by Larissa Ione
The male groaned, his blood-streaked face a mask of agony. Then he screamed when the king of all demons drove one long, sharp claw through his pupil.
“I want her back.” The black veins under Satan’s skin visibly pulsed with the force of his anger. “I want my beloved Harvester back where she belongs. On a skinning block, writhing in blood-soaked misery.”
Beloved? Skinning block? Satan had a strange way of showing affection. Revenant really wished the demon would stop sometimes referring to him as “my son,” which, as far as he knew, wasn’t true.
Please let it not be true.
Satan popped the werewolf’s eyeball into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. After a moment he wheeled around to Revenant, and Rev’s bowels turned to water.
“You said Metatron and Raphael paid a visit to the Horsemen. Did they discuss rescuing Harvester?”
“No, my lord. Not that I heard.” The bastards had rendered him immobile, deaf, and blind. When he’d come to, all of the angels were gone, including Reaver and Lorelia. “I don’t think the Horsemen even know of her status as a plant for Heaven.” They’d been as confused—and pissed—as Revenant when they’d gained consciousness.
Satan snarled, his mood going suddenly sour. “I want Harvester and the heads of those responsible for stealing her. And I swear by all that’s unholy that if angels are involved, I’ll devastate Heaven. Once that angel-infested realm is nothing but smoldering ash and there’s no one to save the weakling humans, I’ll turn my legions loose on the earthly realm.”
Revenant nodded with as much eagerness as he could muster. He hated angels and thought humans were an annoying infestation on an otherwise nice planet, but the idea of turning Heaven and Earth into replicas of Sheoul didn’t sit well. He’d never been to Heaven, but he liked the Earth the way it was. The colors were vibrant. The air was fresh, the sunlight pleasant on the skin. Best of all, it wasn’t crawling with demons. Well, it was, but mostly, they remained hidden behind human masks.
But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.
A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.
In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.
“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.
“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”
He turned back to the werewolf, and with a vicious swipe, he ripped into the male’s belly. Blood and organs spilled onto the floor. The warg’s screams faded away, but before the poor jackass could die, Satan partially healed him with a flick of the wrist.
Partially, because you never wanted your torture subject to be pain free.
“Go back to your duty, Revenant. Bypass the Watcher Council and come directly to me if anything happens with the Horsemen or their Watcher.” He sneered. “They might know more than they’re saying.”
It was against Watcher rules to break the chain of command—even if Satan himself requested it. But the fuck if Revenant was going to point that out, so he merely bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“And Rev,” he said silkily, “don’t let me down, or you’ll take Harvester’s place on the skinning block.” He gestured to the door with his blood-coated clawed hand. “Send in Blight.”
Rev sucked in a sharp breath. Blight commanded all of Satan’s militaries.
“I’m sending an army after Harvester. When they find her, they will drag her and her rescuers back by their intestines.” Satan smiled at the barely conscious werewolf. “And you… you will talk. And then I get a hundred thousand extra souls to enslave in my armies, and Heaven and all its happy inhabitants will fall into my hands.”
And once Heaven fell, there would be nothing to stop him from taking over the Earth next.
Seven
Tavin’s shout screamed through Reaver’s brain.
He dove outside through the opening in the larva-nettle bush and came face to ass with a giant stegosaurus-sized beast. The creature was pawing at Tavin as the Sem tried to wedge himself between two boulders. Calder was twenty yards away, coming at them at a dead run, but Reaver doubted he’d get here before the thing got to Tavin.
“Hey!” Reaver yelled. The demon wheeled around with a snarl, its gaping maw large enough to swallow him whole.
Digging deep into his perilously low power reserves, Reaver blasted the thing with liquid fire that tore into the demon’s chest, splattering blood and gore on the parched earth. The beast screeched, but didn’t slow down. It swiped at Reaver with bony, clawed hands that dripped with the hair and meat of whatever creature it had tangled with before it found them.
With the stench of burnt flesh swirling around him, Reaver spun out of its way while simultaneously hurling a ball of lightning at its head. The lightning veered off course at the last second, a victim of Reaver’s unpredictable powers, and fizzled into a harmless shower of sparks.
Calder, the claws on his hands and feet extended, leaped into the fray, slashing at the demon’s hindquarters as Tavin extracted himself from the safety of the boulders.
His power failing miserably, Reaver went old school and hurled a stone into the demon’s jaw. Roaring, it lunged awkwardly, partially crippled by Calder’s efforts. Reaver hit the ground in a roll to avoid snapping jaws that would have cut him in half. As he popped to his feet, he summoned a shear-whip, and in a single, fluid motion, he leaped onto the demon’s spiny back and brought the white-hot scourge down on the beast’s skull.
The whip cut deeply into its skin, leaving steaming gashes all the way to the bone. The demon roared and threw itself backward, smashing Reaver into the rocky cliff surrounding the camp. Pain speared every bone in Reaver’s body, and his thoughts scattered like spilled marbles.
He bounced off a rocky outcrop before hitting the ground in a messy sprawl. Momentarily stunned, he lay there as the thing clamped its paw on top of him, caging him inside a prison of bony fingers and razor-sharp claws.
Man, he hated these giant things. They couldn’t kill him—very few demons could—but they were capable of serving up a world of hurt that could leave him defenseless for days. Worse, the commotion might attract Satan’s minions.
With renewed enthusiasm, he energized his hands with iced fire and jammed them between the demon’s fingers. Frost streaked through the creature’s hand and up its arm, leaving trails of chilled vapor billowing in its wake.
Excellent. The demon would retreat… ah, shit. Ice froze the demon’s hand to the ground, trapping Reaver as the beast fought Tavin and Calder with its other arm and its clawed feet.
“Reaver!” Tavin’s voice sounded above the demon’s pained screams.
“I’m here,” Reaver called out. He summoned a giant mallet and prepared to smash his way out of the prison of the demon’s palm. “You guys keep the bastard busy.”
“I’m open to suggestions, asshole,” Calder yelled. “Wait… standby!”
A massive crash buckled the ground, shattering the demon’s fro
zen hand and releasing Reaver. The demon lay dead a few yards away, bled out from a gut-spilling gash in his belly, courtesy of Calder, who was bent over, trying to catch his breath. But where was Tavin?
Reaver scrambled over a pile of boulders. “Tav? Man, where are you?”
Calder joined in Reaver’s frantic search, until finally, the Nightlash demon shouted. “There!”
The Seminus’s arm was poking out from under the dead beast’s hindquarters.
Fear made Reaver clumsy as he rushed to Tavin, and he nearly passed out with relief when he found the Sem caught in a small space between the demon’s leg and a rock.
“You okay?” Tavin didn’t respond. Anxiety spiked again as Reaver sank to his knees. “Tav?”
Blood soaked the ground around Tavin, pooling and mixing with the other demon’s darker blood. A faint scritching noise rose up, and the dirt began to vibrate, sending chills up Reaver’s spine.
Carnage maggots.
“Get to safety,” Reaver told Calder. “Now.”
The demon eyed the larva-nettle bush. “What about the fallen angel?”
“The bush will protect her,” Reaver yelled, his patience shot. “Go!”
Hastily, he dragged Tavin out from under the demon’s leg and heaved him over his shoulder. The ground rumbled hard enough to make him stagger. In seconds this patch of battle-chewed earth would become a feeding ground for great white shark–sized grubs that fed on blood and dead flesh, but they wouldn’t turn down a live meal either.
The ground between Reaver and Harvester erupted with maggots, cutting off his path. Shit. He spun sharply and hauled ass up a mound of boulders, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of a maggot that burst out of the ground like a damned porpoise out of water.
“I hate Sheoul,” he breathed, as he laid Tavin out on his side on a flat rock and kneeled beside the still unconscious Sem. The stench of blood, bowels, and death filled his nostrils, and his heart plummeted to his feet. It was worse than he’d thought.
Tavin had been gutted from the back. Broken bones pierced organs that were spilling out of the two-foot gash, and Reaver had a sick feeling he’d left a few vital innards on the ground below.
“Damn you,” Reaver muttered.
Even if Reaver possessed the ability to get the demon to Underworld General, he wouldn’t survive the time it would take to get there. Reaver was Tavin’s only hope, and healing him was going to take every drop of Reaver’s power. He couldn’t afford the loss, but neither could he afford to lose Tavin.
But there was also the very real possibility that his healing power could go awry, twisted and corrupted by the lasher implants. He could kill Tavin just as easily as heal him.
Reaver wasn’t even going to think about the fact that healing demons with angelic power was sort of… frowned upon by his angel brethren. He’d broken a lot bigger rules than that in just the last day.
Tavin sucked in a weak, shuddering breath. As he exhaled, his body went slack with the familiar death sag.
Reaver was done with the overthinking crap.
Power tingled up from his core, spreading across his skin. He placed his hands on Tavin’s head and funneled everything he had into the demon. Sweat formed on his brow as Tavin’s organs and bones began to mend and his heart began to beat.
Clenching his teeth, he dragged power from the deepest depths of his very bones, channeling it into Tavin until he sputtered and choked.
Tavin groaned in tandem with Reaver as his healing ability trickled down to nothing. Drained to the point of near-unconsciousness, Reaver lurched forward, nearly landing on Tavin as his muscles turned to water. He collapsed onto the hard stone and let himself lay there, panting and sweating. Next to him, Tavin breathed in deep, steady draws. The Sem was out of the woods.
“Reaver?” Tavin’s voice was raspy and rough. Pretty normal for a guy who had been teetering on the wrong side of death.
“Yeah?” Reaver didn’t sound so hot, either.
Tavin exploded up to crouch on his haunches next to Reaver, his mangled T-shirt hanging off him in bloody strips, one hand covering his personal Seminus glyph on his throat. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
“I saved your life.” Reaver sat up, irritated at the demon’s utter lack of gratitude. “And you’re welcome.”
Tavin’s blue eyes sparked with gold, which meant he was either horny or annoyed, and Reaver hoped to hell it wasn’t the former, because the guy wasn’t going to find a female anytime soon.
“No… what did you do to me?”
Demons. They didn’t make sense at the best of times. “What are you talking about?”
Tavin moved his hand. Reaver leaned in for a closer look. Had the symbol changed? Reaver thought it had been some sort of string or rope.
“Ah… what was your symbol?” Reaver asked.
“Was?”
“Is,” Reaver said. “Was, is… whatever. What’s the symbol you see on your neck every day when you look in the mirror?”
Tavin’s cheeks blushed pink. “It’s a worm.”
“Worm?” Most Sems had more masculine symbols, or at least, symbols that weren’t… worms.
“Yes, worm.” Tavin gnashed his teeth. “What’s wrong with it? It feels different. I feel different.”
The ground rumbled as the maggots began to move away. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be gone and he could get back to Harvester. Reaver smoothed his fingertip over the thin black lines and gray shaded details of Tavin’s new glyph. A prick of pain stabbed his fingertip, and he drew back with a hiss.
“Well,” Reaver said as he stared at the blood welling on the pad of his finger, “no one is going to make fun of you for having a worm on your neck anymore.”
Tavin glared. “Why not?”
“Because your worm turned into a viper.” He held out his bloodied finger. “And it bites.”
Tavin fell back onto the rock and stared up into the endless black above. “Remind me to never travel with an angel again. Especially not you.”
“I doubt you have to worry about that,” Reaver said.
Because after this trip, chances were that he would no longer be an angel.
Eight
It had been a long time since Harvester had awakened feeling rested and comfortable. She was hungry and a little thirsty, but her mouth wasn’t so parched that she wanted to drink her own tears, so that was something.
Warm arms were wrapped around her, and at her back, a big male body was bracing her, holding her securely in place. Strangely, instead of feeling trapped and shackled, she felt secure. Safe. How long had it been since she’d felt safe? She couldn’t remember.
No… that wasn’t true. She’d been an angel once, living among her kind, never worrying about losing her life or being subjected to endless torture. Now she was… where?
Sudden panic squeezed her in a vise grip and she sat up with a cry. The arms caging her tightened, and when she struggled, they squeezed even tighter.
“Harvester. It’s me. It’s Reaver.”
She went still. Reaver? It all came back to her, but it sure as shit didn’t make her feel any better. She no longer felt the shockwaves from her father’s searing rage, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. When Satan was calm, he was plotting death and destruction. She and Reaver were in grave danger, and it was only a matter of time before the enemy—or the good guys—found them.
“Release me,” she ground out.
His arms fell away, and she scrambled to the other side of the little cove he’d made for them in the center of the larva-nettle bush. She was naked, but she’d lost her sense of modesty thousands of years ago, and besides, they had bigger problems than her lack of clothing. At least she had her sight back.
Yay for eyes.
Reaver remained on the ground, lounging on his side, head propped on one hand as if they didn’t have a care in the world. As if he hadn’t been holding her as carefully as if she were made of glass. Why would he do that? Maybe he
was trying to throw her off balance with the nice-guy act. But if he thought he was going to sweet-talk her into looking for Lucifer, he was more of a fool than she’d believed. She’d done enough for Team Good. She’d done her time and paid her dues.
Besides, she couldn’t sense her evil unborn brother. Not at a distance. She was too drained, too weakened by months of torture. Hell if she was going to tell Reaver that, though.
“We need to get out of here,” she said. “We’ve been here too long. Trackers are going to find us.”
“I know.” Sitting up, he gestured to his backpack. “There are clothes and protein bars inside. Get dressed and eat while I check the situation outside. We’ll head out as soon as you’re ready. Tavin said we’re only a three day journey from a place where I should be able to flash us out of here. Three days, and we’ll all be safe.”
Safe. Reaver might be an optimist, but she was a realist. They’d never be safe. He slipped away before she had a chance to ask where they were. They couldn’t be that far from Satan’s stronghold. She could still feel the sinister vibration that emanated from Sheoul’s very center and called to her blackened soul like a beacon.
No, they were close to hell’s beating heart.
With a shudder, she dug through Reaver’s backpack and scarfed two of the protein bars as well as an apple she found in one of the pockets. She gulped water from the never-empty canteen, a handy angelic vessel that usually held nectar. Unfortunately, most Heavenly nectars were poisonous to fallen angels. Reaver had thought ahead, the wily little halo-head.
Finally feeling as though her gut wasn’t a bottomless pit, she checked out the clothes Reaver had brought. The matching bra and underwear were… pink. Bright. Hideous. Payback, she supposed, for the kitten-dotted pink sweats she’d given him when she’d gotten him out of Sheoul-gra.