Son of a— Ares shoved back from the desk. “Maybe you could have mentioned that earlier? You know, like about two thousand years earlier?” He cursed, not waiting for her or Reaver to say something idiotic like, you know the rules. “Humans are fragile. Easy to kill. If one of them takes on the agimortus—”
“That’s not the main problem,” Reaver said.
“Being easy to kill sounds like a big f**king problem to me. So what else is there?”
“Humans aren’t meant to host it. It’ll kill them. A human would, at most, have forty-eight hours to live.” Harvester smiled, and it was almost a relief to see her back to her sinister self. “And FYI? Pestilence knows. Expect him to step up the killing of Unfallens so Sestiel is forced to use a human. And then watch your world crumble, Horseman.”
Four
Reaver stood alone outside Ares’s house staring blindly at the distant olive grove, his helplessness eating at him. There were so many freaking rules when you were an angel, and Reaver was more aware of that fact than most.
He’d broken a strict Heavenly rule once, and he’d paid the price, had spent a couple of decades as a fallen angel. Then, during a near-Apocalyptic battle a couple of years ago, he’d sacrificed himself to save humanity, and he’d earned his wings back.
For a while, being fully winged and no longer scorned by his Heavenly brethren had been awesome. He was a battle angel, one of God’s warriors, and he’d spent his days slaughtering demons. He’d also been assigned as the Horsemen’s good Watcher. That had been cool, too, even if he was forced to deal with Harvester on a regular basis. Watcher was a prestigious position, and Gethel, the angel who had previously been assigned, hadn’t seemed to mind being rotated out of the duty.
Reaver hadn’t known why he’d been given the task, but now, with a new Apocalypse on the horizon, he was beginning to suspect that this was a test. A test to make sure he could be trusted not to break any rules no matter how dire things got for the human world.
Leaving behind the tang of the warm salt breeze, Reaver flashed to Reseph’s lair in the Himalayas. It was difficult thinking of the easygoing Horseman as Pestilence now, especially when Reaver strolled through the cave and the remnants of Reseph’s life: bean-bag chairs, a margarita blender, open bags of chips, and clothes strewn about the place.
Reaver wandered through the cave, seeking any evidence that Pestilence had been here recently. Hellrats the size of woodchucks scurried under his feet, their gaping mouths lined with multiple rows of needlelike teeth, their forked, black tongues flicking in the air. These were Pestilence’s little spies, and they would report back to him that Reaver had been here.
But not if Reaver could help it.
Smiling grimly, Reaver made a sweeping gesture, and power sang through him, creating an invisible wave of holy fire. The rats disintegrated, their squeaky screams echoing off the walls. Holy fire was awesome. Too bad it only worked on low-level evil.
Still, as an angel, he had an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. The Horsemen did, as well, and if they could locate Deliverance, they would have two weapons in one… because the dagger had a use they didn’t even know about. Problem was, neither he nor Harvester could reveal what they knew. To do so would be a violation of divine law. And Reaver was never going to break a rule again—even if not doing so meant an end to the world.
Gathering his thoughts, he circled the living room, trying to find a way to help Ares, Thanatos, and Limos without actually helping. They were running out of time, and he didn’t need to read all the celestial, biblical, and prophetic signs to know that. He felt it in the tremor shaking his soul.
Tremor. Frowning, he stopped pacing, but impact shocks continued to shoot up his legs. A dense malevolence thickened the air, the ground shifted beneath him, and suddenly pebbles were raining down from the ceiling. He looked up as a massive crack tore through the rock, and then the entire cave collapsed inward. A recliner-sized boulder crashed down, slamming into Reaver’s shoulder. Pain was a white-hot bolt of agony as he summoned all his concentration and flashed out of there before he was crushed and entombed for eternity inside a mountain.
Spreading his wings in the sky above the mountain range, he scanned the area, immediately zeroing in on the source of the sinister vibes… and the violent cave collapse.
Harvester.
Snarling, he dove for her, hitting her as she stood on a nearby mountain peak. She screamed as they both tumbled down the icy cliff face, hitting the bottom in a tangle of limbs and wings.
“Demon scum!” he snarled, as he wrapped his hand around her throat.
Her green eyes fired crimson, and her nails became talons that she swiped across his face. “What is your malfunction?”
He squeezed, taking satisfaction in her gasp for air. “What, you thought I’d be happy that you tried to encase me in stone forever?”
She blinked, and for a moment, he almost thought she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she sank her claws deep into his ruined shoulder, and the pain that swept through him was enough to make him sway and loosen his grip.
She was up in an instant, her booted foot crunching into his ribs. “If I’d wanted you out of the way, you wouldn’t have gotten out of there. Do you know what it’s like to be crushed flat and unable to die? Oh, that’s right, you don’t, because even if it had happened to you, you wouldn’t remember, would you?”
The bitch. He had no idea how she knew about his memory loss, but she loved needling him about how he couldn’t remember his life beyond events that led to his fall. Oh, he’d known things about Heaven and history and people, but he couldn’t remember the details of his existence before he’d met Patrice Kelley, the woman who had eventually convinced him to break such a critical rule that he’d been cast from Heaven.
Neither could anyone else. Even the Akashic records, the ultimate Heavenly database that contained the knowledge of everything, revealed nothing. It was as if Reaver had been erased.
“That was just a warning,” Harvester continued, her voice a deep purr. She was enjoying this. “Your love of breaking rules is well known. Don’t even think about finding loopholes to help the Horsemen.” She smiled, flashing fangs. “See, I have some Heavenly contacts, and I’ll make sure that the next time you fall, there will be no redemption. Only fire and pain.”
With a delicate wave, she flashed away, leaving Reaver alone on the ice, bleeding and shaken. He couldn’t afford to fall again. Doing so meant bypassing the earthbound, in-between stage and going straight to Sheoul, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
So no, Reaver wouldn’t break rules. But he would find a way to pay Harvester back. And when the Final Battle came, she would be the first demon he destroyed.
Harvester flashed herself to her opulent apartment in the Horun region of Sheoul… and screamed. Screamed until her throat went raw. Screamed until her blood slave, a huge male werewolf she called Whine, covered his ears and went to his knees.
When her voice finally went out, she took a few calming breaths, poured herself a shot of Neethul marrow wine, and downed it. The outrageously expensive liquor, made by the demon slave traders, burned like liquid fire and then sat in her belly like a lump of coal. The agony only lasted a moment, and then came the payoff, several minutes of orgasmic ecstasy so intense she had to lean on Whine as she shuddered through the pleasure.
When it was over, she sank down next to him, partly because her legs wouldn’t support her, and partly because she needed to feed. Silently, because he wasn’t allowed to speak unless she told him to, he tilted his head to the side, exposing his jugular. The shackles around his ankles clanked as she shifted to sink her fangs into his neck, and it occurred to her that her chains might be invisible, but she was just as much a prisoner to her fate as he was.
Frustration made her rougher than she normally would be with Whine, and he jerked with each of her vicious pulls on his vein. But dammit, the last two days had been hell… no pun intended. Her fury—and thirst for revenge—was why she’d destroyed his cave. She’d needed to strike back, even if the blow was a minor one.
The problem? Reaver. She hadn’t known the do-gooding angel was in the caves when she’d collapsed the mountain. She could have told him the truth when he’d attacked her, but he wouldn’t have believed her, and worse, she’d have been left trying to explain why she’d wanted to demolish Pestilence’s old residence in the first place.
And now, if Reaver didn’t keep his big mouth shut, Pestilence would find out that she’d been the one to destroy his cave.
She shuddered, remembering how, after he was through with her in that Mexican villa, he’d crouched over her na**d, broken body and whispered roughly in her ear.
That was just a taste of what I will do to you next time. You answer to me now, not the other way around. Remember that. Piss me off again, and I’ll rip you a new a**hole and then f**k it. And that’s just the foreplay.
Oh, she hated him. Right now, she and Reaver couldn’t do much more than monitor the Horsemen’s activities and report back to their bosses, and anything they did do to help or any information they provided had to be cleared first by said bosses. Information such as how Ares’s agimortus could be transferred to humans… that tidbit had been okayed for revealing just yesterday. Why, she didn’t know. She’d learned long ago that she, along with most every other being in the universe, was nothing but a game piece.
Now she just had to figure out how to play. Because as terrified as she’d been at times over the thousands of years she’d been in Sheoul, it was nothing compared to how afraid she was right now. Armageddon was right around the corner, and for the first time, she wasn’t sure if her life in hell would be worse if evil lost… or if it won.
Five
Still torqued from the conversation with Reaver and Harvester, Ares knocked on Cara’s front door and waited. And waited. Just as he raised his fist to knock again, he heard footsteps, and then a muffled, “Who is it?”