Reaver

Reaver (Lords of Deliverance #5) by Larissa Ione

For my readers and my friends. How lucky I am that they so often overlap. I love you guys!

Acknowledgments

First of all, I want to thank everyone on the Grand Central Publishing team for everything they’ve put into this book, with special thanks to Madeleine Colavita for all her help. And a massive thank-you goes to my editor, Amy Pierpont. Oh, my God, we did it!!!!

Special thanks go out to Kim Whalen for being a great shoulder and agent. Yay, Reaver!!!

And thank you, Bryan, for being home when I needed you. Now that you’re home full time, the rest of this crazy journey is yours to share too, so brace yourself!

Glossary

Agimortus—A trigger for the breaking of a Horseman’s Seal. An agimortus can be identified as a symbol engraved or branded upon the host person or object. Three kinds of agimorti have been identified and may take the form of a person, an object, or an event.

Boregate—Portals that allow demons to travel inside Sheoul. The precursors to Harrowgates, Boregates are either unpredictable or inflexible. Some run back and forth between two realms while others take users to random locations within Sheoul.

Daemonica—The demon bible and basis for dozens of demon religions. Its prophesies regarding the Apocalypse, should they come to pass, will ensure that the Four Horsemen fight on the side of evil.

Dermoire—Located on every Seminus demon’s right arm from his hand to his throat, a dermoire consists of glyphs that reveal the bearer’s paternal history. Each individual’s personal glyph is located at the top of the dermoire, on the throat.

Fallen Angel—Believed to be evil by most humans, fallen angels can be grouped into two categories: True Fallen and Unfallen. Unfallen angels have been cast from Heaven and are earthbound, living a life in which they are neither truly good nor truly evil. In this state, they can, rarely, earn their way back into Heaven. Or they can choose to enter Sheoul, the demon realm, in order to complete their fall and become True Fallens, taking their places as demons at Satan’s side.

Harrowgate—Vertical portals, invisible to humans, that demons use to travel between locations on Earth and Sheoul. A very few beings can summon their own personal Harrowgates.

S’genesis—Final maturation cycle for Seminus demons. Occurs at one hundred years of age. A post-s’genesis male is capable of procreation and possesses the ability to shapeshift into the male of any demon species.

Sheoul—Demon realm. Located deep in the bowels of the Earth, accessible to most only by Harrowgates and hellmouths.

Sheoulghul—Tiny, extremely rare crystal spheres that allow angels to partially charge their powers in Sheoul. The origin of these crystals is a closely guarded secret, and little is known about them, but some users claim to have heard them make weeping sounds.

Sheoul-gra—A holding tank for demon souls. The place where demon souls go until they can be reborn or kept in torturous limbo.

Sheoulic—Universal demon language spoken by all, although many species also speak their own language.

Ter’taceo—Demons who can pass as human, either because their species is naturally human in appearance or because they can shapeshift into human form.

Watchers—Individuals assigned to keep an eye on the Four Horsemen. As part of the agreement forged during the original negotiations between angels and demons that led to Ares, Reseph, Limos, and Thanatos being cursed to spearhead the Apocalypse, one Watcher is an angel, the other is a fallen angel. Neither Watcher may directly assist any Horseman’s efforts to either start or stop Armageddon, but they can lend a hand behind the scenes. Doing so, however, may have them walking a fine line, that, to cross, could prove worse than fatal.

Prologue

Fate was not a word angels tossed around lightly. But as Zachariel, First Angel of the Apocalypse, wrote the final chapter of Verrine/Harvester: An Unauthorized Biography, he couldn’t help but think about how fate had screwed her over.

And so it was that, five thousand human years ago, the angel Verrine fell in love with the angel Yenrieth. But Verrine, in her innocence, fled from his affections and sent him into the waiting arms of another.

Verrine finally realized her mistake, but it was too late. She came upon her beloved Yenrieth fornicating with the succubus Lilith.

Unbeknownst to Yenrieth, Lilith became pregnant. Verrine, however, was aware of the pregnancy and for reasons known only to her, she kept the knowledge from Yenrieth. She did, however, swear an oath to find and watch over Yenrieth’s offspring.

In time, Lilith gave birth to four infants, three boys and a girl: Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos.

After many years of searching in secret, Verrine finally located the boys, who had grown up with human families, placed there by Lilith.

But the girl, Limos, had been betrothed to Satan and had made her life in the underworld. Only when Limos emerged from the dark depths of hell did Verrine feel as though she could finally tell Yenrieth about the existence of his children.

But as fate would have it, Limos’s arrival in the human realm was disastrous.

Yenrieth’s children, upon learning from Limos that they were not human but were, in fact, half angel and half demon, started a war between the earthly and demon realms, causing destruction and chaos that bordered on Armageddon.

As punishment, Yenrieth’s offspring were cursed to become the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their fates to be determined by prophecy. Should the Seals that bound them to the curse break, they would become Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, but whether they fought on the side of good or evil had yet to be determined.

No one knows what became of Yenrieth after this, but Verrine, in order to hold to her personal vow to watch over his children, approached three archangels with a plan—to infiltrate hell and use whatever means at her disposal to be assigned one of Sheoul’s most coveted tasks: Sheoulic Watcher of the Horsemen. She intended to act as a spy and manipulate events in order to prevent the demon bible’s version of apocalyptic prophecy.

Three archangels, Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel, approved her request and, knowing she would never see Heaven again, Verrine became the fallen angel Harvester.

It took three thousand years of proving herself to her father, the fallen angel and lord of the underworld,