by Larissa Ione
“I don’t know.” He ran a frustrated hand through his short hair, leaving unruly tufts behind. If there was anything Eidolon hated more than not knowing something, she couldn’t say what. “But I don’t think what I found was the complete ritual.”
“Where did you find this? The hospital’s library? One of your Justice Dealer contacts?” She lowered her voice, realizing the ridiculousness of doing so, given they were in a private office. But better safe than sorry. “An evil sorcerer?”
He shrugged. “Demonic Spells dot com.”
She stared. “Seriously?”
“Yep.” He popped another grape, and she heard the seeds crack as he chewed. “But it’s just an excerpt from a larger tome. I couldn’t find the title, but it appears to be a necromancer spellbook. I have Wraith working on it. He can locate almost anything, but until he knows what, exactly, he’s looking for, he’s sort of chasing ghosts.”
Necromancer magic wasn’t something to be trifled with, but at this point, she was running out of options. And actually, she knew a certain Seminus demon doctor whose background in necromancy and fetish for False Angels might pay off. Bane, buddy, you might just become my best friend today. She made a mental note to give him a call as soon as she was finished here.
“Thank you, Eidolon. What you’ve done… it means the world to me. I don’t know how I can pay you back.”
“Don’t get killed. That’s payment enough.” He stood, a clear sign that this convo was done. “As far as your mother, she can stay here, too, for as long as you both need to after she’s healed.”
Her eyes stung at his kindness. Oh, she knew a large part of his motivation was keeping her as a doctor, but he was also loyal to a fault.
“Thank you again,” she said. “You almost make me believe I can get out of this alive.”
Almost.
Seventeen
“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite fallen angel.”
Revenant sat in the underworld pub known as the Four Horsemen, working on his… tenth?… mug of Pestilence porter as he lounged in the corner booth and watched the curvy succubus saunter toward him. She was carrying her own mug of Horseman-themed brew, Famine ale, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“’Sup, Laylach.”
Her ruby lips curved into a seductive smile he’d seen wrapped around his dick once or twice. He waited for his cock to remember and get all excited, but it didn’t seem to want to come out to play.
Lay, as she fittingly liked to be called, sank down in the booth and scooted next to him. Her short skirt hiked up, revealing her lack of panties and a whole lot more. The scent of her arousal engulfed him, but still he felt dead below the waist.
Her hand came down on his thigh. “Wanna hit the back room?” She slid her palm up to cup his crotch. “Or I could do you right here.”
Across the room, another succubus was doing exactly that to a Bathag demon, his moans carrying through the air as she blew him from under the table.
“Not now,” he said, keeping his eye on the front entrance. “You can fondle me all you want, but that’s not what I’m here for.”
“Yeah? Why are you here, then?”
He grasped her wrist and shoved it into her lap. “Nunya.”
She frowned. “Nunya?”
“Yeah. Nunya business.” In the other booth a portly Oni male had joined in, lifting the succubus onto the bench so he could fuck her while she sucked the Bathag. The patrons at the bar were cheering and making ribald comments, and he had a feeling an orgy was about to start.
It would be the second one tonight.
He should be worked up into a sexual frenzy by now, but dammit, all he could think about was Blaspheme and how she’d tasted. How she’d felt. How she’d sounded when she came.
Now his cock joined the party, and Lay, not one to miss a cue, had him unzipped and was stroking him in a heartbeat. For a moment, he closed his eyes and let her work him, her expert touch something that should have gotten him revved in an instant.
But she made the mistake of whispering in his ear, telling him how badly she wanted to suck him off. But her offer wasn’t the mistake. Her mistake was that she wasn’t a False Angel named Blaspheme.
Fuck, he had it bad. Yes, she was sexy and mouthy and drop-dead gorgeous. And she had a streak of decency in her that drew him, made him want to be decent, too.
But she was also of a species that used deception to fulfill their needs, and by all accounts, no False Angel had ever settled down with a single male. Even when they hooked up with a male False Angel for breeding purposes, they only stayed until they conceived.
And why in the hell was he even thinking about this?
Snarling, he shoved Laylach away, zipped up, and scooted over before she realized he was going to deflate in about two seconds.
“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I told you. I’m not here for that.”
She pouted prettily. “Maybe next time?”
“Sure, babe,” he said vaguely. “Next time.”
She grinned, satisfied with his answer, grabbed her beer, and headed for her next mark. As she sidled up to a Ramreel at the end of the bar, the front door opened, and the demon he’d been waiting for walked in.
The Orphmage, a Neethul demon powerful enough to earn the status of Satan’s personal mage, caught sight of Revenant instantly and came over. “I’m surprised you wanted to meet here,” Gormesh said. “It’s very public.”
Which was precisely why he’d chosen this location. Word of this meeting would get back to Satan, and he wanted to make sure it didn’t look like he was trying to hide anything.
A twinge of pain shot through his head, and wouldn’t you know it, Satan was sending a summons. It wasn’t urgent; the pain would increase as the urgency grew, and right now it was merely an annoyance. But still, the timing was curious.
Gormesh took a seat across the booth from Rev and flashed a mouthful of sharp, white teeth. “You know I don’t meet with anyone outside my residence. I almost didn’t come.”
Revenant slammed his fist on the table, startling the cocky bastard. “Don’t fuck with me,” he growled. “You were salivating over the opportunity to meet with a Shadow Angel to see what I want. So let’s cut the shit.”
Gormesh’s sleazy smile made Rev want to rip it off his face. “Let’s do that, then. What is it you want from me?”
“Information. I want to know what you did to Gethel to speed up Lucifer’s birth.” Actually, he didn’t give a shit. But the only way he was going to get the information he needed was to pretend this was about the pregnant fallen angel.
“Ah.” Laylach caught Gormesh’s attention, and he watched her lead the Ramreel into the back room as he leaned back in his seat. “It was a blood spell. But it didn’t work, thanks to the archangels’ interference.”
“Your spell did something,” Rev said. The orgy across the way had gained two more participants. Someone was going to have to disinfect that table. “Lucifer is twice the size he should be.”
Gormesh shrugged. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want to know if it means he’ll be born soon, or if there’s still three months to go.”
“I have no idea. Have Gethel see a physician.”
“Gee,” Rev drawled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No need to get pissy.” The air became charged with sex, tangible enough that Rev felt it skate across his skin in an electric tingle. Gormesh felt it, too, and began to rub himself through his muslin breeches. “I’m just saying that I can’t tell you when Gethel will drop the little bastard.”
Shit. Revenant wasn’t ready to make any rash decisions regarding handing her over to Reaver, but he definitely didn’t want to procrastinate and risk her giving birth before he could decide if, when, or how he’d surrender her to Heaven.
At this point, the only thing he was sure about was that if he chose to hand over Gethel, he wanted into Heaven on his own terms, not because a bunch of archangel pricks said
they’d purify his blood in exchange for her.
“She had a prenatal checkup a couple of days ago,” Revenant said as Gormesh got more serious with the fondling. “Tests revealed an unknown substance in her blood. Know what it might be? And put your cock back in your pants before I slice it off and feed it to the hell stallion outside.”
Cursing under his breath, Gormesh shoved his pencil dick back inside his breeches. “Fuck if I know. Does her physician think it’s harming her?”
Just the word, physician, gave Rev a hard-on. Blaspheme had gotten way too deep under his skin.
Revenant shifted into a more relaxed pose, giving Gormesh the impression that the next question meant nothing to him, when the exact opposite was true.
“The doctors are stumped. If it is harming her, do you know if it can be removed? If her blood can be purified?”
Revenant didn’t give a shit if Gethel’s blood could be purified. This was all about him. If Revenant could purify his own blood of Satan’s taint, then he wouldn’t need the fucking archangels to do it. Which meant they couldn’t blackmail him into shit, and he could hang out in Heaven as much as he wanted to.
Yeah, it’ll be great to hang out with people who don’t want you there.
So what? He didn’t need to be wanted. He needed to take what was his, whether or not the archangels approved.
Gormesh cast a longing glance at the orgy in the other booth. “Purification depends on what the substance is.”
Revenant looked at the Orphmage over the rim of his beer mug. “What if it’s blood?”
“She has blood in her blood?”
The dense idiot. “What if she drank Satan’s blood?”
Gormesh’s gaze narrowed, and Revenant started to sweat. “Of course she ingested his blood. It was part of the ritual required to prepare her body to host Lucifer.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there,” Gormesh said, the faintest hint of a smile turning up his blue-tinged lips.
“When Lucifer was conceived?”
Gormesh reached for his crotch again, but wisely jerked his hand away. “Yes.”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere. “Can she be cleansed of Satan’s blood?”
Say yes. Please say yes.
“No.”
Disappointment soured Rev’s porter. Shit might as well be vinegar. “Are you sure?”
Gormesh growled. “I am the most powerful mage to ever exist. And when I say that, I don’t mean in Sheoul. I mean in all three realms.” He leaned forward, slapping his hands on the table. Dude was worked up. “Not even Heaven has an angel who can wield magic as well as I can. So question me again at your own peril.”
Revenant laughed softly, his body languid from the alcohol, but his mind was razor sharp. “You do remember who I am.”
The Orphmage, drunk on a power trip fueled by the sex magic in the air, sneered. “Even you can’t match my ability to control the environment. Your power is limited in scope, while mine is —” He cut off in a strangled wheeze as Revenant’s limited power garroted the moron.
Revenant hadn’t even moved a muscle. Didn’t think he could, given the Pestilence porter’s relaxing effect.
“Just yesterday, I stood in Archangel Hall and sent an archangel to Sheoul-gra. An archangel. Do you know what an archangel is, fuckhead? Sending him to the demon graveyard guarded by Hades and the Grim Reaper took less effort than getting an erection.” He squeezed Gormesh’s throat harder. “Now, do you really want to see whose dick is bigger?”
Gormesh’s gray eyes were bulging and wild. “No,” he wheezed.
“Good. You’re smarter than you look.” Revenant released the Orphmage, who grabbed his neck and sucked in huge lungfuls of air. “Let’s try this again. Are you sure Gethel’s blood can’t be purified of Satan’s blood?”
Gormesh coughed, still holding his neck tenderly. “Yes.”
“How do you know?”
The Orphmage hesitated for a heartbeat. “Because I tried it on your father.”
“You… what?” Rev shook his head, unable to process that. Finally, he croaked, “Sandalphon died in the battle that got my mother captured.”
“Technically… no, he didn’t.” Gormesh signaled the barmaid for a War Lager. “Your father was badly injured. Dying. He was taken to Satan, who decided to try an experiment. He force-fed your father his blood. Sandalphon healed, was subjected to gruesome torture and experiments, and then I was brought in to try to remove the taint of Satan’s blood from his own.” Before Rev could ask why, Gormesh held up his hand to stop him. “The Prince of Lies’s blood turned your father dark. Satan wanted to send him to Heaven as a spy, but he needed to be sure the taint couldn’t be removed. The angel who betrayed your parents to Satan joined me in my efforts to remove the taint, but we couldn’t do it. The attempt killed him. We tried again with a captured Seraphim, this time letting the angel return to Heaven, but later we learned that whatever purification process the archangels used killed her, too. I assure you, removing Satan’s blood is impossible.”
Revenant couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His father had been forcibly turned evil, and then he’d died in Sheoul, just like Rev’s mother… which meant that his soul was suffering eternal torment in hell, unable to get out and join all the other angelic souls in Heaven’s Hall of Heroes. And all because he had been betrayed by someone he should have been able to trust.
“Who is this angel who betrayed my mother to Satan?” he ground out. The skin covering his wing anchors itched as the desire to spread his wings and rain down hell on the bastard filled him.
He’d just chosen his angelic sacrifice to Satan.
Gormesh scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Ba’addon. Raphael’s father.”
Raphael’s father was about to die a horrible death. Raphael would be next. All of the archangels would be next. They’d lied to him about cleansing his blood so he could reside in Heaven. They’d fucking lied.
His blood started to boil – literally, causing his skin to steam and crack. He had to force himself to calm down. Raging out would only raise suspicions about why he was so angry, and it certainly wouldn’t help him get any answers from Gormesh if he blew up the pub and everyone in it.
“Why would Ba’addon betray Heaven like that?” he growled. “Does Heaven know? Where is he?”
Gormesh ticked off his dirt-stained fingers as he spoke. One finger. “He’s dead. Satan killed him.” Two fingers. “I doubt Heaven knows what he did.” Three fingers. “I’m certain he didn’t see what he’d done as a betrayal. He wanted power. Prestige. He believed that his name, Ba’addon, was a form of Abaddon, the angel prophesied to do battle with Satan. By turning your parents over to the Dark Lord, Ba’addon thought he could get close enough to do that. His bones now make up the seat of Satan’s throne.”
Fitting, Rev supposed, that the angel who betrayed his parents now had to support Satan’s ass.
Shaken to the core, he could barely string together coherent words for his next question. “But… why would everyone think my father died in battle?”
“Because we returned his body to the battle site with a message that we had your mother.” Gormesh cast another hungry look at the orgy, and Revenant decided he’d had enough. Of Gormesh. Of Sheoul. Of half-truths and total lies.
No one but his mother had ever been honest with him, and suddenly, he needed that comfort as much as he’d needed it as a child.
And he knew exactly where to get it.
Eighteen
Eidolon had just put down his son for a nap when Reaver arrived. And good thing for him that he knocked lightly instead of using the doorbell. After an hour of the toddler’s explosive, exhausted screaming, Eidolon was thankful to have gotten the boy to fall asleep. He’d kill whoever woke him.
“Hey, man,” Eidolon said as he led Reaver to the kitchen. “Thanks for coming by.”
Reaver took a seat on a counter bar stool. “You said it was important. And I alw
ays like to hang out with Sabre.” He looked around. “Where is the little tyke?”
“Napping. And if you wake him up, you get to deal with him.”
Reaver grinned. “Fair enough. Where’s Tayla?”
“She should be home in a couple of hours. She’s out with Kynan and Decker investigating a suspected Soulshredder attack in Missouri.”
“So she’s still with DART, huh? Not back with The Aegis?”
Eidolon shook his head. “Even with the key Aegis players dead, the organization has still been going down a dark path. Kill demons first, don’t bother asking questions later. Tay says The Aegis is lost to corruption and extremism. But the good news is that the Demon Activity Response Team is growing as Aegis defectors find their way to DART.”
In Eidolon’s opinion, The Aegis had always been a lost cause, so secretive and full of hatred that they couldn’t see that not all demons were evil. DART, started by Aegis defectors and working in conjunction with human law enforcement authorities, operated like a demon CSI unit, investigating suspected demonic activity and eliminating verifiable threats to humanity. Demons deemed harmless were left alone.
“Good.” Reaver watched Tayla’s ferret, Mickey, dash through the kitchen and slide under the china cabinet in the dining room. “I heard some gossip today. About Idess and Lore.”
It was Eidolon’s turn to grin. “We got her pregnant.”
“We?”
“Well, we don’t know who the father is yet, but yeah, we did the procedure last week.”
Lore, Eidolon’s half-breed brother, was sterile, but he’d desperately wanted children with his mate, Idess. So Eidolon and his other two brothers, Wraith and Shade, had donated sperm, and Eidolon had implanted it deep inside Idess’s womb. They’d all agreed that no matter who the biological father was, the child would be raised by Idess and Lore.
Reaver cocked a blond brow. “I know a Seminus demon can’t orgasm without being, ah, inside his female, so how…”
Eidolon laughed at the angel’s discomfort. “Our mates had to help. There are work-arounds.” The memory of Tay’s hot mouth working him made his loins stir, and dammit, now he hoped she’d get home a lot sooner than a couple of hours.
