Page 3 of Legacy of Temptation

Then, mingled with the hell-smoked howl of furious thunder, came the pounding of hooves.

Thanatos.

“Regan!” Death sat atop his pale stallion, Styx, as the massive beast charged toward her, his dinner-plate-sized hooves tearing up the ground and flipping chunks of earth into the air.

Fully armored, Thanatos leaped from the saddle of the galloping horse and landed in a combat roll. A violent downburst of wind and rain pelted them as he scooped her into his powerful arms and popped to his feet, all in one graceful motion.

Styx wheeled around, teeth bared, hooves kicking out in a futile attempt to engage the atmospheric foe. The air turned thick and still, and the acrid scent of brimstone and ozone hung heavily in the growing darkness. Styx reared up, snapping his deadly teeth, and as his front hooves slammed back down, a thick bolt of lightning lit him up. Screaming, he collapsed to the ground.

No! Regan couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even gasp for air as fear turned her lungs into useless, deflated sacks.

Styx lay motionless in the rain, his big body twitching.

“Styx!” Rare terror scoured Thanatos’s voice and ramped up hers. Very little frightened her husband, but he’d been bonded to the beast for thousands of years. It was, literally, part of him. If he were to lose it… “Styx, to me!”

Come on, buddy…

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Another heartbeat.

Anoth—

Styxwhinnied. His body collapsed in on itself and poofed into a wisp of smoke.

Yes. The horse’s essence slid under Thanatos’s right gauntlet and settled on his forearm like a tattoo. Now, Styx could heal, and Regan could finally take a breath.

“We’re out of here,” Than growled as he threw out his hand to open a portal.

Something struck his shoulder, cracking hard against his bone-plate armor. Swinging around, he angled his body to shield Regan from the storm and take the brunt of the baseball-sized hail pelting them like bombs.

A gale howled across the land and slammed into them with the force of a locomotive, knocking Thanatos backward. With an angry roar, he lowered his head and fought thewind forevery step closer to the gate. He was as much a force of nature as the tempest, and as he finally leaped through the portal with Regan in his arms, she swore she heard the tortured, angry shrieks of countless souls enshrouded in the churning thundercloud.

Thanatos exploded out of the gate, his heart pounding so hard his armor thudded to the rhythm. Instantly, the staff of Underworld General Hospital ran toward him. Regan struggled to stand on her own, but he refused to let her out of his arms.

“Get Eidolon,” he barked to the nearest person in scrubs. The guy scrambled away, his hooves clacking on the obsidian floor.

“Put me down.” Regan struggled harder. She’d always been the stubborn one in the family. “I’m fine. The pain is gone, and I just felt the baby kick. You need to find Logan.”

Reluctantly, Thanatos lowered Regan to the floor, but he kept a hand around her shoulders to hold her steady. “Logan is with Cujo.”

“I know that.” She braced her lower back with her hand and leaned into him with a heavy, exhausted breath. “But where?”

“Cujo is trained to take Logan to Greece in an emergency.” Thanatos’s sister-in-law, Cara, had used her hellhound-whispering skills to train the mutt to whisk Logan to the island she shared with his Horseman brother, Ares. “You know that. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, of course.” Looking up, she offered him a shaky smile. Her skin was way too pale, strain had put hollows under her eyes, and her miscarriage a year ago was much too fresh in his mind. Where the fuck was the doctor? “I’m just rattled.”

So was Than, but he wouldn’t admit that to Regan. She needed him to be strong right now, and he wouldn’t fail her.

Eidolon burst into the Emergency Department from the direction of the hospital’s office wing and gestured for them to follow him to an open exam room.

“What’s going on?” The doctor, his dark hair molded to his head in the shape of a surgical cap, jerked the privacy curtain closed behind them.

Regan brushed aside Thanatos’s helping hand and climbed onto the exam table on her own. So stubborn.

“I fell,” she said as she reclined against the raised table back. “I think I might have been struck by lightning too. There was some pain in my belly, but it’s better now, and I just felt the baby kick.”

She was struck by lightning?

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