by Larissa Ione
He caught her by the shoulders and wrenched her to the mattress. She might be more powerful than him right now, but he was physically stronger, and once he had her on her back, he used both his strength and his weight to keep her from hurting herself or him.
He just had to hope she was too angry to think about blasting him with her powers. He’d also like it if his cock wasn’t still in let’s play with the hot female mode.
“Harvester.” He jerked his head back to avoid getting whacked in the face by her flailing arm. “I don’t know where I was. You know I can’t remember anything but the last thirty years.”
“Liar! You’ve lied about everything else, you fucking asshole.”
She rocked her head up to bite his shoulder, and shit, that hurt. He shifted to gain leverage and muscled her into the mattress with his forearm over her throat. He kept the pressure light, not wanting to hurt her, but he also didn’t need to have any bites taken out of him.
“Listen to me,” he said roughly, because it wasn’t easy to talk when you were fighting off a snarling hellcat. “I’m not lying. I didn’t even know the truth about myself until a few months ago, after you were taken to Sheoul.”
Eyes shimmering like wet emeralds, she glared up at him, practically frothing with rabid fury. “What,” she ground out, “do you remember?”
“Not much. I can get brief glimpses of my past with you, but most of it is jumbled together. There’s no context.” He paused as a strange vibration began to buzz the air outside. The sharp, shrill sensation of terror skated over his skin.
“It’s night.” Harvester’s gaze tracked around the room as if seeking the source of the vibration. “Nothing can move now. We’re safe for a couple of hours.”
Safe. He was stuck inside a twelve-by-twelve shack with a fallen angel who hated him. There was nothing safe about any of this. Not for him.
“Now get off me,” she snapped.
“Do you promise you won’t try to kill me?”
“No.” If glares were daggers, he’d be bleeding out from massive trauma right now. “But if I wanted to kill you, I’d have given you the Calder treatment already.”
She had a point. He eased off her, but he braced himself for a possible surprise attack. Harvester had always fought dirty. Instead, she sat up calmly and tugged on her tank top.
Now what? He’d rather have her upset and yelling than eerily silent, like a dormant volcano on the verge of a catastrophic eruption.
“Damn you, Reaver.” Harvester scooted to the far side of the mattress and sat there, staring at him with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted more answers about his past.
And he wanted her forgiveness for what he’d done to her as Yenrieth. The anger over the secret she’d kept from him still lingered, but it was nothing compared to what she must be feeling. He’d had five months to come to grips with who he was. She’d had five minutes.
“You don’t want anything from me.” Acid dripped from her voice. “Just like old times.”
“Don’t,” he said as he reached for her. “Don’t do this.”
She jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me.” She flopped down on the mattress, putting her back to him and shutting him out as effectively as a brick wall. “Leave me alone.”
“Harvester—”
“I said, leave me the fuck alone!” She didn’t turn over, just kept up the impenetrable wall routine. “Just give me some fucking space. Can you do that? Can you follow a command for once in your life?”
The pain in her voice flayed him to the bone. He might be feeling residual hate, but the love he’d had for her was there, too, and while both were tempered by his experiences with her as Reaver, that only seemed to make it worse.
Because as far as he could tell, he’d been a major dick as Yenrieth, and Reaver had no idea how to reconcile who he’d been with who he was now. All he knew was that he was the source of Harvester’s pain. Every single stitch of pain she’d endured for the last five thousand years could be laid on his shoulders.
Bracing his back against the wall, he searched his brain for more memories as he waited for Harvester to process everything. He figured he had about five minutes before she ripped into him again, and sure enough, she sat up with a snarl, her eyes flecked with black.
“How did you learn the truth?”
“Reseph told me.” Man, he couldn’t have been more shocked. “He found out from Lilith.”
“Lilith,” she spat out, and beneath her skin, her veins began to blacken and rise to the surface. “I want her dead. I want her to suffer—”
“She’s dead,” he said before she got more worked up. “Reseph destroyed her.”
A low, menacing growl came from deep in her chest, and the tips of her horns erupted through her hair. “I hope he tortured her. I hope he did to her what he did to me.” A shudder shook her, and he reached for her again, but she hissed and knocked his hand away with a flare of power that singed the hair on his arm. “Were you upset about losing your lover?”
Shit. She was starting to go over the edge, and once that happened he’d be screwed. As calmly as he could, he said, “You know I wasn’t. I hated her, remember?” He doubted she saw the irony in him asking her if she remembered.
“You fucked her.” Suddenly, pain clamped down on his skull and pressure compressed his chest. “You hurt me.”
“Harvester,” he croaked. “Stop.”
She didn’t listen. Her eyes went ebony with irrational fury as she slammed her hands into his ribs and sent a blast of electric agony into his body. Clenching his teeth, he groaned and dug deep for the last drop of power he had.
With a whispered command, he released it into the air, enveloping them both in a bubble of exhaustion. It was a last-ditch move that affected them both, and even as she began to return to normal, he felt his eyelids droop.
Harvester slumped to the mattress. “What,” she said tiredly, “did you do?”
Oh, nothing. I just made us both vulnerable to anyone or anything that happens upon us. He just had to hope she was right and that nothing moved during the night in this realm.
Her eyes closed, and she let out a delicate snore. He tried to stay awake, but he was definitely falling victim to his own weapon. His muscles turned to pudding and he fell onto the mattress next to her. With another little snore, Harvester rolled over, bumping her forehead against his. Closing his eyes, he listened to her breathe. He was willing to bet that very few males had ever listened to her sleep. She wouldn’t want to be that vulnerable.
How lonely would that have been? He reached out and carefully tucked her closer, until she was curled into his chest, her arm across his waist. This felt familiar, and when a memory of them lying, fully clothed on a beach of white sand, popped into his head, he knew why.
Damn, but she’d been warm back then.
Floating on a raft of regret, he drifted off…
And woke to the sound of screams. Harvester jackknifed into a sit next to him. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” He leaped off the bed and threw open the door. Outside it was dawn, and a mob of carrion wisps were screeching at something that seemed to be fighting its way from the center of the group.
“A darkman,” Harvester breathed. “Impossible. How the hell did he find us? My wards should have thrown him off track for days.”
“Worry about that later.” Reaver scooped up the backpack. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
She grabbed his wrist in a bruising hold. “Wait. Something’s not right.”
“Maybe your wards were defective. It doesn’t matter. We have to go.”
“My wards were fine. The darkman tracked us somehow.” She scowled. “Did anyone give you anything for the journey?”
“The lasher implants. Why?”
“Because supernatural objects can be enchanted to become homing be
acons for darkmen. Only an angel could do that. Did the lasher implants come into contact with any angels that you know of?”
He shook his head. “Wraith would never have let them out of his sight once he had them. There’s no way—” He broke off as the answer hit him like a punch to the gut. “That bastard.”
“What is it?”
“The sheoulghuls.” He dug the crystals out of his pocket. “Raphael gave me one.”
Her eyes snapped up to his. “Holy fucknuts,” she whispered. “I told you not to trust him.”
“And you were right.” Reaver’s voice was wooden to his own ears. “He knew I’d come after you, and I fell right into his trap. I led the darkmen straight to you.”
Once again Revenant stood before Satan, and once again he wished he was anywhere but here. Anywhere.
Most demons and fallen angels, and even a few humans, would sell their own children at meat markets for the privilege of serving the Dark Lord. It was, after all, an honor to be considered one of Satan’s inner-circle minions. People dreamed of one day being at his side and in his service.
Those people were fucking stupid.
Only a stone-dumb idiot would want that. Satan’s lackeys rarely lived long. One screw-up and it was the ax. The literal ax. The Dark Lord didn’t believe in second chances.
He was also a big fan of shoot-the-fucking-messenger.
“You said your news is important.” The demon king turned away from the warg he’d been torturing for days. “It had better be. I’m about to break this werewolf assassin’s oath and find out who stole Harvester.”
It was important, all right. Revenant just hoped Satan didn’t freak out and do the shoot-the-messenger thing.
“Were you aware that Limos was pregnant?”
Satan’s growl indicated that he knew, and Revenant wondered what happened to the unlucky bastard who’d delivered the baby news. Limos was supposed to have been Satan’s bride, and he held a grudge.
Revenant continued quickly, before his boss had time to get angry. “I believe the archangels are attempting—or already have attempted—to switch Gethel’s and Limos’s babies in the womb.”
The legendary Big Bad pivoted around. “They did what? How do you know?”
“Because the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher mangled the Horsemen. It was… bizarre. When she was finished, Limos’s baby was gone. Not dead. Gone.”
Satan went quiet. Too quiet, and Rev could practically hear the tension crackling in the air. Finally, he wandered over to a tray loaded with implements of torture and selected a rusty butter knife.
“If they have Limos’s child,” he said in a terrifyingly calm voice, “they can perform the ritual remotely within a brief window. When did this happen?”
“Recently.” Rev kept his eye on the knife, not wanting to find himself with a knife in the eye. “I found her at Underworld General. I bound her womb so it won’t hold any child but her own.”
“Excellent. I’m starting to think you should be working for me instead of babysitting Horsemen.”
Oh, fuck no. Revenant’s sense of self-preservation was way too strong to want such an honor.
Whirling in a blur, Satan launched the knife. The thud of the dull blade punching into the werewolf’s gut echoed through the chamber, followed by the male’s low moan.
Satan, now empty-handed, clapped and a female fallen angel named Knell entered.
“My lord?”
“Increase the guard around Gethel and fetch the Orphmage Gormesh. Have him conjure a protection enchantment for Lucifer. He’s in my guest quarters.” He glanced over at Revenant. “He brought the ingredients and incantation I needed to break the warg’s assassin oath. Now the fun begins.”
Knell bowed and left the chamber. Satan strode over to the werewolf, who was hanging from a huge wooden cross. He wrapped his hand around the warg’s throat.
“Mephormus etalia exodushem.”
The warg sucked in a sharp, asthmatic breath. Satan leaned in, lowered his voice. “Who are you working for?”
“Reaver,” the warg moaned, and this time it was Revenant who inhaled sharply.
Rev braced himself for an explosion of Satan’s fury, but to Rev’s shock, the king of demons merely tossed the werewolf to the ground and watched him until he died, a victim of the broken oath’s death sentence.
“I knew Heaven was involved,” Satan said, his voice still eerily calm. “But Reaver… he’s an interesting development.”
What the fuckity fuck? Why wasn’t the demon having a nuclear meltdown? And why would he think that Reaver’s involvement was “interesting”?
“My lord,” Revenant said, as unobtrusively as he could. “What do you want me to do?”
Satan’s lips turned up in a bloodthirsty grin. “Tell Knell to belay my last order. I have another job for the Orphmage.”
Revenant cocked an eyebrow. “Sir?”
Satan laughed, a maniacal sound that congealed Revenant’s blood. “My armies are on the move, waiting to get into Heaven, but right now, all battles with angels will have to be fought in the human realm until Lucifer’s birth shatters Heaven’s walls.”
Revenant wasn’t about to say “Duh,” but… duh.
“I’m tired of waiting. The Orphmage is going to change the game. He’s going to accelerate the timetable.” Satan ran his tongue over sharp teeth. “Lucifer is going to come early.”
Twenty
Son of a bitch!
Reaver was going to destroy that archangel. Somehow, if he survived the darkmen, he was going to make Raphael pay for this.
He tossed the sheoulghuls onto the cabin’s dirt floor, but Harvester snatched them up. “It’s too late to get rid of them. The enchantment has already marked you as a target.” She shoved the crystals back into his pocket. “I think I know a way to fix it, but we have to go.”
She said it as if he wasn’t aware of the urgent need to get the hell out of here.
A shrill, wet scream came from outside. The darkman was closer. They were out of time.
“We can slip past while the demons are distracting him.” He shot her a glance. “You ready?”
“No,” she said so nastily that he knew her nap hadn’t smoothed the way for reasonable dialog about their past. “I was thinking I’d take up knitting while I wait for him to kill me.”
He ignored that and held out his hand to her. “Come on.”
With a blatant sneer at his offer, she brushed past him and slipped out into the throng of carrion wisps.
Swearing quietly, he followed her as she crept around the skinny demons and used the trees and brush as cover.
“We need to head north.” Harvester shoved a fat, leafless branch out of the way and darted into the shadows. “Toward the mesa in the distance.” A crossbow bolt, no doubt made of aurial material, impaled a tree trunk mere centimeters from his head. “Shit—Reaver, you’re glowing!”
Reaver wheeled around in time to see another bolt fire from the darkman’s crossbow. He dove at Harvester, taking her down as the bolt screamed over their heads. Reaver rolled behind a fallen log and blasted the asshole with a stream of hellfire that drained every last bit of Reaver’s power.
The flames caught the darkman in the torso, knocking him backward and sending his crossbow flying.
“The glow’s gone,” Harvester breathed.
“Good.” He already had a bull’s-eye on his chest. There was no need to add neon lights and a flashing arrow pointing at it.
Reaver shoved Harvester down the path they’d started on, but she stopped so suddenly he crashed into her.
“Lucifer,” she gasped. “I can feel him.” She gasped again. “Oh, shit. I can feel my father, too. He’s ahead of us.”
An icy fist closed around Reaver’s heart. “How close?”
Terror flashed in Harvester’s eyes as they shifted to the darkman, who was up and charging in their direction. “I don’t know. Close. We have to hurry.”
“Won’t we be expose
d when we hit the Scythe Plains?”
“We’re stopping before we get there. But we need to run or Satan’s army is going to cut us off.” Harvester took off at a jog, leaving Reaver no choice but to follow. “The entrance to Persephone’s Playground should be over the next ridge.”
He stumbled like a toddler learning to walk. “Persephone’s Playground? It’s real?”
“Yup. No violence allowed. If we can get through the barrier, the darkman can’t hurt us.”
“What about your father?”
“He’s the exception to the ‘no violence’ rule.”
Figured. Satan was the exception to every rule.
They pushed hard, running where they could, scaling inclines when they had to, and once wading through a river that ran red with the blood of something extremely large that had been wounded or killed upstream.
They reached the ridge as another darkman topped the knoll, his white teeth flashing inside the pitch-black hood. Reaver didn’t hesitate. He tackled the thing as it loosed a razor-sharp disc designed to separate heads from bodies before returning to the thrower. They went down in a heap of fists. The darkman tried to wriggle free, his shadowy substance creating a slippery hold, but Reaver had to hang on. Darkmen had few weaknesses, but physical combat was one of them.
He pounded the darkman in the face—at least, what should be his face. There was nothing under the hood but a mouth.
The thing let out a silent scream that Reaver could feel like a million stinging nettles digging into his muscles. He hit it again, hoping to shut the bastard up, but the stinging only grew worse.
“Reaver!”
He cranked his head around just as the darkman who had been chasing them struck Harvester with a summoned club. She launched sideways and plowed into a tree, snapping the trunk in half. Wood splinters showered them, raining down hard enough to give a vampire nightmares.
But Reaver wasn’t a vampire, and he snagged a thick stake out of the air and brought it down through the darkman’s gaping mouth, pinning him to the ground. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hold him long enough for Reaver and Harvester to get out of there.