Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [38]
Furious as Ares was at Sestiel’s fate, he kept his voice even, unwilling to give his brother the satisfaction of seeing him riled. “You must be so disappointed that you didn’t break my Seal.”
Reseph’s eyes flashed unholy crimson. “It’s only a matter of time. I’ll find that human whore Sestiel transferred it to, and then you’ll join me on the side of win.” He swung up onto Conquest, his stallion. Battle snapped his teeth, but Conquest danced out of the way of the strike. “Because evil will win, Ares. Good has far too many limitations.”
A portal opened, and in a whoosh of air displacement, Conquest and Pestilence were gone.
Shit.
Ares glanced around the city—York, England. He’d recognize it blindfolded. Bloody battles had been fought here over the centuries, and he’d been drawn to them all.
He inhaled the layers of odor, from the ancient stench of chamberpot sewage and slaughter house waste to the modern scents of auto fumes and Earl Grey tea. Swirling throughout was the faint funk of hellhound that had clung to Sestiel.
Automatically, Ares fingered his Seal. Sestiel had transferred the agimortus before he died, and Ares had no doubt it had been transferred to Cara—she had been the only human able to see what was happening, which was a side-effect of being bonded to a hellhound… but the big clue had been how his armor and weapons had returned to normal strength after she took off. But where had she gone? He wondered if she’d located her hell beast.
And if she truly understood what had happened to her.
He swung around in the direction she’d gone. All around him, the membrane separating Ares’s plane from the human one began to crack as the concentration he needed to maintain the quantamun fragmented. Select beings like angels and the Horsemen used the supernatural plane to move amongst humans at a different frequency, a million times faster than their eyes could see. Once it collapsed, he’d be visible to the humans.
A portable Harrowgate opened, and smoky shadows billowed out, followed by Thanatos. “What happened?”
“Reseph killed Sestiel, but not before the angel transferred the agimortus.”
“That’s good news. Why so glum?”
“Because he transferred it to a human.” A vision of Cara, shot through with one of Pestilence’s arrows, flashed in his head. And that was a best-case scenario. “Our Watchers said the agimortus isn’t meant to be borne by a human. It’ll kill her.”
Thanatos adjusted the weapons harness criss-crossing his plate armor. “What the hell was Sestiel thinking?”
Ares swallowed a curse. He’d been so busy hunting Sestiel that he’d not filled in his brother and sister on the hellhound crap. Quickly, he brought Than up to speed.
Than let out a low whistle. “Hellhounds don’t bond with humans. In all our time, I’ve never heard of one.”
“Tell the hellhound that,” Ares said sourly. “You got anything helpful, because I could use some good news.” He supposed it was good that Pestilence couldn’t sense Cara, but then, neither could Ares.
Styx tossed his head, and Than reached down to pat the stallion’s neck until he settled. “I did squeeze some information out of another of Reseph’s minions. He hasn’t located Deliverance, but he’s got demons digging up ancient burial grounds all over the world, and in a lot of places we’ve already been over while seeking Limos’s agimortus.”
Fan-fucking-tastic. It had taken centuries to even figure out what Limos’s Seal-breaker was. They’d finally determined that somewhere in the world was a small cup or bowl that, if drunk from, would break her Seal. They’d never found it.
Thanatos was the lucky one—his virginity was the Seal. Though if that could be called lucky… Ares shuddered.
“We’re too fractured,” Ares said. “We don’t have the manpower to search for Limos’s agimortus, locate Deliverance, and protect Cara. We’ve got to focus.