Reaver

Twenty-Three

Her father was on his way.

Terror shrunk Harvester’s skin. They’d managed to stay one step ahead of Satan this entire time, and now, within sight of a Harrowgate, they were going to die.

And that was if they were lucky.

“Was it worth it?” Revenant seized Reaver by the throat and yanked him off the ground. “Was leaving your family vulnerable in order to rescue a traitorous female worth it?”

“She’s not a traitor to my side,” Reaver choked out. He sucked in a wheezing breath. “Wait… my family. Vulnerable?”

Harvester wondered the same thing. She’d call the Horsemen a lot of things, but vulnerable was not one of them.

Revenant, his annoyingly luxurious black mane obscuring his face, leaned in as if to tell Reaver a secret. “They’re recovering from an unfortunate accident. Very sad.” He didn’t sound very sad, but there was definitely an odd note in his voice. “It was so against the rules.”

“Accident?” Reaver sucked a gurgling breath. “Rules? What rules?”

“The ones you like to break.” Revenant heaved Reaver across the room.

Reaver hit a pillar and crumpled to the ground, bits of stone and dust showering him as he tried to push to his hands and knees. Revenant launched at him, and with a sick, twisted smile, Slag tapped his bracelet.

Reaver grunted, and for a brief moment, Harvester got off on his pain. Malevolence was a faint vibration shimmering along every nerve ending, feeding into her pleasure centers like an erotic drug. Daddy’s DNA was just the gift that kept on giving, wasn’t it?

You’re an angel. Your mother is an angel, and your father, bastard that he is now, was an angel when you were conceived. There’s more good in you than evil. Fight this, Harvester.

Reaver’s words in the cavern came back to her in a rush. Her mother… she’d died only three hundred years ago, an innocent casualty of a small uprising in Heaven, according to Raphael. She hadn’t known Harvester had fallen from grace on purpose, and it was one of Harvester’s greatest regrets that her mother hadn’t learned the truth before she died.

Fight this.

Reaver grunted again as Revenant pounded his fists into his face and body, and this time, Harvester took no pleasure in his suffering.

“Stop it!” she screamed. She scrambled across the floor toward them, her knees cracking painfully hard on the floor.

She dove for Revenant’s legs. She didn’t make it. An agonizing pain wrenched her neck as she was jerked to a sudden stop by her hair. Gethel, her fist wrapped around Harvester’s ponytail, hurled Harvester through the air.

She hit the wall in a crack of bones and stone, and everything went black.

When she came to, she and Reaver, his face badly bruised and bloodied, were propped against the pillar he’d crashed into, chains connecting their collars to hooks embedded in the stone. Both Gethel and Revenant were gone. The asshole Nightlash, Slag, was sitting on a marble bench a few yards away, a satisfied smirk on his ugly face.

“Only reason you’re not both dead is that the Dark Lord wants you alive. You,” he said, jabbing his finger at Reaver, “are for his bed until you beg him for death.” His smile widened. “He shares with Slag.”

“Slag’s right,” Harvester agreed. “He does share. But I doubt he shares with demon morons who refer to themselves in the third person.” She shifted to cast a furtive look at the guard situation near the front entrance. There were three that she could see. “He also likes audiences.”

“That was very helpful,” Reaver said dryly.

She slid a glance at him, trying to get a bead on what he was thinking, but his expression was shuttered, his attention focused on their surroundings. The familiarity of his expression made her smile. She and Yenrieth—Reaver—had spent a lot of time hunting minor demons, and she knew the look he got when he had a plan.

A Khepri entered, its nasty insect head swiveling. It drew Slag aside, and the moment they were distracted, Harvester leaned closer to Reaver.

“So… what’s the plan? Tell me you have one.”

“I snagged a key to our collars off Revenant when he was tenderizing me,” he said, and she wanted to kiss him. “But lifting the key was too easy, which makes me think it’s a trap.”

Her heart sank. “It’s our only chance.”

“Agreed.” He rested his head against hers, and again the familiarity came roaring back. They’d propped each other up more times than she could count. “Let me know when Slag turns his back.”

“You got it.” She kept one eye on Slag and the other on the door her father would use when he arrived. The thought made her throat close. She’d do her best to kill both herself and Reaver if she had to. She couldn’t endure more torture, and she couldn’t bear the thought of Reaver going through it, either.

And wasn’t that a huge shift from just a day ago?

“He turned,” she murmured, and Reaver’s arm started moving, as if he was fidgeting. Or maybe digging a key out of his pocket as inconspicuously as possible. “Reaver? What do you think Revenant was talking about when he said the Horsemen met with an accident?”

Reaver went as stiff as the pillar they were bound to. “I don’t know, but if he was responsible, I’ll kill him.”

Harvester would help. “What are you going to tell them about me? Do you think they’ll get why I did some of the things I had to do?” Do you think they’ll forgive me?

It was a stupid, sentimental thing to want, but the Horsemen were the closest thing she had to a family. She’d observed them in secret for three thousand years, and she’d been involved with them as their Watcher for two thousand. She’d watched them grow, watched their failures and successes, their joys and miseries. On hundreds of occasions she’d even healed them or their friends and staff, and all without them knowing.

So yeah, she couldn’t expect them to welcome her with open arms, but she’d like it if they didn’t hate her.

“I think they’ll get it,” Reaver said gruffly, almost as though he was choked up.

“Reaver, are you okay—shit, Slag’s turning.”

Reaver stopped moving just as Slag looked them up and down. Harvester waved and gave him a Cheshire cat smile. Asshole.

“He turned back,” she said quietly.

A low rumble boiled up from Reaver’s chest, startling the crap out of her. She risked a peek at him, but that only made things worse. His head hung low, his blond hair falling across his handsome face. His big shoulders heaved with breaths that made his entire body shudder.

“I’m sorry, Harvester,” he said in a broken whisper. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. You need to know that in case I don’t get out of here. Promise me you’ll tell my kids I’m dead, even if I’m taken alive.”

“What?” she whispered harshly. “No.” How could he even ask that? “And Slag’s looking.”

She shot him the finger. He returned the gesture, and then he made a show of using his fuck-you finger to swipe his bracelet. Ten million volts set fire to her blood, her muscles, her brain. Agony shrieked through her in an inferno of lightning. Flashes of light and dark tapped on her eyeballs, and her surroundings became a blur.

When she was done seizing, she found herself in Reaver’s arms, his hands stroking her back. She tasted ash and ozone, and her ears rung, but she was relieved that she wasn’t the flaming ball of fire she’d thought she was.

Reaver bent to speak into her ear, making it appear as though he were giving her a kiss, and an unbidden shiver of pleasure went through her.

“Are you okay?” At her nod, he continued. “I got the key out of my pocket. Now I need you to sit up a little so I can unlock your collar. Then you’ll unlock mine.”

“What then?”

“I’ll create a distraction. I want you to run. Get inside the Harrowgate and get out of Sheoul.”

“Are you insane?” She started to twist around, but he held her tight. “I’m not abandoning you.”

“Shh.” His hand slid up to the back of her neck, and the collar loosened. “Don’t draw Slag’s attention.”

She felt him slip a tiny, smooth object into her palm. The key. Casually, he pushed her off him and shifted so she could reach his collar. It took only a mere swipe of the key over the metal and the thing popped open.

“We can do this together,” she whispered.

“Trust me, I don’t have a death wish, so I’ll try for the gate. But if something happens, don’t play the hero. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Reaver—”

“Hey.” He silenced her with a kiss that stunned her into silence and that she felt all the way to her bruised, scarred soul. “Tell the Horsemen everything. About you. About me. You need them, and I don’t want them to hate you.”

She swallowed a tangled lump of grief and fear, and not a little yearning. She might hate him sometimes, might not ever be able to trust him, but she also didn’t want to be separated from him. Didn’t want to lose him. It had taken five thousand years to find him again, and even though Reaver wasn’t the Yenrieth she remembered, that turned out to be a good thing.

“Okay,” she lied. “I’ll head straight for the Harrowgate.”

“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you for… everything.”

She didn’t have time to reply. Hell, she didn’t have time to blink. In a blur of motion, Reaver was across the room, his fists and feet putting Slag and the bug-headed freak into the wall.

“Go!” he shouted.

And that was when she felt it. Terror. Horror. A malevolent, oily sensation that permeated every organ and that meant only one thing.

Her father had arrived.