Revenant

“Nope. Just you.” He squinted at her. Looked at the bottle. Looked back at her. “I don’t know what’s in this booze, but I swear it’s making you look different. Like an angel is trying to break through some sort of blurry overlay.”

He frowned again at the bottle, completely oblivious to the fact that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Had the alcohol given him the ability to see through her disguise?

Do something. Fast.

“Ah, hey.” She gestured to his wound. “You need to get some rest now. The wound should be healed by morning.”

Standing, she held out her hand to help him up, but he popped to his feet without her. And then, as if his legs were made of rubber, he collapsed. Only the wall and her quick thinking kept him from crashing to the floor.

“Criminy, you’re heavy.” Holding him with one arm slung around his waist, she casually took the liquor from him and set it on the coffee table.

He leaned heavily on her as she made her way past unpacked boxes toward her bedroom. “She gave up everything for me, Blaspheme,” he mumbled. “She… she… aw, fuck.” His big body trembled, and his voice, which was so deep and powerful, shook as hard as the rest of him. “It’s my fault. Everything that happened to her… it’s on me.”

“Shh.” Wondering who he was talking about, she eased him toward the bed. “It’s okay.”

“No,” he moaned. “It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay. She told me not to break the rules, but I did it anyway. She paid for it, over and over. And then she died at the hands of a monster.” He glanced down at his own hands as if they didn’t belong to him.

“Come on, Rev.” She pushed him down onto the mattress. He sat heavily, remaining like that, his head hanging on his shoulders, his chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon. She lifted his feet and swung him around so he was forced to lie back, his gorgeous ebony hair spreading out over her robin’s-egg blue sheets. “Get some rest.”

“Lay with me.” He stared up at her, his glazed eyes going in and out of focus. She’d seen enough pain and intoxication to know that those things could be the cause of his visual responses, but this went deeper than that. Behind the alcohol muddle and the haze of pain was an open wound no medicine could touch.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she murmured.

“Please.” There was so much vulnerability in that one simple word that she couldn’t turn away.

Wondering how the hell she’d gotten herself into this mess, she climbed onto the opposite side of the bed and stretched out next to him. Naturally, he flipped over, slung his arm around her, and tucked her against him so they were spooning. Despite his condition, she expected him to try something sexual, but within a few heartbeats, his body had stopped shaking, and he was breathing in strong, even respirations.

As she relaxed in his powerful arms, she realized he was right. She did give in to him easily.

Too easily.

Twelve

Hours after Revenant had flashed himself away, Reaver was still staring out at the charred landscape. He had no idea how to handle his brother, no idea how to get through to him. Revenant was angry, hurt, and he possessed way too much power to be so unstable.

Reaver knew firsthand how badly that could go, and he had a lifetime of regrets to prove it.

Reaching out with his senses to locate Harvester, he flashed himself from the New Mexico badlands to the sandy beach of a Greek island he knew well.

Harvester was wading in the crystal surf, her blue-and-white-striped sundress catching the waves as they lapped at her ankles. She wasn’t one for soft, feminine styles, so the fact that she was dressed like she should be at a polo match in the Hamptons was a clue that she was having a difficult day.

That made two of them.

Silently¸ he sat down in the sand, prepared to simply watch her. They’d been separated for five thousand years, and sometimes, like now, he wanted nothing more than to soak up her beauty and marvel at the angel she’d become.

Sure, she was still ornery, maddening, and sometimes, downright mean, but he wouldn’t have her any other way.

She slid a glance at him from underneath the wide rim of her floppy straw hat. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.” He leaned forward and braced his arms on his knees. “What’s wrong? You don’t usually hang out at Ares’s place without a reason.”

Ares, Reaver’s son and the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, known to many as War, didn’t mind anyone in the family hanging out here. But Harvester’s relationship with the Horsemen was complicated, starting with the fact that she was their Heavenly Watcher… and she’d once been their Sheoulic Watcher.

She smiled sadly, and was it his imagination, or was she even paler than she’d been this morning? “I saw Whine today. He goes by Tracker now, but it seems so strange to call him that.”

“Do you regret giving him up?”

“Never,” she said with a brisk shake of her head. “My father would have tortured or killed him to hurt me. Besides, he has a better life with Reseph and Jillian than I ever could have given him.”

“Then why are you so upset?”

She sniffed, got that muley look he knew so well. “I’m not upset. When have you ever known me to be sentimental?”

“Never.”

“There you go.” She started toward him, kicking through the waves. “But while I was waiting to talk to Tracker, Revenant showed up.”