Reaver

Six

Very little frightened Revenant.

But right now, standing in Satan’s living room, he was scared shitless and sweating bullets inside his black leathers.

The Dark Lord’s rage was a force of nature that rocked the building, knocking over statues and shattering pillars and putting deep cracks in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. And in Rev’s skull.

Revenant clutched his head in his hands as Satan’s roar of fury blasted his eardrums. Blood ran from his ears, his nose, his mouth.

But he was far, far better off than the werewolf hanging from a hook in the middle of the room, his body shredded and studded with nails, blood streaming from a gaping hole where his eye used to be.

“Someone stole her,” Satan snarled. “Someone took her right out from under my nose.” He roared again. “How?” He grabbed the werewolf by the throat. “You helped. Tell me who took my daughter from me or I’ll carve out your other eye and eat it while it’s still warm.”

The guy admitted to being an assassin, which meant he likely couldn’t talk about who hired him even if he wanted to. The assassin’s oath was binding on a magical level, and while the spell could be broken, doing so would take time, and it would kill the assassin. And Revenant had a feeling Satan wanted to kill this guy with his bare hands. Or, as he was sporting right now, claws.

The male groaned, his blood-streaked face a mask of agony. Then he screamed when the king of all demons drove one long, sharp claw through his pupil.

“I want her back.” The black veins under Satan’s skin visibly pulsed with the force of his anger. “I want my beloved Harvester back where she belongs. On a skinning block, writhing in blood-soaked misery.”

Beloved? Skinning block? Satan had a strange way of showing affection. Revenant really wished the demon would stop sometimes referring to him as “my son,” which, as far as he knew, wasn’t true.

Please let it not be true.

Satan popped the werewolf’s eyeball into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. After a moment he wheeled around to Revenant, and Rev’s bowels turned to water.

“You said Metatron and Raphael paid a visit to the Horsemen. Did they discuss rescuing Harvester?”

“No, my lord. Not that I heard.” The bastards had rendered him immobile, deaf, and blind. When he’d come to, all of the angels were gone, including Reaver and Lorelia. “I don’t think the Horsemen even know of her status as a plant for Heaven.” They’d been as confused—and pissed—as Revenant when they’d gained consciousness.

Satan snarled, his mood going suddenly sour. “I want Harvester and the heads of those responsible for stealing her. And I swear by all that’s unholy that if angels are involved, I’ll devastate Heaven. Once that angel-infested realm is nothing but smoldering ash and there’s no one to save the weakling humans, I’ll turn my legions loose on the earthly realm.”

Revenant nodded with as much eagerness as he could muster. He hated angels and thought humans were an annoying infestation on an otherwise nice planet, but the idea of turning Heaven and Earth into replicas of Sheoul didn’t sit well. He’d never been to Heaven, but he liked the Earth the way it was. The colors were vibrant. The air was fresh, the sunlight pleasant on the skin. Best of all, it wasn’t crawling with demons. Well, it was, but mostly, they remained hidden behind human masks.

But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.

A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.

In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.

“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.

“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”

He turned back to the werewolf, and with a vicious swipe, he ripped into the male’s belly. Blood and organs spilled onto the floor. The warg’s screams faded away, but before the poor jackass could die, Satan partially healed him with a flick of the wrist.

Partially, because you never wanted your torture subject to be pain free.

“Go back to your duty, Revenant. Bypass the Watcher Council and come directly to me if anything happens with the Horsemen or their Watcher.” He sneered. “They might know more than they’re saying.”

It was against Watcher rules to break the chain of command—even if Satan himself requested it. But the fuck if Revenant was going to point that out, so he merely bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

“And Rev,” he said silkily, “don’t let me down, or you’ll take Harvester’s place on the skinning block.” He gestured to the door with his blood-coated clawed hand. “Send in Blight.”

Rev sucked in a sharp breath. Blight commanded all of Satan’s militaries.

“I’m sending an army after Harvester. When they find her, they will drag her and her rescuers back by their intestines.” Satan smiled at the barely conscious werewolf. “And you… you will talk. And then I get a hundred thousand extra souls to enslave in my armies, and Heaven and all its happy inhabitants will fall into my hands.”

And once Heaven fell, there would be nothing to stop him from taking over the Earth next.