Larissa Ione - Rogue Rider

Well, the fact that the Horsemen hated The Aegis wasn’t a lie, but she might have exaggerated about how many Aegi the Horsemen planned to kill in retaliation for The Aegis’s role in trying to kill Thanatos’s child.

All the better to scare The Aegis into following her blindly. And why wouldn’t they? She was an angel, after all.

Twin wisps of smoke rose from the Elders’ cigarettes, dissipating quickly in the brisk breeze. She could almost smell the tobacco, and her mouth watered. Tobacco was a distinctly human and demon pleasure, and as such, most angels turned up their noses at so much as standing downwind of the smoke. But in her meeting yesterday with Lucifer, she’d been offered a plethora of sinfully decadent drugs, drinks, and foods, and there was no way she could turn down everything. Not when Lucifer, Satan’s right-hand man, insisted.

The cigarette had represented yet another step down a path from which she couldn’t return, and each step was another knife in her soul.

She’d spent three months denying that helping Pestilence had really been so bad, but with each new sin, each action she took against Heaven, it began to sink in.

Still, she felt like she was straddling the line between good and evil, had yet to jump into either pool with both feet. As proof that she wasn’t all bad, she hadn’t revealed the location of The Aegis’s headquarters to the forces of hell… maybe because she’d always supported the demon-slayers’ cause. For thousands of years, they had been all that stood between demons and humans, and she respected their awesome sacrifices.

That, and for now, The Aegis had no idea she had taken a few turns at playing for Team Evil. They still believed she was a Heavenly angel, and she supposed that was true enough. None of her angelic brethren had found her, tried her, and ripped her wings from her back before drop-kicking her straight into Sheoul.

Her crimes would not earn her a stop at the halfway point, the human realm, the place most disgraced angels went to make a choice: try to earn their way back to Heaven, or enter hell and become irreversibly evil, a True Fallen. No, as Reaver had pointed out during their battle three months ago, she was Fallen… she just hadn’t lost her wings.

Reaver was such an obnoxious bastard.

This was all his fault. If he’d refused to replace her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, she wouldn’t have grown angry. She wouldn’t have plotted against him and the Horsemen by working with Pestilence and Lucifer. What had the Archangels been thinking by appointing him? Reaver, who had once done something so egregious that they’d wiped his past from his memory and that of every angel in existence? Reaver, who had disobeyed too many rules to count and had been stripped of his wings just thirty years ago?

Yes, he’d earned his wings back by saving the world with some idiot incubus, but it had been clear to Gethel even then, when she’d awarded him with his angel status, that little had changed. He was still the same arrogant, defiant fool he’d always been.

He was going to pay for what he’d done to her. For what he’d forced her to do. But first, she needed to find Reseph.

Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the sky and repeated a summoning spell she knew by heart. She’d already made the appropriate sacrifice, even though it had pained her to do it—a human male virgin and a pregnant human female. Now she need only wait for the agent of her summons to appear.

When he did, she barely kept herself from recoiling.

The creature, his oozing flesh hanging off his skeletal frame in jerky-like strips and crawling with maggots, materialized before her. He clacked his sharp teeth, and the sound pierced her eardrums like a blade.

“Beautiful angel.” His voice gurgled, as if he was speaking through oil. “What can I give you today?”

“I need khnives and Soulshredders.”

The creature hissed. “Soulshredders don’t do anyone’s bidding.”

“They will this time.” She paused, taking a moment to enjoy the skepticism in the demon’s rheumy yellow eyes. “Their master, Pestilence, is somewhere in the world, and they need to find him.”

“Lies,” the creature rumbled. “Pestilence is dead.”

Drawing on a current of Heavenly power, Gethel flared her wings and came off the ground to hover over the demon. “Angels do not lie, you pathetic wretch.” Her voice boomed like thunder, and the demon cringed. “Pestilence lives, trapped inside his brother’s body, and every Soulshredder in Sheoul needs to be looking for him.” The khnives , horrid opossum-like creatures, could help as well… they excelled at spywork.

The demon nodded vehemently. “A rescue.”

“Exactly.” Gethel cut herself off from her Heavenly power source, praying no one had sensed her while she’d been connected, or if they had, that the connection had been too weak or too brief to trace. To be safe, she needed to get away from here. “Off with you,” she said, shooing the demon away with a flick of her hand. “Get the word out to the Soulshredder Council. I want Reseph found, and if they have to torture and kill everyone who means something to him to do it, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

Pay? Seeing Reseph’s loved ones die would be a bonus.

Jillian took her time cleaning the kitchen, allowing Reseph a chance to unwind. He’d seemed so sad and confused, and while she might not know him very well, her heart had broken for him.

The TV blared from the living room, and when she finally finished in the kitchen, she found Reseph lounging on her couch, feet up on the coffee table, with Doodle purring in his lap. He’d been eyeing the pictures on the wall, skimming over the nature artwork and focusing on the photos of her skydiving and skiing. She used to be good at those things before the demons came.

Jillian nodded at the cat. “He likes you.”

She stood there, hesitant to take a seat next to Reseph, but the couch was the only place to sit. She’d moved her father’s ratty old recliner down to the cellar a few months ago. Her mom had, for years, complained about the thing, saying it was fit only for the local landfill, and while Jillian agreed, she couldn’t bear to part with it. Not yet.

Reseph ran his hand over the cat’s spotted brown fur in long, even strokes. “What’s his name?”

“Doodle.”

“ Doodle ?” He winced. “No wonder he’s so friendly. He’s begging me to call him something like Fang, or Chaos, or Styx.” He patted the empty cushion next to him. “Have a seat. I won’t bite.” A cocky smile accompanied a waggle of his brows. “Unless you like that kind of thing.”

Her cheeks burned at the unbidden image of him nipping at her sensitive spots. “Do you like that kind of thing? I mean, do you think you do?”

His voice turned smoky. Rich. Decadent as hell. “I know I do.” He scratched Doodle’s chin. “See, I know some stuff.”

Now she was burning all over as she sank onto the couch, putting as much space between them as she could without looking like she was trying. Still, he knew, shooting her an amused glance before turning his attention to the TV.

“So what’s going on in the world?” He gestured to the CNN news anchor talking about recovery efforts in Sydney. “What happened in Australia?”

Oh God, he didn’t even know about that ? How could he be a blank slate? Was that even medically possible?

She tucked one leg under her and got comfortable, because this was going to be a very un comfortable conversation. “What’s the last thing you remember about the world?”

Doodle nudged Reseph’s hand, clearly not happy that his new best friend had stopped petting him. “I don’t remember anything before the snowbank.”