Chapter 23
Aleka and Raika were waiting for Scotty when she arrived at Pizzeria Inferno in downtown Sydney.
Since Australia had been ceded to demons by humans, it now flourished as a demon Disneyland, its provinces divided into five Tiers according to the Ufelskala scale of evil.
Sydney sat squarely in Ufelskala Tier One territory, considered generally safe. Even a handful of humans lived there.
“We ordered for you,” Raika said as Scotty took a seat. “Your favorite. Onions, lard, and blood clots.”
“Gross.” That was Raika’s favorite. Scotty loved Raika to death, but growing up in a realm drenched in evil had definitely impacted her life. Or maybe it was being born in Sheoul. Or perhaps her Grim Reaper DNA. Whatever. She was weird. “Aleka would never let you order it for me.”
“To her credit,” Aleka said as she put aside her ever-present planner, “she did try to order it for us. But we settled on a pepperoni to share, and she got a nasty pizza to take home with her.” She looked across the table at Scotty.
“Sounded like you wanted to talk about something. Does it have to do with what we talked about the other day?”
Scotty nodded and glanced over at Raika. “Short version: I slept with Blade to save his life,” she explained. “Now, our entire team is falling apart, and I asked Aleka for advice on what to do.”
“Wow.” Raika reached for a pretzel bite, spearing one with a pointed black fingernail. “But that’s easy. Fuck Mace.”
“That’s what I said.” Aleka grinned. “See? I told you it could work.”
“Yeah, well, Mace and Blade agreed.”
“No way.” Aleka’s eyes shot wide. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Damn.” Raika smiled darkly, the tips of her fangs glinting in the torchlight that contributed to the restaurant’s hell theme.
“You’re playing with fire, girl.” As if on command, flames flickered in Raika’s eyes for a few heartbeats before winking out as if they’d never been there.
Scotty was just glad she could control it now.
Raika’s teen years had resulted in a lot of burn injuries, scorched furniture, and full-blown fires.
“This could either be a giant success or the biggest mistake ever.” Scotty groaned. “What would you guys do?”
Raika swallowed her pretzel bite. “I’m his aunt, so I wouldn’t go the sex route. But you should ride Mace like a bucking hell stallion.”
Scotty scowled at her friend. “But you’ve always said he’s an ass.”
“He is.” Raika shrugged. “But I respect his ruthlessness. And let’s face it, he’s a Seminus demon, so he’s got to be godlike in bed. You’ll have a great time. I mean, as long as he’s wearing a ball gag and you don’t have to listen to him talk.”
Now, Scotty was picturing him with a ball gag, his fangs penetrating the ball, his cock penetrating her.
She took a few gulps of her ice water, but that didn’t stop the perspiration from beading on her brow.
“I’d meet him in a hotel,” Aleka said, reaching for her drink. “You can’t take him home, because, duh, Dad. And you definitely can’t do it at his place.”
Scotty agreed with not taking him home. She had a house with all the privacy she’d need, but her parents rarely knocked when they came over. Plus, her father had a way of knowing everything that went on within the boundaries of his island.
“Why not Mace’s place?” she asked. “All the bedrooms are soundproofed.”
“You didn’t do it in Blade’s bedroom,” Aleka pointed out. “So, to be fair, you shouldn’t do it in Mace’s. The compound needs to be off-limits, because if this thing goes south, you don’t want anything to taint their living spaces.”
Sometimes, her sister made sense—more than sometimes, but Scotty would never admit it.
“So…let me get this straight,” Raika said. “After you and Mace do the deed, you think everything will go back to normal? You’re not going to have feelings for either of them?”
“That’s the plan.”
Raika laughed, a deep-throated, head-back laugh that made her corset bounce and her breasts practically pop out. Every male in the place was staring and drooling.
“You are so na?ve,” she choked out between laughs.
“Oh, yeah? And what makes you an expert on relationships? I’ve never seen you with a male. Ever.”
They waited for the server to deliver the pizza and plates. When he left, Raika snagged a piece.
“I don’t date,” she said. “I don’t have time. Too many bad guys to catch.”
Poor Raika. She’d been cursed by Heaven to capture the worst demons her father had released. She had a quota, and if she didn’t meet it, the harsh punishment left her in agony for hours.
“Still,” Aleka began, “I can’t believe you’ve never met someone who interests you.”
“Never.”
“Not even a little?” Scotty prodded. “I don’t believe you.”
Raika scrutinized them both, and Scotty wondered if Aleka’s skin felt as flayed as hers. No one could maintain eye contact with her for long, not without increasing discomfort, and Scotty was relieved when Raika finally glanced down at her glass of bloodwine.
“I’m going to tell you something,” Raika said. “But if you tell anyone else—”
“You’ll throw us into a pit full of mind-flayers and sword spiders,” Scotty finished. “We know that. It’s your standard threat. Spill.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Raika blurted, “I sneaked a peek into one of Amber’s sketchbooks.” She took a big swig of her wine. “Hoo, boy, was she pissed when she caught me. Have you ever seen her angry? I mean, really angry?”
Scotty and Aleka both shook their heads. Amber had inherited her father’s ability to explode like a bomb, sending lethal shockwaves out in all directions. As a result, she worked hard not to let herself get lost in fury.
“She didn’t kill anyone,” Raika said, “but she blasted me so hard my skin burned off. Hurt like a motherfucker until I healed. I advise you not to go through her sketches without permission.”
“Okay, that might explain why you didn’t date for a couple of days, but not for your entire life.”
Raika ignored Scotty, her gaze locked onto a guy a few tables over. “That male is staring at you, Aleka.”
Aleka sniffed dismissively. “He’s not staring. He’s leering. He’s probably a demon, and he looks like an asshole.”
He did. His cocky leer and puffed-up chest gave him a douchebag air. “You’ll never know unless you talk to him,” Scotty teased.
“This is a Schrodinger’s Asshole situation,” Raika said. “Is he an asshole? Is he a demon? Both? You won’t know until he opens his mouth.”
Scotty laughed, and they turned back to their food—and the previous topic. No way was she letting Raika get away with not filling in the gaps of this juicy story.
“Well?” Scotty prompted. “What does your lack of a love life have to do with Amber?”
“It was her sketches. There was one of me in a dirt grave. A faceless male was shoveling dirt onto me. When I asked her, she said she didn’t know who he was. Just that he was my lover.”
Scotty blinked. “So, you haven’t been with a guy because of that?”
Raika took another swig of her bloodwine. “If I don’t take a lover, I won’t end up in a grave.”
“Amber’s visions don’t always come true,” Aleka said. “Not in the way she sketches them, anyway. Remember that time she tranced out and said Uncle Reseph would be in a plane crash, and he scoffed because he never flies, even with Aunt Jillian?”
He had tried to get Jillian to stop flying, though. Amber had assured them that Jillian hadn’t been involved in her vision, so she’d continued with her job as a pilot and head of DART’s air transportation department.
Raika rolled her eyes. “How was anyone supposed to guess that a plane would crash on top of him?”
As a Horseman of the Apocalypse, he’d survived the freak accident, but it had taken weeks for him to fully heal.
“Still,” Aleka said, in that haughty way she had when she was sure she was right, “you can’t live in fear of relationships.”
“Says the girl who spends every waking moment by herself in a dusty old office, and who won’t attend an event if Sabre is going to be there,” Scotty said, which earned her a sharp glare.
“I—” Aleka broke off and glanced down at her comms unit. “Oh, my—oh, my gods!”
Alarmed, Scotty glanced down at her own comms. “What is it?” Breaking news? Nope, nothing.
Aleka looked up, her eyes wide with shock. “They did it.”
“Great.” Raika rapped her long nails impatiently on the table, getting Aleka’s attention. “Who did what?”
“Wraith and Serena.” Aleka’s emerald eyes grew liquid, but she was smiling, so it couldn’t be bad news. “I asked them to help look for Harvester’s blood. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. And they did it. They have her blood!”
“No fucking way!” Scotty leaped to her feet, uncaring that everyone in the joint was staring at her. “You’re serious? We can bring back G-ma?”
A slow, victorious smile spread across Aleka’s face. “And save Eva. I just need a couple of days to prepare.”
Scotty grinned, finally feeling like her life was back on track. In just a couple of days, Eva would be healthy, G-ma would be alive, and her team would be back to normal.
Things could only get better from here.
The morning sun was already blistering-hot when Mace and Blade arrived at Ares’s training arena, ready for whatever torture he’d devised to put them through today. Oddly, Scotty was late, and they were surprised when she showed up in the archway with Ares.
Their surprise turned suspicious real fast, though.
Scotty and Ares were smiling.
Sure, that was normal for Scotty, but it was really unsettling on Ares. The dude’s perma-scowl was practically iconic.
“What’s wrong with him?” Blade whispered to Mace. “He looks insane.”
“Right?” Mace was really freaked out.
“Guys!” Scotty ran across the expanse of groomed sand, practically bouncing. “Guess what? You’ll never guess. We have Harvester’s blood!”
“Hell, yeah!” Mace high-fived her, and Blade did the same. “This means Eva is safe, right?”
Ares’s grin slid off his face. At least he no longer looked demented. “Only if we can bring back Harvester.”
Confused, Mace looked between them—down to meet Scotty’s gaze and up to meet Ares’s. “You mean there’s a chance we can’t?”
There’d been a plan in place to bring Harvester back almost from the moment they’d learned that the blood that fell on Limos’s party and the Dome of the Rock belonged to the angel.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Scotty’s grin had faded, too, but she perked up again. “But Aleka’s done the research, and she believes that we can do it. With Raika’s help.”
“Why Raika?”
“Because she has some of the same powers as her father, and the ceremony requires manipulating souls and Sheoulic energy.”
“There’s still a chance it won’t work—”
“Daddy!” Scotty jammed her fists on her slim hips and rounded on Ares. “It’s going to work. Think positive.”
Ares was the size of a fucking building, and his intimidation factor was off the charts. But in the stare-off contest between him and his precious little girl, he backed down first, with the slightest twitch of amusement on his lips.
“I prefer being realistic,” he said, his voice a low growl, “but I want this as badly as you do, so I’ll be…positive.”
“Look at you and your personal growth.” Beaming, Scotty bounced on her toes and patted him on the shoulder. “And people say you’re resistant to change.”
“No one says that.” Ares swiped his fingers over a crescent mark on his neck, and his leather armor, the breastplate embossed with the same horse symbol as his forearm, clacked into place. A summoned sword appeared in his fist. “Now, are we all ready to work some shit out?”
“Everyone says that,” Scotty chirped, clearly enjoying poking the bear, “and we got all our shit worked out already.”
One reddish eyebrow came up. “Did you, now?” He grinned. The one that made you shit your pants because you knew there was a whole lot of pain and humiliation coming your way.
“Aw, come on, man. We—” Mace didn’t get to finish his sentence. Nope. Instead, he took a full body slam from the shield Ares must have pulled out of his ass. He flew backward, over the low arena wall, and crashed into the stadium seating.
“He’s your teammate,” Ares yelled at Blade and Scotty. “And you let him get hurt. What are you going to do about it?”
Mace knew the answer to that. They’d come to his defense like a pack of hellhounds, just as he’d done for them countless times.
And yep, in an instant, Blade and Scotty launched at Ares. Fuck, yeah. “Get him, guys!”
Ares defended himself almost casually against their coordinated attacks, but for the first time since the punishing training had begun four days ago, Ares gave up ground.
Sure, he regained it with his powerful offensive pushes, but Scotty and Blade, working together in a seamless, coordinated combat dance, made him work for it.
Mace loved watching them fight. Blade’s decisive, high-octane blows could shatter bone and skulls or sever heads and limbs, while Scotty’s quick, graceful style distracted their enemies and left them vulnerable to attack from Blade or Mace.
Although she was physically stronger than they were, she preferred lightning-fast, crippling strikes with her blade or high-speed hand-to-hand.
Mace’s style was a blend of both, but he liked to play with his prey more than they did.
And he was ready to play.
He leaped nimbly over the retaining wall and came at Ares from behind.
Blade and Scotty joined forces to distract the Horseman while Mace landed a devastating kick to the kidney.
His brief moment of surprise left an opening, and as a unit, they swarmed him, giving no quarter.
Once, a sword-blow to the legs took Ares down to his knees.
They fought hard, and three hours, multiple broken bones, and lots of blood later, they lost the battle but still won the war.
The outcome was expected, but what made it a victory was that losing took three hours instead of twenty minutes like last time.
Yes, Ares had held back—he could have killed them all in a matter of minutes if he’d wanted to—but he’d been forced to fight harder than he likely expected, and after they all collapsed to the ground, their lungs burning and their cuts stinging, Ares congratulated them.
“I’m releasing you from training,” he said. “You never told me what got you sent here, but you seem to have fixed it. Did you?”
They exchanged looks. There was no doubt in anyone’s expressions. Just determination.
Mace turned back to Ares.
“We did,” they said in unison.
Team. Fucking. Up.