He lowered his voice and spoke into her ear. “Without the non-enchanted sheoulghul, I can’t recharge down here.”
“If you’re dead you can’t recharge either,” she pointed out. “Unless you have anything else in that backpack to bargain with, it’s both sheoulghuls or nothing.”
Damn. This was bad. He hadn’t been able to hold onto much power or he’d glow, but every little bit helped. If he couldn’t recharge, he was going to not only be fully dependent on Harvester, but he would be a liability to her as well.
Some rescuer he was.
Cursing to himself, he handed over the sheoulghuls. The shopkeeper smiled like she’d won the lottery as she carefully took the crystals and secured them in a leather pouch that looked suspiciously like human skin.
Man, he hated demons.
The shopkeeper disappeared inside her tent, and when she returned a minute later, she was carrying a bowl of green paste.
“Give me your hand,” she said, and Reaver did as she’d demanded.
Harvester propped a hip against a tent support, her stance relaxed and casual, but he didn’t miss the way she was watching the crowd like a hawk, her sharp eyes assessing every individual who walked by. She was so different from the young, innocent Verrine, who, no matter how many times he’d told to be alert to her surrounding, would get distracted by the smallest things, like a butterfly landing on a flower.
The sudden memory and wash of tender feelings made him jerk as the demon poured the green stuff into his palm. She glared, wiped spilled drops off her hand, and continued, starting up an incantation that made his ears ache. He glanced over at Harvester, but if she noticed the painful buzz, she wasn’t letting on.
The demon ended on a high note that made Reaver wince, and then he damned near shouted when, out of thin air, she produced a golden nail and punched it through his hand.
“What the—” He cut off with a strangled yelp as she yanked the nail back out.
Blood poured onto the ground, and her voice became a clipped, harsh bark. “Done.”
His bleeding stopped, and in an instant, the hole sealed.
Harvester pushed away from the tent support. “You’re clean. Let’s go.” She took his hand and started to jog. “Daddy’s here.”
Reaver’s gut hit the floor. “Here? As in, inside this place?”
She nodded. “I felt him operate the entrance.”
She picked up her pace until they reached a series of portals in the wall. Harvester stopped in front of the third one, its opening constructed from the giant bones of gargantua demons and larger than any of the others, at least as wide as a semitruck’s trailer was long.
“What’s this?”
“It’s another Boregate. Sort of.” She took his hand with only the smallest of dismissive sneers. “We have to walk through together or we’ll end up in different places.”
This didn’t sound promising. “What do you mean, different places?”
“I mean that there’s no map inside. This Boregate drops you wherever it wants to. Could be anywhere in Sheoul, though it usually takes you someplace that makes sense. It’s almost as if it reads your needs. But every once in a while they’ll drop you in the place you least want to be.”
“Like your father’s realm?”
“Exactly.” She smiled with exaggerated perkiness. “But the good news is that he’s not there right now. See? I can see the bright side of things.”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
“That was uncalled for.” She tugged on his hand. “You ready?”
No, but they didn’t have a choice. They stepped through the gate and into what appeared to be a black box.
“Now what?” he asked as the gate snapped shut. And remained shut.
Harvester didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. The expression on her face said it all.
They were trapped.
Twenty-One
Oh, this was not cool.
Harvester cursed as she paced around the black room, which, like almost everything else in Sheoul, was lit by an unseen light source. Not that it did much good. The inky walls, floor, and endless ceiling seemed to absorb the light, leaving them able to see in only about a ten-foot radius no matter where they moved.
“Fuck,” she snapped.
“Why hasn’t the gate dropped us anywhere?”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. Couldn’t anything go right for them? Just once?
“These Boregates are glitchy. Sometimes they do this. Just hold you in these stupid boxes.”
Reaver looked up as if searching for a way out. She wished him luck. “For how long?”
“Until someone else tries to use the gate and un-glitches it.” Frustrated, she kicked at the wall. “I suggested that someone grab Bill Gates and get him to install a new operating system, but apparently, he’s not a demon.” At Reaver’s eye roll, she nodded. “Right? I was surprised, too.”
Reaver leaned against a wall as if they didn’t have a care in the world. How could he relax in a place like this? The claustrophobic crush was going to end her.
“Aside from the fact that we’re trapped for the moment, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“I don’t know, maybe because your über-evil father was within seconds of grabbing us?”
“Spare me the false concern,” she said tightly. “I’m fine.”
Yep, the way her hands were shaking and her voice was frayed with anxiety hinted to all kinds of fine.
“Whatever.” Reaver threw up his hands. “I was just trying to be nice. You know, things normal people do.”
“Are you kidding me? We aren’t normal people. And nice? That’s how you want to play this? You drop a big bomb on me, Yenrieth, and you want to be all nice?”
During her time with Satan’s torturers, Harvester had been drawn and quartered not once but twice. It had been a huge spectacle, the premeal entertainment for two of his dinner parties.
But as agonizing as the experiences had been, they hadn’t even come close to what she’d felt when Reaver confessed his identity.
She still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that five thousand years after Yenrieth disappeared, he was standing in front of her. How was she supposed to process this? Could she process this?
Hell, she might be in total denial if not for the fact that her intense hatred and baffling attraction to Reaver finally made sense. So did the memory of sex with Yenrieth, where Reaver’s face had filled in the blank holes. Reaver had been in the memory because he’d actually been there. Now she knew why kissing him felt so familiar. And why, the first time she’d met Reaver, she’d sensed him before he’d fully materialized. That had never happened with anyone else before.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. We’re not normal. We’re the most fucked-up, star-crossed lovers in history. So let’s not play nice.” His penetrating stare seemed to look right through her. “Maybe you can tell me why you ran away that day when I kissed you.”
“The day you f**ked Lilith, you mean?” And wasn’t that a prick to the heart. That single decision, to flee from a kiss, had led to all of this, but she wasn’t ready to take the entire blame. She rubbed her sternum as if that would ease the pain that still lingered all these centuries later. “I ran away because I was afraid. I had no experience, and you… you were a whore.” His jaw hardened into a stubborn line, and she dared him to deny it. “You still are, aren’t you? Your exploits with demons are well known.”
Reaver’s expression turned cold. “How do you know about the demons I’ve been with? And, by the way, that was in the past, when I was an Unfallen.”
She let out a dubious snort. “Are you really asking me to believe you’ve been a model of angelic purity since you got your wings back?”
“I’ve never been a model of angelic purity,” he said roughly, and she wondered if the note of bitterness in his voice was real or imagined.
“No shit.” She sauntered up to him and stabbed her finger into his breastbone. “So now that you have some memories back, maybe you can tell me where you went after you seduced me, took my virginity, and then told me I disgusted you.”
Inhaling a ragged breath, he closed his eyes. “What I did to you… I’m sorry—”
She jabbed him in the chest so hard he winced. “I don’t give a hellrat’s ass about your apology,” she snapped. “Where did you go?”
He opened his eyes, and while she was gratified to see a shadow of hurt in them, she also felt a little bad about putting it there. Emphasis on little.
“I don’t know. My new memories are limited to me and you.”
“How convenient.” She spun around, paced to the far wall, and then came back at him. “What else do you remember?”
“I remember going to you after I found out I was a father. You were the first person I told. I confided in you.” The hurt in his eyes morphed to blue-fired anger. “But you already knew. You’d known for f**king years.”
Guilt ripped into her with such force that her knees nearly buckled. But she couldn’t let her pangs of conscience derail her need for answers.
“So you remember that, but do you remember any of the shit you did to me? Do you remember how I did everything you ever asked of me, including giving you my blood so you could bond us?”
“Shit.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I remember that. It was a few months before Lilith. We’d just advanced in novice demon hunting training.”
“And you wanted us to be able to feel each other if we got into trouble.”
He hesitated, and the air inside the Boregate grew thick with tension. “There was more to it than that.” He stepped closer, and the musky scent of his skin filled her nostrils. “I didn’t tell you the rest.”
A sinking sensation filled her chest cavity. “You lied?” God, she’d been such a fool. Such a stupid, lovesick, spineless, idiot.
“Only because the truth would have sounded crazy.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And what was the truth?”
“That we needed to do it.” He shoved his hand through his blond mane, leaving it messy and begging for her touch. Even though she hated him right now. “It was just a feeling I had, something we had to do, but I didn’t know why.”
“And now you do?”
“Maybe,” he breathed. “I think the bond is what’s helping me get my memories back.”
“Well, good for you. Glad I could help.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “I am, too.”
She drank in the sight of him as he stood there, his chest heaving as though they’d sparred with their fists instead of with words. And now, she realized, in all the memories she had of Yenrieth, he was no longer faceless. The angel who laughed with her, played tricks on her, and had brought her to the most amazing orgasms was the male standing in front of her.
“So what now?”
He propped one boot casually behind him on the wall. Because yeah, this was all just so run-of-the-mill. “Now we wait for this Boregate to take us somewhere.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
“Do you really think now’s the time to discuss our future? We don’t know if we’re going to survive the rest of the day let alone the next century.”
He was right, but his dismissal still stung. For thousands of years she’d wondered what she would do if Yenrieth reappeared, the scenarios ranging from a cheesy joyful reunion in which they’d run at each other and she’d leap into his arms to her killing him in a fit of rage.
Most of her imaginary reunions involved him falling to his knees and begging forgiveness while she listened patiently until she’d had enough. Then they had wild, intense sex and he swore to never let her go again.
What a joke. Of all the fantasies she’d come up with, none of them had involved them being on the run from Satan and darkmen.
“Let me ask you something.” She squared her shoulders, wincing at the sudden, intense itching in her back as her wings regenerated. A good sign, but annoying. “After you found out I knew about your children, when you seduced me, did you want to have sex with me, even a little? Or was it all for revenge?”
His gaze hit the floor, but not before she caught a glimpse of shame. “I don’t remember.”
“My ass,” she spat out. “You must have some idea. Some feeling.”
“The feeling I get from that day is anger. So if I had to guess, I’d say it was all for revenge.” His eyes snapped up to hers, as brutally cold as his words, and her chest constricted around what was left of her shriveled heart. “Was that what you wanted to hear? Or should I have lied?”
She’d have been fine with a lie, and how f**ked up was that? Son of a bitch, he could throw her off balance, and if there was anything Harvester hated more than being tortured, it was being unsure of herself and her emotions.
“Fuck you, Reaver.” Irrational anger gripped her in sharp talons as she spun away from him, needing as much distance as she could get in the damned shoebox they were trapped inside.
His exasperated voice followed her. “You asked.”
She braced her forehead against the opposite wall, letting the cool stone soothe her. But it didn’t do much to alleviate the anguish building inside her.
Shuffling noises filled the room and she tensed as she felt him come closer. “In case we don’t make it out of Sheoul, I need you to know I’m thankful for what you did for my sons and daughter. I can’t thank you enough.” He swallowed audibly, an almost pained sound. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
“If you’re dead you can’t recharge either,” she pointed out. “Unless you have anything else in that backpack to bargain with, it’s both sheoulghuls or nothing.”
Damn. This was bad. He hadn’t been able to hold onto much power or he’d glow, but every little bit helped. If he couldn’t recharge, he was going to not only be fully dependent on Harvester, but he would be a liability to her as well.
Some rescuer he was.
Cursing to himself, he handed over the sheoulghuls. The shopkeeper smiled like she’d won the lottery as she carefully took the crystals and secured them in a leather pouch that looked suspiciously like human skin.
Man, he hated demons.
The shopkeeper disappeared inside her tent, and when she returned a minute later, she was carrying a bowl of green paste.
“Give me your hand,” she said, and Reaver did as she’d demanded.
Harvester propped a hip against a tent support, her stance relaxed and casual, but he didn’t miss the way she was watching the crowd like a hawk, her sharp eyes assessing every individual who walked by. She was so different from the young, innocent Verrine, who, no matter how many times he’d told to be alert to her surrounding, would get distracted by the smallest things, like a butterfly landing on a flower.
The sudden memory and wash of tender feelings made him jerk as the demon poured the green stuff into his palm. She glared, wiped spilled drops off her hand, and continued, starting up an incantation that made his ears ache. He glanced over at Harvester, but if she noticed the painful buzz, she wasn’t letting on.
The demon ended on a high note that made Reaver wince, and then he damned near shouted when, out of thin air, she produced a golden nail and punched it through his hand.
“What the—” He cut off with a strangled yelp as she yanked the nail back out.
Blood poured onto the ground, and her voice became a clipped, harsh bark. “Done.”
His bleeding stopped, and in an instant, the hole sealed.
Harvester pushed away from the tent support. “You’re clean. Let’s go.” She took his hand and started to jog. “Daddy’s here.”
Reaver’s gut hit the floor. “Here? As in, inside this place?”
She nodded. “I felt him operate the entrance.”
She picked up her pace until they reached a series of portals in the wall. Harvester stopped in front of the third one, its opening constructed from the giant bones of gargantua demons and larger than any of the others, at least as wide as a semitruck’s trailer was long.
“What’s this?”
“It’s another Boregate. Sort of.” She took his hand with only the smallest of dismissive sneers. “We have to walk through together or we’ll end up in different places.”
This didn’t sound promising. “What do you mean, different places?”
“I mean that there’s no map inside. This Boregate drops you wherever it wants to. Could be anywhere in Sheoul, though it usually takes you someplace that makes sense. It’s almost as if it reads your needs. But every once in a while they’ll drop you in the place you least want to be.”
“Like your father’s realm?”
“Exactly.” She smiled with exaggerated perkiness. “But the good news is that he’s not there right now. See? I can see the bright side of things.”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
“That was uncalled for.” She tugged on his hand. “You ready?”
No, but they didn’t have a choice. They stepped through the gate and into what appeared to be a black box.
“Now what?” he asked as the gate snapped shut. And remained shut.
Harvester didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. The expression on her face said it all.
They were trapped.
Twenty-One
Oh, this was not cool.
Harvester cursed as she paced around the black room, which, like almost everything else in Sheoul, was lit by an unseen light source. Not that it did much good. The inky walls, floor, and endless ceiling seemed to absorb the light, leaving them able to see in only about a ten-foot radius no matter where they moved.
“Fuck,” she snapped.
“Why hasn’t the gate dropped us anywhere?”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. Couldn’t anything go right for them? Just once?
“These Boregates are glitchy. Sometimes they do this. Just hold you in these stupid boxes.”
Reaver looked up as if searching for a way out. She wished him luck. “For how long?”
“Until someone else tries to use the gate and un-glitches it.” Frustrated, she kicked at the wall. “I suggested that someone grab Bill Gates and get him to install a new operating system, but apparently, he’s not a demon.” At Reaver’s eye roll, she nodded. “Right? I was surprised, too.”
Reaver leaned against a wall as if they didn’t have a care in the world. How could he relax in a place like this? The claustrophobic crush was going to end her.
“Aside from the fact that we’re trapped for the moment, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“I don’t know, maybe because your über-evil father was within seconds of grabbing us?”
“Spare me the false concern,” she said tightly. “I’m fine.”
Yep, the way her hands were shaking and her voice was frayed with anxiety hinted to all kinds of fine.
“Whatever.” Reaver threw up his hands. “I was just trying to be nice. You know, things normal people do.”
“Are you kidding me? We aren’t normal people. And nice? That’s how you want to play this? You drop a big bomb on me, Yenrieth, and you want to be all nice?”
During her time with Satan’s torturers, Harvester had been drawn and quartered not once but twice. It had been a huge spectacle, the premeal entertainment for two of his dinner parties.
But as agonizing as the experiences had been, they hadn’t even come close to what she’d felt when Reaver confessed his identity.
She still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that five thousand years after Yenrieth disappeared, he was standing in front of her. How was she supposed to process this? Could she process this?
Hell, she might be in total denial if not for the fact that her intense hatred and baffling attraction to Reaver finally made sense. So did the memory of sex with Yenrieth, where Reaver’s face had filled in the blank holes. Reaver had been in the memory because he’d actually been there. Now she knew why kissing him felt so familiar. And why, the first time she’d met Reaver, she’d sensed him before he’d fully materialized. That had never happened with anyone else before.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. We’re not normal. We’re the most fucked-up, star-crossed lovers in history. So let’s not play nice.” His penetrating stare seemed to look right through her. “Maybe you can tell me why you ran away that day when I kissed you.”
“The day you f**ked Lilith, you mean?” And wasn’t that a prick to the heart. That single decision, to flee from a kiss, had led to all of this, but she wasn’t ready to take the entire blame. She rubbed her sternum as if that would ease the pain that still lingered all these centuries later. “I ran away because I was afraid. I had no experience, and you… you were a whore.” His jaw hardened into a stubborn line, and she dared him to deny it. “You still are, aren’t you? Your exploits with demons are well known.”
Reaver’s expression turned cold. “How do you know about the demons I’ve been with? And, by the way, that was in the past, when I was an Unfallen.”
She let out a dubious snort. “Are you really asking me to believe you’ve been a model of angelic purity since you got your wings back?”
“I’ve never been a model of angelic purity,” he said roughly, and she wondered if the note of bitterness in his voice was real or imagined.
“No shit.” She sauntered up to him and stabbed her finger into his breastbone. “So now that you have some memories back, maybe you can tell me where you went after you seduced me, took my virginity, and then told me I disgusted you.”
Inhaling a ragged breath, he closed his eyes. “What I did to you… I’m sorry—”
She jabbed him in the chest so hard he winced. “I don’t give a hellrat’s ass about your apology,” she snapped. “Where did you go?”
He opened his eyes, and while she was gratified to see a shadow of hurt in them, she also felt a little bad about putting it there. Emphasis on little.
“I don’t know. My new memories are limited to me and you.”
“How convenient.” She spun around, paced to the far wall, and then came back at him. “What else do you remember?”
“I remember going to you after I found out I was a father. You were the first person I told. I confided in you.” The hurt in his eyes morphed to blue-fired anger. “But you already knew. You’d known for f**king years.”
Guilt ripped into her with such force that her knees nearly buckled. But she couldn’t let her pangs of conscience derail her need for answers.
“So you remember that, but do you remember any of the shit you did to me? Do you remember how I did everything you ever asked of me, including giving you my blood so you could bond us?”
“Shit.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I remember that. It was a few months before Lilith. We’d just advanced in novice demon hunting training.”
“And you wanted us to be able to feel each other if we got into trouble.”
He hesitated, and the air inside the Boregate grew thick with tension. “There was more to it than that.” He stepped closer, and the musky scent of his skin filled her nostrils. “I didn’t tell you the rest.”
A sinking sensation filled her chest cavity. “You lied?” God, she’d been such a fool. Such a stupid, lovesick, spineless, idiot.
“Only because the truth would have sounded crazy.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And what was the truth?”
“That we needed to do it.” He shoved his hand through his blond mane, leaving it messy and begging for her touch. Even though she hated him right now. “It was just a feeling I had, something we had to do, but I didn’t know why.”
“And now you do?”
“Maybe,” he breathed. “I think the bond is what’s helping me get my memories back.”
“Well, good for you. Glad I could help.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “I am, too.”
She drank in the sight of him as he stood there, his chest heaving as though they’d sparred with their fists instead of with words. And now, she realized, in all the memories she had of Yenrieth, he was no longer faceless. The angel who laughed with her, played tricks on her, and had brought her to the most amazing orgasms was the male standing in front of her.
“So what now?”
He propped one boot casually behind him on the wall. Because yeah, this was all just so run-of-the-mill. “Now we wait for this Boregate to take us somewhere.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
“Do you really think now’s the time to discuss our future? We don’t know if we’re going to survive the rest of the day let alone the next century.”
He was right, but his dismissal still stung. For thousands of years she’d wondered what she would do if Yenrieth reappeared, the scenarios ranging from a cheesy joyful reunion in which they’d run at each other and she’d leap into his arms to her killing him in a fit of rage.
Most of her imaginary reunions involved him falling to his knees and begging forgiveness while she listened patiently until she’d had enough. Then they had wild, intense sex and he swore to never let her go again.
What a joke. Of all the fantasies she’d come up with, none of them had involved them being on the run from Satan and darkmen.
“Let me ask you something.” She squared her shoulders, wincing at the sudden, intense itching in her back as her wings regenerated. A good sign, but annoying. “After you found out I knew about your children, when you seduced me, did you want to have sex with me, even a little? Or was it all for revenge?”
His gaze hit the floor, but not before she caught a glimpse of shame. “I don’t remember.”
“My ass,” she spat out. “You must have some idea. Some feeling.”
“The feeling I get from that day is anger. So if I had to guess, I’d say it was all for revenge.” His eyes snapped up to hers, as brutally cold as his words, and her chest constricted around what was left of her shriveled heart. “Was that what you wanted to hear? Or should I have lied?”
She’d have been fine with a lie, and how f**ked up was that? Son of a bitch, he could throw her off balance, and if there was anything Harvester hated more than being tortured, it was being unsure of herself and her emotions.
“Fuck you, Reaver.” Irrational anger gripped her in sharp talons as she spun away from him, needing as much distance as she could get in the damned shoebox they were trapped inside.
His exasperated voice followed her. “You asked.”
She braced her forehead against the opposite wall, letting the cool stone soothe her. But it didn’t do much to alleviate the anguish building inside her.
Shuffling noises filled the room and she tensed as she felt him come closer. “In case we don’t make it out of Sheoul, I need you to know I’m thankful for what you did for my sons and daughter. I can’t thank you enough.” He swallowed audibly, an almost pained sound. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
