“Yeah. I remember.” He, his sons, brother, and Ares’s army had chased demon hordes all the way into the Ahaggar Mountains after his wife was killed, and once the demons were boxed in, the slaughter had begun.
“Chaos wasn’t part of the demon-human war. He and his mate brought his pups out of Sheoul to teach them to hunt rats among the carnage. He was young, and it was his first litter. You killed them.”
Ares swallowed. He’d done so much killing in his life, so much of it running together like thousands of rivers of blood into one massive sea. But he remembered his first hellhounds. He’d been so full of hatred after the death of his wife that he’d taken pleasure in slaughtering the female and her young. In Ares’s eyes, they’d been nothing but evil beasts feeding on the corpses of his soldiers.
The ground shifted beneath him. They’d been hunting rats, not eating his men. Not fighting humans.
It was only days later that he’d come back to the command tent to find a giant hellhound standing over the remains of his sons and brother.
Oh, Jesus. Chaos hadn’t started the feud between the two of them. Ares had. For so long, he’d believed Ekkad and his sons had died simply because he’d loved them, that they’d been targets for demons who were striking at Ares. But no, they’d died because Ares had destroyed a family.
“All this time I wanted revenge against him, and he wanted the same against me.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. He still hated the damned thing, but Ares understood him now. “I’ll honor the truce.”
Chaos met his gaze, a mutual understanding passing between them. Neither wanted to cuddle or anything, but they’d give each other a wide berth and pass without swinging.
The hound dematerialized, and without the support, Cara hit the floor.
“Cara!” Ares dropped to his knees beside her and gathered her in his arms. She was unconscious.
Limos kneeled beside him. “Is she—”
“No,” he croaked. “Her pulse is weak, though.” He stood, keeping her close to his chest, and threw open a gate. “I’m taking her to Underworld General.”
The hum of a tattoo gun was the sexiest sound Thanatos had ever heard. Well, not counting the sounds of actual sex, which he avoided like one of Pestilence’s plagues. He loved the buzzing sensation and the bite of pain that vibrated deep into his muscles as the needle moved over the small of his back, and he forced himself not to shift so his aching erection could get a little comfort. That bastard deserved to hurt.
“Almost done.” Orelia, a pale, eyeless Silas demon, wiped his sensitized skin with a cloth and went back to work.
She hadn’t used a template and transfer for the design. She never did. The demon worked off images from her customers’ minds, turning thoughts to art, and in Than’s case, taking scenes of death out of his head and relocating them onto his skin, where they could no longer affect him so strongly. He remembered all the death and destruction he’d seen—and participated in—but once they’d been inked onto the canvas of his body, they no longer haunted.
As a bonus, he got off on the process, the pain, the pleasure. Tattoos and piercings were one of the few ecstasies he allowed himself.
“You’re running out of room,” Orelia said, as if he wasn’t aware of that. Fortunately, her unique talent went beyond bringing thoughts to life. She could layer the images and somehow keep them from obliterating each other. The scenes bled together in harmony, each distinct, yet blended.
“Just finish.”
Her long, bony fingers feathered over the design taken from his recent visit to the dying grounds of Pestilence’s Slovenian epidemic. “This one was particularly bad. Your brother has been busy.”
“What have you heard?” Questioning Orelia was his main reason for coming today. He could have held off getting the tat, but he needed intel, and this female, who got into the heads of her customers, had her finger on the underworld’s pulse.
“You know I can’t discuss things I shouldn’t know.”
Standard answer, standard bullshit, and Than didn’t have time for it. “My brother is amassing an army. I want to know where.”
“How would I know?”
Than whipped his arm around behind him and grabbed her thin wrist, wrenching the tattoo gun away from his skin. In one quick move, he flipped over on the table and dragged Orelia close. Like most Silas demons, her skin was so white the veins beneath were visible, her mouth was a mere slash that revealed black, pointed teeth, and her nose was little more than a bump that framed two gaping holes. Unlike most Silas demons, she had tattooed eyes onto her face.
He allowed his fangs to slice down—since she could snag images out of his mind, she was one of the few people who knew what he was and who he hadn’t killed because of it. Not even his brothers and sister knew. This was a secret he’d kept well.
“I don’t have to tell you what I’m capable of,” he said. “You’ve tattooed it on my body for centuries.”
“If I tell you what I know, my life will be in great danger.”
“I guarantee that I’m more dangerous than any of your other customers.”
The muscles in her throat bounced as she swallowed a few times. “But I don’t want to stop the Apocalypse. I want out of Sheoul. The scenes I can draw on humans…” A gruesome smile split her oval face. She’d once said that on humans, her talent was prophetic. She had special, extra-painful tools for them, and once she tattooed their skin with a scene involving them, it came to pass. And Orelia was very creative. And cruel.
“Do you know what it’s like to die at my hands? After the pain ends, your soul becomes part of me. You’ll be trapped in the darkness of my armor with other souls, tormented with their pain and misery. If the Apocalypse happens, you’re the first person I’m coming for, so you won’t have a chance to play with the humans anyway.” He tightened his grip until she whimpered. “So tell me what I want to know.”
“Rumor has it that my people are flocking to the Horun region. But some of my clients have heard tales of growing excitement in Sithbludd.”
“What else?”
“Pestilence has put out a call to all demons… anyone who brings him the head of an Aegi is promised a place at his side after the Apocalypse, and he’s also started quietly paying a bounty for hellhound ears. That’s all I know. I swear it.”
Than released her and flipped over again. “Good. Now finish.” He had some recon to do.
Twenty-three
Ares stepped out of the Harrowgate into the emergency department at Underworld General Hospital, a facility run by demons to care for underworld creatures. Ares used to think it was crazy, but now he was pretty damned glad it existed.
His boots cracked on the obsidian floor as he crossed to the triage desk, where a sleek, catlike Trillah demon was shuffling papers. She sniffed the air and frowned as he approached. “Human?”
“Yes. She needs help. I want Eidolon.”
“He’s busy—”
“Get me the doctor, because if this human dies, I’m going to turn into your worst nightmare.”
She hissed. “This hospital is protected by an antiviolence spell, so your threats are meaningless—”
“I’m not bound by antiviolence spells,” he roared. “Get. Eidolon.”
“Threatening my staff will get you nothing.” The calm voice came from behind him, and he wheeled around to the very demon doctor he’d been demanding to see.
“It wasn’t a threat. If Cara dies, my Seal breaks. You get what I’m saying?”
Eidolon met Ares’s gaze with a sharp, assessing stare few dared to give him, and Ares admitted to a grudging respect for the guy. This was Eidolon’s turf, and he had to do what it took to keep the place safe. Right now, that meant saving Cara’s life, and he knew that. The doctor, who looked as human as Ares, gestured to a nurse and immediately, two people—shapeshifters of some sort—rushed over and guided Ares to a cubicle.
Ares placed Cara gently on the exam table.
“What happened?” Eidolon snapped on some gloves, and the tribal tat that ran from his fingertips all the way to his neck began to glow. Seminus demons, a rare breed of incubi, possessed abilities that were somehow tied to their arm glyphs. Ares just hoped that whatever Eidolon’s gift was, it would be enough to keep Cara alive.
“She’s dying.” Eidolon nodded as he checked her airway and breathing as one of the shapeshifters, a blonde whose name tag identified her as Vladlena, took Cara’s pulse as the other listened to her heart. “Cara bears my agimortus, and it’s killing her. Her death will break my Seal.”
Frowning, Eidolon looked up. “But you said that if Sin had died, Pestilence’s Seal wouldn’t break.”
“Different kind of agimortus.” Ares gripped Cara’s hand. “And you should know that she’s bonded to a hellhound.”
Eidolon paused as he reached for a pair of shears. “Interesting. Where’s the hellhound?”
“I don’t know.”
“So the animal could be injured?” Eidolon sliced Cara’s blouse up the middle, and a terrible, possessive pain rent Ares apart. Everyone froze, and he must have made some hellacious noise, because they were staring at him as if he’d just bitten the horns off a Croix viper.
“Ah… sorry.” He clenched his fists at his sides, hoping that would keep them from striking out. This was weird, though; he’d never been so possessive of a female in his life. “I’m not usually… it’s just…” God, he was never a stuttering fool, either.
“It’s okay,” Eidolon said wryly. “We get the don’t-touch-my-mate thing around here.”
“She’s not my mate.” Sure, he’d thought of her as his, but the word “mate” implied permanence. Something he and Cara wouldn’t have.
“Riiight.” Eidolon nodded sagely, but real quick Ares figured out that the demon was being a sarcastic ass. “So you always tell doctors you’re going to rip their heads off and decorate your mantel with them then?”