Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
ASHER
“So the last place we tracked the horsemen was here,” I said, pointing to the red thumbtack Gavin had shoved into the map on the wall. “The ruined penthouse.”
“Correct. We haven’t found any trace of them since the explosion, but a car was missing from the garage. If it weren’t for the CCTV in the city being down, we would have more to go on.”
I spared the Duke of Tears a glance. “Careful there, Count Orlok. You’re starting to sound like me.”
“An insufferable know-it-all?” he mocked.
“Tech savvy.”
Rosie’s vampire mate let out a long-suffering sigh.
He did that a lot. Especially when Remi and Kingston were around.
Which was part of the reason he’d banned them from our makeshift Situation Room.
If you’d asked me a few years ago, I never in a million years would have pictured this stuffed shirt British duke and I working together.
But what could I say? The Bridgerton knock-off and I made a hell of a team.
We were a modern-day Starsky and Hutch. Mulder and Scully. Regis and Kathy Lee. Bert and Ernie.
No, not like Bert and Ernie. This wasn’t that kind of partnership.
“More like Seigfried and Roy.” Pan’s lazy drawl pulled me out of my jumbled inner ramblings, causing me to snap my gaze to his. He was manspread in a chair in the corner, fingers curled around a glass of brimstone whiskey as he watched us work.
“Did I say that out loud?”
Pan tapped his temple. “Group chat.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. I’d gotten pretty good at keeping my inner thoughts to myself, but I was stretched so thin these days, my mental barriers weren’t nearly as solid.
And not just mine. The amount of weird shit the rest of our group accidentally sent to each other in the last couple of weeks was the stuff of teenagers’ nightmares.
We’re talking wet dreams. Badly delivered one-liners.
Pimple popping. The group chat, as we called the telepathic connection between Rosie and all of her mates, was more beneficial than detrimental, but sometimes I really hated it.
I was a very private person. A hermit, actually. That was, until Rosie found me.
But that was a different story.
“You didn’t have to eavesdrop,” I grumbled.
Pan waved a hand. “It was a welcome reprieve from translating.”
“Translating what?” Gavin asked. “The need for that vanished with Lilith’s arrival. Your position on this team is redundant. You’re little more than a pretty hood ornament.”
Pan narrowed his lavender gaze on the vampire. “How very dare you? Need I remind you, none of you would be here without me.”
Gavin groaned. “Not this again. Every time someone puts you in your place—”
“Nobody puts baby in a corner,” I murmured, sad Remi wasn’t here to appreciate my epicly timed reference.
“—you burst out in a one-man show about how you saved the day.”
“Well, I did.”
“Debatable. We all fought. We wouldn’t have been in the position to require it if you hadn’t been so self-serving and devious.”
Caleb cleared his throat from the rickety folding table where he was investigating his never-ending notes. “As much as I expected you all to start your incessant bickering sooner, would you mind bringing it down a notch? I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Now you made Daddy mad,” I muttered, the quip only serving to add to my longing for Remi and his levity.
Before we could continue, Lilith materialized in the center of the room, her power sucking all the air from my lungs for a moment. She was a force of nature on her worst day, devastating on her best.
“Arts and crafts time, is it?” she asked, clocking the red strings webbing across two of the walls.
“Cute,” I said, taking in her apocalypse-chic attire.
It was the first time I’d seen her in anything other than her fuck-me femme Domme outfits.
Not to say she wasn’t exuding sex. Lilith would do that in a paper bag.
But this was definitely not her usual corset and pencil skirt situation.
It was more of a military-esque catsuit like you’d see Black Widow wear.
Form-fitted, showcasing her curves, but covering every inch of her skin save her hands and a small triangle of exposed flesh at her throat.
She wasn’t even wearing her signature stilettos.
The boots on her feet were sturdy, utilitarian, but as she strolled toward me, I noticed they still bore the red-bottomed soles she was so fond of.
Designer shitkickers . . . I didn’t know they made those.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, wondering at the shift.
“This old thing?” she asked, tossing me a wink.
“Strap a gun to your thigh and you could go to war.”
“Darling, we are at war. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
An icy chill ran down my spine even though her tone was playful.
If Lilith was dressed to fight, that could only mean one thing.
She knew she was going to have to get involved in the fray.
Lilith used her power, her cunning, her massive influence to manipulate the circumstances around her to her benefit.
She never actually got her hands dirty. She hadn’t needed to.
Nor had she been allowed to, technically speaking.
At least not when it came to the horsewomen and their games.
I had no doubt that in a physical altercation with the original demon, I’d lose. Badly.
“Where is your annoyingly handsome faerie pet, Auntie Lilith?” Pan asked, a smirk on his lips.
“Says the man who looks like an annoyingly handsome faerie himself,” I said under my breath.
Pan glowered at me. The loss of his demon form was a sore spot for him. He didn’t mind the pretty purple hair and human-colored skin, but as soon as it came up, he was bemoaning the lack of his stupid tail and horns.
“You wouldn’t dare speak to me that way if I still looked like myself,” he snarled.
“Easily remedied,” Lilith said, snapping her fingers.
In a puff of glitter and—I shit you not—rainbows, Pandemic the Demon was back in all his seven-foot, purple glory. His horns were still gone, but the stumps remained as silent effigies to his sacrifice. And he would never let anyone forget the sacrifice.
Ever.
“Great. Now we have to deal with him like this,” Gavin grumbled. “Insufferable.”
Pan stretched, his tail curling upward and taking hold of the glass in his hand. “Oh, hello you. I’ve missed you so.” His gaze flicked to Lilith. “Can I keep it for a while?”
“As long as you like, darling.”
“Why is he still here? He’s outlived his usefulness.” Caleb’s eyes narrowed as he took in the demon. He’d been front row center for Pan’s possession of me; it was clear there would always be very little trust between the priest and the demon he’d tried to exorcise.
“He’s the only one of us with inside knowledge of demonkind,” I said.
Lilith cocked a brow and served me a cool stare.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s common knowledge that despite your ties to the Hellscape, you remain in this realm.
Pan, on the other hand, was still in the thick of things until this last year.
He has valuable insights about the way demons fight, how they think, where they might strike.
And since we have no outside access to information anymore, he’s the closest thing to an encyclopedia we have. ”
Pan blinked at me. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Brotherly love was a complicated dance, and as Remi once said, I didn’t know the steps. But I did know that Pan and I understood each other in a way no one else could, thanks to our bitch of an egg donor. And that counted for something.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit, Lilith?” Gavin asked, adjusting his shirt cuffs like he was preparing to go to some kind of event. It was the literal apocalypse, and the vampire was in a three-piece suit. What was wrong with him?
“In answer to your earlier question, Drystan is working on security with Nord and Lina. The Novasgardians are security experts, as is my prince. As for the four of you . . . I was hoping you’d made some headway.”
“On locating the horsemen? Negative, ghostrider,” I said, gesturing at the wall.
“With the grid down, collecting intel is basically impossible. We have no idea what’s going on up there.
Unless your angel friend wants to come back and start giving us the headlines. He can be our celestial news anchor.”
“Evander will love that,” Lilith said with a smirk.
“Everyone has to pull their weight. Including angels,” Caleb grumbled.
A strange look crossed Lilith’s face as she held out her empty palm, revealing a dark curl of energy that sparkled in the light, wavering like a mist over water. Then a black envelope manifested, and her blue eyes blazed with anticipation.
“Hello, what’s this?” she murmured, turning the envelope over and inspecting the wax seal.
“Wait!” I shouted as she moved to break the seal and open the letter. “It could be a trap.”
“He’s right. It might not be safe,” Gavin warned, backing me up like a true partner should.
Lilith laughed. “Sweet poppets. Just because your network is down, doesn’t mean that mine is.”
“What are you talking about?” Gavin asked.
“You’re just mentioning this now?” I said, almost on top of him.
She blinked at us as if we were a bunch of naughty children. “A girl must have her secrets.”
“Not during the apocalypse,” Caleb said, coming to stand with Gavin and me.
Pan, the clever little duck, clearly knew what was going on because he just grinned. “Devious as always, Auntie Lilith.”
Pan’s voice echoed in my head without warning. “Call me a duck again and I’ll have your balls for breakfast.”
I couldn’t help myself; I snorted before sending back, “You wish. Also, stay out of my head if you don’t want to hear things you won’t like.”
“Boys,” Lilith snapped. “Care to share with the class?”
“You first,” I tossed back. “You’re the one with the secret messages.”