Revenant

Satan lunged at him with clawed hands and T. rex–sized teeth made to shred flesh from bone.

Revenant let the explosion go.

The world went crimson.

Reaver felt his brother die.

Unbearable pain ripped through him as a fissure broke his soul wide open. “No,” he whispered, even as his legs gave out and he hit the floor in a crack of kneecaps. “No.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to get a chance at being brothers. They might not have ever been let’s-toss-a-ball-together brothers, but they could have worked out their own thing.

Reaver struggled to breathe. Revenant had sacrificed his life for him. For everyone. He’d also just taken out the top three assholes in the universe. Four, counting Lucifer.

The screaming vortex dialed down, and the cage’s spinning slowed. In a moment it would stop and melt into oblivion. For how long, Reaver didn’t know. This kind of magic had a shelf life, and he just hoped they got at least a few decades out of it.

“Revenant,” he rasped. “You son of a bitch.”

He looked over at the cube as it slowed to a lazy, wobbly spin. The crystal had gone opaque, the surface dulled, except for —

Reaver shot to his feet. The trap’s door hadn’t closed. Something was jamming it open, and blood was streaming like a river from out of the foot-wide gap. Inside, something stirred.

Fuck!

Extending his tattered wings, he shot into the air and banked hard to the right, grabbing the edge of the door as the cage spun. He clawed for purchase, gritting his teeth as he reached for the shredded arm that was jamming the door. If he could just shove it back inside —

Shit, wait! He recognized that arm. Hoping it was attached to Revenant’s body, he swung his legs up and wedged himself into the doorway as he yanked on his brother’s wrist. Revenant’s broken body, mangled and slippery with blood, slid out of the trap and flung to the floor.

As Reaver launched away from the cube, he caught one last glimpse of Raphael, his body regenerating from the dozens of pieces it was in. Satan, already mostly re-formed, lunged as the door closed. His gaping maw and sharklike teeth were the last things Reaver saw before the cube became a solid chunk of angel-reinforced crystal.

Reaver hit the ground next to Revenant’s shattered body as the trap began to vibrate, faster and faster, until it winked out of existence.

Everything went dead silent.

The trap was gone, launched into an abyss of nothingness.

A vision flashed before his eyes, words on a page he’d read a million times.

“And I saw a dark angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.”

It was that moment in which Reaver understood what had just happened. The biblical prophecy had been there for eons, running alongside the one that said Reaver would ultimately break the Horsemen’s Seals and kick off Armageddon.

Revenant was part of that prophecy, and he’d just fulfilled it.

The momentousness of what had just happened combined with relief and grief, but he pushed through it to gather what was left of his brother in his arms.

“I’m sorry, Revenant,” he whispered.

And just then, he felt a spark of life. It was weak and flickering like a dying lightbulb, but it was there.

Hastily, Reaver channeled a stream of healing power into his twin, but nothing happened. If anything, the thread of life inside became even more brittle and unstable, and shit, Reaver had to get him help.

“Hold on, Brother. Please… hold on.”

Thirty-Two

“Eidolon!” Reaver’s voice boomed through the hospital… and it wasn’t coming through the speaker system. “ER STAT.”

Blaspheme’s heart jumped into her throat. Leaving behind the DNA samples and all the supplies she’d gathered to alter her identity, she sprinted from her office to the clinic’s Harrowgate, shouldered past UGC’s new dentist, and leaped inside the gate. The second she stepped into Underworld General’s Emergency Department, the metallic tang of blood assaulted her nostrils and she knew it was Revenant.

Across the room, in the closest trauma cubicle, Eidolon, Shade, and Raze were channeling power into his unresponsive body.

Crying out, she ran over, shoving her way between Reaver and Eidolon’s brother-in-law, a dhampire paramedic named Con who was doing his best to start an IV.

“What happened?” She took in Rev’s broken form, the splintered bones punching through mangled flesh, the hemorrhaging gashes, the exposed body parts that shouldn’t be on the outside of his body.

Reaver’s voice was hoarse. “I think he’s dying.”

“No.” She shook her head so hard her hair stung her cheeks. “He can’t. He’s a Shadow Angel. Nothing can kill him!” She was screeching now, as if yelling would make her words true.

“Satan can,” Reaver said. “But he did most of this to himself.”

“Eidolon,” she cried. “Please. Save him.”

She knew the doctor and the others were doing their best, but the grim expression on Eidolon’s face said it all.

Revenant wasn’t going to make it.

After all of this, he was going to die in front of her. After everything they’d been through, after he’d broken a sacred rule for her, now he was going to die. Was this the kind of consequence he talked about when he discussed his reluctance to break rules? Steal blood from a Horseman and pay with your life?