“Enough of this bullshit!” I shouted, at my wits' end. “I admit it, all right? I cocked it all up. I’m the reason it’s all gone pear-shaped. I broke her heart and ruined everything. Now we have to fix it. We have to clean up my mess and bring her home where she belongs.”
“With her mates,” Sin pressed.
“With us.”
“Her. Mates.”
I heaved a sigh and dragged my fingers through my hair. “You know that’s not true. We don’t have mates.”
Sin shook his head in disgust. “Lie to yourself if you have to, but never say that to Merri again. You don’t speak for the rest of us.”
Chaos and Malice took up position behind him, silently echoing their support of his assertion.
“Fine,” I growled through gritted teeth. I was entirely too tangled up in my feelings. It was damn near impossible to reclaim my usual unbothered facade.
“Now that we’ve got that cleared up,” Malice said, “can we get back to the strategizing portion of this meeting?”
While we didn’t require an elaborate strategy for this recovery mission, we did plan for a few of the most likely scenarios. Each of them ending with Lucifer incapacitated and one or all of us escaping with Merri. Either way, Lucifer Morningstar would rue the day he crossed us. Mark my words.
Sin clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Okay, let’s get to summoning our steeds already. I haven’t seen my horse in too long. She’s such a pretty girl.”
“Not here!” Malice cried. “This house is not a stable.”
I nodded. “Outside then. Time is wasting.”
We shouldn’t have expended the energy to teleport to the main drive, but we did it anyway. All of us shared a looming sense of urgency now that we finally knew where Merri was being kept. It had been hard enough to focus long enough to pull together a strategy, but we knew what was on the line. And who we were up against. We wouldn’t get a second chance at this.
No one uttered a single word. No one had to. We simply called for them in our minds and they came.
The clouds darkening and swirling until they boiled with frenetic energy was the first sign our loyal steeds were heeding their summons. Elation built within me at the knowledge that we had all finally been restored to our full selves after that bitch Hel drained us. If we hadn’t, our horses wouldn’t have been able to reach us.
As always, Pestilence’s arrived first, breaking through the clouds at breakneck speed. His horse was a gorgeous animal, its white coat and mane pristine, almost gleaming. War’s followed, its rust-colored hair reminiscent of dried blood, made only more terrifying once you realized its mane and tail were made of freshly flowing blood. Next came Famine’s, a black-on-black nightmare of a beast that was garishly skeletal, the only life within it coming from the glowing white orbs in its eye sockets. Bringing up the rear was my pale steed. Many believed that I was the one with the white horse, but she was actually a pale green, meant to mimic a corpse’s deathly pallor. Her mane and tail were a soft, cloudy gray that flowed behind her like mist over a graveyard. Beautiful, but eerie. Not a creature that belonged on the earthly plane.
“God, I’ve missed them,” Sin whispered, waiting for his steed to touch ground.
“As have I,” Malice agreed.
“We haven’t been ourselves without them.” Chaos strode forward, his red armor materializing and replacing his clothes.
The rest of us followed suit: Malice in his bone-white armor, Sin in his black, and me in my striking silver. Unlike the others, I also wore a cloak, its hood hanging low to obscure my face, the misty gray color an echo of my horse’s mane.
We took our mounts, weapons at the ready in the blink of an eye. The weight of my scythe in my palm grounded me in a way I hadn’t realized I’d needed. I was certain it was the same for the rest of them. With a flourish, Chaos rolled his wrist, his sword materializing before he completed the move. Malice’s bow appeared on his back, the quiver filled with never-ending arrows tipped in poison. And Sin, the newest of us, watched on, anticipation on his face as he waited for his own weapon. He held out one hand and manifested an ornate golden scale. His shoulders slumped, expression twisting to pure incredulity.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
Chaos rolled his eyes. “Swing it, kid.”
Sin’s eyes narrowed with distrust, but he lifted the scale above his head and gave it a tentative swing. As the two plates of the scale moved, they stretched, and the entire thing lengthened into a two-headed flail.
“That’s more like it,” he said with a proud smirk.
“Ready?” Chaos asked, looking around.
We nodded as one.
“Let’s fuckin’ go, boys!” Sin whooped.
Locking eyes with Mal, I jerked my chin at him. “Lead the way.”
