Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,6
expression and then took a seat in front of his desk. “Good news. Apparently, he’s on our side,” I added, hoping it would help him find his manners and relax enough to start talking again.
“Oh, well that’s…forgive me,” he said, straightening onto shaky legs and then extending a cautious hand to War. “I’m a little…confused at the moment.”
War took his hand and nodded before sitting down into the chair beside me. My gaze dropped to the legs to make sure they weren’t going to snap in half from his weight. The last thing we needed was a pissed off Horseman landing on his ass in the middle of an important meeting.
“Anyway,” I said, my eyes sliding back to William when I was confident the chair could hold the weight. The Magister was still staring at the Horseman, apparently unable to look away from him. I didn’t really blame him, though. He was quite a specimen. If you liked the ridiculously tall, chiseled, beefy types from centuries past. “It turns out they were never here for any of us. They’re here because of Lucifer.”
William’s eyebrows pulled together over his befuddled eyes. “I’m not sure I follow. We’ve already taken care of Lucifer. You yourself made sure of it.”
“I sure did, but it seems he left us a little parting gift—our very own Son of Perdition.”
William’s blank stare morphed into something that could only be described as horror. “He mated.”
“By our estimate, the seed is already halfway through gestation, if not further,” explained War, his long auburn hair falling freely around his face. “The next few weeks are going to be crucial as its power will continue to double every few days. If we have any hope in stopping this birth, we must act now. As it stands, we are down two horseman and I fear that even we will not be able to stop it once it is out of utero. Without the Power of Four, that is.”
“The Power of Four?” asked William, the confusion clouding his eyes as he tried to follow what War was saying.
Been there, done that. Was so not buying the t-shirt.
“My brethren and I were created for this reason alone. To stop the Son of Perdition from being born and bringing about the end of days,” answered War, his voice void of any natural human emotion. “It is only when the four of us are together that our full power can be awoken. It is the way we were created.”
“Who…created you?” he asked on a breathless note.
War’s chin rose ever so slightly as he met William’s probing eyes. “The Angel Court.”
The room fell silent with questions that had yet to be formed. William’s gaze appeared to be dancing around the room as though the questions that needed asking were floating around him, just there for the taking. I expected him to ask what this Angel Court was, or if they could be reached again to, you know, send in a replacement horseman. But that wasn’t what he asked when he finally spoke. Either he’d already heard about the Angel Court or he was keeping his lack of knowledge on the subject under wraps.
“Why have we never seen you until now?” His paused for a moment. “Why is there nothing in our books about you?” he added, trying to fill in the missing pieces. And let’s be real. There was a shit-ton of them unaccounted for at this point.
“The Angels couldn’t risk allowing creatures as powerful and destructive as the four of us to roam the earth freely, so they spelled us to slumber until the day the seed was planted in the form of a son. The one true heir to the underworld. Only then could we wake, and only when the four of us joined together could we activate our full power.”
“I see,” he answered, his eyebrows still knitted together in a frenzy. “A form of insurance, I suppose.”
War nodded once.
“And your brothers? Where are they now?”
I decided to jump in and take this one. “Famine is with Trace recovering from a wound, Death is apparently on the way, and Pestilence is…well, dead.” I bite the inside of my cheek and tried not to fiddle with my fingernails as anxiety slithered under my skin like inky smoke. “It’s not my fault though. I mean, not really. It all happened way before I knew what they were really here for.”
William frowned and then pushed back in his chair. “I suppose I hold the blame for that,”