by Larissa Ione
“What species are you?”
She stiffened as if he’d offended her. “I’m a False Angel. Not that it’s any of your business.”
False Angel? Odd. She didn’t read like one. Didn’t act like one. False Angels were known for their teasing, seductive natures and malicious tricks. Not to mention their sex drives. This female should be creaming herself over him, drawn to his darkness and his power.
Time to try another approach. “If you answer my question, I’ll let you suck my cock.”
Mostly, he was testing her with his crude suggestion. Mostly. If she wanted to give him a blow job, he wouldn’t object. He’d tell her exactly how to do it. How to lick him from his balls to his crown. How to swallow him deep and hum on the backstroke. How to use her teeth to balance pleasure and pain.
He shivered with the exciting possibilities.
“Really?” Clapping in exaggerated delight, she gave him the most superficial smile he’d ever seen. “You’ll let me put a total stranger’s piss hose in my mouth while my knees scream in agony on the hard floor? Right here in front of everyone? Gosh, such a hard thing to pass up. But you know, I’d rather eat Ebola pudding than let your sad little dick near me.” She wiggled her fingers as she slipped past him. “Toodles.”
Oh, he needed to tap that.
He waited until she was out of sight, and then he headed back to the emergency department, where a gaggle of Seminus demons had gathered, heads together with a dark-haired female who bore faded Seminus markings on her right arm that, if she were male, would make sense. Sems were exclusively male, and their female mates took the markings on their left arms, so what the hell? He wondered if her marks were tats, and then he realized he didn’t give a shit.
He recognized Eidolon and tapped him on the shoulder. “How is Limos?”
Eidolon’s dark eyes flashed with irritation. “Take a seat. I’ll get to you when I can.”
“Dumbass,” the female muttered.
Revenant hissed. “Who the hell are you to talk to me like that?”
He eyed each of the Seminus males. He knew Eidolon and had seen the blond one, Wraith, hanging out with Thanatos. But the other other male and the female were strangers.
“I’m Sin.” She gestured to the group of males. “These are my brothers.”
“Ridiculous.” He snorted. “There’s no such thing as a female Seminus demon.”
Sin rolled her eyes. “Clearly, my existence renders your statement… stupid.”
“Your existence is not in the natural order. You should be executed,” he said, and her brothers all growled.
“Your mama must not have liked you much,” Sin muttered.
Wraith’s lips peeled back from an impressive set of fangs. Was the guy part vampire? That wasn’t normal, either. “Can’t imagine why that would be.”
Revenant had no idea if his mother had liked him or not. “Tell me what’s going on with Limos. When will she be released?” They all glared, and he clenched his teeth. These insects should give him what he wanted without him having to dig for it. “I’m her Watcher. Tell me.”
Finally, Eidolon got the bug out of his ass and gestured for him to move to an area with little more privacy. When they were away from the others, he shook his head gravely.
“Limos was injured beyond what anyone here can heal, but we got her to about seventy percent. She’s resting now and can go home tomorrow. She’ll need a couple of days to recover. She doesn’t know about the baby yet,” he said, and Revenant felt a twinge of… something. Couldn’t be sadness, though. “Do you know what the hell happened at Limos’s place?”
“Yes.” The weird sensation plucked at him again, and this time, it was almost painful, as if his body were trying to reject a foreign emotion the way it might reject a transplanted organ. His chest tightened and his skin grew clammy and that was enough of that. He needed to change the subject. He gazed off in the direction the False Angel had gone. “Tell me about Dr. Blaspheme.”
“After you tell me what happened.”
Frustrating demon. The rare intelligent ones were the worst. “The Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher had a nuclear meltdown.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He really didn’t. Her actions hadn’t made sense. If she were that volatile, she should never have been assigned as a Watcher. So what had made her go berserk enough to mince the Horsemen and kill a baby? Unless… unless she hadn’t killed it. He thought back to the aftermath, when she’d been crouched over Limos, her palm hovering over her belly. When she stood, she’d looked… guilty. And what had she put in her pocket? “Wait… Limos’s child… you said earlier that it was gone. You mean dead?”
Eidolon glanced over at Limos’s room. “Given the extent of her injuries, as well as those of her brothers, we’re assuming the baby didn’t make it.”
Assuming. Revenant didn’t like assumptions. He liked cold, hard facts. Assumptions were for assholes. But call him an asshole, because Lorelia’s behavior earlier was starting to make sense, and he suddenly didn’t think the infant had been incinerated.
The doctor stood there as if expecting a response to the bad news, and social convention probably dictated that Revenant should give him one that wasn’t full of curse words. So he nodded politely.
But inside, he was fuming. Lorelia had intentionally baited the Horsemen into a fight, giving her an excuse to blast them all and take the baby. And there was only one reason she’d have done that.
The archangels were planning a switcheroo with Gethel’s kid. Clever bastards. Too bad for them that Rev was more clever.
“Now,” he said, done with the fake polite shit. “Blaspheme.”
Eidolon bared his teeth. “She’s off-limits to you.”
The doctor turned on his heel and strode back to his siblings. Off-limits, he’d said. Not bloody likely. That False Angel intrigued Revenant. He’d never been fascinated by a False Angel before, but something about Blaspheme made him twitchy. She had a secret, and he wondered how hard it would be to get it out of her.
Later, though. Right now he had more pressing matters.
He turned toward the exam room where Limos was with Arik and various staff members. He began to chant, low and quiet, until all around him, the air started to hum. With a thought, he gathered the vibrating air together into a single ball of energy that filled his palm.
“Stora ilsh ka’aport.” The ball flew invisibly from his hand and shot into Limos’s room, where it settled over her belly to form a shield. “Fuck you, Lorelia. You and your Heavenly brethren can kiss my ass.”
* * *
Raphael’s bellow of rage rocked the ancient Karnak temple complex, cracking walls and toppling pillars that had stood since 1500 BC. They were in the human realm, but occupying the same space in a different realm was the Sheoulic equivalent, a demonic temple used for sacrificing pregnant females.
They’d planned this down to the second. They’d positioned themselves perfectly. Even the damned stars were favorably aligned.
The ritual, performed only once before, should have worked. Raphael had performed the other one, so he knew how to do it.
Uriel grabbed his arm, but Raphael spun out of the way and the other angel caught a fistful of his robe’s silky sleeve.
“Calm down.” With a wave of his hand, Uriel airlifted a two-ton stone to the top of the pillar it had fallen from. “We’re not here to destroy this place.”
“No,” Raphael snarled, practically choking on his fury. “We’re here to swap Limos’s child with Gethel’s, but the ritual failed.” He rounded on Lorelia, who had gone as pale as the full moon above. “What did you do? Every chant we tried failed to send Lucifer into Limos. Every chant!”
“I—I didn’t do anything—”
“Limos’s womb wouldn’t accept him. You had to have done something. That was our only shot at destroying Lucifer!”
“Listen to me.” Lorelia’s ivory lace gown swished in the yellow dirt as she moved tow
ard him. “I’m telling you, nothing I did would have caused her body to repel Lucifer. Nothing. They share blood. Her body should have recognized that.”
“Then what happened?” Sweet heaven, he wanted to scream again.
Uriel righted a fallen statue and then wiped his hands as if he’d manually moved the five-ton goliath. “Could anyone have known what we planned?”
“Like who?” Raphael asked.
“I don’t know.” Uriel was wearing his usual drab brown tunic and gray breeches, and he blended in with the scenery as he paced around, looking for debris to clean up. He could be annoyingly OCD. “But if someone knew, they could have done something to Limos.”
Lorelia nodded. “It’s possible she ingested herbs or a potion that would render her body inhospitable to Lucifer. Or perhaps a spell encased her in repellant magic.”
But who could have known? He’d kept this between the three of them for a reason. Had either Uriel or Lorelia betrayed them? Had Lorelia, in her enthusiasm to level the Horsemen, said too much or behaved strangely? The smallest thing could have given the Horsemen something to go on. They weren’t fools, after all.
He swiped the tiny clouded marble out of Lorelia’s hand and held it up to the moonlight. He could crush it between his fingers like a grape. And while he’d rather not, he would if doing so served the greater good.
But it wouldn’t, so Limos’s baby, its essence reduced to the marble he was holding, would live.
But that didn’t mean he was done with it.
Eighteen
An hour before darkness fell, Harvester and Reaver discovered an abandoned shack to hole up in just a few miles from the carrion wisp village.
Harvester, her power humming through her body at maybe a fourth of her capacity, set displacement wards on the trail behind them to throw off the Darkmen. Naturally, she pointed out that even if Reaver had been at full strength, he couldn’t have placed the wards. Only evil magic could fool an angelic assassin.
“See, I’m more than useful,” she said, enjoying the way the vein in his temple throbbed with annoyance. “Now discharge your powers. I can make out your glow, and it kind of makes me want to stab you.”
He used up his power to demolish a couple of the eerie black trees that populated the area, and by the time they stumbled through the shack’s open doorway, Harvester’s stomach was growling embarrassingly loud for food. But worse, her entire body was snarling with the need for blood, and her wing anchors throbbed so viciously that any shoulder movement felt like she was being struck with an ax.
She couldn’t feed from Reaver again. Feeding from him had turned her into a monster she hadn’t wanted him to see. She shouldn’t care, should revel in Holy Boy’s disgust. But truthfully, every time she went all Monster Mash, she disgusted even herself.
Besides, it fucking hurt when the horns drilled out of her skull.
The windowless one-room dwelling was dusty and smelled like mold, but there was a gel-like sleeping pad large enough to fit two extra-tall people and a stone trough, which was presumably a toilet. It wasn’t the Hilton, but considering the last time they’d rested it had been inside a parasitic bush, this was luxury.
Reaver cast a glance outside through the crack he’d left in the doorway. “I’ll keep watch while you get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” she lied. She was fucking exhausted.
“You’re going to sleep,” he insisted as he dropped his backpack onto the dirt floor and dug out the canteen. “Here. Drink.”
Her first instinct was to rail against his command no matter how parched she was, but immediately on the heels of that impulse was genuine gratitude. Huh. Maybe there was hope for her after all.
“So demanding,” she said, settling on a combination of both acceptance and indifference. Sinking down on the gel mattress, she took the canteen, downed as much as she could handle, and then took the protein bar he offered. “Thank you.”
He cocked an eyebrow, as if shocked that she took the time to offer thanks. Yeah, well, join the club. Right there with ya, buddy.
She tore open the chocolate-covered whatever-it-was as Reaver opened his own. The thing was waxy on the outside and had the consistency of sawdust on the inside, but it tasted better than anything Harvester had ever had.
With the exception of Reaver’s blood. She shoved that thought into the back of her mind and ordered it to stay there.
Reaver finished his protein bar and sank onto the mattress, putting his back against the wall so he was facing the door. He folded his hands across his abs, and she let her gaze take him in from his broad chest to his powerful shoulders. His black T-shirt, torn and frayed at the seams, clung to him like a second skin, revealing every flex of his muscles.
And his arms… holy hotness, they were strong, yet gentle. She’d seen him demolish demons with them, but she’d also seen him cradle a newborn infant with care. As she ogled his tan biceps, they rippled as if demanding attention.
Even Reaver’s muscles were demanding.
“You should get a tattoo,” she blurted. She loved tattoos.
He grinned, and she felt a silly flutter in her breast. “A long time ago, I made a bet with Eidolon. He said I’d find a mate. I bet him I never would. So now if I ever take a mate, he’s going to make me get the Underworld General caduceus tattooed on my ass.”
“Why?” Seemed like a stupid bet for an immortal to make. Never was a long, long time.
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “You’d think he’d want me to tattoo it somewhere everyone would see it.”
“Not the tattoo,” she said impatiently. “The bet. Why did you say you wouldn’t take a mate?”
One massive shoulder rolled in a lazy shrug. “At the time, I was Unfallen. I had no future. I wasn’t going to enter Sheoul to complete my fall, and the likelihood of earning my wings back was pretty much nil. Who would want me?”
Was he fucking kidding? Who wouldn’t want him? Just looking at him was practically orgasm inducing. He was powerful. Loyal. And he’d stop at nothing to protect those he loved. He’d even sneak into hell to steal Satan’s prize possession in order to stop Lucifer. Any female would be lucky to have him.
Even Harvester, who had hated him for years, could see that.
“And now?” she asked quietly. “Do you think you’ll find a mate now that you’re a halo-fied angel again?” She didn’t know why she was asking. Wasn’t even sure she wanted an answer.
His sapphire eyes locked onto hers, and her heart did a crazy flip. “Assuming I don’t get stripped of my wings or executed for rescuing you… maybe.”
The way he said it, low and rough, was downright erotic, as if he was right now picturing his mate. Naked.
Harvester’s body went all kinds of hot.
“Harvester,” he said, in that rough voice that made her sex throb.
“What?” she found herself leaning toward him, heard her pulse pounding in her ears and felt her lungs struggle for oxygen.
“Lift up your shirt.”
She sucked in a hot breath. “My shirt?” Her hands were already on the bottom hem.
“I’ll do it.” Very gently, he gripped her shoulders and turned her. “I want to see how your wings are healing.”
“Oh.” She went utterly cold with disappointment. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, a dry teasing note in his voice, “I’m not a doctor, but I played one for years.”
“Yes,” she drawled, “that’s much better.” She wondered if he’d enjoyed working at Underworld General. She’d never thought of him as the doctorly type, but as he peeled her tank top up and smoothed his warm hands up her back, she decided she liked his bedside manner.
“Your scars are gone,” he murmured, and she swore she heard his heartbeat pound a little harder, a little faster. So did hers.
His touch was tender as he probed the aching area near her shoulder blades. “Can you
extend your wings yet?”
“I’ll try.” She hoped the slight breathlessness in her words came across as pain and not a reaction to his hands on her body.
Then the pain definitely came through as she tried to bring her wings out. Bone erupted from the slits in her back, and by some miracle she didn’t cry out.
“That’s good,” he said. “You’ve got about two feet of framework. All bone, but once you feed, you can probably double that and add some tissue.”
Retracting her unformed wings, she jerked away from him and yanked her top down. “Not from you.”
“Are we really doing this again? You,” he growled, “are the most stubborn, difficult, infuriating person I have ever dealt with.”
“Aw.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “You say the sweetest things.”
He shook his head as if she were a lost cause, and maybe she was. “We need you to be able to sense Harrowgates. It’s only a matter of time before your father’s forces find us, and if darkmen are on our trail, we need to get out of Sheoul. Now.”
“No.” This time her refusal carried less resolve, and even as she formed an argument—a pathetic one—her fangs lengthened and throbbed, and all the starved cells in her body started to quiver. “Feeding does strange things to me.”
He barked out a husky laugh. “It does strange things to me, too. You need this, angel.” Casually, gracefully, he relaxed his long body and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Come on. I’m right here. It’s just blood. No big deal. Just like last time.”
It’s just blood. No big deal. Except it was a big deal. It was a huge deal for her to turn into an ugly beast, and Reaver was all, Go ahead, stick your fangs in me. And wait… he’d said angel. Usually he called her fallen.
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Warmth spread through her and emotion she couldn’t identify bubbled up inside her. It overflowed from the sealed container she’d kept all her touchy-feely feelings inside since she’d fallen, and while her inner demon wanted to blow her stack and rip Reaver apart for being nice and tapping into that container, she couldn’t.