Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [17]
Battle dragged him backward, and Cara with him. He tugged her over the edge and rolled with her to safety, coming to rest on top of her. For a moment, she stared, her wide, haunted eyes swimming with disbelief.
Then it all went to hell.
Screaming, she pummeled him with her fists and rocked her head up to bite him. He reared back, barely avoiding her teeth, and when Battle stomped one enormous hoof next to her head in a protective warning, her screams deepened, so full of raw terror that Ares felt the vibrations in his chest.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Cara, calm down…”
But there was no calming her, and he knew it. She’d been pushed beyond reason, beyond her ability to cope, and the only thing he could do for her now was knock her out or turn back the clock.
Well, he could pluck out her eyeballs and plug into her visions, but as ruthless as he could be, he preferred to use drastic measures only if necessary and, if possible, only against other warriors. Which meant that if any Aegi were still in her house, they were in for a little all-is-fair-in-war.
Unfortunately for Cara, she wasn’t going to get away unscathed either. If she was bonded to a hellhound, he needed her. The beast would come to her, either physically or in the dream world, and he could lead Ares to Sestiel. Cara would be the bait for Ares’s trap. All he had to do was return her to her home and wait.
“Battle, to me.” Ares swore Battle growled before he wound around his arm again, which, of course, set Cara off with a fresh round of screams. Tightening his arm around her, he summoned a gate, rolled them into it, and came out on the soft, green grass outside her home.
Before she could renew her hysterics, he waved his hand in front of her face. Her expression went slack, her eyes glazing over. He took a minute to readjust her memories… he couldn’t create new ones, but he could erase the most recent events. Being a Horseman came with some pretty cool tricks.
Once he was finished, he carried her into her house. The place reeked of blood and hellhound, and though it appeared that the Aegi had gone, he didn’t take chances. Silently, he laid her on the couch and performed a sweep of the rooms. All clear. A disaster, but clear. The Guardians had damaged the back door, probably when they’d broken in, and before they gathered their dead and left, they’d gone through some of her drawers and closets. Blood was splashed all over the room he’d found Cara in, some sort of veterinary office. She’d be confused as all hell tomorrow when she woke up.
Well… hell, he could at least give her a reasonable explanation for her memory loss. He scrounged around the kitchen until he hit paydirt in the form of a shot glass and a dusty bottle of vodka. After dumping the contents in the sink, he wetted a washcloth and returned to her.
She was curled up on her side, her long hair covering her face. At some point, she’d knocked papers off the coffee table—mostly overdue bills, from what he could tell. For a long moment, he looked at her, wondering if he should shed the armor that helped shield him not only from weapons, but from strong emotion. The hard leather, fashioned from Gerunti demon hide, was a favorite of several demon races that made their living as slave traders, assassins, and mercenaries, none of whom could afford weakness of any kind—and emotions were weakness. But Ares had learned long ago that sometimes a warrior gained a unique perspective by losing the armor.
When you understood what your enemy was feeling, you understood how to hurt him most effectively. Or, in circumstances like this one, if you let yourself see the world the way your target did, you could revise your strategy to take advantage of her situation.
Tossing the bills aside, he feathered the pads of his fingers over the crescent-shaped scar just under his jawbone on the left side of his neck, and his armor melted away, leaving him in black BDU pants and a black tee. These were his everyday clothes,