Reaver

Twenty-Two

Thank you, wall.

Harvester kept repeating her mantra of gratitude as she leaned against said wall, its cool stone easing her fever and lending much-needed support. No way would her shaky legs hold her up if she wasn’t sandwiched between Reaver and the rock surface.

God, that had been good. Amazing.

And devastating.

Reaver hadn’t followed her orders. Instead, he’d taken over and gave her not what she wanted but what she needed. Somehow the bastard had known she was trying to protect herself, trying to keep her emotions at bay, and like the son of a bitch he was, he’d been patient and kind. And beneath the sexual intensity, there’d been a tenderness that would bring her to tears if she thought about it.

I’ll never give you a reason to not trust me.

What kind of shit was that? Why would he say that? The only reason she’d survived as long as she had was because she learned to not trust anyone. Trust got you killed. Or worse, it got you tortured.

Some quack human psychologist would probably say that her inability to trust started before she was even born, when her father rose up against the other archangels and started an insurrection. If he’d truly cared about her and her mother, he wouldn’t have done that, right?

But according to him, he’d done it for her. For her mother. And she’d actually believed him. Over the course of her time spent in Sheoul, he’d told her how the other archangels plotted against him because he had been recognized in the womb as a potential Radiant, the most powerful of all angels. He’d told her he’d loved her mother, even though their mating had been arranged in hopes of producing another potential Radiant.

It hadn’t, but he’d told Harvester that he’d loved her from the moment of conception, and that he wished he’d have been there for her birth.

And then, on the day she’d needed him to prove everything he’d said was true, he’d branded her a traitor and sentenced her to an eternity of the most unimaginable torture he and his minions could devise.

So, okay, she had trust issues. And daddy issues. And probably some new issues with sharp objects.

“Harvester?” Reaver slapped his palms on the wall and pushed off her so she wasn’t squashed, but he didn’t withdraw from her body the way he had when he’d taken her virginity.

Where are you going?

As far away from you as I can get.

Thrusting the painful memories aside, she sighed. “What?”

“We should get dressed.”

She’d expected Reaver to ask if she was okay, or to maybe apologize, so his casual, common-sense suggestion threw her, and she laughed.

“I guess we should.”

He combed through her hair with his fingers, a silly gesture that was somehow more intimate than anything they’d just done. Tingling warmth washed over her, and her stupid heart did a fluttery little jig. This was that sappy, cuddly moment all the romance books and girl magazines waxed on about, wasn’t it? Not that she read those things, but one couldn’t avoid the chatter from women with overactive ovaries.

Dammit, this whole thing had gone terribly wrong. Or terribly right, she realized. She’d released him from the deal they’d made, and he’d proved she was right to do it.

He’d wanted to have sex with her. And he hadn’t kicked her to the curb yet, so that was something.

But that didn’t mean she fully trusted him, and she needed to keep in mind that with the exception of her mother, everyone she’d ever known had disappointed her.

“Are we getting dressed or what?” she snapped.

Reaver sighed, and his hand fell away. She felt an instant pang of regret for ruining the moment. When he withdrew from her body, the pang got worse.

She heard the rustle of clothing as he got dressed, and in the dark silence, she did the same. Once clothed, they stared at each other.

“Well, this is awkward,” she said, and he laughed. God, he was gorgeous when he did that. Everything about him just… glowed.

Glowed… shit. He was throwing light like a nuclear power plant, and she hadn’t even noticed. The overwhelming hatred that usually came with his angelic aura didn’t bother her either.

“Reaver, you’re glow—”

The black box fell away, and in a flash of light, they were dropped into another realm. A realm where everything was dreary and gray, even the massive pyramids that sat atop an ocean of sand.

“Oh, fuck,” she breathed, as a crushing wave of evil swallowed her whole.

“What is it?”

She glanced over at him and drew in a sharp breath. His aura was gone, confirming her suspicion about their location; in this realm, there was no light except for the ever-present hazy luminescence that kept the realm in a constant state of blah.

She wondered if she should sugarcoat what she was going to say. But screw it; she’d never sugarcoated anything in her fallen angel life.

“Remember how I said the Boregate knows where you need to go?”

“Yeah… and we need to get to the human realm. This isn’t it.”

“No,” she said. “This realm belonged to Lucifer. I guess it still does, because I can feel him.”

Reaver’s sandy eyebrows shot up. “So Gethel must be here.” She nodded, and Reaver swore. “This could be bad. He gazed into the distance. “Or it could be good. If we can get close to Gethel, we can take her out.”

“How? You can’t even kill a hellrat, and I’m operating at less than half power. Not to mention the fact that Gethel will be heavily guarded.”

“I can take out a hellrat,” he muttered. “I just can’t replace any power I spend, now that the sheoulghuls are gone.”

“No, I mean you that you can’t use your powers here because you’re an angel. Even if you were at full strength it wouldn’t matter.”

He swore. “I love how things just get worse and worse.”

A feeling of doom settled over her like a shroud as she looked ahead at the city that had been the basis for the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Even the Egyptian gods had been based on the denizens of this realm, animal-headed demons who had gotten off on convincing primitive peoples of their godliness.

“Well, we can’t just stand here. Is there a way out? Now that we know where Gethel is, we’ll go to the archangels,” Reaver said, all logical and crap. Except she knew something he didn’t.

“Yep, there’s a way out. The exit is through a single Harrowgate.”

The smug expression on Reaver’s face fell. He knew what she was about to say, but she gave him credit for at least trying to remain optimistic as he asked, “Where’s the Harrowgate?”

She pointed at the city. “In the very center. Right on Lucifer’s doorstep.”

“Fuck,” Reaver breathed.

“We already did that. But if you’re saying that we’re fucked, I’d say you’re right.”

The journey to the city didn’t take long, and aside from one hawk-headed Horus demon trying to rob them, it was uneventful.

But as they approached the gates to the massive city, Reaver had a feeling things were going to get a lot less dull.

Khepri demons—scarab-headed humanoids—guarded the gate, their skinny antennae swiveling like radar dishes. Flanking them were Sobeks, their humanoid bodies too small for their giant crocodile heads.

Reaver had never encountered any of these demons, which Harvester said no longer traveled away from this realm, but the stories of their cruelty went well beyond the realm’s borders.

He leaned close to Harvester, and her scent made his body stir again.

“Are they going to let us in?”

“Of course,” she said, as if he’d asked an insanely stupid question. “It’s letting us out that’ll be the problem if they find out who we are. And they probably will.”

Harvester was definitely a glass-half-empty person, wasn’t she? But she was right, and the guards opened the gates that were tall enough to allow entrance to Godzilla. Inside, the gray that defined the outskirts of the city was replaced by rich reds and greens, golds and silvers. Great pillars and statues dotted the city, which could have stood in Egypt and no one would have known the difference.

“Charming place,” he muttered as they moved past Neethul slave markets and arenas where demons fought to the death.

Harvester nodded enthusiastically, as if he’d been serious. “I know, right? There’s a pub a few blocks over that serves the best pomegranate wine in all of Sheoul. Costs a fortune, but it’s so smooth. You’d never know they use Soulshredder blood to make it.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“I hear sarcasm.” She tsked. “What is it humans say? That sarcasm is the lowest form of humor?”

He shrugged. “Only for people who don’t get it.”

She laughed, and he missed a step. He’d heard Harvester laugh before, but there had always been an evil undercurrent to it, a morbid amusement that came from things normal people wouldn’t find funny. But this was a pure, bubbly laugh of genuine delight, and it filled him with the strangest giddiness, like a feather was tickling his heart.

As if she felt it too, she slid him an almost shy glance, a lopsided smile curving her luscious mouth. He didn’t say anything, because by now he knew that calling attention to anything pleasant would turn her back into an acid-tongued fishwife. Idly, he wondered if Eidolon had anything for her particular brand of demonic bipolar disorder.

“We’re almost there,” she said, pulling him to the side of the road to avoid being trampled by an elephant-like creature being ridden by an Anubis.

Almost there. If everything went smoothly, then in a few more minutes the nightmare would be over. This part of the nightmare, anyway. They still had to face the archangels, and the things they could do to him made all the miseries of Sheoul seem like a day at an amusement park.

The Harrowgate hung between two gold columns at the top of hundreds of steps that led to a building Harvester said was Lucifer’s palace.

“Will we be able to walk right into it?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Gethel will probably be heavily guarded.

At the top of the steps, demons milled about, but it was the armed Silas demons standing nearby that hot-loaded a massive dump of adrenaline into Reaver’s veins.

“Shit,” Harvester said, her voice so low he barely heard her. “Silas demons are coming up behind us.”

Reaver cast a covert glance back, and yep, they were being flanked. When he looked ahead, Silases were moving toward them, too.

They were blocked.

Instinctively, Reaver reached for his power, but there wasn’t so much as a spark. Harvester had been right. He couldn’t even kill a hellrat.

“I don’t suppose you have any tricks up your sleeve,” he asked.

“I have a lot. Unfortunately, they won’t work in this situation.” She shot a covert glance at the Harrowgate. “I say we forget Gethel for now and make a break for it.”

As much as he’d love to end Gethel and Lucifer right now, he had to admit that without their full range of powers, any attempt would be suicide. But that didn’t mean he was admitting defeat. No, right now the smart thing to do was to escape and live to fight another day.

“On three,” he said. “One.” The demons behind them began to jog. “Two.” The demons in front of them raised their swords. “Three.”

He and Harvester bolted toward the gate, scattering civilian demons like bowling pins. Harvester flung several bursts of lightning at the Silas warriors, turning them to ash. They were within five yards of the gate when a net fell on them, the threads shrink-wrapping them so tightly that their skin sliced open, their blood sizzling when it hit the mesh. Pain tore through Reaver as they crashed to the ground, kicking and fighting, but the netting only squeezed tighter, until they were back-to-back and unable to move more than fingers and toes.

A huge male Nightlash shoved through the throng of Silases, his clawed feet clacking on the stone. “Harvester and Reaver. Slag will be rewarded with such riches for this.” His sharp teeth dripped like someone had rung the dinner bell. “I am Slag.”

No shit. Demons were so damned stupid. Before he could say as much, a demon cut the net away. Reaver shoved to his feet and lunged for Slag, but his limbs where heavy, if he was trying to run through Jell-O.

“The net,” Harvester blurted as a Silas yanked her upright. “It’s like the whip that paralyzed you in the cavern.”

There weren’t enough curse words in enough languages for this situation, Reaver thought. But he made a noble attempt at saying them all when icy metal collars that matched the bracelets on Slag’s wrists were clamped around their necks. Tight.

“Obey, or…” The demon tapped one of the bracelets, and Harvester fell to the ground, screaming in raw, desperate anguish. Gasping for breath, she clawed frantically at the collar.

“Stop it,” he shouted. “Let her go!”

He dove at the Nightlash, but in half a heartbeat Reaver joined Harvester on the ground. Excruciating agony tore through him, as if the collar had sprung spikes that pierced so deeply he felt them in his gut.

It took forever for the pain to ease, and even then, he couldn’t function properly, his limbs flopping around and his head dangling on a neck that wouldn’t support it as they were dragged into the palace. Raised voices came from ahead… both familiar, and Reaver’s stomach bottomed out.

“This,” Harvester rasped, “is going to be bad.”

Reaver groaned. “You have a flair for understatement, you know that?”

Slag punched Reaver in the back of the head. “Shut up.”

Reaver and Harvester were jerked around and forced onto their knees as Gethel and Revenant approached. Gethel’s spun-gold hair fell in sparkly waves around her shoulders, but gone was the luminescence that used to surround her. Her eyes had turned as black as ink, and her once lush, shiny wings were shriveled, the feathers curled and frayed. Angels who stayed too long in Sheoul were prone to decay, and Gethel, carrying the spawn of evil, had gone rotten to the core.

Of course, her core had gone bad a long, long time ago.

Her one-shouldered emerald tunic clung tightly to her hugely rounded belly, where her hand rested protectively. Hard to believe someone with such a black heart could be protective of anything. And how had Lucifer grown so much, so fast? Maybe because he was to be born fully grown? If so, Gethel was going to be extremely miserable for another four months.

Good.

Fast as a snake and from out of nowhere, Gethel backhanded Harvester hard enough to knock her into Reaver.

“Bitch,” Reaver snarled. That earned him a blow from Revenant that made his ears ring.

“It’s good to see you both.” Gethel’s smile as she rubbed her belly made all the hairs on the back of Reaver’s neck stand up. “Extra special to have you here, Reaver.”

She grinned, flashing fangs, apparently a pregnant-with-the-spawn-of-Satan upgrade. Or downgrade, depending on how you looked at it.

“Special seeing you, too,” Reaver drawled. “I don’t think I had a chance to congratulate you the last time I saw you. I hope you suffer in agony for days before Lucifer bursts from your hideous body.”

Gethel blinked with exaggerated shock. “That’s a little harsh. As a father yourself, I’d think you’d be more sympathetic to the plight of a pregnant woman.”

Reaver shrugged. “A pregnant woman, yes. But a psychopathic pregnant troll… can’t get on board with that one.”

She went down on her haunches in front of him. “It doesn’t matter if you can get on board or not. It’s too late anyway.” She folded her hands over her huge, evil lump. “See, we’ve accelerated Lucifer’s growth. Instead of months, he’ll be born in weeks. Maybe days. The clock is ticking, Reaver, and you’re almost out of time.”

An icy blast of oh, shit blasted through him. “You crazy bitch.”

He got another whack upside the head. “Let me take them to the Dark Lord.” Revenant’s deep, eager voice resonated through the opulent marble auditorium.

“I’ve already sent word to him.” Gethel’s mouth turned up in a smile that sent a chill skittering up Reaver’s spine. “Satan will be here any minute.”