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Authors: Larissa Ione

Reaver

BOOK: Reaver
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Table of Contents

A Preview of
Revenant

Newsletters

Copyright Page

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of

any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the

author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review

purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at

[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

For my readers and my friends. How lucky I am that they so often overlap. I love you guys!

Acknowledgments

First of all, I want to thank everyone on the Grand Central Publishing team for everything they’ve put

into this book, with special thanks to Madeleine Colavita for all her help. And a massive thank-you

goes to my editor, Amy Pierpont. Oh, my God, we did it!!!!

Special thanks go out to Kim Whalen for being a great shoulder and agent. Yay, Reaver!!!

And thank you, Bryan, for being home when I needed you. Now that you’re home full time, the rest

of this crazy journey is yours to share too, so brace yourself!

Glossary

Agimortus—
A trigger for the breaking of a Horseman’s Seal. An agimortus can be identified as a

symbol engraved or branded upon the host person or object. Three kinds of agimorti have been

identified and may take the form of a person, an object, or an event.

Boregate—
Portals that allow demons to travel inside Sheoul. The precursors to Harrowgates,

Boregates are either unpredictable or inflexible. Some run back and forth between two realms while

others take users to random locations within Sheoul.

Daemonica—
The demon bible and basis for dozens of demon religions. Its prophesies regarding the

Apocalypse, should they come to pass, will ensure that the Four Horsemen fight on the side of evil.

Dermoire—
Located on every Seminus demon’s right arm from his hand to his throat, a
dermoire

consists of glyphs that reveal the bearer’s paternal history. Each individual’s personal glyph is located

at the top of the
dermoire
, on the throat.

Fallen Angel—
Believed to be evil by most humans, fallen angels can be grouped into two categories:

True Fallen and Unfallen. Unfallen angels have been cast from Heaven and are earthbound, living a

life in which they are neither truly good nor truly evil. In this state, they can, rarely, earn their way

back into Heaven. Or they can choose to enter Sheoul, the demon realm, in order to complete their fall

and become True Fallens, taking their places as demons at Satan’s side.

Harrowgate—
Vertical portals, invisible to humans, that demons use to travel between locations on

Earth and Sheoul. A very few beings can summon their own personal Harrowgates.

S’genesis—
Final maturation cycle for Seminus demons. Occurs at one hundred years of age. A

post-
s’genesis
male is capable of procreation and possesses the ability to shapeshift into the male of

any demon species.

Sheoul—
Demon realm. Located deep in the bowels of the Earth, accessible to most only by

Harrowgates and hellmouths.

Sheoulghul—
Tiny, extremely rare crystal spheres that allow angels to partially charge their powers in

Sheoul. The origin of these crystals is a closely guarded secret, and little is known about them, but

some users claim to have heard them make weeping sounds.

Sheoul-gra—
A holding tank for demon souls. The place where demon souls go until they can be

reborn or kept in torturous limbo.

Sheoulic—
Universal demon language spoken by all, although many species also speak their own

language.

Ter’taceo—
Demons who can pass as human, either because their species is naturally human in

appearance or because they can shapeshift into human form.

Watchers—
Individuals assigned to keep an eye on the Four Horsemen. As part of the agreement

forged during the original negotiations between angels and demons that led to Ares, Reseph, Limos,

and Thanatos being cursed to spearhead the Apocalypse, one Watcher is an angel, the other is a fallen

angel. Neither Watcher may directly assist any Horseman’s efforts to either start or stop Armageddon,

but they can lend a hand behind the scenes. Doing so, however, may have them walking a fine line,

that, to cross, could prove worse than fatal.

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.

BOOK: Reaver
2.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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