Chapter
Twenty-One
ASHER
“Okay, so we have the Death weapon attuned and ready to go, thanks to Asshole. Lilith, you’ve secured it in your super-secret succubus hidey-hole that no one can access, correct?” I shot Lilith a glance, not allowing myself to linger on her skintight patent leather catsuit. She was straight out of every teenage boy’s—and more than a few girls—early 2000sUnderworldfantasies.
“Yes, Asher. It is tucked away and shall remain there until we are ready to face the horsewomen.”
“Excellent.” I turned to my murder board—well, it was more a whiteboard with all sorts of arrows and pictures attached to it, but potato potato as Rosie always said. Finding the checklist I’d created, I went ahead and crossedDeath Weaponoff the list. It felt really fucking good to cross something off a list. “So that just leaves... everything else.”
And there went my check-off high.
“Do we even know where to start with the others?” Alek asked, his big shoulders tense as he settled a palm over Sunday’s knee.
“That we’re not sure of. With Death, we had a clear line to the location. Lucifer was the keeper of the weapon. But here... we don’t know what the trigger might have been to constitute making an item so important.” Caleb paced as he spoke, his gaze never landing on a single one of us. He was pondering. Trying to solve a puzzle with too many missing pieces.
“We have a couple of working theories, though,” Gavin offered.
I gestured for him to go on.
“Well, it only makes sense to use the same frame of reference for War that we did for Death.”
“Great, so we can just go through every war in existence for the last thousand years. Should be super easy,” Remi said, kicking the foot of a chair as he paced.
I frowned at the rare display of temper, doing my best to comfort him by saying, “I don’t think we have to worry about every war. Only the important ones.”
Remi looked at me, a huff of laughter escaping him. “So that narrows it down to what? Fifty? And what constitutes important? Important to who?”
“Touché.”
“We went with the first death, so maybe we look at the first war?” Dahlia suggested.
Chaos cleared his throat and stepped forward. “I might have an idea.”
The room went silent as we all stared at him. The horsemen rarely spoke during our group meetings, so having one do so now was a bit of a novelty. But also, of course he would fucking know. He’d probably participated in all of them.
“Go on,” Lilith urged. “We’re all waiting with bated breath, darling.”
Chaos nodded, brows pulling together before he spoke. “The first war was weak and meaningless. It ended almostbefore it began and achieved very little. I doubt it was of enough consequence to create something so important. But the bloodiest, most destructive, and deadliest warmonger of all time? That’s a thread we should grab onto and follow.”
“Okay. Great. I can name a few.” I began writing names on the whiteboard, but he stopped me by clearing his throat.
“Khan.”
Remi chuckled. “Like from Star Trek? Khaaaaaaan.” His face fell when no one else laughed. “Come on. You guys are no fun.”
“Genghis Khan.”
“Oh, right, that guy.” Remi sat down with a dramatic huff, drawing a small smile from Rosie, who patted his knee.
The rest of the room had gone silent, a little zing of awareness shooting through us at his clarification. If I had to guess, I think we were all struck by the rightness of his suggestion. Compared to every other theory, this one just made sense from every angle.
“Okay. Assuming you’re correct, what do we know about him? Isn’t his tomb hidden or something?” I asked, trying to rack my brain and see what random facts I had lying around. I vaguely remembered watching an oldDeadliest Warriorepisode about him, but it wasn’t like I’d made a point to memorize anything.
“It is. Whatever we need will be in there with him.”
“Great. So we have to find a hidden tomb that no one has ever found, figure out what the object even is, and hope it’s actually there in the tomb with him. Easy day. No problem.”
