Harvester skidded to a halt and wheeled around. “Revenant? That puffed-up, ill-tempered hellswine?”
“I see you’ve met him.”
She snarled. “That by-the-book hardass has been after my job for decades. He even tried seducing me, as if I’d give up my job after enough orgasms. Fool.”
She jerked her hair back from her face so hard it had to hurt, but what Reaver really wanted was for Revenant to hurt. Just because.
“Does he know he can’t insult Limos without getting the boys all riled up?” she asked. “He needs to know that. And he really needs to know not to mess with Battle. Ares’s stallion hates fallen angels. Although I guess it’ll be funny to watch him learn that on his own.” She laughed as if picturing the scene in her head. “Ooh, and I can’t wait for him to mess with Than’s vampires. Thanatos will hang Revenant from the southwest tower of his castle for that.”
“Not likely,” Reaver said. “Watchers got a defensive upgrade to protect against angry Horsemen.”
“Really?” Harvester scowled. “I could have used that once or twice.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“You don’t know anything,” she snapped.
It had been nice to chip through the layer of ice that encased her, but now they were back to the way it had always been. Him trying to get through to her, and her putting up walls as fast as she could.
She spun back around and moved even faster toward wherever she was going.
“I know what Pestilence did to you.” He could guess, anyway.
“Yeah? Good for you. But compared to what my own father and his minions have done, Pestilence was a little boy playing at war spoils. I’m over that trauma, so shut up about it.”
Yup, she sounded over it. But not being completely dense, he didn’t voice that thought.
She stopped in front of a black tent, where a humanoid female was arranging beads on a string, chanting as she worked.
Harvester spoke to her in a language Reaver didn’t know, and a moment later, she turned to him. “She can remove the tracking enchantment. But it’s going to cost both sheoulghuls.”
He lowered his voice and spoke into her ear. “Without the non-enchanted sheoulghul, I can’t recharge down here.”
“If you’re dead you can’t recharge either,” she pointed out. “Unless you have anything else in that backpack to bargain with, it’s both sheoulghuls or nothing.”
Damn. This was bad. He hadn’t been able to hold onto much power or he’d glow, but every little bit helped. If he couldn’t recharge, he was going to not only be fully dependent on Harvester, but he would be a liability to her as well.
Some rescuer he was.
Cursing to himself, he handed over the sheoulghuls. The shopkeeper smiled like she’d won the lottery as she carefully took the crystals and secured them in a leather pouch that looked suspiciously like human skin.
Man, he hated demons.
The shopkeeper disappeared inside her tent, and when she returned a minute later, she was carrying a bowl of green paste.
“Give me your hand,” she said, and Reaver did as she’d demanded.
Harvester propped a hip against a tent support, her stance relaxed and casual, but he didn’t miss the way she was watching the crowd like a hawk, her sharp eyes assessing every individual who walked by. She was so different from the young, innocent Verrine, who, no matter how many times he’d told to be alert to her surrounding, would get distracted by the smallest things, like a butterfly landing on a flower.
The sudden memory and wash of tender feelings made him jerk as the demon poured the green stuff into his palm. She glared, wiped spilled drops off her hand, and continued, starting up an incantation that made his ears ache. He glanced over at Harvester, but if she noticed the painful buzz, she wasn’t letting on.
The demon ended on a high note that made Reaver wince, and then he damned near shouted when, out of thin air, she produced a golden nail and punched it through his hand.
“What the—” He cut off with a strangled yelp as she yanked the nail back out.
Blood poured onto the ground, and her voice became a clipped, harsh bark. “Done.”
His bleeding stopped, and in an instant, the hole sealed.
Harvester pushed away from the tent support. “You’re clean. Let’s go.” She took his hand and started to jog. “Daddy’s here.”
Reaver’s gut hit the floor. “Here? As in, inside this place?”
She nodded. “I felt him operate the entrance.”
She picked up her pace until they reached a series of portals in the wall. Harvester stopped in front of the third one, its opening constructed from the giant bones of gargantua demons and larger than any of the others, at least as wide as a semitruck’s trailer was long.
“What’s this?”
“It’s another Boregate. Sort of.” She took his hand with only the smallest of dismissive sneers. “We have to walk through together or we’ll end up in different places.”
This didn’t sound promising. “What do you mean, different places?”
“I mean that there’s no map inside. This Boregate drops you wherever it wants to. Could be anywhere in Sheoul, though it usually takes you someplace that makes sense. It’s almost as if it reads your needs. But every once in a while they’ll drop you in the place you least want to be.”
“Like your father’s realm?”
“Exactly.” She smiled with exaggerated perkiness. “But the good news is that he’s not there right now. See? I can see the bright side of things.”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
“That was uncalled for.” She tugged on his hand. “You ready?”
No, but they didn’t have a choice. They stepped through the gate and into what appeared to be a black box.
“Now what?” he asked as the gate snapped shut. And remained shut.
Harvester didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. The expression on her face said it all.
They were trapped.
Twenty-One
Oh, this was not cool.
Harvester cursed as she paced around the black room, which, like almost everything else in Sheoul, was lit by an unseen light source. Not that it did much good. The inky walls, floor, and endless ceiling seemed to absorb the light, leaving them able to see in only about a ten-foot radius no matter where they moved.
“Fuck,” she snapped.
“Why hasn’t the gate dropped us anywhere?”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. Couldn’t anything go right for them? Just once?
“These Boregates are glitchy. Sometimes they do this. Just hold you in these stupid boxes.”
Reaver looked up as if searching for a way out. She wished him luck. “For how long?”
“Until someone else tries to use the gate and un-glitches it.” Frustrated, she kicked at the wall. “I suggested that someone grab Bill Gates and get him to install a new operating system, but apparently, he’s not a demon.” At Reaver’s eye roll, she nodded. “Right? I was surprised, too.”
Reaver leaned against a wall as if they didn’t have a care in the world. How could he relax in a place like this? The claustrophobic crush was going to end her.
“Aside from the fact that we’re trapped for the moment, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“I don’t know, maybe because your über-evil father was within seconds of grabbing us?”
“Spare me the false concern,” she said tightly. “I’m fine.”
Yep, the way her hands were shaking and her voice was frayed with anxiety hinted to all kinds of fine.
“Whatever.” Reaver threw up his hands. “I was just trying to be nice. You know, things normal people do.”
“Are you kidding me? We aren’t normal people. And nice? That’s how you want to play this? You drop a big bomb on me, Yenrieth, and you want to be all nice?”
During her time with Satan’s torturers, Harvester had been drawn and quartered not once but twice. It had been a huge spectacle, the premeal entertainment for two of his dinner parties.
But as agonizing as the experiences had been, they hadn’t even come close to what she’d felt when Reaver confessed his identity.
She still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that five thousand years after Yenrieth disappeared, he was standing in front of her. How was she supposed to process this? Could she process this?
Hell, she might be in total denial if not for the fact that her intense hatred and baffling attraction to Reaver finally made sense. So did the memory of sex with Yenrieth, where Reaver’s face had filled in the blank holes. Reaver had been in the memory because he’d actually been there. Now she knew why kissing him felt so familiar. And why, the first time she’d met Reaver, she’d sensed him before he’d fully materialized. That had never happened with anyone else before.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. We’re not normal. We’re the most f**ked-up, star-crossed lovers in history. So let’s not play nice.” His penetrating stare seemed to look right through her. “Maybe you can tell me why you ran away that day when I kissed you.”
“The day you f**ked Lilith, you mean?” And wasn’t that a prick to the heart. That single decision, to flee from a kiss, had led to all of this, but she wasn’t ready to take the entire blame. She rubbed her sternum as if that would ease the pain that still lingered all these centuries later. “I ran away because I was afraid. I had no experience, and you… you were a whore.” His jaw hardened into a stubborn line, and she dared him to deny it. “You still are, aren’t you? Your exploits with demons are well known.”
Reaver’s expression turned cold. “How do you know about the demons I’ve been with? And, by the way, that was in the past, when I was an Unfallen.”
She let out a dubious snort. “Are you really asking me to believe you’ve been a model of angelic purity since you got your wings back?”