Reaver

Reaver’s breath became labored, and Tav felt the angel’s power become a trickle. “Dammit,” Reaver rasped. “I can’t.”

“You’re out of power?” Or maybe it was corrupted. At this point, Tav figured corrupted healing would be better than none at all.

“No,” Reaver said, his voice thick with regret. “But I will be if I heal you any more than I just did. Calder’s got a point. You’re a danger to us all, and I can’t afford to drain my power.”

Loss of blood made Tavin lightheaded as he grabbed his belly, which was slit open and threatening to spill his organs.

“Damn you, Reaver,” he rasped. “You cursed me with this fucking snake with an attitude problem, and now you’re going to let me die?”

“No,” Reaver swore. “We’ll take the Boregate and get you help.”

“Ah, Reaver?” Harvester stared at the Boregate. “We won’t be taking the gate anywhere. It goes to the Deathsands region. I’m pretty sure it’s a one-way trip to a wargrun gambling casino.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Reaver asked. “They should have a nearby Harrowgate.”

“Yes,” she said. “But this Boregate fits only one passenger. And it won’t come back until someone uses it from the other side.”

Since they’d come to rescue Harvester, Tavin figured she’d be the one to take the Boregate. But shockingly, Reaver heaved Tavin into his arms and shoved him inside the coffin-sized gate, propping him against the pitch-black walls.

“Go,” Reaver said. “Someone at the casino should help you to Underworld General. Hurry.”

“But—”

“Go, you fool,” Harvester snapped. “We’ll find another way.”

Weakly, and with a shaking hand, Tavin tapped the squiggly Sheoulic GO symbol carved into the smooth ebony wall. As the gate closed and the two angels disappeared from view, the snake hissed.

Gods, Tavin hated snakes.

* * *

As the gate carrying Tavin away closed, Reaver said a silent prayer that the demon made it to safety. Then he said another for himself, Harvester, and Calder. They were going to need every prayer Reaver could come up with. They’d just lost a damned good fighter, and now they’d have to rely on Calder to locate a Harrowgate. If they lost Calder, they were fucked.

“He’ll be okay, Reaver,” Harvester murmured, and he slid her a surprised glance. Was she actually… comforting him? “Now quit moping and get us out of here.”

That was more like it. “You’re all heart, Harvester.” But hey, the fact that she’d been nice, even for only a moment, was progress.

Scowling, she crossed her arms over her chest. Under the surface of her skin, bruises lingered, and he realized that without Tavin, they were down to Calder for her to feed from. Reaver was going to make sure he was breathing down the bastard’s neck as Harvester bit into it.

“I have no heart,” Harvester said, but it was a lie. He’d seen glimpses of it over the last few years, though at the time he hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

Although the tenderness in her eyes when she’d asked to hold Thanatos’s son, Logan, for the first time had been crystal clear and, perhaps, the first true hint that she wasn’t what she’d seemed.

Reaver cursed under his breath as Calder slipped away to scope out the route ahead, leaving Reaver and Harvester to catch up.

They found Calder standing motionless on the trail a few hundred yards ahead, and Reaver’s heart leaped into his throat. The path continued across a rickety wooden bridge, but the dilapidated state of the bridge was the least of Reaver’s worries.

Above them, far up on the sheer rock faces that surround them, demons perched on ledges and narrow trails. One, a horned demon with a goatlike snout, looked down, and Reaver swore the beast smiled as he caught Reaver’s eye.

Reaver’s gut clenched. They’d been spotted.

The demon raised his hand in a sharp command. Three demons holding the leashes of creatures that resembled scaly skinned bears snapped into action, vaulting from ledge to ledge in a rush toward them.

“We are so fucked.” Calder leaped onto the suspension bridge, and the way it groaned with age and fatigue made Reaver’s clenched gut drop to his feet.

Harvester’s hair swirled around her softly rounded shoulders, caught in a balmy breeze that billowed up from the chasm in front of them. “Aren’t you King of the Obvious.”

“Be nice,” Reaver said. “We need Calder to find a Harrowgate.” He scanned the surroundings, looking for any way out of here that didn’t involve crossing a highly questionable bridge. “Unless you can sense them now.”

“Fuck off.”

So that was a no. Harvester would never admit that there was something she couldn’t do.

“Fuck both of you,” Calder said with a flash of razor-sharp teeth. “I’m going.”

The bridge creaked under his weight and swayed perilously over the gaping canyon, but he continued across, his feet sometimes knocking boards loose or punching right through them. Far below, in the blackness of the pit the bridge spanned, something shrieked.

Reaver held his breath until the Nightlash was across. The approaching demons were halfway down the cliff face now.

“Hold my hand,” he said to Harvester. “We have to run. If the bridge collapses, I’ll fly us across.”

He just hoped it didn’t come to that. Flying in Sheoul was like trying to fly in water. The effort involved in even short flights would drain an angel in mere minutes.

Taking her hand, he darted across the bridge. As they stepped on firm ground, a bear-toad howled.

The demons were on the other side of the bridge, where Harvester and Reaver had been standing just moments before.

“Run!” Harvester yelled, as if Reaver needed the prompt.

They hauled ass through the mountain tunnels with Calder in the lead. Vines dripping with acid grabbed at them like octopus tentacles, and their feet crunched on demon remains littering the ground. The obstacles didn’t slow the bear-toads, and the sounds of their pursuit grew louder with every passing moment.

“We’ve got to take a stand,” he said, as they leaped across a wide stream flowing with a brown gelatinous substance that smelled like rotting flesh.

“I can feel a Harrowgate nearby,” Calder yelled back. “I’ll find it.” Before Reaver could protest, the demon put on a burst of speed and dashed off, disappearing in the murky darkness ahead.

“Shit.” A vine grabbed at Harvester, and she yanked it out of the wall by its roots. Blood dripped from her palm where the acid had eaten her skin away, but she didn’t seem to notice. “The demons are close.”

Too close. Reaver could practically hear the bear-toads’ growls. They were in for a battle, and they had to find a place to fight that would give Reaver’s team every advantage they could get.

They ran hard, finally slowing when the passage widened into a cavern, its ceiling extending so far into the darkness that Reaver couldn’t see it. Massive, sharp stalactites jutted like fangs from above, and spiky stalagmites erupted from the floor.

Exit tunnels on the far wall sat just beyond a pool of oily black stuff that Harvester eyed like it was poison. When she actually said, “It’s poison,” he wasn’t shocked.

“I guessed that.”

“You guessed,” she said. “I knew.”

“Why is everything a competition to you?” Calder had better have located the Harrowgate, because if they had to spend another day down here, Reaver was going to kill her. Or himself. “We need to work on our—” He broke off at the low-pitched drone of a howl.

Harvester wheeled toward the opening they’d come through. “Here they come.”

Dammit. He had no idea which of the tunnels Calder had taken, and even if he did, he couldn’t risk getting caught by the demons in a narrow space where he couldn’t fight.

They had to make their stand here.