Alarm rang through him, stealing his appetite as well. “You can’t take me there.” His voice was a humiliatingly low rasp.
“I have to,” she said, reaching for a napkin. “They’ll be able to help more than I can.”
His pulse kicked into high gear, and a load of hot adrenaline seared his veins. He wanted to find out who he was, but right now, the only thing he knew was Jillian and her cabin. He couldn’t deal with more unknown. He couldn’t be abandoned again. Assuming he’d been abandoned in the first place, anyway.
Hastily shoving back from the table, he stood, startling Jillian to her feet.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Son of a bitch, that wasn’t true. He shook his head, which was starting to pound, almost as if there was someone on the inside, tapping on his skull. “Everything. Fuck, I don’t know.”
She started to move toward him, but he wasn’t ready to be touched or to be talked down or to answer questions. Some sort of sensory overload was making his brain tweak out. Or maybe he had hit his head. Whatever was freaking him out, he didn’t like it.
Before she could get closer, he grabbed his empty bowl and glass and darted to the sink. Then he stood there like a dolt, his palms sweating and his heart pounding.
“Reseph?” Her voice was tentative. Soft. “Are you okay?”
Not even close. “You have a dishwasher.”
“It’s old, but it works.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know how to use it.”
“Every model is different—”
“No. I don’t think I’ve ever used one.” It was such a stupid thing, but it made him feel so… lost.
“You have amnesia, Reseph.”
“It’s not that. I mean, I might not remember anything, but some things are familiar. I knew I liked chili. I know I like sex. I know how to use a computer. But I don’t know what to do with a dishwasher.”
Her hand came down on his as he held onto his bowl in the sink, and he changed his mind about not wanting to be touched, because her hand soothed him as quickly as a shot of fine tequila. Which was another thing he knew he liked.
“I’ll do this,” she said gently. “Why don’t you get some rest?”
“I’ve gotten enough rest.”
“Then go watch some TV. I have DVDs if the satellite isn’t working.”
He didn’t want to leave her, but he wasn’t even sure why. Still, he sensed that she needed some space, and why wouldn’t she? He was a stranger in her house, where she was clearly used to living alone. Really, it was a miracle that she’d taken him in. A lot of people would have left him to die.
Wait… how did he know that? If he was right about people leaving him to die, he must have known some real scumbags in his life.
Which didn’t speak highly for him. In fact, in the deepest recesses of his brain where the strange tapping was going on, there lurked a nasty suspicion. The suspicion that Reseph himself might be a scumbag.
Or worse.
Three
“How are you doing there, you hot, na**d hunk of angel?”
Reaver opened his eyes just long enough to glare at Harvester, a fallen angel who seemed to delight in annoying the shit out of him.
Closing his lids, Reaver settled back against the wall of bone behind him. “I’m an angel trapped in hell, and I’m being slowly digested in the belly of some giant demon. How do you think I am?”
Harvester snapped her fingers in front of his face, startling him into opening his eyes again. She crouched at his feet, her ebony hair cascading all the way to her h*ps over her black leather and lace minidress, a backpack next to her on the ground. “You do regenerate. Quit being dramatic.”
He sighed. “It’s interesting how your latest torture method is to annoy me to death.”
“Annoy?” In a surprising move, she sat down beside him, back to the wall. “I call it conversation. Would you rather be alone in here?”
“Ah. So you’re revealing your softer, gentler side. Sacrificing yourself to keep me company.”
“You’re so cynical.”
“Maybe that’s because a year ago, you tricked me, held me captive, cut off my wings, and tried to get me addicted to marrow wine.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Clearly, my cynicism is unwarranted.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t want to do those things. Maybe I was under orders.”
The Horsemen Watcher Council in Sheoul operated much the same as the Council in Heaven, meaning they offered suggestions and passed along information from Those In Power. But ultimately, it was up to the assigned Watcher himself to take responsibility for any action he or she took. Harvester, as the Four Horsemen’s evil Watcher, would know that.
“Holding a Watcher captive is a violation of Watcher rules. It doesn’t matter if your orders came from the Council or Satan himself. You’ll be punished.” Probably by both Sheoulic and Heavenly forces. Each side was responsible for punishing their own Watcher, but sometimes both sides demanded the right to mete out punishment.
“Eventually.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Right now everyone is too busy putting the human realm back together. Besides, I’ll get a slap on the wrist. Maybe have Watcher duty taken away. I’ll live.”
“That would be a shame.”
Though he was being sarcastic, there was a part of him that would prefer she remained alive and kept her job. As the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, Reaver had to deal with whoever would replace her, and as fallen angels went, there were a lot worse than Harvester.
He shifted, wincing at the agony of his skin scraping on acid-coated taste buds. “How long have I been here, anyway?”
Time worked differently in some regions of Heaven and in Sheoul-gra, and you never knew if one hour spent in one of those places meant three months in the human realm, or if it meant three seconds. Time shifted as often and as quickly as the wind, with no discernible pattern.
“In the half hour you were here with Reseph, three months passed in the human realm. After you threw him out, time here went the opposite way. You’ve been here for three months, but only minutes have passed in the human realm.” She lifted one slender shoulder in a shrug. “Basically, it all evened out. Three months for both realms.”
Which would mean that Reseph would have only recently awakened.
“How do you know I threw Reseph out?”
Harvester rolled her eyes. “You didn’t come here to chat with demon souls. No angel would risk coming to Sheoul, let alone Sheoul-gra, without a damned good reason. Reseph was your reason.” She smirked. “Plus, Hades told me you did something to Reseph to make him disappear.”
“That blue-haired bastard,” Reaver growled. “As if running demon purgatory doesn’t keep him busy enough? He had to rat me out to you?”
“He has to amuse himself somehow, I guess.” Harvester tapped the backpack. “I brought you clothes.” She raked him with a naughty gaze. “Not that you should put them on, you sexy thing.”
Suspicion churned in his gut. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch.” Standing, she unzipped the pack and tossed a pair of bright pink sweats dotted with kittens into his lap. There was the catch… looking stupid. “So where did you send Reseph? I can’t sense him at all anymore.”
“I’m not telling you.”
“I need to know. He’s in danger.”
Clutching the goofy sweatpants, Reaver popped to his feet. “What do you mean, he’s in danger? Reseph’s Seal was repaired and he’s no longer Pestilence. The Daemonica’s prophecy was thwarted.”
There had always been two apocalyptic prophecies about the Four Horsemen, one catalogued by a demon holy book, the Daemonica, and one accounted for in the human Bible. The differences lay in how their Seals would break and what side the Horsemen would fight on… good or evil. Reaver was relieved that only the “good” prophecy was left, but whatever Harvester was babbling about sent a tremor of alarm through him.
“Fool. You know prophecies can change. Reseph’s Seal may not be able to break again until the Bible’s prophecy comes to pass, but the events of the last year have caused a disruption in what was originally foreseen. The Horsemen are still predicted to fight on the side of good in the biblical Apocalypse. But…”
Reaver ground his teeth. “But?” he prompted.
“But Reseph’s evil side was awakened when he became Pestilence. His demon isn’t dead. It’s merely locked up.”
“I know.” And that was actually Reaver’s doing. He’d been in possession of Wormwood, the dagger that could have destroyed Pestilence, but it would have killed Reseph, too. Instead of giving it to the other three Horsemen, he’d let them use Deliverance instead, a dagger they’d wrongly believed would kill Pestilence. “That’s why I took his memory and sent him away.”
“Well, I recently received word from Those In Power that when his memories come back, if he’s not strong enough and he’s subjected to evil again…”
“Pestilence could return,” Reaver said grimly. Damn. He supposed he should be grateful to Harvester for delivering the news, seeing how he was cut off from his own Watcher Council.
But he couldn’t afford to be grateful for anything Harvester did. She would never forgive a debt.
“He won’t have the same powers if he comes back,” she said, “and he can’t bring about the same kind of destruction on the Earth that he did before; at least, not on the same scale. But he can still spread plague and disease, and it will still mean that he can plot, disrupt lives, raise armies in preparation for the biblical Apocalypse. And it would mean one less Horseman to fight for you Goody Two-shoes in the future.”
Through a filter of skepticism, Reaver considered what Harvester was saying. “You’re playing me, Fallen. You only want to find him so you can help that evil side of him come out again.”
“Trust me,” she spat. “I don’t want Pestilence to show his bastard face anytime soon. I want to know where he is so I can keep it from happening.”
Reaver almost believed her. She hated Pestilence, and he couldn’t blame her. Pestilence had hurt her in ways even she didn’t deserve.
He tugged on the sweatpants. They were ridiculously tight, no doubt thanks to Harvester’s sense of humor. “I can’t tell you.”
“You do realize you’ve violated a massive Watcher rule by casting him out of here, right? And by not telling me where he is, you’re violating another. I could have you so punished.”
“No doubt you will,” he muttered. “But I can’t risk telling you. If what you’re saying is true, and anyone else knows he’s out in the world, he’ll have every evil being in Sheoul after him, all trying to bring Pestilence out. If they even suspect that you know where he is, you’ll be tortured for the information.”
“Aw, thanks for caring,” she said with a flutter of eyelashes. “But I can handle it.”
Yeah, he’d seen how well she’d handled it when he found Gethel, the Horsemen’s ex-Heavenly Watcher and a black-hearted traitor, working Harvester over with treclan spikes. Harvester had been broken.
“Speaking of torture, any news on Gethel?”
Harvester’s eyes gleamed. “Rumor has it that she’s recovered from your ass-kicking and is on a mission to find Reseph and bring back Pestilence.”
“What?” Beneath him, the ground shook, the giant digesting demon’s reaction to his roar. “You couldn’t have started off the conversation with, ‘Oh, hey, you didn’t kill Gethel, and by the way, she’s trying to locate Reseph to turn him back into Pestilence’?”
“Why? It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”
She had a point, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “How does she know Reseph is out in the world? Did Hades tell her, too?”
Harvester smoothed her hands down her dress, as if the skintight sheath was wrinkled. “I have no idea. I can only assume that she or Lucifer has spies. But you can bet they won’t keep the knowledge a secret. That’s why I’m here. I need to find Reseph before they do.”
So the choice came down to evil or… evil. Awesome.
Reaver wasn’t prepared to consider either option. What he needed was more information. And a way to get out of here. Right now, his only hope for either was to play nice with Harvester. Finding common ground was probably his best bet.
“How are the other Horsemen doing? What did Regan and Than name their son?” A pang of regret that he hadn’t gone to see the new baby before he’d come to Sheoul-gra ran through him.
“They’re all well, and Than and Regan named the baby Logan Thanatos.” Harvester smiled, and Reaver nearly fell over. She actually seemed happy for them.
He also realized that this was the first time they’d ever had a civil conversation. It was almost… friendly. Weird, since Harvester generally reacted to friendliness with bitchiness.
The scream of a demon in agony echoed from somewhere outside of the gullet of the creature they were standing inside, reminding him that no matter how polite their chat was going, they were still in hell. “What’s Logan look like?”
“He has Than’s blond hair and Regan’s hazel eyes. He smiles a lot.” Harvester twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she eyed him. “I’ll get you out of here to see him if you tell me where Reseph is.”
“I have to,” she said, reaching for a napkin. “They’ll be able to help more than I can.”
His pulse kicked into high gear, and a load of hot adrenaline seared his veins. He wanted to find out who he was, but right now, the only thing he knew was Jillian and her cabin. He couldn’t deal with more unknown. He couldn’t be abandoned again. Assuming he’d been abandoned in the first place, anyway.
Hastily shoving back from the table, he stood, startling Jillian to her feet.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Son of a bitch, that wasn’t true. He shook his head, which was starting to pound, almost as if there was someone on the inside, tapping on his skull. “Everything. Fuck, I don’t know.”
She started to move toward him, but he wasn’t ready to be touched or to be talked down or to answer questions. Some sort of sensory overload was making his brain tweak out. Or maybe he had hit his head. Whatever was freaking him out, he didn’t like it.
Before she could get closer, he grabbed his empty bowl and glass and darted to the sink. Then he stood there like a dolt, his palms sweating and his heart pounding.
“Reseph?” Her voice was tentative. Soft. “Are you okay?”
Not even close. “You have a dishwasher.”
“It’s old, but it works.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know how to use it.”
“Every model is different—”
“No. I don’t think I’ve ever used one.” It was such a stupid thing, but it made him feel so… lost.
“You have amnesia, Reseph.”
“It’s not that. I mean, I might not remember anything, but some things are familiar. I knew I liked chili. I know I like sex. I know how to use a computer. But I don’t know what to do with a dishwasher.”
Her hand came down on his as he held onto his bowl in the sink, and he changed his mind about not wanting to be touched, because her hand soothed him as quickly as a shot of fine tequila. Which was another thing he knew he liked.
“I’ll do this,” she said gently. “Why don’t you get some rest?”
“I’ve gotten enough rest.”
“Then go watch some TV. I have DVDs if the satellite isn’t working.”
He didn’t want to leave her, but he wasn’t even sure why. Still, he sensed that she needed some space, and why wouldn’t she? He was a stranger in her house, where she was clearly used to living alone. Really, it was a miracle that she’d taken him in. A lot of people would have left him to die.
Wait… how did he know that? If he was right about people leaving him to die, he must have known some real scumbags in his life.
Which didn’t speak highly for him. In fact, in the deepest recesses of his brain where the strange tapping was going on, there lurked a nasty suspicion. The suspicion that Reseph himself might be a scumbag.
Or worse.
Three
“How are you doing there, you hot, na**d hunk of angel?”
Reaver opened his eyes just long enough to glare at Harvester, a fallen angel who seemed to delight in annoying the shit out of him.
Closing his lids, Reaver settled back against the wall of bone behind him. “I’m an angel trapped in hell, and I’m being slowly digested in the belly of some giant demon. How do you think I am?”
Harvester snapped her fingers in front of his face, startling him into opening his eyes again. She crouched at his feet, her ebony hair cascading all the way to her h*ps over her black leather and lace minidress, a backpack next to her on the ground. “You do regenerate. Quit being dramatic.”
He sighed. “It’s interesting how your latest torture method is to annoy me to death.”
“Annoy?” In a surprising move, she sat down beside him, back to the wall. “I call it conversation. Would you rather be alone in here?”
“Ah. So you’re revealing your softer, gentler side. Sacrificing yourself to keep me company.”
“You’re so cynical.”
“Maybe that’s because a year ago, you tricked me, held me captive, cut off my wings, and tried to get me addicted to marrow wine.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Clearly, my cynicism is unwarranted.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t want to do those things. Maybe I was under orders.”
The Horsemen Watcher Council in Sheoul operated much the same as the Council in Heaven, meaning they offered suggestions and passed along information from Those In Power. But ultimately, it was up to the assigned Watcher himself to take responsibility for any action he or she took. Harvester, as the Four Horsemen’s evil Watcher, would know that.
“Holding a Watcher captive is a violation of Watcher rules. It doesn’t matter if your orders came from the Council or Satan himself. You’ll be punished.” Probably by both Sheoulic and Heavenly forces. Each side was responsible for punishing their own Watcher, but sometimes both sides demanded the right to mete out punishment.
“Eventually.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Right now everyone is too busy putting the human realm back together. Besides, I’ll get a slap on the wrist. Maybe have Watcher duty taken away. I’ll live.”
“That would be a shame.”
Though he was being sarcastic, there was a part of him that would prefer she remained alive and kept her job. As the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, Reaver had to deal with whoever would replace her, and as fallen angels went, there were a lot worse than Harvester.
He shifted, wincing at the agony of his skin scraping on acid-coated taste buds. “How long have I been here, anyway?”
Time worked differently in some regions of Heaven and in Sheoul-gra, and you never knew if one hour spent in one of those places meant three months in the human realm, or if it meant three seconds. Time shifted as often and as quickly as the wind, with no discernible pattern.
“In the half hour you were here with Reseph, three months passed in the human realm. After you threw him out, time here went the opposite way. You’ve been here for three months, but only minutes have passed in the human realm.” She lifted one slender shoulder in a shrug. “Basically, it all evened out. Three months for both realms.”
Which would mean that Reseph would have only recently awakened.
“How do you know I threw Reseph out?”
Harvester rolled her eyes. “You didn’t come here to chat with demon souls. No angel would risk coming to Sheoul, let alone Sheoul-gra, without a damned good reason. Reseph was your reason.” She smirked. “Plus, Hades told me you did something to Reseph to make him disappear.”
“That blue-haired bastard,” Reaver growled. “As if running demon purgatory doesn’t keep him busy enough? He had to rat me out to you?”
“He has to amuse himself somehow, I guess.” Harvester tapped the backpack. “I brought you clothes.” She raked him with a naughty gaze. “Not that you should put them on, you sexy thing.”
Suspicion churned in his gut. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch.” Standing, she unzipped the pack and tossed a pair of bright pink sweats dotted with kittens into his lap. There was the catch… looking stupid. “So where did you send Reseph? I can’t sense him at all anymore.”
“I’m not telling you.”
“I need to know. He’s in danger.”
Clutching the goofy sweatpants, Reaver popped to his feet. “What do you mean, he’s in danger? Reseph’s Seal was repaired and he’s no longer Pestilence. The Daemonica’s prophecy was thwarted.”
There had always been two apocalyptic prophecies about the Four Horsemen, one catalogued by a demon holy book, the Daemonica, and one accounted for in the human Bible. The differences lay in how their Seals would break and what side the Horsemen would fight on… good or evil. Reaver was relieved that only the “good” prophecy was left, but whatever Harvester was babbling about sent a tremor of alarm through him.
“Fool. You know prophecies can change. Reseph’s Seal may not be able to break again until the Bible’s prophecy comes to pass, but the events of the last year have caused a disruption in what was originally foreseen. The Horsemen are still predicted to fight on the side of good in the biblical Apocalypse. But…”
Reaver ground his teeth. “But?” he prompted.
“But Reseph’s evil side was awakened when he became Pestilence. His demon isn’t dead. It’s merely locked up.”
“I know.” And that was actually Reaver’s doing. He’d been in possession of Wormwood, the dagger that could have destroyed Pestilence, but it would have killed Reseph, too. Instead of giving it to the other three Horsemen, he’d let them use Deliverance instead, a dagger they’d wrongly believed would kill Pestilence. “That’s why I took his memory and sent him away.”
“Well, I recently received word from Those In Power that when his memories come back, if he’s not strong enough and he’s subjected to evil again…”
“Pestilence could return,” Reaver said grimly. Damn. He supposed he should be grateful to Harvester for delivering the news, seeing how he was cut off from his own Watcher Council.
But he couldn’t afford to be grateful for anything Harvester did. She would never forgive a debt.
“He won’t have the same powers if he comes back,” she said, “and he can’t bring about the same kind of destruction on the Earth that he did before; at least, not on the same scale. But he can still spread plague and disease, and it will still mean that he can plot, disrupt lives, raise armies in preparation for the biblical Apocalypse. And it would mean one less Horseman to fight for you Goody Two-shoes in the future.”
Through a filter of skepticism, Reaver considered what Harvester was saying. “You’re playing me, Fallen. You only want to find him so you can help that evil side of him come out again.”
“Trust me,” she spat. “I don’t want Pestilence to show his bastard face anytime soon. I want to know where he is so I can keep it from happening.”
Reaver almost believed her. She hated Pestilence, and he couldn’t blame her. Pestilence had hurt her in ways even she didn’t deserve.
He tugged on the sweatpants. They were ridiculously tight, no doubt thanks to Harvester’s sense of humor. “I can’t tell you.”
“You do realize you’ve violated a massive Watcher rule by casting him out of here, right? And by not telling me where he is, you’re violating another. I could have you so punished.”
“No doubt you will,” he muttered. “But I can’t risk telling you. If what you’re saying is true, and anyone else knows he’s out in the world, he’ll have every evil being in Sheoul after him, all trying to bring Pestilence out. If they even suspect that you know where he is, you’ll be tortured for the information.”
“Aw, thanks for caring,” she said with a flutter of eyelashes. “But I can handle it.”
Yeah, he’d seen how well she’d handled it when he found Gethel, the Horsemen’s ex-Heavenly Watcher and a black-hearted traitor, working Harvester over with treclan spikes. Harvester had been broken.
“Speaking of torture, any news on Gethel?”
Harvester’s eyes gleamed. “Rumor has it that she’s recovered from your ass-kicking and is on a mission to find Reseph and bring back Pestilence.”
“What?” Beneath him, the ground shook, the giant digesting demon’s reaction to his roar. “You couldn’t have started off the conversation with, ‘Oh, hey, you didn’t kill Gethel, and by the way, she’s trying to locate Reseph to turn him back into Pestilence’?”
“Why? It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”
She had a point, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “How does she know Reseph is out in the world? Did Hades tell her, too?”
Harvester smoothed her hands down her dress, as if the skintight sheath was wrinkled. “I have no idea. I can only assume that she or Lucifer has spies. But you can bet they won’t keep the knowledge a secret. That’s why I’m here. I need to find Reseph before they do.”
So the choice came down to evil or… evil. Awesome.
Reaver wasn’t prepared to consider either option. What he needed was more information. And a way to get out of here. Right now, his only hope for either was to play nice with Harvester. Finding common ground was probably his best bet.
“How are the other Horsemen doing? What did Regan and Than name their son?” A pang of regret that he hadn’t gone to see the new baby before he’d come to Sheoul-gra ran through him.
“They’re all well, and Than and Regan named the baby Logan Thanatos.” Harvester smiled, and Reaver nearly fell over. She actually seemed happy for them.
He also realized that this was the first time they’d ever had a civil conversation. It was almost… friendly. Weird, since Harvester generally reacted to friendliness with bitchiness.
The scream of a demon in agony echoed from somewhere outside of the gullet of the creature they were standing inside, reminding him that no matter how polite their chat was going, they were still in hell. “What’s Logan look like?”
“He has Than’s blond hair and Regan’s hazel eyes. He smiles a lot.” Harvester twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she eyed him. “I’ll get you out of here to see him if you tell me where Reseph is.”
