Rogue Rider

Thanatos, sitting on the arm of the chair Regan was perched in, looked up from the cradle he was rocking with one foot. “Kynan called. Said to gather everyone here.”

“Looks like I have good timing.” Reaver moved over to the cradle, where Logan was sound asleep and Cujo was sitting, one shoulder propped against the frame. “I hope The Aegis isn’t causing trouble. What have he and Arik been working on?”

“Some rogue demon tearing up a town somewhere,” Limos said in a bored tone. No, a single demon wouldn’t even make the Horsemen blink. At five thousand years old, they’d learned to separate the big problems from the small ones, and it took a lot for them to consider anything a big problem.

“How’s everything else?”

Ares scratched the inky black lap hound behind the ear, and the thing made a guttural sound Reaver could only hope was a happy noise. “I’m not sure. There have been some odd rumors floating around Sheoul, rumblings about Pestilence’s old buddies trying to regroup. And Cara is worried about the hellhounds. A bunch have gone missing, and more disappear every day. She won’t let Hal out of her sight.”

Odd. Only someone very powerful would mess with hellhounds. Reaver made a mental note to check with Eidolon, head of Underworld General Hospital, to see if he was aware of a fatal hellhound virus running amok.

Kynan and Arik burst through the front door. Arik went immediately, wordlessly, to Limos and folded her against him.

“Arik.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “What is wrong with you?”

“Let me cut to the chase.” Kynan peeled off his leather jacket and tossed it over the back of one of the chairs. “Your brother is back.”

Reaver’s lungs seized, and oh-shit adrenaline flashed like fire through his veins. His secret was about to become not-so-secret, and not in the way he’d wanted.

Ares came to his feet, dumping the hellhound on the ground. “That can’t be. He was destroyed. We saw it.”

“How can you be sure?” Than asked Kynan, and Reaver didn’t miss how he’d angled himself closer to the cradle, as if expecting Pestilence to pop out of thin air and grab his son.

Arik kept his arm around Limos. “We were hunting a Soulshredder in Colorado. We found what we believed to be the epicenter of the attacks, a woman living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Then we discovered that a stranger appeared around the time the attacks started, a male named Reseph. We saw his picture. It’s him.”

Kynan nodded. “We believe he’s staying with the woman.”

Limos swallowed sickly. “Staying, or holding her hostage? Is he Pestilence, or is he Reseph?”

“We don’t know,” Arik said, “but the fact that there’s a Soulshredder killing people around him doesn’t look good for him being Reseph.”

“Soulshredders were Pestilence’s favorite demon to use to terrorize humans,” Limos breathed. “Oh, God. If he’s Pestilence—”

“He’s Reseph,” Reaver muttered, and all eyes turned on him.

“You knew about this?” Ares asked, his voice going low. “You knew he was alive and walking around with humans and you didn’t tell us? How long have you known?”

Reaver hated that Reseph’s existence had been revealed this way, but he had no one to blame but himself. “I’ve known since the day Thanatos stabbed him in the heart with Deliverance. I’m the one who got him out of Sheoul-gra.”

Stunned faces stared back at him. Finally, Arik broke the silence. “I hope to f**k you have a good explanation for this, because angel or not, I want to kick your ass right now.”

“You’re out of line, human,” Reaver said, maybe a little too defensively. “I don’t do anything without a good reason.” He just hoped his reason was good enough. “I went to Sheoul-gra to make sure Reseph’s soul was secure. He still has a part to play when the Final Days come. The Daemonica’s prophecy may have failed, but there’s still one more to play out.”

“We know that,” Thanatos ground out. “Get to the part where you turned him loose.”

“Patience,” Reaver snapped. “I’m not one of your servants.” He calmly rolled up his sleeves, giving himself a chance to find the right words. “I went to Sheoul-gra. But I didn’t expect to find Reseph the way he was. He wasn’t… a soul. He was himself.”

“Himself?” Ares asked. “As who? Pestilence or Reseph?”

“Reseph. But he was broken.”

Limos pulled away from Arik. “What do you mean, broken?”

“He was Reseph. But he remembered everything he did as Pestilence.”

“Oh, God,” Limos whispered. “How awful.”

Kynan cursed. “I don’t understand what the deal is. So he has to take responsibility for murdering millions of people. Why is this a problem?”

“I’m wondering the same thing, myself,” Arik said. “So what if he remembers what he did?”

“You didn’t know Reseph,” Limos said. “Neither of you did. You only knew him as an evil monster. But before his Seal broke, he was fun, happy, and he never intentionally hurt anyone. If he knows all of the things that happened at his hand, it’ll kill him.”

“And that’s what he was doing,” Reaver said. “He was harming himself. I’ve never seen such self-torture in my life.” Well, what he could remember of his life, anyway. “His mind was fractured.”

“I don’t care.” Arik snapped. “The f**ker deserves every drop of misery he experiences.”

“Pestilence does,” Reaver said. “Reseph doesn’t. But that’s not why I did what I did.”

“What, exactly,” Ares ground out, “did you do?”

“I erased his memory and dropped him in the human world.”

“Why?”

“To give him time to heal. We need him whole when the Biblical Apocalypse starts. Even if it doesn’t happen for another thousand years, we need all the time we can get to heal him. He needs to reintegrate his good side, because Pestilence is still in there. His power is diminished and he can’t bring about the end of days anymore, but he could still wreak havoc on Earth and in Sheoul.”

Regan shoved to her feet. “Put him back in Sheoul-gra.”

Reaver closed his eyes. “Regan, I understand your concern for Logan—”

“Respectfully, Reaver, I don’t think you do,” Regan said. “Pestilence wants Logan dead. He tried to kill us both, so I don’t think you get it. You don’t have kids, so you can’t possibly understand.”

Thanatos slung his arm over her shoulder and tugged her against him. “I’m with Regan. I want him taken back.”

“So you want your brother, who you loved for thousands of years, to suffer unimaginable pain?”

Ares, who rarely let emotions interfere with his battle-wise thinking, didn’t make an exception now. “The pain is regrettable, but it’s what’s best for everyone.”

“I drove a blade through his heart,” Thanatos said flatly. “He’s dead to me.” Than scowled, his brow slamming down over his yellow eyes. “And wait, why didn’t Deliverance destroy him?”

Reaver braced himself for this next part. “Deliverance wasn’t the blade you needed to kill Pestilence.”

The sudden silence in the room was broken only by Than’s low growl. “Reaver…”

The souls of those Thanatos had killed, the ones who got sucked into his armor, began to billow around his feet as Than’s anger mounted. Regan lay a comforting hand on his arm, and though the souls eased off the frenzied swirling, the fact that they were still there wasn’t good.

“What’s going on?” The bright orange flower in Limos’s ebony hair wilted, as though it sensed her mood. “What are you not telling us?”

“Remember how Pestilence was trying to find Wormwood?”

Kynan nodded. “He tore apart Aegis headquarters and killed dozens for the dagger.”

“Well, he got it. He knew Wormwood was the dagger that would kill him.” Reaver looked Than in the eye. “You’d been searching for a way to repair Reseph’s Seal, but what you didn’t know was that Deliverance was the answer. You had it all along.”

“A blade his Deliverance,” Than murmured. “Okay, so that part of my prophecy was about saving Reseph. But The Doom Star cometh if the cry fails? We thought the Doom Star was Halley’s Comet.”

Reaver shook his head. “The Doom Star was Wormwood. Gethel and Pestilence figured it out.”

“So if we’d failed to stab Pestilence with Deliverance at the moment of Logan’s first cry, we could have killed Pestilence at any time with Wormwood?”

“Exactly.”

Thanatos’s furious curse made the hellhounds in the room leap to their feet and look for a threat. “I could have killed him. I could have ended this and you didn’t tell me? All this time we were living with a false sense of security? My son could still be in danger and you thought it was best to not tell us?”

The accusing glares of everyone in the room shriveled Reaver’s heart. There were very few people Reaver cared about disappointing, and those here happened to be the few. “I didn’t know about Wormwood until just before Logan’s birth. I only had a few moments to make a choice about giving it to you, and I chose Reseph’s life. He isn’t a threat to you. His memory is gone.”

“Damn you, Reaver,” Thanatos croaked, the rare emotion in his voice shredding Reaver’s insides. He hated to see any of these warriors hurt, and knowing he was at least in part responsible only made it worse. “Damn you.”

Ares swore in disgust. “Take him back to Sheoul-gra.”

Reaver understood Ares’s anger, but dammit, Reaver had made a decision, and he had to stand by what he believed was best. “A, you don’t order your Watcher, or any angel, around. B, we need him whole. He won’t heal if I send him back.”