And Jillian… had those days spent with her, making love and being at peace, been a figment of his imagination? A dream that made the nightmares seem all the worse? Maybe his conscience was playing tricks on him, because the days with Jillian might well be a dream, but she was real.
“Kill me,” he whispered through a throat that was raw from his screams. “Someone… kill me.”
But there was no one around to hear. Even Harvester, who delighted in his agony, had left after fitting him with restraints. He didn’t care about the shackles. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Besides, sometimes he jerked on the chains just to feel the soul-deep knifing agony that shot through his bones.
How long had it been since she’d chained him, anyway? He remembered a couple of nights, a couple of dawns.
Suffer, you bastard. Suffer as no one has suffered before, she’d whispered, before licking at a trail of blood that ran from his face to his ear. If you care at all, you should know that you aren’t free of Pestilence. Only a sliver of evil could turn you back into him. Oh, not in an apocalyptic sense, but you could revert back to the disgusting creature you were if evil taps into the demon half that was awakened when your Seal broke. You think you’re miserable now? Turn back into Pestilence and watch your brothers and sister hunt you into the ground.
Harvester’s words rang in his ears over and over as he fell back into the pit of memories, so soaked in horror.
“End me,” he whispered.
But no one heard.
Twenty-two
Limos stood in Ares’s great room for the sixth day in a row, biting her lime-colored nails and staring down the hallway toward Reseph’s bedroom, where his screams had grown louder over the last hour. They should peak soon, and then he’d fall into a period of soft whimpers as he rocked himself back and forth, staring blankly into space.
“He’s not getting any better.” She turned to her brothers, husband, and Kynan. “We can’t let him suffer like this.”
Ares closed his eyes for a second, face tilted to the ceiling. “No one wants Reseph to suffer, Limos.”
“Really? You could have fooled me. Thanatos stares daggers at him every time we go in the room.”
Than, who was pacing the length of the great room, paused. “It’s not that I want him suffering. It’s that I can’t get what he’s done out of my head.”
“But that’s not Pestilence in there,” Limos insisted. “It’s Reseph. We need to do something to help him.”
“What do you suggest?” Ares asked. “He won’t listen to any of us. He won’t eat, he won’t drink, and when I tried to drag him into the shower today he just dropped to the tiles and screamed. Like he didn’t deserve to be clean. I’ve seen a lot of trauma in my life, but this is beyond anything I know how to deal with.”
Arik looked up from playing tug-of-war with Hal. “What about what you did for me? When I was all out of it after escaping from Sheoul.”
Limos thought about that for a second. “I stimulated you.”
Arik winked. “And you did a damned fine job of it.”
“Christ,” Kynan muttered. “Get a room.”
Ares shrugged. “It can’t hurt to try something new. Limos, the woman Reseph was with… he’s been calling for her. Do you think they had something going on?”
Jillian’s devastation had definitely been real. “I didn’t talk to her for long, but if I had to guess, I’d say they had some sort of relationship. Which, for Reseph, would be a first.”
“Bring her here.” Ares spoke as if he was a general giving a soldier orders, but for once, Limos didn’t call him on it or take it personally. Deep down, he was as worried about Reseph as she was. “The human may be the only person who can help him right now.”
“I’m on it.” She just hoped that Jillian would want to come.
Finding out that the male you had been sleeping with was not only half demon, but that he had almost brought about the End of Days wouldn’t be a selling point.
“You might want to hurry.” Reaver’s voice came from out of nowhere. Limos spun to where he stood near the fireplace, his sapphire eyes bright with concern.
“Why? What is it?”
“I’ve just come from the Watcher Council. Their fear that Pestilence will return is urgent.”
Ares strode forward, a lock of his reddish-brown hair falling over his eyes. “You said exposure to evil could do that. We’re keeping him isolated.”
“That’s good, but in the state he’s in, his mind is weakened. This same thing would have happened if I’d left him in Sheoul-gra.” Reaver sounded a little relieved that what he’d done had actually been the right choice. “His mind is full of cracks that Pestilence could slip through. He needs to heal, and it needs to happen now. Even then, he’s going to spend his entire life fighting to keep Pestilence at bay.”
Thanatos cursed. “Then we’re screwed. Reseph has always been one to ship out when things get rough.”
“We’ve got to let him try,” Limos said fiercely. “I’ll get Jillian. Maybe she’ll give him a reason to fight.”
“And if she doesn’t give him a reason to keep Pestilence locked down?” Ares asked.
“Then I give you Wormwood.” Reaver spoke in a low, grave tone. “And you put both Reseph and Pestilence out of their misery.”
It had been almost a week since Reseph had gone. Six days that Jillian had spent in a desperate search to find him. Or, at least, find out what, exactly, had happened. How the hell did three people pop in and out of thin air? Well, four, counting Reseph.
Jillian had spent the first day crying, curled up in the sheets that still smelled like him, thinking that maybe she was crazy. But then she’d reminded herself that she’d seen demons with her own eyes, so things once thought impossible were now very, very real.
She’d spent the next two days scouring the Internet, getting millions of hits on people who could do what she’d seen. Unfortunately, there was too much information to wade through. Aliens. Angels. Demons. Superheroes.
She had, at least, gotten hits when she typed in the names Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos. Individually, she got lots of mythical references. But together, she got one very, very interesting return.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
At that point, she’d been too overwhelmed to continue doing anything but stare at the computer screen, until she fell asleep on the keyboard. She’d needed solid answers that made sense, so she’d called an agency that seemed to be everywhere.
The Aegis.
They knocked on her door the next day. Five minutes later, she regretted the call.
Two men had introduced themselves as Lance and Juan, representatives of The Aegis, and they’d had a lot of questions about Reseph and his whereabouts.
Where did you find him? A snowbank. He said his name was Reseph? Yes. Did he tell you who he was? He didn’t know who he was. He had amnesia.
Then came the more invasive questions, and Jillian had gotten testy. Were you intimate with him? None of your business. Did he talk about his brothers and sister? Did you miss the part about the amnesia? Where is he now? I don’t know. How can you not know? Because he disappeared into thin air, you asshole.
She’d tried asking questions of her own, like why they were interested in Reseph and who he really was, but they’d refused to answer. By the time they’d gone, her head had been spinning and she’d been pissed off. She could use a friend to talk to—not that she was sure what to say—but Stacey had left a week ago for her brother’s wedding in Arizona and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.
Damn it. She held the little bird Reseph had carved, staring at it as if it could morph into a carrier pigeon and take Reseph a message. Maybe she could take it to a psychic to see if the psychic could glean any information from Reseph’s vibes.
Dear God, she was losing it, wasn’t she? She was so desperate to find him that she was actually considering going to a psychic. Hell, she’d even flipped through the phone book a time or twelve, but it seemed as though psychics didn’t advertise in her town’s Yellow Pages.
A knock on the door nearly made her jump out of her skin, and she prayed it wasn’t the Aegis guys again. Hastily, she grabbed her phone and peeked out the window. No vehicle.
Heart pounding at the thought that it might be Reseph outside—you know, after popping onto her deck from thin air—she opened the door and sucked in a harsh breath. The woman who had helped take Reseph away stood there, looking very out of place in a bright yellow and green sundress.
Jillian didn’t bother with hello. “Where’s Reseph? What have you done with him?”
“Chill. He’s why I’m here.” Limos strolled inside like she owned the place, her flip-flops slapping on the wood floor.
“Yes, please,” Jillian muttered. “Come in.”
“Thanks,” Limos said brightly. She regarded the room for a moment before turning to Jillian. “Small place. Looks larger from the outside.”
“Unsolicited criticism aside, what are you doing here?”
Limos looked down at her bright lime nails. “Did you and Reseph have a relationship?”
Weird question. “Ah… yeah.”
“Was it just sex?”
“Excuse me? That’s none of your business.” What was it with people wanting to know how intimate she and Reseph had been?
Limos’s dark eyebrows shot up, as if she was surprised to be challenged. “It kind of is. I mean, I don’t want to know the dirty details, ’cuz, gross. But we need your help, so I need to know how involved you were. Did you fall in love with him?”
“Look, I’m really not comfortable with this—”
“I’ll take that as a yes. The real question is just how attached to you he was.”
I love you, Jillian. I love you, and I want this to be the start of something new. Fresh pain squeezed her heart. She missed Reseph so much. How could things have gone from being so perfect to being so awful in a matter of hours?
“Jillian?” Limos’s voice was quiet, as if she knew how hard this was.
“He said he loved me,” Jillian murmured.
“He what?”
Jillian crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling defensive, and maybe a little foolish. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Let me put it this way,” Limos said. “In five thousand years, he’s never fallen for a female.”
She gaped at Limos in disbelief. “Five thousand years. You want me to believe he’s five thousand years old.”
“Yep.” Limos went back to studying her fingernails. “I guess we didn’t tell you. Brace yourself. My brothers and I are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You probably heard about us in Sunday school.”
“I got kicked out of Sunday school before they got to that story,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel. “But yes, I’m familiar with the Four Horsemen. You’re saying that Reseph, the man I saved from a blizzard, is a biblical monster.”
“Well, no. I mean, the biblical prophecy is just one of two. We’re not all evil and creepy like you see on TV and the movies.” She frowned. “Mostly, we’re not. Anyhoo, you really didn’t save Reseph from a blizzard. He’s immortal. He would have survived.”
She thought back to his miraculous recovery after being frozen nearly solid. “Okay, so let’s say I believe you. Did the hypothermia affect his memory? Was that why he had amnesia?”
Limos winced. “This is where it gets tricky.”
As if the rest of it was all normal and easy? “I’m listening.”
Limos reached down her shirt and pulled out a gold chain with a circular pendant. “This is a Seal. As long as it’s whole, my brothers and I are neither good nor evil. There have always been two Horsemen prophecies… one human, one demon. The human prophecy, when it comes to pass, will put us fighting on the side of humans. The demon one would turn us evil.”
Jillian really didn’t like where this seemed to be going. “And the tricky part?”
“The demon prophecy was kicked off a little over a year ago. Reseph’s Seal broke.”
It took a few heartbeats for Jillian’s brain to work through what Limos had said, and when it all came together, her chest constricted.
“So… wait. All the turmoil the Earth went through, the demons, the plagues… all of it… it happened because of Reseph, didn’t it?”
“Yes. He turned into an evil bastard named Pestilence. He spent a year trying to break our Seals.” She chewed her bottom lip for a second. “There’s time for the gritty details later. Right now I need to ask you to help us.”
Jillian should have been a lot more horrified than she was, but she suspected that everything she’d just learned was too big to process. No doubt she’d freak out later.
“You haven’t answered my question about Reseph’s memory.”
“We stopped Pestilence. Thanatos drove a dagger through his heart and killed him. Sort of. It took away his power, anyway, and it stopped the Apocalypse. That’s why all of a sudden, everything went back to normal. Reseph went to a place called Sheoul-gra. It’s sort of a holding tank for demon souls. The problem was that, as Reseph, he remembered everything Pestilence had done. And it was bad. Really bad. Reseph went crazy, and our Watcher, an angel named Reaver, zapped his memory and sent him here to heal.”
Okay, now it was starting to process, and Jillian sank onto the couch, her legs unable to support not only her body, but the weight of everything she’d just heard. “This is unbelievable.”
“Kill me,” he whispered through a throat that was raw from his screams. “Someone… kill me.”
But there was no one around to hear. Even Harvester, who delighted in his agony, had left after fitting him with restraints. He didn’t care about the shackles. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Besides, sometimes he jerked on the chains just to feel the soul-deep knifing agony that shot through his bones.
How long had it been since she’d chained him, anyway? He remembered a couple of nights, a couple of dawns.
Suffer, you bastard. Suffer as no one has suffered before, she’d whispered, before licking at a trail of blood that ran from his face to his ear. If you care at all, you should know that you aren’t free of Pestilence. Only a sliver of evil could turn you back into him. Oh, not in an apocalyptic sense, but you could revert back to the disgusting creature you were if evil taps into the demon half that was awakened when your Seal broke. You think you’re miserable now? Turn back into Pestilence and watch your brothers and sister hunt you into the ground.
Harvester’s words rang in his ears over and over as he fell back into the pit of memories, so soaked in horror.
“End me,” he whispered.
But no one heard.
Twenty-two
Limos stood in Ares’s great room for the sixth day in a row, biting her lime-colored nails and staring down the hallway toward Reseph’s bedroom, where his screams had grown louder over the last hour. They should peak soon, and then he’d fall into a period of soft whimpers as he rocked himself back and forth, staring blankly into space.
“He’s not getting any better.” She turned to her brothers, husband, and Kynan. “We can’t let him suffer like this.”
Ares closed his eyes for a second, face tilted to the ceiling. “No one wants Reseph to suffer, Limos.”
“Really? You could have fooled me. Thanatos stares daggers at him every time we go in the room.”
Than, who was pacing the length of the great room, paused. “It’s not that I want him suffering. It’s that I can’t get what he’s done out of my head.”
“But that’s not Pestilence in there,” Limos insisted. “It’s Reseph. We need to do something to help him.”
“What do you suggest?” Ares asked. “He won’t listen to any of us. He won’t eat, he won’t drink, and when I tried to drag him into the shower today he just dropped to the tiles and screamed. Like he didn’t deserve to be clean. I’ve seen a lot of trauma in my life, but this is beyond anything I know how to deal with.”
Arik looked up from playing tug-of-war with Hal. “What about what you did for me? When I was all out of it after escaping from Sheoul.”
Limos thought about that for a second. “I stimulated you.”
Arik winked. “And you did a damned fine job of it.”
“Christ,” Kynan muttered. “Get a room.”
Ares shrugged. “It can’t hurt to try something new. Limos, the woman Reseph was with… he’s been calling for her. Do you think they had something going on?”
Jillian’s devastation had definitely been real. “I didn’t talk to her for long, but if I had to guess, I’d say they had some sort of relationship. Which, for Reseph, would be a first.”
“Bring her here.” Ares spoke as if he was a general giving a soldier orders, but for once, Limos didn’t call him on it or take it personally. Deep down, he was as worried about Reseph as she was. “The human may be the only person who can help him right now.”
“I’m on it.” She just hoped that Jillian would want to come.
Finding out that the male you had been sleeping with was not only half demon, but that he had almost brought about the End of Days wouldn’t be a selling point.
“You might want to hurry.” Reaver’s voice came from out of nowhere. Limos spun to where he stood near the fireplace, his sapphire eyes bright with concern.
“Why? What is it?”
“I’ve just come from the Watcher Council. Their fear that Pestilence will return is urgent.”
Ares strode forward, a lock of his reddish-brown hair falling over his eyes. “You said exposure to evil could do that. We’re keeping him isolated.”
“That’s good, but in the state he’s in, his mind is weakened. This same thing would have happened if I’d left him in Sheoul-gra.” Reaver sounded a little relieved that what he’d done had actually been the right choice. “His mind is full of cracks that Pestilence could slip through. He needs to heal, and it needs to happen now. Even then, he’s going to spend his entire life fighting to keep Pestilence at bay.”
Thanatos cursed. “Then we’re screwed. Reseph has always been one to ship out when things get rough.”
“We’ve got to let him try,” Limos said fiercely. “I’ll get Jillian. Maybe she’ll give him a reason to fight.”
“And if she doesn’t give him a reason to keep Pestilence locked down?” Ares asked.
“Then I give you Wormwood.” Reaver spoke in a low, grave tone. “And you put both Reseph and Pestilence out of their misery.”
It had been almost a week since Reseph had gone. Six days that Jillian had spent in a desperate search to find him. Or, at least, find out what, exactly, had happened. How the hell did three people pop in and out of thin air? Well, four, counting Reseph.
Jillian had spent the first day crying, curled up in the sheets that still smelled like him, thinking that maybe she was crazy. But then she’d reminded herself that she’d seen demons with her own eyes, so things once thought impossible were now very, very real.
She’d spent the next two days scouring the Internet, getting millions of hits on people who could do what she’d seen. Unfortunately, there was too much information to wade through. Aliens. Angels. Demons. Superheroes.
She had, at least, gotten hits when she typed in the names Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos. Individually, she got lots of mythical references. But together, she got one very, very interesting return.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
At that point, she’d been too overwhelmed to continue doing anything but stare at the computer screen, until she fell asleep on the keyboard. She’d needed solid answers that made sense, so she’d called an agency that seemed to be everywhere.
The Aegis.
They knocked on her door the next day. Five minutes later, she regretted the call.
Two men had introduced themselves as Lance and Juan, representatives of The Aegis, and they’d had a lot of questions about Reseph and his whereabouts.
Where did you find him? A snowbank. He said his name was Reseph? Yes. Did he tell you who he was? He didn’t know who he was. He had amnesia.
Then came the more invasive questions, and Jillian had gotten testy. Were you intimate with him? None of your business. Did he talk about his brothers and sister? Did you miss the part about the amnesia? Where is he now? I don’t know. How can you not know? Because he disappeared into thin air, you asshole.
She’d tried asking questions of her own, like why they were interested in Reseph and who he really was, but they’d refused to answer. By the time they’d gone, her head had been spinning and she’d been pissed off. She could use a friend to talk to—not that she was sure what to say—but Stacey had left a week ago for her brother’s wedding in Arizona and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.
Damn it. She held the little bird Reseph had carved, staring at it as if it could morph into a carrier pigeon and take Reseph a message. Maybe she could take it to a psychic to see if the psychic could glean any information from Reseph’s vibes.
Dear God, she was losing it, wasn’t she? She was so desperate to find him that she was actually considering going to a psychic. Hell, she’d even flipped through the phone book a time or twelve, but it seemed as though psychics didn’t advertise in her town’s Yellow Pages.
A knock on the door nearly made her jump out of her skin, and she prayed it wasn’t the Aegis guys again. Hastily, she grabbed her phone and peeked out the window. No vehicle.
Heart pounding at the thought that it might be Reseph outside—you know, after popping onto her deck from thin air—she opened the door and sucked in a harsh breath. The woman who had helped take Reseph away stood there, looking very out of place in a bright yellow and green sundress.
Jillian didn’t bother with hello. “Where’s Reseph? What have you done with him?”
“Chill. He’s why I’m here.” Limos strolled inside like she owned the place, her flip-flops slapping on the wood floor.
“Yes, please,” Jillian muttered. “Come in.”
“Thanks,” Limos said brightly. She regarded the room for a moment before turning to Jillian. “Small place. Looks larger from the outside.”
“Unsolicited criticism aside, what are you doing here?”
Limos looked down at her bright lime nails. “Did you and Reseph have a relationship?”
Weird question. “Ah… yeah.”
“Was it just sex?”
“Excuse me? That’s none of your business.” What was it with people wanting to know how intimate she and Reseph had been?
Limos’s dark eyebrows shot up, as if she was surprised to be challenged. “It kind of is. I mean, I don’t want to know the dirty details, ’cuz, gross. But we need your help, so I need to know how involved you were. Did you fall in love with him?”
“Look, I’m really not comfortable with this—”
“I’ll take that as a yes. The real question is just how attached to you he was.”
I love you, Jillian. I love you, and I want this to be the start of something new. Fresh pain squeezed her heart. She missed Reseph so much. How could things have gone from being so perfect to being so awful in a matter of hours?
“Jillian?” Limos’s voice was quiet, as if she knew how hard this was.
“He said he loved me,” Jillian murmured.
“He what?”
Jillian crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling defensive, and maybe a little foolish. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Let me put it this way,” Limos said. “In five thousand years, he’s never fallen for a female.”
She gaped at Limos in disbelief. “Five thousand years. You want me to believe he’s five thousand years old.”
“Yep.” Limos went back to studying her fingernails. “I guess we didn’t tell you. Brace yourself. My brothers and I are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You probably heard about us in Sunday school.”
“I got kicked out of Sunday school before they got to that story,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel. “But yes, I’m familiar with the Four Horsemen. You’re saying that Reseph, the man I saved from a blizzard, is a biblical monster.”
“Well, no. I mean, the biblical prophecy is just one of two. We’re not all evil and creepy like you see on TV and the movies.” She frowned. “Mostly, we’re not. Anyhoo, you really didn’t save Reseph from a blizzard. He’s immortal. He would have survived.”
She thought back to his miraculous recovery after being frozen nearly solid. “Okay, so let’s say I believe you. Did the hypothermia affect his memory? Was that why he had amnesia?”
Limos winced. “This is where it gets tricky.”
As if the rest of it was all normal and easy? “I’m listening.”
Limos reached down her shirt and pulled out a gold chain with a circular pendant. “This is a Seal. As long as it’s whole, my brothers and I are neither good nor evil. There have always been two Horsemen prophecies… one human, one demon. The human prophecy, when it comes to pass, will put us fighting on the side of humans. The demon one would turn us evil.”
Jillian really didn’t like where this seemed to be going. “And the tricky part?”
“The demon prophecy was kicked off a little over a year ago. Reseph’s Seal broke.”
It took a few heartbeats for Jillian’s brain to work through what Limos had said, and when it all came together, her chest constricted.
“So… wait. All the turmoil the Earth went through, the demons, the plagues… all of it… it happened because of Reseph, didn’t it?”
“Yes. He turned into an evil bastard named Pestilence. He spent a year trying to break our Seals.” She chewed her bottom lip for a second. “There’s time for the gritty details later. Right now I need to ask you to help us.”
Jillian should have been a lot more horrified than she was, but she suspected that everything she’d just learned was too big to process. No doubt she’d freak out later.
“You haven’t answered my question about Reseph’s memory.”
“We stopped Pestilence. Thanatos drove a dagger through his heart and killed him. Sort of. It took away his power, anyway, and it stopped the Apocalypse. That’s why all of a sudden, everything went back to normal. Reseph went to a place called Sheoul-gra. It’s sort of a holding tank for demon souls. The problem was that, as Reseph, he remembered everything Pestilence had done. And it was bad. Really bad. Reseph went crazy, and our Watcher, an angel named Reaver, zapped his memory and sent him here to heal.”
Okay, now it was starting to process, and Jillian sank onto the couch, her legs unable to support not only her body, but the weight of everything she’d just heard. “This is unbelievable.”
