Reaver (16 page)

contract. This… this is not good.”

Red lights flashing on the wall indicated that an ambulance was arriving with a critical patient, and

Eidolon’s adrenaline spiked. He loved a good emergency.

“I gotta go,” he said to Tavin. “I’ll work on this, see if we can come up with a way to reverse it.” He

glanced at Idess. “Can you look into it as well?”

“You bet.” She smiled reassuringly at Tavin, but the look she gave Eidolon was the exact opposite.

Basically, poor Tav was screwed.

Reaver, what have you done?

Reaver, what have you done?

Plugging into Reaver’s vein was like plugging into an electric socket. Harvester had fed from an

angel before, but to her relief, this was different. Better.
Way
better.

No longer worried about turning into a heinous beast, she drew deeply, greedily.

Hot blood splashed into her mouth, a silken cascade of the most coveted substance in the

underworld. It was as if Harvester had bitten into a live wire while orgasming. Wetness flooded her

sex as blissful effervescence flowed through her veins and ecstasy sizzled over the surface of her skin.

Clinging tightly to Reaver’s shoulders and clamping him firmly between her thighs, she swallowed,

her pulse growing stronger with every pull on his vein. She’d only ever experienced this once before.

With Yenrieth.

This was what sex between angels felt like. This was what Neethul marrow wine was created to

imitate. Harvester used to guzzle the stuff like iced tea on a steamy day in the Styx river basin. Now

she realized that marrow wine was a massively pathetic substitute for the real thing.

This was sensual. Decadent. Literally divine.

If Heaven could be summed up as a flavor, it would be Reaver’s blood. She needed more.

“Easy, sweetheart.” Reaver’s husky voice rumbled through her, adding another layer of euphoria to

her senses. “You can take more later. I’m not going anywhere.”

You promise?
The question popped into her head as if it were a natural thing to ask. Whatever.

She’d be horrified later. Right now, all that mattered was how Reaver’s lifeblood made her feel. How

he
made her feel.

He’d broken another huge rule for her, and he’d done it so easily, as if he weren’t committing a

wing-severing offense. The knowledge laid her out, gutted her emotionally.

And it made her so hot she wanted to rip his clothes off with her teeth. Moaning at the thought, she

rocked against him, letting her sex roll back and forth over his erection. She thought she heard him

moan, too, and was his breathing as frantic as hers?

“Hey, Harvester.” Reaver stroked her back as he spoke, breathless and hoarse. “You need to stop

now.”

No stopping. Her entire body vibrated at a frequency that threatened to blow her apart in a dark,

seething storm of ecstasy…

Dark… seething… no, that didn’t seem right. Her angel-blood-addled brain couldn’t focus

anymore. Reaver’s Heavenly light and power was infusing her, making her strong. Warping into

darkness and evil and—

“Harvester.” Reaver’s voice, more urgent, rolled through her. “Stop.”

His hands, which had been caressing her back and running through her hair, were suddenly on her

shoulders in a biting, painful grip. Growling, she doubled her efforts to take his blood. Somewhere in

the back of her mind she knew she should stop, but she crushed the thought with coldhearted

ruthlessness.

She was a fallen angel, after all. Evil. Satan’s daughter.

Suddenly, Reaver tore away from her. Blood sprayed from his torn throat, calling to her like a juicy

hamburger called to a starving man. She dove for him, but he wheeled out of the way.

“You… I remember—holy shit.” He stared at her like she was both a stranger and an old enemy as

he slapped his hand over the wound in his neck. “Something’s wrong with you.”

Something was wrong with
her
? She laughed, and even to her own ears it was a sinister sound.

“Nothing’s wrong with
me
, angel.” Her voice was warped. Guttural. Demonic surround sound. “It’s

you. You’re glowing. You’re an angel in hell, and now everyone is going to know it.”

Twelve

Metatron barreled through the halls of the Archangel complex, his heart racing, his powers skating on

the surface of his skin. Screams reverberated off the walls and pillars, and under his feet, tremors

rocked the ground.

He skidded around a corner at the entrance to the Crystal Chamber, and for a moment, he froze at

the incomprehensible sight of a Soulshredder tearing apart an angel.

A
demon
.

No demon had ever set foot in Heaven, let alone inside the Archangel buildings.

“Metatron!” Raphael’s shout rang out from somewhere behind him.

Metatron hurled a flaming dagger at the Soulshredder, taking it out with effortless ease. The thing

shrieked as its body combusted, raining greasy ashes onto the gold-and-gem-tiled floor.

Whirling in the direction of Raphael’s shout, he ducked the swing of another Soulshredder, but

before he could destroy it, a sword cleaved the evil beast in half. It collapsed, and with its death, the

overwhelming, almost crippling sense of evil in Heaven vanished.

Behind the creature, spattered in demon blood, was Raphael. Disbelief and anger etched deep lines

in his face, and Metatron wondered if he looked as shaken as Raphael was.

“This is madness,” Raphael breathed, his voice laced with a rare note of fear.

Oh, he didn’t fear demons; he feared for the future, just as Metatron did. Not since Satan led a

rebellion that divided Heaven and cost thousands of angel lives had an event of such proportions

rocked Heaven.

“This goes beyond madness,” Metatron said grimly. And, he could admit it,
shakily
.

Raphael recovered his sword and cleaned it with a mere thought. “There’s no way Lucifer has been

born already.”

Metatron reached deep into his rattled psyche for an elusive measured calmness. “This isn’t Satan’s

doing.”

Raphael frowned. “Then whose?”

“There’s only one answer.” Metatron didn’t even have to guess at this. He
knew
.

Raphael’s eyes shot wide. “
Reaver
.”

“And Harvester. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Raphael’s face mottled with anger, but the emotion was a lot milder than Metatron would have

expected. The other archangel had always hated Reaver, but Metatron had no idea why.

“He did it. I actually went through with it. He rescued her and put us all at risk. That fool!” Raphael

made the sword disappear, though Metatron suspected he’d like to run it through Reaver’s chest. “We

have to post combat units at every mass exit point from Sheoul, and we have to get structural teams to

find the weak spots in the Heavenly membrane.”

He groaned out loud at that last part, because Heaven was… huge. It would take thousands, if not

hundreds of thousands, of years to inspect every nook and cranny.

“It’s time to tell the others,” Metatron said grimly.

Time to let all the other archangels in on what Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel had done five thousand

years ago when they’d erased all memories of Yenrieth. No one else knew that Reaver was Yenrieth,

father of the Horsemen, destroyer of entire villages and towns. No one knew how truly powerful

Reaver was, and that Metatron had been forced to bind his powers when Reaver was very young.

And no one except Metatron knew that Reaver and Harvester, as Yenrieth and Verrine, had blood-

bonded.

Under normal circumstances and with their memories intact, they’d have felt each other no matter

where they were in the universe.

But when Verrine fell and she became evil, the bond went into a hibernation of sorts. It should have

stayed that way… unless Harvester tasted Reaver’s blood.

Metatron had feared this, had feared what would happen if the bond was awakened while Reaver

was in Sheoul. Now he knew. The powers Metatron had sealed within Yenrieth were starting to leak

out. Warped and twisted by his Sheoulic environment, they were punching holes in the very fabric that

separated Heaven and hell.

There was pounding of feet, and then a dozen senior archangels burst into the chamber. A dozen

more flashed in and the room, its gold-veined crystal walls vibrating, went opaque for privacy and

expanded to accomodate the crowd.

Gabriel was the first to speak. “What is going on? I just killed a demon…
in my home
.”

“I found one in my pool,” Michael said as he instantly changed his garb from a soaked robe to pin-

striped black slacks and a Green Bay Packers green-and-gold jersey. From century to century, the

angel thought he had a handle on current human fashion, but he rarely got it right.

Metatron met each of his brothers’ gazes before focusing on the spilled bowl of fruit near the body

of the angel the Soulshredder had killed. Sorrow made his heart clench, but mourning would have to

wait.

“It’s time,” he said grimly, “that you all knew the truth.”

Hold onto your balls, everyone, because if you thought things were bad now, just wait. They were

about to get much, much worse
.

Raphael flashed himself straight from the Archangel complex to the Emerald Knoll, a grassy hill

surrounded by a moat that flowed in a circular river. Lorelia was waiting for him, her golden hair

glinting in the sunlight. An ancient Chinese text floated nearby, but she wasn’t reading. Instead she

was pacing and flapping her dove-gray wings with the speed of a hummingbird. When she saw

Raphael, she ran to him.

The book hit the ground.

“Raphael.” Her hands fluttered nervously at her sides. “I heard demons broke in. Is it true? Has

Lucifer been born?”

“Demons, yes. Lucifer, no.” He smiled tightly. “We have another problem. Tell me, do the

Horsemen know Reaver’s whereabouts?”

She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Ask them.”

“Of course,” she said. “But why?”

“I have a task for you,” he said, intentionally ignoring her question. That was the great thing about

being an archangel. Niceties and explanations weren’t necessary. “It’s going to be dangerous. And

delicate.”

“Name it.” Lorelia had been a guardian angel of unborn infants before her assignment to the

Horsemen, so this was going to be right up her alley.

“As you’re aware, Gethel is pregnant with a bouncing baby reincarnated Lucifer.” At Lorelia’s nod,

he continued. “Obviously, we can’t let her give birth. We sent assassins the moment we heard about

her pregnancy, but their chances of successfully taking her out are slim. No doubt she’s heavily

protected and most likely residing in a region of Sheoul that our assassins can’t enter.”

The archangels had first approached their network of demon spies, but finding someone willing to

put down Satan’s lover and his unborn son was beyond impossible. Demons might be as dumb as

doorknobs, but they weren’t suicidal. Darkmen, as conjured assassins, had no such self-preservation

instinct.

“What does this have to do with me?”