Immortal Rider

Page 8

“What is it?”
The update flashing on her underworld app filled the chamber with an eerie glow. “The gambling network. It’s buzzing.” Pains stabbed her chest, and for a second she was pretty sure she was having a heart attack. “The odds of Arik dying tomorrow just tanked.”
“That’s good news.”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not.” She looked up. “The rumor is that he escaped. Odds now are that he’ll be dead in an hour.”
“Hey, Pest.” The light tone Arik went for didn’t make it past his parched, raw throat.
“Did you really think you were going to escape?”
Arik swung around, hoping his wince at the painful twinge in his hip came across as a casual smile. “Nah. I broke out to get some exercise. How’d you find me, anyway?”
Pestilence, his big body encased in tarnished armor that oozed oily stuff at the joints, rubbed his chin as though deep in thought. As if the fucker had more than one brain cell. “Spiny hellrats are my spies. But for what it’s worth, it was a noble attempt. Impressive, actually.”
“I live for your admiration.”
“I’m sure.”
Arik’s stomach rumbled, the sound magnified by the tunnel’s acoustics, which was a little embarrassing. “What is it you want from me? ’Cuz I gotta tell ya, there’s very little you can do that hasn’t been done.”
The Horseman smiled, exposing some serious fangage. “We’re going to get close, you and I. Very, very close.”
Arik swallowed. Tried to, anyway. His throat was too dry. But he definitely didn’t like the sound of Pestilence’s close thing. “Look, I’m sure you make all the lady demons cream their panties, but I’m just not that into you.”
“You’re into Horsemen, though, aren’t you? You’re here because you couldn’t keep your hands off my sister.” Pestilence shrugged. “I’m not judging. She’s got that unattainable bad girl quality going on. Took balls for you to kiss her, what with you being a pathetic human and all.”
Too exhausted to banter any more, Arik slumped against the wall of the cave. “Just do whatever you came to do. Take me back to the cell. Kill me. Whatever. I’m tired of the games.”
Pestilence was in Arik’s face in a heartbeat, his fingers wrapped around his throat. Arik didn’t even have a chance to fight back before he was lifted into the air and slammed into the stone with such force that his teeth rattled.
“I would love to kill you right now, but I have other plans.” Pestilence knocked Arik against the wall again, and the crack of breaking bones echoed like gunshots off the stone walls.
Pain set fire to every nerve ending. He dangled there, watching in horror as the fucker struck, sinking his huge-ass fangs into his throat. Arik punched, scratched, struggled as hard as he could, but nothing he did seemed to faze Pestilence.
Gradually, blood loss sapped his strength, until his struggles amounted to little more than spastic twitches. He became lightheaded, woozy, and eventually all the pains and aches melted away, leaving him blissfully numb.
Pestilence lifted his head, and though Arik’s vision had gone dark, he felt the rasp of the dude’s tongue sliding over the punctures. Crazily, Arik’s only thought was how vampire-like the whole thing was.
Pestilence released him, and he dropped heavily to the ground, landing in a crumpled, motionless heap. Arik heard the clank of armor, and then something was against his mouth, and warm liquid was flowing over his tongue. At first, he was grateful for the wetness that relieved his parched tongue and throat, and he swallowed greedily.
Until he realized the wetness was blood.
Holy hell, he was drinking the Horseman’s blood—
His body jackknifed as pain shot through him, and suddenly he was flopping around like a dying animal on the side of the road, his limbs out of control, his head banging on the stone floor. Pestilence wrestled him flat on the ground with his huge, armored body, forcing Arik to keep drinking, even though he wanted to vomit.
White spots floated in front of his eyes, and darkness surrounded him, sucking him into a spinning vortex of oblivion.
And then he was alone, lying on the ground. The narrow tunnel didn’t look familiar, and the ceiling was so low that an average-sized man would have to duck to walk through it. Mixed with the stifling, searing heat was a cool breeze. Well, not cool, exactly. More like a slightly less blistering breeze.
And wait… what had happened? How had he gotten here? Why was he not in his cell?
Didn’t matter. He needed to find the source of the breeze. He tried to get to his feet, but they wouldn’t work. Nothing below the waist worked. He supposed he should be panicking, but mentally, he was as numb as his lower body.
The breeze beckoned him, and reaching deep for what little energy remained in his broken body, he dug his fingers into the black soil and dragged himself toward the fresh air. Heat blasted him, steam and smoke burned his eyes, and his fingernails tore. But little pinpricks of light appeared in the distance, giving him hope and the willpower to continue.
He pulled himself along, grunting with every inch of progress, until finally, dear God finally, he found himself at the precipice between hell and the earth.
And then he realized, as he stared into the gaping maw of a massive, bubbling volcano, that nothing had changed. He’d climbed out of hell, but this was no different. This was hell on earth.
The volcano’s hellmouth looked the same to Limos as it had when she’d searched it earlier. Blackened, with steam rising toward it, though most of it was deflected by the air coming out of Sheoul.
Kynan had come with her, gated straight from the chamber in Egypt. All she could think of was the gambling odds she’d seen. The demons who monopolized the underworld—and, now, the upperworld—gambling industry were eerily accurate, and the fact that they’d given Arik high odds of dying within an hour was beyond bad.
“Where’s the entrance?” Kynan said, as he picked his way across a field of jagged rock.
She jerked her head at the shimmering bubble that spread across a gaping hole in the side of the mountain. “Right there. Let’s go.”
She started toward it, but a pained groan halted her in her tracks. Wheeling around, she zeroed in on a crack in the earth a few feet from the entrance to the tunnel. Was that a… hand? Yes. She bolted over stone as sharp as glass shards to where the hand became an arm, and then a torso and head became visible, and her heart went crazy.
Arik.
Dear… God. Mouth so dry she couldn’t swallow, she fell to her knees next to him. She’d seen so much in her lifetime, but the sight of this man, who had been so powerful, so healthy… but who was now gaunt, his skin shredded, blistered from the heat and blackened from ash… the horror of it made her own skin shrink. On her arm, Bones writhed at the scent of Arik’s blood.
“Arik,” she whispered. “It’s me, Limos.”
Kynan came up behind her, and his muttered, “Christ,” echoed through the crater. He went down on his heels and rested two fingers against Arik’s throat as he leaned over to put his cheek near Arik’s mouth. “He’s breathing. Pulse is erratic. We have to get him to—”
Kynan leaped to his feet, startled by a swarm of demons that was charging from out of the hellmouth’s entrance. He drew his stang and turned to her. “Go! Take Arik!”
Limos didn’t argue. She threw a Harrowgate and gathered Arik in her arms, surprised by his weight. He was thin, but he’d retained some muscle and had somehow kept more weight on him than she’d expected.
An arrow sailed past her head as she stepped through the gate. It punched into a tree trunk outside her private Hawaiian villa, narrowly missing skewering her gardener. Keeping Arik tucked against her, she stepped into the sand. Her chef, housekeeper, and one of her three guards, all wolf shifters from a nearby pack, came running.
“I need help carrying him to my room.” She nodded at her chef, Hekili. “Go to Underworld General and bring the doctor named Eidolon here. Quickly.”
The others helped her get Arik settled on top of her frilly pink comforter. They brought her warm water and a washcloth, and while she waited for Eidolon, she wiped Arik down, making slow, gentle passes over his skin. What wasn’t scraped raw or cut open was inflamed and disco Kmedm walored; his fingertips had been worn to the bone, and his neck had been savaged by a pair of huge fangs. There wasn’t an inch of him that hadn’t been injured.
“Oh, Arik,” she murmured. “If you just hadn’t kissed me. If you hadn’t made me want you…” One corner of his swollen mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile, and she jerked in surprise. “Can you hear me?”
His cracked lips ruffled in a bigger smile before they settled into a pained, pinched line again. On impulse, she leaned over and touched her mouth to his, lightly, hoping for a response.
Nothing. But then, what had she been hoping for? That he’d suddenly sit up, good as new? That her kiss would wake him from his torment? She’d always loved fairy tales, loved how princesses always got their princes, but this was no children’s fable where he’d magically get better because of her touch. This was a horror story, and it was her fault he was hurt in the first place.
Sighing, she wiped away blood from a gash in his jaw. He’d been shaved recently, but she didn’t ponder that for too long—demon jailers often shaved their prisoners to keep their skin exposed and sensitive to torture.
God, what he must have gone through. “I—” She cut herself off, unable to say it. I’m sorry. Growing up, she’d been forbidden to ever say those words. To ever feel sorry about any action. Sorry meant weakness. The one time she’d apologized, to a messenger bringing word from her fiancé, her mother had punished Limos by gouging the male’s eyes out before throwing him to her slaves to defile.
No… sorry was not a word to be thrown around lightly, and she’d said it only once since. Last month, when Ares’s servant, Torrent, had been killed, her brother’s pain had overridden her upbringing, just as Arik’s was threatening to do now.
Eidolon, dressed in scrubs, arrived, ending her dark ruminations, and wouldn’t you know it, Shade was with him, looking all cocky in his black paramedic uniform. The brothers’ resemblance was so strong that if not for Eidolon’s short black hair and Shade’s longer hair, they could be mistaken as twins. Kynan came in behind them, dripping with demon blood.
“You should have brought Arik to UG,” Eidolon said, as he crossed to the bed.
The desire to make up some dramatic excuse niggled at her, because frankly, she could use a dose of euphoria right now, but she gritted her teeth and told the simple truth. “I didn’t want anyone to know he’s been found.”
Eidolon grabbed a pair of shears from out of the red medic bag Shade placed at Arik’s feet. “Who is anyone?”
“The demons he escaped from.” She glanced at Ky. “I’m assuming you killed the ones who attacked us?”
“Yeah. Once you were gone, they tried to get back inside the hellmouth, but headless demons don’t go far.”
Shade helped Eidolon cut off Arik’s shredded pants, and Limos practically shook with rage at the sight of swollen, bruised flesh and broken bones poking through skin. She would destroy the bastards who’d don Ks wge e this.
“You don’t think anyone will guess Arik’s with you?” Shade asked.
“No one knows where I live. Underworld General is sort of… famous. And I don’t trust your staff.”
Eidolon shot her a dark look before palming Arik’s forehead, his dermoire glowing as he channeled his ability into the human. “He’s in bad shape. Really bad.” He frowned. “There’s a lot of healed damage. Holy hell, he’s had his ear drums punctured, every bone broken multiple times, his skull is a mass of fractures. His organs are caked with scar tissue.”
“So someone healed him?” Limos was going to make Arik’s captors experience everything he had. Without the healing. “What—or who—could have done that?”
Shade dug IV supplies out of his bag. “Spells could have been used. And there are some species of demons who have abilities similar to ours, though not nearly as powerful.”
Eidolon’s frown became a scowl, and then a growl. “I can’t repair any of the old injuries, which means it was a Sem who healed him. Arik is going to be dealing with this damage for the rest of his life. I can fix a lot of things, but not another Sem’s work.”
“What do you mean?” Kynan moved next to her.
Eidolon palpated Arik’s abdomen. “It’s like someone setting a broken leg bone but not knowing what they’re doing. The bone will heal, but it’ll heal wrong, leaving the limb bent or twisted. Arik’s healer did that with pretty much everything. Whoever did it was good enough to keep Arik alive, but he wasn’t practiced.”
“There’s nothing you can do?” she asked, as Shade hung a bag of clear liquid from the bed post and then inserted a needle into the back of Arik’s hand.
Eidolon shook his head. “Once something has been healed by another Seminus demon… it can’t be undone.”
Limos cursed. “What about the immediate injuries? The shit he’s dealing with right now?”
“Those I can fix.” Eidolon nodded at Shade. “Need your help, bro. He’s got spinal fractures, a severed spinal cord, third-degree burns, bilateral compound tib-fib fractures, and multiple lacerations. If you can handle his pain, I’ll get the healing started.”