Revenant

He could lie like this forever. Maybe the Earth would stop spinning, the realms would stop fighting, and everyone would leave him and Blaspheme the hell alone. Revenant had never been one to dream… any dreams he might have had were destroyed on that Megiddo hilltop all those years ago, when Reaver had made it clear that brothers or not, they weren’t family, and Rev didn’t belong in Heaven.

But here he was, dreaming. Which was insane, considering his life was in the worst possible place it could be right now, with both Heaven and hell screwing with him. Neither side was known for being especially forgiving when it came to battles between good and evil, which meant that no matter what he did, someone was going to rain a whole lot of hell down on his head. Literally, if Satan was the one he pissed off.

So yeah, lying in bed and dreaming of a future where he was in any way happy was stupid.

But as Blaspheme let out a contented sigh, he realized he was happy at this very moment. He was going to embrace it. Savor it.

Because something told him it wasn’t going to last.

Sixteen

Revenant woke to the tap of Blaspheme’s fingers on his sternum. He’d fallen asleep? Seriously? He never crashed after sex.

Opening his eyes, he glanced at the clock on the wall, and yep, he’d lost a couple of hours. He canted his head to the side, smiling when he saw Blaspheme facing him, her body stretched against his as he lay on his back, her hand running up and down his chest.

“Hi.” She returned his smile with a shy one of her own.

“Hi.” His voice was shot to hell, but in a good postcoital way.

“So,” she said, not wasting any time, “how is it that you and Reaver are brothers? And why didn’t Reaver ever mention it before?”

Groaning, Rev threw his forearm over his eyes. “You got something against coffee before conversation?”

“Nope. But while you were sleeping I rummaged through your kitchen, and I couldn’t find any.” She jabbed him in the ribs. “So? Spill.”

Figuring he couldn’t avoid getting back to real life, Revenant tucked his arm behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Reaver didn’t mention having a brother because he didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago. Neither did I.”

“How can that be?”

“Our memories were erased. Twice.”

Sitting up, she snared a blanket from the foot of the bed and covered herself. Too bad. He could look at her creamy breasts all day. “I’m lost.”

He was lost, too. “Yeah, well, I’m still trying to work out thousands of years of memories myself.” Reaching over, he fingered a tendril of her silky hair while he considered how much to tell her. He didn’t trust anyone, but False Angels, with their lying, seductive ways, were even less trustworthy. And Blaspheme, while she wasn’t like any False Angel he’d ever met, was undoubtedly hiding something from him. He might have been drunk when he saw some sort of crumpling aura around her last night at her apartment, but he was perfectly sober now, and he still sensed that there was something not right with her.

That said, he didn’t know how she could possibly use anything he told her against him.

“Our mother was a battle angel,” he said finally. “She was pregnant with a potential Radiant, and she was betrayed by an angel to Satan’s forces. Our father was killed in the battle, and she was taken to Sheoul. She gave birth to twins. Heaven worked out a deal to take one of the infants, and Sheoul would take the other.”

“Oh, wow,” she whispered. “So that’s how you’re an angel, not a fallen angel. Heaven took Reaver, didn’t they?”

“Yes. I was left behind, raised in a ten-by-ten cell in a dungeon.” The memories came at him like blows, but he quickly blocked them and got away from that messy part of the story. “Years later, after I learned the truth, I went to Reaver, and it didn’t go well. He’d just discovered that the female he loved had betrayed him and that he had four grown children. He was pissed, I was pissed… let’s just say that between the two of us, we caused a whole lot of destruction.”

“What’s a whole lot?”

“The kind that requires thousands of angels to rewrite history in the minds of humans.”

She swallowed. “They can do that?”

“Apparently they’ve done it several times.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “So I lost my memory. Satan told me that I was a fallen angel, and that I didn’t remember my time in Heaven because sometimes fallen angels lose their memories when they fall from grace. I bought it. I believed it when he told me that I was kicked out of Heaven for assassinating fellow angels.” He snorted. “I toed the evil line like a champ. Fuck, I need a drink. You?”

She shook her head.

“You sure?” He swung out of bed and strode, naked, to the portable bar in the corner. “Don’t think I’ve ever met a False Angel who wasn’t a lush.”

“I have to work later. For some reason, Eidolon frowns on his staff showing up drunk.”

He poured himself a shot of Sheoul’s finest absinthe, made the old-fashioned way, with wormwood grown in the corpses of imps. “Ah, that’s right. You’re a False Angel with ethics.”

“Yeah. Ethics.” She rubbed her temples as if fending off a headache. “So how long did you go around thinking you were a fallen angel? Also,” she grumbled, “you should put on some clothes. You’re a menace to society when you’re naked.”