by Larissa Ione
He skidded around a corner at the entrance to the Crystal Chamber, and for a moment, he froze at the incomprehensible sight of a Soulshredder tearing apart an angel.
A demon.
No demon had ever set foot in Heaven, let alone inside the Archangel buildings.
“Metatron!” Raphael’s shout rang out from somewhere behind him.
Metatron hurled a flaming dagger at the Soulshredder, taking it out with effortless ease. The thing shrieked as its body combusted, raining greasy ashes onto the gold-and-gem-tiled floor.
Whirling in the direction of Raphael’s shout, he ducked the swing of another Soulshredder, but before he could destroy it, a sword cleaved the evil beast in half. It collapsed, and with its death, the overwhelming, almost crippling sense of evil in Heaven vanished.
Behind the creature, spattered in demon blood, was Raphael. Disbelief and anger etched deep lines in his face, and Metatron wondered if he looked as shaken as Raphael was.
“This is madness,” Raphael breathed, his voice laced with a rare note of fear.
Oh, he didn’t fear demons; he feared for the future, just as Metatron did. Not since Satan led a rebellion that divided Heaven and cost thousands of angel lives had an event of such proportions rocked Heaven.
“This goes beyond madness,” Metatron said grimly. And, he could admit it, shakily.
Raphael recovered his sword and cleaned it with a mere thought. “There’s no way Lucifer has been born already.”
Metatron reached deep into his rattled psyche for an elusive measured calmness. “This isn’t Satan’s doing.”
Raphael frowned. “Then whose?”
“There’s only one answer.” Metatron didn’t even have to guess at this. He knew.
Raphael’s eyes shot wide. “Reaver.”
“And Harvester. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Raphael’s face mottled with anger, but the emotion was a lot milder than Metatron would have expected. The other archangel had always hated Reaver, but Metatron had no idea why.
“He did it. I actually went through with it. He rescued her and put us all at risk. That fool!” Raphael made the sword disappear, though Metatron suspected he’d like to run it through Reaver’s chest. “We have to post combat units at every mass exit point from Sheoul, and we have to get structural teams to find the weak spots in the Heavenly membrane.”
He groaned out loud at that last part, because Heaven was… huge. It would take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years to inspect every nook and cranny.
“It’s time to tell the others,” Metatron said grimly.
Time to let all the other archangels in on what Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel had done five thousand years ago when they’d erased all memories of Yenrieth. No one else knew that Reaver was Yenrieth, father of the Horsemen, destroyer of entire villages and towns. No one knew how truly powerful Reaver was, and that Metatron had been forced to bind his powers when Reaver was very young.
And no one except Metatron knew that Reaver and Harvester, as Yenrieth and Verrine, had blood-bonded.
Under normal circumstances and with their memories intact, they’d have felt each other no matter where they were in the universe.
But when Verrine fell and she became evil, the bond went into a hibernation of sorts. It should have stayed that way… unless Harvester tasted Reaver’s blood.
Metatron had feared this, had feared what would happen if the bond was awakened while Reaver was in Sheoul. Now he knew. The powers Metatron had sealed within Yenrieth were starting to leak out. Warped and twisted by his Sheoulic environment, they were punching holes in the very fabric that separated Heaven and hell.
There was pounding of feet, and then a dozen senior archangels burst into the chamber. A dozen more flashed in and the room, its gold-veined crystal walls vibrating, went opaque for privacy and expanded to accomodate the crowd.
Gabriel was the first to speak. “What is going on? I just killed a demon… in my home.”
“I found one in my pool,” Michael said as he instantly changed his garb from a soaked robe to pin-striped black slacks and a Green Bay Packers green-and-gold jersey. From century to century, the angel thought he had a handle on current human fashion, but he rarely got it right.
Metatron met each of his brothers’ gazes before focusing on the spilled bowl of fruit near the body of the angel the Soulshredder had killed. Sorrow made his heart clench, but mourning would have to wait.
“It’s time,” he said grimly, “that you all knew the truth.”
Hold onto your balls, everyone, because if you thought things were bad now, just wait. They were about to get much, much worse.
Raphael flashed himself straight from the Archangel complex to the Emerald Knoll, a grassy hill surrounded by a moat that flowed in a circular river. Lorelia was waiting for him, her golden hair glinting in the sunlight. An ancient Chinese text floated nearby, but she wasn’t reading. Instead she was pacing and flapping her dove-gray wings with the speed of a hummingbird. When she saw Raphael, she ran to him.
The book hit the ground.
“Raphael.” Her hands fluttered nervously at her sides. “I heard demons broke in. Is it true? Has Lucifer been born?”
“Demons, yes. Lucifer, no.” He smiled tightly. “We have another problem. Tell me, do the Horsemen know Reaver’s whereabouts?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Ask them.”
“Of course,” she said. “But why?”
“I have a task for you,” he said, intentionally ignoring her question. That was the great thing about being an archangel. Niceties and explanations weren’t necessary. “It’s going to be dangerous. And delicate.”
“Name it.” Lorelia had been a guardian angel of unborn infants before her assignment to the Horsemen, so this was going to be right up her alley.
“As you’re aware, Gethel is pregnant with a bouncing baby reincarnated Lucifer.” At Lorelia’s nod, he continued. “Obviously, we can’t let her give birth. We sent assassins the moment we heard about her pregnancy, but their chances of successfully taking her out are slim. No doubt she’s heavily protected and most likely residing in a region of Sheoul that our assassins can’t enter.”
The archangels had first approached their network of demon spies, but finding someone willing to put down Satan’s lover and his unborn son was beyond impossible. Demons might be as dumb as doorknobs, but they weren’t suicidal. Darkmen, as conjured assassins, had no such self-preservation instinct.
“What does this have to do with me?”
“We need a backup plan.” Another backup plan, anyway. Raphael had set the first one in motion when he’d given Reaver the sheoulghul. He’d suspected that the idiot might try to rescue Harvester, and now it was only a matter of time before he paid dearly for that stupid move.
“What kind of backup plan?” Lorelia asked.
Raphael swallowed his distaste at what he was about to say. Regret was the price of being an archangel, of setting aside personal feelings in order to do what was necessary to win a war.
“I need you to perform a fetaelis mortcaesar on Limos.”
“Limos?” The color drained from Lorelia’s face in an almost comical rush. “You… you can’t be serious.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“But the risks—”
“Limos is the only person I’m aware of, in any of the three realms, who can do this. She’s immortal, so she’ll survive. She’s pregnant, which is critical. She’s farther along in her pregnancy than Gethel by a matter of a couple of weeks, which is a bonus. And Satan’s blood has run through her veins since she was betrothed to him as a child. Also a critical requirement. Can you think of anyone else who matches those prerequisites?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Are you arguing with me?”
She swallowed audibly. “No, my lord. But it’s against Watcher rules. Even with your orders, I’ll be pun
ished. Unless you’ve spoken to the Watcher Council.”
“No. This is an archangel matter. I told you this was going to be dangerous. I’ll do what I can to ensure a light punishment, but ultimately, it’s up to both Heavenly and Sheoulic Watcher Councils.”
He just hoped his plan worked. He’d be the hero who saved Heaven. If it failed, he’d end up before the Archangel Council and face punishment of his own.
Lorelia shifted her weight as she chewed her bottom lip, and he knew she was going through all of the pros and cons.
Pros: Save Heaven.
Cons: Too many to list.
She needed an incentive. “Tell you what,” he said. “Do this, and I’ll assign you to the FCU.”
Her astonished breath told him he’d both hooked her and reeled her in. “You’d really do that? You’d assign me to the Fabled Cities Unit? I know people who have been trying for a thousand years to just get on the waiting list.”
Everyone wanted to be assigned to FCU detail and rightly so. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to visit lost cities and mythical locales? And not just visit them, but go back in time to experience the rise and fall of entire ancient civilizations, some of which had been erased from human and even angelic knowledge.
“There’s an opening if you want it.” Besides, once the task was done, she’d have to avoid the Horsemen for the rest of her life. They’d kill her for what she was going to do.
Suddenly eager, Lorelia wrung her hands like a villain from an old silent film. “When do you want this to happen?”
“As soon as possible. We might not be able to kill Gethel, but with your help, we can make sure that Lucifer’s birth takes place under our control, where we can kill him before he takes his first breath.”
“How do you think I should handle it? Revenant isn’t going to let me just walk up to Limos and rip the child from her womb.”
True. The Horsemen’s Sheoulic Watcher existed to give the Heavenly Watcher trouble. And to keep Heaven from stealing an advantage in the ever-present tug-of-war between Heaven and Sheoul.
“You’ve got powerful anti-Horsemen weapons. Start a fight. Make them take the first swing so you can use self-defense as an argument with the Council. And be sure to demolish them all so they’re out of commission for a while. We need six Earth hours to complete the ritual.”
“What about Lucifer? How are you going to take him from Gethel?”
“We need the physical presence of only one of the infants to perform the ceremony. Lucifer’s soul will be forced out of Gethel remotely.” He lowered his head, hating that it had come to this. But war was war, and Heaven would do what it must to win. “Do your job right, and Limos will have no way of knowing we switched her child with Gethel’s, and that the life we put back inside her is Lucifer.”
At least, no one would know until he was born. Then the horse shit would hit the fan. The Horsemen had wreaked havoc upon the Earth once—badly enough that history had been erased and rewritten. The archangels had done it before, and they could do it again. The Earth and its inhabitants might suffer, and that was regrettable.
But Heaven would be safe.
Thirteen
Reaver stared at the beast Harvester had become, his mind torn between focusing on the fact that he was glowing and the fact that while she’d been latched on, connected to him in a way that seemed more intimate than anything he’d ever done, he’d remembered things about his past with her. Yenrieth’s past with Verrine. The memories had been fleeting and broken, as if they’d been whirling inside a tornado and he could catch only bits and pieces as they flew by.
Harvester stared back at him, her normally green eyes as black as the oily pools dotting the landscape around them. Black and blue veins ran like a road map of evil under her gray skin, and her lips, usually lush and as smooth as a fine merlot, had blackened and peeled back to reveal a mouth full of sharp teeth. She was taller. Larger. And two horns jutted from her skull like railroad spikes.
“We’re going to slaughter you down here, angel.” She charged him, swiping at his face with claw-tipped hands.
“Shit.” He spun, caught her from behind, and threw her to the ground.
His blood had strengthened her, but she was still no match for him. Not yet. Once she was fully healed, they’d be on even footing. He knew from experience that she was his equal in almost every way.
She popped to her feet with a hiss. “You’re going to die.”
“Verrine!” His bellow rumbled through the cave, breaking free rocks and dust that pelted them and swirled through the air. “This isn’t you. My blood did something—”
“It is me!” she screamed, and he swore the air pulsed around her. “I’m not Verrine. I’m hell’s daughter. Evil runs through my veins. You wasted what was left of your pathetic life to rescue a monster.”
“You aren’t a monster.”
“No?” She took a few steps toward him, her hips swaying in that dangerously seductive way she had that drove Reaver crazy with lust. “Want to know what’s going through my head right now? Because I guarantee you’ll change your mind.” She whirled around as Calder burst into the cavern.
“I found the way out!” Calder gave Harvester a double-take. “Damn, bitch, you’re ugly.” He gestured to the tunnel he’d emerged from. “Come on, I’ll show you. We can be in the human realm in an hour—”
Calder’s head exploded like a balloon full of strawberry jelly and cream cheese. Gore splattered on the cave walls and dripped down the stalactites to form gooey puddles on the ground.
“What the fuck?” Reaver leaped away from Harvester, whose finger and thumb pointed like a gun at the demon’s remains.
Smiling, she brought her hand up and pretended to blow smoke from her finger pistol. “Bang.”
Still stunned, Reaver choked out, “He was going to get us out of here.”
“Whatever,” she said with a shrug. “He was an asshole.”
Yes, he was. But he was an asshole they needed. “He was our ally!” he shouted.
“Ally?” Harvester laughed, a crackly, paper-thin sound. “Do you know how many good guys I’ve killed since I fell? Thousands. Humans, demons, angels.” Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, as if inhaling the scent of her victims’ misery. “I fucking loved it.” She shivered and opened her eyes.
To survive Sheoul and earn a place as Watcher, she had to do things that hardened her heart and blackened her soul.
Raphael had called it. Reaver wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Harvester post-rescue, but this wasn’t it. He’d hoped that Verrine was somewhere inside the fallen angel, and now that he had a few memories in his head, he truly couldn’t reconcile this Harvester with the angel who had, in the human realm, healed children and animals. Who had brought him manna drops after he’d been mangled in a battle with demons.
Who had kissed him.
“Damn you, Harvester,” he breathed. “Whatever is going through your head is happening because of my blood. Or my glow. It’s affecting the evil side of you, but you can fight it.”
She raked her hand through her hair, exposing more of her polished black horns. “It’s easier not to.”
“Since when has doing the right thing been easy?” He inched slowly closer, careful to keep her from feeling trapped. “It wasn’t easy to give up your wings, was it? It wasn’t easy to do the things you had to do to prove your loyalty to Satan, but you did it.”
A tremor shook her, so subtle he’d have missed it if he’d blinked. But then it was gone, and her malevolence burned in her coal eyes once more.
“It was difficult… but only at first.” She licked her lips and moaned with pleasure. “Do you know how quickly you learn to love the rush other people’s misery provides?”
He took another step closer. “Listen to me. You’re an angel. Your mother is an angel, and your father, bastard that he is now, was an angel when you were conceived. There’s more good in you than evil no matter how much Sheoul has changed you. Fight
this, Harvester.”
She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, they were bloodshot, but at least the whites were… white instead of inky black. “You remind me of someone.”
Yeah, he thought. I remind you of me. Of Yenrieth.
“Purge your powers,” she said roughly, and he went taut with suspicion. “You have to get rid of the glow.” Her clawed hands flexed at her sides. “It makes me want to… hurt you.”
She was right—if feeding from him had drained the lasher implants and with them, their angel-masking ability, the only way to dampen his angelic signature was to drain his powers. But what if she was lying and he wasn’t radiating an angelic aura? What if she wanted him to drain himself so he’d be weakened and vulnerable?
“Do it,” she purred. “Expend yourself.”
Could he trust her? And did she have to make it sound so dirty?
Harvester’s expression tightened, and all over her body, the veins winding in erratic paths beneath her skin began to pulse. “Do you think I’m going to slaughter you once you’ve depleted your power reserves?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“I won’t.” She clenched her teeth as she spoke, as if her brain was trying to keep her mouth from talking. “My word is all I have. I won’t go back on it. I keep to my oaths.”
I keep to my oaths. Another snapshot of memory. He saw Verrine on her knees, sobbing as she pleaded with him. I keep to my oaths. Please, Yenrieth, you have to understand.
Understand what? What oaths? What was that all about? Had he trusted her then? Could he trust her now?
Harvester was starting to pant. “Once you do it, I should return to normal. But hurry. I can’t hold back for long.”
Shit. Even if he could settle Harvester down or knock her out, he couldn’t walk around Sheoul like some sort of divine beacon. He’d be dead, or worse, taken prisoner within hours.
“Stand back.” He gestured to the far side of the cave, near Calder’s body. “Over there.”
With a displeased growl, she moved with him to the exit, and he didn’t like the way she kept staring at him like he was a juicy steak. And not one to be savored.