by Larissa Ione
Blaspheme’s husky voice rolled through Revenant in a silken caress. Naked, she lay beneath him, thighs parted, her sex glistening with honey as she waited for him to sink his hard cock into her tight sheath.
It was about damned time. He could take her now, get her out of his system, and move on to his next conquest.
He frowned. Why didn’t his usual pattern sound so easy this time?
“Fuck me, Revenant,” she repeated.
Reaching down, she fingered herself, and he damned near came. He’d been with a lot of females in his life, but none of them made him feel as though he needed to be inside them or he’d die. Just fall over dead.
“Anything for you, babe.” He mounted her, guiding his cock to her dripping entrance, but before he could sink into her slippery heat, she slapped her palms against his chest.
“Be careful of your wound.”
His wound? He looked down, saw the bandage wrapped around his torso. How had that happened?
“That’s what happens when you let emotion rule. That’s what happens when you start thinking you belong in Heaven. That’s what happens when you think you can be happy.” She was rambling now, her words coming faster and faster. “That’s what happens when you deal with archangels. That’s what happens when you confide in your brother.”
“No,” he croaked. “That’s not… that’s not how it happened.” How was she tapping into his thoughts and dreams he didn’t even know he had?
“That’s what happens when you remember your mother. That’s what happens when you realize she suffered for nothing. That’s what happens when you understand what a disappointment you were to her. She sent Reaver to Heaven because he was the good twin. She didn’t even give you a proper name.”
Rearing back, he covered his ears. “No!” His breath burned in his throat as he said it over and over. “No, no, no… noooo!”
Suddenly, Blaspheme was gone, and he was panting as he lay on a strange bed in a strange room. How the ever-living fuck had he gotten here? And where was here?
Forcing himself to calm down, he inhaled slowly. Blaspheme’s clean scent filled his nostrils, and things started to come back to him.
He’d been wounded… he slapped his hand on his torso, felt the very real bandages under his palm. So that part wasn’t a dream. She’d sewn him up, cared for him, tucked him into bed. Reaching over onto the other side of the mattress, he felt for warmth, but if she’d been there, she was long gone.
There was a note on the nightstand.
I’m in the rooftop garden having my morning coffee. There’s a carafe and mugs in the kitchen if you want some.
Cool. He loved coffee.
With a thought, he cleaned up, which was an awesome bennie of being a Shadow Angel. Instant shower and change of clothes. He went with black leather pants and a black tank top under a leather jacket today, poured himself a cup of hazelnut coffee, and flashed himself to the rooftop. Which was another bennie. As a regular fallen angel, he could only flash to places he knew. Now he could pretty much wish himself anywhere.
Yep, very awesome.
“Hey, Blas —”
A scream made his chest go cold.
Dropping his mug, he bolted around the shed he’d materialized behind, and what he saw at the front of the building turned the ice in his chest to lava-hot fury. Rage consumed him. He didn’t think. Didn’t so much as breathe.
He slammed into the angel who had Blas pinned to the side of the mechanicals building and was about to plunge a dagger into her heart. They both hit the rooftop, grunting as about five hundred combined pounds of angel crashed into the structure. The dagger, an ancient aurial forged specifically to kill angels and fallen angels, clattered to the ground.
Revenant could have demolished the fucker, incinerated him, blasted him to bits, yanked him apart like a good old medieval draw-and-quartering. But Rev had too much rage stewing inside him to use his powers. He needed a brawl. Needed to feel bone splinter and flesh pulverize under his fists.
Needed to protect his female the way males were meant to. It didn’t matter that Blaspheme wasn’t technically his yet. She would be, if only for a night.
One night won’t be enough.
He banished that thought as he smashed his fist into the other male’s jaw. The angel got a good jab in his ribs, but then they both flipped to their feet, and the battle was on.
The angel grinned as he sent a stream of liquid lightning at Revenant’s torso. “Die, Fallen.”
Searing heat bored into Rev. Hurt like hell, but even as smoke rose from his burning flesh, his body healed. Surprise and panic lit the other male’s eyes as Revenant walked toward him, not even slowed by the angelic weapon.
“Revenant!” Blaspheme’s terrified voice came from behind him. “He’ll kill you!”
She was worried. How sweet.
Revenant stopped, letting the angel’s lightning stream into his body, absorbing the power, memorizing the intricate pattern that composed this particular talent. All his life Revenant had been using fallen angel weapons, never knowing he had the ability to use angel weapons as well.
Now he could. All he had to do was learn them.
The other male, a bald dude with mink wings, stared in disbelief as his weapon failed. Not just failed, but backfired.
“Get used to it, fucker.” Rev reversed the angel’s stream of lightning and sent it back at him, a hundred times hotter.
Baldie screamed and fell back, his body sizzling and smoking. Never one to waste an opportunity, Revenant went in for the kill. Scooping up the dagger the angel had been ready to use on Blaspheme, he rushed the angel.
A whip appeared in Baldie’s hand, a whip that burned like a stream of lava. Molten orange drops plopped to the rooftop, burning holes in the asphalt as he cracked the whip in an arc meant to take Revenant’s head off. He ducked, the tip of the weapon glancing off his shoulder in a hiss of fire meeting flesh.
This dude was so dead.
Revenant leaped and spun, landing a kick in the other angel’s throat that crushed bone, tissue, and esophagus. Baldie hit the ground in a crumpled heap, but his unconsciousness wasn’t going to save him.
“Say good night, motherfucker.” Straddling Baldie’s unconscious form, he plunged the blade downward.
“Revenant! Stop.”
The blade flew from his hands. Then, as if a massive fist had closed around him, his breath was squeezed out of his lungs and his body crumpled in on itself.
Reaver.
His twin stood on the rooftop, his eyes flashing blue fire. Blaspheme had palmed the blade meant to end her life and was standing against the rooftop door, her gaze flitting between Rev, Reaver, and the unconscious angel.
With a roar, Revenant broke out of his brother’s magical hold and sent an invisible punch of energy back at him. Reaver grunted and flew backward, blood spraying from his mouth and nose.
“Revenant, no!” Blaspheme rushed toward him. “He’s a Radiant —”
“Get back!” Reaver threw out his hand, and a tornadic blast of wind pinned her against the door.
“Don’t touch her.” A black veil of hatred filled Revenant’s vision, until all he could think about was dealing out pain to the male who was holding Blaspheme against her will.
He came at Reaver with a sword of flame and spark, and with a single mighty swing, he cut his brother in half from the shoulder to the hip. Blaspheme’s horrified scream rang out, but Reaver recovered in an instant and returned the favor, slicing through Revenant’s thighs with a low, spinning chop of his own blade.
Revenant hit the ground, the agony short-lived as his body regenerated.
“This fighting is pointless, brother,” Reaver yelled. “We’re equally matched.”
“It’s not pointless if you’re in pain,” Revenant yelled back.
But at least Blaspheme was free of Reaver’s hold. In fact, before he could stop her, she yanked open the stairwell door and fled. Good, now she was off the battlefield a
nd wouldn’t become collateral damage.
Twisting around, Revenant charged his powers and prepared to fry Baldie. This was going to end.
“Do not kill that angel,” Reaver roared, flashing to intercept Rev’s weapon.
“Or what?” This was Revenant’s ticket to security in Sheoul. The only way he could prove to Satan that he was trustworthy.
Yeah, because being the Prince of Lies’s right-hand man was a dream job.
Didn’t matter. He had no choice. Heaven didn’t want him, and if Satan didn’t either, the king of demons would snuff him like a spent cigarette.
“Or you’ll never be welcome in Heaven.”
Revenant laughed. Hard. When he finally sobered, he actually felt pity for his brother. “Truly? You think the archangels would ever, in a million years, embrace me like family? You are delusional.”
“I spoke with them,” he said. “They’re willing to make it right. Everything that happened to you as a child… they want to fix it.”
“Fix it?” Revenant practically sputtered as he got to his feet. “How in the grand realm of fuck can they fix what they put me through? What they put our mother through?”
“They said your blood is tainted by Satan, but that the taint can be removed.”
Hope sparked, but he wasn’t going to get too excited. Hope was for fools. “Bullshit.”
“Listen to me,” Reaver said, his voice almost pleading. “I don’t trust Raphael, but if there’s even a chance that you could be admitted into Heaven without the risk of corrupting anything, you have to take it.”
Revenant didn’t have to do anything. But he couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the catch?”
“You have to prove your loyalty.”
Gee, that sounded familiar, didn’t it? “And how do I do that?”
Reaver’s hands tightened into fists. “Gethel.”
Of course. “Let me guess. You want me to kill her.”
“No. I want you to bring her to me so I can kill her.”
Rev flexed his hands, enjoying the feel of Baldie’s blood drying on his knuckles. “Somehow I doubt the archangels made that part of the bargain.”
“They said they’ll purify your blood when Gethel is in their hands. They didn’t say she had to be alive.” Reaver flared his brilliant gold wings – wings that made him unique among all angels. “Well? What’s it to be?”
“I need to think about it.”
Reaver’s flat stare spoke volumes about what his twin thought of that. “You have to think about it? Seriously? You don’t know if you’d rather serve good or evil?”
“You self-righteous jackass,” Revenant snarled. “It’s so easy for you to judge, isn’t it? You, who grew up in Heaven with a family who loved you. You, who was given every opportunity to achieve greatness, and you still managed to fuck it up. If you’d just listened to me when I came to you at Mount Megiddo all those years ago, if you’d helped me instead of hating me, we could have avoided five thousand fucking years of memory loss and hell!”
“You’re right,” Reaver shot back. “But that was a long time ago. We need to get past that —”
“It was weeks ago!” Not technically, but it was just a couple of weeks ago that the truth had come out and memories had been restored, and Revenant was still sorting through eons of shit. “You got your memories back, along with a mate, children, grandchildren, an aunt, an uncle, and probably a couple of gilded mansions. You know what I got? Threats from both sides. I need to do their bidding or take a hike. So go screw yourself, asshole. I need time to decide which side, good or evil, is going to fuck me over harder.” He started for the door Blaspheme had gone through.
“Rev —”
He whirled back to his brother and jabbed his finger into his sternum. “Don’t. Don’t you dare play nice now. Take your precious angel over there and go back to Heaven where you belong. I’ll give the archangels my decision soon.”
“Revenant,” Reaver said quietly, “there’s an expiration date on this offer. If Gethel gives birth before you deliver her to us, the deal is off.”
Of course it was. Heaven couldn’t possibly offer him sanctuary simply because he was an angel. Nope. There had to be strings attached to something that should have been his by birth.
“Why were you here with Blaspheme, anyway?” Reaver asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“I worked with her for years at Underworld General when I was Unfallen, and I consider her a friend. Don’t hurt her, Revenant, or you’ll answer to me.”
Revenant made a theatrical, sarcastic gesture with his hands. “Ooh, scary.”
“I mean it.”
Whatever. He was sick of this shit. He should just kill the angel who attacked Blaspheme and be done with it. Except that when he looked over at where the bastard had been, he was gone.
Instant, sharp alarm rang through him. Blaspheme could be in trouble.
And God help Baldie if he had her, because this time, Rev wasn’t going to give the fucker the courtesy of dying in the human realm.
Revenant was going to drag that haloed bastard to Sheoul and kill him there.
Where his soul could languish in misery for all eternity.
Fourteen
They were brothers. Brothers. As if it wasn’t shocking enough that Reaver and Revenant were twins, the other revelation had blown Blaspheme away.
Reaver said that he and Revenant were evenly matched. Reaver was a Radiant… which meant that Revenant was a Shadow Angel.
A fucking Shadow Angel, the most powerful being in Sheoul, save Satan. If she’d thought Revenant was trouble as a fallen angel, that was nothing compared to what he really was.
Her breath came in terrified, spastic bursts as she ran down the fire escape stairs, past her apartment floor and down, until she tore through the door at the base of the building and sprinted up the sidewalk. She had no idea where she was going, just that she had to get away from two of the most dangerous individuals to have ever existed.
Gods, her mother was going to kill her.
Hey, Mom, guess what? You know how we’ve been keeping a low profile and staying away from angels and fallen angels? Yeah, well, I managed to attract the attention of both. Oh, and the best part? One is a Radiant and the other is a Shadow Angel. Awesome, right?
Stopping to catch her breath, she leaned against a light pole and buried her face in her hands. How could her life have gotten out of control so fast? Her False Angel enchantment was rapidly wearing off, both she and her mother had been attacked, she’d become obstetrician to Satan’s baby mama, and now she’d landed in the center of some sort of family squabble between two extremely lethal individuals. All she needed now was to get fired from her job or hit by a truck.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there like that, trying to gather her thoughts and corral her anxiety, but eventually an elderly man with a cane stopped to ask if she was okay. She thanked him, grateful for the dropkick back into reality.
A reality in which she’d neglected to grab her purse as she made her getaway, which meant she had no cell phone, no transit pass, and no money. She could hear her mother’s voice now.
Didn’t I teach you anything about bugging out in an emergency?
Wondering how much worse things could get, she reached out with her senses and located a Harrowgate about half a mile away. If she could just get to UG without anyone attacking her, she’d be safe. But it really sucked that her new apartment had been compromised. She’d only just moved in, and she couldn’t afford to break the lease, lose her deposits, and pay new ones somewhere else.
Plus, finding a place in an area that hadn’t been ravaged by the apocalyptic events of last year wasn’t easy.
She hoofed it as fast as she could past fish-and-chips shops, pubs, and a bustling corner grocer, the tug of the Harrowgate growing more intense with each step. Finally, as she darted between a bookstore and a butcher shop, she saw the gate shimmering against the bookstore’s brick wall. W
ith no humans about, it opened up, beckoning to her with the promise of safety.
From out of nowhere, she heard the flap of giant wings. Terror squeezed her heart, cutting off her scream as she dove for the gate. Arms came around her, and a heartbeat later, she was standing in the middle of what looked like a log cabin – if log cabins were built from charred wood and brimstone.
The furry skin of some sort of demonic animal lay on the packed-earth floor, and a few pieces of stick furniture were scattered randomly around, as if whoever lived here didn’t do much actual living here.
The arms released her, and she whirled, prepared to fight for her life with teeth and nails, if that’s what it came down to. But when she saw Revenant standing there in his usual leathers and chains, she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved… or more terrified than ever.
“What the hell are you doing?” The adrenaline dump made her question come out as a shout, but at this point, she didn’t give a crap. “Why did you snatch me like that? Where are we?”
“This is my place.”
This windowless, barren hovel was his home? The idea that she was standing in a Shadow Angel’s lair, no doubt deep inside Sheoul, with no way to tell anyone where she was, drove a spike of fear straight through her heart.
It also pissed her off. If he was going to kill her, she wasn’t going to temper her thoughts or her words. “You need a new Realtor.”
His dark brows pulled together in irritation. “Yeah, well, when you’re a fallen angel under Satan’s thumb, you don’t have a lot of options.”
“Really?” she snapped. “Because I’m betting that Shadow Angels can pretty much have what they want.”
He ran a hand through his hair with a frustrated shove. “The Shadow Angel thing is fairly recent.”
Rubbing her arms because it was freezing in here, she relaxed a little, figuring that if he hadn’t killed her or at least chained her to a wall by now, he wasn’t going to. Hopefully.
“Recent is a matter of perspective,” she said. “For an immortal, recent can mean something that happened in the last thousand years.”
“It’s been a little over two weeks.”