Eternal Rider

Prologue

Her name was Lilith, and she was an evil succubus. His name was Yenrieth, and he was a good angel.

After hundreds of years of seducing humans, Lilith got bored. So she set her sights on Yenrieth, the ultimate challenge. He resisted. She pursued. He resisted some more. This went on for decades, until the inevitable happened. She was, after all, beautiful, and he liked his wine a little too much.

No one knows what happened to Yenrieth after their night of passion, but nine months later, Lilith gave birth to four children, three boys and a girl. She named them Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos. Lilith kept the girl, Limos, with her in Sheoul, and she planted the males in the human world, exchanging them for the infants of wealthy, powerful families.

The boys grew into men, never suspecting the truth about their origins. At least, not until demons rose up, spreading terror and seeking to use Lilith’s sons against the humans. Limos escaped from Sheoul, found her brothers, and revealed the truth about their parentage.

By this time, the brothers had seen their lands and families destroyed by demons and, blinded by hatred and the need for revenge, Lilith’s children encouraged (manipulatively and forcibly, sometimes) humans to help them fight violent, never-ending battles against the underworld abominations.

This didn’t go over well in the heavenly realm.

Zachariel, an angel of the Apocalypse, led a legion of angels to Earth, where they met in battle with demon hordes. When the earth and waters ran red with blood, and humans could no longer survive on the poisoned land, Zachariel struck a deal with the devil.

Lilith’s children were to be punished for slinging mankind to the brink of doom in their selfish bid for revenge. Because they had nearly brought about the end of days, they were charged as the keepers of Armageddon. Defenders or instigators; the choice would fall on their shoulders.

Each of them was given a Seal, and with each Seal came two prophecies. Should they protect their Seals from breaking until the prophecy laid out by the Bible came to pass, they would save their souls—and mankind.

But should they allow the Seals to be broken prematurely, as written in the Daemonica, the demon bible, they would turn evil, and would forever be known by the names Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.

And thus were born the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

“Mmm… I love the story about how you came into existence. Doesn’t it give you shivers when you hear it?”

Ares, seated at the bar in an underworld pub, tried to ignore the female behind him, but the rub of her breasts against his back and the slide of her dainty hands from his waist to his inner thighs weren’t easy to tune out. Her heat burned right through his hard leather armor.

“Yeah. Shivers.” Some idiot read the legend aloud from the plaque that hung on the wall every time he was in here… which was often. The tavern, kept in business mainly by Ares and his siblings, was his second home, was even known as the Four Horsemen, and for the most part, male demons melted into the background or scurried out the back door when Ares arrived. Wise. Ares despised demons, and that, combined with his love of a good fight, led to… bad things… for hell’s minions.

But the opposite sex was a little braver—or maybe hornier. Female demons, shifters, weres, and vamps hung out twenty-four-seven in hopes of getting their hands, paws, or hooves on Ares and his brothers. Hell, Ares couldn’t swing his dick without hitting one. Usually he was a little more receptive to drinking, gambling, and general mischief, but something wasn’t sitting right today. He was on edge. Twitchy.

He was never like that.

He was even in danger of losing the chess game he was playing with the pudgy pink Oni bartender, and Ares hadn’t lost any game of strategy in… well, ever.

“Oh, War.” The female Sora demon, Cetya, ran her tongue along the top of his ear. “You’ve got to know it makes us hot.”

“My name,” he gritted out, “is Ares. You don’t want to be around on the day I become War.” He moved his rook, tossed back half his ale, and was about to signal for another, when the female’s hand dropped between his legs.

“I still like War better.” Her voice was a seductive trill, her fingers nimble as they sought the opening at his groin. “And Pestilence… such a sexy name.”

Only a demon would think “Pestilence” was a turn-on. Ares peeled her red hand away. She was one of Reseph’s regular bedmates, one of hundreds of Horsemen groupies who called themselves Megiddo Mount-me’s. They even subclassed themselves according to who their favorite Horseman was; Ares’s groupies liked to be called Mongers. War Mongers.

The bartender made a foolish move with his knight, and Ares hid a smile in his mug.

The female, who looked like a cartoon devil, traced a long, black nail over the stallion tattoo on Ares’s forearm. “I love this.”

The horse was as much a part of him as his organs, whether Battle was on his skin or under his seat, and Ares stiffened at the sensation of both his arm and scalp being stroked. Any contact with the glyph sent a shock of sensation to the corresponding parts of Ares’s body, which could be a real pain in the ass. Or it could be inappropriately pleasant…

Ares spun his mug down the length of the bar top and slid his queen into striking position. Triumph sang through him, filling that space in his soul that was always hungry for victory. “Checkmate.”

The bartender cursed, the Sora laughed, and Ares came to his feet. At nearly seven feet tall, he dwarfed the demon, but that didn’t faze her, and she plastered the entire length of her tank-topped, miniskirted body to his. Her tail swished on the hay-strewn floor, her black horns swiveled like pointy satellite dishes, and if her gaze grew any hotter his breeches were going to get real uncomfortable.

He despised his body’s reaction to demons, had never truly warmed up to females who didn’t at least appear to be human.

Some grudges lasted a lifetime.

“I’m outta here.” Despite the chess coup, his unease was becoming an itch under his skin, the way it did when a global war escalated. He needed to get back to the hunt for an ex-bedmate of his, a demon named Sin who had started a werewolf—or, warg, as they liked to be called—plague. Ares and his siblings had only recently determined that she was the key to a prophecy that, if it came to pass, would break Reseph’s Seal and turn him into the very thing Cetya wanted: Pestilence.

Sin had to die before a werewolf civil war broke out.

Unable to remain still any longer, he flung a gold Sheoulin mark at the three-eyed bartender. “A round for the house.”

With a firm grip, he dislodged the Velcro-demon and strode out of the tavern and into perpetual twilight. Muggy, hot air that reeked of sulfur filled his lungs, and his boots sank into the spongy terrain that defined the Six-River region of Sheoul, the demon realm in the Earth’s core.

Battle writhed on his skin, impatient to run.

“Out,” Ares commanded, and a heartbeat later, the tattoo on his arm turned to mist, expanding and solidifying into a giant blood bay stallion. Battle nudged him with his nose in greeting—or, more likely, for sugar cubes.

“You forgot this.”

Always ready to live up to his name, Battle bared his teeth at the Sora, who stood in the tavern doorway, her tail wrapped around the hilt of a dagger, which she dangled playfully. The blatant invitation in her sultry smile told him she’d plucked the weapon from Ares herself, but he knew that. He didn’t leave weapons behind.

Of course, he never got weapons lifted, either. The female was good. Real good. And even though he wasn’t normally into demons, he had to admire her talent. No wonder Reseph liked this one so much. Maybe Ares would make an exception to his no-demons-that-look-like-demons rule…

Grinning, he started toward her… and stopped dead.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled in warning. With a furious scream, Battle reared up, and from out of the forest of shadowed trees a buffalo-sized hellhound leaped through the air. Ares zeroed in on the beast’s left side, seeking—and not finding—the jagged scar that would have identified the vile creature as the one Ares had been hunting for thousands of years. Disappointment rocked him even as he shoved the Sora out of the way, a stupid move that nearly landed him between snapping jaws.

Ares and his sibs were immortal, but hellhound bites were poison to the Horsemen, causing paralysis, and then the suffering really began.

He dove to the ground as Battle struck out with a powerful hoof, hooking the other animal in the ribs and sending it tumbling into the tavern door. The hound recovered so quickly that Battle’s blow might as well have been a fleabite, and it targeted the Sora, who scrambled backward on her hands and knees. Her terror was palpable, like little whips on Ares’s skin, and he had a feeling this was her first experience with a hellhound.

Hell of a way to pop that cherry.

“Hey!” Distract. Rolling to his feet, Ares drew his sword. Provoke. “I’m over here, you piece-of-shit mongrel.” Terminate.

Anticipation gleamed in the hellhound’s crimson eyes as it swung around, melting into an inky blur of evil. Ares met it head-on, with three hundred pounds of armored weight behind his blow. The satisfying crunch of steel meeting bone rent the air. An impact tremor shot up Ares’s arms, and a massive jet of blood spewed from the hound’s chest.

A bloodcurdling snarl ripped from the hound’s throat as it launched a surprisingly effective counterattack, slamming one huge paw into Ares’s chest. Claws raked his breastplate, and he flew backward, plowing into a stone summoning column. Pain lanced his upper body, and then the hellhound was on him, its jaws snapping a millimeter from Ares’s jugular.

Foul breath burned Ares’s eyes, and frothy, stinging saliva dripped on his skin. The beast’s claws tore at his armor, and it took every ounce of Ares’s strength to keep the hound from ripping out his throat. Even with Battle striking at the canine’s body, the creature did its damnedest to get a mouthful of flesh.

As hard as he could, Ares jammed his sword into the animal’s belly and yanked the blade upward. As the beast screamed in pain, Ares rolled, twisted, and brought the sword around in an awkward arc.

Awkward or not, the stroke cleaved the hound’s head from its shoulders. The thing fell to the ground, twitching, steam hissing from its gaping neck. The spongy ground drank the blood before it could pool, and hundreds of blackened teeth sprouted from the dirt, clamped onto the hound’s body, and began to chew.

Battle whinnied with amusement. The horse’s sense of humor had always been perched on the gallows with the crows.

Before the earth could claim the beast, Ares wiped his blade clean on its fur, giving repeated thanks to whoever was listening that the hound hadn’t bitten him. The horror of a bite was never-ending—the paralyzation didn’t stop the pain… or the ability to scream. Ares knew that firsthand.

He frowned as a thought spun up. The vile canines were predators, killers, but they generally hunted in packs, so why was this one solo?

What was going on?

Ares glanced over at the tavern door. The Sora had disappeared, was probably pounding shots of demonfire in the bar, and hey, wasn’t it great that no one had bothered to come out and help. Then again, no demon in his right mind willingly tangled with a hellhound no matter how much love he had for the slaughter—and most demons loved to slaughter.

Light flashed, and twenty yards away in a copse of black, twisted trees, a summoned Harrowgate shimmered into existence. Normal Harrowgates were permanent portals through which underworld creatures could travel, but the Horsemen had the ability to summon them at will, which made for easy surprise attacks and quick escapes.

Ares sheathed his sword as Thanatos emerged, throwing menacing shadows where there should be none. Both he and his pale dun mount, Styx, dripped with gore, and the stallion’s nostrils bubbled with blood.

It wasn’t an unusual sight, but the timing was too coincidental, and Ares cursed as he swung up onto Battle. “What happened?”

Thanatos’s expression darkened as he took in the dead animal. “Same thing that happened to you, apparently.”

“Have you heard from Reseph or Limos?”

Thanatos’s yellow eyes flashed. “I was hoping they were here.”

Ares threw out his hand, casting a Harrowgate. “I’ll go to Reseph. You check on Limos.” He didn’t wait for his brother’s reply. He spurred Battle through the gate, and the warhorse leaped, his big hooves coming down on a rocky shelf that had been scoured smooth by centuries of harsh wind and ice storms.

This was Reseph’s Himalayan hideaway, a giant maze of caverns carved deep into the mountains and invisible to human eyes. Ares dismounted in one smooth motion, his boots striking the stone with twin cracks that echoed endlessly in the thin air.

“To me.”

Instantly, the warhorse dissolved into a cloud of smoke, which twisted and narrowed into a tendril that wrapped around Ares’s hand and set into his forearm in the brown-gray shape of a horse tattoo.

Ares barged through the cave entrance, and he hadn’t gone a dozen steps when an electric current of ten-thousand-volt alarm shot up his spine.

Time to dance.

He was already in a dead run when he drew his sword, the metallic sound of the blade clearing its scabbard like a lover’s whisper during foreplay. It didn’t matter that he’d just engaged an enemy; he loved a good battle, craved the release of tension that hit him with the force of a full-body orgasm, and he’d long ago decided he’d rather fight than fuck.

Though he had to admit that after a good brawl, winding down with a lush, sultry female couldn’t be beat. Maybe he’d head back to the tavern after this and find a War Monger after all.

Adrenaline pumping hotly through his veins, Ares took a sharp corner so fast he had to skid into a change of direction, and then he burst through the doorway to Reseph’s main living area.

His brother, hand wrapped around a bloodied ax, stood in the middle of the room, which was painted in a fresh, dripping coat of blood. Reseph was panting, his shoulders slumped, head bent, white-blond hair concealing his face. He was motionless, his muscles locked up hard. Behind him, a hellhound lay dead, and in the corner, a very much alive hound let out a gravelly snarl, its gaping maw lined with razor-sharp teeth.

“Reseph.”

Ares’s brother didn’t move a muscle.

Fuck. He’d been bitten.

The beast swung its shaggy head toward Ares. Red eyes glowed with bloodlust as it gathered its hind legs under it. Ares calculated the distance to the target in a millisecond, and in one quick motion launched a dagger that impaled the hellhound in the eye. Ares pressed his advantage, heaving his sword in a horizontal side swing that caught the creature in the mouth, slicing its jaw clean off. The hound howled in agony and fury, but Reseph had already injured it and, weakened, it stumbled and fell, allowing Ares an opportunity to run his blade straight through its black heart.

“Reseph!” Leaving the sword impaled in the animal, Ares ran to his brother, whose blue eyes were wild, glazed with pain. “How did they get in?”

“Someone,” Reseph groaned, “had to have… sent them.”

That much was becoming clear. But very few beings could handle or control a hellhound. So if someone had sent the beasts, he was serious about putting Ares and his brothers—and maybe Limos too—out of commission.

“You should feel special,” Ares said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “You got two hellhounds, and I only got one. Who’d you piss off?” Gently, Ares wrapped his arms around Reseph’s chest and lowered him to the ground.

Reseph sucked in a gurgling breath. “Last night… my… Seal.”

Ares went cold to the core, and with trembling hands, he tore away Reseph’s T-shirt to expose the chain around his neck. The Seal hanging from it was whole, but when he palmed the gold coin, a vibration, dense with malevolence, shot up his arm.

“The warg plague…” Reseph spoke between gritted teeth and rattling breaths. “Worse. This is… not… good.”

Not good was an understatement. As Ares held the medallion, a hairline fracture split it down the middle. All around them, the cave began to shake. Reseph screamed as his Seal cracked into two pieces.

The countdown to Armageddon had begun.

“The first Horseman of the Apocalypse has been loosed.”

Sergeant First Class Arik Wagner, one of two representatives for the U.S. Army’s paranormal unit, the R-XR, missed a step as he paced the length of the conference room inside The Aegis’s Berlin headquarters. The two agencies had worked independently for decades, but had recently joined forces to combat the ever-increasing underworld threat. Arik never took intel from The Aegis lightly, but he still had to run Kynan’s words through his brain a couple of times before he could make sense of the situation, let alone believe it.

As he inhaled a shaky breath, he concentrated on pacing without falling on his face as he slid glances at Kynan and the other eleven Elders who were sitting around the conference table. It was obvious that some were already in on the news, but the others… not so much, if the shock and fear in their expressions was any indication. The shock was expected; it was their fear that put Arik on edge. The Aegis was an ancient demon-fighting organization that had weathered end-of-the-world scenarios time and time again, so to see its leaders frightened… disturbing as hell.

“Damn.” Regan, a stunning, bronze-skinned woman who was way too young to be in any way called an “Elder,” flipped her long ponytail over her shoulder and played with the dark ends, a habit Arik knew she ran to when she was nervous.

Arik’s normally unflappable partner, Decker, had lost all the color in his face and was now relying on the doorframe to keep his big body upright. “When? How?”

“I just found out this morning.” Kynan’s denim-blue eyes flashed as he shoved the Daemonica, the demon bible, to the center of the table and opened it to expose a page near the back. “It’s all about this passage. She of mixed blood who should not exist, carries with her the power to spread plague and pestilence. When battle breaks, conquest is seal’d.” Tension put lines in his face as he looked around the table. “She of mixed blood is my sister-in-law, Sin. She started the plague that spread through the werewolf population and led to the conflict that broke out within the species a couple of days ago. As the prophecy indicates, when battle breaks, conquest is sealed. The warg battle is what broke the Horseman’s Seal.”

Arik kept up the carpet-wearing routine, his combat boots thudding like muffled gunshots. “So you’re saying that this is a demon prophecy?”

There was a long pause before Kynan delivered an ominous “Yes,” in his gravelly voice. He’d had his throat nearly ripped out by a demon back in his Army days, and he wore the scars and trashed voice like a badge of honor.

“How is the demon prophecy different from human prophecy?” Decker had regained some color, which was good, because with his gray-blue eyes and blond hair, he’d resembled a reanimated corpse.

Kynan, in worn jeans and gray fitted tee, kicked back in his chair and folded his hands over his abs. “Apparently, if the Daemonica’s prophecy goes down, the Horsemen will embrace their demon halves and turn pure evil. If the prophecy from the Bible comes to pass, the Horsemen will take after their angel father and fight on the side of good.”

That stopped Arik in his tracks. “What? The Horsemen are evil. Have you read the Book of Revelation? They’re supposed to usher in the end of days, with disease, war, famine, and death.”

“That’s the most common interpretation of the Bible’s passages.” One of the senior Elders, Valeriu, who also happened to be distantly related to Arik by marriage, drummed his fingers on the oak tabletop. “But some scholars, including myself, think that the Horsemen’s Seals will be broken by Jesus himself, and the Horsemen will lead the way to the end of days, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“Of course not,” Arik drawled. “Every Apocalypse is a party. Bring your own beer, pretzels, and semiautomatic weapons.” Regan shot him an annoyed glance. Apparently sarcasm wasn’t appreciated in Aegis headquarters. It wasn’t appreciated in the R-XR either, but mainly because Arik was still in the dog house for going AWOL a few days earlier instead of revealing his werewolf sister’s location. “So what does the first broken Seal mean to us? Can we repair it? Prevent the others from breaking?”

“I don’t know.” Kynan let out a frustrated breath. “We’re going to have to dig deep for theories, prophecies, any scrap of information we can scrounge up.”

Shit, Arik was going to need a stiff drink after this. “Do we know what will cause the next Seal to break?”

“All we have is what the next line in the prophecy says.” Valeriu flipped through the stack of paper in front of him and pulled out a single page. “An angel’s mistake shall bring about War, and her death shall break his sword. But be wary, a hound’s heart may yet defeat.”

Arik ran his hand over his military-issue haircut, and wasn’t it an odd time to note that he needed a trim. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s about the second Horseman, War.” Valeriu shoved his glasses up on his nose. “We don’t understand all of it, but we believe War’s agimortus is an Unfallen.”

An Unfallen… an earthbound fallen angel who hadn’t yet entered Sheoul and become irreversibly evil. Interesting. “Wait.” Arik shook his head. “Agimortus?”

“Yes,” Valeriu said. “A trigger for breaking a Seal. It can be a person, an object, or an event.”

“Pestilence’s Seal was broken by an event,” Kynan explained. “Sin was an agimortus whose actions put into motion an event that triggered the Seal to break. Killing her before the plague she started led to war would have prevented the broken Seal. But we believe War’s agimortus is a person. Killing this being will break his Seal.”

Arik paused in his pacing. “If you knew about the first prophecy, that Sin was an agimortus, why didn’t you kill her?”

Kynan inhaled a shaky breath. Sin was sister to his best friends—demon best friends. “In hindsight, it’s obvious. But at the time, we didn’t know. We were too close to it.”

“You were too close to it.” Regan stood, her tall, curvy body drawing Arik’s appreciative gaze. Not that he was interested—he liked his women a little softer and less I’llkill-you-where-you-stand—but she did remind him that he hadn’t seen any mattress action in a long time. Hard to hook up when you had to lie about everything from your name, to your job, to your entire life history.

Red splotches colored Kynan’s cheeks. “Yeah. I was. I’d read the prophecy a million times, so I should have seen that she was the agimortus as soon as the plague started. The thing we need to remember is that prophecies are obscure for a reason.”

Arik considered everything he’d been told. “The prophecy mentions hounds. Would hellhounds have anything to do with any of this?”

Ky’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Why?”

“The R-XR has received an unusual number of reports of hellhound sightings.”

The Guardians exchanged looks, and Val finally said, “We’ve noted an increase in sightings as well. Our Guardians have encountered more in the last week than in the entire year before.” Before Arik could ask, Val shook his head. “We don’t know why.”

“Okay, so we have to find a way to prevent War’s Seal from breaking. What about the other Horsemen? Can the Seals be broken out of order?”

“According to the Daemonica, Pestilence’s Seal had to break first, but the others can break in any order. And it gets worse,” Val said miserably, and oh, joy, all of this somehow got worse. Arik’s drink was going to be a double. With a chaser. “If any two Seals break, the others will fall as well, without any trigger. Once all four Seals are broken, we’re chin deep in Armageddon.”

Arik felt his thoughts being scattered like confetti in a windstorm. He had so many questions, and he had a feeling there weren’t nearly enough answers. “Are we looking at imminent breakage of the other Seals? Or is this something that could go on for centuries?”

“Technically, it could go on.” Regan’s gaze was somber, her husky voice grim. “But Pestilence being loosed is bad enough. All over the world, disease is springing up, water sources are contaminated with bacteria, and demonic activity is off the charts. Do we really want that going on for centuries?”

Val cleared his throat. “It’s written that the destruction of one Seal weakens the others. In effect, it causes events to occur that will hasten the breakage of the other Seals. An object needed to break a Seal, for example, might be found after thousands of years of hiding. And, no doubt, Pestilence, as pure evil, is actively trying to break his siblings’ Seals. The Horsemen are the most powerful underworld beings in existence, next to Satan himself. They will virtually rule the Earth if the Final Battle goes in favor of evil.”

“That’s just great,” Arik muttered. “So what’s the plan? Sounds like we need to either contain or kill these Horsemen so that if their Seals break, they can’t wreak havoc, or we need to work with them to keep any more Seals from breaking.”

“We don’t know that they can be contained or killed.” Regan shoved her coffee mug under the coffee dispenser. “We don’t know nearly enough about anything.”

“I’ll see what my in-laws know and can find out,” Kynan said. “They have a unique perspective on demonic lore.”

“Excellent idea.” Regan’s voice was more full of saccharine than her coffee. “Get demons to help.”

“We need all the help we can get.” Kynan laced his hands behind his head and gazed at the medieval painting behind Arik, the one depicting a battle between angels and demons. “And we need it from the Horsemen.”

“Is that wise?” Decker asked. “Do we really want to get cozy with these guys? If they’re evil, we don’t want to be on their radar.”

Kynan shook his head. “According to the Aegis histories, they used to work closely with us.”

“Why’d they stop?”

“Modern stupidity. Around the time of the Middle Ages, The Aegis went a little fanatical with religion. Hell, The Aegis is behind the witch persecutions. There was a huge shift in thinking, which led to the belief that everything supernatural is evil, including the Horsemen.” Kynan gave everyone a stern look. “It’s only been in the last couple of years that we’ve started to return to the original path.”

Arik bit back a grin at Kynan’s tacked-on, in-your-face last sentence. Though he’d met with a lot of resistance from the Elders, Kynan was largely responsible for The Aegis’s new line on underworld creatures. Not only was he married to a half-demon, but he also carried angel blood in his veins. Then there was the fact that he’d been charmed by angels and was fated to play a role in the Final Battle, and Ky wasn’t afraid to use his status to get the Elders to see things his way.

“So basically,” Arik said gruffly, “we need to ask for help from guys who might hold a grudge against The Aegis and who have the power to usher in the end of the world.”

Kynan’s smile was pure twisted amusement. “Welcome to everyday life in The Aegis.”