Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [111]
“Get inside.” Vulgrim lifted her to her feet. “My tesmon cannot lose you.”
“Tesmon?”
“Herd father.” He tugged her toward the door. “Ares.”
His furred arms closed around her protectively, and they stumbled onto the porch. A blade came from out of nowhere, slashing at Vulgrim’s face. He deflected it with his horn, which sheared off like a carrot under a cleaver. The blond man who’d swung the weapon dove for Vulgrim, taking him down to the ground. Another man came from nowhere with an ax, and in horrible slow motion, Cara saw it coming down in an arc over Vulgrim’s neck.
A million images flashed in her head, and she saw the face of the man she’d killed at her house in the expressions of the guys attacking Vulgrim.
If you want to survive, if you want those you care about to survive, you may need to make sacrifices and do things you never thought you’d do. Things you might find distasteful, that go against everything you’ve ever believed. Reaver’s prophetic words were like a soundtrack that went along with the images, and without hesitating, Cara allowed her gift a full charge, nothing held back.
With a battle cry, she lunged, gripping one man on the shoulder and the other by the waist. Energy sizzled down her arm and through her fingers. The effect on the men was instantaneous; blood and tissue spurted from their eyes, noses, mouths, and ears. Their bodies swelled like balloons, and as they hit the ground, they broke open into steaming piles of gore.
There was no regret. Not. A. Bit. Ares had been right. It felt good to get rid of monsters, and hell if she was going to waste her life feeling bad about it.
Vulgrim, whose eyes had always seemed so tiny for his big head, stared at her, his eyes now the size of saucers. “That,” he rumbled, “is one scary ability.” He grunted. “I like it.” He leaped to his feet. “Now go inside. Hide yourself!”
Cara careened off the doorjamb and the walls as she bolted toward the fallen angel. He’d somehow managed to roll under the coffee table, where he was working his bound wrists against the leg in a desperate attempt to fray the ropes. He saw her coming, and he hissed like a correred lion.
“Behind you!”
Instinctively, Cara dove to the side, barely avoiding the swipe of a massive, clawed hand. Whatever was chasing her let out a pissed-off snarl. Hot breath blasted the back of her head, and she nearly gagged at the fumes. The door to the bedroom was just ahead—
“Don’t touch her! She’s mine.” The voice froze her marrow. Pestilence. “And someone drag that angel to Sheoul.”
The scaly thing chasing her ignored Ares’s brother, and even as she stumbled through the bedroom door, she turned, saw the monster go down beneath the hooves of Pestilence’s evil stallion. She slammed the door and locked it, but two seconds later, it crashed inward, and thousands of pounds of horse and warrior filled the room. Somewhere in the house, Zhreziel screamed. Inside her head, Cara screamed, too. She should have transferred the agimortus, because the fallen angel was being dragged to Sheoul, where his soul was going to be ruined anyway.
The fear Cara had experienced at the hands of men who had robbed her house and the Guardians who had believed she was a demon paled in comparison to the sheer, icy terror that wracked her body now. She trembled as Pestilence swung down off the horse, his armor clanking and dripping a disgusting black substance as well as fresh Ramreel blood.
“Seems you’re bonded to a hellhound,” he said, his deep voice rumbling right through her soul. “That means that killing you isn’t going to be as easy as running you through with a sword or slitting your delicate throat.”
“Shame, that,” she said, surprised at how she didn’t sound nearly as afraid as she felt.
“I have him, you know. Your hellhound. He fought me and my men, but even now, he’s being transferred to my lair.”
She shook with fury so intense her teeth rattled. “Let him go,