Larissa Ione - Reaver

“You killed our mother,” Reaver breathed, the anger coming back to him as sharp and clear as the memory.

Reaver had already been in a rage after learning what Verrine had done, and his brother’s revelations had tipped him all the way off the ledge. He’d gone insane, furious at Revenant for murdering the mother Reaver hadn’t even met, angry at everyone in Heaven for lying to him. Betraying him.

Metatron’s head whipped around to Revenant. “You? You killed her?”

Revenant snarled, his raven wings, now marbled with gold and silver streaks, snapped out to eclipse the rising sun.

“And you ,” he shot back at Metatron. “You left me to rot in Sheoul, while you took him .” He jabbed his finger at Reaver.

“We had no choice,” Metatron yelled. “It was one or neither.”

Revenant’s hair changed color to match Reaver’s as he ignored Metatron and rounded on Reaver again. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you about our mother. I was young and alone, and the very day I learned about you, I came to you as a brother. But all you saw was an enemy and a fiend.” Revenant’s eyes went crimson, and black veins marbled his skin as he rose off the ground in a whirlwind of lightning. His voice was a cannon boom that would have shattered lesser beings’ eardrums. “Now that is all you will ever see.”

Revenant shot into the sky, and when the high cloud layer engulfed him, the heavens churned and blood began to fall as rain.

Metatron ground his teeth, muscles leaping under skin dripping with red. “That could have gone better.”

Probably. But right now, worrying about rocky family reunions was the least of Reaver’s concerns. Heaven and hell were about to square off for a battle in which no one would win, and the deadline had passed for him to offer himself up to Satan in place of Raphael.

“You said I can go anywhere in Sheoul?”

“Anywhere but Satan’s region and any region he’s visiting.” Metatron reached skyward, and the blood-rain stopped. “You can go places even I can’t. But beware, Yenrieth. There are limits to your powers. You can’t heal demons anymore. Positive energy from you will harm them. Some species of demons will burn to ash in your very presence. You’ll need to spend a month every year in Heaven or you’ll lose your most powerful abilities. And Revenant can sense you in Sheoul, as you’ll be able to sense him in Heaven. His job will be to keep you away, and he’ll have a power advantage on his home turf.”

“Will I have an advantage on mine?”

“Yes, but remember, he isn’t a fallen angel, so no one else, including archangels, can sense him in Heaven. You’ll be our only line of defense should he get in to steal records or assassinate angels… or worse, to open the gates of Heaven to Sheoul from the inside.”

The not-so-subtle subtext there was that Reaver needed to not let them down. And he wouldn’t.

Overhead, a pitch-black cloud roiled, but instead of pitching thunder and lightning, Reaver heard growls and screams.

“Demons are in Heaven,” Metatron barked. “I have to go.”

In a flash, Metatron was gone. Reaver stretched his wings and took flight, amazed at the power and grace that flowed through the veins of his new body.

Now it was time to test that power.

He banked a hard right and dove toward Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock, where demons were spilling from a Harrowgate nearby. Angels soared in from the opposite direction, dozens of them, their hands gripping ancient Heavenly weapons.

With no more than a thought, he burned the first wave of demons to ash on a flyby. Then he took out the second wave, then the third. The other angels didn’t even have a chance to fight, but he sensed demons rising from Harrowgates all over the world, and he couldn’t stop them all.

Their target wasn’t humankind; they were on a mission to destroy Earthly holy places and draw angels from Heaven. Then, after enough angelic blood was spilled, the demons could open a hole in the barrier that separated the Heavenly and Sheoulic realms.

The birth of Lucifer would be the death blow, collapsing sections of Heaven itself and, in turn, demolishing huge expanses of the barrier.

But Lucifer was also the solution to stopping this. Leaving the next wave of demons to the waiting angels, he searched his senses for… there. Harvester was picking up on Lucifer’s life force. Quickly, before he lost the signal, he locked onto Harvester’s vibe and flashed himself into Sheoul and directly into a region he was sure he’d never been to. Into a palace built of bones and gold, and where the corpses of demons hung in decorative cages from the ceiing.

And there in front of him was Gethel.

She was feeding from an infant werewolf, and if the pile of bodies in the corner was any indication, she wasn’t ready to stop sucking blood to feed the unholy spawn in her belly anytime soon.

“ Bitch .”

With a yelp, she spun around. The baby fell from her hands, tumbling headfirst toward the stone floor. Reaver darted in and snatched the little boy a mere centimeter from the tiles.

“Reaver,” she gasped. “You’re a—”

“Yeah,” he snarled. “I am.”

He blasted her with a bolt of supercharged Heavenly light that enveloped her in blistering acid. She tried to scream, but the light entered her open mouth, scouring away her voice and leaving her nothing to spill but blood.

He dove for her, preparing to snatch her up and whisk her out of Sheoul. But as his fingers brushed the fabric of her gown, what felt like a wrecking ball smashed into him, knocking him into a pillar that broke in half and came down in massive chunks. He shielded the infant against his chest as Revenant nailed him with another invisible ball of pain.

“Oh, brother,” Revenant hissed. “We’re off to a great sibling rivalry, aren’t we?” He sent a fiery streak at Reaver, but Reaver leaped out of its path and returned fire with a blast of razor shards that drilled a dozen holes through Revenant’s body.

His brother didn’t even blink.

His job will be to keep you away, and he’ll have a power advantage on his home turf.

No shit, Metatron.

As Revenant came at him with a massive flame-sword, Reaver tucked the infant under his arm and did a midair roll that smashed him into Gethel. She was screaming in silence, her skin so blistered that she was barely recognizable. He grabbed her and flashed to Megiddo, where he dropped her in a pool of the blood-rain Revenant had left behind.

As expected, Brother Dearest arrived a split-second later. “Give her to me.”

“Tell your boss that you can have her back if he stops this war and forfeits the souls he wants to claim for breach of contract.”

Revenant snorted. “He’ll never agree.”

“Oh, I think he will.” Reaver fed waves of agony into Gethel, waves that also sucked life away. “You know our power. You know I can destroy both Lucifer and Gethel right now.”

Revenant’s wings flared. “A minor setback. Lucifer will be reborn again.”

“But it’ll take time,” Reaver pointed out. “Finding the right vessel to carry him could take centuries. Psychotic traitor angels willing to give up their lives so they can give birth to Satan’s spawn are pretty rare. Even you must know that.”

Reaver’s scalp prickled and half a dozen archangels, followed by two dozen fallen angels Reaver had never before seen, appeared in a circle around him, Revenant, and Gethel.

Metatron came forward, meeting one of the fallens inside the circle. “Caim.” Metatron halted a yard away from the white-haired male. “It’s been a long time.”

“Not long enough.” Caim flashed fangs as long as Reaver’s index finger. “Give us our Dark Mother.”