Larissa Ione - Reaver

But if Satan had his way, everything would change. He’d been wanting war for eons, and now he might have his excuse. Even more important, he now had the means to carry through with his threat. Lucifer’s birth would be the opening salvo that would strike the Heavenly realm like a magnitude million-point-nine earthquake, weakening its very foundations and paving the way for a demon invasion.

A demon invasion Satan would organize should Harvester admit to her espionage, or should her rescuers be either angels—or backed by angels. Any of those scenarios meant that Heaven had broken a substantial law that archangels themselves had drafted along with both the Sheoulic and Heavenly Watcher Councils. And if they’d violated the statute that stated that neither Heaven nor Sheoul could plant an agent inside the enemy Watcher ranks, the penalty was a matter of souls.

In this case, Heaven would default a hundred thousand souls to Satan. Plus an angel of his choice.

“Can’t another of your children feed Lucifer?” Revenant asked, and he swallowed dryly as Satan rounded on him again.

“Of course,” he growled. “But she’s the oldest of my progeny, and the only one conceived while I was still an angel. Her blood is ten times more powerful than any of my other sons and daughters. I need the bitch.” Reaching up, he rubbed one of his horns. “And I’m not even close to being done punishing her for betraying me.”

He turned back to the werewolf, and with a vicious swipe, he ripped into the male’s belly. Blood and organs spilled onto the floor. The warg’s screams faded away, but before the poor jackass could die, Satan partially healed him with a flick of the wrist.

Partially , because you never wanted your torture subject to be pain free.

“Go back to your duty, Revenant. Bypass the Watcher Council and come directly to me if anything happens with the Horsemen or their Watcher.” He sneered. “They might know more than they’re saying.”

It was against Watcher rules to break the chain of command—even if Satan himself requested it. But the fuck if Revenant was going to point that out, so he merely bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

“And Rev,” he said silkily, “don’t let me down, or you’ll take Harvester’s place on the skinning block.” He gestured to the door with his blood-coated clawed hand. “Send in Blight.”

Rev sucked in a sharp breath. Blight commanded all of Satan’s militaries.

“I’m sending an army after Harvester. When they find her, they will drag her and her rescuers back by their intestines.” Satan smiled at the barely conscious werewolf. “And you… you will talk. And then I get a hundred thousand extra souls to enslave in my armies, and Heaven and all its happy inhabitants will fall into my hands.”

And once Heaven fell, there would be nothing to stop him from taking over the Earth next.

Tavin’s shout screamed through Reaver’s brain.

He dove outside through the opening in the larva-nettle bush and came face to ass with a giant stegosaurus-sized beast. The creature was pawing at Tavin as the Sem tried to wedge himself between two boulders. Calder was twenty yards away, coming at them at a dead run, but Reaver doubted he’d get here before the thing got to Tavin.

“Hey!” Reaver yelled. The demon wheeled around with a snarl, its gaping maw large enough to swallow him whole.

Digging deep into his perilously low power reserves, Reaver blasted the thing with liquid fire that tore into the demon’s chest, splattering blood and gore on the parched earth. The beast screeched, but didn’t slow down. It swiped at Reaver with bony, clawed hands that dripped with the hair and meat of whatever creature it had tangled with before it found them.

With the stench of burnt flesh swirling around him, Reaver spun out of its way while simultaneously hurling a ball of lightning at its head. The lightning veered off course at the last second, a victim of Reaver’s unpredictable powers, and fizzled into a harmless shower of sparks.

Calder, the claws on his hands and feet extended, leaped into the fray, slashing at the demon’s hindquarters as Tavin extracted himself from the safety of the boulders.

His power failing miserably, Reaver went old school and hurled a stone into the demon’s jaw. Roaring, it lunged awkwardly, partially crippled by Calder’s efforts. Reaver hit the ground in a roll to avoid snapping jaws that would have cut him in half. As he popped to his feet, he summoned a shear-whip, and in a single, fluid motion, he leaped onto the demon’s spiny back and brought the white-hot scourge down on the beast’s skull.

The whip cut deeply into its skin, leaving steaming gashes all the way to the bone. The demon roared and threw itself backward, smashing Reaver into the rocky cliff surrounding the camp. Pain speared every bone in Reaver’s body, and his thoughts scattered like spilled marbles.

He bounced off a rocky outcrop before hitting the ground in a messy sprawl. Momentarily stunned, he lay there as the thing clamped its paw on top of him, caging him inside a prison of bony fingers and razor-sharp claws.

Man, he hated these giant things. They couldn’t kill him—very few demons could—but they were capable of serving up a world of hurt that could leave him defenseless for days. Worse, the commotion might attract Satan’s minions.

With renewed enthusiasm, he energized his hands with iced fire and jammed them between the demon’s fingers. Frost streaked through the creature’s hand and up its arm, leaving trails of chilled vapor billowing in its wake.

Excellent. The demon would retreat… ah, shit . Ice froze the demon’s hand to the ground, trapping Reaver as the beast fought Tavin and Calder with its other arm and its clawed feet.

“Reaver!” Tavin’s voice sounded above the demon’s pained screams.

“I’m here,” Reaver called out. He summoned a giant mallet and prepared to smash his way out of the prison of the demon’s palm. “You guys keep the bastard busy.”

“I’m open to suggestions, asshole,” Calder yelled. “Wait… standby!”

A massive crash buckled the ground, shattering the demon’s frozen hand and releasing Reaver. The demon lay dead a few yards away, bled out from a gut-spilling gash in his belly, courtesy of Calder, who was bent over, trying to catch his breath. But where was Tavin?

Reaver scrambled over a pile of boulders. “Tav? Man, where are you?”

Calder joined in Reaver’s frantic search, until finally, the Nightlash demon shouted. “There!”

The Seminus’s arm was poking out from under the dead beast’s hindquarters.

Fear made Reaver clumsy as he rushed to Tavin, and he nearly passed out with relief when he found the Sem caught in a small space between the demon’s leg and a rock.

“You okay?” Tavin didn’t respond. Anxiety spiked again as Reaver sank to his knees. “Tav?”

Blood soaked the ground around Tavin, pooling and mixing with the other demon’s darker blood. A faint scritching noise rose up, and the dirt began to vibrate, sending chills up Reaver’s spine.

Carnage maggots.

“Get to safety,” Reaver told Calder. “Now.”

The demon eyed the larva-nettle bush. “What about the fallen angel?”

“The bush will protect her,” Reaver yelled, his patience shot. “Go!”

Hastily, he dragged Tavin out from under the demon’s leg and heaved him over his shoulder. The ground rumbled hard enough to make him stagger. In seconds this patch of battle-chewed earth would become a feeding ground for great white shark–sized grubs that fed on blood and dead flesh, but they wouldn’t turn down a live meal either.

The ground between Reaver and Harvester erupted with maggots, cutting off his path. Shit. He spun sharply and hauled ass up a mound of boulders, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of a maggot that burst out of the ground like a damned porpoise out of water.