get worse when she was worked up.

Please, please don’t let this be labor. Yes, the fact that they didn’t yet have Pestilence was a huge concern, but right now, her own fears were surfacing. For eight months she’d avoided thinking about motherhood, since the baby was going to Kynan and Gem. But things had changed. She’d fallen for the baby, and she was falling for its father.

That would have been a good thing in a normal world, maybe. But so much uncertainty was going to surround her son’s birth, and so much weight was being placed on his tiny shoulders. She wanted to bear it all, and she wished like hell she knew how.

Thanatos tapped on the door. He entered, his bone armor clacking, tension making the scorpion on his neck sting his jugular.

“Your friends are here.” He flexed his fingers at his sides. “Kynan and Decker. Arik is here too, with Limos and Ares.”

Full house. How perfect, given that she felt like crap and wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Kynan had learned.

“Give me a minute to get dressed.”

“Need help?”

“No, I—” She broke off at the quirk of a smile on his lips. “I think,” she said wryly, “that if you helped, it might take long enough to get out of here that our guests would become suspicious.”

“Good.” He strode over to her and put his mouth to her throat. With a little rumble, he scraped his teeth over her skin in a blatantly possessive marking. “I want them suspicious. I don’t want anyone f**king with you ever again.”

Ever again? What did he mean by that? They’d both avoided talk of the future, because truly, the future looked so bleak, so uncertain. In Regan’s case, she just didn’t dare to plan. She’d had her life torn apart so much, and each time she’d thought her future with a family was secure the ground beneath her feet fell away again.

Thanatos stepped away and moved toward the door. As he exited, he looked back over his shoulder. “No matter how bad Kynan’s news is, I’ve got you, okay?” Before she could respond, he closed the door softly behind him.

Choking back emotion that seemed to scald her throat, she finished dressing and joined the others in the great room.

The tension in there was as thick as an Oni demon’s blood. But she was glad to see that Than’s nightwalkers were back at work. Peter gave her a respectful nod as he slipped into the kitchen.

Kynan and Decker were sitting stiffly on the long bench that ran the length of one side of the trestle table. Ares, Limos, and Thanatos were standing, fully armored, as if they were waiting for Ky and Deck to attack. Reaver was there, and he and Arik had angled themselves between the two groups as if prepared to prevent a battle from breaking out.

When Kynan saw Regan, he and Decker both came to their feet. She felt Than’s gaze on her as she crossed toward them, her palms sweating and her gut churning. The expressions on her fellow Elders’ faces were the grimmest she’d ever seen.