Immortal Rider_ Lords of Deliverance Series_ - Larissa Ione [35]
Harvester had trapped him. Somehow, she’d immobilized him. His heart couldn isn [t c het even beat in panic, but he felt her finger jam into his chest, felt his body tip over so he was on his back, staring up at the gray afternoon sky. A minute later, his vision blurred, but he made out faces above him. Voices around him. He felt hands grab him roughly, and then there was a flash, and suddenly, the massive pain spreading through his chest told him where he was.
Sheoul.
Harvester had flashed him into hell. This was a huge violation of the Watcher covenant. Clearly, Harvester didn’t care.
“Take him into the guest room.”
He wanted to fight, to scream, anything at all, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He could only feel. Sucked that all his other senses had dulled, but that one remained perfectly intact.
Reaver was manhandled as he was carried, and then he was thrown face-down onto what he assumed was a table, and chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles.
He was held fast, unable to move, barely able to think.
“Now, Whine.” Harvester’s eyes gleamed with anticipation as her werewolf minion came forward with a serrated blade—an old bone saw. He’d worked with them at Underworld General, and he knew damned good and well what they looked like.
And as other minions closed in on him, ripped open his shirt and dug into his back to stretch out his wings, he realized he’d soon know what they felt like, too.
Pestilence couldn’t decide if he was in a good mood, or a bad one. That happened a lot lately. Usually he just fucked and killed something, which was always a supercharged Prozac. But today had been a roller coaster of ups and downs, ending with what had happened when he’d watched Harvester take Reaver from the dying village.
He’d seen the fallen angel flirt with Reaver, showing off her tits and ass, and Pestilence had been… jealous.
Why, Pestilence had no idea. He hated Harvester. He wanted to cause her as much misery as he could, which was why he’d tethered Arik’s soul to him—he was going to kill the human and take his soul to the Dark Lord, where he’d use Arik as a bargaining chip. A bargaining chip to get Harvester as his mate.
Yes, he hated her. But she was one of the most powerful females—next to his mother—in all of Sheoul. Having her on his side to rule after the Apocalypse, when he and his siblings would be at war with each other for dominance and control of the earth and of souls, would be advantageous.
It would also be fun, because he’d love forcing her into his bed every night. He would get off on her screams, her tears, her pleas for mercy.
A shiver of delight went through him, followed immediately by a burst of raw rage. His plan had hit a snag. A big one, which he’d learned when he visited Limos, intent on killing Arik in front of her. The moment he’d stepped inside her house, he’d encountered a problem.
He couldn’t sense Arik’s soul, which meant that the human’s soul belonged to someone else.
Some fucker had already staked a claim on it, and now Pestilence had to find that someone else before Arik was killed.
It figured that just as everything was coming together, one thread had begun to unravel.
But that was okay. He’d work it out. He always did. And now that Lucifer had brought Sartael out of whatever prison he’d been in, finding Limos’s agimortus could be only days away.
Pestilence climbed out of the hellhound blood-filled stone pit where he’d bathed to feed his armor, leaving behind the dead bodies of the Amish family he’d enjoyed until they’d died. Time to get to work. He’d finally perfected the plague he’d been working on for weeks, and the human race had a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Nine
For the last hour at least, Arik had stood, back to the wall, eyeing the sandwich and pie. His mouth watered, but his mind was in turmoil. If he ate the food, he’d suffer in ways no man had ever suffered. Well, no man except Arik, because