“No deal.”
“Stubborn git.” She toyed with the ends of her hair, brushing them playfully across the deep furrow of her cleavage. “I have one other offer. If you don’t take it, you should know that Azagoth has been pressing me to torment you with more than annoying conversation. He’s furious that you released Reseph. He had serious plans to make Pestilence pay for torturing his daughter.”
And that was one of the reasons Reaver had freed Reseph. Azagoth, Sheoul-gra’s gatekeeper, wouldn’t care that the male trapped here was Reseph, not Pestilence. Reaver couldn’t allow Reseph to suffer for his demon half’s deeds.
He narrowed his eyes at his fellow Watcher. “What’s the offer?”
Slowly, seductively, Harvester licked her generous lips, and Reaver’s gut twisted. “Sex,” she said, her voice all silk and sin. “You agree to pleasure me at the time of my choosing.”
“What?” He blinked like a dope. “Why? You hate me.”
“My reasons are my own.” She trailed one slender finger down her throat, continuing lower, until she was caressing her nipple through the sheer fabric at the bodice of her dress. “Well? What’s your answer? Give me sex in return for your freedom.”
The very idea made him want to hurl. But it wasn’t as if he was rolling in options. “When? Where? And for how long?”
“When I wish it. Could be tomorrow, could be in two hundred years. Where? We’ll make it fair and say in the human realm so neither of us has a power advantage. How long? Twenty-four human hours.”
“And what,” he said through clenched teeth, “will you have me do?”
Her eyes sparked with hunger. “Whatever I want you to do. But you should know that I’m into pretty much everything.” Her voice became a throaty, honeyed drawl. “And I especially appreciate a talented tongue.”
He really was going to throw up. Closing his eyes, he considered her offer and in the end decided that twenty-four hours in Harvester’s bed couldn’t be worse than an eternity in a Sheoul-gra torture chamber.
Probably.
“Fine,” he ground out. “But just you. No threesomes, no spectators, and no commands that aren’t directly related to… pleasuring you.” He barely managed those last two words.
“Deal.” She sauntered up to him and placed her palm over his heart. “A kiss to seal it.”
Lifting her face, Harvester slanted her mouth over his. He wasn’t sure what he expected from her, but soft lips and a flavor like fresh rose water wasn’t it. Neither was the vague sense of familiarity. Had she kissed him before? Maybe when he’d been held captive in her house and under the influence of marrow wine?
Her tongue slid along the seam of his lips, and okay, if she wanted to play, he’d play. She thought she was stealing a kiss from an angel, thought she had the upper hand.
Never. Gripping her shoulders, he spun her into the wall and pinned her with his body. His wings flared high, draping them both in darkness. She grunted as he plunged his tongue into her mouth, taking instead of giving.
“You like it rough then, do you?” she murmured against his lips. “I can do you that way.”
A surprisingly pleasant sting sizzled through his mouth, and then Harvester was licking at his lips and tongue. He tasted blood, knew she’d clipped him with a fang. Heat rushed south, stirring his loins.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He hated Harvester. Despised everything about her. And yet… damn.
Before she discovered the extent of how much his body was betraying him, he kissed her savagely hard and stepped back, summoning every measure of icy composure he had.
“Deal sealed,” he said.
Harvester’s eyes were glazed as she dabbed at the blood on her lips with the back of her hand. “Sealed.” She smiled, flashing shiny white fangtips. “Now, I’ll get you out of here. But remember, angel. When I call, you come running. And make sure you’re fully clothed. I want to strip you myself.”
Gethel stood atop a rocky outcrop in Scotland, her gaze focused on the castle in the distance, its bottom half shrouded in mist. Her sharp eyesight caught a glimpse of two Aegis Elders, Lance and Omar, as they stood on the south wall smoking cigarettes. She wondered if they were discussing her; she’d given them enough to talk about for a month straight. All lies, of course, meant to trick them into doing her bidding.
Well, the fact that the Horsemen hated The Aegis wasn’t a lie, but she might have exaggerated about how many Aegi the Horsemen planned to kill in retaliation for The Aegis’s role in trying to kill Thanatos’s child.
All the better to scare The Aegis into following her blindly. And why wouldn’t they? She was an angel, after all.
Twin wisps of smoke rose from the Elders’ cigarettes, dissipating quickly in the brisk breeze. She could almost smell the tobacco, and her mouth watered. Tobacco was a distinctly human and demon pleasure, and as such, most angels turned up their noses at so much as standing downwind of the smoke. But in her meeting yesterday with Lucifer, she’d been offered a plethora of sinfully decadent drugs, drinks, and foods, and there was no way she could turn down everything. Not when Lucifer, Satan’s right-hand man, insisted.
The cigarette had represented yet another step down a path from which she couldn’t return, and each step was another knife in her soul.
She’d spent three months denying that helping Pestilence had really been so bad, but with each new sin, each action she took against Heaven, it began to sink in.
Still, she felt like she was straddling the line between good and evil, had yet to jump into either pool with both feet. As proof that she wasn’t all bad, she hadn’t revealed the location of The Aegis’s headquarters to the forces of hell… maybe because she’d always supported the demon-slayers’ cause. For thousands of years, they had been all that stood between demons and humans, and she respected their awesome sacrifices.
That, and for now, The Aegis had no idea she had taken a few turns at playing for Team Evil. They still believed she was a Heavenly angel, and she supposed that was true enough. None of her angelic brethren had found her, tried her, and ripped her wings from her back before drop-kicking her straight into Sheoul.
Her crimes would not earn her a stop at the halfway point, the human realm, the place most disgraced angels went to make a choice: try to earn their way back to Heaven, or enter hell and become irreversibly evil, a True Fallen. No, as Reaver had pointed out during their battle three months ago, she was Fallen… she just hadn’t lost her wings.
Reaver was such an obnoxious bastard.
This was all his fault. If he’d refused to replace her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, she wouldn’t have grown angry. She wouldn’t have plotted against him and the Horsemen by working with Pestilence and Lucifer. What had the Archangels been thinking by appointing him? Reaver, who had once done something so egregious that they’d wiped his past from his memory and that of every angel in existence? Reaver, who had disobeyed too many rules to count and had been stripped of his wings just thirty years ago?
Yes, he’d earned his wings back by saving the world with some idiot incubus, but it had been clear to Gethel even then, when she’d awarded him with his angel status, that little had changed. He was still the same arrogant, defiant fool he’d always been.
He was going to pay for what he’d done to her. For what he’d forced her to do. But first, she needed to find Reseph.
Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the sky and repeated a summoning spell she knew by heart. She’d already made the appropriate sacrifice, even though it had pained her to do it—a human male virgin and a pregnant human female. Now she need only wait for the agent of her summons to appear.
When he did, she barely kept herself from recoiling.
The creature, his oozing flesh hanging off his skeletal frame in jerky-like strips and crawling with maggots, materialized before her. He clacked his sharp teeth, and the sound pierced her eardrums like a blade.
“Beautiful angel.” His voice gurgled, as if he was speaking through oil. “What can I give you today?”
“I need khnives and Soulshredders.”
The creature hissed. “Soulshredders don’t do anyone’s bidding.”
“They will this time.” She paused, taking a moment to enjoy the skepticism in the demon’s rheumy yellow eyes. “Their master, Pestilence, is somewhere in the world, and they need to find him.”
“Lies,” the creature rumbled. “Pestilence is dead.”
Drawing on a current of Heavenly power, Gethel flared her wings and came off the ground to hover over the demon. “Angels do not lie, you pathetic wretch.” Her voice boomed like thunder, and the demon cringed. “Pestilence lives, trapped inside his brother’s body, and every Soulshredder in Sheoul needs to be looking for him.” The khnives, horrid opossum-like creatures, could help as well… they excelled at spywork.
The demon nodded vehemently. “A rescue.”
“Exactly.” Gethel cut herself off from her Heavenly power source, praying no one had sensed her while she’d been connected, or if they had, that the connection had been too weak or too brief to trace. To be safe, she needed to get away from here. “Off with you,” she said, shooing the demon away with a flick of her hand. “Get the word out to the Soulshredder Council. I want Reseph found, and if they have to torture and kill everyone who means something to him to do it, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
Pay? Seeing Reseph’s loved ones die would be a bonus.
Four
Jillian took her time cleaning the kitchen, allowing Reseph a chance to unwind. He’d seemed so sad and confused, and while she might not know him very well, her heart had broken for him.
The TV blared from the living room, and when she finally finished in the kitchen, she found Reseph lounging on her couch, feet up on the coffee table, with Doodle purring in his lap. He’d been eyeing the pictures on the wall, skimming over the nature artwork and focusing on the photos of her skydiving and skiing. She used to be good at those things before the demons came.
Jillian nodded at the cat. “He likes you.”
She stood there, hesitant to take a seat next to Reseph, but the couch was the only place to sit. She’d moved her father’s ratty old recliner down to the cellar a few months ago. Her mom had, for years, complained about the thing, saying it was fit only for the local landfill, and while Jillian agreed, she couldn’t bear to part with it. Not yet.
Reseph ran his hand over the cat’s spotted brown fur in long, even strokes. “What’s his name?”
“Doodle.”
“Doodle?” He winced. “No wonder he’s so friendly. He’s begging me to call him something like Fang, or Chaos, or Styx.” He patted the empty cushion next to him. “Have a seat. I won’t bite.” A cocky smile accompanied a waggle of his brows. “Unless you like that kind of thing.”
Her cheeks burned at the unbidden image of him nipping at her sensitive spots. “Do you like that kind of thing? I mean, do you think you do?”
His voice turned smoky. Rich. Decadent as hell. “I know I do.” He scratched Doodle’s chin. “See, I know some stuff.”
Now she was burning all over as she sank onto the couch, putting as much space between them as she could without looking like she was trying. Still, he knew, shooting her an amused glance before turning his attention to the TV.
“So what’s going on in the world?” He gestured to the CNN news anchor talking about recovery efforts in Sydney. “What happened in Australia?”
Oh God, he didn’t even know about that? How could he be a blank slate? Was that even medically possible?
She tucked one leg under her and got comfortable, because this was going to be a very uncomfortable conversation. “What’s the last thing you remember about the world?”
Doodle nudged Reseph’s hand, clearly not happy that his new best friend had stopped petting him. “I don’t remember anything before the snowbank.”
“Okay, what’s the last thing you know?” she asked. “Like, do you know who the president is?”
“Of what country?”
“The United States.”
He frowned. “I have no idea.”
“Who is the last one you remember?”
“Washington.” He sounded proud of himself for remembering something, and she hated having to crush him.
“You couldn’t remember him,” she said faintly. “He’s been dead for more than two hundred years.”
Throwing his head back, Reseph lowered his lids and concentrated. “I’ve got other names in my head, but I can’t place them. Like Napoléon and Hitler and Azagoth. It’s like I have all these puzzle pieces in my head, but I can’t fit more than two together.” Azagoth? He uttered a mild curse and opened his eyes. “I give up. So what’s up with the news showing destroyed countries? And why have they been blathering about economic meltdowns and recoveries? And apocalypses.”
“Because up until three months ago, the world was under siege by demons.” The last word came out as a broken whisper. It still didn’t seem real, and all at once, too real.
Reseph’s hand stilled on Doodle’s shoulders. “And now it’s not?”
“Thankfully, no. All of a sudden, demons all over the world were burned to ash or disappeared. People are calling it WV-Day, for World Victory Day. Every government is taking credit for the WV-Day, but no one can say why or how it all went down.” Conspiracy theories were off the charts, though. There were as many rumors floating around as there were trees on her property.
“Stubborn git.” She toyed with the ends of her hair, brushing them playfully across the deep furrow of her cleavage. “I have one other offer. If you don’t take it, you should know that Azagoth has been pressing me to torment you with more than annoying conversation. He’s furious that you released Reseph. He had serious plans to make Pestilence pay for torturing his daughter.”
And that was one of the reasons Reaver had freed Reseph. Azagoth, Sheoul-gra’s gatekeeper, wouldn’t care that the male trapped here was Reseph, not Pestilence. Reaver couldn’t allow Reseph to suffer for his demon half’s deeds.
He narrowed his eyes at his fellow Watcher. “What’s the offer?”
Slowly, seductively, Harvester licked her generous lips, and Reaver’s gut twisted. “Sex,” she said, her voice all silk and sin. “You agree to pleasure me at the time of my choosing.”
“What?” He blinked like a dope. “Why? You hate me.”
“My reasons are my own.” She trailed one slender finger down her throat, continuing lower, until she was caressing her nipple through the sheer fabric at the bodice of her dress. “Well? What’s your answer? Give me sex in return for your freedom.”
The very idea made him want to hurl. But it wasn’t as if he was rolling in options. “When? Where? And for how long?”
“When I wish it. Could be tomorrow, could be in two hundred years. Where? We’ll make it fair and say in the human realm so neither of us has a power advantage. How long? Twenty-four human hours.”
“And what,” he said through clenched teeth, “will you have me do?”
Her eyes sparked with hunger. “Whatever I want you to do. But you should know that I’m into pretty much everything.” Her voice became a throaty, honeyed drawl. “And I especially appreciate a talented tongue.”
He really was going to throw up. Closing his eyes, he considered her offer and in the end decided that twenty-four hours in Harvester’s bed couldn’t be worse than an eternity in a Sheoul-gra torture chamber.
Probably.
“Fine,” he ground out. “But just you. No threesomes, no spectators, and no commands that aren’t directly related to… pleasuring you.” He barely managed those last two words.
“Deal.” She sauntered up to him and placed her palm over his heart. “A kiss to seal it.”
Lifting her face, Harvester slanted her mouth over his. He wasn’t sure what he expected from her, but soft lips and a flavor like fresh rose water wasn’t it. Neither was the vague sense of familiarity. Had she kissed him before? Maybe when he’d been held captive in her house and under the influence of marrow wine?
Her tongue slid along the seam of his lips, and okay, if she wanted to play, he’d play. She thought she was stealing a kiss from an angel, thought she had the upper hand.
Never. Gripping her shoulders, he spun her into the wall and pinned her with his body. His wings flared high, draping them both in darkness. She grunted as he plunged his tongue into her mouth, taking instead of giving.
“You like it rough then, do you?” she murmured against his lips. “I can do you that way.”
A surprisingly pleasant sting sizzled through his mouth, and then Harvester was licking at his lips and tongue. He tasted blood, knew she’d clipped him with a fang. Heat rushed south, stirring his loins.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He hated Harvester. Despised everything about her. And yet… damn.
Before she discovered the extent of how much his body was betraying him, he kissed her savagely hard and stepped back, summoning every measure of icy composure he had.
“Deal sealed,” he said.
Harvester’s eyes were glazed as she dabbed at the blood on her lips with the back of her hand. “Sealed.” She smiled, flashing shiny white fangtips. “Now, I’ll get you out of here. But remember, angel. When I call, you come running. And make sure you’re fully clothed. I want to strip you myself.”
Gethel stood atop a rocky outcrop in Scotland, her gaze focused on the castle in the distance, its bottom half shrouded in mist. Her sharp eyesight caught a glimpse of two Aegis Elders, Lance and Omar, as they stood on the south wall smoking cigarettes. She wondered if they were discussing her; she’d given them enough to talk about for a month straight. All lies, of course, meant to trick them into doing her bidding.
Well, the fact that the Horsemen hated The Aegis wasn’t a lie, but she might have exaggerated about how many Aegi the Horsemen planned to kill in retaliation for The Aegis’s role in trying to kill Thanatos’s child.
All the better to scare The Aegis into following her blindly. And why wouldn’t they? She was an angel, after all.
Twin wisps of smoke rose from the Elders’ cigarettes, dissipating quickly in the brisk breeze. She could almost smell the tobacco, and her mouth watered. Tobacco was a distinctly human and demon pleasure, and as such, most angels turned up their noses at so much as standing downwind of the smoke. But in her meeting yesterday with Lucifer, she’d been offered a plethora of sinfully decadent drugs, drinks, and foods, and there was no way she could turn down everything. Not when Lucifer, Satan’s right-hand man, insisted.
The cigarette had represented yet another step down a path from which she couldn’t return, and each step was another knife in her soul.
She’d spent three months denying that helping Pestilence had really been so bad, but with each new sin, each action she took against Heaven, it began to sink in.
Still, she felt like she was straddling the line between good and evil, had yet to jump into either pool with both feet. As proof that she wasn’t all bad, she hadn’t revealed the location of The Aegis’s headquarters to the forces of hell… maybe because she’d always supported the demon-slayers’ cause. For thousands of years, they had been all that stood between demons and humans, and she respected their awesome sacrifices.
That, and for now, The Aegis had no idea she had taken a few turns at playing for Team Evil. They still believed she was a Heavenly angel, and she supposed that was true enough. None of her angelic brethren had found her, tried her, and ripped her wings from her back before drop-kicking her straight into Sheoul.
Her crimes would not earn her a stop at the halfway point, the human realm, the place most disgraced angels went to make a choice: try to earn their way back to Heaven, or enter hell and become irreversibly evil, a True Fallen. No, as Reaver had pointed out during their battle three months ago, she was Fallen… she just hadn’t lost her wings.
Reaver was such an obnoxious bastard.
This was all his fault. If he’d refused to replace her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, she wouldn’t have grown angry. She wouldn’t have plotted against him and the Horsemen by working with Pestilence and Lucifer. What had the Archangels been thinking by appointing him? Reaver, who had once done something so egregious that they’d wiped his past from his memory and that of every angel in existence? Reaver, who had disobeyed too many rules to count and had been stripped of his wings just thirty years ago?
Yes, he’d earned his wings back by saving the world with some idiot incubus, but it had been clear to Gethel even then, when she’d awarded him with his angel status, that little had changed. He was still the same arrogant, defiant fool he’d always been.
He was going to pay for what he’d done to her. For what he’d forced her to do. But first, she needed to find Reseph.
Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the sky and repeated a summoning spell she knew by heart. She’d already made the appropriate sacrifice, even though it had pained her to do it—a human male virgin and a pregnant human female. Now she need only wait for the agent of her summons to appear.
When he did, she barely kept herself from recoiling.
The creature, his oozing flesh hanging off his skeletal frame in jerky-like strips and crawling with maggots, materialized before her. He clacked his sharp teeth, and the sound pierced her eardrums like a blade.
“Beautiful angel.” His voice gurgled, as if he was speaking through oil. “What can I give you today?”
“I need khnives and Soulshredders.”
The creature hissed. “Soulshredders don’t do anyone’s bidding.”
“They will this time.” She paused, taking a moment to enjoy the skepticism in the demon’s rheumy yellow eyes. “Their master, Pestilence, is somewhere in the world, and they need to find him.”
“Lies,” the creature rumbled. “Pestilence is dead.”
Drawing on a current of Heavenly power, Gethel flared her wings and came off the ground to hover over the demon. “Angels do not lie, you pathetic wretch.” Her voice boomed like thunder, and the demon cringed. “Pestilence lives, trapped inside his brother’s body, and every Soulshredder in Sheoul needs to be looking for him.” The khnives, horrid opossum-like creatures, could help as well… they excelled at spywork.
The demon nodded vehemently. “A rescue.”
“Exactly.” Gethel cut herself off from her Heavenly power source, praying no one had sensed her while she’d been connected, or if they had, that the connection had been too weak or too brief to trace. To be safe, she needed to get away from here. “Off with you,” she said, shooing the demon away with a flick of her hand. “Get the word out to the Soulshredder Council. I want Reseph found, and if they have to torture and kill everyone who means something to him to do it, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
Pay? Seeing Reseph’s loved ones die would be a bonus.
Four
Jillian took her time cleaning the kitchen, allowing Reseph a chance to unwind. He’d seemed so sad and confused, and while she might not know him very well, her heart had broken for him.
The TV blared from the living room, and when she finally finished in the kitchen, she found Reseph lounging on her couch, feet up on the coffee table, with Doodle purring in his lap. He’d been eyeing the pictures on the wall, skimming over the nature artwork and focusing on the photos of her skydiving and skiing. She used to be good at those things before the demons came.
Jillian nodded at the cat. “He likes you.”
She stood there, hesitant to take a seat next to Reseph, but the couch was the only place to sit. She’d moved her father’s ratty old recliner down to the cellar a few months ago. Her mom had, for years, complained about the thing, saying it was fit only for the local landfill, and while Jillian agreed, she couldn’t bear to part with it. Not yet.
Reseph ran his hand over the cat’s spotted brown fur in long, even strokes. “What’s his name?”
“Doodle.”
“Doodle?” He winced. “No wonder he’s so friendly. He’s begging me to call him something like Fang, or Chaos, or Styx.” He patted the empty cushion next to him. “Have a seat. I won’t bite.” A cocky smile accompanied a waggle of his brows. “Unless you like that kind of thing.”
Her cheeks burned at the unbidden image of him nipping at her sensitive spots. “Do you like that kind of thing? I mean, do you think you do?”
His voice turned smoky. Rich. Decadent as hell. “I know I do.” He scratched Doodle’s chin. “See, I know some stuff.”
Now she was burning all over as she sank onto the couch, putting as much space between them as she could without looking like she was trying. Still, he knew, shooting her an amused glance before turning his attention to the TV.
“So what’s going on in the world?” He gestured to the CNN news anchor talking about recovery efforts in Sydney. “What happened in Australia?”
Oh God, he didn’t even know about that? How could he be a blank slate? Was that even medically possible?
She tucked one leg under her and got comfortable, because this was going to be a very uncomfortable conversation. “What’s the last thing you remember about the world?”
Doodle nudged Reseph’s hand, clearly not happy that his new best friend had stopped petting him. “I don’t remember anything before the snowbank.”
“Okay, what’s the last thing you know?” she asked. “Like, do you know who the president is?”
“Of what country?”
“The United States.”
He frowned. “I have no idea.”
“Who is the last one you remember?”
“Washington.” He sounded proud of himself for remembering something, and she hated having to crush him.
“You couldn’t remember him,” she said faintly. “He’s been dead for more than two hundred years.”
Throwing his head back, Reseph lowered his lids and concentrated. “I’ve got other names in my head, but I can’t place them. Like Napoléon and Hitler and Azagoth. It’s like I have all these puzzle pieces in my head, but I can’t fit more than two together.” Azagoth? He uttered a mild curse and opened his eyes. “I give up. So what’s up with the news showing destroyed countries? And why have they been blathering about economic meltdowns and recoveries? And apocalypses.”
“Because up until three months ago, the world was under siege by demons.” The last word came out as a broken whisper. It still didn’t seem real, and all at once, too real.
Reseph’s hand stilled on Doodle’s shoulders. “And now it’s not?”
“Thankfully, no. All of a sudden, demons all over the world were burned to ash or disappeared. People are calling it WV-Day, for World Victory Day. Every government is taking credit for the WV-Day, but no one can say why or how it all went down.” Conspiracy theories were off the charts, though. There were as many rumors floating around as there were trees on her property.
