Her mind went sluggish, her struggles weakening as oxygen deprivation took its toll. Images flipped through her brain, but not the ones she’d have expected while on the brink of death.
People lied about your life flashing before your eyes, because all she could see was Thanatos. She remembered how he looked when he was coming, how his body strained and his muscles bunched and rolled. She remembered the sound of his voice, his laugh.
And she remembered the expression on his face when he realized she’d betrayed him.
She was going to die, and it would all have been for nothing.
In her belly, the baby kicked, harder and harder, as if it too knew the end was near. The vampire smiled.
“I can sense the life within you,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy feeling it snuff out.” His hand went to her swollen abdomen, and in her mind, she screamed.
“Could you two be any louder?” A stranger’s voice joined the scream in her mind and the thud of her pulse in Regan’s ears, just as a breeze whispered over her skin.
In the next instant, the vampire flew sideways and she was ripped out of his grip. She had only a split second to see the other vampire who had joined the party before he flung her aside. She hit the floor behind the podium and sat there, gasping for air as the newcomer, one she definitely recognized as one of Thanatos’s daywalker servants, attacked the vampire who had been trying to kill her.
The newcomer slammed his fist into the first vamp’s head, sending him reeling into the wall. Before he could recover, the new vampire shoved a splinter of wood—where he’d gotten it, she had no idea—into the other vamp’s chest. The first vampire hissed even as his body began to blacken and crack into dust.
The surviving vampire limped over to her, fury and pain mingling in his eyes. “You betrayed Thanatos,” he growled. “You betrayed us all.”
She wasn’t sure about the “all” thing, but the rest was true enough. “Then why did you save me?”
“Save you?” The vampire gestured to the ashy mess that used to be his brethren. “He was merely going to kill you. I’m taking you to Thanatos.” He grinned. “Trust me, I didn’t save you.”
Two
The only thing worse than being paralyzed and trapped inside your own skull, unable to move or speak, was being kept like that by your own brother and sister.
For eight and a half endless, insanity-inducing months, Thanatos, fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, had been kept in a bed with nothing but a TV for company. Well, every twelve hours he was visited by someone from Underworld General Hospital to inject him with paralyzing hellhound saliva, change his hydrating saline IV bag, and give him a humiliating sponge bath before changing his sweat pants. But usually whoever visited was wham, bam, thank you, ma’am and all business. And sure, his sister, Limos, third Horseman, and Ares, second Horseman, hung out with him, but Ares wasn’t all that talkative.
Limos was a chatterbox, but Than didn’t really give a shit about what color nail polish she’d put on that morning or how she and her husband, a human named Arik, were planning a European honeymoon after the Apocalypse was over.
And seriously, a honeymoon? Wasn’t it a little late for that? And it wasn’t as if Limos didn’t live on an island paradise anyway, so every freaking day was a honeymoon for them.
Bitter much, Than-boy?
Yeah, there might be some jealousy there. Because as sick as it sounded, the one thing that had kept Than sane over the thousands of years he’d been alive was the fact that Ares and Limos were as alone as he was. But now Ares and Limos were both married and happy, and he was left paralyzed, miserable, and ripping a massive hatred for the female who had put him here.
Regan.
Ever since he’d been cursed as the Horseman who would become Death when his Seal broke, he’d believed that his Seal was his virginity. He’d guarded his dick like it was the freaking Hope Diamond. He might have been an unpinned grenade ready to blow with sexual need, but dammit, he’d kept himself all virginal and shit.
Until Regan came along, with her seductive body, her devious plot, and her drugged mead. She’d managed to get him na**d, get him immobilized, and get him off. The why of it still wasn’t clear, since not once, in all of Limos’s and Ares’s ramblings, had they brought up the Aegis Guardian. And the fact that she was a Guardian, one of the human warriors who existed to rid the world of demons, only made her actions more mystifying.
Guardians didn’t want to start the Apocalypse, so either she was secretly working against The Aegis, or she hadn’t thought that f**king him would break his Seal.
But if it was the latter … why had she gone to extremes to get him in bed? As a larger-than-life legend, he might have starfucker appeal, and sure, he knew he was handsome, but resorting to drugs and her supernatural ability in order to get what she wanted?
Fury slithered through him, as hot as the lust he’d felt when he’d been beneath Regan, her wet heat clenching around his cock. God, it had been good. For centuries he’d fantasized about being with a female, had imagined all the ways he’d take her. His favorite fantasy had always been with her on all fours and him mounting her from behind, his chest sealed to her back by their sweat, his weight holding her steady for his thrusts.
For these past months, when his mind had drifted to sex, Regan had been that female on her hands and knees.
His c*ck jerked in response to the direction of his thoughts, pissing him off. His dick had no business getting hard for her, and on his arm, his stallion, Styx, kicked, sensing his master’s emotions. The horse, currently in a tattoo-like form, had been stuck on his skin, as paralyzed as Than had been—
Wait. His c*ck was hard, his horse was stirring … which meant the hellhound venom was wearing off.
Thanatos’s heartbeat went double-time as hope shot through him. Maybe his siblings were finally allowing him to be free. Oh, man, if so… he had serious plans. First, he was going to kick Limos’s and Ares’s asses. Then he was going to have sex.
Lots and lots of sex.
Before Regan, avoiding sex hadn’t been difficult because he hadn’t known what he was missing. But now he knew, and his body craved it almost as much as it craved revenge. And wasn’t revenge going to be sweet. He couldn’t decide if he was going to kill Regan or f**k her. Maybe both. Not in that order, though. He wasn’t a complete sicko.
The door creaked open. Ares’s heavy footsteps were accompanied by Limos’s whisper-light ones and the click of hellhound claws on the floor.
“Hey, bro,” Limos chirped, as if Thanatos was hanging out for fun. His hands began to clench, but quickly, he locked up his muscles, forcing himself to remain still.
Ares changed the channel on the TV they’d mounted above his bed. “Sorry about that,” he grunted. “Someone must have bumped the remote. A cubic zirconia-fest on the Home Shopping Network couldn’t have been too exciting.”
Oh, no, really. I was just thinking about how great a gold filigree necklace and teardrop earrings would look on me, and at seventy-five ninety-nine plus shipping, it’s a freaking steal. But damn, I missed the deal because, oh, that’s right, I’m f**king frozen.
Limos’s hand came down on Than’s biceps, and he struggled to keep from twitching. “Hey…look…we have to tell you something.” Her voice was low and serious, and shit, this couldn’t be good. “I know you can probably feel the disruption in the world, and it’s gotta be making you crazy.”
Crazy? Try ceiling-licking, rabies-frothing, dish-ran-away-with-the-spoon in-fucking-sane. Limos and Ares had been keeping him up to date on Pestilence’s exploits, but they hardly needed to. Thanks to his curse, Than could feel mass casualties around the globe, was drawn to them like a junkie to he**in. Obviously, being paralyzed had put the brakes on his ability to travel to them, but the pull was still there, swirling around his insides like smoke from a crematorium.
“It’s about to get worse,” Ares said. “Pestilence’s plagues have caused war and famine and death all over the globe. It’s why we haven’t been around much. We’ve been spending way too much time at the sites of the worst of it.”
Limos and Ares suffered similar curses as Than; Ares was drawn to scenes of large-scale battles, and Limos was tugged to famines. And yeah, Than had noticed that they hadn’t been around to keep him entertained. At least Cara, Ares’s wife, had been there. She read to Thanatos a lot, and he didn’t think he could ever thank her enough for that.
So why is it about to get worse? He wanted to scream at them, could feel his left hand, which was concealed at his side, begin to curl into a fist.
“Last week, Pestilence claimed Australia in the name of Sheoul.”
Oh, shit. Demons who were normally bound to Sheoul—what humans called hell—could now occupy Australia. A country that size could host millions of demons and allow for them to set the stage for a massive global attack. Demons had, since the beginning of time, desired to kick off the Apocalypse in order to defeat mankind and take the Earth as a trophy, and with Australia in their pockets, they’d just lobbed the ball that much closer to the end zone.
What about the humans?
Limos, who had always been in sync with his thoughts, answered as though she’d heard him. “Any humans who didn’t evacuate are … lost.”
“We got a few out.” Ares’s voice turned bleak. “Kynan, Limos, Arik and I got a few.”
“It’s bad,” Limos said. “But the good news is that The Aegis found a way to close the hellmouths. It’s temporary … the magic they’re using is being eaten away by demon countermagic, but it’s slowed mass demon movement.” She patted his arm. “Be patient, Than. Only a couple of weeks left to go, and we’ll release you.”
A couple of weeks? Why then?
Ares squeezed Than’s foot. “Someone will be here in a couple of hours for your next injection. We’ll be back when we can.”