Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [20]
Pestilence would be that Horseman.
Harvester grinned, her fangs glinting wetly. “You can’t truly believe that. Ares will win, just as he wins everything.”
With a roar, Pestilence slammed the fallen angel into the side of one of the shanties. The impact blew a hole through the wood, and they both staggered into the building. “I’m not allowed to kill you,” he snarled, shoving her against a support beam, “but I can make you wish you were dead.”
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” She whipped one veiny wing around his back and sank the clawed tip into the back of his neck. Pain shot up his spine and ricocheted around the inside of his skull, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction of a sound. “You’ve always been jealous of Ares.”
Not always. It wasn’t until after Reseph’s Seal broke that the great Ares had gotten under his skin. Ares had been a masterful commander as a human. Ares had never lost a battle. Ares was the original of the Greek god of the same name. Blah fucking blah.
It was Pestilence’s turn. He was going to hurt Ares where it mattered—those servants he cared so much about. Hell, yes, Pestilence was going to make a name for himself. He would be the most feared of the Horsemen. Long after the Apocalypse ended, his name would be spoken with reverence. With awe. With fear.
He reached behind his back and caught Harvester’s wingtip. With a twist of his wrist, he snapped the bones in her wing. He cut off her screech by ripping into her throat with his teeth. Blood spilled down her chest, coating him with sticky warmth.
No, he couldn’t kill her. That was against the rules. But he could stop just short of it.
And he could make sure that the initial tales of his reign of terror came from a firsthand account.
Help me.
The voice came to Cara as she floated in a dark, cold room, her body a misty shadow. Below her, a dog howled from inside a cage, its glimmering red eyes watching her every move. She moved closer, unsure how, since she was hanging in the air, but in any case, she was suddenly eye to eye with the canine.
Find me.
She started. The voice had come from the dog. Not an actual voice, but more of a thought inside her head.
“Who are you?”
I am yours. You are mine.
Mine? Yours? This was so weird. She put her face right up to the cage, oddly unafraid of the creature inside. It was clearly a puppy, but something about it radiated lethal power and danger. Its fur was so black it seemed to absorb what little light entered the room from behind closed shutters on a single, tiny window, and its teeth looked as if they should be inside the mouth of a shark rather than that of a dog.
She searched for a lock… heck, a door on the cage… but found nothing except odd symbols etched into the bars. The entire cage sat inside a painted circle on the cement floor. “How do I release you?”
You must find me.
So… this dream dog-thing was a little dimwitted. “I’ve found you.”
In the other world.
He was definitely not right in the head. Says the person talking to the dog.
“Who put you here?”
Sestiel.
Who was Sestiel? She floated up and looked around what appeared to be a basement. The walls had been built with layers of stone, suggesting older construction. She drifted to a set of dusty shelves, which held only a few label-less cans, a broken pencil, and a glass flask half-full of clear liquid. Oddly, the flask wasn’t dusty. She reached for it, only to have her hand pass through the bottle and the shelves.
Maybe this wasn’t a dream. Maybe she was a ghost. But how had she died? Her memory was a black hole.
A distant pounding startled her, and she spun around to the dog. “What was that?”
What was what?
The pounding came again, a dull knock, growing louder, and she felt herself being pulled toward the sound, her body stretching like taffy. Something soft cradled her body, and light flooded her eyes.