Larissa Ione - Reaver

Tavin lifted his lids. Reaver was sitting on him, a knife in his hand and a concerned look on his face.

“W-what… happened?”

“Shit.” Reaver disappeared the dagger. “I don’t know. But you need to get to Underworld General. Fast.”

Tavin struggled into a sitting position, aided by Harvester, and looked down at himself. Blood poured out of dozens of gashes. Bone was visible in places where flesh had been stripped by the Silas’s blades, and his right knee was crushed so badly his lower leg bent at an awkward angle.

“Oh… fuck.”

“Yeah.” Reaver yanked him into his arms as Harvester led them to the shimmering curtain of light ahead. The Boregate. “You went berserk when the serpent glyph bit you. You tried to attack Harvester. I had to stab it to make it let go.” He cursed. “Hold still.”

Nausea bubbled up in Tavin’s throat as Reaver’s power sifted through him. The snake writhed, and Tav joined it, pain screaming along all his nerve pathways.

Calder’s voice cracked over the sound of Tavin’s pulse pounding in his ears. “Let him die. He’s a danger to all of us if he goes ape-shit again.”

The asshole was right, and Tavin was mercenary enough to know he’d have said the same thing. But fuck… Tav wanted to live. Hand trembling, dripping with blood, he extended his middle finger at the Nightlash male.

Reaver’s breath became labored, and Tav felt the angel’s power become a trickle. “Dammit,” Reaver rasped. “I can’t.”

“You’re out of power?” Or maybe it was corrupted. At this point, Tav figured corrupted healing would be better than none at all.

“No,” Reaver said, his voice thick with regret. “But I will be if I heal you any more than I just did. Calder’s got a point. You’re a danger to us all, and I can’t afford to drain my power.”

Loss of blood made Tavin lightheaded as he grabbed his belly, which was slit open and threatening to spill his organs.

“Damn you, Reaver,” he rasped. “You cursed me with this fucking snake with an attitude problem, and now you’re going to let me die?”

“No,” Reaver swore. “We’ll take the Boregate and get you help.”

“Ah, Reaver?” Harvester stared at the Boregate. “ We won’t be taking the gate anywhere. It goes to the Deathsands region. I’m pretty sure it’s a one-way trip to a wargrun gambling casino.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Reaver asked. “They should have a nearby Harrowgate.”

“Yes,” she said. “But this Boregate fits only one passenger. And it won’t come back until someone uses it from the other side.”

Since they’d come to rescue Harvester, Tavin figured she’d be the one to take the Boregate. But shockingly, Reaver heaved Tavin into his arms and shoved him inside the coffin-sized gate, propping him against the pitch-black walls.

“Go,” Reaver said. “Someone at the casino should help you to Underworld General. Hurry.”

“But—”

“Go, you fool,” Harvester snapped. “We’ll find another way.”

Weakly, and with a shaking hand, Tavin tapped the squiggly Sheoulic GO symbol carved into the smooth ebony wall. As the gate closed and the two angels disappeared from view, the snake hissed.

Gods, Tavin hated snakes.

As the gate carrying Tavin away closed, Reaver said a silent prayer that the demon made it to safety. Then he said another for himself, Harvester, and Calder. They were going to need every prayer Reaver could come up with. They’d just lost a damned good fighter, and now they’d have to rely on Calder to locate a Harrowgate. If they lost Calder, they were fucked.

“He’ll be okay, Reaver,” Harvester murmured, and he slid her a surprised glance. Was she actually… comforting him? “Now quit moping and get us out of here.”

That was more like it. “You’re all heart, Harvester.” But hey, the fact that she’d been nice, even for only a moment, was progress.

Scowling, she crossed her arms over her chest. Under the surface of her skin, bruises lingered, and he realized that without Tavin, they were down to Calder for her to feed from. Reaver was going to make sure he was breathing down the bastard’s neck as Harvester bit into it.

“I have no heart,” Harvester said, but it was a lie. He’d seen glimpses of it over the last few years, though at the time he hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

Although the tenderness in her eyes when she’d asked to hold Thanatos’s son, Logan, for the first time had been crystal clear and, perhaps, the first true hint that she wasn’t what she’d seemed.

Reaver cursed under his breath as Calder slipped away to scope out the route ahead, leaving Reaver and Harvester to catch up.

They found Calder standing motionless on the trail a few hundred yards ahead, and Reaver’s heart leaped into his throat. The path continued across a rickety wooden bridge, but the dilapidated state of the bridge was the least of Reaver’s worries.

Above them, far up on the sheer rock faces that surround them, demons perched on ledges and narrow trails. One, a horned demon with a goatlike snout, looked down, and Reaver swore the beast smiled as he caught Reaver’s eye.

Reaver’s gut clenched. They’d been spotted.

The demon raised his hand in a sharp command. Three demons holding the leashes of creatures that resembled scaly skinned bears snapped into action, vaulting from ledge to ledge in a rush toward them.

“We are so fucked.” Calder leaped onto the suspension bridge, and the way it groaned with age and fatigue made Reaver’s clenched gut drop to his feet.

Harvester’s hair swirled around her softly rounded shoulders, caught in a balmy breeze that billowed up from the chasm in front of them. “Aren’t you King of the Obvious.”

“Be nice,” Reaver said. “We need Calder to find a Harrowgate.” He scanned the surroundings, looking for any way out of here that didn’t involve crossing a highly questionable bridge. “Unless you can sense them now.”

“Fuck off.”

So that was a no. Harvester would never admit that there was something she couldn’t do.

“Fuck both of you,” Calder said with a flash of razor-sharp teeth. “I’m going.”

The bridge creaked under his weight and swayed perilously over the gaping canyon, but he continued across, his feet sometimes knocking boards loose or punching right through them. Far below, in the blackness of the pit the bridge spanned, something shrieked.

Reaver held his breath until the Nightlash was across. The approaching demons were halfway down the cliff face now.

“Hold my hand,” he said to Harvester. “We have to run. If the bridge collapses, I’ll fly us across.”

He just hoped it didn’t come to that. Flying in Sheoul was like trying to fly in water. The effort involved in even short flights would drain an angel in mere minutes.

Taking her hand, he darted across the bridge. As they stepped on firm ground, a bear-toad howled.

The demons were on the other side of the bridge, where Harvester and Reaver had been standing just moments before.

“Run!” Harvester yelled, as if Reaver needed the prompt.

They hauled ass through the mountain tunnels with Calder in the lead. Vines dripping with acid grabbed at them like octopus tentacles, and their feet crunched on demon remains littering the ground. The obstacles didn’t slow the bear-toads, and the sounds of their pursuit grew louder with every passing moment.

“We’ve got to take a stand,” he said, as they leaped across a wide stream flowing with a brown gelatinous substance that smelled like rotting flesh.

“I can feel a Harrowgate nearby,” Calder yelled back. “I’ll find it.” Before Reaver could protest, the demon put on a burst of speed and dashed off, disappearing in the murky darkness ahead.