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Bones smashed into one of the fallen angels, crushing him beneath his hooves as he tore at its wings with his teeth. Limos was a whirl of blades as she leaped from the stallion’s back and made the remaining fallen angel bleed from two dozen wounds before he even knew what hit him.

Gunfire rang out at close range, and Bones screamed, rearing up and splashing blood from a baseball-sized hole in his side. It healed almost instantly, but she knew it hurt like hot hell. A bullet pll.scringed off her armor, and dammit, the stupid humans couldn’t tell friend from foe. Arik came to his feet, his eyes blazing with fury. At first, Limos thought the anger was directed at her, but when he charged at a soldier whose M-16 was trained on her… well, she melted a little.

Another set of fallen angels interrupted her mushy appreciation at Arik’s defense of her, one hitting Kynan so hard against the side of the building that when he crumpled to the ground, his arm was skewed in an unnatural angle, the end of the broken bone jutting out of his skin.

“Arik!” she yelled. “We have to go!”

He wheeled around, his fists tangled in the soldier’s shirt. “I’m not leaving.”

She ran to him, followed by Bones, who struck out at demons that tried to attack her flank. “The demons are here because of you. If we go, they’ll go. It’s the humans’ only chance.”

Arik only hesitated for a second before cursing and shoving the stunned soldier away. “Let’s do it.”

Limos opened a gate, grabbed Arik’s hand and Bones’s reins, and darted through the portal. Their feet hit the warm, white sand on Ares’s Greek island, a hundred yards from where she’d killed Sartael. She so did not want to be reminded of that incident, and she prayed Ares and Thanatos would let it go.

“Son of a bitch,” Arik snapped. “How did the demons get on base? It’s warded.”

“Not from underneath,” she said. “And not from the kind of power Lucifer wields. Once the demons came up from below, they disabled the wards, which is how we and the fallen angels got in.”

“Lucifer?”

She nodded. “He told me he’d found you and was going to grab you. Those demons had to be his, and trust me, your people have never come up against anything like him before. And the fact that he can extend his power into the human realm means that the barrier between realms has been compromised. It won’t be long until it falls and every demon in Sheoul will escape.”

“I thought the Seals had to break for that to happen.”

She dug a piece of elk jerky out of Bones’s saddlebags and fed it to him. “The more powerful Pestilence becomes, and the more human earth he claims in the name of Sheoul, the weaker the barrier becomes.”

“That’s fantastic.” Arik carefully tucked his stang in his pants pocket. “So why are we here?”

“Cara sent hellhounds to my island to root out anything that could potentially be a threat or a spy hoping to learn where you are. I need to check with her to make sure it’s clear before I take you back there.” She sighed. “I just hope the helldogs don’t eat any humans.”

Arik gave her that stare that said “dumbass” without words. “Yeah. That would be a bonus.”

She held out her arm. “Bones, to me.” The stallion, his jaws still working on the jerky, dissolved into smoke ed him and settled into her skin without protest.

“Then what?” Arik asked, as he wiped away a stream of blood on his temple. “You gonna take me back to your house and lie to me some more?”

She started toward the front door. “I’m sure you’re a pillar of truth, Arik.”

“I’ve never stolen someone’s memories and lied about it.” Arik fell into step beside her, his combat boots making heavy thuds on the pavers.

“Oh, right. So holier than thou. You’re saying you’ve never lied? Do you tell everyone you meet who you are and who you work for?”

“That’s different. My job is beyond top secret.”

“And what do you tell the women you meet? Do you have to lie to them about your job? About who you are? Do you fuck them with all those lies between