His leather armor creaked as he fisted his pendant, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Women and children had been slaughtered, the few goats that had survived the blight had been taken for food, andįuck, this was just one of scores of similar scenes that were playing out on this continent alone. The battle before him finally began to wane, and the electric high that had held Ares hostage eased, replaced by the usual Him to weaken in close proximity to his agimortus-bearer. Which, unfortunately, left Ares unable to protect her.īut then, even if Ares found her, his ability to defend her was limited, thanks to a fun addendum to his curse, which caused This one broke out, and Ares was drawn to the battles and away from his most pressing task-locating Batarel, the fallen angelĪs the current holder of Ares's agimortus, if Batarel died, Ares's Seal would break, unleashing War upon the Earth.Ĭhased relentlessly by Reseph, as well as by any demon who wanted to usher in the Apocalypse, Batarel had fallen off the grid, Pestilence was roaming the globe, causing disease, insect and rodent infestations, and massĬrop failures with nothing more than a bite or a touch of his finger and a thought.

Now he was Pestilence, and with the name and transformation came unholy Over the centuries, had been gone for six months. The most easygoing and playful of Ares's siblings, the brother who had held them all together It was a catch-22, though, because his very presence ramped up the violence,įeeding into the bloodlust of every human in a five-mile radius.

To pry himself away until the blood stopped flowing. Ares had wandered the area for days, drawn to the hostilities like a drug addict to heroin, unable Local warlords, their brains ravaged by an insect-borne disease, were clashing over what little water had puddled in the bottom Stallion on the outskirts of a nameless village in Africa, his body and mind vibrating with energy. Ares, also known as War, second of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to much of the human and demon world, sat astride his

Desire Unchained by Larissa Ione