Reaper

by Larissa_Ion

  Moloch’s armies spanned four regions, with pockets of troops in nearly all the rest. That the bastard had been able to so easily gather demons who should have been loyal to Revenant was disturbing…and also unfortunate.

  Azagoth cursed and knocked over one of the thousands of D&D figures Cipher had brought to represent the armies.

  Moloch’s forces of little green plastic orcs, goblins, and imps took up far too much real estate. Azagoth’s hundred thousand demons were represented by far fewer silver plastic trolls, and the five thousand hellhounds Cara had sent were on the map as black dire wolf figures. The two remaining figurines were the ones he focused on, a hand-painted elf ranger, and a human fighter who looked remarkably like their doubles, Reseph and Ares.

  The two Horsemen known as Pestilence and War would lead the charges, and once they got close enough, they would retrieve Lilliana—with the help of Azagoth’s spies inside the fortresses. At least, that was the plan.

  Ares said that things rarely went as planned.

  Fucking Horseman and his frank, honest assessments. Azagoth flicked the fighter figurine onto the floor because that was what mature males with control of their emotions did.

  If Lilliana were here, she’d give him a look full of, did you really just do that?

  If she were here, he wouldn’t have done it.

  Getting his shit together, he picked Ares off the floor. In truth, the guy’s frankness was what made him valuable as an advisor. There was nothing more useless than a sycophant who told him only what he wanted to hear. But just this once, it would have been great if Ares had sugarcoated the pill he’d given him before he and Reseph left to stage for the battle.

  “We’ll be severely outnumbered.” Ares gestured to areas of the map near Moloch’s castle. “Here, here, and here.” He moved several feet down the table and waved his hand over Satan’s territory, which Moloch apparently now held. “We’re not outnumbered here, but I doubt Reseph can get past the natural geological barriers, and even if he does, there are a lot of things worse than a demon army protecting the palace.” He gripped the sword at his hip and swung around to Azagoth in a smooth, crisp turn. “You’re going to lose your entire army with no guarantee that I’ll get in.”

  It was not what Azagoth wanted to hear. “It’s the only chance I have, Ares,” he snapped. “What would you do?”

  Ares ran his thumb across the sword’s pommel as if remembering the thousands of battles he’d fought, the millions he’d killed. “I’d do exactly what you’re doing,” he said. “But I’d do it knowing that even with the hellhounds Cara’s sending, the chance of success is maybe…fifty-fifty.”

  “You’re just a ray of fucking sunshine, aren’t you?”

  “Did you want me to blow smoke up your ass? Because that’s not my kink, and I’d rather not pop my cherry with the Grim Reaper.”

  As irritated as Azagoth was, he had to admire the guy. He was a brilliant tactician, a warrior who commanded respect, and a fierce defender of those he cared about. There had been a time when Ares, along with his three Horseman siblings, believed that Azagoth was their sire. He wondered if they’d been relieved when they learned the truth, that Reaver was their father.

  Father.

  He reached up and fingered the scythe pendant Lilliana had given him, taking comfort in the connection they’d established and experienced. Could they do it again? If he laid down on the floor right now and closed his eyes, would she be there?

  He’d never wanted to sleep more in his life.

  A tap at one of the door columns brought him sharply back to the present.

  “Enter,” he called out as he glanced at his watch. The rescue attempt would begin in thirty-four minutes.

  “Azagoth.”

  “Reaver.” Summoning his power, Azagoth spun around to the south entrance with a hiss. “Why didn’t I sense your arrival?”

  Reaver strode toward him in jeans and a black tee, his blond hair shorter than the last time he’d seen him, his expression far less angry. “The last time I was here to spank your ass, I figured out how to conceal my signature.”

  The last time Reaver was here, he’d delivered a warning not to fuck with Moloch. Something told Azagoth that attacking Moloch might count as fucking with him.

  “Who let you in?” As if he didn’t know. Only Hawkyn and Z could open the portal, and Z would die before doing so without permission.

  Reaver didn’t answer. “I hear you want information about Flail.”

  “You could have sent a text.”

  “I could have. But I wanted to see if I could help.”

  Although Azagoth didn’t doubt that Reaver would do what he could for Lilliana, he did doubt that helping was his sole reason for being here, and Azagoth called him on it.

  “You wanted to make sure that what I’m doing to get Lilliana back isn’t violating my contract.” Azagoth gestured to the map, figuring…what the hell. If the angel could help, at this point, he’d take it. “I’ve got two Horsemen going against Moloch, leading hellhounds and legions of demons I command.” It wasn’t a lie. He did command his secret re-souled army, but he’d also gotten an influx of demons who’d joined his cause, some mercs for pay or those who owed him, and even a few who knew he had blackmail material on them.

  Reaver narrowed his eyes at him. “How did you get my sons to risk themselves for you? If you threatened them—”

  “I didn’t, you winged jackass. They volunteered. Reseph likes a good fight, and Ares wants to help Lilliana. I’d have had all four Horsemen, but Limos and Thanatos are hunting the fallen angels who killed Wraith. Thanatos caught one, so he’s…busy, and Limos said she’d drop in and help fight if she didn’t bag a fallen angel of her own by the time the battle starts. So, yeah, you can help. How about you destroy Moloch and his armies and then grab Lilliana? That’d be great.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I know you can go almost anywhere in Sheoul you want to go. Just as Revenant has access to Heaven.”

  Reaver studied the armies surrounding the fortresses. “I’m not merely forbidden to enter any region held by Satan, I’m incapable of it. And since Moloch holds the lands for Satan, I don’t have access to his fortresses.”

  “You can wipe out his armies beyond the regions he holds.”

  “Not inside Sheoul. There are rules, Azagoth.” Reaver’s gaze held his, the Radiant’s look edged with a warning. “You’d do well to remember that.”

  Azagoth laughed at Reaver’s arrogance. “Rules? You, the greatest rule breaker in all of history, are lecturing me about adhering to protocol?”

  Reaver shrugged. “You’re catching on.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Azagoth growled. “I haven’t broken any rules.”

  “No? Did you not give your griminions the power to kill?”

  Azagoth’s jaw damned near hit his boots. Somehow, he managed to keep his composure, even as his mind raced to figure out who had betrayed him.

  “It was a long-overdo upgrade,” he said. “Hardly anything to get worked up over. And I did have the demon lawyers at Dire and Dyre look over my contract. They think the section on griminions is vague enough to allow some play.” Heaven had fucked him over with the vague thing, and Azagoth figured it was his turn to twist a clause in his favor. “You should know, I’ll fight any attempts by Heaven to find me in violation of the contract.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Azagoth.” Reaver crossed his arms over his chest. “What you did was illegal, and you know it.”

  Cipher had set up dozens of noncombatant figurines around the map, some chosen to represent specific people, some more generic, and Azagoth picked up one with wings as he paced slowly, opposite the table from Reaver.

  “You said you were here about Flail.”

  The smug jackass pulled out his cell phone, tapped angrily, and then shoved it back into his pocket. “I emailed the file.”

  “Then you’ll be leaving, I assume.”

  “Right a
fter you assure me you aren’t going to release Satan from the prison I put him in.”

  That Reaver was concerned was a no-brainer. He and his twin, Revenant, had pissed off the most powerful, infamous, grudge-holding fallen angel in existence. Of course, they wouldn’t want him walking out on parole nine hundred and some odd years early. Azagoth got that. He wasn’t Satan’s Facebook friend, either.

  “I won’t release him from his prison,” Azagoth promised.

  “And how can I trust that, given that you’ve already broken a contract signed in your own blood?”

  Azagoth squeezed the figurine so hard, its wings pierced the skin of his thumb. “I told you, griminions are a gray area.”

  “And what of Part III, Section II, Paragraph I, which specifically states that you cannot, using any means or method, release souls from Sheoul-gra unless they are to be reincarnated? Is that a gray area? I warned you, Azagoth. After you released souls to go after Bael, I warned you not to do it again. Specifically, not to go after his twin.”

  Yeah, Reaver had warned him, all right.

  If you kill him, all that you know, all that you are…will be destroyed.

  Which was why Azagoth had given strict orders to capture Moloch, not kill him.

  “You don’t need to worry about Moloch.”

  Reaver swiped a hand over the map and grabbed a handful of silver game pieces. Azagoth’s army. “But I do need to worry about the hundred thousand souls you released.”

  Son of a bitch.

  There was no point in denying it. There was no point in anything except getting Lilliana back. “It’s not worth ruffling your feathers over. Most of them will die in battle and return to Sheoul-gra.”

  “Don’t bullshit me!” Reaver repeated, his white and gold wings flaring, and his body glowing with power. “You broke at least three rules, and you did it on a huge scale. You released souls, you gave them the power to evict the souls of living demons, which ultimately gave you a hundred thousand more souls, and then they took over the physical bodies. What you’ve done is beyond forbidden.”

  “And I’d do it again,” Azagoth yelled back, charging up his own power. Reaver could kick his ass, but Azagoth would fuck him up hard before it happened. “It’s my wife and child!”

  “I can’t keep protecting you.” Reaver swept his arm across the map, wiping it clean. “Right now, this is contained. But it will come out, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “What is it you want me to do, Reaver?”

  Reaver inhaled deeply, and his wings settled against his back. “I want you to win the battle, and I want you to get Lilliana back. She doesn’t deserve this. None of you do.”

  Azagoth crushed a figurine from Moloch’s army under his boot. “Then maybe you could find your brother. He could end all of this.”

  “Well, gee, I hadn’t thought of that,” Reaver said with a roll of his brilliant blue eyes. “I don’t suppose you know where he could be?”

  As if Azagoth hadn’t given that very question a lot of thought. “Depends on if he gave up his reign willingly or not.”

  “He didn’t. He’s imprisoned somewhere. I know he is.”

  “Then that narrows down the places he could be.” Azagoth flicked his finger, and all of the figurines on the floor jumped back onto the map. “In order to trap someone as powerful as Revenant, you’d need a container as strong as the one you created for Satan.”

  “There are few who can create one like that.”

  Azagoth nodded. “I’m aware of that.” He willed the figurines to fight, playing out a battle on the table that he was guaranteed to win. “But one already exists. There’s just one catch.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The hellhound figures took down a skeleton army guarding Moloch’s north wall. “A few thousand years ago, some fallen angels who were pissed off at Satan built a prison hidden inside a temple, but there were a few snags.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, Satan got wind of it, for one. But the real problem is that it’s a voluntary trap.” At Reaver’s raised eyebrows, he continued. “Its power comes from the victim’s desire to be inside it.”

  “Who would want to be inside it?”

  Azagoth used to wonder the same thing. Now, he knew. “Anyone whose mate was being used as the bait.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Inside a temple in the Ca’askull region. Getting there is a journey many don’t survive, and only a handful know it was built to house the trap. The snare itself is like the Abyss in Heaven.” It had, in fact, been built using materials from Heaven, a dirty little secret Azagoth had learned when he questioned the original builders, one of whom still resided on the second ring of the Inner Sanctum. “You can only find it if the need is great enough.”

  “Revenant’s need would be great if he believed his mate was inside,” Reaver said grimly. “I’ve got to find that temple.”

  “You can’t. The trap was built with the secret help of angels. I don’t know who. It was designed so an angel could lure Satan inside and still get out after it’d closed. But when Satan got wind of the temple’s purpose, he claimed it in his name.”

  “Which means, it’s his property, and even I can’t get to it,” Reaver snarled. “Damn it.” He cursed again. “I still have to try.”

  Azagoth wished him luck. He looked at his map and revised that thought. He wished them all luck.

  They were going to need it.

  Chapter 17

  The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the legend known as Thanatos to friends, and Death to everyone else, wasn’t notorious for his generous spirit or tendency to dole out mercy. Nope. Thanatos was proud to be renowned for the exact opposite.

  The fallen angel hanging in his dungeon could testify to that. The fucker would definitely agree that killing Thanatos’s best friend drew out the very worst in Death.

  He wiped his hands on a bloodstained rag as he climbed the winding stone steps to the castle’s main residence where he lived with his mate, Regan, their children Logan and Amber, and dozens of vampire servants. There was also a bison-sized hellhound running around somewhere, but Thanatos hadn’t seen Cujo since this morning when Logan had been slipping the beast bites of sausage from his breakfast plate.

  The heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs swung open as he reached for the handle.

  “Hey, bro.” Limos, the Horseman called Famine, stepped aside, her Hawaiian-print sundress swirling around her slender thighs. “Regan said you were downstairs. Thought I’d see if you needed help.”

  Help? As if. “My name is Death. I think I’ve got this.”

  Inhaling the mouthwatering aroma of baking bread coming from the kitchen, he closed the dungeon door and engaged the lock. Regan would be furious if one of the kids found their way down there. Something about scarring them for life and maybe being out of car seats before they were allowed to play with iron maidens and torture racks.

  Kids these days were so sheltered.

  “Well, what has he told you so far?” Limos followed him as he headed for the washroom, her steps so light, he didn’t even hear them.

  “I only started questioning him a few minutes ago, but he’s given up the names of his accomplices and the fucker who hired them to make sure Lilliana left Underworld General via the Harrowgate instead of the parking lot.” He washed and dried. “As suspected, it was Moloch.”

  “Fucking perv,” Limos muttered, her violet eyes sparking with outrage. “He used to come and check my chastity belt, you know, for fit, back when I was living with Mommie Dearest.” She wrapped a strand of long, black hair around her finger and tugged angrily. “He was so disgusting. I finally shoved a fork in his eye. Hoo boy, he was not happy.”

  That made Thanatos chuckle. While Reseph, Ares, and Thanatos had grown up in the human world, unaware that they were the product of a union between the angel Reaver and the succubus Lilith, Limos had been raised with their mother in Sheoul. Promis
ed to Satan as his bride when she was just an infant, she’d been forced to wear a chastity belt from the moment she could walk.

  Thanatos would have eye-forked any sick bastard who wanted to check it for fit, too. Good for her.

  He patted his pocket. Dammit, he’d left his phone in the dungeon. He headed back, Limos still on his heels. “Any news from the battle? Last I heard, Ares had just led the initial charge.”

  “I have news,” she said, “but you’re not going to want to hear it.”

  Wasn’t that par for the course? He unlocked the dungeon door. “Lay it on me. I’ve sensed large-scale death for hours.”

  Normally, he’d be drawn to the scene, but dealing with the fallen angel had been enough to satisfy his bloodlust for battle.

  The sound of his boots and Limos’s flip-flops echoed off the tight, narrow walls as they descended into the dank underbelly of his fortress.

  “Ares led Azagoth’s army against the forces surrounding Moloch’s keep, and he was kicking ass.” The icy temperature as they descended made Limos’s breath visible as she spoke. “But then Moloch brought in a dozen fallen angels and a hundred thousand demon soldiers through a giant temporary Harrowgate.”

  That made Thanatos halt in his tracks so fast that Limos bumped into him. “How is that even possible?”

  “No idea.” She gave him a nudge to get him moving again. “And Reseph couldn’t even get within a thousand miles of Revenant’s fortress.”

  Ares must be furious. The only thing he hated more than losing a battle was losing a battle to a fallen angel.

  “Reseph’s assault was pretty much doomed from the beginning,” Than said. “No one has ever taken Satan’s castle by force. But the attack on Moloch should have gone better. I mean, Ares is War. If he were a Dungeons and Dragons character, he’d get plus-three modifiers to all his ability scores.” He reconsidered that. “Except charisma. He’d take a big hit there. And he’d get a proficiency bonus on every roll just because of his name.” Well, his name and several thousand years of killing people in battle.

  “If you’re trying to say that Ares has the tactical advantage against anyone, in any and all wartime situations, just say it.” She huffed. “You don’t have to get all weird and nerdy.”