Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (30 page)

He still had time. A few hours if he was to open the portal on Christmas as Lucifer had requested—demanded.

Splitting the earth in front of him, he opened a crack through the bedrock, penetrating to the core of Hell. “Demons and imps all, return to Hell and await my call.”

Without hesitation, they stepped off into the abyss and vanished.

The remaining humans stood by silent and afraid.

Camael closed the chasm. “You’ll return to Bolton Cemetery and await further instructions. Do you understand?”

Several of them nodded, but he could sense their feelings of betrayal. After all, he inhabited Little Stevie’s body now. None of them would be at Bolton when he arrived because none would want to be next. As it turned out, he didn’t even care. They’d exceeded their usefulness. An hour ago he would have shoved them down the chasm himself, but his heart just wasn’t in it anymore.

He needed to think.

And the only place he could do that was in Hell.

Clearly his judgment was clouded here.

He waited until the bus disappeared into the sunrise. The horizon was filled with streaks of pink as the snow continued to drift over him, beginning to accumulate.

Perhaps there would be a white Christmas after all.

Such a human thing to wish for.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ruth heard footsteps outside the crypt. She tried to scoot herself up into a sitting position, but her limbs were too cold to cooperate anymore. Instead, she huddled into the sweatshirt, locked in a fetal position around her own fetus.

The sound of rattling at the door snapped her eyes open. Was this it? Was Camael coming for her?

“Hey, you in there?” a man’s voice asked.

“Who’s there? Help me! Can you get me out of here?”

“I dunno. There’s a palawk on it.”

Ruth tried to translate in her head. “A padlock?”

“Yeah.”

She scrambled. If she had a willing rescuer, surely he could come up with some way to help her to escape. “Can you find a big rock or…a headstone to break the lock?”

“I kin try.”

“Please! Hurry!”

Silence filled the crypt again and several long minutes passed. The wait was so long that she was sure he’d lost his nerve and left. A crack echoed through the concrete tomb and she nearly jumped out of her frozen skin. She was surprised she didn’t crack into two herself with the unexpected jolt.

After several more strikes, he seemed to find a rhythm. How long would it take? They were so far away from anywhere. No one would hear the noise he was making unless Camael came back before he accomplished his task. Helpless to do anything to advance her own rescue, she offered words of encouragement to her unseen rescuer.

“I know you’re close! Keep trying! You can do it!”

“I shoulda come sooner.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Were you on the bus?”

The pounding stopped.

“Don’t stop! It’s okay. Just keep going. We can talk when you get me out!”

“I was scared.”

“I know. I am, too, but we have to get out of here. What’s your name?”

“Carl.”

“Carl, I’m Ruth. Please don’t stop!”

Rather than answering, Carl continued to pound against the padlock on the door of the crypt. It never took this long in the movies. Just when she was sure it was never going to happen, she heard the steel hit the concrete ledge outside the door. The door pushed open and the first rays of the sunrise blinded her as Carl stood in silhouette, filling the doorway. He was one big man. And she’d never been so happy to see someone in her life.

“You okay?” he asked, folding himself in half to inspect her.

“You gave me your sweatshirt on the bus. I would have never made it this long without it, Carl.”

“Weren’t nothing. Shoulda come sooner. Kept thinkin’ that bad man was comin’ back anytime. I slipped away, hid in the woods after we got here. Finally gave up and did the right thing.”

He slid an arm around her shoulders and another under her knees, and scooped her up like she was nothing. Ruth pulled his bald head down to her face and kissed the top of it.

“Thank you, Carl.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Let’s get somewhere safe first.”

As Carl started walking across the valley, toward the highway, Ruth caught a glimpse of the impossible. Just above the tree line on the mountainside opposite them, hidden in the still dark forest was a glowing dome, like half a snow globe.

It was a circle of protection. And to project an aura like that, it had to be a powerful one. It was not the sort of magic one or even a handful of witches was capable of producing. This sort of magic took a village.

It had to be Nate’s coven.

Carl carried her under the Bolton Cemetery sign and out of the cemetery. He stopped at the gravel road and turned right, back the way they’d driven in earlier.

“No, Carl. We have to go straight ahead, then across the highway and through the forest on the other side. We can’t take the roads this time. He’ll find us.”

Carl looked out across to the other mountain. “That a long way, Ruth. I can carry ya, but you’re cold. This way they’s a town at least.”

“No, Carl. Please. I think my people are over there.”

“And by you people, you don’t mean more of that bad man, right?”

“No. I mean the good guys.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Camael sat on the end of his bed in his lush suite in Hell with his forehead pressed against the cool surface of the hourglass. Elaina’s soul pulsed with gray-blue energy inside. His host body was deteriorating quickly despite having travelled through his personal portal. Bits of flesh were already peeling and falling to the floor from the slightest agitations, which was indicative of his internal frame of mind, as well. His resolve was crumbling along with his body.

He was sick of it. All of it.

Sick of changing forms. Sick of the constant battle. Sick of his pain, both physical and emotional. This urn at once held the key to his freedom and his imprisonment.

Now that he knew Elaina was alive, he also knew why he’d kept her soul hidden for all of these years. Why he’d kept her.

Hope.
It had been with him the whole time after all.

Maeve’s reappearance plagued him with questions. He’d witnessed her soul detach itself from her body. There was no return from that. Yet she
lived
and, from all appearances, was back in the battle.

How was it possible?

Reapers had been known to persist indefinitely, some even after being buried alive for years and depleted to the point of a reaper coma, but without a soul? No. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he never would have believed it possible.

Elaina’s body had persisted, and her soul remained firmly within his grasp. Was it possible to reanimate her as Maeve had been reanimated? Could she be reinsouled? Even in his misery, Camael knew the chance was miniscule. It was foolish to even entertain the thought.

He’d held Elaina’s famished and ruined shell in his very arms. She was too far gone. Not only that, but it was much too late for him to try. Lucifer wouldn’t tolerate any delays or setbacks. Not when they were this close.

Camael opened the padded case next to him, seated the urn back into the indentations and sealed the latches. Conflict still warred inside him.

He rose and paced to the full mirror hanging on the wall beside his bed, examining his reflection. How he longed to take his own form and be rid of this ridiculous shell. To be whole again, if only for a moment.

Sensing his master’s presence before he even fully manifested, Camael turned to find Lucifer on his balcony, wearing soft denim jeans and a long-sleeved, black dress shirt, starched to perfection. His long, blond hair flowed past his shoulders and the glow from the Sea of the Dead back lit his head, forming a red halo around him. Camael suppressed a sarcastic chuckle. It wouldn’t pay to laugh in the Devil’s face.

“Tidying up?” Lucifer cast a judicious look around Camael’s suite.

“Tying up some loose ends is all.” Camael’s heart pounded in his chest as he silently willed the fallen angel to leave.

“A few more hours and all our hard work will come to fruition. You’ve been with me for how long now, Camael? Twenty years?”

“Twenty-seven,” Camael corrected, cringing inwardly.

“Time does fly. It seems like only yesterday when you were broken and worthless, flailing about and blind for vengeance. I took you in. Offered you not only a place, but a position of worth. Here you have had the opportunity to achieve everything you wanted as well as the means to do it. You must be just as excited as I am to finally see our project nearing completion.” Lucifer made his way around the room, picking up accoutrements and studying them.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Yet…” Lucifer settled onto the end of Camael’s bed beside the case and rested his hand upon it, drumming his fingers on the wood as he shook his head from side to side. “And yet, I feel a change in you, Camael. A hesitancy perhaps? I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Lucifer tapped the case for emphasis. “Where is the fire inside you that burned so brightly just hours ago? What has happened…now, so close to the end of our mission, that has you sulking in Hell instead of shredding open the portal you have prepared for me?
Promised
me?”

Camael felt sweat break out along his host’s back and trickle down his spine. “Nothing, my lord. It isn’t hesitancy you sense. It’s anticipation. I’m only making sure there are no loose ends to trip us up in this final hour.”

“You have chosen a location for the portal?”

“I have.”

“I can expect it to be opened within the hour then?” Lucifer studied Camael with a scrutiny that burned through him, trying to ferret out his lies.

“Soon.”

Lucifer’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “When you were broken, I offered you respite. When you despaired, I offered you retribution. Have I not given you everything that was within my power to offer you?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Lucifer jumped up abruptly and clapped his hands together. “I know you will not fail me, Camael. Soon we will both have everything we have ever wanted.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I look forward to seeing you topside, very, very
soon
.”

“Yes, my lord.”

As quickly as he’d appeared, Lucifer vanished. Camael sucked in a long breath and then let it out slowly. He knew what needed to be done.

He took one last look around his suite and added a long fur coat to his refreshed wardrobe. It didn’t help the appearance of his host body any, but it helped against the chill that had penetrated his body. If he failed, he wouldn’t be returning to this room…at least not in any recognizable or usable form. If he failed, he’d become oil for the machine he’d help build. If he failed…

He wouldn’t fail. Couldn’t.

Camael picked up the case and tucked it inside the coat.

The case was the one remaining possession in his long and miserable existence that had any meaning to him at all. He flashed out of Hell. There was one stop he needed to make before returning to the coven. He couldn’t get through the circle of protection alone, but he had another idea.

There was still time.

He’d make it.

***

“Stop here, Carl.”

Ruth studied the circle of protection. It was much brighter up close, a physical shield that pulsed with power far above their heads like an aurora borealis. The shield emitted more power than she’d ever witnessed.

She knew she couldn’t cross it without being invited inside. Carl, however, could walk right on in. Sure, there was probably a repelling spell attached to the circle, but if he made it through the worst of it, he’d be perfectly fine. She would have to wait outside the boundary until he brought back someone to let her in.

Assuming they
would
let her in.

Her child’s survival depended wholly on the kindness of strangers now. The thought of hanging out here alone in the snow seemed a little worse after being trapped in the crypt for several hours. It had taken much longer than she’d expected for Carl to carry her through the blowing cold to reach the coven. The stormy skies dampened the brightness of the earlier sunrise, and they came to a rest at the metaphysical coven gates under the gloomy grayness that had developed. Carl was exhausted, but so was she. And bone cold. She was a reaper for crying out loud.