Free Immortal Rider (LD2) by Larissa Ione

wetness that relieved his parched tongue and throat, and he swallowed greedily.
    Until he realized the wetness was blood.
    Holy hell, he was drinking the Horseman’s blood—
    His body jackknifed as pain shot through him, and suddenly he was flopping around like a dying animal on the side of the road, his limbs out of control, his headbanging on the stone floor. Pestilence wrestled him flat on the ground with his huge, armored body, forcing Arik to keep drinking, even though he wanted to vomit.
    White spots floated in front of his eyes, and darkness surrounded him, sucking him into a spinning vortex of oblivion.
    And then he was alone, lying on the ground. The narrow tunnel didn’t look familiar, and the ceiling was so low that an average-sized man would have to duck to walk through it. Mixed with the stifling, searing heat was a cool breeze. Well, not cool , exactly. More like a slightly less blistering breeze.
    And wait… what had happened? How had he gotten here? Why was he not in his cell?
    Didn’t matter. He needed to find the source of the breeze. He tried to get to his feet, but they wouldn’t work. Nothing below the waist worked. He supposed he should be panicking, but mentally, he was as numb as his lower body.
    The breeze beckoned him, and reaching deep for what little energy remained in his broken body, he dug his fingers into the black soil and dragged himself toward the fresh air. Heat blasted him, steam and smoke burned his eyes, and his fingernails tore. But little pinpricks of light appeared in the distance, giving him hope and the willpower to continue.
    He pulled himself along, grunting with every inch of progress, until finally, dear God finally, he found himself at the precipice between hell and the earth.
    And then he realized, as he stared into the gaping maw of a massive, bubbling volcano, that nothing had changed. He’d climbed out of hell, but this was no different. This was hell on earth.

    The volcano’s hellmouth looked the same to Limos as it had when she’d searched it earlier. Blackened, with steam rising toward it, though most of it was deflected by the air coming out of Sheoul.
    Kynan had come with her, gated straight from the chamber in Egypt. All she could think of was the gambling odds she’d seen. The demons who monopolized the underworld—and, now, the upperworld— gambling industry were eerily accurate, and the fact that they’d given Arik high odds of dying within an hour was beyond bad.
    “Where’s the entrance?” Kynan said, as he picked his way across a field of jagged rock.
    She jerked her head at the shimmering bubble that spread across a gaping hole in the side of the mountain. “Right there. Let’s go.”
    She started toward it, but a pained groan halted her in her tracks. Wheeling around, she zeroed in on a crack in the earth a few feet from the entrance to the tunnel. Was that a… hand? Yes. She bolted over stone as sharp as glass shards to where the hand became an arm, and then a torso and head became visible, and her heart went crazy.
    Arik.
    Dear… God. Mouth so dry she couldn’t swallow, she fell to her knees next to him. She’d seen so much in her lifetime, but the sight of this man, who had been so powerful, so healthy… but who was now gaunt, his skin shredded, blistered from the heat and blackened from ash… the horror of it made her own skin shrink. On her arm, Bones writhed at the scent of Arik’s blood.
    “Arik,” she whispered. “It’s me, Limos.”
    Kynan came up behind her, and his muttered, “Christ,” echoed through the crater. He went down on his heels and rested two fingers against Arik’s throat as he leaned over to put his cheek near Arik’s mouth. “He’s breathing. Pulse is erratic. We have to get him to—”
    Kynan leaped to his feet, startled by a swarm of demons that was charging from out of the hellmouth’s entrance. He drew his stang and turned to her. “Go! Take Arik!”
    Limos didn’t argue. She threw a