Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [34]
“Perhaps.”
Ares ran his mind through dozens of scenarios, and yes, now that Sestiel had a hellhound in his possession, he could use it as leverage to gain the cooperation of the animal’s pack. If so, he’d have to visit the only summoning circle outside Sheoul that was dedicated to hellhounds.
Looked like Easter Island would be Ares’s next stop.
Battle kicked impatiently on Ares’s arm. You’ll get your fight soon enough, buddy. “How many of you are left?”
“A dozen, maybe,” she said. A dozen? Jesus. Fully a hundred must have been killed or given over their souls to Sheoul. Tristelle gazed up at him with pleading eyes. “You said you can help?”
“I lied.”
Panic drained the color out of her face. “What can we do?”
“Pray.” Ares gestured to the entrance to Lilith’s temple. “And this time, don’t waste your time praying to a demon.”
Blood streamed in fat rivulets down Sestiel’s arms and legs. His throat had been slashed, his torso flayed open. None of the wounds would kill him, but death was coming for him nevertheless.
The sound of hoofbeats clanged painfully inside his head, as if someone was tapping a hammer against his skull. Sestiel stumbled down the rock face of the mountain he’d flashed himself to after Pestilence found him on Easter Island. He’d hoped to find Tristelle at the Temple of Lilith, but according to a worshipper, he’d just missed her.
He inched along a sloping ledge, praying Pestilence wouldn’t follow, but he knew better. Pestilence had drawn blood, and his demon stallion could now track Sestiel wherever he went, even if he was clinging to the hellhound pup in his basement.
Weakened by battle and blood loss, Sestiel lost his footing and tumbled over a cliff. He caught air, and for a lingering, weightless moment, he could pretend he still had wings. Could almost feel them stretching in a graceful arc behind him like phantom limbs.
But angels ousted from Heaven had their wings docked, and unless he redeemed himself, ghost feathers were all he had. There was one other way to get wings, but completing his fall by entering Sheoul, the demon realm humans called hell, had never been an option. Sestiel might have fallen, but his faith in the good and holy would not be shaken.
He held on to that thought as he hit the ground, the impact snapping bones and wrenching a cry of agony from his lips. He could barely breathe, but he dragged himself to a boulder and used the crevices as handholds to pull himself up.
He couldn’t fail. He had to perform one final service to mankind. To his Lord.
But thanks to Pestilence and his army of minions, Sestiel had nearly run out of Unfallen to transfer the agimortus to, and now he couldn’t afford the time it would take to hunt down one of the remaining few. Which left only humans as hosts. Humans, who would die within hours of receiving it.
It was possible, however, that if the human had been supernaturally enhanced, he would be stronger, last longer under the agimortus’s life-draining burden.
While he still had time, he closed his eyes and gulped the tiny vial of blood he’d taken from the hellhound after he’d flashed into the basement where he kept the pup and saw the human female’s disembodied spirit fleeing, a clear sign that she was bonded to the beast. His gut wrenched as the poison entered his belly, but awareness filtered through the nausea, hazy and distant. The human woman, Cara… he could feel her…
Light flashed before him, and the hoofbeats in his head became a raging thunder in his ears. Dressed in dull armor that creaked as his white warhorse galloped, Pestilence loosed an arrow.
Sestiel lurched to the side, but the arrow adjusted course like a guided missile and pierced him in the heart.
“You can run, but you’ll just die tired.” The Horseman’s shout reverberated off the mountain and brought stones and clumps of dirt raining down. “That’s a human military saying, but it’s so appropriate, don’t you think?”
Sestiel’s vision swam as a blood bay stallion leaped onto the scene through a veil of light, its rider guiding the beast