The Darkest Secret (Lords of the Underworld #7)(22)
Author: Gena Showalter

“A what?”

“Don’t ask,” Torin said dryly.

“But,” Zacharel continued, “none of those things made a difference. Yet if you looked at him and felt no evil, the girl did the impossible. She forced the demons into submission. That means she is the key.”

Confusion caused Strider’s brows to knit together. “The key? The key to what?”

“Amun’s sanity. He needs her. He must be with her.”

Both Strider and Torin gaped at the angel.

Torin was the first to recover. “She’s a Hunter.” Disbelief and fury coated his tone.

“Yet that mattered not to Amun or the demons,” Zacharel pointed out. “Where is your joy? Your friend now has a chance of surviving.”

A chance. Grim words when they should have been hopeful.

The day Strider had busted into Amun’s room, the angels had been talking of final y kil ing the insane warrior. They’d given the Lords enough time to fix him, they’d said, and the Lords hadn’t fixed him. The phantoms had begun to seep into the hal way, trying to escape the angels, the fortress, and enter the world.

Strider wouldn’t al ow that. He wouldn’t al ow Amun to be harmed, either. But he real y wouldn’t al ow Ex near him.

“The day I arrived, you said the female was infected. What did you mean by that?” He would have asked before, but after visiting Amun that first time, he’d been kind of busy sandpapering his skin off in an effort to expunge the evil.

“I have not been given permission to share those details,”

the angel said, his frostiness not thawing a single degree.

Zacharel cared about permission? Shocker. “Who do you need permission from?”

“Lysander.”

Of course. The head honcho. “Wel , where is he?”

“With his Bianka. They were arguing, and he gave her possession of their cloud. No one is to disturb them for any reason. There are neon signs al around the palace saying so.”

Okay. Strider didn’t real y understand a word of that. A cloud palace? Why would Bianka’s possession of it matter? There was no one bigger or stronger than Lysander—except Strider. And unless Bianka went total Harpy on Lysander, which she wouldn’t do because Harpies were supposedly physical y incapable of harming their consorts, there was no way the petite stunner could overpower the angel.

Unless, of course, Lysander wanted her to overpower him.

Aha. Now Strider understood what Zacharel had meant.

The two were engaged in a sexual marathon, and Lysander had given control to Bianka. They may not see him for several years. One thing Strider had learned about the Harpy when she’d visited the fortress was that she enjoyed power and didn’t relinquish it easily.

Lucky Lysander.

Strider could have tasted a Harpy of his own, he supposed, since Bianka had two single sisters. Taliyah and Kaia.

Taliyah was the ice princess, as seemingly emotionless as Zacharel, but Strider had never been interested in her.

Now, Kaia on the other hand, wel , she was the wildfire.

He’d been interested. Real y interested—until she’d slept with Paris, keeper of Promiscuity. Strider had decided then not to bother with her. Who could compete with a freaking god of sex?

To be honest, Strider was sick of competing in the bedroom al the damn time. Sick of having to be the best lover his partner had ever had. It had gotten old. There was nothing wrong with a guy wanting to lie back and let the woman do al the work for once.

If Defeat had been awake, the demon would have said,

“Win.” Strider almost wished the little shit would speak up.

Woulda been nice to trample on his feelings by shouting,

“Shut the hel up!” The bastard had gotten Strider into this mess, after al .

“And…he’s off again,” Torin muttered wryly.

“Am not.” Strider flipped him off. “Tel me this at least,” he said to the angel. “Can the girl, being infected as she is with something you stupidly won’t tel me about, contaminate Amun? Make him worse?”

A moment passed in silence as the angel considered the question. And wouldn’t you know it? He gave no reaction to the word stupidly. “No.”

Al right, then. Strider would forget about Ex’s “infection.”

For now.

“So what are we going to do about Amun and the girl?”

Torin asked, getting them back on track. Again. He leaned back in his chair, resting his ankle against his knee, hands twined over his middle. A casual pose, if not for the lines of tension branching from his mouth.

Zacharel eyed the keeper of Disease as if he’d lost his brain when he’d gained his demon. “We wil test our theory, of course. We wil put her back inside Amun’s room.”

“Hel , no!” Strider snarled. And not because those sparks of jealousy had instantly lit back up and now poured through his veins like streams of acid. “He’s defenseless, and she’l hurt him.”

“She didn’t before.”

“That doesn’t mean she’l be a tame house cat next time!”

“If things continue as they are, I wil kil him.” The words were so simply stated, Strider had no doubt Zacharel meant what he said. “Your choice. I wil be satisfied one way or the other.”

Not real y a choice at al , the bastard. He had to know that.

“I’l have to clear out Amun’s room and remove…” Shit.

“Everything except the bed.” Anything could be used as a weapon. As he’d already learned. “The window wil need iron bars.” Hunters were notoriously adept and wily. Look what Ex had done with a simple piece of glass.

His stomach ached in remembrance, the scab pul ing tight.

“Maybe we should break her hands, too,” Torin suggested, shocking the sweet loving hel out of Strider.

He was usual y the voice of semi-reason. “I don’t want her able to snap his neck or pluck his eyes while he’s defenseless.”

Zacharel shrugged, drawing attention to the breadth of his shoulders—and making Strider grit his teeth in annoyance that he’d noticed. What was wrong with him? Men were not his personal preference. “She didn’t before,” the angel remarked.

“That doesn’t mean she’l be a tame house cat next time,”

Torin repeated, mimicking Strider’s earlier you’re-a-moron tone.

“That’s when she thought she could escape with him,”

Strider forced himself to say. Because deep down, he stil didn’t like the thought of hurting her. He lost more IQ points every day, he decided. “This time, she’l know there’s no way she can free herself. She’l know she’s helpless and needs to curry our favor.”