But she couldn’t afford to feel bad, and she certainly couldn’t afford to show him any compassion. In this place, kindness killed.
“Stop dawdling,” she snapped. “I need the guest chamber prepared immediately.” She didn’t wait for Whine to nod. She flashed straight to the one person who could help her carry out her mission, the most powerful Orphmage in the underworld.
The Neethul, Gormesh, occupied a crystal tower on the craggy banks of the river Acheron. G Vthe most puards circled the tower, which was clear as glass right now, but could change color and opacity at Gormesh’s whim. He was in his lab, walking between rows of test subjects. Unwilling test subjects, if the way they were strapped to tables and locked in cages was any indication.
The guards didn’t mess with her, and she passed through the front doors with no problem. The moment the doors closed, the palace walls turned smoky, and in moments, the sorcerer appeared at the top of the grand staircase.
“Harvester.” His voice was as smoky as the walls. “It’s been centuries.”
Which hadn’t been long enough. She cut to the chase. “I need something that will paralyze an angel.”
Gormesh whistled, long and low. “Angels aren’t easily immobilized. You know that.”
“Of course I know that,” she gritted out. She might have left Heaven thousands of years ago, but every memory of her time as a pure angel was as sharp as one of the Orphmage’s scalpels.
“Why not simply trap your angel with a containment spell and cut off his wings?”
“Because this particular angel won’t be easily led into a trap, and I don’t have the time to set up something elaborate.” She started up the stairs, holding the sorcerer with her gaze. “My orders are coming from the very top, so any help you can provide will be most… appreciated.”
“The very top, you say?” his elflike ears twitched. “Come with me. This will cost you, but we’ll figure something out.”
Great. The fucker didn’t come cheap for the simplest things. This? This was going to cost her more than she could afford.
But the payoff would be spectacular. Reaver wouldn’t know what hit him.
Reaver smiled down at the pile of dead demons in the dirt at his feet. Of all his duties, his favorite was killing demons. As a battle angel of the Power order of angels, it was what he’d been bred for, and he was good at it. Sure, back when he’d been stripped of his wings and cast out of Heaven, he’d worked as a doctor at Underworld General Hospital, where he’d healed demons. But he’d been selective about who he saved, because the truth was that not all demons were evil, just as not all humans were good.
There was balance everywhere, a yin-yang thing going on since the beginning of time, and for the most part, it had worked.
Until Pestilence’s Seal had broken, and now the balance between good and evil was rapidly shifting… and not in the favor of good. Evil was spilling out of Sheoul and was infecting humans everywhere, including here, in this remote Polish village where people had turned on each other, not knowing that their actions had been influenced by the demons Reaver had just killed.
Gethel, the angel who had been the Horsemen’s good Watcher before Reaver had taken the assignment a little over a year ago, emerged from inside one of the houses whe [he s re a family had been slaughtered.
“All souls have crossed over,” she said, as she glided toward him. “But far too many crossed to the wrong side.”
That was the problem with the kind of evil they were dealing with now. Too many humans who wouldn’t normally fall to darkness were allowing evil into their bodies and minds. In the battle for souls, Heaven had always had the advantage, but even that was starting to change.
Gethel eyed the dead demons, her lip curling in distaste. “Your power is impressive, Reaver. I can see why you were chosen as my replacement.” Smiling, she spread her wings—white, shot through with gold—and performed a pre-flight check as she folded and unfolded them again. “Give Limos my best. I do miss her. And Reseph.” Her smile turned sad. “He was the one I thought might retain some humanity even after his Seal broke.”
“I did too.” Reaver lifted his hand in the stick-in-the-ass formal manner his fellow angels were so fond of. “Fare well, Gethel.”
She lifted off so fast that even Reaver would have missed it if he’d blinked. Around him, the dead demons disintegrated, as they always did in the human realm—unless they were shapeshifters or weres, or a species such as Seminus demons, who appeared to be human. Basically, if they couldn’t pass as human, they decomposed in a matter of seconds.
His scalp prickled, a split-second of warning before Harvester materialized.
“Hello, you sexy beast,” she said, the sarcasm in her voice setting his teeth on edge. She stood before him, her shiny hair and wings as black as her soul.
“What do you want? I have things to do.” Namely, he had to respond to the summoning that had become a fizzy tug on his insides in the last few minutes.
Thanatos was calling him, and Reaver wondered what was up. The Horsemen didn’t screw around with a summons, though sometimes Reaver wished they would. Would it really hurt them to summon him for, say, a barbecue? Or for one of Limos’s beach parties? Angels had to eat too.
“I merely longed to gaze upon your angelic handsomeness.” Harvester batted her eyelashes, and Reaver snorted.
“I think it’s more likely you came to smash me under a mountain again.” He gestured to the countryside. “You have an entire mountain range to work with.”
“Tsk-tsk. You don’t trust me at all, do you?”
“I probably didn’t trust you even when we were in Heaven together.” Probably, because he didn’t remember. His memory, as well as all evidence of his very existence, had been wiped for some reason, and he couldn’t recall anything that had taken place before the event that caused his fall a quarter-century ago. Even when he’d been given his wings back, his memory hadn’t returned, and no angel he knew of, fallen or otherwise, could remember him either.
Harvester shrugged, a slow roll of one curvy bare shoulder. Geez, she was dressed like a stripper in a black leather bustier and miniskirt, fishnet nylons, and six-inch [andre stilettos. Reaver might be all holy and good now, but one of the dangers of being on Earth—especially now that evil was permeating everything—was that angels felt everything humans did, including lust, and Reaver had always had a thing for scantily dressed, naughty girls.
He narrowed his eyes. Was Harvester aware of his dirty little secret?
“I wasn’t always untrustworthy,” she said, sounding a little stung despite her casual attitude. “I did enjoy serving.” Her smile flashed fangtips. “But I enjoy ruling more.”
“Are you here to chat, or are you here about something important?”
“It’s definitely important.”
“About the Horsemen?” That would be the only reason she’d seek him out. It was the only thing they had in common.
“In a way. You know the human, Arik, escaped from Sheoul.”
No, he didn’t know that. Must have been what Thanatos was summoning him about. “I’d heard.”
She bent over to pick up what looked like a ring on the ground, exposing a thin scrap of black underwear that didn’t cover nearly enough, and Reaver bit down on the inside of his cheek as he averted his gaze.
“How pretty,” Harvester murmured, as she straightened.
“I’m sure it’s a priceless treasure. Now, what about Arik?”
“He’s with Limos.” She handed Reaver the silver ring, and he was too distracted by the fallen angel’s breasts, which had nearly popped out of the bustier while she’d been bent over, to wonder why she’d hand him anything. “Pestilence has claimed his soul.”
Reaver drew a quick, sharp breath. “He what?”
“Yep. Pestilence made sure that when Arik dies, his soul is sent straight to him. He’s developing talents like that faster than any of us could have foreseen.”
Damn, but the evil Horseman was growing powerful. Before Reseph’s Seal broke, only Thanatos had any control over souls. Now Pestilence could not only absorb them from humans while they were still alive, turning them into obedient minions and adding to his own strength, but he was capable of claiming souls in a way only a handful of the most powerful demons could.
“This isn’t good,” Reaver muttered.
“It’s not good for you,” she corrected. “It’s very good for my team.” Smiling, she sauntered up to him and placed her hand on his chest. Her voice went low and husky. “You know what else is good for my team? You. In my custody.”
An alarm clanked inside his head, an impending sense of doom coming down on him like a shroud, but before he could identify the source, his body went rigid, so solid he might have been encased in ice.
Harvester had trapped him. Somehow, she’d immobilized him. His heart couldn isn [t c het even beat in panic, but he felt her finger jam into his chest, felt his body tip over so he was on his back, staring up at the gray afternoon sky. A minute later, his vision blurred, but he made out faces above him. Voices around him. He felt hands grab him roughly, and then there was a flash, and suddenly, the massive pain spreading through his chest told him where he was.
Sheoul.
Harvester had flashed him into hell. This was a huge violation of the Watcher covenant. Clearly, Harvester didn’t care.
“Take him into the guest room.”
He wanted to fight, to scream, anything at all, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He could only feel. Sucked that all his other senses had dulled, but that one remained perfectly intact.
Reaver was manhandled as he was carried, and then he was thrown face-down onto what he assumed was a table, and chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles.
He was held fast, unable to move, barely able to think.
“Now, Whine.” Harvester’s eyes gleamed with anticipation as her werewolf minion came forward with a serrated blade—an old bone saw. He’d worked with them at Underworld General, and he knew damned good and well what they looked like.
And as other minions closed in on him, ripped open his shirt and dug into his back to stretch out his wings, he realized he’d soon know what they felt like, too.
Pestilence couldn’t decide if he was in a good mood, or a bad one. That happened a lot lately. Usually he just f**ked and killed something, which was always a supercharged Prozac. But today had been a roller coaster of ups and downs, ending with what had happened when he’d watched Harvester take Reaver from the dying village.
He’d seen the fallen angel flirt with Reaver, showing off her tits and ass, and Pestilence had been… jealous.
Why, Pestilence had no idea. He hated Harvester. He wanted to cause her as much misery as he could, which was why he’d tethered Arik’s soul to him—he was going to kill the human and take his soul to the Dark Lord, where he’d use Arik as a bargaining chip. A bargaining chip to get Harvester as his mate.
Yes, he hated her. But she was one of the most powerful females—next to his mother—in all of Sheoul. Having her on his side to rule after the Apocalypse, when he and his siblings would be at war with each other for dominance and control of the earth and of souls, would be advantageous.
It would also be fun, because he’d love forcing her into his bed every night. He would get off on her screams, her tears, her pleas for mercy.
A shiver of delight went through him, followed immediately by a burst of raw rage. His plan had hit a snag. A big one, which he’d learned when he visited Limos, intent on killing Arik in front of her. The moment he’d stepped inside her house, he’d encountered a problem.
He couldn’t sense Arik’s soul, which meant that the human’s soul belonged to someone else.
Some fucker had already staked a claim on it, and now Pestilence had to find that someone else before Arik was killed.
It figured that just as everything was coming together, one thread had begun to unravel.
But that was okay. He’d work it out. He always did. And now that Lucifer had brought Sartael out of whatever prison he’d been in, finding Limos’s agimortus could be only days away.
Pestilence climbed out of the hellhound blood-filled stone pit where he’d bathed to feed his armor, leaving behind the dead bodies of the Amish family he’d enjoyed until they’d died. Time to get to work. He’d finally perfected the plague he’d been working on for weeks, and the human race had a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Nine
For the last hour at least, Arik had stood, back to the wall, eyeing the sandwich and pie. His mouth watered, but his mind was in turmoil. If he ate the food, he’d suffer in ways no man had ever suffered. Well, no man except Arik, because he’d already been through it. A couple of times.
You’re a slow f**king learner, boy. The voice of his father pounded through his head, and what the fuck? He’d been done with the abusive son of a bitch since the day he’d passed away in the hospital, nothing but an empty shell, mentally and physically. It had been surreal to look at the hands that had pounded Arik, Runa, and their mother into bloody pulps and to see how fragile they were, the skin paper thin and bruised by IV catheters and blood draws.
Not once had Arik felt sorry for his old man’s premature death, but now that he’d gotten an eyeful of Sheoul firsthand, he almost regretted cursing his father to hell. Almost, because some people deserved to be there. Here. Arik was still in hell, and he needed to remember that.
He inhaled, taking in the fragrant sweetness of the pie, because the demons wouldn’t beat him for breathing. He knew, had tested them time and time again by getting as close to the forbidden food as possible and taking deep, full lungfuls of air, as if maybe he could absorb some calories that way.