“You make it very difficult to like you.” Expression shuttered, he gripped her hand and moved it away. Prickly asshole. “I’m carrying a couple of sheoulghuls. The power I can draw from Sheoul with them is amplified by the lasher glands I had implanted under my wings to mute my angel glow.”
“Impressive,” she murmured, and her own wing stumps throbbed painfully. “And creative.”
He rolled one powerful shoulder. “I have friends who think outside the box.”
Friends. A startling twinge of something… envy, maybe… pricked her. When she’d been a full-fledged angel, she’d had lots of friends and a best friend in Yenrieth. She’d been happy then. Could she be happy again? She’d given up on her dreams of having a normal life a long time ago, but if it was possible… damn, she had five thousand years of evil baggage to shed and she didn’t even know where to start.
Getting out of here might be a good place to begin.
“Are you as powerful down here as you are aboveground, then?” Say yes. A “no” meant the likelihood of them getting out of here was abysmal.
“Not even close,” he said, and her heart sank. “I can’t replenish my power as quickly, and when I use it, the results can be unpredictable.” Bending, he grabbed his backpack. “I was hoping you’d have some power in reserve.”
She automatically rolled her shoulders to feel her wings, but only the lingering sensation of ghost limbs greeted her. Deep inside her wing anchors, angelic energy tingled, but only a whisper.
“I have a little. Maybe enough to cripple a single demon.”
Reaver cursed. “Once you use it, how long will it take to replenish?”
“Several hours.” Which sucked. She’d rather be blind than powerless. Deaf than weak. Dead than vulnerable.
Reaver considered that. “Once you feed from Tavin, you’ll be a lot more useful.”
Useful? She’d be useful? “I’m more than useful, you haloed ass.” She sniffed. “You forget where you are and who I am. I am Satan’s daughter, and we’re in my domain.”
Not that any of that meant anything since she had no idea what region they were in, and right now, being Satan’s traitorous daughter only increased her visibility.
“Trust me, I can’t forget where we are,” Reaver muttered, as he looped the pack’s strap over his shoulder. “But you know, you could at least pretend to be grateful that I risked my wings, life, and soul to rescue you.”
He was right. But she couldn’t afford to be grateful. Gratitude meant owing him, and owing people meant they had a hold on you.
“I didn’t ask you to save me,” she snapped. “I made my choices with my eyes wide open and no false hope that I’d get out. Ever. So save the guilt trip for someone who cares.”
Reaver watched her as though trying to strip away every protective layer. She felt it as tangibly as she’d felt her torturer’s skinning knives, and anxiety robbed her of her breath.
“Stop it!” she croaked. “Stop looking at me.”
Frowning, he reached for her, but in her mind, it wasn’t his hand. It was her father’s, and his claws dripped with blood.
Terror squeezed her heart in an icy fist. She screamed, the sound ripping from her throat in a raw, hot rush.
“Reaver! Shut her up!” Tavin’s voice penetrated her horror, but something wasn’t right. Even as the clawed hand in her mind morphed back into Reaver’s, fear still clung to her like a dire leech.
The ground shook and a concentrated swell of evil descended on them like a cloud.
“Shit.” Reaver grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the shrub, which he’d iced over again. Outside, in the muggy air above, demonic critters swarmed, their wings clacking like bones striking more bones.
And beyond the inky cloud of flying things, standing on a blackened ridge, was an army.
Satan’s army.
Nine
Tavin was used to being chin-deep in trouble. Hell, he was in trouble more often than he wasn’t.
But as he and Calder stood behind a wall of stone and thorny bushes and scanned the massive army that seemed to stretch for miles on the cliffs above them, he was aware that this was a special kind of trouble.
“Stupid bitch,” Calder hissed. “Her scream brought them right to us.”
Reaver came from out of nowhere and clamped his hand around Calder’s throat. When he spoke, his voice was low but dripping with menace. “Say that again, and I’ll feed you to that army.”
Calder nodded, his already pale skin going even paler.
“I don’t think they see us,” Harvester whispered from behind them. “If they did, they’d be here already.”
Point made, Reaver released Calder and gazed up at the two-story-tall horned goat-man who appeared to be the leader. “I think you’re right. But we can’t get out of here while they’re surrounding the valley.”
Tavin nodded. The army was in their direct path to one of the few small zones where Reaver could flash out of Sheoul. The demon’s goatlike eyes took in the immediate area, but he didn’t focus on any one thing, including where Tavin, Calder, Reaver, and Harvester were concealed between bushes.
“They’re going to search the valley. We have to make a break for it.” He gestured behind them, where massive fissures left deep clawlike marks in the sheer cliff faces. “They’ll never find us in those.”
“And we might never find our way out,” Harvester said. “There are thousands of tunnels that extend for hundreds of thousands of miles beneath the mountains.”
Tavin let his homing senses do a quick sweep of the area, and he got a faint hit to the northwest. “There’s a Boregate inside one. Not too far.”
Reaver frowned. “What’s a Boregate?”
“They’re like Harrowgates,” Harvester said. “Except you can’t control where they go. And some of them can only go back and forth between two places.”
“And they’re all different sizes,” Tavin said. “They’re unpredictable as hell, and a pain in the ass, but I don’t think we have a choice.”
“Damn,” Reaver breathed. He looked over at Harvester, who gave a nearly imperceptible nod. For a few, tense heartbeats, Reaver seemed to consider their predicament, and then he gave Tav the go-ahead with a thumbs-up gesture.
Fucking awesome. Assuming they didn’t get slaughtered by Satan’s forces, Tavin would be out of here in a few hours. Gesturing for everyone to follow, he ducked low and darted between a row of stone pillars. The army rumbled above them, and Tavin’s heart nearly stopped when he looked over his shoulder to see hundreds of demons starting down the hill into the valley.
“Hurry,” Harvester barked, as if Tavin wasn’t already moving as fast as he could without drawing attention to their movement.
A sudden blast of heat came in a massive wave from ahead, scorching his skin and making the snake on his neck wriggle. He scratched at it viciously. The thing bit him. Fucker.
“Which way?” Reaver asked.
Tavin gestured to the crevice glowing red in the distance. They ducked around a stony outcrop, and the heat became a blistering, nonstop wind. As they rounded a bend, the path opened up into a broad expanse of mountainside that dripped with lava.
“There.” Squinting against the hot blasts of air, he pointed to a passage between lava flows. “The gate should be a few miles in.”
The passage turned out to be a maze of tunnels and bridges over muddy rivers and molten streams, and twice they had to leap over collapsed sections of pathway. Finally, as the stench of brimstone and sulphur swallowed them in a cloud of steam, Tavin sensed the Boregate within a few yards.
“We’re here—”
Reaver’s shout cut him off. “Watch out!”
Instinctively, Tavin ducked. Something whistled past his head. Shouts rose up over the sound of Calder’s curses.
Tavin spun around and threw out some curses of his own as the hot mist cleared, revealing a dozen eyeless Silas demons spilling out of a Y junction and onto the path in front of them.
Calder dropped one with his crossbow before Tavin’s blades cleared their sheathes. Several demons broke away from the pack and charged them, their mouths gaping wide with tiny, sharp teeth.
Reaver, eyes on the leader, coolly tucked Harvester behind him and fired off some sort of icy weapon shard at the lead Silas.
The demon went down, a hole in his chest from the ice shard. The demon behind him met the same fate from the same shard and so did the third and fourth. By the time the shard reached the fifth Silas, it had melted to the size of a pencil, and it shattered on the demon’s sternum.
The Silas cackled. It cackled until Tavin slit its pasty white throat. Blood splashed onto his hand, and at the same moment, the snake bit deep into Tavin’s neck.
What the—
Suddenly, everything became a blur he saw only through a haze of red. It was as if Tavin was dancing on air, striking out at whatever came within reach of his blades. He felt no pain, but neither did he feel the need to protect himself.
There was only the insane, driving desire to kill. And not just kill, but cause pain. He heard himself laughing maniacally as he toyed with one of the demons, cruelly carving out two holes in its face where its eyes should have been.
Tavin.
Tavin!
Someone was calling his name. He didn’t recognize the voice. He turned toward it. A male he thought he should know was staring at him. All around the blond male—an angel?—were dozens of Silas bodies, some of them boiling in pools of liquid fire. A black-haired female stood nearby, her body swaying as if she could barely hold herself up.
The desire to kill revved up again, and he launched a blade at the female. The angelic male dove in front of her, knocking aside the blade. He hit the ground and rolled, hissing when his shoulder hit a stream of lava.
Tavin was going to make him drink the lava. And then he was going to f**k the female. The Nightlash demon grinning with bloodlust as he hacked off a Silas’s head could watch until Tav finished. Then the Nightlash would die.
The snake kept chewing on his neck, filling him with hot, stinging juice. It made him strong. Fearless. This was f**king awesome.
“I’m going to make you scream, female.” His voice rumbled with savagery. “You’re mine.” Drooling in anticipation, Tavin leaped at her, but the blond male hit him with a full-body slam. They both grunted and crashed down on the burning stone.
Tavin. Stop it!
He felt a buzz of energy enter his body, and then a sting in his throat, and for a moment, everything went dark.
“Tavin?”
Tavin lifted his lids. Reaver was sitting on him, a knife in his hand and a concerned look on his face.
“W-what… happened?”
“Shit.” Reaver disappeared the dagger. “I don’t know. But you need to get to Underworld General. Fast.”
Tavin struggled into a sitting position, aided by Harvester, and looked down at himself. Blood poured out of dozens of gashes. Bone was visible in places where flesh had been stripped by the Silas’s blades, and his right knee was crushed so badly his lower leg bent at an awkward angle.
“Oh… fuck.”
“Yeah.” Reaver yanked him into his arms as Harvester led them to the shimmering curtain of light ahead. The Boregate. “You went berserk when the serpent glyph bit you. You tried to attack Harvester. I had to stab it to make it let go.” He cursed. “Hold still.”
Nausea bubbled up in Tavin’s throat as Reaver’s power sifted through him. The snake writhed, and Tav joined it, pain screaming along all his nerve pathways.
Calder’s voice cracked over the sound of Tavin’s pulse pounding in his ears. “Let him die. He’s a danger to all of us if he goes ape-shit again.”
The as**ole was right, and Tavin was mercenary enough to know he’d have said the same thing. But fuck… Tav wanted to live. Hand trembling, dripping with blood, he extended his middle finger at the Nightlash male.
Reaver’s breath became labored, and Tav felt the angel’s power become a trickle. “Dammit,” Reaver rasped. “I can’t.”
“You’re out of power?” Or maybe it was corrupted. At this point, Tav figured corrupted healing would be better than none at all.
“No,” Reaver said, his voice thick with regret. “But I will be if I heal you any more than I just did. Calder’s got a point. You’re a danger to us all, and I can’t afford to drain my power.”
Loss of blood made Tavin lightheaded as he grabbed his belly, which was slit open and threatening to spill his organs.
“Damn you, Reaver,” he rasped. “You cursed me with this f**king snake with an attitude problem, and now you’re going to let me die?”
“No,” Reaver swore. “We’ll take the Boregate and get you help.”
“Ah, Reaver?” Harvester stared at the Boregate. “We won’t be taking the gate anywhere. It goes to the Deathsands region. I’m pretty sure it’s a one-way trip to a wargrun gambling casino.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Reaver asked. “They should have a nearby Harrowgate.”
“Yes,” she said. “But this Boregate fits only one passenger. And it won’t come back until someone uses it from the other side.”
Since they’d come to rescue Harvester, Tavin figured she’d be the one to take the Boregate. But shockingly, Reaver heaved Tavin into his arms and shoved him inside the coffin-sized gate, propping him against the pitch-black walls.