Deva coughed, spraying blood. “I think… I think they were Eradicators. They found me.” She sat up, clawing at Blaspheme’s hand, desperation and terror punching through the haze of pain in her eyes. “Which means they’re also looking for you.”
Two
A high-intensity Satanic summons shrieked in Revenant’s head as he stood atop Mount Megiddo, his lungs filling with hot, dry air.
Ignoring Satan’s command, Revenant called out with his mind and voice to the highest-ranking archangel in Heaven.
“Metatron.”
Nothing. A breeze whipped up a dust devil a few yards away, but other than that, nothing moved.
“Metatron!”
More nothing. Even the dust devil died a slow, agonizing death.
“Metatron!”
Fuck. He should have expected that he’d be ignored. The archangels had abandoned him thousands of years ago, so why the hell would they pay any attention to him now?
Assholes. All he wanted were some answers. Why had they left him and his mother to rot in hell? Why didn’t anyone, in five thousand years, tell him the truth before now? Before he regained his memories and got a promotion… thanks to his brother’s “heroic” actions and Heaven’s rule that what was done to one twin must be done to the other. And why hadn’t they told him he was welcome in Heaven? After all, Reaver was allowed.
Because you aren’t welcome. You’re evil. Corrupt.
The Dark Lord’s summons came again, this time blasting him so violently that pain drove him to his knees. Blood sprayed from his nose and ears, and as he gripped his head, he swore his skull was cracking.
Dammit, he was not ready to face Satan. Not that he was ever ready. No one in their right mind would happily drop everything to take a meeting with the Dark Lord. And now that Rev knew the truth about his past – or at least, about most of it – he had even less motivation to have a face-to-face with the king of all demons.
Satan had lied to Revenant for thousands of years, had even hinted that Rev was his son.
It was all bullshit, and Revenant wondered how things were going to change now that the truth had come out. One thing was certain; he wanted to be armed with as much knowledge as he could gather before he faced Satan, and only one person could give him the answers he sought.
Unfortunately, Metatron didn’t seem inclined to provide any answers. Which left Revenant with only one other option.
Nursing his Satanic headache, he summoned a handful of books and flashed himself to the other side of the Earth, to the home of Thanatos, fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
As the Four Horsemen’s Sheoulic Watcher, Revenant was supposed to keep an eye on them. But since regaining his memories, he’d avoided them the way he’d avoided their father. Revenant’s brother.
Reaver.
Every time they’d faced off since regaining their memories, they’d battled it out, and Revenant’s words to Reaver during one particular encounter still echoed in his thoughts.
The very day I learned about you, I came to you as a brother. But all you saw was an enemy and a fiend. Now that is all you will ever see.
Revenant had cooled his jets a little since that moment a couple of weeks ago, but the fact remained that five thousand years ago, before their memories were wiped – the first time – Reaver had rejected Revenant, and to this day, nothing had changed.
So, no, Revenant wasn’t expecting Reaver’s four legendary hellspawns to welcome Uncle Rev with open arms.
And yet he was standing in front of Thanatos’s Greenland castle, wondering if the Horseman known as Death would willingly open the door. More likely, Revenant would have to barge in and lay everyone out in order to get a peek at the rare books Thanatos hoarded in his library.
An electric tingle on the back of his neck alerted him to the presence of angels a split second before Harvester, the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and Reaver himself materialized in front of him.
Fuck.
“Revenant.” Harvester’s smoky voice had always made Rev think of cat-o-nines wrapped in silk. She looked the part as well, dressed in tight black leather pants and stiletto-heeled boots, a lace corset binding her waist and plumping her perfect breasts. She looked a little paler than usual, though. Maybe getting her halo back after thousands of years of being a fallen angel wasn’t sitting well with her. “Why are you here?”
“I’m the Horsemen’s evil Watcher,” he said, getting a kick at how his brother winced at the word evil. “I don’t need a reason, nor do I answer to you.”
“But you will answer to me,” Reaver said.
Revenant snorted. Reaver had been sending out mental invitations to meet for weeks, but Revenant hadn’t answered. He wasn’t going to answer to his brother now, either.
“Bite me.” He flashed himself closer to Thanatos’s keep, but a heartbeat later, Harvester and Reaver were forming a wall in front of him again. How tiresome. “I was going to give Thanatos the courtesy of knocking on his door, but you’re giving me no choice but to flash inside his residence with no warning. The last time I did that to a Horseman, I caught Ares and Cara in a… compromising position.” He shrugged. “But whatever. Let’s see what Thanatos and Regan are up to, shall we?”
He started to dematerialize, but Reaver snarled and gripped his arm, tethering him to his current position. “Just tell us why you’re here.”
Well, hell, maybe Reaver could give Rev the information he needed. He held up the copies of the Bible, the Quran, and the Daemonica in his hand. “I want to use Thanatos’s library. I need to find references to Shadow Angels and Radiants, and these cryptic, contradictory tomes aren’t exactly helpful.”