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For my readers and my friends. How lucky I am that they so often overlap. I love you guys!
Acknowledgments
First of all, I want to thank everyone on the Grand Central Publishing team for everything they’ve put into this book, with special thanks to Madeleine Colavita for all her help. And a massive thank-you goes to my editor, Amy Pierpont. Oh, my God, we did it!!!!
Special thanks go out to Kim Whalen for being a great shoulder and agent. Yay, Reaver!!!
And thank you, Bryan, for being home when I needed you. Now that you’re home full time, the rest of this crazy journey is yours to share too, so brace yourself!
Glossary
Agimortus—A trigger for the breaking of a Horseman’s Seal. An agimortus can be identified as a symbol engraved or branded upon the host person or object. Three kinds of agimorti have been identified and may take the form of a person, an object, or an event.
Boregate—Portals that allow demons to travel inside Sheoul. The precursors to Harrowgates, Boregates are either unpredictable or inflexible. Some run back and forth between two realms while others take users to random locations within Sheoul.
Daemonica—The demon bible and basis for dozens of demon religions. Its prophesies regarding the Apocalypse, should they come to pass, will ensure that the Four Horsemen fight on the side of evil.
Dermoire—Located on every Seminus demon’s right arm from his hand to his throat, a dermoire consists of glyphs that reveal the bearer’s paternal history. Each individual’s personal glyph is located at the top of the dermoire, on the throat.
Fallen Angel—Believed to be evil by most humans, fallen angels can be grouped into two categories: True Fallen and Unfallen. Unfallen angels have been cast from Heaven and are earthbound, living a life in which they are neither truly good nor truly evil. In this state, they can, rarely, earn their way back into Heaven. Or they can choose to enter Sheoul, the demon realm, in order to complete their fall and become True Fallens, taking their places as demons at Satan’s side.
Harrowgate—Vertical portals, invisible to humans, that demons use to travel between locations on Earth and Sheoul. A very few beings can summon their own personal Harrowgates.
S’genesis—Final maturation cycle for Seminus demons. Occurs at one hundred years of age. A post-s’genesis male is capable of procreation and possesses the ability to shapeshift into the male of any demon species.
Sheoul—Demon realm. Located deep in the bowels of the Earth, accessible to most only by Harrowgates and hellmouths.
Sheoulghul—Tiny, extremely rare crystal spheres that allow angels to partially charge their powers in Sheoul. The origin of these crystals is a closely guarded secret, and little is known about them, but some users claim to have heard them make weeping sounds.
Sheoul-gra—A holding tank for demon souls. The place where demon souls go until they can be reborn or kept in torturous limbo.
Sheoulic—Universal demon language spoken by all, although many species also speak their own language.
Ter’taceo—Demons who can pass as human, either because their species is naturally human in appearance or because they can shapeshift into human form.
Watchers—Individuals assigned to keep an eye on the Four Horsemen. As part of the agreement forged during the original negotiations between angels and demons that led to Ares, Reseph, Limos, and Thanatos being cursed to spearhead the Apocalypse, one Watcher is an angel, the other is a fallen angel. Neither Watcher may directly assist any Horseman’s efforts to either start or stop Armageddon, but they can lend a hand behind the scenes. Doing so, however, may have them walking a fine line, that, to cross, could prove worse than fatal.
Prologue
Fate was not a word angels tossed around lightly. But as Zachariel, First Angel of the Apocalypse, wrote the final chapter of Verrine/Harvester: An Unauthorized Biography, he couldn’t help but think about how fate had screwed her over.
And so it was that, five thousand human years ago, the angel Verrine fell in love with the angel Yenrieth. But Verrine, in her innocence, fled from his affections and sent him into the waiting arms of another.
Verrine finally realized her mistake, but it was too late. She came upon her beloved Yenrieth fornicating with the succubus Lilith.
Unbeknownst to Yenrieth, Lilith became pregnant. Verrine, however, was aware of the pregnancy and for reasons known only to her, she kept the knowledge from Yenrieth. She did, however, swear an oath to find and watch over Yenrieth’s offspring.
In time, Lilith gave birth to four infants, three boys and a girl: Reseph, Ares, Limos, and Thanatos.
After many years of searching in secret, Verrine finally located the boys, who had grown up with human families, placed there by Lilith.
But the girl, Limos, had been betrothed to Satan and had made her life in the underworld. Only when Limos emerged from the dark depths of hell did Verrine feel as though she could finally tell Yenrieth about the existence of his children.
But as fate would have it, Limos’s arrival in the human realm was disastrous.
Yenrieth’s children, upon learning from Limos that they were not human but were, in fact, half angel and half demon, started a war between the earthly and demon realms, causing destruction and chaos that bordered on Armageddon.
As punishment, Yenrieth’s offspring were cursed to become the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their fates to be determined by prophecy. Should the Seals that bound them to the curse break, they would become Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, but whether they fought on the side of good or evil had yet to be determined.
No one knows what became of Yenrieth after this, but Verrine, in order to hold to her personal vow to watch over his children, approached three archangels with a plan—to infiltrate hell and use whatever means at her disposal to be assigned one of Sheoul’s most coveted tasks: Sheoulic Watcher of the Horsemen. She intended to act as a spy and manipulate events in order to prevent the demon bible’s version of apocalyptic prophecy.
Three archangels, Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel, approved her request and, knowing she would never see Heaven again, Verrine became the fallen angel Harvester.
It took three thousand years of proving herself to her father, the fallen angel and lord of the underworld, Satan, before she was granted a position as Watcher. For the next two thousand years she covertly helped the Horsemen keep their Seals from breaking and pretended to work against each of the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watchers, Shiresta, Barabus, Gethel, and Reaver.
And when, in the Year of our Lord 2010, a Seminus demon named Sin inadvertently broke Reseph’s Seal and turned him into the demon known as Pestilence, Harvester’s work began in earnest. The Daemonica’s version of the Apocalypse had begun.
Harvester, corrupted by thousands of years of evil, performed tasks that would eat at her soul and scour away what little goodness was left in her heart. But ultimately, her actions saved humankind, and the Apocalypse was averted. All worked out according to plan… until Gethel, a traitor to Heaven, betrayed Harvester to Satan.
And Harvester, unable to ask the very people she saved for help, was dragged to Sheoul to suffer an eternity of torment at Satan’s hands.
Zachariel p
aused to dip his angel-feather pen into the sacred ink blended from the blood of twenty archangels. Crimson drops dripped from the nib as he lifted it from the crystal bottle, and he wondered how much more he should write. Yenrieth had been scrubbed from the history books and from the memories of all but a select few, and Zachariel wasn’t sure how much he should reveal. His own memories of Yenrieth had been returned just recently, and only so he could record Harvester’s story.
Blood ink spattered on the desk, and Zachariel realized the finality of the situation. Harvester was gone forever. There was no more to write. Thanks to Harvester’s sacrifice, humanity was safe, and so were Yenrieth’s children. She, more than any angel in history, had shaped the future of all the realms.
Harvester was a fallen angel. And a fallen hero.
Zachariel let the pen fall back into the bottle, and with a silent prayer for Harvester’s soul, he closed the book.
One
In any other building in the world, the sight of a hellhound lying on the floor with a baby in its mouth would send people screaming in horror or scrambling for weapons.
In a castle belonging to one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, people didn’t bat an eye.
Reaver ignored the shaggy black beast that bared its teeth at him as he strode across the great room. Hellhounds hated angels, and the feeling was mutual.
“Thanatos,” Reaver called out, “Cujo is slobbering on your son.”
Thanatos poked his blond head out of the library doorway. “That’s why Logan gets a lot of baths.”
The hound, a puppy itself at around two hundred pounds, flopped onto its side and allowed Logan to tug on its fur and ears as the infant climbed on top of the beast. Logan was going to be a soggy, furry mess by the time his mother, Regan, got home.
It had been months since Reaver had been here, and not much had changed. The fire that burned practically year-round was going in the hearth, vampire servants bustled between the cavernous rooms, and the mouthwatering aroma of fresh bread wafted from the kitchen. Regan had added personal touches here and there, replacing some of Thanatos’s ancient weapons and gory paintings on the walls with tapestries and pictures of the local landscape. Throw rugs now covered the hard, cold floors, and baby toys lay scattered like colorful land mines that squeaked in shrill protest when Reaver’s booted feet accidentally stomped on them.
The keep’s massive wooden doors flew open behind Reaver, bringing a chilly blast of late spring Greenlandic wind through the entrance. Ares, Reseph, and Limos came in with the breeze, Ares in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, Reseph in jeans and nothing else, and Limos in a glaringly orange maternity sundress. When she saw Reaver, she grinned, and despite being five months pregnant, she tackled him in a fierce embrace.
He’d always loved her enthusiasm, even before he learned she was his daughter, and he hugged her close. He just wished he’d been able to give her much-needed hugs when she was a child. Wished he could have been there for her first steps, her first words.
If only he’d known about her. And Ares. And Thanatos. And Reseph.
“ ’Sup, Pops?” Limos pulled away, taking her tropical piña colada scent with her. “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you in months.”
Time ran differently in Heaven, so it felt like only days to Reaver. And maybe he’d been a little hesitant to visit. For years he’d been the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, but the dynamic of their relationship had changed since he’d discovered they were his offspring. He’d been fired as their Watcher, and more important, he wasn’t sure how to be a father to five-thousand-year-old legends.
Worse, he didn’t know how to be a grandfather. He was over five thousand years old and technically could be a grandfather thousands of times over, but he didn’t feel old enough to be a grandfather even once.
“I’ve been in the Akashic Library trying to find something… anything, that’ll help track down Gethel,” Reaver said, and Thanatos growled at the mention of the Horsemen’s ex-Watcher, an angel who betrayed Heaven and nearly killed Than’s son. “I even searched her home in Heaven, but it’s been ransacked by Enforcers already.”
Enforcers, Heaven’s angel lawkeepers, had made finding the renegade angel a top priority, their zealous pursuit spurred by the fact that the entire underworld was buzzing about her rumored involvement in some sort of plot against Heaven. Intel from the Heavenly spy network indicated a countdown was also involved. But a countdown to what?
“It should not be this difficult.” Frustration lashed Reaver all the way to his wing feathers. He’d been searching for eight months without a single lead. “She isn’t technically a fallen angel, so she can’t hide in Sheoul—” He broke off, wheeling around at the sudden sensation of evil emanating from the doorway.
“My ears are burning.” Tiny flecks of light materialized into a shape. Gethel’s shape.
Instantly, the Horsemen flicked their fingers over the crescent-shaped scars on their throats, activating their armor and their weapons. Snarling, the hellhound leaped to his feet, somehow sweeping Logan beneath his big body as everyone put themselves between the child and Gethel.
“Limos!” Than shouted. “Get Logan out of here.”
Reaver didn’t hesitate. He blasted the angel with nuclear-grade direlight. The blue spear of sizzling light whispered through Gethel’s body and blew up the keep’s massive wooden door. Gethel, unharmed, merely smiled, even when he sent an arc of fire at her head. The flaming column passed through her like an arrow through fog.
“How the fuck did you do that?” Thanatos advanced on her, sword leveled at her throat, but Reaver suspected the Horseman’s weapon would be as useless as his own. The souls Than stored in his armor—the souls of those he killed—swirled at his feet, anxious to kill. “How did you get in here? My keep is warded against anyone but my Watchers and Reaver flashing in.”
“The child I carry lent me his power.” Gethel touched her stomach, and Reaver’s mouth went dry at the sight of the bump under her palm.
What kind of child could she possibly be carrying? Power of that magnitude in any species was almost unheard of.
The answer came to him like a poleax between the eyes. A Radiant, or Shadow Angel, as some called them, would be powerful enough to blow through Than’s wards. But there hadn’t been any angels of that class around for centuries. If Gethel was pregnant with an angel who could travel freely through both Heaven and Hell, the archangels needed to know.
The hairs on the back of Reaver’s neck stood up, and half a second later, the Horsemen’s Sheoulic and Heavenly Watchers, Revenant and Lorelia, flashed in.
Ares’s leather armor creaked as he stepped closer to Gethel, his two-handed sword poised to strike a lethal blow. “Explain.”
Gethel dragged out a dramatic pause. “I’m going to give birth to Lucifer.”
Bullshit. Lucifer, Satan’s right-hand man, was dead. Reaver had seen the fallen angel torn to pieces with his own eyes. So what was Gethel’s game?
“You mean Lucifer’s child?” Reaver hoped not. Any spawn of Lucifer’s would be as powerful as most archangels.
“Lucifer himself,” she said sweetly, and Reaver’s stomach wrenched with disbelief. “I was chosen to be the vessel that will give him physical form again.” She eyed Thanatos’s sword. “Go ahead and run me through. I’m not really here. My precious Lucifer has the power to project my image to the moon if I want.”
A thunderous rumble tore through the castle, and then two archangels dressed in business casual slacks and shirts slammed to the ground in twin rays of golden light. Before anyone could react, Raphael and Metatron swept the Horsemen and Revenant, their evil Watcher, aside like flies, leaving them lying unconscious on the ground. Lorelia stood there looking stunned and grateful to be left conscious.
Reaver snared Raphael’s arm. “What did you do to them?”
Irritation flickered in the angel’s expression, and Reaver knew he was close to being laid out by some über-powerful archangel
weapon.
“They’ll recover.” Raphael gestured to Gethel. “When we get hold of you, you won’t recover.”
“You are an angel, Gethel.” Metatron’s silver-blue eyes flashed lightning, but his words were measured. Controlled. The calm before the tempest. “You can stop this madness before it’s too late.”
“Why would I do that? I’m carrying the second most powerful being in Sheoul.” She drummed her fingers on her belly. “His power will rival even yours.”
“How is this possible?” Lorelia asked, obsessively twisting the ruby ring on her pinky. “Reseph destroyed Lucifer months ago.”
In truth, Reseph’s demon half, Pestilence, had also played a key role in Lucifer’s messy demise, but Reaver wasn’t going to split hairs right now.
“Lucifer was destroyed,” Metatron agreed, never taking his eyes off Gethel. “But his soul was sent to Sheoulgra. Given the right, albeit unlikely, conditions—”
“He could be reborn,” Raphael finished sourly. “But under what circumstances?”
Metatron closed his eyes as Gethel smirked, waiting for him to solve the puzzle. “Only Satan is powerful enough to sire a reincarnated fallen angel of Lucifer’s status. The mother would need to be someone pure and holy who fell from grace.”
“Or an angel who betrayed Heaven and Earth,” Reaver said grimly. “Gethel.”
Gethel clapped. “Bravo.”
Raphael glared at Reaver. “If you’d killed her when you had the chance, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Way to stab me where it hurts, dickhead. Reaver’s failure to kill the golden-haired wench during their last battle ate at him like acid. But that didn’t mean he liked being taken to task about it by a puffed-up archangel who had parked his butt safely behind his monstrosity of a desk while the human realm suffered under a demon invasion and near-apocalypse.
“If any of you had gotten off your pampered asses to, I don’t know, help, maybe she’d be dead by now,” Reaver said, wondering if he should throw in a few expletives for emphasis. Ultimately, he decided not to push his luck. Either archangel could turn him into a juicy stain.