Rogue Rider

Three

“How are you doing there, you hot, naked hunk of angel?”

Reaver opened his eyes just long enough to glare at Harvester, a fallen angel who seemed to delight in annoying the shit out of him.

Closing his lids, Reaver settled back against the wall of bone behind him. “I’m an angel trapped in hell, and I’m being slowly digested in the belly of some giant demon. How do you think I am?”

Harvester snapped her fingers in front of his face, startling him into opening his eyes again. She crouched at his feet, her ebony hair cascading all the way to her hips over her black leather and lace minidress, a backpack next to her on the ground. “You do regenerate. Quit being dramatic.”

He sighed. “It’s interesting how your latest torture method is to annoy me to death.”

“Annoy?” In a surprising move, she sat down beside him, back to the wall. “I call it conversation. Would you rather be alone in here?”

“Ah. So you’re revealing your softer, gentler side. Sacrificing yourself to keep me company.”

“You’re so cynical.”

“Maybe that’s because a year ago, you tricked me, held me captive, cut off my wings, and tried to get me addicted to marrow wine.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Clearly, my cynicism is unwarranted.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t want to do those things. Maybe I was under orders.”

The Horsemen Watcher Council in Sheoul operated much the same as the Council in Heaven, meaning they offered suggestions and passed along information from Those In Power. But ultimately, it was up to the assigned Watcher himself to take responsibility for any action he or she took. Harvester, as the Four Horsemen’s evil Watcher, would know that.

“Holding a Watcher captive is a violation of Watcher rules. It doesn’t matter if your orders came from the Council or Satan himself. You’ll be punished.” Probably by both Sheoulic and Heavenly forces. Each side was responsible for punishing their own Watcher, but sometimes both sides demanded the right to mete out punishment.

“Eventually.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Right now everyone is too busy putting the human realm back together. Besides, I’ll get a slap on the wrist. Maybe have Watcher duty taken away. I’ll live.”

“That would be a shame.”

Though he was being sarcastic, there was a part of him that would prefer she remained alive and kept her job. As the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, Reaver had to deal with whoever would replace her, and as fallen angels went, there were a lot worse than Harvester.

He shifted, wincing at the agony of his skin scraping on acid-coated taste buds. “How long have I been here, anyway?”

Time worked differently in some regions of Heaven and in Sheoul-gra, and you never knew if one hour spent in one of those places meant three months in the human realm, or if it meant three seconds. Time shifted as often and as quickly as the wind, with no discernible pattern.

“In the half hour you were here with Reseph, three months passed in the human realm. After you threw him out, time here went the opposite way. You’ve been here for three months, but only minutes have passed in the human realm.” She lifted one slender shoulder in a shrug. “Basically, it all evened out. Three months for both realms.”

Which would mean that Reseph would have only recently awakened.

“How do you know I threw Reseph out?”

Harvester rolled her eyes. “You didn’t come here to chat with demon souls. No angel would risk coming to Sheoul, let alone Sheoul-gra, without a damned good reason. Reseph was your reason.” She smirked. “Plus, Hades told me you did something to Reseph to make him disappear.”

“That blue-haired bastard,” Reaver growled. “As if running demon purgatory doesn’t keep him busy enough? He had to rat me out to you?”

“He has to amuse himself somehow, I guess.” Harvester tapped the backpack. “I brought you clothes.” She raked him with a naughty gaze. “Not that you should put them on, you sexy thing.”

Suspicion churned in his gut. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Standing, she unzipped the pack and tossed a pair of bright pink sweats dotted with kittens into his lap. There was the catch… looking stupid. “So where did you send Reseph? I can’t sense him at all anymore.”

“I’m not telling you.”

“I need to know. He’s in danger.”

Clutching the goofy sweatpants, Reaver popped to his feet. “What do you mean, he’s in danger? Reseph’s Seal was repaired and he’s no longer Pestilence. The Daemonica’s prophecy was thwarted.”

There had always been two apocalyptic prophecies about the Four Horsemen, one catalogued by a demon holy book, the Daemonica, and one accounted for in the human Bible. The differences lay in how their Seals would break and what side the Horsemen would fight on… good or evil. Reaver was relieved that only the “good” prophecy was left, but whatever Harvester was babbling about sent a tremor of alarm through him.

“Fool. You know prophecies can change. Reseph’s Seal may not be able to break again until the Bible’s prophecy comes to pass, but the events of the last year have caused a disruption in what was originally foreseen. The Horsemen are still predicted to fight on the side of good in the biblical Apocalypse. But…”

Reaver ground his teeth. “But?” he prompted.

“But Reseph’s evil side was awakened when he became Pestilence. His demon isn’t dead. It’s merely locked up.”

“I know.” And that was actually Reaver’s doing. He’d been in possession of Wormwood, the dagger that could have destroyed Pestilence, but it would have killed Reseph, too. Instead of giving it to the other three Horsemen, he’d let them use Deliverance instead, a dagger they’d wrongly believed would kill Pestilence. “That’s why I took his memory and sent him away.”

“Well, I recently received word from Those In Power that when his memories come back, if he’s not strong enough and he’s subjected to evil again…”

“Pestilence could return,” Reaver said grimly. Damn. He supposed he should be grateful to Harvester for delivering the news, seeing how he was cut off from his own Watcher Council.

But he couldn’t afford to be grateful for anything Harvester did. She would never forgive a debt.

“He won’t have the same powers if he comes back,” she said, “and he can’t bring about the same kind of destruction on the Earth that he did before; at least, not on the same scale. But he can still spread plague and disease, and it will still mean that he can plot, disrupt lives, raise armies in preparation for the biblical Apocalypse. And it would mean one less Horseman to fight for you Goody Two-shoes in the future.”

Through a filter of skepticism, Reaver considered what Harvester was saying. “You’re playing me, Fallen. You only want to find him so you can help that evil side of him come out again.”

“Trust me,” she spat. “I don’t want Pestilence to show his bastard face anytime soon. I want to know where he is so I can keep it from happening.”

Reaver almost believed her. She hated Pestilence, and he couldn’t blame her. Pestilence had hurt her in ways even she didn’t deserve.

He tugged on the sweatpants. They were ridiculously tight, no doubt thanks to Harvester’s sense of humor. “I can’t tell you.”

“You do realize you’ve violated a massive Watcher rule by casting him out of here, right? And by not telling me where he is, you’re violating another. I could have you so punished.”

“No doubt you will,” he muttered. “But I can’t risk telling you. If what you’re saying is true, and anyone else knows he’s out in the world, he’ll have every evil being in Sheoul after him, all trying to bring Pestilence out. If they even suspect that you know where he is, you’ll be tortured for the information.”

“Aw, thanks for caring,” she said with a flutter of eyelashes. “But I can handle it.”

Yeah, he’d seen how well she’d handled it when he found Gethel, the Horsemen’s ex-Heavenly Watcher and a black-hearted traitor, working Harvester over with treclan spikes. Harvester had been broken.

“Speaking of torture, any news on Gethel?”

Harvester’s eyes gleamed. “Rumor has it that she’s recovered from your ass-kicking and is on a mission to find Reseph and bring back Pestilence.”

“What?” Beneath him, the ground shook, the giant digesting demon’s reaction to his roar. “You couldn’t have started off the conversation with, ‘Oh, hey, you didn’t kill Gethel, and by the way, she’s trying to locate Reseph to turn him back into Pestilence’?”

“Why? It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”

She had a point, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “How does she know Reseph is out in the world? Did Hades tell her, too?”

Harvester smoothed her hands down her dress, as if the skintight sheath was wrinkled. “I have no idea. I can only assume that she or Lucifer has spies. But you can bet they won’t keep the knowledge a secret. That’s why I’m here. I need to find Reseph before they do.”

So the choice came down to evil or… evil. Awesome.

Reaver wasn’t prepared to consider either option. What he needed was more information. And a way to get out of here. Right now, his only hope for either was to play nice with Harvester. Finding common ground was probably his best bet.

“How are the other Horsemen doing? What did Regan and Than name their son?” A pang of regret that he hadn’t gone to see the new baby before he’d come to Sheoul-gra ran through him.

“They’re all well, and Than and Regan named the baby Logan Thanatos.” Harvester smiled, and Reaver nearly fell over. She actually seemed happy for them.

He also realized that this was the first time they’d ever had a civil conversation. It was almost… friendly. Weird, since Harvester generally reacted to friendliness with bitchiness.

The scream of a demon in agony echoed from somewhere outside of the gullet of the creature they were standing inside, reminding him that no matter how polite their chat was going, they were still in hell. “What’s Logan look like?”

“He has Than’s blond hair and Regan’s hazel eyes. He smiles a lot.” Harvester twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she eyed him. “I’ll get you out of here to see him if you tell me where Reseph is.”

“No deal.”

“Stubborn git.” She toyed with the ends of her hair, brushing them playfully across the deep furrow of her cleavage. “I have one other offer. If you don’t take it, you should know that Azagoth has been pressing me to torment you with more than annoying conversation. He’s furious that you released Reseph. He had serious plans to make Pestilence pay for torturing his daughter.”

And that was one of the reasons Reaver had freed Reseph. Azagoth, Sheoul-gra’s gatekeeper, wouldn’t care that the male trapped here was Reseph, not Pestilence. Reaver couldn’t allow Reseph to suffer for his demon half’s deeds.

He narrowed his eyes at his fellow Watcher. “What’s the offer?”

Slowly, seductively, Harvester licked her generous lips, and Reaver’s gut twisted. “Sex,” she said, her voice all silk and sin. “You agree to pleasure me at the time of my choosing.”

“What?” He blinked like a dope. “Why? You hate me.”

“My reasons are my own.” She trailed one slender finger down her throat, continuing lower, until she was caressing her nipple through the sheer fabric at the bodice of her dress. “Well? What’s your answer? Give me sex in return for your freedom.”

The very idea made him want to hurl. But it wasn’t as if he was rolling in options. “When? Where? And for how long?”

“When I wish it. Could be tomorrow, could be in two hundred years. Where? We’ll make it fair and say in the human realm so neither of us has a power advantage. How long? Twenty-four human hours.”

“And what,” he said through clenched teeth, “will you have me do?”

Her eyes sparked with hunger. “Whatever I want you to do. But you should know that I’m into pretty much everything.” Her voice became a throaty, honeyed drawl. “And I especially appreciate a talented tongue.”

He really was going to throw up. Closing his eyes, he considered her offer and in the end decided that twenty-four hours in Harvester’s bed couldn’t be worse than an eternity in a Sheoul-gra torture chamber.

Probably.

“Fine,” he ground out. “But just you. No threesomes, no spectators, and no commands that aren’t directly related to… pleasuring you.” He barely managed those last two words.

“Deal.” She sauntered up to him and placed her palm over his heart. “A kiss to seal it.”

Lifting her face, Harvester slanted her mouth over his. He wasn’t sure what he expected from her, but soft lips and a flavor like fresh rose water wasn’t it. Neither was the vague sense of familiarity. Had she kissed him before? Maybe when he’d been held captive in her house and under the influence of marrow wine?

Her tongue slid along the seam of his lips, and okay, if she wanted to play, he’d play. She thought she was stealing a kiss from an angel, thought she had the upper hand.

Never. Gripping her shoulders, he spun her into the wall and pinned her with his body. His wings flared high, draping them both in darkness. She grunted as he plunged his tongue into her mouth, taking instead of giving.

“You like it rough then, do you?” she murmured against his lips. “I can do you that way.”

A surprisingly pleasant sting sizzled through his mouth, and then Harvester was licking at his lips and tongue. He tasted blood, knew she’d clipped him with a fang. Heat rushed south, stirring his loins.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He hated Harvester. Despised everything about her. And yet… damn.

Before she discovered the extent of how much his body was betraying him, he kissed her savagely hard and stepped back, summoning every measure of icy composure he had.

“Deal sealed,” he said.

Harvester’s eyes were glazed as she dabbed at the blood on her lips with the back of her hand. “Sealed.” She smiled, flashing shiny white fangtips. “Now, I’ll get you out of here. But remember, angel. When I call, you come running. And make sure you’re fully clothed. I want to strip you myself.”

Gethel stood atop a rocky outcrop in Scotland, her gaze focused on the castle in the distance, its bottom half shrouded in mist. Her sharp eyesight caught a glimpse of two Aegis Elders, Lance and Omar, as they stood on the south wall smoking cigarettes. She wondered if they were discussing her; she’d given them enough to talk about for a month straight. All lies, of course, meant to trick them into doing her bidding.

Well, the fact that the Horsemen hated The Aegis wasn’t a lie, but she might have exaggerated about how many Aegi the Horsemen planned to kill in retaliation for The Aegis’s role in trying to kill Thanatos’s child.

All the better to scare The Aegis into following her blindly. And why wouldn’t they? She was an angel, after all.

Twin wisps of smoke rose from the Elders’ cigarettes, dissipating quickly in the brisk breeze. She could almost smell the tobacco, and her mouth watered. Tobacco was a distinctly human and demon pleasure, and as such, most angels turned up their noses at so much as standing downwind of the smoke. But in her meeting yesterday with Lucifer, she’d been offered a plethora of sinfully decadent drugs, drinks, and foods, and there was no way she could turn down everything. Not when Lucifer, Satan’s right-hand man, insisted.

The cigarette had represented yet another step down a path from which she couldn’t return, and each step was another knife in her soul.

She’d spent three months denying that helping Pestilence had really been so bad, but with each new sin, each action she took against Heaven, it began to sink in.

Still, she felt like she was straddling the line between good and evil, had yet to jump into either pool with both feet. As proof that she wasn’t all bad, she hadn’t revealed the location of The Aegis’s headquarters to the forces of hell… maybe because she’d always supported the demon-slayers’ cause. For thousands of years, they had been all that stood between demons and humans, and she respected their awesome sacrifices.

That, and for now, The Aegis had no idea she had taken a few turns at playing for Team Evil. They still believed she was a Heavenly angel, and she supposed that was true enough. None of her angelic brethren had found her, tried her, and ripped her wings from her back before drop-kicking her straight into Sheoul.

Her crimes would not earn her a stop at the halfway point, the human realm, the place most disgraced angels went to make a choice: try to earn their way back to Heaven, or enter hell and become irreversibly evil, a True Fallen. No, as Reaver had pointed out during their battle three months ago, she was Fallen… she just hadn’t lost her wings.

Reaver was such an obnoxious bastard.

This was all his fault. If he’d refused to replace her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, she wouldn’t have grown angry. She wouldn’t have plotted against him and the Horsemen by working with Pestilence and Lucifer. What had the Archangels been thinking by appointing him? Reaver, who had once done something so egregious that they’d wiped his past from his memory and that of every angel in existence? Reaver, who had disobeyed too many rules to count and had been stripped of his wings just thirty years ago?

Yes, he’d earned his wings back by saving the world with some idiot incubus, but it had been clear to Gethel even then, when she’d awarded him with his angel status, that little had changed. He was still the same arrogant, defiant fool he’d always been.

He was going to pay for what he’d done to her. For what he’d forced her to do. But first, she needed to find Reseph.

Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the sky and repeated a summoning spell she knew by heart. She’d already made the appropriate sacrifice, even though it had pained her to do it—a human male virgin and a pregnant human female. Now she need only wait for the agent of her summons to appear.

When he did, she barely kept herself from recoiling.

The creature, his oozing flesh hanging off his skeletal frame in jerky-like strips and crawling with maggots, materialized before her. He clacked his sharp teeth, and the sound pierced her eardrums like a blade.

“Beautiful angel.” His voice gurgled, as if he was speaking through oil. “What can I give you today?”

“I need khnives and Soulshredders.”

The creature hissed. “Soulshredders don’t do anyone’s bidding.”

“They will this time.” She paused, taking a moment to enjoy the skepticism in the demon’s rheumy yellow eyes. “Their master, Pestilence, is somewhere in the world, and they need to find him.”

“Lies,” the creature rumbled. “Pestilence is dead.”

Drawing on a current of Heavenly power, Gethel flared her wings and came off the ground to hover over the demon. “Angels do not lie, you pathetic wretch.” Her voice boomed like thunder, and the demon cringed. “Pestilence lives, trapped inside his brother’s body, and every Soulshredder in Sheoul needs to be looking for him.” The khnives, horrid opossum-like creatures, could help as well… they excelled at spywork.

The demon nodded vehemently. “A rescue.”

“Exactly.” Gethel cut herself off from her Heavenly power source, praying no one had sensed her while she’d been connected, or if they had, that the connection had been too weak or too brief to trace. To be safe, she needed to get away from here. “Off with you,” she said, shooing the demon away with a flick of her hand. “Get the word out to the Soulshredder Council. I want Reseph found, and if they have to torture and kill everyone who means something to him to do it, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

Pay? Seeing Reseph’s loved ones die would be a bonus.