The Horseman shot Harvester a glance that said she wasn’t welcome before he and Regan headed back to the group, Cujo on their heels until they walked past the grill. Then the mutt took a detour to grab a package of hot dogs off the cooler. Ares gave chase, but when Hal joined in, the hot dogs were lost between two snapping hellhound jaws.
Harvester turned away, her wings drooping. “Good thing I didn’t want to stay anyway.”
“Wait.” Reaver snagged her by the wrist and turned her back to him. “I don’t know why you lied for me, but thank you.”
Harvester snorted. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it because I have a reputation to uphold. And I certainly didn’t want to hold the brat.”
“Then why did you ask?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to see what Thanatos would say.”
She was lying, but why? Her behavior lately had been completely baffling. Even now, she was stealing glances at Logan, and with every covert look, her expression softened.
Definitely baffling.
“Are you… okay?”
Harvester’s head snapped back so violently he might as well have punched her. “Of course I am, you haloed fool.” She spread her wings, blotting out the sun and throwing a massive shadow. “Look at me. My blood runs with power. Do I seem weak or pathetic in any way?”
“Never mind,” he muttered. Her defensiveness made it so difficult to deal with her sometimes. “I spoke with my supervisors about Gethel. None of them know where she is. Have you had a chance to talk with your colleagues?”
“Talk?” Her lip curled. “We don’t talk. They dictate. I tell them to f**k off.”
She. Was. Impossible. “Okay then. Did they dictate to you before you told them to screw themselves?”
“Yes. They said to leave it alone. I’m guessing they know more about Gethel than they’re saying, but they won’t tell me anything.” She finally tucked her wings away. “Are you ready to tell me where Reseph is?”
“No.”
“You sure? Maybe I could pleasure the information out of you.”
“Yes,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth, “I’m sure.”
“Fine, fine. Don’t get your pinfeathers all prickly.” She slid a glance at where the Horsemen were gathered around a tub of iced drinks, their laughter carrying on the ocean breeze. “I got something for Logan. Do you think Thanatos and Regan will accept it?”
This just kept getting stranger and stranger. “Probably depends on what it is.”
“It’s not a poisonous viper or a razor-wire mobile,” she snapped. “Go to hell, Reaver. Oh, wait, I just rescued you from there. Go back to hell.”
She flashed off the beach, leaving Reaver staring at empty air and feeling like he’d been spun like a top. Harvester had always been volatile, but these mood swings were extreme even for her.
“Reavie-weavie!” Limos called out from next to the picnic table. “Food!”
Food. A cookout. A beach, kids, and pets. All so normal when just three months ago the world had been on the verge of apocalypse and this family had been embroiled in a hellish war that could have put the Horsemen on the wrong side of the battle.
Reaver was happy for them. Even Reseph seemed to be at peace. But Reaver couldn’t shake the feeling that things were not as they seemed.
The danger to the world might have been averted, but the trouble had just begun.
Harvester materialized inside her residence and was instantly thankful that her werewolf slave, Whine, wasn’t there to greet her. She didn’t want anyone, even her slave, to see her like this.
Tears spilled from her eyes, burning, stinging. Which pissed her off, because she never cried. Ever. She’d long ago allowed evil to encase her heart in a diamond-hard shell—a necessity if one was to survive Sheoul.
But the Horsemen had always been her weakness, and she’d never been able to completely detach herself from them emotionally. She’d tried, oh, how she’d tried. And now that the Apocalypse was over, she’d let her guard down even more, hoping that they had done the same.
Time was running out for her, and all she’d wanted was to hold Logan before the ticking clock in her head, the impending sense of doom, became a reality. And to maybe be invited to stay for the get-together. But she couldn’t blame Thanatos for his attitude toward her, and that was the problem. Up until now, Harvester had owned her choices. Had owned her fall from Heaven.
But now she found herself wishing… what? That she could go back in time and not fall? No, that had to happen. What was done was done.
Cursing herself for weakness, she dashed away her tears with the back of her hand.
And realized something was terribly wrong.
The stench of blood tinged the air, and her skin prickled with a sudden sense of malevolence. She whirled around and snarled at the male standing in her living room doorway, his lips wet with blood.
“Lucifer,” she hissed. “How dare you enter without permission.”
Dead, ebony eyes gleamed, and his tongue made a slow, taunting sweep over his lower lip. “I did more than enter.”
She now understood why Whine hadn’t greeted her. Lucifer had done something to him, but now wasn’t the time to show either concern or fear.
And yet both were making her quake on the inside.
“Get out.” She flared her wings, and he returned the defiant gesture, his black, leathery wings scraping her ceiling. “Unless you’re here to bestow some great honor on me, get the f**k out of my home.”
“Great honor?” His laughter rattled the Bedim demon artwork gracing her walls. The sensual paintings depicting the romantic rituals of dozens of demon species always reminded Harvester that love was a weakness even for the lowliest of demons. “Because of you, we lost our bid for an Apocalypse.”
Her gut twisted, and her lungs seized. How much blame were he and Satan going to lay at her feet? The clock in her head picked up its pace.
“What’s the matter, Harvester?” His voice was low, smooth, and laden with poison. “You look a little frightened.”
She scoffed, even though he’d struck the bull’s-eye. “I have nothing to be afraid of. As Watcher, my job was not to help our team. It was to keep an eye on the Horsemen and dole out information as it was given to me.”
“Oh,” Lucifer said silkily, “I think you did far more than that.”
“If this is about some broken Watcher rule, punish me already. Or leave me the hell alone.”
Lucifer’s toothy smile sent a chill slithering up her spine. “Broken Watcher rules are the least of your worries, Fallen.”
“Come, Lucifer, games aren’t your style.” She hoped the underlying tremor in her voice was audible only to her. “Why don’t you put that forked tongue to good use and tell me what you’re dancing around?”
“Ask your werewolf.” With that, Lucifer flashed out of there.
Shit. Harvester’s shaky legs barely supported her as she lurched toward her bedroom, where the smell of blood grew stronger. As soon as she entered, she saw why.
Poor Whine was curled up on his pallet on the floor, his body a mass of bruises and cuts and wrong angles. The moment he opened his one functional eye and saw her, he tried to get up.
“Whine, no.” Harvester kneeled next to him and pushed him down. “Stay still.”
The werewolf shuddered and closed his eye. “Sorry… mistress.”
“Shh.” Mentally cursing Lucifer, she stroked Whine’s hair. She’d gained ownership of the warg thirty years ago after she’d killed his cruel owner, and since then, she’d sworn to protect him. Granted, she hadn’t been particularly kind to him, but that had been to keep them both safe. Kindness in Sheoul got you killed.
“What did Lucifer want?” she asked, and Whine shuddered again.
“He demanded the… malador.”
Harvester’s breath shot out of her lungs. “Did you tell him where it is?” Please say no. The tiny item was her one ace, the only card she had to save herself.
Or to save someone else.
“No,” Whine rasped. “Never. But—”
“But what?”
“He… he told me you were going to suffer a traitor’s death.”
Her hand froze mid-stroke. A traitor’s death. The death part was misleading, because in Sheoul, traitors were kept alive, in agony, for eternity. Often, after centuries of torture, they were… peeled… and encased in wax to suffer endlessly on display like dead body art.
So what did Lucifer suspect her of? And where was he getting his information? Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to go meekly to anyone’s torture chamber. She could run, and if worse came to worst, she’d find an angel to kill her—
“He also said…” Whine inhaled a ragged breath. “If you try to escape, he’ll destroy everyone you care about.”
Damn him. She’d been so careful to not show affection to anyone for this exact reason.
Closing her eyes, she sank down on the floor beside Whine. In her head the ticking clock sped up even more, the hands moving so fast that the individual ticking sounds were barely distinguishable. Very soon, the alarm was going to go off, and Harvester’s time would be up.
Fourteen
It took Reseph a full forty-eight hours to get the hinky feeling out of his gut. Something had triggered his internal alarm when he’d seen the demon investigators, and he still didn’t know why. Except he got the distinct impression that they were a danger to him. But why the hell would he be of any interest to them?
The sense of danger was growing, and some of it was coming from within himself. It was as if he was dangerous, a bomb fuse waiting for a spark, and he was terrified that Jillian would be the one to take shrapnel.
He and Jillian had spent two days bouncing between town, where they scoured the library and the Internet trying to figure out who he was, and her farm, where he did shit Jillian needed done. He’d repaired a hole in the siding of her barn, strung barbed wire along a section of droopy fence, cleaned stalls and the chicken coop, and he’d even folded laundry.