Free Apocalypse: The Lords of Deliverance Compendium by Larissa Ione

smiled.
    “I can sense the life within you,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy feeling it snuff out.” His hand went to her swollen abdomen, and in her mind, she screamed.
    “Could you two be any louder?” A stranger’s voice joined the scream in her mind and the thud of her pulse in Regan’s ears, just as a breeze whispered over her skin.
    In the next instant, the vampire flew sideways and she was ripped out of his grip. She had only a split second to see the other vampire who had joined the party before he flung her aside. She hit the floor behind the podium and sat there, gasping for air as the newcomer, one she definitely recognized as one of Thanatos’s daywalker servants, attacked the vampire who had been trying to kill her.
    The newcomer slammed his fist into the first vamp’s head, sending him reeling into the wall. Before he could recover, the new vampire shoved a splinter of wood—where he’d gotten it, she had no idea—into the other vamp’s chest. The first vampire hissed even as his body began to blacken and crack into dust.
    The surviving vampire limped over to her, fury and pain mingling in his eyes. “You betrayed Thanatos,” he growled. “You betrayed us all.”
    She wasn’t sure about the “all” thing, but the rest was true enough. “Then why did you save me?”
    “Save you?” The vampire gestured to the ashy mess that used to be his brethren. “He was merely going to kill you. I’m taking you to Thanatos.” He grinned. “Trust me, I didn’t
save
you.”

Two

    T he only thing worse than being paralyzed and trapped inside your own skull, unable to move or speak, was being kept like that by your own brother and sister.
    For eight and a half endless, insanity-inducing months, Thanatos, fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, had been kept in a bed with nothing but a TV for company. Well, every twelve hours he was visited by someone from Underworld General Hospital to inject him with paralyzing hellhound saliva, change his hydrating saline IV bag, and give him a humiliating sponge bath before changing his sweat pants. But usually whoever visited was
wham, bam, thank you, ma’am
and all business. And sure, his sister, Limos, third Horseman, and Ares, second Horseman, hung out with him, but Ares wasn’t all that talkative.
    Limos was a chatterbox, but Than didn’t really give a shit about what color nail polish she’d put on that morning or how she and her husband, a human named Arik, were planning a European honeymoon after the Apocalypse was over.
    And seriously, a honeymoon? Wasn’t it a little late for that? And it wasn’t as if Limos didn’t live on an island paradise anyway, so every freaking day was a honeymoon for them.
    Bitter much, Than-boy
?
    Yeah, there might be some jealousy there. Because as sick as it sounded, the one thing that had kept Than sane over the thousands of years he’d been alive was the fact that Ares and Limos were as alone as he was. But now Ares and Limos were both married and happy, and he was left paralyzed, miserable, and ripping a massive hatred for the female who had put him here.
    Regan.
    Ever since he’d been cursed as the Horseman who would become Death when his Seal broke, he’d believed that his Seal was his virginity. He’d guarded his dick like it was the freaking Hope Diamond. He might have been an unpinned grenade ready to blow with sexual need, but dammit, he’d kept himself all virginal and shit.
    Until Regan came along, with her seductive body, her devious plot, and her drugged mead. She’d managed to get him naked, get him immobilized, and get him off. The why of it still wasn’t clear, since not once, in all of Limos’s and Ares’s ramblings, had they brought up the Aegis Guardian. And the fact that she was a Guardian, one of the human warriors who existed to rid the world of demons, only made her actions more mystifying.
    Guardians didn’t want to start the Apocalypse, so either she was secretly working against The Aegis, or