by Larissa Ione
Reluctantly, he prepared himself, knowing this could be the dumbest move he’d ever made. And that was saying something, because he’d made some whoppers.
Gathering every drop of his power, he threw out his hands and sent a blast of energy at the far side of the cave.
Please, Yenrieth, you have to understand.
Verrine’s words blindsided him again, knocking him so mentally off balance that he lost control of the divine lightning. The lasher implants might be drained of the ability to mask his aura, but they still managed to morph his power into a superstrong wrecking ball of white-hot fire that plowed into the cavern wall. An explosion shattered the air and hurled them a dozen yards down the tunnel. Through a thick plume of dust, he could make out tumbling boulders and falling slabs of earth.
“The cave’s collapsing,” he breathed, and then he stopped breathing as the tunnel they were in began to fold like a house of cards. “Run!”
He grabbed Harvester’s hand—no longer clawed—and sprinted over the uneven ground as the ceiling behind them buckled.
“You’re still glowing,” Harvester shouted above the roar of the destruction. “But it’s faint. I might only be able to see it because your blood is in my veins.”
He wasn’t that relieved. Now he was an angel in hell with no powers, no disguise, and no idea how they were going to get out.
Fourteen
Two days later, they were still stuck in Sheoul, but at least Harvester had gotten them out of the mountain caverns. They’d been forced to run blindly from the collapse, and then from a constant stream of enemies. The sheoulghuls gave Reaver a partial recharge, but he had to constantly discharge his powers to keep his Heavenly aura muted—and to keep Harvester from going evil again. But the close confines of the tunnels meant he wouldn’t broadcast the glow very far, which had allowed him to hold a small amount of energy in reserve to handle minor threats. Like an orc he blasted while they’d been on the run. He hadn’t even slowed down to do it.
Harvester, at least, was stronger now, and she’d been able to take out several enemies with some low-level fallen angel weapons.
But she drained her powers quickly and while she was able to recoup them faster than before, she was still operating at far below her normal threshold. Worse, she was unable to either flash them anywhere or sense Harrowgates. With their powers depleted, they’d taken a dive into a swift underground river in order to lose the enemies on their heels.
Endless miles of trying to keep their heads above water later, they’d been thrown out of the mountain darkness and onto the shore of an eerie, orange-glowing realm where everything was grotesquely gaunt and exaggerated, all Tim Burton and a touch of crack.
Now, dripping wet, exhaustion making them shuffle almost drunkenly, they entered a ramshackle village teeming with tall, inky-black creatures that resembled upright Borzoi dogs, with their narrow heads and skinny bodies.
“No sudden movements,” Harvester whispered. “Walk very slowly at first, or the carrion wisps will give chase.”
“Carrion wisps?”
She nodded. “The name is misleading, because they don’t eat carrion. They like their meat still moving.”
Reaver eyed the things, which were coming out of their soot-colored smokestack-like dwellings to follow behind them as they made their way through the center of the village. “How do we keep from being moving meat?”
Her still-damp hair clung to her shoulders as she shrugged wearily. “Don’t look tasty.”
Don’t look tasty? Brilliant.
He looked beyond the village, to a forest of black, leafless trees that sprouted from the ground like skeletal zombie hands punching up from graves. Looked like they were going to be walking into a Halloween portrait.
Talk about your postcards from hell.
“I don’t suppose you know where we are,” he said.
“Sure I do.” The teasing spin on her words amused him despite the fact that they weren’t in the best shape or situation. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“How helpful.”
Another shrug. “I try.”
She was her usual flippant self, but days spent on the run with no rest was taking its toll on her. On Reaver, too, if he could be honest with himself.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” he muttered.
“Loving what? The fact that now I’m the one with all the power and knowledge?” Reaching back, she tied her damp hair into a messy knot. “Yes.” She gazed up at the sky, which was a little less bright than it had been a few minutes ago. “We need to find shelter. It’s getting dark, and in this realm, everything has to take shelter at night. Here, the darkness kills.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that when we first washed up on the riverbank?”
She glared. “Right. Because that’s the first thing I thought of while recovering from two days of swimming and fighting off demon fish things. Also, we need to move faster.”
Reaver was on board with that. The carrion wisps were inching closer, and now there were maybe a hundred of them, all sizing Reaver and Harvester up for a meal.
They picked up the pace, their boots clacking painfully loudly on the uneven cobblestone road. The eerie quiet of the place was so unsettling he decided he’d rather listen to Harvester.
“Obviously, you know where we are,” he said. “Do you know how to get us out of here?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “No. I still can’t sense Harrowgates. But if we keep moving to the north, we should arrive at the Pavilion of Serpents in a few days. It’s one of the few places you can flash us out of Sheoul from.”
As they walked she tugged at her wet tank top, airing it out and peeling it away from places where it had molded to her body. Really, she could leave it wet and plastered to her curves. Reaver might hate her, but he’d never denied that she had a spectacular body.
Except he didn’t really hate her anymore. The thought came out of nowhere, was a surprise to him, but he wasn’t going to deny it. The slivers of memories that had come to him when she’d taken his vein had brought back emotions as well. He’d cared for her when he was Yenrieth. He might have even loved her. And before any of those memories had returned, he’d already accepted that she’d done evil for the sake of good, and he understood how she’d become what she was.
So no, he no longer hated her. But that didn’t mean he trusted her.
“So what’s your plan for us when we get out of Sheoul?” Harvester asked. “You can’t take me to Heaven unless I’m bound with angel twine, and even if you have that, don’t you think the archangels are going to just toss me back to Satan?”
He actually did have angel twine tucked away in his pack, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The dental-floss-thin thread, if used to bind a fallen angels’ wings, allowed passage into Heaven. It also bound their powers while in Heaven. Handy stuff.
“They aren’t going to send you back,” he said.
She rubbed her bare arms as if chilled, but it was a million degrees in this freakshow realm. “How can you be sure?”
He bared his teeth at a carrion wisp who came a little too close, and the thing backed off. They were getting bolder. “You’ll be the most important asset the archangels have ever seen. After five thousand years in Sheoul, not to mention the fact that you’re Satan’s daughter, you have powerful intel. They won’t be able to afford to let you go again.”
He studied the faded slash marks on her arms and shoulders, wondered if the emotional scars she bore from her time in Satan’s dungeon were healing as fast as her physical ones.
“And,” he added, “you can help them find Lucifer. That’s your ace. They need you.”
He could almost feel the wall around her fortifying itself. “I told you I’m not helping.”
“You said that so I would kill you.”
“No,” she said, her voice thickened with anger. “I said it because I don’t give a shit what happens to anyone in Heaven. Especially not the arc
hangels.” She stopped in the middle of the road, and so did the herd of carrion wisps. Her gaze met his. “You can’t trust them, Reaver. Never trust them.”
Surprised by her vehemence, Reaver hesitated, feeling as though he should comfort her even if he didn’t know why.
“I don’t.” He hefted the backpack higher on his shoulder. “But what makes you say that?”
Her smile was bitter. “I say it because I used to trust them. If there was anyone I thought I could count on, it was the archangels.”
“Until…” he prompted.
“Until I was ordered to take you captive,” she said, and an uneasy sensation rolled through him. “You can’t trust any of them. Especially not Raphael.”
“And why is that?” he bit out.
“Because,” she said softly, “it was Raphael who ordered your capture and torture.”
Harvester rarely got a chance to see Reaver struck dumb. Now was one of those moments, and she was going to savor it a little.
And maybe she wanted to savor it because even when he wasn’t being all luminous, like now, something about him still got to her like a poisonous rash, irritating the part of her that was dark and damaged.
She so badly wanted to scratch that itch.
Her body was tight with tension and the kind of restlessness that demanded relief. Making her even grumpier, her wing anchors felt like they were on fire. They were trying to heal, but they required fuel. She needed to feed again, but damn, she was still experiencing the ragey effects of the last feeding. What she couldn’t figure out was why, when she’d fed from Reaver, she hadn’t gone evil right away, the way she had when she’d fed from Tryst, the angel she’d killed thousands of years ago.
Guilt tore at her, cozying up to the thousands of other guilt-inducing acts she’d committed over the course of her life.
“Raphael?” Reaver finally growled. “He wanted you to cut off my wings and get me addicted to marrow wine? Why?”
“He needed you out of the way so you wouldn’t stop me from doing what I had to do to stop the Apocalypse.”
A tempest brewed in Reaver’s blue eyes, making them swirl with clouds and lightning. Sexy. She’d always loved a man with a temper.
“My ass. You could have gotten me out the way without torturing me.” He narrowed those stormy eyes at her. “So whose idea was that?”
She started walking again, hoping to outrun her own deeds, but no, Reaver kept up, his scorching glare a reminder of what she’d done.
“Well?”
“Raphael’s.”
They’d met in a realm-neutral Central American cave, where she’d asked the archangel to reconsider, but he’d been dead set on making sure Reaver was incapacitated and in pain. When she’d outright refused, he’d threatened to take the one thing she cherished. The one thing she still had left of Verrine’s life: her memories of Yenrieth.
It didn’t matter that some of the memories were terrible. The majority were from happy times when she and Yenrieth were learning to hunt demons or ride horses, or when they were just lying in a meadow and watching shepherds with their sheep. Those memories were what she hung onto when she lost faith in the reason she’d started on the fallen angel path in the first place. They’d given her a purpose. And more than anything else, including saving the world and giving the Horsemen peace and happiness in their lives, her memories of Yenrieth had given her an escape when she was hanging from chains in one of her father’s many dungeons.
“You already have more memories than you should,” Raphael said. “You don’t remember what he looks like, but you remember everything he did. No one, except perhaps Lilith, has even that. To everyone else, he only exists in the histories of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
She still had no idea why it was that she had memories no one else did, and Raphael never answered her when she asked. He was such a dick.
“You hellrat bastard,” she spat. “Reaver’s pain means so much to you that you’re blackmailing me to make it happen?”
“Yes.” Raphael brushed a cobweb off his shoulder. “Now, do you want me to take the memories of Yenrieth from you?”
“No.” Fury roared through her, joined by pain as her body morphed, against her will, into her demon body. She hated when she went all Hulk from rage or angel blood, but that’s what being a fallen angel was. Evil and ugly. “I’ll do it.”
Raphael shrank away from her in disgust. “Good.” He disappeared, but his voice hung in the air for a few more seconds. “Make it hurt. And don’t let me see you like that again. You’re hideous.”
Yeah, Raphael was all heart and asshole.
“Did you enjoy hurting me?” Reaver asked, his voice as angry as his gaze.
Ouch. She supposed it was a legitimate question, given how she’d done all she could to make him believe she’d loved every minute of his misery, but for some reason, she no longer wanted him to think the worst of her. Maybe there really was part of her that was still good. She’d done a lot of things for the good team, but she’d never truly felt as if she was good. Especially because the things she’d done in the name of good had been reprehensible.
Like torturing Reaver.
She looked ahead, avoiding his gaze. “Did you enjoy it when you found Gethel torturing me with treclan spikes?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go.”
They walked in silence for a while, the carrion wisps still following like sickly ghosts.
“Harvester,” Reaver said, his voice calmer now, “why did you choose to fall?”
“I needed to watch over the Horsemen.”
Reaver’s golden mane had dried in perfect, shiny waves that fell across his cheeks and jaw as he inclined his head in a slow nod. “I know. But why were the Horsemen so important to you?”
She considered her answer, but everything sounded so lame. Because I was in love with their father. Because I made a promise. Because I was an idiot. Finally, she settled on, “You wouldn’t understand.”
He cursed, low and long. “I really hate it when people say that. You have no idea what I’ll understand and what I won’t. Pet peeve of mine. So why don’t you try me.”
His tone set her temper on edge, and no matter how many times she repeated to herself that she needed to refuse to let her evil side reign and make an effort to talk instead of argue, she still spit out an irritated, “Why should I?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Maybe because I risked my wings to rescue you.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she reminded him for what felt like the millionth time. “And if you’re going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life, why don’t we part ways now and let me fend for myself.”
Reaver closed his eyes and breathed deeply enough for her to hear. “Once, just once, can you not fight me?”
She owed him and she knew it, but being indebted to anyone, especially Reaver, was unacceptable. When she owed someone, that debt became a weapon, as she’d learned after many, many lessons. And while Reaver didn’t have anything worth blackmailing her with, he knew more about her vulnerabilities than anyone alive.
Still, she was grateful, and he deserved better than her fallen angel attitude. “I swore to Yenrieth that I would take care of his children.”
Reaver missed a step. “He was aware that you were planning to fall for the sake of his children, and he let you?”
“No one lets me do anything.” She flicked a spark of power at a carrion wisp that was close enough to have her by the throat in two bounding leaps. The thing yelped and slunk to the back of the pack.
“But he knew?”
“Not exactly,” she said and sighed. “My oath was more to myself. On the very day his children were conceived, I swore I’d watch over them. He didn’t even know Lilith was pregnant.”
Reaver’s throat worked on a swallow, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. Impossible for him to believe she had once been decent, she supposed.
“Why? Why would you
swear to something like that?”
She thought about lying, or not answering at all, but she knew Reaver well enough to know that he wouldn’t let this go. And again, he’d rescued her. She owed him.
“Because.” It was her turn to swallow. And avert her gaze. “I was in love with him.”
She snuck a peek at Reaver, but his expression went shuttered, utterly unreadable. Maybe he was having a hard timing imagining that she might have had feelings for someone. “So you remember him?”
“I remember events,” she said, maybe a little harshly, but dammit, it kind of stung that Reaver would be so floored by the idea that she’d loved someone. “But I don’t remember what he looked like. No one does.”
It was a long time before Reaver replied. “Was he… were you two…”
“No.” This was so humiliating. “I pined for him for decades, but to him I was only a friend. Then, one day, he kissed me.”
That had been the best day of her life. She and Yenrieth had been practically inseparable, best friends who honed their fighting skills together, who pulled pranks on humans and other angels, and who even skinny-dipped in crystal pools together. He’d never looked upon her with lust, but she’d been unable to see his magnificent body naked without practically drooling.
“I was a virgin,” she said hoarsely. “I was saving myself for him, but when he finally pulled his head out of his ass and kissed me, I panicked like a lamb in a storm and fled. And he ran straight to Lilith’s bed.”
Well, bed of grass, anyway. He’d fucked the demon on the bank of one of the pools he and Harvester had swum in, and Harvester had come upon the aftermath. She’d been gutted by what she’d seen, and to this day the memory still had the power to cut deep.
Reaver muttered something that sounded like fucking idiot as he kept his gaze focused on the forest ahead, never looking in her direction. He was probably disgusted by her stupidity, just as she was.
“What happened then?”
“I sensed that the succubus was pregnant.” Looking down at her boots as they walked, she wondered what would have happened if she’d handled things differently. Some angels possessed the gift of clairvoyance, but she wasn’t one of them. How handy that would have been. “I should have told Yenrieth right then, but I was afraid he’d chase her into Sheoul and get himself killed. He was so damned impulsive and hotheaded, and he was still a novice battle angel. Even with the kind of power he had, he wasn’t experienced enough to enter most of Sheoul by himself. Plus, it was sometimes dangerous to upset him.”