Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [27]
When it was over, she sank down next to him, partly because her legs wouldn’t support her, and partly because she needed to feed. Silently, because he wasn’t allowed to speak unless she told him to, he tilted his head to the side, exposing his jugular. The shackles around his ankles clanked as she shifted to sink her fangs into his neck, and it occurred to her that her chains might be invisible, but she was just as much a prisoner to her fate as he was.
Frustration made her rougher than she normally would be with Whine, and he jerked with each of her vicious pulls on his vein. But dammit, the last two days had been hell… no pun intended. Her fury—and thirst for revenge—was why she’d destroyed his cave. She’d needed to strike back, even if the blow was a minor one.
The problem? Reaver. She hadn’t known the do-gooding angel was in the caves when she’d collapsed the mountain. She could have told him the truth when he’d attacked her, but he wouldn’t have believed her, and worse, she’d have been left trying to explain why she’d wanted to demolish Pestilence’s old residence in the first place.
And now, if Reaver didn’t keep his big mouth shut, Pestilence would find out that she’d been the one to destroy his cave.
She shuddered, remembering how, after he was through with her in that Mexican villa, he’d crouched over her naked, broken body and whispered roughly in her ear.
That was just a taste of what I will do to you next time. You answer to me now, not the other way around. Remember that. Piss me off again, and I’ll rip you a new asshole and then fuck it. And that’s just the foreplay.
Oh, she hated him. Right now, she and Reaver couldn’t do much more than monitor the Horsemen’s activities and report back to their bosses, and anything they did do to help or any information they provided had to be cleared first by said bosses. Information such as how Ares’s agimortus could be transferred to humans… that tidbit had been okayed for revealing just yesterday. Why, she didn’t know. She’d learned long ago that she, along with most every other being in the universe, was nothing but a game piece.
Now she just had to figure out how to play. Because as terrified as she’d been at times over the thousands of years she’d been in Sheoul, it was nothing compared to how afraid she was right now. Armageddon was right around the corner, and for the first time, she wasn’t sure if her life in hell would be worse if evil lost… or if it won.
Five
Still torqued from the conversation with Reaver and Harvester, Ares knocked on Cara’s front door and waited. And waited. Just as he raised his fist to knock again, he heard footsteps, and then a muffled, “Who is it?”
“Name’s, ah, Jeff.” That was a common human name, wasn’t it? “I wanted to check on the dog I dropped off last night.” She wouldn’t remember the dog, thanks to his memory deletions, but it would be interesting to see how she handled this.
Silence. More silence. Then, finally, came the metallic clicks of the multitude of locks being manipulated. The door cracked open, but only as far as the chain would allow. Those chains were ridiculous. Any normal-sized male could force the door, and Ares wasn’t normal. He could break it with his pinky.
“Dog?”
Put her at ease. Smile. Create explanations for everything that seemed odd this morning. “Yeah. You know, the injured dog I brought you last night.”
Her eyes flared in what he suspected might be recognition. He hoped to hell not. His mind-wipes might not be as effective as Than’s or Limos’s—she could actually replace memories—but they still did the job. Maybe the hellhound bond had affected his ability.
“Who are you?” she asked. “You’re not from around here.”
“I’m thinking about moving here. Staying with cousins in town until I find a place. They told me you’re a vet.” He hoped he’d gotten that detail right, and that all the stuff in her office was actually hers.
“I’m not,” she said with a strange hitch in her voice. “Not really.”
What was that supposed to mean? He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried