“I’m not killing you, so stop asking. We need you to track down Gethel, and we have to do it fast. She’s pregnant—”
“With Lucifer,” Harvester interrupted. “I know. Gethel wants me to be his Binky.”
“Binky?”
“His pacifier.” She tucked her legs under her, and he was glad to see some of the abrasions had healed. “He’ll be born fully grown, and he’ll need the blood of a sibling to help him achieve full strength. She already made a meal of me to make him stronger.”
Damn. “If we can kill him before he’s reborn, he won’t be using anyone as a Binky.”
One curvy shoulder shrugged under the blanket. “I’m not helping you track him down, so you might as well kill me now.”
“Why won’t you help?”
“Because.”
He ground his teeth. “Whether you help or not, I’m not killing you, and that’s final.”
“You’re as stubborn as ever.”
“I’m the stubborn one?” His mind churned with reasons she would refuse to help find Lucifer, but only one made sense. “You’re refusing to help find Lucifer just so I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “I’m refusing because I’m evil and Lucifer is going to be my brother. Ever think of that?”
She wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be serious. But she’d never been easy to read, and her expression right now would earn her a first-place ribbon at a mule show.
“I don’t believe you,” he ground out.
“Then maybe you’ll believe me when I say you’re going to regret not killing me.”
“That I believe.” He cursed, rethinking this entire rescue. “We’ll find Lucifer without your help.” How, he had no idea. Just surviving the journey out of Sheoul was going to be difficult enough.
“Good luck.” The irritation in her tone was mixed with exhaustion, and a moment later, she yawned.
“Let me get Tav in here. You need to feed.” As much as he hated the idea of her feeding from the incubus and getting all jacked up, he hated the fact that Harvester was so damaged even more.
Her sightless eyes shot wide. “No one touches me. Not until I can see.”
He didn’t want to be a dick and argue, but with his powers so compromised and probably every demon in Sheoul after them, they needed her to be as strong as possible.
“You need to regrow your wings—”
“I said no,” she snapped, the color rising in her face. “Don’t you see that I’m blind?”
Saying she was blind was the closest Harvester had ever come to admitting to having any kind of vulnerability. Bile rose in his throat at the level of desperation she must be feeling, and though it went against every instinct, he gave her more time to come around.
“We can wait until you wake up.” Hopefully Matt would be back by then. Werewolves, with their human origins, provided more nourishment than demons, by far. Very slowly, he reached for her. She flinched when his fingers brushed her shoulder. “You need to get some rest.”
He urged her to lie back on the ground. She went without an argument, which told him how tired she was. Harvester never did anything without a fight or a cutting word.
Closing her eyes, she curled up under the blanket, and within a couple of heartbeats, she was breathing in a deep, even rhythm.
But just as Reaver breathed a sigh of relief that she was asleep, she stiffened and gasped in alarm. “My father,” she croaked. “I can feel him. He’s coming for us, Reaver. Satan’s coming.”
Six
Very little frightened Revenant.
But right now, standing in Satan’s living room, he was scared shitless and sweating bullets inside his black leathers.
The Dark Lord’s rage was a force of nature that rocked the building, knocking over statues and shattering pillars and putting deep cracks in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. And in Rev’s skull.
Revenant clutched his head in his hands as Satan’s roar of fury blasted his eardrums. Blood ran from his ears, his nose, his mouth.
But he was far, far better off than the werewolf hanging from a hook in the middle of the room, his body shredded and studded with nails, blood streaming from a gaping hole where his eye used to be.
“Someone stole her,” Satan snarled. “Someone took her right out from under my nose.” He roared again. “How?” He grabbed the werewolf by the throat. “You helped. Tell me who took my daughter from me or I’ll carve out your other eye and eat it while it’s still warm.”
The guy admitted to being an assassin, which meant he likely couldn’t talk about who hired him even if he wanted to. The assassin’s oath was binding on a magical level, and while the spell could be broken, doing so would take time, and it would kill the assassin. And Revenant had a feeling Satan wanted to kill this guy with his bare hands. Or, as he was sporting right now, claws.
The male groaned, his blood-streaked face a mask of agony. Then he screamed when the king of all demons drove one long, sharp claw through his pupil.
“I want her back.” The black veins under Satan’s skin visibly pulsed with the force of his anger. “I want my beloved Harvester back where she belongs. On a skinning block, writhing in blood-soaked misery.”
Beloved? Skinning block? Satan had a strange way of showing affection. Revenant really wished the demon would stop sometimes referring to him as “my son,” which, as far as he knew, wasn’t true.
Please let it not be true.
Satan popped the werewolf’s eyeball into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. After a moment he wheeled around to Revenant, and Rev’s bowels turned to water.
“You said Metatron and Raphael paid a visit to the Horsemen. Did they discuss rescuing Harvester?”
“No, my lord. Not that I heard.” The bastards had rendered him immobile, deaf, and blind. When he’d come to, all of the angels were gone, including Reaver and Lorelia. “I don’t think the Horsemen even know of her status as a plant for Heaven.” They’d been as confused—and pissed—as Revenant when they’d gained consciousness.
Satan snarled, his mood going suddenly sour. “I want Harvester and the heads of those responsible for stealing her. And I swear by all that’s unholy that if angels are involved, I’ll devastate Heaven. Once that angel-infested realm is nothing but smoldering ash and there’s no one to save the weakling humans, I’ll turn my legions loose on the earthly realm.”
Revenant nodded with as much eagerness as he could muster. He hated angels and thought humans were an annoying infestation on an otherwise nice planet, but the idea of turning Heaven and Earth into replicas of Sheoul didn’t sit well. He’d never been to Heaven, but he liked the Earth the way it was. The colors were vibrant. The air was fresh, the sunlight pleasant on the skin. Best of all, it wasn’t crawling with demons. Well, it was, but mostly, they remained hidden behind human masks.
But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.
A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.
In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.
“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.
“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”
He turned back to the werewolf, and with a vicious swipe, he ripped into the male’s belly. Blood and organs spilled onto the floor. The warg’s screams faded away, but before the poor jackass could die, Satan partially healed him with a flick of the wrist.
Partially, because you never wanted your torture subject to be pain free.
“Go back to your duty, Revenant. Bypass the Watcher Council and come directly to me if anything happens with the Horsemen or their Watcher.” He sneered. “They might know more than they’re saying.”
It was against Watcher rules to break the chain of command—even if Satan himself requested it. But the f**k if Revenant was going to point that out, so he merely bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“And Rev,” he said silkily, “don’t let me down, or you’ll take Harvester’s place on the skinning block.” He gestured to the door with his blood-coated clawed hand. “Send in Blight.”
Rev sucked in a sharp breath. Blight commanded all of Satan’s militaries.
“I’m sending an army after Harvester. When they find her, they will drag her and her rescuers back by their intestines.” Satan smiled at the barely conscious werewolf. “And you… you will talk. And then I get a hundred thousand extra souls to enslave in my armies, and Heaven and all its happy inhabitants will fall into my hands.”
And once Heaven fell, there would be nothing to stop him from taking over the Earth next.
Seven
Tavin’s shout screamed through Reaver’s brain.
He dove outside through the opening in the larva-nettle bush and came face to ass with a giant stegosaurus-sized beast. The creature was pawing at Tavin as the Sem tried to wedge himself between two boulders. Calder was twenty yards away, coming at them at a dead run, but Reaver doubted he’d get here before the thing got to Tavin.
“Hey!” Reaver yelled. The demon wheeled around with a snarl, its gaping maw large enough to swallow him whole.
Digging deep into his perilously low power reserves, Reaver blasted the thing with liquid fire that tore into the demon’s chest, splattering blood and gore on the parched earth. The beast screeched, but didn’t slow down. It swiped at Reaver with bony, clawed hands that dripped with the hair and meat of whatever creature it had tangled with before it found them.
With the stench of burnt flesh swirling around him, Reaver spun out of its way while simultaneously hurling a ball of lightning at its head. The lightning veered off course at the last second, a victim of Reaver’s unpredictable powers, and fizzled into a harmless shower of sparks.
Calder, the claws on his hands and feet extended, leaped into the fray, slashing at the demon’s hindquarters as Tavin extracted himself from the safety of the boulders.
His power failing miserably, Reaver went old school and hurled a stone into the demon’s jaw. Roaring, it lunged awkwardly, partially crippled by Calder’s efforts. Reaver hit the ground in a roll to avoid snapping jaws that would have cut him in half. As he popped to his feet, he summoned a shear-whip, and in a single, fluid motion, he leaped onto the demon’s spiny back and brought the white-hot scourge down on the beast’s skull.
The whip cut deeply into its skin, leaving steaming gashes all the way to the bone. The demon roared and threw itself backward, smashing Reaver into the rocky cliff surrounding the camp. Pain speared every bone in Reaver’s body, and his thoughts scattered like spilled marbles.
He bounced off a rocky outcrop before hitting the ground in a messy sprawl. Momentarily stunned, he lay there as the thing clamped its paw on top of him, caging him inside a prison of bony fingers and razor-sharp claws.
Man, he hated these giant things. They couldn’t kill him—very few demons could—but they were capable of serving up a world of hurt that could leave him defenseless for days. Worse, the commotion might attract Satan’s minions.
With renewed enthusiasm, he energized his hands with iced fire and jammed them between the demon’s fingers. Frost streaked through the creature’s hand and up its arm, leaving trails of chilled vapor billowing in its wake.
Excellent. The demon would retreat… ah, shit. Ice froze the demon’s hand to the ground, trapping Reaver as the beast fought Tavin and Calder with its other arm and its clawed feet.
“Reaver!” Tavin’s voice sounded above the demon’s pained screams.
“I’m here,” Reaver called out. He summoned a giant mallet and prepared to smash his way out of the prison of the demon’s palm. “You guys keep the bastard busy.”
“I’m open to suggestions, asshole,” Calder yelled. “Wait… standby!”
A massive crash buckled the ground, shattering the demon’s frozen hand and releasing Reaver. The demon lay dead a few yards away, bled out from a gut-spilling gash in his belly, courtesy of Calder, who was bent over, trying to catch his breath. But where was Tavin?
Reaver scrambled over a pile of boulders. “Tav? Man, where are you?”
Calder joined in Reaver’s frantic search, until finally, the Nightlash demon shouted. “There!”
The Seminus’s arm was poking out from under the dead beast’s hindquarters.
Fear made Reaver clumsy as he rushed to Tavin, and he nearly passed out with relief when he found the Sem caught in a small space between the demon’s leg and a rock.
“With Lucifer,” Harvester interrupted. “I know. Gethel wants me to be his Binky.”
“Binky?”
“His pacifier.” She tucked her legs under her, and he was glad to see some of the abrasions had healed. “He’ll be born fully grown, and he’ll need the blood of a sibling to help him achieve full strength. She already made a meal of me to make him stronger.”
Damn. “If we can kill him before he’s reborn, he won’t be using anyone as a Binky.”
One curvy shoulder shrugged under the blanket. “I’m not helping you track him down, so you might as well kill me now.”
“Why won’t you help?”
“Because.”
He ground his teeth. “Whether you help or not, I’m not killing you, and that’s final.”
“You’re as stubborn as ever.”
“I’m the stubborn one?” His mind churned with reasons she would refuse to help find Lucifer, but only one made sense. “You’re refusing to help find Lucifer just so I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “I’m refusing because I’m evil and Lucifer is going to be my brother. Ever think of that?”
She wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be serious. But she’d never been easy to read, and her expression right now would earn her a first-place ribbon at a mule show.
“I don’t believe you,” he ground out.
“Then maybe you’ll believe me when I say you’re going to regret not killing me.”
“That I believe.” He cursed, rethinking this entire rescue. “We’ll find Lucifer without your help.” How, he had no idea. Just surviving the journey out of Sheoul was going to be difficult enough.
“Good luck.” The irritation in her tone was mixed with exhaustion, and a moment later, she yawned.
“Let me get Tav in here. You need to feed.” As much as he hated the idea of her feeding from the incubus and getting all jacked up, he hated the fact that Harvester was so damaged even more.
Her sightless eyes shot wide. “No one touches me. Not until I can see.”
He didn’t want to be a dick and argue, but with his powers so compromised and probably every demon in Sheoul after them, they needed her to be as strong as possible.
“You need to regrow your wings—”
“I said no,” she snapped, the color rising in her face. “Don’t you see that I’m blind?”
Saying she was blind was the closest Harvester had ever come to admitting to having any kind of vulnerability. Bile rose in his throat at the level of desperation she must be feeling, and though it went against every instinct, he gave her more time to come around.
“We can wait until you wake up.” Hopefully Matt would be back by then. Werewolves, with their human origins, provided more nourishment than demons, by far. Very slowly, he reached for her. She flinched when his fingers brushed her shoulder. “You need to get some rest.”
He urged her to lie back on the ground. She went without an argument, which told him how tired she was. Harvester never did anything without a fight or a cutting word.
Closing her eyes, she curled up under the blanket, and within a couple of heartbeats, she was breathing in a deep, even rhythm.
But just as Reaver breathed a sigh of relief that she was asleep, she stiffened and gasped in alarm. “My father,” she croaked. “I can feel him. He’s coming for us, Reaver. Satan’s coming.”
Six
Very little frightened Revenant.
But right now, standing in Satan’s living room, he was scared shitless and sweating bullets inside his black leathers.
The Dark Lord’s rage was a force of nature that rocked the building, knocking over statues and shattering pillars and putting deep cracks in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. And in Rev’s skull.
Revenant clutched his head in his hands as Satan’s roar of fury blasted his eardrums. Blood ran from his ears, his nose, his mouth.
But he was far, far better off than the werewolf hanging from a hook in the middle of the room, his body shredded and studded with nails, blood streaming from a gaping hole where his eye used to be.
“Someone stole her,” Satan snarled. “Someone took her right out from under my nose.” He roared again. “How?” He grabbed the werewolf by the throat. “You helped. Tell me who took my daughter from me or I’ll carve out your other eye and eat it while it’s still warm.”
The guy admitted to being an assassin, which meant he likely couldn’t talk about who hired him even if he wanted to. The assassin’s oath was binding on a magical level, and while the spell could be broken, doing so would take time, and it would kill the assassin. And Revenant had a feeling Satan wanted to kill this guy with his bare hands. Or, as he was sporting right now, claws.
The male groaned, his blood-streaked face a mask of agony. Then he screamed when the king of all demons drove one long, sharp claw through his pupil.
“I want her back.” The black veins under Satan’s skin visibly pulsed with the force of his anger. “I want my beloved Harvester back where she belongs. On a skinning block, writhing in blood-soaked misery.”
Beloved? Skinning block? Satan had a strange way of showing affection. Revenant really wished the demon would stop sometimes referring to him as “my son,” which, as far as he knew, wasn’t true.
Please let it not be true.
Satan popped the werewolf’s eyeball into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. After a moment he wheeled around to Revenant, and Rev’s bowels turned to water.
“You said Metatron and Raphael paid a visit to the Horsemen. Did they discuss rescuing Harvester?”
“No, my lord. Not that I heard.” The bastards had rendered him immobile, deaf, and blind. When he’d come to, all of the angels were gone, including Reaver and Lorelia. “I don’t think the Horsemen even know of her status as a plant for Heaven.” They’d been as confused—and pissed—as Revenant when they’d gained consciousness.
Satan snarled, his mood going suddenly sour. “I want Harvester and the heads of those responsible for stealing her. And I swear by all that’s unholy that if angels are involved, I’ll devastate Heaven. Once that angel-infested realm is nothing but smoldering ash and there’s no one to save the weakling humans, I’ll turn my legions loose on the earthly realm.”
Revenant nodded with as much eagerness as he could muster. He hated angels and thought humans were an annoying infestation on an otherwise nice planet, but the idea of turning Heaven and Earth into replicas of Sheoul didn’t sit well. He’d never been to Heaven, but he liked the Earth the way it was. The colors were vibrant. The air was fresh, the sunlight pleasant on the skin. Best of all, it wasn’t crawling with demons. Well, it was, but mostly, they remained hidden behind human masks.
But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.
A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.
In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.
“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.
“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”
He turned back to the werewolf, and with a vicious swipe, he ripped into the male’s belly. Blood and organs spilled onto the floor. The warg’s screams faded away, but before the poor jackass could die, Satan partially healed him with a flick of the wrist.
Partially, because you never wanted your torture subject to be pain free.
“Go back to your duty, Revenant. Bypass the Watcher Council and come directly to me if anything happens with the Horsemen or their Watcher.” He sneered. “They might know more than they’re saying.”
It was against Watcher rules to break the chain of command—even if Satan himself requested it. But the f**k if Revenant was going to point that out, so he merely bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“And Rev,” he said silkily, “don’t let me down, or you’ll take Harvester’s place on the skinning block.” He gestured to the door with his blood-coated clawed hand. “Send in Blight.”
Rev sucked in a sharp breath. Blight commanded all of Satan’s militaries.
“I’m sending an army after Harvester. When they find her, they will drag her and her rescuers back by their intestines.” Satan smiled at the barely conscious werewolf. “And you… you will talk. And then I get a hundred thousand extra souls to enslave in my armies, and Heaven and all its happy inhabitants will fall into my hands.”
And once Heaven fell, there would be nothing to stop him from taking over the Earth next.
Seven
Tavin’s shout screamed through Reaver’s brain.
He dove outside through the opening in the larva-nettle bush and came face to ass with a giant stegosaurus-sized beast. The creature was pawing at Tavin as the Sem tried to wedge himself between two boulders. Calder was twenty yards away, coming at them at a dead run, but Reaver doubted he’d get here before the thing got to Tavin.
“Hey!” Reaver yelled. The demon wheeled around with a snarl, its gaping maw large enough to swallow him whole.
Digging deep into his perilously low power reserves, Reaver blasted the thing with liquid fire that tore into the demon’s chest, splattering blood and gore on the parched earth. The beast screeched, but didn’t slow down. It swiped at Reaver with bony, clawed hands that dripped with the hair and meat of whatever creature it had tangled with before it found them.
With the stench of burnt flesh swirling around him, Reaver spun out of its way while simultaneously hurling a ball of lightning at its head. The lightning veered off course at the last second, a victim of Reaver’s unpredictable powers, and fizzled into a harmless shower of sparks.
Calder, the claws on his hands and feet extended, leaped into the fray, slashing at the demon’s hindquarters as Tavin extracted himself from the safety of the boulders.
His power failing miserably, Reaver went old school and hurled a stone into the demon’s jaw. Roaring, it lunged awkwardly, partially crippled by Calder’s efforts. Reaver hit the ground in a roll to avoid snapping jaws that would have cut him in half. As he popped to his feet, he summoned a shear-whip, and in a single, fluid motion, he leaped onto the demon’s spiny back and brought the white-hot scourge down on the beast’s skull.
The whip cut deeply into its skin, leaving steaming gashes all the way to the bone. The demon roared and threw itself backward, smashing Reaver into the rocky cliff surrounding the camp. Pain speared every bone in Reaver’s body, and his thoughts scattered like spilled marbles.
He bounced off a rocky outcrop before hitting the ground in a messy sprawl. Momentarily stunned, he lay there as the thing clamped its paw on top of him, caging him inside a prison of bony fingers and razor-sharp claws.
Man, he hated these giant things. They couldn’t kill him—very few demons could—but they were capable of serving up a world of hurt that could leave him defenseless for days. Worse, the commotion might attract Satan’s minions.
With renewed enthusiasm, he energized his hands with iced fire and jammed them between the demon’s fingers. Frost streaked through the creature’s hand and up its arm, leaving trails of chilled vapor billowing in its wake.
Excellent. The demon would retreat… ah, shit. Ice froze the demon’s hand to the ground, trapping Reaver as the beast fought Tavin and Calder with its other arm and its clawed feet.
“Reaver!” Tavin’s voice sounded above the demon’s pained screams.
“I’m here,” Reaver called out. He summoned a giant mallet and prepared to smash his way out of the prison of the demon’s palm. “You guys keep the bastard busy.”
“I’m open to suggestions, asshole,” Calder yelled. “Wait… standby!”
A massive crash buckled the ground, shattering the demon’s frozen hand and releasing Reaver. The demon lay dead a few yards away, bled out from a gut-spilling gash in his belly, courtesy of Calder, who was bent over, trying to catch his breath. But where was Tavin?
Reaver scrambled over a pile of boulders. “Tav? Man, where are you?”
Calder joined in Reaver’s frantic search, until finally, the Nightlash demon shouted. “There!”
The Seminus’s arm was poking out from under the dead beast’s hindquarters.
Fear made Reaver clumsy as he rushed to Tavin, and he nearly passed out with relief when he found the Sem caught in a small space between the demon’s leg and a rock.
