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Heart racing like she’d run a marathon, she practically hurled herself out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen, where she sent a quick text to Thanatos to bring some clothes. Then she settled in to doing the only thing she could think of to help Arik; feed him. She slapped together a sandwich piled high with sliced turkey, cut a wedge of banana cream pie, and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge.

The sound of footsteps froze her to the floor before she’d taken three steps back to the counter.

Reseph.

She’d know the cadence of his saunter anywhere. Except he wasn’t Reseph anymore, and though ninety-nine percent of the time she was well aware of that fact, sometimes she slipped, her mind taking her back to memories of him doing something familiar, like bopping through her house looking to party, or pestering her into going to a movie with him.

“Hey, sis,” he drawled, as he set up shop in the doorway, his big, armored body blocking the way to Arik’s room. “Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your pathetic human pet?”

“He escaped, you liar.”

“He got out of his cell,” Pestilence countered, “but I got him to the hellmouth entrance before demons got him. Granted, I left him in worse condition than I found him, but there’s always a trade-off, isn’t there?”

“You,” she snarled. “You’re the reason he was so battered.”

He shrugged, one of the spiked metal shoulder plates carving a deep groove into the white paint on the doorjamb. “I didn’t do anything his captors hadn’t done to him. Or would have done to him if you hadn’t gotten to him before Sartael’s team did.”

“You’re despicable.”

Pestilence clutched his chest dramatically. “You wound me.”

Oh, she’d like to wound him, all right. “What do you want? I did what you as Sd wence clutcked, so get the hell out of my house.”

Her brother fingered the engraved bow-and-arrow symbol on the back of his gauntlet. The right touch would pop a real weapon into his hand, and Limos hoped he didn’t suddenly decide to put an arrow between her eyes.

“I came to give you a heads-up,” he said, halting the finger play.

She stared. “Really.”

“Yup.” The amused glint in his eyes grew sinister, and his lips peeled back from fangs as long as her pinky. “I fed from your boy. He’s smooth going down. When your Seal breaks, you can see for yourself.”

Fury that he’d stuck those fangs into Arik was a gasoline fire in her veins. Her brother had committed violence against Arik, had hurt and used him, but there was an envious element to her anger, as well. Pestilence had been intimate with Arik… granted, the intimacy was sick and twisted, but there was definitely a forced closeness to feeding, to the penetration, and she had no doubt her brother had gotten off on what he’d done.

Even though she wanted to hurl one of the knives from the butcher block at Pestilence’s head, she didn’t give her brother the satisfaction.

“My Seal isn’t going to break,” she said calmly.

“It will.” Pestilence pushed off the doorframe. “That’s the only reason I haven’t killed the human yet. I want you to be the one who does it. I want to watch when you drink him to death.”

“Why would it matter to you if he’s dead?”

“Because,” he said, his voice as dark as the black stuff leaking from the joints of his armor, “he fed from me too. Which means that when he dies, his soul is mine. And I have plans for it.”

Horror clamped down hard on Limos’s throat, squeezing so viciously she couldn’t breathe, and she fought the urge to launch herself at him.

When she could speak again, her voice was a raw rasp. “Why? Why would you do that?”

But before the question was even fully out of her mouth, she knew. Every soul Pestilence took made him stronger, but this went far beyond that.

“Yeah,” Pestilence drawled. “You know why. You always had more brains than boobs.” He flashed his fangs. “Your husband will give me anything I want in trade for Arik’s soul.”

Her calm evaporated. She snatched up a butcher knife and hurled it with all her strength.