Reaver

Reaver was on board with that. The carrion wisps were inching closer, and now there were maybe a hundred of them, all sizing Reaver and Harvester up for a meal.

They picked up the pace, their boots clacking painfully loudly on the uneven cobblestone road. The eerie quiet of the place was so unsettling he decided he’d rather listen to Harvester.

“Obviously, you know where we are,” he said. “Do you know how to get us out of here?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “No. I still can’t sense Harrowgates. But if we keep moving to the north, we should arrive at the Pavilion of Serpents in a few days. It’s one of the few places you can flash us out of Sheoul from.”

As they walked she tugged at her wet tank top, airing it out and peeling it away from places where it had molded to her body. Really, she could leave it wet and plastered to her curves. Reaver might hate her, but he’d never denied that she had a spectacular body.

Except he didn’t really hate her anymore. The thought came out of nowhere, was a surprise to him, but he wasn’t going to deny it. The slivers of memories that had come to him when she’d taken his vein had brought back emotions as well. He’d cared for her when he was Yenrieth. He might have even loved her. And before any of those memories had returned, he’d already accepted that she’d done evil for the sake of good, and he understood how she’d become what she was.

So no, he no longer hated her. But that didn’t mean he trusted her.

“So what’s your plan for us when we get out of Sheoul?” Harvester asked. “You can’t take me to Heaven unless I’m bound with angel twine, and even if you have that, don’t you think the archangels are going to just toss me back to Satan?”

He actually did have angel twine tucked away in his pack, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The dental-floss-thin thread, if used to bind a fallen angels’ wings, allowed passage into Heaven. It also bound their powers while in Heaven. Handy stuff.

“They aren’t going to send you back,” he said.

She rubbed her bare arms as if chilled, but it was a million degrees in this freakshow realm. “How can you be sure?”

He bared his teeth at a carrion wisp who came a little too close, and the thing backed off. They were getting bolder. “You’ll be the most important asset the archangels have ever seen. After five thousand years in Sheoul, not to mention the fact that you’re Satan’s daughter, you have powerful intel. They won’t be able to afford to let you go again.”

He studied the faded slash marks on her arms and shoulders, wondered if the emotional scars she bore from her time in Satan’s dungeon were healing as fast as her physical ones.

“And,” he added, “you can help them find Lucifer. That’s your ace. They need you.”

He could almost feel the wall around her fortifying itself. “I told you I’m not helping.”

“You said that so I would kill you.”

“No,” she said, her voice thickened with anger. “I said it because I don’t give a shit what happens to anyone in Heaven. Especially not the archangels.” She stopped in the middle of the road, and so did the herd of carrion wisps. Her gaze met his. “You can’t trust them, Reaver. Never trust them.”

Surprised by her vehemence, Reaver hesitated, feeling as though he should comfort her even if he didn’t know why.

“I don’t.” He hefted the backpack higher on his shoulder. “But what makes you say that?”

Her smile was bitter. “I say it because I used to trust them. If there was anyone I thought I could count on, it was the archangels.”

“Until…” he prompted.

“Until I was ordered to take you captive,” she said, and an uneasy sensation rolled through him. “You can’t trust any of them. Especially not Raphael.”

“And why is that?” he bit out.

“Because,” she said softly, “it was Raphael who ordered your capture and torture.”

Harvester rarely got a chance to see Reaver struck dumb. Now was one of those moments, and she was going to savor it a little.

And maybe she wanted to savor it because even when he wasn’t being all luminous, like now, something about him still got to her like a poisonous rash, irritating the part of her that was dark and damaged.

She so badly wanted to scratch that itch.

Her body was tight with tension and the kind of restlessness that demanded relief. Making her even grumpier, her wing anchors felt like they were on fire. They were trying to heal, but they required fuel. She needed to feed again, but damn, she was still experiencing the ragey effects of the last feeding. What she couldn’t figure out was why, when she’d fed from Reaver, she hadn’t gone evil right away, the way she had when she’d fed from Tryst, the angel she’d killed thousands of years ago.

Guilt tore at her, cozying up to the thousands of other guilt-inducing acts she’d committed over the course of her life.

“Raphael?” Reaver finally growled. “He wanted you to cut off my wings and get me addicted to marrow wine? Why?”

“He needed you out of the way so you wouldn’t stop me from doing what I had to do to stop the Apocalypse.”

A tempest brewed in Reaver’s blue eyes, making them swirl with clouds and lightning. Sexy. She’d always loved a man with a temper.

“My ass. You could have gotten me out the way without torturing me.” He narrowed those stormy eyes at her. “So whose idea was that?”

She started walking again, hoping to outrun her own deeds, but no, Reaver kept up, his scorching glare a reminder of what she’d done.

“Well?”

“Raphael’s.”

They’d met in a realm-neutral Central American cave, where she’d asked the archangel to reconsider, but he’d been dead set on making sure Reaver was incapacitated and in pain. When she’d outright refused, he’d threatened to take the one thing she cherished. The one thing she still had left of Verrine’s life: her memories of Yenrieth.

It didn’t matter that some of the memories were terrible. The majority were from happy times when she and Yenrieth were learning to hunt demons or ride horses, or when they were just lying in a meadow and watching shepherds with their sheep. Those memories were what she hung onto when she lost faith in the reason she’d started on the fallen angel path in the first place. They’d given her a purpose. And more than anything else, including saving the world and giving the Horsemen peace and happiness in their lives, her memories of Yenrieth had given her an escape when she was hanging from chains in one of her father’s many dungeons.

“You already have more memories than you should,” Raphael said. “You don’t remember what he looks like, but you remember everything he did. No one, except perhaps Lilith, has even that. To everyone else, he only exists in the histories of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

She still had no idea why it was that she had memories no one else did, and Raphael never answered her when she asked. He was such a dick.

“You hellrat bastard,” she spat. “Reaver’s pain means so much to you that you’re blackmailing me to make it happen?”

“Yes.” Raphael brushed a cobweb off his shoulder. “Now, do you want me to take the memories of Yenrieth from you?”

“No.” Fury roared through her, joined by pain as her body morphed, against her will, into her demon body. She hated when she went all Hulk from rage or angel blood, but that’s what being a fallen angel was. Evil and ugly. “I’ll do it.”

Raphael shrank away from her in disgust. “Good.” He disappeared, but his voice hung in the air for a few more seconds. “Make it hurt. And don’t let me see you like that again. You’re hideous.”

Yeah, Raphael was all heart and a**hole.

“Did you enjoy hurting me?” Reaver asked, his voice as angry as his gaze.

Ouch. She supposed it was a legitimate question, given how she’d done all she could to make him believe she’d loved every minute of his misery, but for some reason, she no longer wanted him to think the worst of her. Maybe there really was part of her that was still good. She’d done a lot of things for the good team, but she’d never truly felt as if she was good. Especially because the things she’d done in the name of good had been reprehensible.

Like torturing Reaver.

She looked ahead, avoiding his gaze. “Did you enjoy it when you found Gethel torturing me with treclan spikes?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go.”

They walked in silence for a while, the carrion wisps still following like sickly ghosts.

“Harvester,” Reaver said, his voice calmer now, “why did you choose to fall?”

“I needed to watch over the Horsemen.”

Reaver’s golden mane had dried in perfect, shiny waves that fell across his cheeks and jaw as he inclined his head in a slow nod. “I know. But why were the Horsemen so important to you?”

She considered her answer, but everything sounded so lame. Because I was in love with their father. Because I made a promise. Because I was an idiot. Finally, she settled on, “You wouldn’t understand.”

He cursed, low and long. “I really hate it when people say that. You have no idea what I’ll understand and what I won’t. Pet peeve of mine. So why don’t you try me.”

His tone set her temper on edge, and no matter how many times she repeated to herself that she needed to refuse to let her evil side reign and make an effort to talk instead of argue, she still spit out an irritated, “Why should I?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Maybe because I risked my wings to rescue you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she reminded him for what felt like the millionth time. “And if you’re going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life, why don’t we part ways now and let me fend for myself.”

Reaver closed his eyes and breathed deeply enough for her to hear. “Once, just once, can you not fight me?”