Immortal Rider

Twenty

Arik did not want to talk about himself. Limos was much more interesting, but when she rubbed her palm in a slow circle over his chest, he fell into a lulling sort of trance and forgot why he didn’t want to talk.

Limos cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something?”

If that wasn’t a prelude to a question that was going to be hard to answer, he didn’t know what was. “You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer or that you’ll like what I say.”

She nodded, cleared her throat again. “Runa said you wouldn’t like yourself if you knew what you’d done to her, and Shade said your father was abusive, that you used to protect Runa and your mother.”

“So?” He knew he was being defensive, but this was one of the very few subjects he didn’t like to talk about.

“So… tell me.”

He eyed her sideways. “That’s not a question.”

“You sound like Ares,” she grumbled. “Okay, let’s try this. Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

“Did you kill them?” She asked with such matter-of-fact innocence, as if killing your parents was a normal thing to do. What different worlds they’d grown up in.

“Suicide and cancer took them.”

Limos resumed the circling of her palm over his chest. The sensation was amazingly intimate. “How did you protect your mother and sister? I mean, you were a child, right?”

Seriously, he did not want to talk about this. But Limos worked him like a master interrogator, except she got him to talk with pleasure instead of pain. As her fingers traced a tingly path from one nipple to the other, he cracked like a thin-shelled egg.

“I ran interference,” he said, gruffly. “When my old man was beating on one of them, I pissed him off so much that he turned on me.” Oh, but that wasn’t all. By the time he hit his teens, he’d learned to bargain. I’ll get booze for you, if you stop hitting mom. I’ll score you some weed if you’ll lay off Runa. I’ll fetch that prostitute off Third and Division if you’ll stop making mom scream at night.

Eventually, he’d learned the art of threats, too. If you make mom or Runa bleed again, I’ll go to the cops. And finally, after three days of no food in the house because their dad had spent all the money on booze, Arik had hit rock bottom too. Go to AA and clean up right now, or I swear, I’ll make you feel everything you’ve done to us.

That had led to a physical altercats mur, I’ll ion between the two of them that had ended in Arik’s broken arm and his father’s missing teeth. And nothing changed. Not until Arik went to the “weird guy” in school, the one who always wore black, sketched skulls and pentagrams on his notebook covers, and said he worshipped the devil.

Runa always believed that it was their mother who had given their father the ultimatum that made him get sober and become a model father, but no, it was Arik and the weird guy, who summoned a demon and made a deal that Arik had regretted with every fiber of his being.

“How did you get out of that situation?” Limos asked.

For a long moment, he lay there, listening to the sounds of the thunderstorm puttering out and a hellhound howling nearby. Who would ever have thought that the eerie sound of a hellhound would be a comfort? But that was the world he was in now, one that had changed radically in the last couple of years, and even more in the last few days. Especially for him.

“This is one of those questions you won’t answer, isn’t it?” Limos sighed. Limos, who had become the biggest part of his new world. And hell, since her brother had claimed his soul, he supposed it couldn’t hurt to tell her it wasn’t the first time that had happened.

“How did I get out of the situation? I sold my soul to a demon who promised to make my father go sober and straight.”

Limos shot straight up, her raven hair falling forward to cover her breasts, which was a shame. “You did what?”

“Yeah, it was stupid. But I was desperate. Convinced that the next time my old man got violent, he’d kill Runa or my mom.” He reached up to play with a strand of her silky hair. “It worked. He got sober and stopped beating the shit out of us and cheating on mom, but then he got lung cancer, and our mom committed suicide, so I sold my soul for nothing I guess.”

“How long?” Limos rasped.

“How long what? Until he died?”

“How long until the demon collects?”

“He already tried. Remember when I said I was bitten by a demon? That was his calling card. I was supposed to die, but Shade saved me.”

“What kind of demon?” She gripped his leg so fiercely he knew he’d have bruises by morning. “What species did you sell your soul to?”

“Charnel Apostle. Why?”

Limos jumped to her feet, startling him. “Get dressed.” She snatched her bikini top out of the sand. “Hurry. We have to find this demon.”

He tugged on his pants. “He failed to kill me. The contract is broken.”

“No,” she said, her voice laden with impatience, “it isn’t. Charnel Apostles never allow for out clauses.” She cursed in a few different demon languages. “Gah. That’s why Pestilence hasn’t killed you. I wondered about that, but now it makes sense.”

“Not to me.” He slipped on his shirt and helped her tie her bikini strings in the back while she lifted her hair. “Interesting tat.” He frowned at the set of scales, which he’d swear had been weighted differently the last time he saw it.

“We don’t have time for tats,” she said, spinning around to him. “My brother tethered your soul, but someone else has a claim on it. In order to get it for himself, he has to buy it from the other demon. Or, more likely, kill the dude. We have to get to that demon first.”

“How?”

She fiddled with her navel ring as she spoke, her words spilling like a dam had broken. “I’ve seen Gethel perform rituals to bargain for souls before. We need an angel. And some blood from everyone who participated in the summoning of the demon who took your soul.”

Arik shook his head. “That’s impossible. The guy who did it died in prison a few years ago. But that’s good news, right? It means Pestilence can’t find the demon, either.”

Limos’s creative curses blistered his ears. “No. Pestilence will be able to sense the holder of the soul he’s trying to claim. We’re screwed.”

“In more ways than one, I think.” He gestured down the beach at Thanatos jogging toward them. Thankfully, they were dressed, but the guy wasn’t an idiot, and if he had a single brotherly instinct, he’d… yep… the Horseman’s eyes narrowed as he approached, and Arik readied himself for Death Match: Part Two.

Fortunately, though Than gave Arik a look that spelled out L-A-T-E-R, he didn’t pull a big brother.

“Human.” Thanatos’s voice was as dark as his expression. “You said you can learn any demon language.”

“Yeah. Why.”

Thanatos held out a slip of parchment. “Can you read them?”

“What’s this about?” Limos asked, as Arik took the page and studied the strange scribblings.

“I have Regan going over everything I’ve found about your agimortus. She said that this piece of Isfet writing felt angry, but I don’t know what it says. I was hoping your boy here could translate.”

Arik shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t read demon languages. Just speak them.”

“Dammit,” Than snarled. He glanced down at the messy towel and churned up sand, and those damned shadows started swirling around his feet.

Not good. With the Horseman’s focus off the agimortus, it was locking in on Arik and Limos. Think fast… “Why don’t you just ask an Isfet? Or do they not exist anymore?”

“They exist,” Limos said, “but no one but the Isfet know their language. That’s why most of what we think we know about my agimortus is legend and not fact.”

Arik slapped the parchment into Limos’s palm. “Then let’s go find an Isfet,fin why most because you’ve got yourself an interpreter.”

Arik’s soul might still be the rope in a tug-o-war, and Limos might still be engaged to Mr. 666, but if they could secure her agimortus, it would be a huge win for the good guys. And as long as Thanatos could keep his Seal from breaking, having Limos’s Seal safe would mean that everyone could shift their focuses from her to stopping Pestilence.

This could be the much-needed break the R-XR and The Aegis had been looking for. Arik grinned.

Pestilence could suck it.

Limos and Arik waited for Ares and Thanatos at the Temple of Limos, which was the only temple constructed for the Horsemen that wasn’t inside Sheoul. Limos’s temple existed inside a bubble of sorts, where the demon and human realms met and where both humans and demons could walk, but neither could pass into the other’s realm. This bubble was deep inside an ancient Incan cave that Limos doubted had seen a human in hundreds of years.

From the looks of the temple, it hadn’t seen demons either.

She looked around at the dust and crumbling stone altars. “This is really insulting.”

Arik kneeled next to a time-bleached skeleton chained to the wall. “Why are all these skeletons here?”

“They were sacrifices to me.”

Her boots clacked on the floor as she moved to one of the altars, where a bunch of colored stones had been laid out in the pattern of a set of scales. Under her armor, her own scales, the tattoo, remained balanced, which was a relief. It tended to tip to evil when she was in one of the bubbles or inside Sheoul.

Grimacing, Arik stood. “Nice.”

She watched him wander around the temple, studying its marble walls, every inch of which was engraved with symbols or writing. When he stopped in front of a carving of her and her brothers standing before kneeling humans and demons, he traced his finger over her image, and she swore she felt his touch on her skin.

“You and your brothers are close, but what’s supposed to happen if all of your Seals break?”

“I think, after the Apocalypse is over and evil has won, we’re supposed to be at war with each other.” The very idea made her sick.

“I can’t imagine going to war with Runa,” he said, dropping his hand from the carving.

She smiled. “We have that in common.”

Their love for their siblings had made them both go to extremes. She kept harmful secrets from her brothers, and Arik had sold his soul for his sister. Limos was still reeling from that revelation, but in a small way, it was actually good news. It meant that Pestilence didn’t own Arik’s soul—yet. As soon as they were done here, she was going to grill Arik for every drop of information she could get about thd geant this demon. They had to find him before Pestilence did.

Arik moved on to a wall that was covered in huge blocks of lettering. “What does all of this say? Looks like a couple different languages.”

She nodded. “Some is in Latin, but most is in Sheoulic.” She ran her finger over a block of black lettering in the gray stone. “This is the legend of our origins.” She pointed to another section. “That’s a wedding program of sorts.”

A curious, dark anger rolled off his body, but she instinctively knew it wasn’t directed at her. “What’s it say?”

“A bunch of crap from my contract, mostly.” Assuming he knew Sheoulic, she read the words aloud. “The daughter of Lilith shall be married by the blood of an angel no more, and the pearls of virtue shall then be broken by her husband.”

His expression turned both thoughtful and angry, and she swore she heard him growl. Inexplicably, she was a little… turned on… by his reaction to the wedding plans. He twined his fingers in hers and tugged her a little closer, and she let out a happy sigh as Ares and Than entered, a tall, green-skinned Isfet walking between them.

Ares remained at the door as Than led the Isfet inside. “I don’t think he knows why he’s here. We couldn’t really communicate.”

“How’d you get him to come with you?” Arik asked.

Than shrugged. “We kidnapped him.”

Kidnapping was so something Reseph would have done, and she couldn’t help but smile. “You will return him without the Neethul learning of this, right?” The Neethul kept the Isfet as slaves, and they were experts in the art of cruel punishment. No doubt the Isfet would be blamed for his own kidnapping.

“Of course,” Ares said.

Than grinned. “And if any Neethul find out, we’ll make sure they can’t repeat it to anyone else.” Now that was one hundred percent Thanatos. He glanced over at Arik. “Ball’s in your court, human.”

Arik, who had changed into black BDUs and was loaded down with weapons Kynan had brought to Limos’s house before they left, turned his attention to the Isfet. “Greetings,” he said, in perfect Sheoulic. “We would like to ask you some questions.”

The Isfet, who Limos assumed was a male, though she wasn’t sure why, blinked his big, round eyes. “This demon you ask?”

Right. She’d forgotten how bad their Sheoulic was.

Arik sank down on one of the benches, and she got the impression he was trying to look non-threatening. Though with his chest harness and gun belt, she didn’t think it worked. It did add an extra layer of sexy to him, though.

“Can you speak to me in your language?”

The Isfet nodded, his long, spindly fingers curling around his walking staff. “Is I know?”

“Criminy.” Arik scrubbed his hand over his face as he looked at Limos. “No wonder you’ve had a hard time talking to them.”

The demon’s skin changed color like a chameleon’s, turning sparkly silver, and he said something in the Isfet language. Arik frowned, but made a gesture for the demon to continue. After a few minutes, Arik blew out a long breath.

“This language is freaky. I’ve never had to listen this long to learn one. Just when I think I might have it… wait.” Arik spoke a few words Limos didn’t understand. The Isfet jerked, his tiny mouth falling open. Arik spoke again, and with an animated flapping of his arms, the Isfet spoke about a million words a minute.

Arik turned to Limos. “Have you been searching chambers of… ice?”

“Yes.” She moved closer to him. “Some of the rumors we followed up on spoke of ice caves, both in Sheoul and in the human realm.”

Arik took her hand again and pulled her down next to him. “What about the boiling glass?”

Limos sighed. “We assume that could be lava, so we’ve looked in volcanic chambers as well.”

“And towers,” Arik mused. “They speak of towers.”

Arik turned back to the Isfet, and they engaged in another conversation. “Okay,” he said. “The location wasn’t lost to legend. It was lost to translation. You know they can barely understand or speak Sheoulic… they only know a few words, enough to sell their product.”

“Why couldn’t they learn Sheoulic?” Than asked.

Arik shifted to address them all. “It’s like communicating with dogs. They can read our body language, and they can understand a few words, can read the tones of our voices. But they can’t understand conversations, and that can’t be taught. It’s a species thing.”

“So you’re saying that the Isfet are like dogs?”

“Yes. They’re like no other demon. Hell, they might not even be demons.”

Limos glanced over at the Isfet. “What else would they be?”

“No idea.” Arik shrugged, making his shirt stretch tight over his broad shoulders. Yum. “Aliens, maybe?”

“Aliens.” Thanatos’s voice was flat, disbelieving.

“Your skepticism is funny, coming from one of the Four fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

She supposed Arik had a point, but still, in all her time, she’d not come across a single alien. She didn’t think so, anyway. “Okay, so whatever they are, you understand them, now, right?”

“Sort of. He said the cup is in a chamber of… I can’t figure out the right word.”

The Isfet shuffled over to the altar and tapped one od t" width="2f the stones.

“A crystal,” Arik breathed. “That’s it. It makes sense. It’s in a chamber of crystals.”

“Not ice?”

“No. That’s how it was translated into Sheoulic, so that’s how you understood it. And it was flooded with hot water.”

“Boiling glass,” she murmured. “What about the towers?”

He spoke with the Isfet, and then turned to Limos. “Not towers. Columns. Huge columns of crystal inside a big cave. And he said that since I know their language, I’ll know the signs inside. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know where the cave is.”

“Google.” Everyone turned to look at Ares, who shrugged. “Cara likes to say that you can Google anything. Can’t hurt.”

“So we Google for caves of crystal?” Arik grinned. “Let’s get Googling.”