Reaver

sinister sound.

“Nothing’s wrong with me, angel.” Her voice was warped. Guttural. Demonic surround sound. “It’s you. You’re glowing. You’re an angel in hell, and now everyone is going to know it.”

Twelve

Metatron barreled through the halls of the Archangel complex, his heart racing, his powers skating on the surface of his skin. Screams reverberated off the walls and pillars, and under his feet, tremors rocked the ground.

He skidded around a corner at the entrance to the Crystal Chamber, and for a moment, he froze at the incomprehensible sight of a Soulshredder tearing apart an angel.

A demon.

No demon had ever set foot in Heaven, let alone inside the Archangel buildings.

“Metatron!” Raphael’s shout rang out from somewhere behind him.

Metatron hurled a flaming dagger at the Soulshredder, taking it out with effortless ease. The thing shrieked as its body combusted, raining greasy ashes onto the gold-and-gem-tiled floor.

Whirling in the direction of Raphael’s shout, he ducked the swing of another Soulshredder, but before he could destroy it, a sword cleaved the evil beast in half. It collapsed, and with its death, the overwhelming, almost crippling sense of evil in Heaven vanished.

Behind the creature, spattered in demon blood, was Raphael. Disbelief and anger etched deep lines in his face, and Metatron wondered if he looked as shaken as Raphael was.

“This is madness,” Raphael breathed, his voice laced with a rare note of fear.

Oh, he didn’t fear demons; he feared for the future, just as Metatron did. Not since Satan led a rebellion that divided Heaven and cost thousands of angel lives had an event of such proportions rocked Heaven.

“This goes beyond madness,” Metatron said grimly. And, he could admit it, shakily.

Raphael recovered his sword and cleaned it with a mere thought. “There’s no way Lucifer has been born already.”

Metatron reached deep into his rattled psyche for an elusive measured calmness. “This isn’t Satan’s doing.”

Raphael frowned. “Then whose?”

“There’s only one answer.” Metatron didn’t even have to guess at this. He knew.

Raphael’s eyes shot wide. “Reaver.”

“And Harvester. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Raphael’s face mottled with anger, but the emotion was a lot milder than Metatron would have expected. The other archangel had always hated Reaver, but Metatron had no idea why.

“He did it. I actually went through with it. He rescued her and put us all at risk. That fool!” Raphael made the sword disappear, though Metatron suspected he’d like to run it through Reaver’s chest. “We have to post combat units at every mass exit point from Sheoul, and we have to get structural teams to find the weak spots in the Heavenly membrane.”

He groaned out loud at that last part, because Heaven was… huge. It would take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years to inspect every nook and cranny.

“It’s time to tell the others,” Metatron said grimly.

Time to let all the other archangels in on what Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel had done five thousand years ago when they’d erased all memories of Yenrieth. No one else knew that Reaver was Yenrieth, father of the Horsemen, destroyer of entire villages and towns. No one knew how truly powerful Reaver was, and that Metatron had been forced to bind his powers when Reaver was very young.

And no one except Metatron knew that Reaver and Harvester, as Yenrieth and Verrine, had blood- bonded.

Under normal circumstances and with their memories intact, they’d have felt each other no matter where they were in the universe.

But when Verrine fell and she became evil, the bond went into a hibernation of sorts. It should have stayed that way… unless Harvester tasted Reaver’s blood.

Metatron had feared this, had feared what would happen if the bond was awakened while Reaver was in Sheoul. Now he knew. The powers Metatron had sealed within Yenrieth were starting to leak out. Warped and twisted by his Sheoulic environment, they were punching holes in the very fabric that separated Heaven and hell.

There was pounding of feet, and then a dozen senior archangels burst into the chamber. A dozen more flashed in and the room, its gold-veined crystal walls vibrating, went opaque for privacy and expanded to accomodate the crowd.

Gabriel was the first to speak. “What is going on? I just killed a demon… in my home.”

“I found one in my pool,” Michael said as he instantly changed his garb from a soaked robe to pin-striped black slacks and a Green Bay Packers green-and-gold jersey. From century to century, the angel thought he had a handle on current human fashion, but he rarely got it right.

Metatron met each of his brothers’ gazes before focusing on the spilled bowl of fruit near the body of the angel the Soulshredder had killed. Sorrow made his heart clench, but mourning would have to wait.

“It’s time,” he said grimly, “that you all knew the truth.”

Hold onto your balls, everyone, because if you thought things were bad now, just wait. They were about to get much, much worse.

* * *

Raphael flashed himself straight from the Archangel complex to the Emerald Knoll, a grassy hill surrounded by a moat that flowed in a circular river. Lorelia was waiting for him, her golden hair glinting in the sunlight. An ancient Chinese text floated nearby, but she wasn’t reading. Instead she was pacing and flapping her dove-gray wings with the speed of a hummingbird. When she saw Raphael, she ran to him.

The book hit the ground.

“Raphael.” Her hands fluttered nervously at her sides. “I heard demons broke in. Is it true? Has Lucifer been born?”

“Demons, yes. Lucifer, no.” He smiled tightly. “We have another problem. Tell me, do the Horsemen know Reaver’s whereabouts?”

She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Ask them.”

“Of course,” she said. “But why?”

“I have a task for you,” he said, intentionally ignoring her question. That was the great thing about being an archangel. Niceties and explanations weren’t necessary. “It’s going to be dangerous. And delicate.”

“Name it.” Lorelia had been a guardian angel of unborn infants before her assignment to the Horsemen, so this was going to be right up her alley.

“As you’re aware, Gethel is pregnant with a bouncing baby reincarnated Lucifer.” At Lorelia’s nod, he continued. “Obviously, we can’t let her give birth. We sent assassins the moment we heard about her pregnancy, but their chances of successfully taking her out are slim. No doubt she’s heavily protected and most likely residing in a region of Sheoul that our assassins can’t enter.”

The archangels had first approached their network of demon spies, but finding someone willing to put down Satan’s lover and his unborn son was beyond impossible. Demons might be as dumb as doorknobs, but they weren’t suicidal. Darkmen, as conjured assassins, had no such self-preservation instinct.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“We need a backup plan.” Another backup plan, anyway. Raphael had set the first one in motion when he’d