Immortal Rider_ Lords of Deliverance Series_ - Larissa Ione [64]
“You’re rusty, Limos. The Prince of Lies will want his Princess of Lies to have skills befitting the title.” Lucifer smiled, his blackened lips cracking. “Speaking of which, I have an offer for you. Go to the Dark Lord, and I will call off my minions.”
Bones pawed at the ground, wanting a piece of the demon, and Limos was right there with him. “A, you could use some ChapStick. B, what minions?”
“The ones who are awaiting my signal to bring Arik to me, now that Sartael has found him.”
She smiled. “Now who’s lying? Sartael’s power in the human realm is limited to finding demons and demonic artifacts.”
“Silly, stupid girl,” Lucifer drawled. “Arik’s soul belongs to a demon. Therefore, he’s a demonic artifact.” Limos’s oh-shit meter topped out, then blew the lid off at Lucifer’s next words. “And I’m going to deliver him straight to your husband.” Lucifer’s boneless gait brought him even closer, and she forced Bones to dig his hooves into the earth to keep Ares from shoving them through the gate. “You should have been his a long time ago, Limos. You have played very loose with the terms of your contract, and he is not… pleased.”
Her heart ricocheted around her chest as if seeking a way out. If her brothers knew how loose, they’d toss her to Lucifer themselves.
“And your mother…” Lucifer affected a sad expression. “She’s so disappointed in you. She raised you to be more responsible.”
Thanatos eased Styx closer to Bones. “How irresponsible of Li to not want to enter into an arranged marriage with the most evil being to have ever existed.”
“Limos is the envy of every female in the underworld. She knew what he was when she agreed to be his mate,” Lucifer pointed out.
That was true. Oh, God, was that ever true. She’d been promised to him as an infant, but had willingly stood before him to pledge her intentions later, as a teen who was fully aware of what she was doing.
But she’d changed her mind, and it was all crashing down on her now, and she wondered when she’d be crushed under the weight of the fallout.
“She didn’t agree.” Ares’s voice dripped with disdain. “This was forced on her as a child, against her will.”
Oh, fuck. She tensed up so hard that Bones groaned at the pressure of her thighs against his ribs. Lucifer’s head swiveled around slowly, creepily. The sinister smile on his face was something right out of a horror movie.
“Is that what she told you?” Throwing his head back, Lucifer laughed.
In a sudden, blind burst of panic, she cast a Harrowgate next to Lucifer, using it as a weapon. It sliced into him like a giant blade, severing his left arm, shaving his shoulder from his torso.
The sound he made, one of pain, fury, and hatred, blasted her ears with such force that her eardrums burst. Pain exploded in her head, and a chorus of yelps and shouts said it was torture on her brothers and the hellhound, too. The ground rumbled, and Lucifer morphed into a dinosaur-sized monster, a black, scaly thing with grotesquely misshapen limbs and exaggerated teeth and genitals. It raked the hound with its claws, ripping gaping wounds the length of Gore’s body.
Before she could react, Ares and Battle rammed her through his gate.
Limos and Bones came out in Ares’s courtyard. And they weren’t alone. Bones spun as Sartael burst out of her Harrowgate. He leaped for her, and though Bones caught him in the ankle with his teeth, the fallen angel managed to knock her out of the saddle. They hit the ground and rolled, throwing punches and slashing with weapons.
His hand came around her throat, and he slammed her head hard into a rock. Bones screamed in fury, and his hooves filled her vision. Wet, cracking noises became one with Sartael’s shriek of pain as Bones’s feet went right through his back and out his chest, pinning him in the sand.
Limos scrambled out from under him, grateful that the hell stallion’s hooves had missed her. As her burst eardrums knit back together,