“Luck of the draw,” Raphael said, but the way he said it conveyed his displeasure at the hand Heaven had been dealt. Clearly, he had a real burr up his ass when it came to Reaver.

Revenant knew the feeling, and he hated that he had that in common with Raphael.

“So you gave up.” He was halfway to the stage now, and the archangels were starting to sweat. “Left me to grow up in hell and my mother to suffer. You just forgot us.”

“We didn’t forget,” Michael said. “And we did try to convince your mother to leave.” Several heads swiveled around to stare at him, and wasn’t that interesting. They hadn’t known about whatever it was Michael was blabbing about.

“What do you mean?” Revenant asked. “How could she have left?”

Gabriel swiped a pewter chalice from the table and knocked back the contents before fixing his steady gaze on Reaver.

“Are you aware that your mother could have left Sheoul with you?” Gabriel asked. “But that she chose to remain behind, even knowing that an opportunity to leave would never be presented again?”

“Metatron told me that,” Reaver said, and for the first time ever, Revenant heard an emotional tremor in his brother’s voice. “Most of it.”

Rev could only swallow over and over as his salivary glands futilely worked to moisten his parched mouth. He didn’t know any of this.

Finally, he managed a raspy “Why? Why would she stay behind?”

“To protect you,” Gabriel said, his tone making clear that he thought her choice was the wrong one. “She knew that Reaver would be safe and would have a good life even if she couldn’t be the one to raise him. But you were doomed to a living hell. She wanted to protect you as much as she could. She made a deal with Satan that would allow you to remain with her until you were ten mortal years old. I’m assuming the bargain was kept?”

Revenant nodded numbly. He’d assumed she’d been held against her will after his birth. Guilt turned his marrow to pudding, and he suddenly couldn’t walk anymore. He halted on the crimson carpet, his knees trembling, his insides quivering. Dear… fuck. She’d sacrificed everything for him. She’d known she would suffer for all eternity, but she’d chosen to stay with him anyway. He was the reason she’d suffered.

“She…” He cleared his throat of the humiliating hoarseness. “She stayed with me. What did Satan get out of the deal?”

Gabriel’s gaze cast downward. “We don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Revenant began to shake so hard he could barely stay upright. Distantly, he heard shouts and things crashing, and he realized he wasn’t the one shaking. The building was. He looked down, and beneath his boot soles, black veins began to sprout in the floor, spreading through the auditorium like millions of invasive, poisonous roots.

“Get him out of here!”

“Reaver, hurry!”

“He’s fouling the area!”

“We warned you! He’s poison.”

None of the voices made sense, even though he heard the exact words. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and as if a spell had broken, he snapped, shooting lightning from his body in a three hundred and sixty degree spread. He heard screams, more shouts, calls for Reaver to —

Arms wrapped around him in a tackle, and suddenly he was in some kind of crazy free fall through space and clouds and fire. An eternity later, the plummeting sensation came to an abrupt end as he hit something hard as shit, with Reaver on top of him. Rage and pain and shame spun up in a massive vortex of misery.

“Revenant!” Reaver’s voice barely penetrated the black haze that swallowed him. “Chill out!”

A million pounds of pressure built inside him, demanding release, but all he knew how to do was scream. Scream like he had as a child, when he watched his mother suffer for his deeds.

He screamed. And screamed. And screamed. And when he was done, his voice was raw and his eyes were dry, and all around him, for miles and miles, there was nothing but blackened, scorched earth.

Even Reaver was singed, his face streaked with ash, his clothes steaming. A moment later, his brother returned to normal, and it was as if nothing had happened.

What had happened?

He must have asked that out loud, because Reaver kneeled next to him as he lay bleeding on the ground. “You went off like a bomb.” He gestured to the surrounding landscape. “I had a feeling that’s what was going to happen. We’re at an old nuclear test site in New Mexico. Figured you couldn’t do much damage here.”

Reaver’s hand came down on his shoulder, and Rev felt power channel into him, but nothing seemed to be happening. If anything, his pain grew worse. He looked down at himself, and yeah, he was pretty torn up, but it was the gash running the length of his rib cage that was hurting like a son of a bitch.

“Why am I injured?” he rasped. And shit, he was dizzy.

“Metatron told me that we heal almost instantly from any wound,” Reaver replied. “Except those we cause ourselves.”

“That knowledge might have come in handy before I went Hiroshima on my own ass.” Except that he hadn’t done it intentionally. Clearly, there were still some kinks to work out with his new Shadow Angel powers.

Reaver pumped another round of energy into Revenant, and Rev groaned, sure his organs were exploding. “Dammit,” Reaver breathed. “I can’t heal you. We should get you to UG.”

Rev rolled out of Reaver’s grip. “I’m fine.” Black dots appeared in his vision. Yep, fine.