Reaver

Seven

Tavin’s shout screamed through Reaver’s brain.

He dove outside through the opening in the larva-nettle bush and came face to ass with a giant stegosaurus-sized beast. The creature was pawing at Tavin as the Sem tried to wedge himself between two boulders. Calder was twenty yards away, coming at them at a dead run, but Reaver doubted he’d get here before the thing got to Tavin.

“Hey!” Reaver yelled. The demon wheeled around with a snarl, its gaping maw large enough to swallow him whole.

Digging deep into his perilously low power reserves, Reaver blasted the thing with liquid fire that tore into the demon’s chest, splattering blood and gore on the parched earth. The beast screeched, but didn’t slow down. It swiped at Reaver with bony, clawed hands that dripped with the hair and meat of whatever creature it had tangled with before it found them.

With the stench of burnt flesh swirling around him, Reaver spun out of its way while simultaneously hurling a ball of lightning at its head. The lightning veered off course at the last second, a victim of Reaver’s unpredictable powers, and fizzled into a harmless shower of sparks.

Calder, the claws on his hands and feet extended, leaped into the fray, slashing at the demon’s hindquarters as Tavin extracted himself from the safety of the boulders.

His power failing miserably, Reaver went old school and hurled a stone into the demon’s jaw. Roaring, it lunged awkwardly, partially crippled by Calder’s efforts. Reaver hit the ground in a roll to avoid snapping jaws that would have cut him in half. As he popped to his feet, he summoned a shear-whip, and in a single, fluid motion, he leaped onto the demon’s spiny back and brought the white-hot scourge down on the beast’s skull.

The whip cut deeply into its skin, leaving steaming gashes all the way to the bone. The demon roared and threw itself backward, smashing Reaver into the rocky cliff surrounding the camp. Pain speared every bone in Reaver’s body, and his thoughts scattered like spilled marbles.

He bounced off a rocky outcrop before hitting the ground in a messy sprawl. Momentarily stunned, he lay there as the thing clamped its paw on top of him, caging him inside a prison of bony fingers and razor-sharp claws.

Man, he hated these giant things. They couldn’t kill him—very few demons could—but they were capable of serving up a world of hurt that could leave him defenseless for days. Worse, the commotion might attract Satan’s minions.

With renewed enthusiasm, he energized his hands with iced fire and jammed them between the demon’s fingers. Frost streaked through the creature’s hand and up its arm, leaving trails of chilled vapor billowing in its wake.

Excellent. The demon would retreat… ah, shit. Ice froze the demon’s hand to the ground, trapping Reaver as the beast fought Tavin and Calder with its other arm and its clawed feet.

“Reaver!” Tavin’s voice sounded above the demon’s pained screams.

“I’m here,” Reaver called out. He summoned a giant mallet and prepared to smash his way out of the prison of the demon’s palm. “You guys keep the bastard busy.”

“I’m open to suggestions, asshole,” Calder yelled. “Wait… standby!”

A massive crash buckled the ground, shattering the demon’s frozen hand and releasing Reaver. The demon lay dead a few yards away, bled out from a gut-spilling gash in his belly, courtesy of Calder, who was bent over, trying to catch his breath. But where was Tavin?

Reaver scrambled over a pile of boulders. “Tav? Man, where are you?”

Calder joined in Reaver’s frantic search, until finally, the Nightlash demon shouted. “There!”

The Seminus’s arm was poking out from under the dead beast’s hindquarters.

Fear made Reaver clumsy as he rushed to Tavin, and he nearly passed out with relief when he found the Sem caught in a small space between the demon’s leg and a rock.

“You okay?” Tavin didn’t respond. Anxiety spiked again as Reaver sank to his knees. “Tav?”

Blood soaked the ground around Tavin, pooling and mixing with the other demon’s darker blood. A faint scritching noise rose up, and the dirt began to vibrate, sending chills up Reaver’s spine.

Carnage maggots.

“Get to safety,” Reaver told Calder. “Now.”

The demon eyed the larva-nettle bush. “What about the fallen angel?”

“The bush will protect her,” Reaver yelled, his patience shot. “Go!”

Hastily, he dragged Tavin out from under the demon’s leg and heaved him over his shoulder. The ground rumbled hard enough to make him stagger. In seconds this patch of battle-chewed earth would become a feeding ground for great white shark–sized grubs that fed on blood and dead flesh, but they wouldn’t turn down a live meal either.

The ground between Reaver and Harvester erupted with maggots, cutting off his path. Shit. He spun sharply and hauled ass up a mound of boulders, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of a maggot that burst out of the ground like a damned porpoise out of water.

“I hate Sheoul,” he breathed, as he laid Tavin out on his side on a flat rock and kneeled beside the still unconscious Sem. The stench of blood, bowels, and death filled his nostrils, and his heart plummeted to his feet. It was worse than he’d thought.

Tavin had been gutted from the back. Broken bones pierced organs that were spilling out of the two-foot gash, and Reaver had a sick feeling he’d left a few vital innards on the ground below.

“Damn you,” Reaver muttered.

Even if Reaver possessed the ability to get the demon to Underworld General, he wouldn’t survive the time it would take to get there. Reaver was Tavin’s only hope, and healing him was going to take every drop of Reaver’s power. He couldn’t afford the loss, but neither could he afford to lose Tavin.

But there was also the very real possibility that his healing power could go awry, twisted and corrupted by the lasher implants. He could kill Tavin just as easily as heal him.

Reaver wasn’t even going to think about the fact that healing demons with angelic power was sort of… frowned upon by his angel brethren. He’d broken a lot bigger rules than that in just the last day.

Tavin sucked in a weak, shuddering breath. As he exhaled, his body went slack with the familiar death sag.

Reaver was done with the overthinking crap.

Power tingled up from his core, spreading across his skin. He placed his hands on Tavin’s head and funneled everything he had into the demon. Sweat formed on his brow as Tavin’s organs and bones began to mend and his heart began to beat.

Clenching his teeth, he dragged power from the deepest depths of his very bones, channeling it into Tavin until he sputtered and choked.

Tavin groaned in tandem with Reaver as his healing ability trickled down to nothing. Drained to the point of near-unconsciousness, Reaver lurched forward, nearly landing on Tavin as his muscles turned to water. He collapsed onto the hard stone and let himself lay there, panting and sweating. Next to him, Tavin breathed in deep, steady draws. The Sem was out of the woods.

“Reaver?” Tavin’s voice was raspy and rough. Pretty normal for a guy who had been teetering on the wrong side of death.

“Yeah?” Reaver didn’t sound so hot, either.

Tavin exploded up to crouch on his haunches next to Reaver, his mangled T-shirt hanging off him in bloody strips, one hand covering his personal Seminus glyph on his throat. “What the fuck did you do to me?”

“I saved your life.” Reaver sat up, irritated at the demon’s utter lack of gratitude. “And you’re welcome.”

Tavin’s blue eyes sparked with gold, which meant he was either horny or annoyed, and Reaver hoped to hell it wasn’t the former, because the guy wasn’t going to find a female anytime soon.

“No… what did you do to me?”

Demons. They didn’t make sense at the best of times. “What are you talking about?”

Tavin moved his hand. Reaver leaned in for a closer look. Had the symbol changed? Reaver thought it had been some sort of string or rope.

“Ah… what was your symbol?” Reaver asked.

“Was?”

“Is,” Reaver said. “Was, is… whatever. What’s the symbol you see on your neck every day when you look in the mirror?”

Tavin’s cheeks blushed pink. “It’s a worm.”

“Worm?” Most Sems had more masculine symbols, or at least, symbols that weren’t… worms.

“Yes, worm.” Tavin gnashed his teeth. “What’s wrong with it? It feels different. I feel different.”

The ground rumbled as the maggots began to move away. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be gone and he could get back to Harvester. Reaver smoothed his fingertip over the thin black lines and gray shaded details of Tavin’s new glyph. A prick of pain stabbed his fingertip, and he drew back with a hiss.

“Well,” Reaver said as he stared at the blood welling on the pad of his finger, “no one is going to make fun of you for having a worm on your neck anymore.”

Tavin glared. “Why not?”

“Because your worm turned into a viper.” He held out his bloodied finger. “And it bites.”

Tavin fell back onto the rock and stared up into the endless black above. “Remind me to never travel with an angel again. Especially not you.”

“I doubt you have to worry about that,” Reaver said.

Because after this trip, chances were that he would no longer be an angel.