by Larissa Ione
Harvester had said she’d noticed something similar. “Sounds a little extreme,” Reaver muttered.
He got a full-fledged you’re a dumbass look from the archangel. “Have you even met yourself?” Metatron sighed. “Things went well until you slept with Lilith. When you learned what you’d done, you went on a bender, destroying every demon you came across, disobeying direct orders, and, in general, being an asshat. Verrine was the sole calming influence on you, but after you learned that she kept the existence of your sons and daughter from you, we lost even that.” He blew out a long breath. “Then you met your brother, and that was the beginning of the downward spiral no one could pull you out of.”
Thirty-Two
Reaver could really use a bottle of tequila right now. Maybe two. He stared at Metatron, the male who had raised him as his own, and then decided he didn’t need the alcohol, because his head was already spinning.
“So I met my brother. Did I know he was my brother at the time?”
“No, but he knew you,” Metatron said. “He, too, had been raised to think he was an only child. But somehow he learned about you, and he arranged a meeting. We don’t know what went down between the two of you, only that your anger was so formidable that you leveled entire cities at the height of your wrath. Your brother, too, was angry, and he barged into Heaven as if he’d lived there all his life.”
Reaver frowned. “How could he get in? Fallen angels can’t enter Heaven.”
“Ah, but think about it. He wasn’t fallen. He was a full angel raised in Sheoul, but the fact that he could also draw power from Sheoul made us suspect that you were both Radiants.” Metatron went back to wearing a path in the dirt. “One of the terms in the deal that gave you to us said that what was done to one of you must be done to both, so his ability to draw power from Heaven was sealed… and then we erased you both from all memories.”
Reaver’s stomach churned. “So he forgot who I was, and I forgot him?”
“Exactly.” Metatron’s boots hit the hard-packed earth with the force of thunderclaps.
“But why? I get that I deserved punishment, but why the memories?”
Metatron’s expression turned sour. “Because people began to talk. They began to suspect the truth, including the fact that one or both of you were potentially Radiants. We learned our lesson with Satan. He was a potential Radiant, but his anger over not being Raised—promoted—to Radiant status filled him with hatred. His hatred leaked out of every pore, and those around him began to resent his power and his potential. Envy is poison for angels, infecting huge populations like decay. We couldn’t afford another internal uprising, so we did what we had to do.”
Reaver supposed that made sense. “Then what?”
“Angels cannot be given the honor of becoming a Radiant; they must earn it. You weren’t going to earn it until you learned to control your temper and your powers, and the only way to do that was to give you a clean slate and let you reinvent yourself. We named you Reaver and let you continue on with your life.” He shook his head. “You were still a challenge. Maybe even more of one. You were like a dog that doesn’t get enough exercise or discipline and turns destructive. There wasn’t a rule you didn’t break. And when you transferred the Marked Sentinel charm from Serena’s mom to Serena thirty years ago, it was the last straw. We took away your wings and once again took your memory, and that of your brother, and you have both lived without memories since. Honestly, we all wrote you off. None of us believed you would earn your way back into Heaven by saving the world with that Seminus demon.”
Reaver had offered himself up as a meal to Serena’s mate, Wraith, allowing the demon to destroy a fallen angel who was hellbent on opening a portal from Sheoul into Heaven. He hadn’t counted on surviving, let alone being raised to full angel status again.
“Bet you didn’t believe I’d manage to lose my wings again, either.”
Metatron shook his head. “You’ve always been unpredictable. But now I’m giving you a choice.”
“And what is that?”
“Do you want your memory back?”
“Is that really a choice? Because… ah, yeah. Who wouldn’t want their memory back?”
“Someone who did terrible things.”
Okay, there was that. Reaver was happy with who he was now. He loved his sons, his daughter, his grandchildren—born and unborn. And then there was Harvester. The very thought of her made his heart trip all over itself. Would all of that be ruined if he remembered all his stupid, horrible mistakes? He thought about Reseph, and how happy he’d been before the memories of what he’d done as Pestilence turned him into a tortured, drooling mess. If not for his mate, Jillian, Reseph would probably still be insane.
But Reseph was also making amends. The people Reaver wronged deserved nothing less. Harvester deserved nothing less.
“I want them back.”
“And that,” Metatron said, “was the right answer. Stand.” He made a rising gesture with his hand, and Reaver rose to his feet without any effort of his own. “You, Yenrieth, also called Reaver, for your numerous sacrifices, will be Raised.”
A massive stream of light blasted down from the heavens, bathing Reaver in gold. Ecstasy infused every fiber with strength and bliss. He swore he could feel each individual cell in his body come alive, could feel his wings knit back together in a matter of seconds.
The light retreated back into the clouds, and when Reaver took his first breath, it was as if he was no longer breathing air, but power. It detonated inside him, filling him with electric euphoria. He flared his wings and nearly dropped his jaw when he took in their new magnificence. No longer layered with white, sapphire-tipped feathers, they were pure gold, and as he tested their might, golden, glittery dust settled around him.
An echo of awareness tingled deep inside him, familiar and warm. Harvester. Damn, he could almost feel what she was feeling. Sense what she was sensing. And right now, she was happy, was with Limos’s child. It was as if she were standing right next to him, and his eyes stung with pure, unadulterated joy.
“You are a Radiant,” Metatron said softly, and Reaver gasped.
He remembered Metatron. Remembered how the angel had taught him to swim, to heal a rabbit with a broken leg, to fly when Reaver’s first feathers grew in. He’d loved the archangel like a father.
Then his memories had been taken, and Reaver had lived for thousands of years seeing Metatron from only a distance, never knowing how important the angel had been to him. Then, thirty years ago, even those memories had been taken, and Reaver didn’t lay eyes on Metatron again. Not until Reaver had earned his wings back. His regular wings. Not these golden beauties.
“New memories will come back to you in waves,” Metatron said. “Even a Radiant can’t handle thousands of years’ worth all at once.”
“What…” Reaver swallowed a rare lump of emotion. “What does being a Radiant mean?”
“It means there are very few whose powers can match yours, let alone exceed them. Those who can exceed include me, Satan, and God himself.”
Reaver could barely catch his breath to speak. “Who can match?”
Metatron’s eyebrows shot up. “You know that there must be a balance between Heaven and Sheoul. My equal was Lucifer.”
Metatron, as the Lord’s right-hand man, had always been in an angelic class by himself. A lightbulb went off in Reaver’s head. “That’s why Gethel is pregnant. Without your equal, there’s an imbalance that needs to be corrected.”
“Precisely. We need to prevent his reincarnation for as long as possible to avoid destruction and more demon invasions in Heaven, but eventually, he will be reborn or another equally powerful fallen angel will take his place.” He looked down, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Balance is important, and part of the deal with Satan when we got you back was that if you were Raised as a Radiant, your brother must be Raised as well, though in Sheoul they call the equivalent a Shadow Angel.”
Reaver’s mouth wen
t dry. All around, there was a rumble, as if a thunderstorm had started in the bowels of hell and had broken through Earth’s crust. Suddenly, something streaked out of the sky and hit the plateau like a bomb. Rock and dirt exploded into the air, and when the dust cleared, the massive form of a dark-haired male crouched in the center of the crater took shape.
“Reaver, meet your brother.” Metatron gestured to the male, who unfurled to his full height. “Revenant.”
Thirty-Three
Revenant’s presence triggered another memory blast that knocked Reaver backward several steps. Images tore through his head, everything from his childhood with Metatron and Caila to his history with Verrine to his fits of temper that destroyed entire cities. Oh, there were good things, too, like the time he rescued a village from demons who had been bent on eating the town’s children.
In fact, there was more good than bad in the massive memory dump. But the bad, especially the things that involved Verrine, ripped his heart in half.
“Reaver.” Gripping his head with both hands, Revenant stepped out of the crater. “Fuck… Yenrieth… I remember you. I remember… everything.”
So did Reaver. The memories kept coming, and if Revenant’s grunts were any indication, it was happening to him, too.
In his head, he saw Revenant standing on a boulder in a plain brown robe that matched his uneven mop of plain brown hair.
“Yenrieth.” The brown-haired male held out his hand. “Finally we meet.”
“Finally?” Reaver ignored the offered hand. “Who are you?”
“I’m Revenant. I’m your twin brother.”
Yenrieth snorted. “I have no brother.”
Sadness swam in Revenant’s black eyes as he dropped his hand to his side. “Your life is a lie. Just like mine.”
“We met. Here. On this very spot.” Reaver took in the landscape, seeing it in a whole new light. “You told me you were my brother, and that everything I’d ever known was a lie.” Revenant’s words rang in his ears as if they were spoken only moments ago. “You told me our father was dead and that Metatron was really my uncle.” He sucked in a sharp breath as he remembered what else Revenant revealed that day.
“How do you know all of this?” Yenrieth asked. “Who told you?”
“Our mother.”
Yenrieth grappled with his surprise and all the new information as Revenant leaped off the boulder he’d been standing on, his sandals hitting the hard ground with twin slaps of leather on dirt.
“Our… mother? You know her?” Yenrieth’s heart pounded wildly. “Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Yenrieth hadn’t known her, but the fact that now he would never have the chance to meet her left him shattered. If Revenant was telling the truth, Yenrieth’s entire life had been a lie, and the people he’d loved, the people he’d believed were his parents, had deceived him since infancy. He had so many questions, but right now, the female who had given birth to him was his only focus.
“When?”
“Recently.”
“How?”
Revenant met Yenrieth’s gaze. “I killed her.”
“You killed our mother,” Reaver breathed, the anger coming back to him as sharp and clear as the memory.
Reaver had already been in a rage after learning what Verrine had done, and his brother’s revelations had tipped him all the way off the ledge. He’d gone insane, furious at Revenant for murdering the mother Reaver hadn’t even met, angry at everyone in Heaven for lying to him. Betraying him.
Metatron’s head whipped around to Revenant. “You? You killed her?”
Revenant snarled, his raven wings, now marbled with gold and silver streaks, snapped out to eclipse the rising sun.
“And you,” he shot back at Metatron. “You left me to rot in Sheoul, while you took him.” He jabbed his finger at Reaver.
“We had no choice,” Metatron yelled. “It was one or neither.”
Revenant’s hair changed color to match Reaver’s as he ignored Metatron and rounded on Reaver again. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you about our mother. I was young and alone, and the very day I learned about you, I came to you as a brother. But all you saw was an enemy and a fiend.” Revenant’s eyes went crimson, and black veins marbled his skin as he rose off the ground in a whirlwind of lightning. His voice was a cannon boom that would have shattered lesser beings’ eardrums. “Now that is all you will ever see.”
Revenant shot into the sky, and when the high cloud layer engulfed him, the heavens churned and blood began to fall as rain.
Metatron ground his teeth, muscles leaping under skin dripping with red. “That could have gone better.”
Probably. But right now, worrying about rocky family reunions was the least of Reaver’s concerns. Heaven and hell were about to square off for a battle in which no one would win, and the deadline had passed for him to offer himself up to Satan in place of Raphael.
“You said I can go anywhere in Sheoul?”
“Anywhere but Satan’s region and any region he’s visiting.” Metatron reached skyward, and the blood-rain stopped. “You can go places even I can’t. But beware, Yenrieth. There are limits to your powers. You can’t heal demons anymore. Positive energy from you will harm them. Some species of demons will burn to ash in your very presence. You’ll need to spend a month every year in Heaven or you’ll lose your most powerful abilities. And Revenant can sense you in Sheoul, as you’ll be able to sense him in Heaven. His job will be to keep you away, and he’ll have a power advantage on his home turf.”
“Will I have an advantage on mine?”
“Yes, but remember, he isn’t a fallen angel, so no one else, including archangels, can sense him in Heaven. You’ll be our only line of defense should he get in to steal records or assassinate angels… or worse, to open the gates of Heaven to Sheoul from the inside.”
The not-so-subtle subtext there was that Reaver needed to not let them down. And he wouldn’t.
Overhead, a pitch-black cloud roiled, but instead of pitching thunder and lightning, Reaver heard growls and screams.
“Demons are in Heaven,” Metatron barked. “I have to go.”
In a flash, Metatron was gone. Reaver stretched his wings and took flight, amazed at the power and grace that flowed through the veins of his new body.
Now it was time to test that power.
He banked a hard right and dove toward Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock, where demons were spilling from a Harrowgate nearby. Angels soared in from the opposite direction, dozens of them, their hands gripping ancient Heavenly weapons.
With no more than a thought, he burned the first wave of demons to ash on a flyby. Then he took out the second wave, then the third. The other angels didn’t even have a chance to fight, but he sensed demons rising from Harrowgates all over the world, and he couldn’t stop them all.
Their target wasn’t humankind; they were on a mission to destroy Earthly holy places and draw angels from Heaven. Then, after enough angelic blood was spilled, the demons could open a hole in the barrier that separated the Heavenly and Sheoulic realms.
The birth of Lucifer would be the death blow, collapsing sections of Heaven itself and, in turn, demolishing huge expanses of the barrier.
But Lucifer was also the solution to stopping this. Leaving the next wave of demons to the waiting angels, he searched his senses for… there. Harvester was picking up on Lucifer’s life force. Quickly, before he lost the signal, he locked onto Harvester’s vibe and flashed himself into Sheoul and directly into a region he was sure he’d never been to. Into a palace built of bones and gold, and where the corpses of demons hung in decorative cages from the ceiing.
And there in front of him was Gethel.
She was feeding from an infant werewolf, and if the pile of bodies in the corner was any indication, she wasn’t ready to stop sucking blood to feed the unholy spawn in her belly anytime soon.
“Bitch.”
With a yelp, she spun around. Th
e baby fell from her hands, tumbling headfirst toward the stone floor. Reaver darted in and snatched the little boy a mere centimeter from the tiles.
“Reaver,” she gasped. “You’re a—”
“Yeah,” he snarled. “I am.”
He blasted her with a bolt of supercharged Heavenly light that enveloped her in blistering acid. She tried to scream, but the light entered her open mouth, scouring away her voice and leaving her nothing to spill but blood.
He dove for her, preparing to snatch her up and whisk her out of Sheoul. But as his fingers brushed the fabric of her gown, what felt like a wrecking ball smashed into him, knocking him into a pillar that broke in half and came down in massive chunks. He shielded the infant against his chest as Revenant nailed him with another invisible ball of pain.
“Oh, brother,” Revenant hissed. “We’re off to a great sibling rivalry, aren’t we?” He sent a fiery streak at Reaver, but Reaver leaped out of its path and returned fire with a blast of razor shards that drilled a dozen holes through Revenant’s body.
His brother didn’t even blink.
His job will be to keep you away, and he’ll have a power advantage on his home turf.
No shit, Metatron.
As Revenant came at him with a massive flame-sword, Reaver tucked the infant under his arm and did a midair roll that smashed him into Gethel. She was screaming in silence, her skin so blistered that she was barely recognizable. He grabbed her and flashed to Megiddo, where he dropped her in a pool of the blood-rain Revenant had left behind.
