Reaver

Ares barked out a command, and the five hellhounds that had been stalking Gethel halted midstep. They couldn’t harm her, but clearly, Gethel had a thing against hellhounds.

Could she really kill them even if she was no more substantial than a ghost? If so, Lucifer had grown unbelievably strong. Not good.

Gethel jammed her fists on her hips and pivoted back to Reaver. “Your answer, Fallen.”

She must be loving this, the bitch. “My answer is no.”

“Think about this very carefully,” she said.

“I did. No.”

Her soiled wings shot up from her back, and the hounds growled. “Idiot! You will be condemning Heaven to a war it can’t win, which means it will spill over into the human realm.” Her wings quivered with her zealous excitement. “But before any of that happens, you, and everyone you care about, will pay for your foolish choice to not deliver Raphael to the Dark Lord.” She spat on the floor, and even though she wasn’t physically in the room, her wet spit splattered on the tiles. “You have until dawn.”

She disappeared, and Reaver cursed. He was so sick of the games both Heaven and Sheoul played with lives, the way they used loved ones to get what they wanted.

“So what are we going to do?” Ares’s gaze was steely, his stance squared and aggressive. He was ready for battle, and Reaver knew the Horseman would fight until his last breath if Reaver asked him to.

“We aren’t going to do anything.” Reaver scrubbed his hand over his face. Fuck, he was screwed. “I started this, and I’ll finish it. I can’t put anyone else at risk.”

Ares came over and laid a big hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about us. Just don’t do anything stupid, like rescuing Harvester and leaving us in the dark about it.” Irritation rumbled in Ares’s voice, but Reaver didn’t regret the choice he’d made to keep the Horsemen safe. “You’re our father, and we’ll do anything to help you. Especially if it means a chance to feed Gethel to the hellhounds.”

Reaver knew that, and he was grateful. But he also didn’t see any way for the Horsemen to help. He couldn’t hand an archangel over to the forces of evil, but he couldn’t risk his family, either.

“Ares!” Clutching a cell phone, Cara ran into the great room, wrapped in a fluffy pink robe, her hair dripping wet. “It’s Regan. Than’s castle is under attack.” The cell buzzed before she could say more. She glanced at it and looked at Reaver. “It’s Shade. Underworld General is under siege, too.”

Nothing could attack the inside of the hospital, but if the parking lot filled with demons, they could wreak havoc on the outside. Once the structure was compromised, the antiviolence spell would break, and the hospital, which had barely recovered from Pestilence’s rampage, would fall.

“Are you going to Than’s?” Reaver asked.

Ares threw a gate open. “Yup. Wanna lift?” At Reaver’s nod, Ares turned to Cara. “Call Reseph. Send him to UG.”

“Call Limos, too.” Ares and Cara both gave Reaver looks edged with doubt, but Reaver shook his head. “She’s okay.”

“Ares.” Cara ran over and kissed him, a kiss so full of love that Reaver nearly swayed from the force of it. He thought of Harvester, and how they’d finally found each other… but was it too late?

“Be careful,” she said to both of them. “I’ll send some hounds.”

“If these are Satan’s forces, the hounds won’t fight,” Reaver said.

“I know.” Cara patted Ares on his boiled-leather breastplate. “But they’ll defend. And they look really scary.”

Reaver laughed despite the seriousness of the situation. “They are that.”

Ares cast a personal Harrowgate, and with a wave to Cara, Reaver entered with the Horseman… and stepped out into complete chaos.

Thirty

Reaver stood on the outer wall of Thanatos’s keep, looking out at the charred remains of the evil army that had besieged them. The battle had been tough, but brief… which meant this had been a demonstration of intent, rather than a full-scale assault on Reaver’s loved ones.

But tough, he knew, was a matter of perspective. With no powers, Reaver had been forced to fight with his hands. He was good at it, more than a match for a similarly sized demon, but… he’d hated the way everyone felt as though they needed to protect him.

He felt like such a failure, unable to contribute much to battle. Even Thanatos’s vampire servants had been of more help. Just a day ago Reaver could have crushed any one of them like an insect under his boot.

Now he was the bug waiting for a foot. A foot that was coming for him soon. The attack had made that clear. It had made a lot of things clear, and as he gazed out at the sparse vegetation surrounding the countryside where Thanatos’s children would play, Reaver knew what he had to do.

Footsteps approached, and Reaver turned to see Thanatos and Ares top the stone steps that led to the wall walkway. No longer armed, Ares was in the blue board shorts he’d worn at his manor, and Thanatos was in workout pants and a T-shirt. The 3-D tattoos that covered him from chin to toe shimmered on his skin as he walked.

“Got a text from Limos,” Than said. “Underworld General is safe. Minor casualties.” He smirked. “Eidolon refuses to help the injured enemies. Funny, I’m always torn between wanting to kill that guy and wanting to high- five him.”

“I know what you mean,” Reaver muttered. “All Sems have that effect.”

Than snorted. “I’ve noticed. Which reminds me that I need to text Wraith and cancel our playdate for the kids today.”

Reaver just shook his head. It was so bizarre that Thanatos found the most exasperating of the Sem brothers to be the least annoying. Even more bizarre was hearing the Horseman known as Death talking about playdates.

“Never thought I’d say I was glad to see Harvester show up,” Ares said. “Man, she smoked that ice troll.”

Reaver tried not to be petty and bitter about the fact that he’d barely been able to make the ice troll flinch.

“Yeah,” Than said, “but wasn’t that against Watcher rules?”

Reaver glanced down into the courtyard at the troll, which hadn’t dissolved into a greasy stain yet. In the human realm all demons that didn’t appear human would, upon death, dissappear. But rate of disintegration varied depending on species and where they died.

“She didn’t violate Watcher rules,” Reaver said. “This wasn’t about Horsemen. It was about the conflict between Sheoul and Heaven.”

“Exactly.” Harvester appeared next to Reaver in a glittering shimmer of light, and instant lust kindled in his groin at the sight of her in a short black leather skirt, a black leather bra top, and thigh-high fuck-me boots. Damn, he was happy that her taste in clothing had survived the transition from fallen angel to angel.

“But I’ll still get in trouble.” A breeze made her ebony hair swirl around her slender shoulders, and Reaver’s fingers flexed with the desire to wrap her silky locks around his hands and hold her for a sensual onslaught. “I’m not supposed to be on the front lines, since I’ll be a target for capture or kill.”

“Then why are you here?” Ares asked. “It’s a foolish risk. You never expose your most important assets to the enemy. That’s how wars are lost.”

“Foolish?” Harvester cocked a dark eyebrow. “I swore an oath to watch over you. Not to put up with your shit. I’m not evil anymore, but I’m still not nice. Keep that in mind.”

Well, that wasn’t going to help the relationship between Harvester and the Horsemen at all. “He’s right,” Reaver said before Ares could blow his stack. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Would you have come?” she shot back. He didn’t need to answer that, and she knew it. “Thought so.” She looked past Reaver at Than and Ares. “Boys, can I have a minute with your father?”

Warmth engulfed Reaver at the way she’d said your father. His family had begun