“Two,” she snapped. “There are two stoplights.”
“Oh, well, then, I’ll see if I can get the slave trade going in your thriving metropolis.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, which just made him grin. “Just keep in mind that if you hurt her, I’ll come after you with everything I have.”
She shoved his arm out of the way, got in the vehicle, and took off. The slight fishtail from hitting the gas too hard probably pissed her off, but it amused the hell out of him.
At least, he was amused until he felt a presence. He listened to the fading sound of Stacey’s vehicle, and then he listened to the forest. An owl’s hoot pierced the night, but other than that… nothing. But he felt like he was being watched. The odd thing was that this time he didn’t get a danger vibe. The opposite happened, in fact. There was something comforting about the feeling he got.
“Whoever you are,” he said quietly, “I’d like to see you. Because right now, I’m thinking I might be a little touched in the head.”
No one popped out of thin air or stepped out of the woods. Naturally.
“Come on, you damned voyeur. Throw me a bone.” He did a three-sixty, looking in every possible direction. “I don’t suppose you can tell me who I am. No? Well, f**k you.”
He waited another minute, and the sensation faded, leaving behind only an awareness that he was outside in the cold, in the dark, and Jillian, who was warm and light, was inside.
Frustrated, he went back into the cabin, alarm spiking when he didn’t see her. He checked the kitchen, and then found her in the unlit bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Did Stacey read you the riot act?” Her voice was gravelly, with a note of tears.
“Little bit. I think she wanted to shove that nightstick up my ass. And not in a fun way.”
She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. She’s a good friend.” He climbed onto the mattress and stretched out, wrapping his arms around her to pull her down beside him. “You okay? Is there anything I can do?”
“This is perfect.” She snuggled into the crook of his arm. “Too perfect, I think.”
“How can anything be too perfect?”
“Because,” she whispered. “That’s when everything falls apart.”
Reaver was happy to see that Reseph was doing well. The Horseman seemed to have adjusted to life in the human world, and he certainly hadn’t looked any worse for wear when Reaver had spied on him and the female deputy from the cover of the Khote.
The same couldn’t be said of Reaver.
Harvester had gotten him out of Sheoul-gra as promised, but he was still bearing the wounds he’d gotten from the demon that had been eating him slowly for the last three months. And Harvester, the bitch, hadn’t even offered to heal him. Not that he’d have taken her up on it. But still.
As an angel, Reaver healed quickly… unless the damage had been inflicted in Sheoul or by a particularly powerful angel. Then all bets were off and he got to look like he’d spent some time in a meat grinder.
So as he strode down the pristine white walls of the Archangel Multiplex, his bruises and raw skin added a much-needed splash of color. He had, at least, taken the time to stop by his residence to shower and change out of Harvester’s pajamas and into jeans and a blue T-shirt. In Heaven and a few places on Earth, angels could snap their fingers to clean up and change, but he’d opted to enjoy the feel of hot water sluicing over his aching body. His time spent as a fallen angel had given him a taste for simple pleasures, and he really didn’t give a damn if his fellow angels looked down their perfect noses at him for that.
Ahead, crystal arches marked the entrance to the compound’s Watcher headquarters, where teams kept track of the goings-on of beings all over the world. This was where Reaver’s bosses worked, as well as the bosses for other classes of overseer angels, such as Memitim.
Reaver took a hard right at the second archway, passing through a sparkling membrane that acted as a sound barrier. Inside the seemingly endless room, angels flipped through books and perused scrolls, monitored screens that hung in the air like holograms, and chatted among themselves like office workers around a water cooler.
Angels liked to think they were so much better than humans, but Reaver hadn’t seen much evidence of that.
With nothing more than a thought, he created a stage in the center of the space, leaped up on it, and made sure his voice carried—again, all it took was a thought.
“Hey! Fellow angels.” Yeah, so not protocol, and Darnella, a snooty ginger-haired angel who took extreme pride in wings that matched her hair color perfectly, called him on it.
“Reaver. Have you no shame?”
“I’m standing here in jeans and a T-shirt, with a split lip, broken nose, and black eyes. Do I look like I have shame?” He could have dressed appropriately formal—or at least business casual—for this, but screw it. He was feeling rebellious today. He looked out at the two dozen annoyed angels. “I don’t suppose anyone has seen Gethel?”
Blank stares were his only answer.
“Okay, let’s try this. Does anyone know what she’s done?”
Modran, a dark-haired male wearing a ridiculous jeweled silver robe, stepped forward. “She’s no longer part of our department. Why would we have seen her or know of her activities?”
Reaver had no idea where she’d been reassigned after Reaver had taken over for her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and he didn’t care. He also didn’t have access to high-ranking angels who might know, but some of these idiots did.
“I just thought you’d like to know that she’s gone bad. Really bad. She colluded with Pestilence to kill Thanatos’s child and start the Apocalypse.”
There was much scoffing. And skeptical expressions. And flat-out calls of “liar.” Fools. Problem was, he didn’t have a lot of credibility. It didn’t matter that as a fallen angel he’d helped save the freaking world a few years ago; the only thing these morons focused on was the fact that he’d been fallen in the first place. They were going to flip their halos when they learned about his newest stunt. Tossing Reseph into the human realm wasn’t going to go over well.
Especially since Gethel knew Reseph was out there and was trying to find him.
Darnella arched an eyebrow. “And you have proof of this?”
“I have witnesses. Thanatos among them.” He explained what had happened, and gradually, shock, sadness, and fury replaced the skepticism.
“More than three months have passed in the human realm,” Darnella said. “Why did you wait so long to bring this to us?”
“I was stuck in Sheoul.” Reaver braced himself for the rest of the confession, but before he could speak, a blond male Reaver didn’t recognize moved forward, dressed from head to toe in white.
“I’ll speak with the Archangels to determine if an investigation is needed and if Gethel will be required to hand over her sheoulghul.”
“If?” Reaver snorted in disgust. And Gethel was in possession of an artifact that allowed for recharging angelic powers in Sheoul? Most battle angels didn’t have access to sheoulghuls, and battle angels were the ones who needed them most. “I’m telling you that she’s gone bad. She’s sided with the bad guys—you remember them—the demons? Even now she’s plotting to bring Pestilence back.”
“And how, exactly, does she plan to do that?” Modran asked, skepticism dripping from his deep voice. “Pestilence is dead.”
Reaver winced. “Not… exactly. Thanatos used the wrong dagger. Reseph was sent to Sheoul-gra with Pestilence locked away inside him.”
Murmurs resonated through the crowd, and Darnella spoke up. “That’s unexpected, but good news. We stand a better chance of winning the future biblical Apocalypse with an extra Horseman on our side. We calculated the odds of success without him, and they were, sad to say, not encouraging.”
“Not encouraging?” Reaver was always amazed at his brethrens’ capacity for understatement. “You are aware of the theory that Reseph’s death could unravel history? Overnight, every reference to four Horsemen would be erased, including those from the Bible, and everything Reseph ever affected in any way would take a new course. If he’d died, we could all have woken up to a very different world.”
It was something that had happened before, when the Horsemen, before their curses, had started a war. Angels had stepped in and changed human history and memories with little consequence. But Reseph had been around for five thousand years and had affected countless lives and events.
Darnella smiled coldly. “Speculation. And irrelevant, since he’s not dead. Hopefully he’s suffering a million deaths right now.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, and Reaver prepared himself for a flaying that just might be physical as well as verbal.
“He’s not in Sheoul-gra,” he said abruptly. Rip the bandage off quickly and all that. “I wiped his memory and turned him over to the human realm.”
Stunned silence. And then furious roars and a few screeches of, “You did what?” Calls for Reaver’s wings to be severed followed next, along with too many offers to do it right now.
Reaver held up his hand, but the cacophony only died down a little. “It gets worse. Yeah, that’s right; save your insults and demands for my expulsion from Heaven for later.” He looked out over the furious crowd and wondered how long it was going to take for his Watcher duty to be taken away from him. Or worse. “Gethel knows Reseph is free, which probably means every key player in Sheoul does, too. As I said, she’s trying to bring Pestilence back, and if she finds him, she could do it if she subjects him to evil again.”
“How do you know this?” Modran asked—through clenched teeth.
“Harvester told me—”
“Harvester?” The jewel-robed guy practically screamed her name. “You trust the word of a fallen angel?”
“Not normally,” Reaver said. “But she has reasons to speak the truth about this. And her Watcher Council has known about Reseph’s release from Sheoul-gra for months, thanks to loose-lipped demons. Now that you know, you can confirm everything I’ve said.” He hopped down from the stage, letting it poof away. “I have an angel to hunt. I suggest you put the wheels in motion for others to be on the lookout for Gethel as well.”
“You’re going to be punished for what you’ve done,” Modran swore, as if Reaver had been at all unsure about that.
Reaver ignored Modran and strode toward the exit. He’d do everything in his power to find Gethel, but first he had to check in on the Horsemen.
And given that he’d missed a birth, a wedding, and who knew what else, he had a feeling that explaining his absence to them was going to be a lot more difficult than explaining it to angels.
Nine
Jillian woke to the smell of burned pancakes and charred bacon. She sat up, blinking, the events of last night as fuzzy as her eyes. She’d crashed, and crashed hard. She remembered waking at one point in the night, and although she couldn’t recall why she’d woken, she did know that Reseph had been holding her, and his chest had been wet with her tears.
He hadn’t said a word. He’d just handed her tissues and kept her close, his strong arms banded around her. And now, it seemed, he was trying to burn down her house.
She made a quick trip to the bathroom and donned her robe before hurrying to the kitchen, where Reseph, wearing only jeans, was dousing a fire.
Smoke drifted out of the sink, billowing up around a stream of rushing water. “Oh, uh… hi.” Reseph shot her a sheepish grin over his shoulder. “I tried to make you breakfast.”
“I can see that.” She peered into the sink, where the remains of paper towels and pancakes were an ashy mush. “I think, in the future, you should leave the cooking to me.”
He frowned down at the mess. “It’s like I’ve never cooked in my life. How could I not have cooked?”
“Maybe you only ate out?”
“Maybe I’m rich and have servants,” he suggested. “That would be cool.”
She turned off the gas burner that was heating the empty cast iron frying pan. “I don’t think I’d like being that rich.”
He pivoted around and propped his hip on the counter, giving her a tantalizing view of his sculpted chest. “So there’s nothing you’d want to change around here? No place you’d like to travel?”
The magical island full of hunks like Reseph came to mind. “Maybe I’d get a new truck and expand the barn, and a tropical vacation would be nice, but no, I like my life the way it is.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his sternum and worked his way up to his shoulder, getting out the morning kinks, and Jillian could barely tear her eyes away to open the fridge. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m better,” she said, as she fetched the bowl where she kept her fresh eggs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” She didn’t think she’d ever want to talk about her neighbors’ deaths, or the fact that she’d freaked out last night. “But thank you. And thanks for getting the fire going.”
“I also fed the animals and shoveled the path to the barn.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. I hope it’s okay, but I spent some time on the Internet.”
A twinge of anxiety shot through her. “Did you find anything? About yourself?”
“Oh, well, then, I’ll see if I can get the slave trade going in your thriving metropolis.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, which just made him grin. “Just keep in mind that if you hurt her, I’ll come after you with everything I have.”
She shoved his arm out of the way, got in the vehicle, and took off. The slight fishtail from hitting the gas too hard probably pissed her off, but it amused the hell out of him.
At least, he was amused until he felt a presence. He listened to the fading sound of Stacey’s vehicle, and then he listened to the forest. An owl’s hoot pierced the night, but other than that… nothing. But he felt like he was being watched. The odd thing was that this time he didn’t get a danger vibe. The opposite happened, in fact. There was something comforting about the feeling he got.
“Whoever you are,” he said quietly, “I’d like to see you. Because right now, I’m thinking I might be a little touched in the head.”
No one popped out of thin air or stepped out of the woods. Naturally.
“Come on, you damned voyeur. Throw me a bone.” He did a three-sixty, looking in every possible direction. “I don’t suppose you can tell me who I am. No? Well, f**k you.”
He waited another minute, and the sensation faded, leaving behind only an awareness that he was outside in the cold, in the dark, and Jillian, who was warm and light, was inside.
Frustrated, he went back into the cabin, alarm spiking when he didn’t see her. He checked the kitchen, and then found her in the unlit bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Did Stacey read you the riot act?” Her voice was gravelly, with a note of tears.
“Little bit. I think she wanted to shove that nightstick up my ass. And not in a fun way.”
She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. She’s a good friend.” He climbed onto the mattress and stretched out, wrapping his arms around her to pull her down beside him. “You okay? Is there anything I can do?”
“This is perfect.” She snuggled into the crook of his arm. “Too perfect, I think.”
“How can anything be too perfect?”
“Because,” she whispered. “That’s when everything falls apart.”
Reaver was happy to see that Reseph was doing well. The Horseman seemed to have adjusted to life in the human world, and he certainly hadn’t looked any worse for wear when Reaver had spied on him and the female deputy from the cover of the Khote.
The same couldn’t be said of Reaver.
Harvester had gotten him out of Sheoul-gra as promised, but he was still bearing the wounds he’d gotten from the demon that had been eating him slowly for the last three months. And Harvester, the bitch, hadn’t even offered to heal him. Not that he’d have taken her up on it. But still.
As an angel, Reaver healed quickly… unless the damage had been inflicted in Sheoul or by a particularly powerful angel. Then all bets were off and he got to look like he’d spent some time in a meat grinder.
So as he strode down the pristine white walls of the Archangel Multiplex, his bruises and raw skin added a much-needed splash of color. He had, at least, taken the time to stop by his residence to shower and change out of Harvester’s pajamas and into jeans and a blue T-shirt. In Heaven and a few places on Earth, angels could snap their fingers to clean up and change, but he’d opted to enjoy the feel of hot water sluicing over his aching body. His time spent as a fallen angel had given him a taste for simple pleasures, and he really didn’t give a damn if his fellow angels looked down their perfect noses at him for that.
Ahead, crystal arches marked the entrance to the compound’s Watcher headquarters, where teams kept track of the goings-on of beings all over the world. This was where Reaver’s bosses worked, as well as the bosses for other classes of overseer angels, such as Memitim.
Reaver took a hard right at the second archway, passing through a sparkling membrane that acted as a sound barrier. Inside the seemingly endless room, angels flipped through books and perused scrolls, monitored screens that hung in the air like holograms, and chatted among themselves like office workers around a water cooler.
Angels liked to think they were so much better than humans, but Reaver hadn’t seen much evidence of that.
With nothing more than a thought, he created a stage in the center of the space, leaped up on it, and made sure his voice carried—again, all it took was a thought.
“Hey! Fellow angels.” Yeah, so not protocol, and Darnella, a snooty ginger-haired angel who took extreme pride in wings that matched her hair color perfectly, called him on it.
“Reaver. Have you no shame?”
“I’m standing here in jeans and a T-shirt, with a split lip, broken nose, and black eyes. Do I look like I have shame?” He could have dressed appropriately formal—or at least business casual—for this, but screw it. He was feeling rebellious today. He looked out at the two dozen annoyed angels. “I don’t suppose anyone has seen Gethel?”
Blank stares were his only answer.
“Okay, let’s try this. Does anyone know what she’s done?”
Modran, a dark-haired male wearing a ridiculous jeweled silver robe, stepped forward. “She’s no longer part of our department. Why would we have seen her or know of her activities?”
Reaver had no idea where she’d been reassigned after Reaver had taken over for her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and he didn’t care. He also didn’t have access to high-ranking angels who might know, but some of these idiots did.
“I just thought you’d like to know that she’s gone bad. Really bad. She colluded with Pestilence to kill Thanatos’s child and start the Apocalypse.”
There was much scoffing. And skeptical expressions. And flat-out calls of “liar.” Fools. Problem was, he didn’t have a lot of credibility. It didn’t matter that as a fallen angel he’d helped save the freaking world a few years ago; the only thing these morons focused on was the fact that he’d been fallen in the first place. They were going to flip their halos when they learned about his newest stunt. Tossing Reseph into the human realm wasn’t going to go over well.
Especially since Gethel knew Reseph was out there and was trying to find him.
Darnella arched an eyebrow. “And you have proof of this?”
“I have witnesses. Thanatos among them.” He explained what had happened, and gradually, shock, sadness, and fury replaced the skepticism.
“More than three months have passed in the human realm,” Darnella said. “Why did you wait so long to bring this to us?”
“I was stuck in Sheoul.” Reaver braced himself for the rest of the confession, but before he could speak, a blond male Reaver didn’t recognize moved forward, dressed from head to toe in white.
“I’ll speak with the Archangels to determine if an investigation is needed and if Gethel will be required to hand over her sheoulghul.”
“If?” Reaver snorted in disgust. And Gethel was in possession of an artifact that allowed for recharging angelic powers in Sheoul? Most battle angels didn’t have access to sheoulghuls, and battle angels were the ones who needed them most. “I’m telling you that she’s gone bad. She’s sided with the bad guys—you remember them—the demons? Even now she’s plotting to bring Pestilence back.”
“And how, exactly, does she plan to do that?” Modran asked, skepticism dripping from his deep voice. “Pestilence is dead.”
Reaver winced. “Not… exactly. Thanatos used the wrong dagger. Reseph was sent to Sheoul-gra with Pestilence locked away inside him.”
Murmurs resonated through the crowd, and Darnella spoke up. “That’s unexpected, but good news. We stand a better chance of winning the future biblical Apocalypse with an extra Horseman on our side. We calculated the odds of success without him, and they were, sad to say, not encouraging.”
“Not encouraging?” Reaver was always amazed at his brethrens’ capacity for understatement. “You are aware of the theory that Reseph’s death could unravel history? Overnight, every reference to four Horsemen would be erased, including those from the Bible, and everything Reseph ever affected in any way would take a new course. If he’d died, we could all have woken up to a very different world.”
It was something that had happened before, when the Horsemen, before their curses, had started a war. Angels had stepped in and changed human history and memories with little consequence. But Reseph had been around for five thousand years and had affected countless lives and events.
Darnella smiled coldly. “Speculation. And irrelevant, since he’s not dead. Hopefully he’s suffering a million deaths right now.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, and Reaver prepared himself for a flaying that just might be physical as well as verbal.
“He’s not in Sheoul-gra,” he said abruptly. Rip the bandage off quickly and all that. “I wiped his memory and turned him over to the human realm.”
Stunned silence. And then furious roars and a few screeches of, “You did what?” Calls for Reaver’s wings to be severed followed next, along with too many offers to do it right now.
Reaver held up his hand, but the cacophony only died down a little. “It gets worse. Yeah, that’s right; save your insults and demands for my expulsion from Heaven for later.” He looked out over the furious crowd and wondered how long it was going to take for his Watcher duty to be taken away from him. Or worse. “Gethel knows Reseph is free, which probably means every key player in Sheoul does, too. As I said, she’s trying to bring Pestilence back, and if she finds him, she could do it if she subjects him to evil again.”
“How do you know this?” Modran asked—through clenched teeth.
“Harvester told me—”
“Harvester?” The jewel-robed guy practically screamed her name. “You trust the word of a fallen angel?”
“Not normally,” Reaver said. “But she has reasons to speak the truth about this. And her Watcher Council has known about Reseph’s release from Sheoul-gra for months, thanks to loose-lipped demons. Now that you know, you can confirm everything I’ve said.” He hopped down from the stage, letting it poof away. “I have an angel to hunt. I suggest you put the wheels in motion for others to be on the lookout for Gethel as well.”
“You’re going to be punished for what you’ve done,” Modran swore, as if Reaver had been at all unsure about that.
Reaver ignored Modran and strode toward the exit. He’d do everything in his power to find Gethel, but first he had to check in on the Horsemen.
And given that he’d missed a birth, a wedding, and who knew what else, he had a feeling that explaining his absence to them was going to be a lot more difficult than explaining it to angels.
Nine
Jillian woke to the smell of burned pancakes and charred bacon. She sat up, blinking, the events of last night as fuzzy as her eyes. She’d crashed, and crashed hard. She remembered waking at one point in the night, and although she couldn’t recall why she’d woken, she did know that Reseph had been holding her, and his chest had been wet with her tears.
He hadn’t said a word. He’d just handed her tissues and kept her close, his strong arms banded around her. And now, it seemed, he was trying to burn down her house.
She made a quick trip to the bathroom and donned her robe before hurrying to the kitchen, where Reseph, wearing only jeans, was dousing a fire.
Smoke drifted out of the sink, billowing up around a stream of rushing water. “Oh, uh… hi.” Reseph shot her a sheepish grin over his shoulder. “I tried to make you breakfast.”
“I can see that.” She peered into the sink, where the remains of paper towels and pancakes were an ashy mush. “I think, in the future, you should leave the cooking to me.”
He frowned down at the mess. “It’s like I’ve never cooked in my life. How could I not have cooked?”
“Maybe you only ate out?”
“Maybe I’m rich and have servants,” he suggested. “That would be cool.”
She turned off the gas burner that was heating the empty cast iron frying pan. “I don’t think I’d like being that rich.”
He pivoted around and propped his hip on the counter, giving her a tantalizing view of his sculpted chest. “So there’s nothing you’d want to change around here? No place you’d like to travel?”
The magical island full of hunks like Reseph came to mind. “Maybe I’d get a new truck and expand the barn, and a tropical vacation would be nice, but no, I like my life the way it is.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his sternum and worked his way up to his shoulder, getting out the morning kinks, and Jillian could barely tear her eyes away to open the fridge. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m better,” she said, as she fetched the bowl where she kept her fresh eggs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” She didn’t think she’d ever want to talk about her neighbors’ deaths, or the fact that she’d freaked out last night. “But thank you. And thanks for getting the fire going.”
“I also fed the animals and shoveled the path to the barn.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. I hope it’s okay, but I spent some time on the Internet.”
A twinge of anxiety shot through her. “Did you find anything? About yourself?”
