Reaver

Two

That hell was all fire and brimstone was a common misconception, and while there most certainly were areas of blistering heat and flames fifty stories tall, Harvester thought the freezing cold was much worse.

But that was because she was in a torture chamber whose blizzard-like atmosphere froze her lungs with every breath. Not that taking breaths was easy, given that she was facedown and being pressed between two blocks of ice.

Tomorrow she might be back in the fires, or she’d be tossed into a pit full of ravenous hellhounds, or she’d be impaled on a thick pole and put on display in Satan’s living room, where anyone who entered could do whatever they wished to her.

Those were the most pleasant of the thousands of scenarios she could be faced with.

She marshaled all her strength to take a breath, but what little air she took in felt like it consisted of tiny razor blades. Blood splashed from her nose and mouth, freezing almost instantly on her lips and skin.

A prickling sensation stung her neck muscles, which should have been frozen solid, and she knew she was no longer alone.

“Harvesssster.” Venom, one of Satan’s Torture Marshals, spoke in his silky, snakey voice. The yellow-skinned bastard’s shuffling footsteps came closer. “It’s time to move you.”

A shiver went through her. She hoped he’d move her to a cell where she’d get a few hours of rest and some food, but that happened so rarely that hoping was akin to dreaming. Most likely, she was in for more misery.

“On a ssscale of one to one hundred, I’ll bet your desssire to die is clossse to one hundred, yesss?”

One hundred? One million would be more accurate.

“Your father wantsss to sssee you.”

No. Oh… no. A single tear formed in her eye, freezing before it could fall.

“He isss having a feassst tonight. You will be the centerpiece on hisss table. Quite an honor.”

Forgive me for not being excited, but last time, I was the predinner entertainment, and then I was part of the meal.

“You also have a visitor.”

Visitor?

Another prickly sensation joined the first, and her gut twisted as a female voice filled the chamber. “Oh, my. You do look awful.”

Gethel. That bitch. The former angel had betrayed Heaven in the worst way, and now, if Harvester’s senses were working properly, it would seem that Gethel was pregnant with Harvester’s half sibling.

Daddy had been busy.

“I wanted to be the first to tell you that I will be giving birth to Lucifer.”

If Harvester could throw up, she would have. But there was nothing in her crushed belly. Lucifer’s rebirth would send shockwaves through Heaven. Literal shockwaves that would cause death and destruction.

“And this is where you come in.” Gethel cleared her throat as if preparing to give a speech. “He’ll be born full-grown. The birth, of course, will kill me, but I’ll die a glorious death, don’t you think?”

Glorious? No. But with any luck Gethel would suffer the way she deserved.

“You, Harvester, will nourish him when he’s born. Instead of milk, he’ll need blood. And instead of being cradled in the arms of his mother, he’ll be cradled between your welcoming thighs. And when he’s finished with you, he will destroy everything you hold dear. The Horsemen. Their children.” Her voice dropped to a low growl. “Reaver.”

That was where Gethel was wrong. Harvester did not hold Reaver dear. She hated him, and if she never saw him again it would be too soon. Okay, yes, she’d always been fiercely attracted to him and certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed for picking his teeth with bones, but she still hated him.

He’d stirred those dual desires from the day they’d met at Ares’s Greek manor. He’d been assigned as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher shortly before Reseph’s Seal broke and initiated the demon bible’s apocalyptic prophecy. He’d flashed onto Ares’s beach, and Harvester had zapped him with a bolt of lightning before he’d fully materialized.

“Who are you?” Harvester stood, feet glued to the sand, stunned at her own actions. She’d sensed his arrival and her first instinct had been to strike. Sure, she’d always been one to shoot first and ask questions later, but she wasn’t usually this quick on the draw.

The newcomer angel peeled himself off one of the many ancient stone columns that dotted Ares’s island, his charred T-shirt trailing wisps of smoke and his sapphire eyes seething. With a snap of his fingers he returned fire, nailing her between the eyes with some sort of invisible sledgehammer.

Crushing pain nearly knocked her to her knees. Bastard. She threw another bolt at him, but he was ready, and he wheeled gracefully out of the way.

“Knock it off!” he yelled. “You’re Harvester, right?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maybe.” Damn, he was hot. Smoking hot. Literally. His jeans were still smoldering.

“I’m Reaver. Gethel’s replacement.” He strode toward her, and the closer he got, the more she wanted to light him up again.

Something about him pissed her the hell off, and she had to wonder if they’d met in battle in the past. Had to be a battle, because she’d have remembered a one-on-one meeting with him.

Or a one-on-one anything.

She held up her hand. “Stop now or I’ll fry you to a crisp.” Tiny streaks of lightning danced between her fingers, poised to make her threat a reality.

He blatantly, infuriatingly, took two more steps, ignoring her warning before halting just out of arm’s reach. “Why did you attack me?”

“You’re a stranger.”

“A stranger? You’re kidding, right? Because it’s not like I zapped in here with candy and a white van with blacked-out windows.” He stepped closer, and she turned up the electric charge in her hand. “Also, you aren’t twelve. So why did you attack me?”

“How was I supposed to know you weren’t going to attack me? It’s not like angels pop out of thin air all the time just to wish me a nice day.”

His full lips twisted into a sneer. “Don’t fuck with me again, Fallen.”

Fallen. Of all the insults he could throw at her, of all the vile slurs, he chose the only one that really stung. The only one that struck her like a physical blow. All other cheap barbs rolled off her back because they were either ridiculous or true. But this one… she’d fallen from grace to help superior asshats like the angel standing before her, and she was tired of putting up with holier-than-thou self-importance from dicks like him.

She blasted him. Straight up put him on his ass again. And God, it felt good.

Smiling at the feathers floating down all around her like the aftermath of a teenage girl’s pillow fight, she flashed the hell out of there.

So, yeah, she hated him, hated him even more simply because she lusted for him in a way she hadn’t lusted for anyone in almost five thousand years.

Not since Yenrieth, the angel who had claimed her heart. And then stomped on it before mysteriously disappearing forever, not only from all the realms but from memories, as well. Oh, Harvester remembered how he’d made her feel, but his face was a blank. He could have been a toad-headed orc for all she knew.

The sound of grinding gears and clanking chains filled the cavern, and Gethel and her obnoxious chatter was forgotten. As the giant block of ice lifted, Harvester inhaled her first full breath in… what, days? Again, the pain of her lungs filling with shockingly cold air sent a storm of agony through her.

Then the real pain set in as a layer of skin peeled off her body with the block of ice. Unable to scream through her frozen throat, she shrieked in her head, until her skull seemed ready to explode.

The block swung free, leaving her crushed, skinless from her ankles to the back of her neck, and unable to move as Venom looped a razor-sharp chain around her ankles.

Gethel moved into Harvester’s field of vision, her frilly red maternity top filling Harvester’s view. Helpless, Harvester watched as the angel bitch slashed her wrist with a dull knife before holding a crystal goblet to catch the blood streaming from the wound.

Harvester’s head spun in sickeningly slow circles. Eventually Gethel pulled the goblet away, letting Harvester bleed into a gutter on the floor. Not that bleeding on the floor was anything new.

Gethel squatted next to Harvester and put the cup to her lips. “Lucifer will feed from you himself when he’s born, but you can nourish him now, as well. With every swallow, tremors will rock Heaven. You are both so very connected.”

Crazy bitch. The only person Harvester was connected to was Yenrieth, and that hadn’t turned out so well.

“Give me your hand.”

Verrine didn’t hesitate, even though she had no idea what Yenrieth was doing with a ceremonial blade. She trusted him, and she especially liked it when he touched her.

Very gently, he turned her hand over, palm up, and put the tip of the silver knife to the skin under her thumb.

“I’m going to connect us forever,” he said, and she jerked.

“That’s forbidden,” she said in a gasp. “Only mated battle angels can do that.”

“I’m a battle angel.”

“But I’m not. And we aren’t mated.” Not that she wouldn’t mate him if he asked. But right now he was proposing something very much against the rules. Heart racing, she yanked her hand away. “We’ll be punished.”

“Not if we don’t tell anyone.” He put the blade to his palm and drew a slow, shallow cut from the base of his pinky to the heel of his thumb. “We have to do this. I can’t explain why. I just know that someday it’s going to make sense.”

Verrine’s gut churned. Yenrieth had always known things, and he’d always been right, so she didn’t question his intentions or his reasoning. But this was a substantial angelic offense. Not to mention that it would create a permanent link between them, and given that angels were immortal, it wasn’t an act to be taken lightly. Not even if you’d loved the person asking you to link since the first day of Demon Hunting Basics class.

And yet, she held out her hand. Allowed him to slice her palm the way he’d cut his. The pain was fleeting, gone the moment he twined his fingers with hers. Their blood ran together, and Verrine was lost in a moment of bliss so pure that all she could do was moan with the glory of it.

“We’re linked,” he whispered. “We’ll forever be able to find each other, no matter where in the universe we are.”

He’d been wrong. On the day he disappeared from Heaven and memories, she lost the ability to feel him. It was as if he’d never existed. She’d searched for him for years, had made a nuisance of herself by questioning everyone she thought might have answers, but she’d come up empty. Not even the archangels had offered up any explanations.

She supposed the fact that no one remembered Yenrieth could explain why, but someone had to know something. Only after she’d lost her wings and gone to Sheoul had she given up the search, but that didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes wonder what had happened to him.

Gethel drained the goblet, and Harvester swore that an aura of power pulsed around her now, as oily and dark as a puddle of tar poison in Sheoul’s Boneyard region. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sighed contentedly.

“I’ll see you at supper,” Gethel said, all cheery. Harvester hoped Gethel was experiencing morning sickness. All day long.

Gethel slipped away as Venom tugged on the chain connected to Harvester’s ankles, and she slid off the bottom block, taking another layer of skin from her body. The pain kept her from feeling the landing on the floor, at least.

Harvester felt herself being dragged over uneven, rocky ground, and as her body thawed, her agony jacked higher.

For the ten millionth time, she replayed the moment, thousands of years ago, when she’d stood before three archangels and said, “I want you to kick me out of Heaven so I can infiltrate Sheoul as a spy and earn my way to being the Horsemen’s Watcher. I can work to subvert the Daemonica’s version of the Apocalypse.”

The archangels had laughed until they realized she was serious. Raphael had thrown a full-blown angel tantrum that humans felt as a dust storm that swept across the Holy Land. And then Metatron and Uriel had joined in to try to talk her out of it, even as they agreed that if her plan worked, it would be the greatest Heavenly coup in history. If she failed, she’d suffer like no angel ever had.

Turned out that she’d succeeded… but she was still suffering like no angel ever had.

“The Dark Lord will break you tonight.” Venom dropped the chain and crouched next to her to grip her face in his scaly hands. “You will tell him how much Heaven knew about your actionsss.”

“Nothing,” she croaked. “I swear.” The lie came easily, which was, no doubt, why Satan didn’t believe her. Thousands of years of living in Sheoul had chipped away at the angel she once was and had made many things simple. Lying. Destroying. Killing.

All she’d ever wanted was to be good, so it was ironic that in order to do good, she’d had to become bad. She’d had to make everyone she cared about hate her. She’d had to lose everything, from her self-respect to her wings to her dreams of having friends and a family with Yenrieth, the only person she’d ever loved.

The only thing she had left was knowledge, and that was something she would hang onto until her last breath.

Life as she’d known it was over, but she could still do good. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut while enduring an eternity of torture.