by Larissa Ione
“This,” Harvester rasped, “is going to be bad.”
Reaver groaned. “You have a flair for understatement, you know that?”
Slag punched Reaver in the back of the head. “Shut up.”
Reaver and Harvester were jerked around and forced onto their knees as Gethel and Revenant approached. Gethel’s spun-gold hair fell in sparkly waves around her shoulders, but gone was the luminescence that used to surround her. Her eyes had turned as black as ink, and her once lush, shiny wings were shriveled, the feathers curled and frayed. Angels who stayed too long in Sheoul were prone to decay, and Gethel, carrying the spawn of evil, had gone rotten to the core.
Of course, her core had gone bad a long, long time ago.
Her one-shouldered emerald tunic clung tightly to her hugely rounded belly, where her hand rested protectively. Hard to believe someone with such a black heart could be protective of anything. And how had Lucifer grown so much, so fast? Maybe because he was to be born fully grown? If so, Gethel was going to be extremely miserable for another four months.
Good.
Fast as a snake and from out of nowhere, Gethel backhanded Harvester hard enough to knock her into Reaver.
“Bitch,” Reaver snarled. That earned him a blow from Revenant that made his ears ring.
“It’s good to see you both.” Gethel’s smile as she rubbed her belly made all the hairs on the back of Reaver’s neck stand up. “Extra special to have you here, Reaver.”
She grinned, flashing fangs, apparently a pregnant-with-the-spawn-of-Satan upgrade. Or downgrade, depending on how you looked at it.
“Special seeing you, too,” Reaver drawled. “I don’t think I had a chance to congratulate you the last time I saw you. I hope you suffer in agony for days before Lucifer bursts from your hideous body.”
Gethel blinked with exaggerated shock. “That’s a little harsh. As a father yourself, I’d think you’d be more sympathetic to the plight of a pregnant woman.”
Reaver shrugged. “A pregnant woman, yes. But a psychopathic pregnant troll… can’t get on board with that one.”
She went down on her haunches in front of him. “It doesn’t matter if you can get on board or not. It’s too late anyway.” She folded her hands over her huge, evil lump. “See, we’ve accelerated Lucifer’s growth. Instead of months, he’ll be born in weeks. Maybe days. The clock is ticking, Reaver, and you’re almost out of time.”
An icy blast of oh, shit blasted through him. “You crazy bitch.”
He got another whack upside the head. “Let me take them to the Dark Lord.” Revenant’s deep, eager voice resonated through the opulent marble auditorium.
“I’ve already sent word to him.” Gethel’s mouth turned up in a smile that sent a chill skittering up Reaver’s spine. “Satan will be here any minute.”
Twenty-Three
Her father was on his way.
Terror shrunk Harvester’s skin. They’d managed to stay one step ahead of Satan this entire time, and now, within sight of a Harrowgate, they were going to die.
And that was if they were lucky.
“Was it worth it?” Revenant seized Reaver by the throat and yanked him off the ground. “Was leaving your family vulnerable in order to rescue a traitorous female worth it?”
“She’s not a traitor to my side,” Reaver choked out. He sucked in a wheezing breath. “Wait… my family. Vulnerable?”
Harvester wondered the same thing. She’d call the Horsemen a lot of things, but vulnerable was not one of them.
Revenant, his annoyingly luxurious black mane obscuring his face, leaned in as if to tell Reaver a secret. “They’re recovering from an unfortunate accident. Very sad.” He didn’t sound very sad, but there was definitely an odd note in his voice. “It was so against the rules.”
“Accident?” Reaver sucked a gurgling breath. “Rules? What rules?”
“The ones you like to break.” Revenant heaved Reaver across the room.
Reaver hit a pillar and crumpled to the ground, bits of stone and dust showering him as he tried to push to his hands and knees. Revenant launched at him, and with a sick, twisted smile, Slag tapped his bracelet.
Reaver grunted, and for a brief moment, Harvester got off on his pain. Malevolence was a faint vibration shimmering along every nerve ending, feeding into her pleasure centers like an erotic drug. Daddy’s DNA was just the gift that kept on giving, wasn’t it?
You’re an angel. Your mother is an angel, and your father, bastard that he is now, was an angel when you were conceived. There’s more good in you than evil. Fight this, Harvester.
Reaver’s words in the cavern came back to her in a rush. Her mother… she’d died only three hundred years ago, an innocent casualty of a small uprising in Heaven, according to Raphael. She hadn’t known Harvester had fallen from grace on purpose, and it was one of Harvester’s greatest regrets that her mother hadn’t learned the truth before she died.
Fight this.
Reaver grunted again as Revenant pounded his fists into his face and body, and this time, Harvester took no pleasure in his suffering.
“Stop it!” she screamed. She scrambled across the floor toward them, her knees cracking painfully hard on the floor.
She dove for Revenant’s legs. She didn’t make it. An agonizing pain wrenched her neck as she was jerked to a sudden stop by her hair. Gethel, her fist wrapped around Harvester’s ponytail, hurled Harvester through the air.
She hit the wall in a crack of bones and stone, and everything went black.
When she came to, she and Reaver, his face badly bruised and bloodied, were propped against the pillar he’d crashed into, chains connecting their collars to hooks embedded in the stone. Both Gethel and Revenant were gone. The asshole Nightlash, Slag, was sitting on a marble bench a few yards away, a satisfied smirk on his ugly face.
“Only reason you’re not both dead is that the Dark Lord wants you alive. You,” he said, jabbing his finger at Reaver, “are for his bed until you beg him for death.” His smile widened. “He shares with Slag.”
“Slag’s right,” Harvester agreed. “He does share. But I doubt he shares with demon morons who refer to themselves in the third person.” She shifted to cast a furtive look at the guard situation near the front entrance. There were three that she could see. “He also likes audiences.”
“That was very helpful,” Reaver said dryly.
She slid a glance at him, trying to get a bead on what he was thinking, but his expression was shuttered, his attention focused on their surroundings. The familiarity of his expression made her smile. She and Yenrieth—Reaver—had spent a lot of time hunting minor demons, and she knew the look he got when he had a plan.
A Khepri entered, its nasty insect head swiveling. It drew Slag aside, and the moment they were distracted, Harvester leaned closer to Reaver.
“So… what’s the plan? Tell me you have one.”
“I snagged a key to our collars off Revenant when he was tenderizing me,” he said, and she wanted to kiss him. “But lifting the key was too easy, which makes me think it’s a trap.”
Her heart sank. “It’s our only chance.”
“Agreed.” He rested his head against hers, and again the familiarity came roaring back. They’d propped each other up more times than she could count. “Let me know when Slag turns his back.”
“You got it.” She kept one eye on Slag and the other on the door her father would use when he arrived. The thought made her throat close. She’d do her best to kill both herself and Reaver if she had to. She couldn’t endure more torture, and she couldn’t bear the thought of Reaver going through it, either.
And wasn’t that a huge shift from just a day ago?
“He turned,” she murmured, and Reaver’s arm started moving, as if he was fidgeting. Or maybe digging a key out of his pocket as inconspicuously as possible. “Reaver? What do you think Revenant was talking about when he said the Horsemen met with an accident?”
Reaver went
as stiff as the pillar they were bound to. “I don’t know, but if he was responsible, I’ll kill him.”
Harvester would help. “What are you going to tell them about me? Do you think they’ll get why I did some of the things I had to do?” Do you think they’ll forgive me?
It was a stupid, sentimental thing to want, but the Horsemen were the closest thing she had to a family. She’d observed them in secret for three thousand years, and she’d been involved with them as their Watcher for two thousand. She’d watched them grow, watched their failures and successes, their joys and miseries. On hundreds of occasions she’d even healed them or their friends and staff, and all without them knowing.
So yeah, she couldn’t expect them to welcome her with open arms, but she’d like it if they didn’t hate her.
“I think they’ll get it,” Reaver said gruffly, almost as though he was choked up.
“Reaver, are you okay—shit, Slag’s turning.”
Reaver stopped moving just as Slag looked them up and down. Harvester waved and gave him a Cheshire cat smile. Asshole.
“He turned back,” she said quietly.
A low rumble boiled up from Reaver’s chest, startling the crap out of her. She risked a peek at him, but that only made things worse. His head hung low, his blond hair falling across his handsome face. His big shoulders heaved with breaths that made his entire body shudder.
“I’m sorry, Harvester,” he said in a broken whisper. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. You need to know that in case I don’t get out of here. Promise me you’ll tell my kids I’m dead, even if I’m taken alive.”
“What?” she whispered harshly. “No.” How could he even ask that? “And Slag’s looking.”
She shot him the finger. He returned the gesture, and then he made a show of using his fuck-you finger to swipe his bracelet. Ten million volts set fire to her blood, her muscles, her brain. Agony shrieked through her in an inferno of lightning. Flashes of light and dark tapped on her eyeballs, and her surroundings became a blur.
When she was done seizing, she found herself in Reaver’s arms, his hands stroking her back. She tasted ash and ozone, and her ears rung, but she was relieved that she wasn’t the flaming ball of fire she’d thought she was.
Reaver bent to speak into her ear, making it appear as though he were giving her a kiss, and an unbidden shiver of pleasure went through her.
“Are you okay?” At her nod, he continued. “I got the key out of my pocket. Now I need you to sit up a little so I can unlock your collar. Then you’ll unlock mine.”
“What then?”
“I’ll create a distraction. I want you to run. Get inside the Harrowgate and get out of Sheoul.”
“Are you insane?” She started to twist around, but he held her tight. “I’m not abandoning you.”
“Shh.” His hand slid up to the back of her neck, and the collar loosened. “Don’t draw Slag’s attention.”
She felt him slip a tiny, smooth object into her palm. The key. Casually, he pushed her off him and shifted so she could reach his collar. It took only a mere swipe of the key over the metal and the thing popped open.
“We can do this together,” she whispered.
“Trust me, I don’t have a death wish, so I’ll try for the gate. But if something happens, don’t play the hero. Get the fuck out of here.”
“Reaver—”
“Hey.” He silenced her with a kiss that stunned her into silence and that she felt all the way to her bruised, scarred soul. “Tell the Horsemen everything. About you. About me. You need them, and I don’t want them to hate you.”
She swallowed a tangled lump of grief and fear, and not a little yearning. She might hate him sometimes, might not ever be able to trust him, but she also didn’t want to be separated from him. Didn’t want to lose him. It had taken five thousand years to find him again, and even though Reaver wasn’t the Yenrieth she remembered, that turned out to be a good thing.
“Okay,” she lied. “I’ll head straight for the Harrowgate.”
“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you for… everything.”
She didn’t have time to reply. Hell, she didn’t have time to blink. In a blur of motion, Reaver was across the room, his fists and feet putting Slag and the bug-headed freak into the wall.
“Go!” he shouted.
And that was when she felt it. Terror. Horror. A malevolent, oily sensation that permeated every organ and that meant only one thing.
Her father had arrived.
Twenty-Four
Fuck. In an uncoordinated scramble, Harvester came to her feet as demons swarmed into the mansion like an army of ants protecting their hill.
The Harrowgate was just yards away, and even though she’d have to knock a few demons aside to get to it, she could get there.
But not without Reaver.
Reaching deep for every drop of power she could find, she let out her inner demon, gray skin, sharp claws, horns… the whole package that she rarely brought out on purpose. With a roar of fury, she hurled a shockwave of energy that knocked the invaders into walls and pillars. Reaver got caught in the blast, but in a stroke of badly needed luck, he tumbled through the arched opening that went straight to the Harrowgate.
She charged after him, but she skidded to a halt as chaos erupted in the courtyard below. Darkness fell in the distance, screaming toward them like the blackest storm cloud. Giant bolts of crimson lightning zapped anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in the path of the chruning tempest. Bodies exploded like bags of liquefied hamburger, splattering the street, buildings, and other demons.
Here comes Daddy.
Harvester let out a juicy curse, but it was nowhere near adequate to describe the terror turning her marrow to jelly and her bones to rubber.
She seized Reaver’s wrist and dragged him to his feet. “Come on,” she shouted over the din of screams, shouts, and the rumble that came with the storm and her father’s approach.
They limped toward the Harrowgate, joining the mass exodus of demons who were desperate to escape the great and terrible king of demons they both worshipped and feared.
“I told you to run,” Reaver yelled. “You agreed.”
“I lied.” She elbowed a dozen different demons, who were either trying to kill them or shoving their way to the Harrowgate.
Suddenly, Reaver became a dead weight. Pivoting midstride, she slipped in a pool of blood. Reaver’s blood.
His face was a mask of agony as he went down, a sword impaling him between the shoulder blades. The blade tip erupted from his chest, the telltale sparkle of an aurial weapon twinkling even through the wetness of his blood.
“No,” she gasped. “Oh, shit no.”
“I have another blade with your name on it, Daughter.” The ominous, rumbling voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Unless you give yourself up without a fight.”
In the center of town, the hideous, horned monster that was her father was coming fast, carried by a hell stallion twice the size of a normal beast. Every footprint left a fiery hole in the street, and every puff of breath sent flames at anyone stupid enough to still be in the path.
She eyed the Harrowgate. She could be inside in a few heartbeats, but only if she abandoned Reaver, who would be dead in minutes if he didn’t get help.
“Harvester.”
Satan’s voice rattled her to her core and kicked her into high gear. In a frenzied, clumsy rush, she grabbed Reaver’s arms and dragged him toward the gate. Something sliced into her back, making her stumble and nearly lose her grip on Reaver. Gritting her teeth against the agony, she battled a storm of daggers, razor discs, and throwing stars, too many of them taking bites out of her flesh.
She risked a look back… and wished she hadn’t. Satan and Gethel’s minions were almost upon them, smashing through the crowds of panicked demons.
It was a messy mass of confusion that saved Harvester, and even though she was bleeding so badly she could hardly see for all the
blood in her eyes, she hurled both herself and Reaver into the gate. An ugly tusked demon slipped inside at the last second and slammed his palm onto the wall map.
“No!” she shouted, but the gate closed with a glittering flash of light.
A heartbeat later, the gate opened, spilling them in a heap onto a grassy mountainside.
In the human realm.
Holy hell, they’d done it. Harvester sat up and held Reaver close as she let out a sob of relief. Tears and blood stung her eyes as she inhaled a breath of fresh air she thought she’d never take again.
The demon who’d hitched a ride with them snarled, the tusks jutting from his lower jaw dripping with pink-tinged drool. Bits of raw meat were stuck between his teeth.
“Looks like I brought supper with me.” His lips peeled back in what she thought was a smile.
She rose and limped toward him, hoping the fact that she could barely walk didn’t diminish her powers of intimidation.
“You will step aside and allow us to leave, or I’ll destroy you.”
His snarl-smile grew fiercer. “Private Harrowgate, bitch. Anyone can come here, assuming they know the right map sequence, but no one but me can leave.”
Oh, wasn’t that just perfect. Now what? Reaver was unconscious and would be dead in minutes, and Harvester’s injuries were too severe to get them much farther.
“You do know who the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are?” She pointed to Reaver. “That’s their father. If you don’t go get them and he dies, I promise you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life suffering in ways you can’t even imagine. When they finally let you die, it’ll be Thanatos who slaughters you, and then you’ll spend eternity in the hell of his armor.”
The guy’s mouth snapped shut, and after a mere second of hesitation, he disappeared through the Harrowgate.
Practically collapsing with relief, she settled down in the grass next to Reaver and listened to his shallow, rattling breaths, wishing she hadn’t spent all her power. If she could channel some healing energy into him, maybe she could remove the sword. Right now, the thing was draining his life, but pulling it free could do even more damage. An aurial didn’t allow for healing around the site of the wound, and a bleed-out from one could kill.
