Thanatos had lived during the days when being poleaxed wasn’t just an expression. He’d managed to avoid it … until now.
Now he knew exactly how it felt as he stood there like a dolt, staring numbly at Regan’s belly. He dragged his gaze upward, to br**sts that seemed larger than before, to her slender throat, and finally, he met her hazel eyes. They were as beautiful as he remembered, bright, with a warrior’s hard ice behind fire. But they were also tinged with fear, proving she wasn’t stupid.
When he’d first entered the auditorium, he’d been prepared to kill her. Now he just wanted a stiff drink.
He was going to be a father.
From virgin to dad in zero to sixty.
The door burst open, and both Kynan and Decker were there, pistols trained on Than. Bullets wouldn’t penetrate his armor or kill him, but they’d hurt like hell if they struck exposed body parts. Like his head.
“Fire those guns,” Than said quietly, “and every Aegi in the building will pay for it.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Kynan said. “Leave now.”
“Leave?” Than laughed even as the souls in his armor spun like thousands of little tornadoes. Thousands? Why would there be so many? Didn’t matter. Not right now. He took Regan’s arm before she could scoot away. “I’ll leave. But she’s coming with me.”
Decker’s finger slipped from his pistol’s trigger guard to the trigger. “No way in hell.”
“It’s all right,” Regan said quickly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Presumptuous, don’t you think?” Than said, and then felt like an as**ole when she paled.
“Regan, you don’t have to protect us.” Kynan stepped closer, and Decker moved with him, their bodies in practiced sync. “Let’s talk about this, Horseman.”
“Stall until you can summon my brother and sister? I don’t think so.” He dragged Regan to the door at the other end of the auditorium, and when he slammed it open he wasn’t surprised to find over a dozen Guardians, all armed to the teeth, waiting for him. Well, one female held a dagger and a menacing-looking cup of tea.
“First person who moves against me dies,” he told them. “Second person gets you all killed.”
Regan remained stiffly at his side. “Stay back, everyone. I’m going willingly.”
All but one obeyed, and the one, the idiot who dared to swing a skinny blade at him, found out how fast Thanatos could launch a soul from his armor. The other slayers found out how loudly humans screamed when they were having their souls ripped from their bodies.
“Stop it,” Regan yelled, but it was too late.
“I warned them,” he said, as he hauled her out of the building. “And I’m not in the mood for second chances, Regan. Keep that in mind.”
The second they were outside headquarters, Than threw a gate and tugged Regan through it. They came out at his Greenland keep in a marked-off area set aside specially for gates—the things had a tendency to slice people in half if they materialized next to or on top of someone.
Wind roared across the dark, barren landscape, carrying with it the faint tang of the nearby ocean and smoke from the fires inside the keep. Regan’s ponytail fluttered as she stepped onto the grass, her cheeks pinking up from the cool breeze. It might be summer, but it was still cold, cloudy, and wet.
“Why are we here?”
He took her elbow and marched her toward the door. “I live here.”
“I know that,” she ground out. “But I figured you’d want to go someplace less obvious. Especially since you’re now going to have the entire Aegis organization after you for kidnapping me and killing a Guardian.”
“You figured wrong.” He shoved open the door, and immediately his vampire servants came running.
“Master!” Viktor’s dark eyes were wide, a grin splitting his face. “You’re back. We didn’t know or we’d have prepared—”
“It’s okay. I’ll be back to talk to you later.” He led Regan down the stone steps to his dungeon, and when she resisted halfway, he swept her up and carried her. Oddly, where her belly touched his armor, her heat burned right through the bone plate.
“Let…me…go.” She struggled in his arms, and he cursed, gripping her tighter while trying not to hurt her.
“Stop it. You’ll injure yourself or the baby.” A glint of silver flashed, and he blocked the blade before it bit into his cheek. With a snap of his wrist, he broke Regan’s grip on the dagger and it clattered to the stone steps. “Let me guess. Coated in hellhound venom? Nice try.”
“It’s also imbued with a locator spell, you giant ass. The Aegis will be able to track me.”
“Right,” he drawled, “because they won’t guess that you’re at my place. Seeing how I took you.”
She sank her teeth into his hand and he yelped, but he didn’t put her down until they reached the first cell. Quickly, he shoved her inside before she bit him again. Not that he was opposed to biting, but there were more appropriate times for that.
Oh, look… you got laid once and you’re already making everything about sex.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” Regan asked, incredulous.
He slammed the cage door. “Yes.”
Crimson splotches colored her pale cheeks, and she hugged herself, rubbing her bare arms. “Can I at least have a blanket?”
Fuck. Now he felt like a heel. She was dressed for summer in a gauzy white blouse, khaki capris, and bare feet, but it was freezing down here year round, and while it didn’t affect him, she was human, and she’d succumb to hypothermia. He shouldn’t care. In fact, he didn’t. But he wasn’t going to let her die while his baby was inside her.
“Well?” When he didn’t say anything, because he was actually considering taking her back upstairs, she sighed. “Look, I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” he spat. “You drugged me, restrained me, took my virginity, and then left me so pissed off that my siblings had to imprison me for over eight months. Angry doesn’t even begin to cover it. Were you trying to start the Apocalypse? Does The Aegis know what you did, or were they in on it?”
“I didn’t know you were restrained, Than. I lost control of my ability, and I didn’t realize it was attacking you.” She shivered … or maybe it was a shudder. “And I didn’t drug you. I mean, obviously, you were drugged, but it wasn’t my idea. One of your vampires gave me that wine.”
“None of my vampires would betray me.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but one did.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he got tired of your grumpy ass and decided you needed to get laid. How the hell should I know?”
He ground his teeth. “They knew sex was off-limits for me. They wouldn’t have done it.”
“Fine. Whatever. Ask Ares or Limos. They know. The wine drugged me, too.” She winced and palmed her belly, and before he even knew what he was doing, he was inside the chamber, his hands on her shoulders.
“Are you okay? Is it the baby?”
She blinked in surprise. “It was just a kick. Ponyboy is really active.”
“Ponyboy?”
Again her cheeks colored, but this time with a soft, feminine blush. “Well, you’re a Horseman…the father… so…Ponyboy.”
He wanted to smile at that, but then he remembered he hated her and forced his expression to remain neutral. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He started for the door, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“I have to pee.”
He gestured to the corner. “There’s a chamber pot.”
“Seriously? Eew.” She recoiled in horror at the dusty clay vessel.
“Humans of your day are ridiculously spoiled. What do you think people did before toilets?”
“I don’t really care. We do have toilets now, and I’d rather use one.” She wrinkled her nose. “If I try to squat down on that, I’ll never get back up.”
“Fine,” he muttered, taking her wrist. “You’re a terrible prisoner, you know that?” She wisely kept her mouth shut as he led her back up the steps and to his bedroom.
When she saw where he was taking her, she ground to a halt just outside the door. “Um…”
“Would you prefer the dungeon? Your choice.”
Her eyes flashed, and she shoved past him. “This will be fine,” she said, as if she were a guest at a hotel who was dismissing the bellboy.
“Don’t try anything, Regan,” he warned. “I’m going to have a guard at the door.”
“How long are you going to leave me here?”
“Until I figure out what to do with you.” He bent to look her directly in the eyes. “But be clear on this; your life is now mine.”
Five
A full hour after Regan had been snatched, Aegis Headquarters was still in a state of chaos. Kynan was supposed to be heading home to New York to meet his wife and daughter so they could join their in-laws at Underworld General for the weekly family summit.
Today Kynan was going to be late. Shit, if he made it at all it would be a miracle.
“How did those vampires and demons escape, and how the hell did that Horseman find our headquarters?” Ian, one of The Aegis’s Elders, was shouting. “We’ve never, in all our thousands of years of existence, been found. What happened?”
Kynan wanted to point out that The Aegis’s headquarters had nearly been located by the enemy half a dozen times over the course of their history, and had they not moved locations, they would have been, but he kept quiet. Ian was a hotheaded as**ole who wouldn’t back down from any argument, and Kynan wasn’t in the mood to knock him the f**k out.
Chad, another Elder with an attitude problem, rounded on Kynan and Decker. “And how could you have let that bastard just waltz out of here with Regan?”
“I didn’t see you steppin’ up to the plate yourself,” Decker drawled, his usually faint Texas twang vibrating with every word. The more pissed off he was, the redder his neck got, as he liked to say.
“The Horseman couldn’t have touched Kynan.” Chad shot an accusatory look Ky’s way. “You should have done something.”
“Thanatos came prepared to deal with me,” Kynan said, and damn if that didn’t rankle. The guy had been smart enough to kill a fallen angel, and while Ky wasn’t sure the soul of one could harm him, he hadn’t been about to take any chances with his life or anyone else’s … especially not Regan’s.
“So what now?” Decker asked.
Ky eyed the coffeemaker, wondering if he should caffeinate. It was going to be a long day. “Valeriu, Lance, and Juan are already on the way to the UK to check out a site for our new headquarters.” Now that Thanatos knew their current location, it, along with all of their libraries, secrets, artifacts, and weapons, was in danger if his Seal were to break.
“Hey!” Suzi burst through the door, even more frantic than she already was with Regan missing. “There’s another Horseman here. I think it’s War.”
“Ares,” Kynan muttered. He could never get it through these people’s heads that the Horsemen would only be known as War, Death, and Famine after their Seals broke. “And it’s about time.”
Ian’s green eyes nearly popped out of his head. “You told another one how to find us? Why don’t you just put a neon sign on the building and upload our address to Yahoo?”
“I called him while Thanatos was still here,” Kynan ground out. “I was hoping he’d be able to talk his brother down.”
These fools truly had no idea how important it was to work with the Horsemen. Not only were they the only beings powerful enough to deal with Pestilence, but if humans pissed them off enough, they could wipe their hands of the fight altogether. Hole up in their residences and let humans fight Pestilence and his demons on their own.
Chad snorted. “Good plan. Maybe if you’d—”
Chad broke off with a strangled sound as huge hands came down on Suzi’s shoulders to move her aside gently but firmly. Ares filled the doorway, his broad shoulders brushing the frame as he strode inside, a mountain of leather armor and attitude.
“Where is my brother?”
Kynan met the ancient warrior halfway into the room. “He left. Took Regan with him.”
A river of curses fell from Ares’s mouth. “How was he behaving?”
“Like he was in need of a rabies shot. He killed one of our Guardians.”
“Just one? You caught him on a good day.”
Ares was probably right. Than could have taken them all out and made it seem effortless. “I thought we’d agreed to keep him immobilized for a little while longer.”
“We did, human.”
“Then how did he get free?”
“I don’t know.”
Kynan scrubbed his hand over his face. “How helpful.” Ares stared at him. “Just get Regan back for us.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Ares spun around on his heel and started out of the room, halting when Decker called his name.
“Your brother,” Decker said. “He won’t hurt her, will he?”
Ares’s big shoulders rose and fell slowly, as if he were taking a deep, calming breath. When he spoke, his voice was deceptively soft.
“I hope not,” he said. “For his sake, and the sake of mankind, I hope not.”
Now he knew exactly how it felt as he stood there like a dolt, staring numbly at Regan’s belly. He dragged his gaze upward, to br**sts that seemed larger than before, to her slender throat, and finally, he met her hazel eyes. They were as beautiful as he remembered, bright, with a warrior’s hard ice behind fire. But they were also tinged with fear, proving she wasn’t stupid.
When he’d first entered the auditorium, he’d been prepared to kill her. Now he just wanted a stiff drink.
He was going to be a father.
From virgin to dad in zero to sixty.
The door burst open, and both Kynan and Decker were there, pistols trained on Than. Bullets wouldn’t penetrate his armor or kill him, but they’d hurt like hell if they struck exposed body parts. Like his head.
“Fire those guns,” Than said quietly, “and every Aegi in the building will pay for it.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Kynan said. “Leave now.”
“Leave?” Than laughed even as the souls in his armor spun like thousands of little tornadoes. Thousands? Why would there be so many? Didn’t matter. Not right now. He took Regan’s arm before she could scoot away. “I’ll leave. But she’s coming with me.”
Decker’s finger slipped from his pistol’s trigger guard to the trigger. “No way in hell.”
“It’s all right,” Regan said quickly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Presumptuous, don’t you think?” Than said, and then felt like an as**ole when she paled.
“Regan, you don’t have to protect us.” Kynan stepped closer, and Decker moved with him, their bodies in practiced sync. “Let’s talk about this, Horseman.”
“Stall until you can summon my brother and sister? I don’t think so.” He dragged Regan to the door at the other end of the auditorium, and when he slammed it open he wasn’t surprised to find over a dozen Guardians, all armed to the teeth, waiting for him. Well, one female held a dagger and a menacing-looking cup of tea.
“First person who moves against me dies,” he told them. “Second person gets you all killed.”
Regan remained stiffly at his side. “Stay back, everyone. I’m going willingly.”
All but one obeyed, and the one, the idiot who dared to swing a skinny blade at him, found out how fast Thanatos could launch a soul from his armor. The other slayers found out how loudly humans screamed when they were having their souls ripped from their bodies.
“Stop it,” Regan yelled, but it was too late.
“I warned them,” he said, as he hauled her out of the building. “And I’m not in the mood for second chances, Regan. Keep that in mind.”
The second they were outside headquarters, Than threw a gate and tugged Regan through it. They came out at his Greenland keep in a marked-off area set aside specially for gates—the things had a tendency to slice people in half if they materialized next to or on top of someone.
Wind roared across the dark, barren landscape, carrying with it the faint tang of the nearby ocean and smoke from the fires inside the keep. Regan’s ponytail fluttered as she stepped onto the grass, her cheeks pinking up from the cool breeze. It might be summer, but it was still cold, cloudy, and wet.
“Why are we here?”
He took her elbow and marched her toward the door. “I live here.”
“I know that,” she ground out. “But I figured you’d want to go someplace less obvious. Especially since you’re now going to have the entire Aegis organization after you for kidnapping me and killing a Guardian.”
“You figured wrong.” He shoved open the door, and immediately his vampire servants came running.
“Master!” Viktor’s dark eyes were wide, a grin splitting his face. “You’re back. We didn’t know or we’d have prepared—”
“It’s okay. I’ll be back to talk to you later.” He led Regan down the stone steps to his dungeon, and when she resisted halfway, he swept her up and carried her. Oddly, where her belly touched his armor, her heat burned right through the bone plate.
“Let…me…go.” She struggled in his arms, and he cursed, gripping her tighter while trying not to hurt her.
“Stop it. You’ll injure yourself or the baby.” A glint of silver flashed, and he blocked the blade before it bit into his cheek. With a snap of his wrist, he broke Regan’s grip on the dagger and it clattered to the stone steps. “Let me guess. Coated in hellhound venom? Nice try.”
“It’s also imbued with a locator spell, you giant ass. The Aegis will be able to track me.”
“Right,” he drawled, “because they won’t guess that you’re at my place. Seeing how I took you.”
She sank her teeth into his hand and he yelped, but he didn’t put her down until they reached the first cell. Quickly, he shoved her inside before she bit him again. Not that he was opposed to biting, but there were more appropriate times for that.
Oh, look… you got laid once and you’re already making everything about sex.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” Regan asked, incredulous.
He slammed the cage door. “Yes.”
Crimson splotches colored her pale cheeks, and she hugged herself, rubbing her bare arms. “Can I at least have a blanket?”
Fuck. Now he felt like a heel. She was dressed for summer in a gauzy white blouse, khaki capris, and bare feet, but it was freezing down here year round, and while it didn’t affect him, she was human, and she’d succumb to hypothermia. He shouldn’t care. In fact, he didn’t. But he wasn’t going to let her die while his baby was inside her.
“Well?” When he didn’t say anything, because he was actually considering taking her back upstairs, she sighed. “Look, I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” he spat. “You drugged me, restrained me, took my virginity, and then left me so pissed off that my siblings had to imprison me for over eight months. Angry doesn’t even begin to cover it. Were you trying to start the Apocalypse? Does The Aegis know what you did, or were they in on it?”
“I didn’t know you were restrained, Than. I lost control of my ability, and I didn’t realize it was attacking you.” She shivered … or maybe it was a shudder. “And I didn’t drug you. I mean, obviously, you were drugged, but it wasn’t my idea. One of your vampires gave me that wine.”
“None of my vampires would betray me.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but one did.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he got tired of your grumpy ass and decided you needed to get laid. How the hell should I know?”
He ground his teeth. “They knew sex was off-limits for me. They wouldn’t have done it.”
“Fine. Whatever. Ask Ares or Limos. They know. The wine drugged me, too.” She winced and palmed her belly, and before he even knew what he was doing, he was inside the chamber, his hands on her shoulders.
“Are you okay? Is it the baby?”
She blinked in surprise. “It was just a kick. Ponyboy is really active.”
“Ponyboy?”
Again her cheeks colored, but this time with a soft, feminine blush. “Well, you’re a Horseman…the father… so…Ponyboy.”
He wanted to smile at that, but then he remembered he hated her and forced his expression to remain neutral. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He started for the door, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“I have to pee.”
He gestured to the corner. “There’s a chamber pot.”
“Seriously? Eew.” She recoiled in horror at the dusty clay vessel.
“Humans of your day are ridiculously spoiled. What do you think people did before toilets?”
“I don’t really care. We do have toilets now, and I’d rather use one.” She wrinkled her nose. “If I try to squat down on that, I’ll never get back up.”
“Fine,” he muttered, taking her wrist. “You’re a terrible prisoner, you know that?” She wisely kept her mouth shut as he led her back up the steps and to his bedroom.
When she saw where he was taking her, she ground to a halt just outside the door. “Um…”
“Would you prefer the dungeon? Your choice.”
Her eyes flashed, and she shoved past him. “This will be fine,” she said, as if she were a guest at a hotel who was dismissing the bellboy.
“Don’t try anything, Regan,” he warned. “I’m going to have a guard at the door.”
“How long are you going to leave me here?”
“Until I figure out what to do with you.” He bent to look her directly in the eyes. “But be clear on this; your life is now mine.”
Five
A full hour after Regan had been snatched, Aegis Headquarters was still in a state of chaos. Kynan was supposed to be heading home to New York to meet his wife and daughter so they could join their in-laws at Underworld General for the weekly family summit.
Today Kynan was going to be late. Shit, if he made it at all it would be a miracle.
“How did those vampires and demons escape, and how the hell did that Horseman find our headquarters?” Ian, one of The Aegis’s Elders, was shouting. “We’ve never, in all our thousands of years of existence, been found. What happened?”
Kynan wanted to point out that The Aegis’s headquarters had nearly been located by the enemy half a dozen times over the course of their history, and had they not moved locations, they would have been, but he kept quiet. Ian was a hotheaded as**ole who wouldn’t back down from any argument, and Kynan wasn’t in the mood to knock him the f**k out.
Chad, another Elder with an attitude problem, rounded on Kynan and Decker. “And how could you have let that bastard just waltz out of here with Regan?”
“I didn’t see you steppin’ up to the plate yourself,” Decker drawled, his usually faint Texas twang vibrating with every word. The more pissed off he was, the redder his neck got, as he liked to say.
“The Horseman couldn’t have touched Kynan.” Chad shot an accusatory look Ky’s way. “You should have done something.”
“Thanatos came prepared to deal with me,” Kynan said, and damn if that didn’t rankle. The guy had been smart enough to kill a fallen angel, and while Ky wasn’t sure the soul of one could harm him, he hadn’t been about to take any chances with his life or anyone else’s … especially not Regan’s.
“So what now?” Decker asked.
Ky eyed the coffeemaker, wondering if he should caffeinate. It was going to be a long day. “Valeriu, Lance, and Juan are already on the way to the UK to check out a site for our new headquarters.” Now that Thanatos knew their current location, it, along with all of their libraries, secrets, artifacts, and weapons, was in danger if his Seal were to break.
“Hey!” Suzi burst through the door, even more frantic than she already was with Regan missing. “There’s another Horseman here. I think it’s War.”
“Ares,” Kynan muttered. He could never get it through these people’s heads that the Horsemen would only be known as War, Death, and Famine after their Seals broke. “And it’s about time.”
Ian’s green eyes nearly popped out of his head. “You told another one how to find us? Why don’t you just put a neon sign on the building and upload our address to Yahoo?”
“I called him while Thanatos was still here,” Kynan ground out. “I was hoping he’d be able to talk his brother down.”
These fools truly had no idea how important it was to work with the Horsemen. Not only were they the only beings powerful enough to deal with Pestilence, but if humans pissed them off enough, they could wipe their hands of the fight altogether. Hole up in their residences and let humans fight Pestilence and his demons on their own.
Chad snorted. “Good plan. Maybe if you’d—”
Chad broke off with a strangled sound as huge hands came down on Suzi’s shoulders to move her aside gently but firmly. Ares filled the doorway, his broad shoulders brushing the frame as he strode inside, a mountain of leather armor and attitude.
“Where is my brother?”
Kynan met the ancient warrior halfway into the room. “He left. Took Regan with him.”
A river of curses fell from Ares’s mouth. “How was he behaving?”
“Like he was in need of a rabies shot. He killed one of our Guardians.”
“Just one? You caught him on a good day.”
Ares was probably right. Than could have taken them all out and made it seem effortless. “I thought we’d agreed to keep him immobilized for a little while longer.”
“We did, human.”
“Then how did he get free?”
“I don’t know.”
Kynan scrubbed his hand over his face. “How helpful.” Ares stared at him. “Just get Regan back for us.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Ares spun around on his heel and started out of the room, halting when Decker called his name.
“Your brother,” Decker said. “He won’t hurt her, will he?”
Ares’s big shoulders rose and fell slowly, as if he were taking a deep, calming breath. When he spoke, his voice was deceptively soft.
“I hope not,” he said. “For his sake, and the sake of mankind, I hope not.”
