Reaver (15 page)

“No.” She backed up, crying out when she bumped her wing anchors into a stalactite that hung so

low it nearly touched the ground. When she spoke again, her voice was laced with pain. “I might lose

control. And it’s against Heavenly law for you to willingly give your blood for food.”

The control thing was an issue for sure, but since when did she care about Heavenly law? “As

you’ve pointed out before, I tend to bend rules.”

“Bend? You wouldn’t be
bending
a rule. You’d be breaking it over the ass of an archangel.”

The visual almost made him laugh. “Don’t worry about that.” After what he’d done, what was one

more broken law?

“I’m trying,” she said tightly, “to not make things worse for you with the archangels.”

He actually did laugh at that, even as he appreciated her concern. “I hit the height of worst when I

rescued you.”

Her chin came up, and he braced himself for a mulish conversation. “I’m not feeding from you.”

He wasn’t worried about a broken rule that no one would find out about anyway. His concern was

that drinking his blood could, potentially, drain his powers as it replenished hers. He could scarcely

afford to lose any strength, and he wasn’t sure how much he could trust Harvester if she was

significantly stronger than he was.

“Why are you being so obstinate? A year ago, you’d have jumped at the chance to suck me dry.”

“A year ago, I was pretending to be an evil bitch.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know what I am!” she shouted. “I used to know, and now I don’t, and it’s all your

fault.”

Ah, damn
. For so long after he’d lost his memory, he’d wandered aimlessly, not knowing who he’d

been and unclear on who he was, other than an angel who had been given the boot from Heaven for

saving the life of a human child who had been fated to die.

So yeah, he’d been directionless, but at least he’d been able to start life with a clean slate. Harvester

didn’t have that. In her case, she’d spent the majority of her life in the service of Sheoul. She might

have fallen from Heaven on purpose, but she’d truly become a fallen angel. Was she going to be able

to re-adjust?

One thing was certain. Offering to help her was only going to send her into retreat mode, and

arguing with her would do the same. All he could do was give her space, something he was
so
not

good at. So screw it.

“You’re a fallen angel, Harvester,” he said. “But you aren’t evil.” Hopefully. “That means you can

be whatever you want.” He moved toward her, noted the way her breaths came faster as he drew

nearer. “But you can only be what you want if you survive. Which means you need to feed from me.

No more bullshit. Do it or give me a damned good reason why you can’t.”

“Fuck off.”

“There you go,” he growled. “Run to your standard answer when you don’t have a real response.”

“You don’t understand, you fool,” she yelled. “Is your halo squeezing your skull so tightly that your

brain can’t get blood? Feeding from you will fuck me up. I did it once. I fed from an angel, and it

made me do… horrible things. I killed the angel, Reaver. I couldn’t stop, and
I killed him
.”

Crushing sadness at the angel’s death… and at Harvester’s obvious regret, sat like a lump in

Reaver’s belly. But they had no choice, and he couldn’t let up on her now.

“You won’t kill me. I won’t let you.”

He backed her against a boulder, and she yelped again when she banged her wing achors against the

stone. She must be in so much pain, but even now she was schooling her expression as if she hadn’t

made a sound. He spared her his pity and tapped his throat.

“Now, bite me.”

Her eyes locked onto his neck and the force of her hunger crashed over him like a tidal wave. This

time, she wasn’t going to refuse. A sudden stab of unease pierced his chest, even though he knew they

needed for this to happen or they weren’t going to survive.

Then again, if she fell into a sinister haze of bloodlust while he was powerless, drained by her

feeding, she might just revisit the time when she’d tortured him. When she’d done her evil best to get

him addicted to marrow wine.

Maybe they should wait a little longer for Calder—

As fast as a
croix viper
, she struck, sinking her fangs deep into his vein.

And then the world shifted under his feet.

Eleven

Eidolon was having a great day. Which was notable, because ever since Pestilence had come through

the hospital like a rabid tornado and killed half his staff and destroyed a fuck-ton of equipment, most

days were shit.

Underworld General had been understaffed for months, and he’d had to do an emergency hire of

untrained people in order to keep the hospital operating at the most basic levels. He was paying to

have several
ter’taceo—
demons who passed as humans—attend EMT, nursing, and medical schools,

but obviously that took time. Time he didn’t have.

What was getting the hospital through in the meantime was the hiring of demon species who

already possessed healing abilities as part of their breed makeup. Which meant he’d hired dozens of

Seminus demons.

It hadn’t been easy—Sems were rare, even for incubi. But thanks to Sin’s prior relationship to

Tavin when she’d been his assassin master, Eidolon had been able to bring several of his brothers on

board.

Things were finally getting better. He was even getting ready to expand his medical practice by

building an urgent-care clinic that would be connected to Underworld General via an internal

Harrowgate. He’d chosen his in-laws, Gem and Conall, as well as a False Angel named Blaspheme to

run the place.

Eidolon finished stitching up a Mamu who had split his head open while attacking an elderly human

male. Eidolon had no idea if the human had survived, and he didn’t ask. His job wasn’t to judge.

Usually. He’d been raised by Justice demons, so judging had been trained into him at an early age, and

every once in a while he couldn’t help but deliver a little hospital justice. Like using stitches instead

of his much less painful healing power. Or operating without anesthesia.

Little things. Little things that gave him an immense feeling of satisfaction.

“Keep the area clean,” he told the Mamu. It was pointless to talk about cleanliness with a demon

who thrived in filth, but some habits were hard to break. “You’ll need to make an appointment to have

the stitches removed.”

The Mamu hissed, his black lips peeling back from pitted, pointy little teeth. “Appointments. Fuck

appointments. I can do it myself.”

“That’s your choice.” Eidolon stripped off his gloves and trashed them. “See the front desk about

payment.” He got out of there before the Mamu bitched about that, too.

“E!” Blaspheme’s voice called out from the other side of the emergency bay.

He jogged over to one of the exam rooms, where Blas and a red-haired Sem named Forge were

working on a Sem lying on a table.

“Handing this one off to you.” Blaspheme shoved a clipboard at him. “I’ve got a pregnant Sora in

exam one I need to prep for delivery.” She gestured to the Seminus demon patient. “He asked for

you.”

She swept out of the room in a blur of golden hair and purple scrubs. He moved to the patient and

was shocked to see Tavin lying on the table.

“Holy hell, Tav.” The guy had been minced, but Forge’s healing ability was sealing up wounds

nearly as quickly as Eidolon could do it. “What the fuck happened? Where’s Reaver?”

“Screw Reaver,” Tav muttered. “He did this to me.”

Eidolon blinked. He didn’t get struck dumb often, but he couldn’t see Reaver turning on someone

like this. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Tavin sat up, fighting Forge when the other Sem tried to hold him down. “This,” he said, yanking

down the collar of his shirt.

Eidolon peered closely at the glyph. “I thought you had a worm—”

“I did.” Tavin cursed. “Reaver healed me. It did something… I don’t know what. But when it was

done, I had this viper that fucking
bites
.”

Eidolon brushed his finger over the snake and yanked his hand back when it struck. “That’s

interesting.”

“Interesting?” Tavin flopped back down on the exam table. “Maybe you’ll find it interesting how,

when I sliced into a demon and got blood on my hand, the damned viper latched onto my throat and

injected me with shit that made me go crazy. I went into some sort of berserker mode. Nearly killed

myself without even knowing it. I tried to… hurt… Harvester, too. Would have, if Reaver hadn’t

stopped me.”

It sounded almost as if Tavin had entered
s’genesis
, the final stage of a Seminus demon’s

maturation, when they turned into monsters who cared only about sex. And they would take it in any

way they had to, which often meant trickery and violence.

Eidolon frowned. “You said this happened when you killed a demon?”

At Tavin’s nod, Eidolon strode to the door and shouted at a nurse to fetch Idess, another in-law. As

an ex-angel of sorts, she was the closest thing to an expert on an angel-powered… whatever-it-was

plaguing Tavin.

While he waited, he helped Forge heal Tavin, who spent the entire time bitching about angels.

Eidolon said a silent thanks when Idess showed up, her chestnut hair secured in a long, tight ponytail

by a series of gold metal bands.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Eidolon pointed to Tavin’s symbol. “Do you recognize that?”

Narrowing her honey-colored eyes, Idess leaned in close. But not close enough to get bitten, he

noticed. “That looks like a patron cobra.”

“A what?” Eidolon and Tavin asked in unison.

She inhaled a deep breath. “It’s a symbol angels used to brand people requesting protection from

demons. But this makes no sense. Not only is it slightly altered—this snake has fangs—the symbol

hasn’t been used in thousands of years.” She frowned down at Tavin. “How did it get there? Only an

angel could do this.”

“Reaver did it.”

She blinked. “
Reaver?
” She looked as baffled as Eidolon felt. “Why would he do that? The patron

cobra can’t be used on demons.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Tavin said. “His powers are all fucked up.”

“Oh.” Idess’s expression went slack. “
Oh
.”

“Oh, what?” Tavin croaked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Neither did Eidolon.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that instead of protecting you, it’s fighting you. See, if the symbol is

cast on a human, it gives the bearer strength and focus and the ability to fight demons with extra skill.

The snake also comes alive and fights the enemy. But because you’re a demon, it’s battling you, too.”

Tavin closed his eyes. “That’s great. That’s just fan-fucking-tastic.” When he opened his eyes

again, they’d gone gold with anger. “So you’re saying that every time I fight a demon, this is going to

happen?”

“I can’t say for sure,” she said, “but I’d guess that’s the case. It might attack you randomly, as

well.”

“Found that out already.” Tavin uttered a juicy Sheoulic curse. “I have decades left on my assassin