Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
CHAOS
T he sight of Sin’s back as he stormed into his bedroom greeted me as I rounded the corner in search of Grim. Before I had the chance to utter a single word, the incubus slammed the door behind him. Looks like Red had him wound up already.
I chuckled to myself as I continued past his room, shaking my head as the distorted scream of Sin’s guitar filtered down the hall. He was more affected by her than I thought he’d be. He’d been so confident earlier, but she’d obviously thrown him for a loop. Served him right.
For as long as I’d known him, Sinclair had been annoyingly arrogant. Anything that took him down a peg or two was a win in my book. Not that I was about to tell her that. My plan was to stay as far away from Lilith’s ward as possible. Though I supposed she was technically our ward now. And I had to... breed her. Unless Sin was successful first.
Fucking Grim. This was all his fault. And in typical fashion, after tossing us headfirst into this disaster, he fucked off and left the rest of us to deal with the fallout.
He wasn’t going to run from this. I wouldn’t fucking let him.
“Grim!” I bellowed as I barged into his office, the door swinging so hard the knob embedded into the plaster wall. “Grimsby! I know you’re in there.”
As expected, I found the avatar of Death behind his desk. The only indication I’d startled him was a slight flinch of his eyes before he quickly clicked something on his keyboard. For Grim, that was the equivalent of a teenage boy caught jerking off to his daddy’s porn.
“What are you doing?” I asked, immediately closing the distance between us.
“Nothing you should be concerned about.”
“Really?” I mused, peeking around the desk at his computer screen. His screensaver was up, the 3D line art swirling around and changing colors. “You won’t mind if I do this then,” I added, shooting forward and clicking the button that would bring his desktop to life.
“Motherfucker,” Grim growled, settling back in his chair in what could only be called defeat as the surveillance feed we’d installed in Merri’s room came up.
“Well, well, well. Espionage is supposed to be my forte. I didn’t expect Death to be so conniving. Usually you just waltz in and take what you want.”
He cut a deadly glare my way and scoffed. “Espionage? Spare me. You barge in like a bull in a china shop. There’s a reason your name is Chaos.”
“I’m strategic when I need to be. Brute force usually gets the job done.”
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, telling me without using words that he thought I was full of shit.
Chaos hadn’t always been my name, though it was as appropriate as my first. A long time ago, I’d been known as Ariston. My mother had visited a seer prior to my birth. She’d been told that I was destined for greatness and that I required a name deserving of my future legacy. I couldn’t help but wonder, knowing how things played out, how much of my name ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because surely one whose name meant ‘the best’ had placed a target on their back not only for their enemies, but the gods as well.
Not that any of it mattered. I’d set that life aside when I’d taken up the horseman’s mantle. As had Sin when his time came centuries later. Out of the four of us, only Grim and Malice were the originals, at least as far as I knew. We didn’t really talk about who or what came before. Those versions of ourselves were long gone. Dead and buried.
“She’s a pretty little thing, I’ll give her that,” Grim muttered. “Already giving them hell.”
“Pretty things have a way of getting people into trouble.”
“They aren’t the problem.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the ones who want to possess them.”
“Speaking of...” I drawled, settling myself on the corner of his desk with my arms folded across my chest. “What do you think he’s going to do when he finds out we’re hiding her?”
There was no need to say his name. There was only one ‘he’ I could be referring to.
“Nothing good.”
“Are we prepared to handle that? We’re weakened, drained, and vulnerable. Not in fighting shape.”
One silver brow raised as he assessed me. “Afraid, Chaos? That’s not like you.”
“Concerned. Our enemy is much more powerful than we are as it stands right now.”
“How do you know that? He’s been locked away for decades. He could’ve been drained just as we have.”
“The Morningstar has a reputation for a reason. I would never underestimate his ability.”
“But you’re happy to underestimate mine?”
My eyes narrowed slightly at Grim’s tone. He might consider himself the leader of our little warband, but I’d long ago stopped bowing to any man.
“Show me your shadows. Then maybe my faith will be restored.”
It was a gamble to challenge him, but if I’d been considerably weakened by Helene’s game, there was no doubt in my mind he was too.
“No.”
“Because you can’t?”
“Because I have nothing to prove. No matter my current state, I am Death, same as I’ve always been.”
I waved a hand. “Yes, yes. You’re inevitable. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard this speech before, Grim. But you’re failing to consider one very key fact. You’ve never been weakened before. None of us have. And none of us have ever been stupid enough to face off against Lucifer and his Princes either. How exactly do you see this playing out? Did you even stop to think what this meant for the rest of us when you accepted Lilith’s proposition?”
Grim sighed and dragged a hand through his thick, pewter-colored hair. “It takes time.”
“What does?”
“Releasing the Princes. We will regain our strength, of that I’m sure. You’ll succeed in breeding the girl, so Lucifer won’t get a chance, and then he won’t want to fight. He’ll slink back to where he came from like he always does.”
“If you think it will be that easy, you’re an even bigger fool than I imagined.”
It was ludicrous to think this would go off without a hitch. Something would get in the way, and relying on Sin or me to successfully impregnate her was a long shot at best. There were so many other factors at play, not the least of which was the dawn of the apocalypse. Just because it hadn’t fully taken hold didn’t mean it wasn’t a threat. The veil between the mortal realm and hell had lifted. That was cosmic interference on the very highest level. There was no telling what sort of hell—no pun intended—that would unleash.
And that didn’t even take into consideration the four of us all cohabitating for the foreseeable future. There was a reason we’d all gone our separate ways. Needs we each had to fulfill and manage. Needs that, if left unmet, would become... problematic.
I balled my hands into fists to hide the tremor in my fingers. The urge for violence surged to the surface, clawing at me as I contemplated the potential enemies that lurked in every metaphorical shadow.
“We are the only thing standing in the way of Lucifer claiming his throne. If you think he doesn’t already know we’re not on his side, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Grim drummed his fingers on his desk before shoving his chair back and rising to his full height. “Of course he knows. The girls have already aligned themselves with him if they’re smart, and we know they are.”
“Smarter than us?”
He leveled me with a weighted stare. “They’ve done what we never could. They beat us at our own game.”
The echo of my earlier thoughts added fuel to my inner fire. Around me, Grim’s desk rattled, and books fell from the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the wall.
Grim’s eyes clocked the movement and slowly dragged his silver gaze back to mine. “Chaos,” he warned.
“I’m trying. My control is threadbare after Hel’s game.”
“Fix it.”
“Don’t you think I would if I knew how?”
“What do you usually do to let off steam when you’re not out waging war?”
I knew the question was more reminder than bid for information. Grim already knew the answer. When I couldn’t actively participate in war—mortals tended to notice when you didn’t age after a couple of decades—I usually moved on to other violent outlets. Anything that would allow me to siphon off bits of the violence simmering within me. Most recently, I’d been an underground fighter with a perfect record. Or at least I had been before Hel captured me and took me off the scene.
“Your punching bag is still in the gym.”
My surprise helped ground me. “We haven’t been together in decades. Yet you kept this place as though we’d return at any moment.”
Grim shrugged, silver irises flashing in the pre-dawn light. “This is your home. It always will be.”
I grunted in response. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was touched by his sentiment; that implied a depth of emotion I didn’t think either of us could lay claim to. But it was as close to brotherly as any of us got.
“I’ll work it out of my system.”
“Good. See that you do.”
“Motherfucker!” I slammed my fist into the punching bag hard enough to burst its seams, but not without a shockwave of pain accompanying the blow.
The agony radiated through my bones, up my arm, and into my shoulder. I wasn’t mortal, hadn’t been for longer than most could comprehend, but I remembered this feeling. Overexertion. Weakness. Fatigue.
The last time I’d been this wrung out, I’d just completed the Crypteia. I’d nearly died during the rite of passage, but I proved myself worthy of the title of Spartan warrior. So while the sensation was one that certainly left an imprint, it was also one I had never anticipated experiencing again.
With each minor defeat, my frustration mounted, and with it, my rage.
It began when I couldn’t successfully bench press my usual weight and then grew when I had to not only slow down but cut short my run on the treadmill. But the final insult was this fucking wheezing in my lungs as I threw punch after punch at the bag. My godsdamned muscles trembled and threatened to give out.
If I ever got my hands on Hel, I’d make her wish she was never created.
Snagging a towel, I wiped the sweat from my brow before storming out of the gym and toward the kitchen. At this rate, I’d need to ensure I had a pre-workout shake along with my usual smoothie after. Just like a fucking mortal gym bro.
The disgust I felt at my current situation had my stomach churning.
Yeah. Disgust. That’s the reason I currently felt like puking, and not because I’d just spent the last three hours running my body into the ground.
Some male specimen I was. Even if I wanted to breed our little troublesome ward, I had little to offer at the moment.
I’d just thrown everything into the blender when the elevator emitted a soft chime and none other than the menace herself tumbled out of the doors. I had to admit, she looked better than when we’d taken her. Cheeks rosy, lips plump, hair somehow glossier than before. Thankfully, she’d changed clothes, but even in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, she was somehow the most alluring creature I’d laid my eyes on. I hated how she could draw my attention with so little effort.
I didn’t want to desire her in any way. There were so many more important things to focus on. She was an inconvenience I didn’t want or need.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snapped, annoyed that out of everyone here, she was the one who caught me in my moment of weakness.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “I was just looking for the kitchen.”
“Well, you found it,” I muttered, pressing the button on the blender and drowning out whatever else she was about to say.
When I couldn’t keep the blender going any longer, I shut it off and kept my gaze focused on the task at hand. Pour the ugly green drink into a cup. Don’t spill. Don’t look at her.
She let out a musing huff as I started chugging my smoothie. “I think I’m going to call you Grumpy. Oh wait, that might be confusing with the Brits. Hmm. Oh, I know. I’ll call you Moody!”
“Great. And I’ll call you Annoying Pest. Glad we’ve established our roles. If you’ll excuse me.”
“I thought you’d settled on Red,” she called after me.
I would have smiled at her sass if I didn’t find her mouthing off so fucking annoying. There were clearly better uses for that mouth. Ones that didn’t involve her uttering a word.
“Wait!” she cried just before I could slip out of the living area and back into the wellness half of the penthouse’s bottom floor.
“What?” I grumbled, irritated for many reasons, the least of which was the erection her proximity was causing.
Succubi were as notorious as sirens for the way they preyed on lesser men. I was not a lesser man. I was one of the strongest beings in existence. And still, her power called to me. I would not be bested by lust magic. I was the master of my domain, even if I was weakened at the moment.
“Where’s the refrigerator?”
She gestured to the cabinets all around her, not realizing that the fridge was camouflaged behind one of the many doors.
I let out a heavy sigh, wishing I was callous enough to walk away, but there was something about those doe eyes that made me feel like leaving her to her own devices would be akin to kicking a puppy.
“Sonofabitch,” I hissed to myself as I stalked back over to where she stood. The way her gaze trailed up my body as I stepped directly in front of her filled me with irrefutable male pride. She liked what she saw. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she?
“Um . . .”
Unable to help myself, I leaned down and breathed in her intoxicating scent. Immediately irritated with myself, I couldn’t help but put my lips to her ear and growl, “Take a picture, Red. It’ll last longer.” Then I opened up the door directly behind her, blasting us both with cool air.
I stepped away, needing the space more than I wanted to admit. I had to get out of here before I hate-fucked her on the kitchen island. The last thing I needed was to get that close to her.
A soft clearing of her throat stopped me in my tracks. “The fuck is it now?” I bit out.
Turning around, I saw her bewildered expression and sighed in resignation as she pointed to the elaborate espresso machine on the counter. “Make go, please?”
“You don’t know how to make a cup of fucking coffee?”
The sweet little doll was replaced with a brat as she popped her hands on her hips and met my glare with one of her own. “No, Moody, I don’t. Not when the machine looks like an alien spaceship.”
“Then maybe you don’t deserve any,” I muttered, shocked to find myself once again stomping back over to her to flick the buttons necessary to get the machine percolating.
Five minutes later, I’d frothed milk, added syrup and espresso, and all but created latte art for this thorn in my side. Handing her the mug, I took a deep breath and stared her down, jaw clenched tight before I asked. “Anything else, princess?”
“Nope.” She brought the drink to her lips and took a slow sip, her eyes never leaving mine. “Mmm. You know, if this horseman gig doesn’t pan out, you’d make a really hot barista.”
My irate growl was met with a soft giggle as she took another sip.
I was almost clear of her when her voice rang out a final time, stopping me in my tracks. “Thank you, Moody!”
My dick jerked in my pants, begging for attention. I stared down at my crotch, frustration coursing through me.
“Absolutely not.”