Reaver

Prologue

Fate was not a word angels tossed around lightly. But as Zachariel, First Angel of the Apocalypse, wrote the final chapter of Verrine/Harvester: An Unauthorized Biography, he couldn’t help but think about how fate had screwed her over.

And so it was that, five thousand human years ago, the angel Verrine fell in love with the angel Yenrieth. But Verrine, in her innocence, fled from his affections and sent him into the waiting arms of another.

Verrine finally realized her mistake, but it was too late. She came upon her beloved Yenrieth fornicating with the succubus Lilith.

Unbeknownst to Yenrieth, Lilith became pregnant. Verrine, however, was aware of the pregnancy and for reasons known only to her, she kept the knowledge from Yenrieth. She did, however, swear an oath to find and watch over Yenrieth’s offspring.

In time, Lilith gave birth to four infants, three boys and a girl: Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos.

After many years of searching in secret, Verrine finally located the boys, who had grown up with human families, placed there by Lilith.

But the girl, Limos, had been betrothed to Satan and had made her life in the underworld. Only when Limos emerged from the dark depths of hell did Verrine feel as though she could finally tell Yenrieth about the existence of his children.

But as fate would have it, Limos’s arrival in the human realm was disastrous.

Yenrieth’s children, upon learning from Limos that they were not human but were, in fact, half angel and half demon, started a war between the earthly and demon realms, causing destruction and chaos that bordered on Armageddon.

As punishment, Yenrieth’s offspring were cursed to become the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their fates to be determined by prophecy. Should the Seals that bound them to the curse break, they would become Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, but whether they fought on the side of good or evil had yet to be determined.

No one knows what became of Yenrieth after this, but Verrine, in order to hold to her personal vow to watch over his children, approached three archangels with a plan—to infiltrate hell and use whatever means at her disposal to be assigned one of Sheoul’s most coveted tasks: Sheoulic Watcher of the Horsemen. She intended to act as a spy and manipulate events in order to prevent the demon bible’s version of apocalyptic prophecy.

Three archangels, Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel, approved her request and, knowing she would never see Heaven again, Verrine became the fallen angel Harvester.

It took three thousand years of proving herself to her father, the fallen angel and lord of the underworld, Satan, before she was granted a position as Watcher. For the next two thousand years she covertly helped the Horsemen keep their Seals from breaking and pretended to work against each of the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watchers, Shiresta, Barabus, Gethel, and Reaver.

And when, in the Year of our Lord 2010, a Seminus demon named Sin inadvertently broke Reseph’s Seal and turned him into the demon known as Pestilence, Harvester’s work began in earnest. The Daemonica’s version of the Apocalypse had begun.

Harvester, corrupted by thousands of years of evil, performed tasks that would eat at her soul and scour away what little goodness was left in her heart. But ultimately, her actions saved humankind, and the Apocalypse was averted. All worked out according to plan… until Gethel, a traitor to Heaven, betrayed Harvester to Satan.

And Harvester, unable to ask the very people she saved for help, was dragged to Sheoul to suffer an eternity of torment at Satan’s hands.

Zachariel paused to dip his angel-feather pen into the sacred ink blended from the blood of twenty archangels. Crimson drops dripped from the nib as he lifted it from the crystal bottle, and he wondered how much more he should write. Yenrieth had been scrubbed from the history books and from the memories of all but a select few, and Zachariel wasn’t sure how much he should reveal. His own memories of Yenrieth had been returned just recently, and only so he could record Harvester’s story.

Blood ink spattered on the desk, and Zachariel realized the finality of the situation. Harvester was gone forever. There was no more to write. Thanks to Harvester’s sacrifice, humanity was safe, and so were Yenrieth’s children. She, more than any angel in history, had shaped the future of all the realms.

Harvester was a fallen angel. And a fallen hero.

Zachariel let the pen fall back into the bottle, and with a silent prayer for Harvester’s soul, he closed the book.