“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Oh… no.” Releasing him, she opened her eyes. They’d fully formed but were crystal clear, not yet capable of sight. “They’re going to destroy you, Reaver.”
She said it like he wasn’t aware of that fact. And why did she care, anyway? “It’ll be okay—”
“No, it won’t! You fool!” she spat out. “You’ve signed your own death warrant.”
The blanket had pooled at her hips, leaving her upper body exposed, but she didn’t seem to notice. Reaver noticed, but not because her br**sts were perfect and he knew how they looked in a skimpy bikini top. He noticed because of the light pink lash marks crisscrossing her chest, and a dark cloud of anger descended on him. He suddenly wanted to lay waste to every vile creature who had laid a finger on her.
He told himself his reaction was ingrained in his battle angel DNA—he’d always felt an intense desire to kill demons who harmed people. He told himself that, but for some reason he heard Eidolon’s voice in his head saying bullshit. The demon had always been a straight shooter.
And look at that, Reaver was an angel with a demon on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry about me right now.” He settled the blanket around her shoulders, but again, it went ignored and fell open in front. “You need to save your strength to heal.”
“I’m not worried about you, and healing is pointless,” she replied. “You’ve got to kill me. Let Satan think you pulled a lone wolf and did it to get back at me for kidnapping you and helping Pestilence. The archangels will be furious that you went against their orders, but you’ll probably keep your wings. It’ll be a win-win all around.”
“I’m not killing you, so stop asking. We need you to track down Gethel, and we have to do it fast. She’s pregnant—”
“With Lucifer,” Harvester interrupted. “I know. Gethel wants me to be his Binky.”
“Binky?”
“His pacifier.” She tucked her legs under her, and he was glad to see some of the abrasions had healed. “He’ll be born fully grown, and he’ll need the blood of a sibling to help him achieve full strength. She already made a meal of me to make him stronger.”
Damn. “If we can kill him before he’s reborn, he won’t be using anyone as a Binky.”
One curvy shoulder shrugged under the blanket. “I’m not helping you track him down, so you might as well kill me now.”
“Why won’t you help?”
“Because.”
He ground his teeth. “Whether you help or not, I’m not killing you, and that’s final.”
“You’re as stubborn as ever.”
“I’m the stubborn one?” His mind churned with reasons she would refuse to help find Lucifer, but only one made sense. “You’re refusing to help find Lucifer just so I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “I’m refusing because I’m evil and Lucifer is going to be my brother. Ever think of that?”
She wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be serious. But she’d never been easy to read, and her expression right now would earn her a first-place ribbon at a mule show.
“I don’t believe you,” he ground out.
“Then maybe you’ll believe me when I say you’re going to regret not killing me.”
“That I believe.” He cursed, rethinking this entire rescue. “We’ll find Lucifer without your help.” How, he had no idea. Just surviving the journey out of Sheoul was going to be difficult enough.
“Good luck.” The irritation in her tone was mixed with exhaustion, and a moment later, she yawned.
“Let me get Tav in here. You need to feed.” As much as he hated the idea of her feeding from the incubus and getting all jacked up, he hated the fact that Harvester was so damaged even more.
Her sightless eyes shot wide. “No one touches me. Not until I can see.”
He didn’t want to be a dick and argue, but with his powers so compromised and probably every demon in Sheoul after them, they needed her to be as strong as possible.
“You need to regrow your wings—”
“I said no,” she snapped, the color rising in her face. “Don’t you see that I’m blind?”
Saying she was blind was the closest Harvester had ever come to admitting to having any kind of vulnerability. Bile rose in his throat at the level of desperation she must be feeling, and though it went against every instinct, he gave her more time to come around.
“We can wait until you wake up.” Hopefully Matt would be back by then. Werewolves, with their human origins, provided more nourishment than demons, by far. Very slowly, he reached for her. She flinched when his fingers brushed her shoulder. “You need to get some rest.”
He urged her to lie back on the ground. She went without an argument, which told him how tired she was. Harvester never did anything without a fight or a cutting word.
Closing her eyes, she curled up under the blanket, and within a couple of heartbeats, she was breathing in a deep, even rhythm.
But just as Reaver breathed a sigh of relief that she was asleep, she stiffened and gasped in alarm. “My father,” she croaked. “I can feel him. He’s coming for us, Reaver. Satan’s coming.”
Six
Very little frightened Revenant.
But right now, standing in Satan’s living room, he was scared shitless and sweating bullets inside his black leathers.
The Dark Lord’s rage was a force of nature that rocked the building, knocking over statues and shattering pillars and putting deep cracks in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. And in Rev’s skull.
Revenant clutched his head in his hands as Satan’s roar of fury blasted his eardrums. Blood ran from his ears, his nose, his mouth.
But he was far, far better off than the werewolf hanging from a hook in the middle of the room, his body shredded and studded with nails, blood streaming from a gaping hole where his eye used to be.
“Someone stole her,” Satan snarled. “Someone took her right out from under my nose.” He roared again. “How?” He grabbed the werewolf by the throat. “You helped. Tell me who took my daughter from me or I’ll carve out your other eye and eat it while it’s still warm.”
The guy admitted to being an assassin, which meant he likely couldn’t talk about who hired him even if he wanted to. The assassin’s oath was binding on a magical level, and while the spell could be broken, doing so would take time, and it would kill the assassin. And Revenant had a feeling Satan wanted to kill this guy with his bare hands. Or, as he was sporting right now, claws.
The male groaned, his blood-streaked face a mask of agony. Then he screamed when the king of all demons drove one long, sharp claw through his pupil.
“I want her back.” The black veins under Satan’s skin visibly pulsed with the force of his anger. “I want my beloved Harvester back where she belongs. On a skinning block, writhing in blood-soaked misery.”
Beloved? Skinning block? Satan had a strange way of showing affection. Revenant really wished the demon would stop sometimes referring to him as “my son,” which, as far as he knew, wasn’t true.
Please let it not be true.
Satan popped the werewolf’s eyeball into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. After a moment he wheeled around to Revenant, and Rev’s bowels turned to water.
“You said Metatron and Raphael paid a visit to the Horsemen. Did they discuss rescuing Harvester?”
“No, my lord. Not that I heard.” The bastards had rendered him immobile, deaf, and blind. When he’d come to, all of the angels were gone, including Reaver and Lorelia. “I don’t think the Horsemen even know of her status as a plant for Heaven.” They’d been as confused—and pissed—as Revenant when they’d gained consciousness.
Satan snarled, his mood going suddenly sour. “I want Harvester and the heads of those responsible for stealing her. And I swear by all that’s unholy that if angels are involved, I’ll devastate Heaven. Once that angel-infested realm is nothing but smoldering ash and there’s no one to save the weakling humans, I’ll turn my legions loose on the earthly realm.”
Revenant nodded with as much eagerness as he could muster. He hated angels and thought humans were an annoying infestation on an otherwise nice planet, but the idea of turning Heaven and Earth into replicas of Sheoul didn’t sit well. He’d never been to Heaven, but he liked the Earth the way it was. The colors were vibrant. The air was fresh, the sunlight pleasant on the skin. Best of all, it wasn’t crawling with demons. Well, it was, but mostly, they remained hidden behind human masks.
But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.
A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.
In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.
“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.
“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”