“Why am I not dead?” Revenant muttered.
“You’re a Shadow Angel. Only I, the entire contingent of archangels, or God himself can kill you, and it’ll take a lot more effort than simply noshing on your heart.” Satan strode through the pile of remains on his way to the throne, his Italian leather shoes squeaking wetly in the gore. “And if you’re entertaining any ideas of defecting to Heaven, let me just end that right now. Sandalphon might have fucked you into existence, but it’s my blood that runs through your veins.”
Revenant rubbed his chest, which was already mostly healed. He could even feel a new heart thumping around in there. “I don’t understand.”
“When you were a baby, you were fed your mother’s milk, mixed with demon blood.”
“I know that,” he said. At least, now he knew that. Two weeks ago he’d been clueless.
Satan sank down on his throne made of bones. “Surely you didn’t think we gave you something that came from some random demon’s vein? It was my blood. I bound you to me and this realm forever. You are corrupt, and entering Heaven will corrupt the very realm. So yes, in all the ways that matter, I am your father.”
Revenant’s gut rolled. Being Satan’s “son” didn’t give him any special privileges. On the contrary, the king of demons expected more from his children, and when they let him down, he had a way of not taking it well. His daughter, Harvester, was living proof of that. If Reaver hadn’t saved her from his clutches, she’d still be in Satan’s dungeons, being tortured every minute of every day, in ways even Rev’s sick mind couldn’t comprehend.
“Is this why you summoned me, my lord? To dine on cardiac tartare and regale me with stories of my childhood?”
“Father,” Satan said, his voice distilled into pure malevolence. “You will call me Father.”
Fuck that. To do so would be a disgrace to his mother and his real father. “Why did you summon me?” Rev repeated.
“Why did you summon me, Father?” Satan snarled, and abruptly, pain squeezed Revenant’s brain. “Say it.”
Clutching his head, Revenant ground out, “Why did you summon me?” Another blast of pain struck him, and blood spurted from Rev’s ears.
The king of demons got in his face. “Say it.”
“Why did you summon me?” Revenant shouted, and then an unbelievable crush of agony drove him to his knees. Blood poured from his nose as his skull caved inward.
Satan went down on his heels in front of Revenant. “So fucking stubborn.” A sly smile curved his crimson lips. “Call me Father. It’s a new rule.”
Damn him. Deep inside, Revenant trembled with the need to obey. The one thing that had been drilled into him almost since birth was the need to follow rules. Breaking them meant pain, and while pain was something Rev could handle, watching his mother suffer the most heinous torture because he broke rules was not something he’d been able to deal with.
She was long dead, but his need to follow rules was not, and Satan knew that.
Rev locked gazes with the demon in front of him. Someday he’d get revenge for everything Satan had done to Revenant’s mother, but until then, he’d play Satan’s game. After all, he needed to be trusted – and alive – to make the demon pay for years of suffering.
“Why did you summon me… Father?” he ground out.
Satan patted him on the head like he might do to a child. “Very good. I brought you here for two reasons. First, Gethel needs medical attention. She’s growing weaker as Lucifer grows stronger. He seems to be pulling energy from not only Gethel, but from all of my children as well. It’s possible that, upon his birth, they will all die.”
That definitely explained why Harvester had looked like microwaved shit. “So?”
Revenant didn’t give a hellrat’s ass if Gethel died. He’d hated her when she’d been an angel, and now, as a fallen angel pregnant with Satan’s offspring, he hated her even more. She was a nasty piece of work who had broken a million rules while acting as the Four Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher. As for Satan’s kiddos, Rev didn’t like any of them, either. Reaver probably wouldn’t be happy if Harvester died, though.
Satan pushed to his feet and returned to his monstrosity of a throne. “So… Gethel can’t go to Underworld General.”
No, probably not. The staff of UG was largely neutral to the goings-on between good and evil, but the people who ran the place, like that asshole Seminus demon, Eidolon, and his dickhead brothers and Sin, his half-breed abomination of a sister, had been personally affected by Gethel’s machinations. There was no way they’d help her. Hell, she wouldn’t make it out of the hospital alive.
“What do you want me to do about that?” Rev asked. “Unless I’m missing a memory of attending medical school, I’m useless.”
“You will take a doctor to Gethel.”
So basically, Rev would have to kidnap a doctor, because no one in their right mind would volunteer to treat a psychotic ex-angel who was carrying Satan’s son… a son who also happened to be the reincarnated soul of Lucifer, the second-most-powerful fallen angel to have ever existed.
Until Revenant.
Except that Revenant wasn’t truly fallen, so he supposed he didn’t count.
Wiping away blood on his mouth with the back of his hand, Rev stood. “Is that all?”
“No.” Satan steepled his hands in front of him and leaned forward. This wasn’t going to be good. “Given all your new knowledge and memories, I question your loyalty,” he said, and now the reason he’d been so insistent that Rev call him Father made sense. He was trying to reinforce ties… or force them, as it were.
“You have no reason to question my allegiance,” Revenant assured him, even as his mind swirled with confusion about his place in the world. “I was born here. Raised here. Heaven abandoned me eons ago.” He jabbed his finger into his sternum, directly over the still-raw wound from his cardiectomy. Or whatever the medical people called the violent removal of a heart from one’s chest. “I did your bidding for five thousand years. Whatever you wanted done, even when your other minions wouldn’t do it, I did it. So why in the realm of fuck would you doubt me, when you’re the one who kept me and sent Reaver to Heaven when we were newborns in the first place?”
Satan studied him the way an entomologist might study an insect. “You think I sent Reaver to Heaven?” He laughed. The fucker actually laughed, because yeah, this subject was hilarious.
Revenant growled. “You gonna let me in on the joke?”
The amusement abruptly drained from Satan’s expression, and Revenant suspected it was time to put his name on a heart transplant list.
“Heaven insisted on taking one twin, so I told your mother to choose,” Satan said, and Rev’s gut did a somersault. He didn’t want to know this. “She refused, of course. Even after torture and two nights in my bed.” He frowned. “I guess those two things are one and the same.”
Nausea and impotent rage bubbled up inside Revenant, but he tamped them down, knowing full well that attacking the demon son of a bitch would only end badly. For Revenant.
“Finally, I had to threaten to torture her precious babies,” Satan continued. “That’s when she gave in and chose to send Reaver to Heaven. She knew, as I did, that Reaver was the good twin. The one worth saving.”
A spear of pain punched through Revenant’s chest, which he’d long thought was bulletproof. “No,” he argued, forcing a steady, neutral tone, “she knew Reaver was the one who couldn’t hack it down here.”
Satan’s bark of laughter sent hellrats scurrying from their hiding places. “Heaven wouldn’t have taken you. Not with my blood in your veins. Why do you think no one came to rescue you? Your soul is corrupt, and it’s only grown more corrupt. Tell me, since you gained your memory back and were raised to the status of Shadow Angel, has an agent of Heaven contacted you to welcome you into their loving embrace? No?” He bared his teeth. “And they never will. Mark my words.”
Revenant had never known Satan to be able to read m
inds, but it was almost as if he’d looked into Rev’s and latched onto his deepest, most secret desires. How could Revenant not want to know the place where he and Reaver should have been raised together? How could he not want to be accepted by those who had treated Reaver like family?
A silent snarl rose up in Rev’s throat. Fuck it. He didn’t need his angelic family. He had… okay, so he didn’t have a family. But hey, as long as he had a warm female in his bed, he didn’t need one.
“I have no desire to be welcomed into Heaven’s loving embrace.” But would it kill them to offer? To at least give him the opportunity to choose for himself? He was an angel, after all, just like all the other haloed pukes. Just like his brother.
Satan’s doubtful smile said he wasn’t buying it. But then, the Prince of Lies was suspicious of everyone. Liars assumed everyone lied. “Then you’ll have no problem proving it to me, right?”
“And if I do have a problem with it?”
“Then you should ask Harvester what happens when someone close to me pisses me off. Now, I’ll ask you again: You’ll have no problem proving your loyalty to me, right?”
Fuck. There wasn’t an inch of Harvester’s body, outside or inside, that Satan and his cronies hadn’t peeled, smashed, cut, macerated, or defiled… and she was his daughter. The only one of his offspring to be conceived while he was still an angel. He’d actually loved her, so what would he do to Revenant, whom he barely tolerated?
“Of course not,” Rev ground out.
“Then here’s the deal, son.” His black gaze lifted to the wall behind Revenant, where hundreds of bone rings hung from hooks.
Halos, they were called, because they’d been cut from the skulls of angels. Revenant’s own mother was up there, hanging in a place of prominence and ultimate insult – from a mounted upside-down crucifix.
“You,” Satan continued, “will bring me the head of an angel. And not some simpering, wimpy Cherubim or Seraphim. I want an angel from the Order of Thrones or higher.”
As far as strategies went, that was brilliant. The moment Rev killed an angel in cold blood, Heaven would close all its doors to Revenant.
What Satan didn’t know was that Heaven hadn’t opened any doors to begin with.
Satan slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair – which, fittingly, had been fashioned from human arm bones. “Your answer.”
Revenant bowed his head. He’d never liked angels anyway. “Your will is mine.”
“Is it?” Satan’s eyes glowed with unfathomable evil as he locked gazes with Rev. “Do not fail me, my son. You’ve seen how I punish traitors, but what I’ve done to them will be child’s play compared to what I’ll do to you. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Good. Because taking out a single angel is just the beginning. As a Shadow Angel, you can go places I can’t and take out entire legions of angels. Your power will be my sword, and your primary objective will be to decimate Heaven’s angel population, including my darling daughter, Harvester,” Satan said, and Rev saw his relationship with Reaver go from antagonistic to full-blown Cain and Abel. “You have until Sanguinalia to bring an angel’s head to me.”
Sanguinalia, one of Sheoul’s most important holidays, would take place in a week. Which meant Revenant had seven days to get everything he wanted from Heaven before he killed an angel and confirmed to everyone that he’d deserved to be the twin who was left behind in Sheoul after his mother gave birth.
“Go,” Satan continued. “Take care of Gethel. I want Lucifer to be born healthy and powerful. I’m eager to have him at my side again.”
That fucker. Lucifer had been the biggest bastard, next to Satan, Revenant had ever known. Rev had partied for a week straight after Reseph tore Lucifer apart and sent his soul to Sheoul-gra. Now the dickhead was going to be reincarnated, and in a few short years, he’d replace Revenant as the second-most-prominent being in Sheoul.
Unless…
No. Rev couldn’t go there. If he destroyed Lucifer, his suffering would become legend. Generations of demons would share stories of his misery while they toasted marsh rats around the campfire.
So no, Revenant couldn’t kill Lucifer. Not if he wanted to live.
But someone else… he grinned.
Because Revenant might not be in a position to prevent Lucifer’s birth, but he knew someone who could.
Three
Deva’s surgery, performed by Eidolon and his sister-in-law, Gem, lasted ten hours. Blaspheme had begged to scrub in, but Eidolon had relegated her to “the box,” where she could do nothing but observe through a glass window. She hadn’t doubted that her mother was in the best hands in the world, but she’d still hated being so helpless.
Now, as her mother was being wheeled into post-op, Blaspheme waited anxiously for Eidolon’s surgery report.
He met her in the staff room outside the OR, and the moment she saw the bleak expression on his face, her heart plummeted to her feet.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
The stethoscope around his neck bounced against his broad chest as he walked toward her. Like all sex demons, the black-haired doctor was impossibly gorgeous, something she’d have appreciated on any other day. Something she did appreciate on any other day. He was mated, but Blaspheme wasn’t blind.
“The surgery went well,” he said, a note of compassion softening his matter-of-fact voice.
“But?”
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “I was able to set her broken arm, repair her lacerated stomach, colon, and liver, and treat the burn on her leg, but I couldn’t use my healing ability. Something interfered with my power.”
“I know.” She looked down, remembering the cup of coffee in her hand, and took a drink. It was cold and stale, but it felt good going down her parched throat. “She tangled with an angel.”
One dark eyebrow shot up. “That explains it.”
“Will she be okay?”
Silence. It only lasted for a heartbeat, but it was enough to curdle the creamed coffee in her belly. “I don’t know. I repaired what I could, but whatever weapon the angel used scrambled her insides. It actually reversed my healing ability and caused more damage, which means it was a specialty weapon, like grimlight or haloshiv.”
Which meant a specialty angel had wielded the weapon. A specialty angel like an Enforcer. Or, as Deva claimed, an Eradicator, Heaven’s extermination specialists. With the ability to see through enchantments and sense things other angels couldn’t – like angel DNA inside someone who shouldn’t have it – they were Enemy Number One to beings like Blaspheme.
“So what are you saying?” She knew, but she needed to hear it. Needed it to be real, or she’d live in a world of make-believe where everything was happy-happy and her mother would recover all by herself, the way fallen angels always did.
“She’s still in danger,” he said. “I’ll look into some alternative treatments, but for now, it’s a waiting game. I’m sorry, Blaspheme. I wish I had better news.”
“Thank you,” she said numbly. Her brain had shut down after the word danger, leaving her disoriented and reeling. “I, ah… I want to see her.”
“Of course.” Eidolon rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “If you need anything, let me know. Take off all the time you want.”
She gave a noncommittal nod, but she wouldn’t be taking any time off. She had nothing else to do but work, and as long as her mother was in the hospital, she’d be here, too. Besides, she loved her job, had never felt as needed as she did when she was elbow-deep in someone’s chest cavity. There was just something about giving life.
No number of saved lives can give back the one you took.
The nagging voice in her head was always there to keep her feet on the ground. Technically, she hadn’t taken a life. But one had been sacrificed for her, and she was going to honor that. She had no doubt, in fact, that her guilt had been the reason she’d chosen a career in medicine.
<
br /> Leaving Eidolon, she hurried to the recovery room, where her mother was hooked up to machines Blaspheme could operate blindfolded, but right now she couldn’t even remember what they were called.
“Blas.” Deva’s voice was barely a whisper.
Blaspheme gripped her mother’s pale hand and sank into the chair next to the bed. “Don’t talk. You need to rest.”
Ignoring her, Deva opened her eyes, the vivid aqua now hazy with pain and meds. “Where… where am I?”
“You’re at Underworld General. Don’t worry, you’re safe. Angels can’t enter.”
The problem was that Devastation couldn’t stay here forever, and clearly, she couldn’t return home. She could find a place to stay in Sheoul, but if Heavenly angels had located her, it wouldn’t be long before fallen angels such as Destroyers, the Sheoul equivalent of Eradicators, found her as well… and then there wouldn’t be a safe spot for her in the entire universe.
Vyrm, the forbidden offspring of an angel and a fallen angel, weren’t tolerated by Heaven nor hell, and neither were their parents. After nearly two hundred years of frequent moves, name changes, and close calls, Blaspheme was all too aware of that fact.
“How… bad?”
Blaspheme couldn’t lie to her mother – hell, she wasn’t the best liar to begin with. “The surgery went well,” she said. “But there are some complications from whatever weapon you were attacked with.”
As if on cue, Deva inhaled a rattling breath, and on the exhale, blood sprayed from her nose and mouth. “The angel… he used… grimlight.”
Shit. Grimlight, a weapon used exclusively by Eradicators, confirmed what Eidolon had said. Blas reached for a bedside tissue and gently dabbed away the blood on her mother’s face as she let the reality of the situation sink in. Heaven had found her mother, which meant they couldn’t be far behind Blaspheme.
“I’m going to die, Blas.”
“No.” She squeezed her mom’s hand. “I always knew this day could come. I’ve done a lot of research into grimlight —”