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Synopsis
Larissa Ione’s New York Times bestselling Demonica series is back and hotter than ever!
Hell hath no fury
For five thousand years, Revenant believed he was alone in the world, a fallen angel beyond any redemption. Now he finds he has a twin brother who had all the light and love Revenant was denied. Caught in a tug of war between heaven and hell, he must weigh his thirst for revenge against his desire for a mysterious female named Blaspheme, a female whose very origins could deliver him into salvation—or destruction.
Like an angel scorned
Blaspheme has a deadly secret: she’s the forbidden offspring of an angel and a fallen angel. Hunted by both heavenly and satanic forces, she has survived only by laying low and trusting no one. When Revenant claims he can save them both, how can she possibly believe him? But the powerful angel is persistence incarnate, and for Blaspheme, there’s no place she can hide in heaven or hell where he won’t find her.
Release date: December 16, 2014
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 400
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Revenant
Larissa Ione
Revenant was one fucked-up fallen angel.
No, wait… angel. He’d only believed he was a fallen angel.
For five thousand fucking years.
But he wasn’t an angel, either. Maybe technically, but how could someone born and raised in Sheoul, the demon realm some humans called hell, be considered a holy-rolling, shiny-haloed angel? He may have a halo, but the shine was long gone, tarnished since his first taste of mother’s milk, mixed with demon blood, when he was only hours old.
Five thousand fucking years.
It had been two weeks since he’d learned the truth and the memories that had been taken away from him were returned. Now he remembered everything that had happened over the centuries.
He’d been a bad, bad angel. Or a very, very good fallen angel, depending on how you looked at it.
Toxic anger rushed through his veins as he paced the subterranean parking lot outside Underworld General Hospital. Maybe the doctors inside had some kind of magical drug that could take his memories away again. Life had been far easier when he’d believed he was pure evil, a fallen angel with no redeeming qualities.
Okay, he probably still didn’t have any redeeming qualities, but now, what he did have were conflicted feelings. Questions. A twin brother who couldn’t be more opposite of him.
With a vicious snarl, he strode toward the entrance to the emergency department, determined to find a certain False Angel doctor he was sure could help him forget the last five thousand years, if only for a couple of hours.
The sliding glass doors swished open, and the very female he’d come for sauntered out, her yellow-duckie-spotted blue scrubs clinging to a killer body. Instant lust fired in his loins, and fuck yeah, screw the drugs, she was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Take her twice and call me in the morning.
Since the moment he bumped into her at the hospital a few weeks ago, he’d been obsessed, and now, as Blaspheme’s long legs ate up the asphalt as she walked toward him, he imagined them wrapped around his waist as he pounded into her. The closer she came, the harder his body got, and he cursed with disappointment when she dropped her keys and had to stop to pick them up. Then he decided she could drop her keychain as often as she wanted to, because he got a fucking primo view of her deep cleavage when her top gaped open as she bent over.
She straightened, looped the keychain around her finger, and started toward him again, humming a Duran Duran song.
“Blaspheme.” He stepped out from between two black ambulances, blocking her path.
She jumped, a startled gasp escaping full crimson lips made to propel a male to ecstasy. “Revenant.” Her gaze darted to the hospital doors, and he got the impression she was plotting her escape route. How cute that she thought she could get away from him. “What are you doing lurking in the parking lot?”
Lurking? Well, some might call it that, he supposed. “I was on my way to see you.”
She smiled sweetly. “Well, you’ve seen me. Buh-bye.” Pivoting, her blond ponytail bouncing, she headed in the opposite direction.
Back to the hospital.
With a mental flick of his wrist, he changed into jeans, cowboy boots, and a NASCAR T-shirt, and turned his shoulder-length hair from black to brown before flashing around in front of her, once again blocking her path. “Maybe this is more to your liking?”
She gave him a flat stare. Clearly, rednecks weren’t her thing.
Giving it another try, he went ginger and short with the hair, and decked himself out in a business suit. “How about this?”
More staring. He switched back to goth biker chic and stopped fucking around. “Come home with me.”
“Wow.” She crossed her arms over her chest, which only drew his attention to her rack. Niiice. “You get right to the point.”
He shrugged. “Saves time.”
“Were you planning to wine and dine me at least? You know, before the sex.”
“No. Just sex.” Lots and lots of sex.
He could already imagine her husky voice deepening in the throes of passion. Could imagine her head between his legs, her mouth on his cock, her hands on his balls. He nearly groaned at the imaginary skin flick playing in his head.
“Oh,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re charming, aren’t you?”
Not once in his five thousand years had anyone ever called him charming. But even uttered with sarcasm, it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.
“Don’t do that,” he growled.
“Do what?” She stared at him like he was a loon.
“Never mind.” Dying to touch her, he held out his hand. “You’ll love my playroom.”
She wheeled away like he was offering her the plague instead of his hand. “Go to hell, asshole. I don’t date fallen angels.”
“Good news, then, because it’s not a date.” And he wasn’t a fallen angel.
“Right. Well, I don’t fuck fallen angels, either.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go away.”
She was rejecting him? No one rejected him. No one. Having been raised in a dungeon, with torture specialists and executioners as his playmates, he hadn’t exactly learned the art of seduction or even polite conversation. But sex… he spoke that language fluently.
She started to take off again, and he blinked, confused. This wasn’t right. He had his sights set on her, and she was supposed to surrender. This was something new. Something… titillating. The confusion morphed into a sensation he welcomed and knew well; the jacked-up high of the hunt.
Instantly, his senses sharpened and focused. His sense of smell brought a whiff of her vanilla-honey scent. His sense of hearing homed in on her rapid, pounding heartbeat. And his sense of sight narrowed in on the tick of her pulse at the base of her throat.
The urge to pounce, to take her down and get carnal right here, right now, was nearly overwhelming. Instead, he moved in slowly, matching her step for step as she backed up.
“What are you doing?” She swallowed as she bumped up against a massive support beam.
“I’m going to show you why you need to come home with me.” He planted both palms on the beam on either side of her head and leaned in until his lips brushed the tender skin of her ear. “You won’t regret it.”
“I already told you. I don’t fuck fallen angels.”
“So you said,” he murmured. “Do you kiss them?”
“Ah… no, I—”
He didn’t give her the chance to finish her sentence. Pulling back slightly, he closed his mouth over hers.
Strawberry gloss coated his lips as he kissed her, and he swore he’d never liked fruit as much as he did right now.
Her hands came up to grip his biceps, tugging him closer as she deepened the kiss. “You’re good,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I know,” he whispered back.
Suddenly, pain tore into his arms as her nails scored his skin. “But you’re not that good.”
Before he could even blink, she shoved hard and ducked out from under the cage of his arms. With a wink, she strutted away, her fine ass swinging in her form-fitting scrub bottoms. She stopped at the door of a candy apple red Mustang and gave him a sultry look that made his cock throb.
“Give up now, buddy. I can out-stubborn anyone.” She hopped into her car and peeled out of her parking stall, leaving him in the dust.
Blaspheme was practically hyperventilating as she drove through New York City’s crowded streets, wishing she’d taken the Harrowgate to work today. But no, she’d chosen to drive from her Brooklyn apartment to Underworld General one last time, a sentimental stupidity that had not only taken up precious time, but had also run her straight into a fallen angel who somehow, after a short, unpleasant verbal exchange at the hospital a few weeks ago, thought they needed to date.
No, not date. Just have sex.
Her entire body heated at the thought, something it had no business doing.
But gods, he was incredible. Standing in the UG parking lot, he’d looked like a giant goth biker, wrapped in leather and chains, his massive boots sporting wicked talons at the tips. Even the backs of his fingerless gloves were adorned with metal studs at the knuckles. She’d always hated the tough-guy bullshit, but Revenant had fucking owned it. She got the impression that he lived his life that way; if he wanted it, he owned it.
Even when he’d changed his look, he’d still been like something out of a magazine or movie. The cowboy boots had made her want to take up riding—not necessarily horses—and the business suit had given her some racy desk fantasies.
He wasn’t going to give up on her, was he? At least not without a fight, which she was going to give him. She couldn’t afford to have a fallen angel sniffing around.
Cursing, she fumbled through her purse for her cell phone and dialed her contact from the moving company. Sally answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Bonnie,” Sally said, using the name Blaspheme adopted when dealing with humans. “The movers said they’ll be done loading your belongings for the second shipment to London by the end of the day.”
“Good,” Blas said. It would be nice to go directly to UG’s new London clinic directly, rather than having to use the hospital’s emergency department Harrowgate to get there. “I should be there in an hour—” The Call Waiting beep interrupted. “Can I get back to you? My mother is ringing in.”
Sally’s cheerful, “No problem,” was followed by a promise to make sure the movers would take wonderful care of Blaspheme’s things and not to worry, and a moment later, Blaspheme’s mother was on the other line.
“Hi, Mom.” Blaspheme slammed on her brakes to avoid rear-ending a piece-of-shit truck that apparently hadn’t come equipped with a turn signal or brake lights. She shot the driver the finger through her front windshield.
“Blas.” Her mother’s raspy voice came from right next to Blaspheme.
Screaming, Blas dropped the phone. “Holy shit!”
She opened her mouth again to yell at her mother for popping into the car from out of nowhere, but when she saw the blood, her voice cut out. Deva, short for Devastation, sat in the passenger seat, every inch of her body covered in blood. The broken end of a bone punched through her left biceps, and a deep, to-the-femur burn had wrecked her right leg.
“Oh, gods,” Blaspheme gasped. “What happened?”
Her mother lifted her trembling hand from her abdomen, and Blas got an eyeful of bowels poking through the laceration that stretched from just above her navel to her hip bone.
The injury itself was grave enough, but emanating from it was a vibe Blaspheme couldn’t place. Whatever it was, it felt… wrong. And very, very fatal.
“I—” Deva sucked in a rattling breath… and slumped, unconscious, against the window.
“Mom!” The POS truck moved, allowing Blaspheme to whip the Mustang around a corner to head back to Underworld General. She automatically reached out with her mind to find a Harrowgate, and although she located one a block away, there was nowhere to park, and no way she could abandon the vehicle in the middle of the street.
Damn, it would be nice to be able to flash like the normal offspring of a fallen angel, but that wasn’t an option for Blaspheme. It would never be an option.
On instinct, she gripped her mother’s wrist and tried to channel healing energy into her, but that talent had been rendered useless a long time ago.
Dammit!
“Just hold on,” she told her mom as she wove her car through the streets, narrowly avoiding sideswiping a cab and a messenger on a bike.
She whipped into the underground parking lot owned by the hospital but off-limits to the human public, drove through a false wall, and practically skidded to a halt in a stall in the hospital’s hidden parking lot. Then, for a split second, an eternity, really, she hesitated.
Everyone at the hospital believed Blas was a False Angel. She could come up with an explanation as to why her mother wasn’t the same species, but doing so could raise questions. Questions from the one person she was pretty sure was already suspicious.
A mere two weeks ago, Eidolon, Underworld General’s founder and chief of staff, had been just cryptic enough in his warning to stay away from Revenant that she’d been paranoid ever since.
Her mother groaned, and suddenly, it didn’t matter what Eidolon suspected. Her job… hell, her life… was at risk, but so was Deva’s, and she couldn’t let her mother die.
Quickly, she leaped out of the vehicle and ran through the sliding doors to the emergency department.
“I need help!” she barked, and in an instant, Luc, a werewolf paramedic, and Raze, a Seminus demon physician, rushed outside with a stretcher.
Moments later, Blaspheme was in an exam room, gloved up, while Luc checked vitals and Raze channeled his healing power into Deva. His scowl indicated that he was having trouble.
“Her stomach ruptured,” he said. “Dammit, there’s a tear in her transverse colon. I can heal the tears right now, but she needs surgery to clean out the contaminants.” He looked over at Blas. “It’s a huge risk, though. I know you’re aware that False Angels don’t respond well to anesthesia.”
Shit. Blaspheme did not want to reveal the truth about her mother—and potentially, herself—but she couldn’t compromise Deva’s health by sending her into surgery with doctors who thought she was something other than what she was. Maybe she could play fast and loose with the facts and hope no one dug too deep.
Blas glanced up as she prepared an IV site in the back of her mother’s hand. “She’s not a False Angel.”
Raze cocked an eyebrow. “But you said she’s your mother.”
“She’s my adoptive mother,” she lied. “She’s a fallen angel.” At least the second part was the truth.
Raze’s hand jerked, and he cursed under his breath. She understood his shock; fallen angels were rare, they were mostly evil assholes, and as far as Sheoulic denizens went, they were at the top of the food chain.
Raze’s ginger hair, longer in front than in the back, fell over his eyes as he leaned in for a closer look at Deva’s abdominal wound. “This is strange.”
Those weren’t words you wanted a doctor to say. She attempted to summon her most useful FA ability, what was commonly called X-ray vision, used by False Angels to determine the health or virility of their potential victims. As a medical professional, Blas had found a better use for it.
Sadly, it barely flickered before snuffing out. Great. Another False Angel ability was failing. How long before they were all gone and her true identity was revealed?
“What’s strange?” she asked.
“I can’t heal her. Nothing’s happening.”
“What?” Blas looked up from inserting an IV catheter into Deva’s vein to stare at the incubus. “Are you out of juice?”
He held up his right arm, which was covered in glowing glyphs from his throat to his fingers. “My power is at full charge. I’m telling you, it’s not me. It’s her.”
The vibe. What if the weird vibe coming off her mother was somehow interfering with Raze’s powers?
Raze glanced over at her. “Can you take a look inside her and tell me what’s going on?”
“I just tried,” she said. “I think I’m too emotional.”
Raze nodded, apparently buying her bullshit story for the X-ray failure.
Her mother groaned, and her eyes flickered open. Her hand fumbled for Blas’s. “Alone,” she rasped. “I need to talk to you alone.”
Blaspheme looked up at Raze. “Arrange for an OR. We’ll get her into surgery right away. And page Eidolon. I want him on this.” Despite Blas’s fears of discovery, she needed him. As the most skilled, most experienced doctor in the entire underworld, Eidolon just might be the only one who could save her mother.
Raze and Luc took off, leaving her alone with Deva.
“Mom,” she said quietly. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Angels,” she said, and Blaspheme’s stomach churned. “I was attacked by angels.”
Which explained the vibe and Raze’s difficulty healing her. Some angelic weapons caused injury that couldn’t be repaired using supernatural means.
“Where were you?” Blaspheme squeezed her mother’s hand when Deva’s eyes closed. “Hey, stay with me. Where were you when they attacked you?”
“Home,” she rasped. “They found me, Blaspheme.”
A chill crawled up her spine. “They?” She had a sickening feeling she knew who they were, and she prayed she was wrong.
Deva coughed, spraying blood. “I think… I think they were Eradicators. They found me.” She sat up, clawing at Blaspheme’s hand, desperation and terror punching through the haze of pain in her eyes. “Which means they’re also looking for you.”
A high-intensity Satanic summons shrieked in Revenant’s head as he stood atop Mount Megiddo, his lungs filling with hot, dry air.
Ignoring Satan’s command, Revenant called out with his mind and voice to the highest-ranking archangel in Heaven.
“Metatron.”
Nothing. A breeze whipped up a dust devil a few yards away, but other than that, nothing moved.
“Metatron!”
More nothing. Even the dust devil died a slow, agonizing death.
“Metatron!”
Fuck. He should have expected that he’d be ignored. The archangels had abandoned him thousands of years ago, so why the hell would they pay any attention to him now?
Assholes. All he wanted were some answers. Why had they left him and his mother to rot in hell? Why didn’t anyone, in five thousand years, tell him the truth before now? Before he regained his memories and got a promotion… thanks to his brother’s “heroic” actions and Heaven’s rule that what was done to one twin must be done to the other. And why hadn’t they told him he was welcome in Heaven? After all, Reaver was allowed.
Because you aren’t welcome. You’re evil. Corrupt.
The Dark Lord’s summons came again, this time blasting him so violently that pain drove him to his knees. Blood sprayed from his nose and ears, and as he gripped his head, he swore his skull was cracking.
Dammit, he was not ready to face Satan. Not that he was ever ready. No one in their right mind would happily drop everything to take a meeting with the Dark Lord. And now that Rev knew the truth about his past—or at least, about most of it—he had even less motivation to have a face-to-face with the king of all demons.
Satan had lied to Revenant for thousands of years, had even hinted that Rev was his son.
It was all bullshit, and Revenant wondered how things were going to change now that the truth had come out. One thing was certain; he wanted to be armed with as much knowledge as he could gather before he faced Satan, and only one person could give him the answers he sought.
Unfortunately, Metatron didn’t seem inclined to provide any answers. Which left Revenant with only one other option.
Nursing his Satanic headache, he summoned a handful of books and flashed himself to the other side of the Earth, to the home of Thanatos, fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
As the Four Horsemen’s Sheoulic Watcher, Revenant was supposed to keep an eye on them. But since regaining his memories, he’d avoided them the way he’d avoided their father. Revenant’s brother.
Reaver.
Every time they’d faced off since regaining their memories, they’d battled it out, and Revenant’s words to Reaver during one particular encounter still echoed in his thoughts.
The very day I learned about you, I came to you as a brother. But all you saw was an enemy and a fiend. Now that is all you will ever see.
Revenant had cooled his jets a little since that moment a couple of weeks ago, but the fact remained that five thousand years ago, before their memories were wiped—the first time—Reaver had rejected Revenant, and to this day, nothing had changed.
So, no, Revenant wasn’t expecting Reaver’s four legendary hellspawns to welcome Uncle Rev with open arms.
And yet he was standing in front of Thanatos’s Greenland castle, wondering if the Horseman known as Death would willingly open the door. More likely, Revenant would have to barge in and lay everyone out in order to get a peek at the rare books Thanatos hoarded in his library.
An electric tingle on the back of his neck alerted him to the presence of angels a split second before Harvester, the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and Reaver himself materialized in front of him.
Fuck.
“Revenant.” Harvester’s smoky voice had always made Rev think of cat-o-nines wrapped in silk. She looked the part as well, dressed in tight black leather pants and stiletto-heeled boots, a lace corset binding her waist and plumping her perfect breasts. She looked a little paler than usual, though. Maybe getting her halo back after thousands of years of being a fallen angel wasn’t sitting well with her. “Why are you here?”
“I’m the Horsemen’s evil Watcher,” he said, getting a kick at how his brother winced at the word evil. “I don’t need a reason, nor do I answer to you.”
“But you will answer to me,” Reaver said.
Revenant snorted. Reaver had been sending out mental invitations to meet for weeks, but Revenant hadn’t answered. He wasn’t going to answer to his brother now, either.
“Bite me.” He flashed himself closer to Thanatos’s keep, but a heartbeat later, Harvester and Reaver were forming a wall in front of him again. How tiresome. “I was going to give Thanatos the courtesy of knocking on his door, but you’re giving me no choice but to flash inside his residence with no warning. The last time I did that to a Horseman, I caught Ares and Cara in a… compromising position.” He shrugged. “But whatever. Let’s see what Thanatos and Regan are up to, shall we?”
He started to dematerialize, but Reaver snarled and gripped his arm, tethering him to his current position. “Just tell us why you’re here.”
Well, hell, maybe Reaver could give Rev the information he needed. He held up the copies of the Bible, the Quran, and the Daemonica in his hand. “I want to use Thanatos’s library. I need to find references to Shadow Angels and Radiants, and these cryptic, contradictory tomes aren’t exactly helpful.”
Reaver released him and stepped back. “You want to know more about what you are. About what we both are.”
“Um, yeah. Duh.” Wasn’t his brother a genius. “It isn’t every day you get promoted to the highest-known rank of angel, and it isn’t like there’s a fucking manual anywhere that outlines the job description.”
No, there had only ever been a handful of Shadow Angels like Revenant, and Radiants like Reaver, and since there could only be one of each in existence at any given time, there was no one to ask about it.
Reaver shrugged. “It’s learn as you go.”
“That’s very helpful, brother.”
Reaver made a sound of impatience and jammed his hand through his perfect mane of shiny blond hair. Revenant changed his hair color to match. Just to be a tool.
“We were given those ranks together,” Reaver said. “And we can figure it out together.”
Revenant laughed. “Now you want to play big brother? Now that I don’t need you?”
“You do need me,” Reaver said. “We need each other.”
“Really,” Revenant said flatly. “And why is that?”
Reaver’s voice went low and ominous. “Because Lucifer is about to be reborn, and his birth is going to cause seismic shifts both on Earth and in Heaven.”
This again? The Heavenly types got so worked up about reincarnated fallen angels. Okay, sure, Lucifer, as Satan’s former right-hand man, wasn’t your run-of-the-mill fallen angel, and the fallen angel carrying him, Gethel, had conceived him while she was still rocking wings and a halo. Oh, and in Lucifer’s newest incarnation, he was also Satan’s son. Which meant Lucifer was extra, extra special.
The asshole. In a few short years, he’d reclaim his place at Satan’s side, and he’d spend his life trying to ruin Revenant’s. It wouldn’t matter that Rev would always outmatch him in sheer strength and ability—Lucifer would have Satan’s ear and clout. When Lucifer gave a command, it would be followed as if given by Satan himself. Just the way it had been before Lucifer went and got himself killed a few months ago.
Revenant cleared his throat. “A, I don’t care. B, when you cut off Gethel’s wings to prevent Lucifer from being born fully grown, you reduced his powers, so stop with the ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it’ bullshit.”
Harvester shook her head, her black-as-pitch hair swinging around her slender shoulders. “It’s not bullshit. We reduced Lucifer’s powers, but he’s still the most powerful fallen angel to ever be reincarnated. His birth will still send shock waves through the heavens.”
“And,” Reaver said grimly, “he’s growing stronger every day. Harvester can feel him.”
Ah, so maybe Lucifer’s growth was the reason Harvester was looking particularly pale, and maybe a little gaunt. As Satan’s daughter, she was connected to all of her siblings, born and unborn. Not that Revenant gave a shit. But it explained why Reaver did.
“It gets worse,” Harvester said. “After Lucifer is born, he’ll keep growing stronger, until he’s reached the pinnacle of power. Once that happens, he and Satan can join forces—with you. The Trifecta of Evil, the archangels call it, because you’ll be the three most powerful beings in Sheoul. Together, there would be very little that could stop you from wreaking hell on Earth. Reaver will be forced by the biblical prophecy to break all four of the Horsemen’s Seals and kick off the End of Days.”
The Heavenly types were as obsessed with Armageddon as they were with fallen angels. It was all getting old. “And what do you want me to do about it?”
Reaver folded his arms over his chest. “Give us Gethel before she gives birth to Lucifer.”
Another rerun. Yawn. They should syndicate this shit. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re an angel, Revenant. Metatron told me that we need to work together—”
“Did he now? Funny, because he won’t even respond to my request to meet him. Has he sent me an invitation to Heaven? No? Then go rot.” He flashed out of there, no longer caring about getting answers about what being a Shadow Angel meant. Besides, Satan’s summons was buzzing around in his skull like an angry hornet.
Interesting how Satan had his knickers in a twist about talking to Rev, while Metatron couldn’t be bothered to se. . .
No, wait… angel. He’d only believed he was a fallen angel.
For five thousand fucking years.
But he wasn’t an angel, either. Maybe technically, but how could someone born and raised in Sheoul, the demon realm some humans called hell, be considered a holy-rolling, shiny-haloed angel? He may have a halo, but the shine was long gone, tarnished since his first taste of mother’s milk, mixed with demon blood, when he was only hours old.
Five thousand fucking years.
It had been two weeks since he’d learned the truth and the memories that had been taken away from him were returned. Now he remembered everything that had happened over the centuries.
He’d been a bad, bad angel. Or a very, very good fallen angel, depending on how you looked at it.
Toxic anger rushed through his veins as he paced the subterranean parking lot outside Underworld General Hospital. Maybe the doctors inside had some kind of magical drug that could take his memories away again. Life had been far easier when he’d believed he was pure evil, a fallen angel with no redeeming qualities.
Okay, he probably still didn’t have any redeeming qualities, but now, what he did have were conflicted feelings. Questions. A twin brother who couldn’t be more opposite of him.
With a vicious snarl, he strode toward the entrance to the emergency department, determined to find a certain False Angel doctor he was sure could help him forget the last five thousand years, if only for a couple of hours.
The sliding glass doors swished open, and the very female he’d come for sauntered out, her yellow-duckie-spotted blue scrubs clinging to a killer body. Instant lust fired in his loins, and fuck yeah, screw the drugs, she was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Take her twice and call me in the morning.
Since the moment he bumped into her at the hospital a few weeks ago, he’d been obsessed, and now, as Blaspheme’s long legs ate up the asphalt as she walked toward him, he imagined them wrapped around his waist as he pounded into her. The closer she came, the harder his body got, and he cursed with disappointment when she dropped her keys and had to stop to pick them up. Then he decided she could drop her keychain as often as she wanted to, because he got a fucking primo view of her deep cleavage when her top gaped open as she bent over.
She straightened, looped the keychain around her finger, and started toward him again, humming a Duran Duran song.
“Blaspheme.” He stepped out from between two black ambulances, blocking her path.
She jumped, a startled gasp escaping full crimson lips made to propel a male to ecstasy. “Revenant.” Her gaze darted to the hospital doors, and he got the impression she was plotting her escape route. How cute that she thought she could get away from him. “What are you doing lurking in the parking lot?”
Lurking? Well, some might call it that, he supposed. “I was on my way to see you.”
She smiled sweetly. “Well, you’ve seen me. Buh-bye.” Pivoting, her blond ponytail bouncing, she headed in the opposite direction.
Back to the hospital.
With a mental flick of his wrist, he changed into jeans, cowboy boots, and a NASCAR T-shirt, and turned his shoulder-length hair from black to brown before flashing around in front of her, once again blocking her path. “Maybe this is more to your liking?”
She gave him a flat stare. Clearly, rednecks weren’t her thing.
Giving it another try, he went ginger and short with the hair, and decked himself out in a business suit. “How about this?”
More staring. He switched back to goth biker chic and stopped fucking around. “Come home with me.”
“Wow.” She crossed her arms over her chest, which only drew his attention to her rack. Niiice. “You get right to the point.”
He shrugged. “Saves time.”
“Were you planning to wine and dine me at least? You know, before the sex.”
“No. Just sex.” Lots and lots of sex.
He could already imagine her husky voice deepening in the throes of passion. Could imagine her head between his legs, her mouth on his cock, her hands on his balls. He nearly groaned at the imaginary skin flick playing in his head.
“Oh,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re charming, aren’t you?”
Not once in his five thousand years had anyone ever called him charming. But even uttered with sarcasm, it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.
“Don’t do that,” he growled.
“Do what?” She stared at him like he was a loon.
“Never mind.” Dying to touch her, he held out his hand. “You’ll love my playroom.”
She wheeled away like he was offering her the plague instead of his hand. “Go to hell, asshole. I don’t date fallen angels.”
“Good news, then, because it’s not a date.” And he wasn’t a fallen angel.
“Right. Well, I don’t fuck fallen angels, either.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go away.”
She was rejecting him? No one rejected him. No one. Having been raised in a dungeon, with torture specialists and executioners as his playmates, he hadn’t exactly learned the art of seduction or even polite conversation. But sex… he spoke that language fluently.
She started to take off again, and he blinked, confused. This wasn’t right. He had his sights set on her, and she was supposed to surrender. This was something new. Something… titillating. The confusion morphed into a sensation he welcomed and knew well; the jacked-up high of the hunt.
Instantly, his senses sharpened and focused. His sense of smell brought a whiff of her vanilla-honey scent. His sense of hearing homed in on her rapid, pounding heartbeat. And his sense of sight narrowed in on the tick of her pulse at the base of her throat.
The urge to pounce, to take her down and get carnal right here, right now, was nearly overwhelming. Instead, he moved in slowly, matching her step for step as she backed up.
“What are you doing?” She swallowed as she bumped up against a massive support beam.
“I’m going to show you why you need to come home with me.” He planted both palms on the beam on either side of her head and leaned in until his lips brushed the tender skin of her ear. “You won’t regret it.”
“I already told you. I don’t fuck fallen angels.”
“So you said,” he murmured. “Do you kiss them?”
“Ah… no, I—”
He didn’t give her the chance to finish her sentence. Pulling back slightly, he closed his mouth over hers.
Strawberry gloss coated his lips as he kissed her, and he swore he’d never liked fruit as much as he did right now.
Her hands came up to grip his biceps, tugging him closer as she deepened the kiss. “You’re good,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I know,” he whispered back.
Suddenly, pain tore into his arms as her nails scored his skin. “But you’re not that good.”
Before he could even blink, she shoved hard and ducked out from under the cage of his arms. With a wink, she strutted away, her fine ass swinging in her form-fitting scrub bottoms. She stopped at the door of a candy apple red Mustang and gave him a sultry look that made his cock throb.
“Give up now, buddy. I can out-stubborn anyone.” She hopped into her car and peeled out of her parking stall, leaving him in the dust.
Blaspheme was practically hyperventilating as she drove through New York City’s crowded streets, wishing she’d taken the Harrowgate to work today. But no, she’d chosen to drive from her Brooklyn apartment to Underworld General one last time, a sentimental stupidity that had not only taken up precious time, but had also run her straight into a fallen angel who somehow, after a short, unpleasant verbal exchange at the hospital a few weeks ago, thought they needed to date.
No, not date. Just have sex.
Her entire body heated at the thought, something it had no business doing.
But gods, he was incredible. Standing in the UG parking lot, he’d looked like a giant goth biker, wrapped in leather and chains, his massive boots sporting wicked talons at the tips. Even the backs of his fingerless gloves were adorned with metal studs at the knuckles. She’d always hated the tough-guy bullshit, but Revenant had fucking owned it. She got the impression that he lived his life that way; if he wanted it, he owned it.
Even when he’d changed his look, he’d still been like something out of a magazine or movie. The cowboy boots had made her want to take up riding—not necessarily horses—and the business suit had given her some racy desk fantasies.
He wasn’t going to give up on her, was he? At least not without a fight, which she was going to give him. She couldn’t afford to have a fallen angel sniffing around.
Cursing, she fumbled through her purse for her cell phone and dialed her contact from the moving company. Sally answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Bonnie,” Sally said, using the name Blaspheme adopted when dealing with humans. “The movers said they’ll be done loading your belongings for the second shipment to London by the end of the day.”
“Good,” Blas said. It would be nice to go directly to UG’s new London clinic directly, rather than having to use the hospital’s emergency department Harrowgate to get there. “I should be there in an hour—” The Call Waiting beep interrupted. “Can I get back to you? My mother is ringing in.”
Sally’s cheerful, “No problem,” was followed by a promise to make sure the movers would take wonderful care of Blaspheme’s things and not to worry, and a moment later, Blaspheme’s mother was on the other line.
“Hi, Mom.” Blaspheme slammed on her brakes to avoid rear-ending a piece-of-shit truck that apparently hadn’t come equipped with a turn signal or brake lights. She shot the driver the finger through her front windshield.
“Blas.” Her mother’s raspy voice came from right next to Blaspheme.
Screaming, Blas dropped the phone. “Holy shit!”
She opened her mouth again to yell at her mother for popping into the car from out of nowhere, but when she saw the blood, her voice cut out. Deva, short for Devastation, sat in the passenger seat, every inch of her body covered in blood. The broken end of a bone punched through her left biceps, and a deep, to-the-femur burn had wrecked her right leg.
“Oh, gods,” Blaspheme gasped. “What happened?”
Her mother lifted her trembling hand from her abdomen, and Blas got an eyeful of bowels poking through the laceration that stretched from just above her navel to her hip bone.
The injury itself was grave enough, but emanating from it was a vibe Blaspheme couldn’t place. Whatever it was, it felt… wrong. And very, very fatal.
“I—” Deva sucked in a rattling breath… and slumped, unconscious, against the window.
“Mom!” The POS truck moved, allowing Blaspheme to whip the Mustang around a corner to head back to Underworld General. She automatically reached out with her mind to find a Harrowgate, and although she located one a block away, there was nowhere to park, and no way she could abandon the vehicle in the middle of the street.
Damn, it would be nice to be able to flash like the normal offspring of a fallen angel, but that wasn’t an option for Blaspheme. It would never be an option.
On instinct, she gripped her mother’s wrist and tried to channel healing energy into her, but that talent had been rendered useless a long time ago.
Dammit!
“Just hold on,” she told her mom as she wove her car through the streets, narrowly avoiding sideswiping a cab and a messenger on a bike.
She whipped into the underground parking lot owned by the hospital but off-limits to the human public, drove through a false wall, and practically skidded to a halt in a stall in the hospital’s hidden parking lot. Then, for a split second, an eternity, really, she hesitated.
Everyone at the hospital believed Blas was a False Angel. She could come up with an explanation as to why her mother wasn’t the same species, but doing so could raise questions. Questions from the one person she was pretty sure was already suspicious.
A mere two weeks ago, Eidolon, Underworld General’s founder and chief of staff, had been just cryptic enough in his warning to stay away from Revenant that she’d been paranoid ever since.
Her mother groaned, and suddenly, it didn’t matter what Eidolon suspected. Her job… hell, her life… was at risk, but so was Deva’s, and she couldn’t let her mother die.
Quickly, she leaped out of the vehicle and ran through the sliding doors to the emergency department.
“I need help!” she barked, and in an instant, Luc, a werewolf paramedic, and Raze, a Seminus demon physician, rushed outside with a stretcher.
Moments later, Blaspheme was in an exam room, gloved up, while Luc checked vitals and Raze channeled his healing power into Deva. His scowl indicated that he was having trouble.
“Her stomach ruptured,” he said. “Dammit, there’s a tear in her transverse colon. I can heal the tears right now, but she needs surgery to clean out the contaminants.” He looked over at Blas. “It’s a huge risk, though. I know you’re aware that False Angels don’t respond well to anesthesia.”
Shit. Blaspheme did not want to reveal the truth about her mother—and potentially, herself—but she couldn’t compromise Deva’s health by sending her into surgery with doctors who thought she was something other than what she was. Maybe she could play fast and loose with the facts and hope no one dug too deep.
Blas glanced up as she prepared an IV site in the back of her mother’s hand. “She’s not a False Angel.”
Raze cocked an eyebrow. “But you said she’s your mother.”
“She’s my adoptive mother,” she lied. “She’s a fallen angel.” At least the second part was the truth.
Raze’s hand jerked, and he cursed under his breath. She understood his shock; fallen angels were rare, they were mostly evil assholes, and as far as Sheoulic denizens went, they were at the top of the food chain.
Raze’s ginger hair, longer in front than in the back, fell over his eyes as he leaned in for a closer look at Deva’s abdominal wound. “This is strange.”
Those weren’t words you wanted a doctor to say. She attempted to summon her most useful FA ability, what was commonly called X-ray vision, used by False Angels to determine the health or virility of their potential victims. As a medical professional, Blas had found a better use for it.
Sadly, it barely flickered before snuffing out. Great. Another False Angel ability was failing. How long before they were all gone and her true identity was revealed?
“What’s strange?” she asked.
“I can’t heal her. Nothing’s happening.”
“What?” Blas looked up from inserting an IV catheter into Deva’s vein to stare at the incubus. “Are you out of juice?”
He held up his right arm, which was covered in glowing glyphs from his throat to his fingers. “My power is at full charge. I’m telling you, it’s not me. It’s her.”
The vibe. What if the weird vibe coming off her mother was somehow interfering with Raze’s powers?
Raze glanced over at her. “Can you take a look inside her and tell me what’s going on?”
“I just tried,” she said. “I think I’m too emotional.”
Raze nodded, apparently buying her bullshit story for the X-ray failure.
Her mother groaned, and her eyes flickered open. Her hand fumbled for Blas’s. “Alone,” she rasped. “I need to talk to you alone.”
Blaspheme looked up at Raze. “Arrange for an OR. We’ll get her into surgery right away. And page Eidolon. I want him on this.” Despite Blas’s fears of discovery, she needed him. As the most skilled, most experienced doctor in the entire underworld, Eidolon just might be the only one who could save her mother.
Raze and Luc took off, leaving her alone with Deva.
“Mom,” she said quietly. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Angels,” she said, and Blaspheme’s stomach churned. “I was attacked by angels.”
Which explained the vibe and Raze’s difficulty healing her. Some angelic weapons caused injury that couldn’t be repaired using supernatural means.
“Where were you?” Blaspheme squeezed her mother’s hand when Deva’s eyes closed. “Hey, stay with me. Where were you when they attacked you?”
“Home,” she rasped. “They found me, Blaspheme.”
A chill crawled up her spine. “They?” She had a sickening feeling she knew who they were, and she prayed she was wrong.
Deva coughed, spraying blood. “I think… I think they were Eradicators. They found me.” She sat up, clawing at Blaspheme’s hand, desperation and terror punching through the haze of pain in her eyes. “Which means they’re also looking for you.”
A high-intensity Satanic summons shrieked in Revenant’s head as he stood atop Mount Megiddo, his lungs filling with hot, dry air.
Ignoring Satan’s command, Revenant called out with his mind and voice to the highest-ranking archangel in Heaven.
“Metatron.”
Nothing. A breeze whipped up a dust devil a few yards away, but other than that, nothing moved.
“Metatron!”
More nothing. Even the dust devil died a slow, agonizing death.
“Metatron!”
Fuck. He should have expected that he’d be ignored. The archangels had abandoned him thousands of years ago, so why the hell would they pay any attention to him now?
Assholes. All he wanted were some answers. Why had they left him and his mother to rot in hell? Why didn’t anyone, in five thousand years, tell him the truth before now? Before he regained his memories and got a promotion… thanks to his brother’s “heroic” actions and Heaven’s rule that what was done to one twin must be done to the other. And why hadn’t they told him he was welcome in Heaven? After all, Reaver was allowed.
Because you aren’t welcome. You’re evil. Corrupt.
The Dark Lord’s summons came again, this time blasting him so violently that pain drove him to his knees. Blood sprayed from his nose and ears, and as he gripped his head, he swore his skull was cracking.
Dammit, he was not ready to face Satan. Not that he was ever ready. No one in their right mind would happily drop everything to take a meeting with the Dark Lord. And now that Rev knew the truth about his past—or at least, about most of it—he had even less motivation to have a face-to-face with the king of all demons.
Satan had lied to Revenant for thousands of years, had even hinted that Rev was his son.
It was all bullshit, and Revenant wondered how things were going to change now that the truth had come out. One thing was certain; he wanted to be armed with as much knowledge as he could gather before he faced Satan, and only one person could give him the answers he sought.
Unfortunately, Metatron didn’t seem inclined to provide any answers. Which left Revenant with only one other option.
Nursing his Satanic headache, he summoned a handful of books and flashed himself to the other side of the Earth, to the home of Thanatos, fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
As the Four Horsemen’s Sheoulic Watcher, Revenant was supposed to keep an eye on them. But since regaining his memories, he’d avoided them the way he’d avoided their father. Revenant’s brother.
Reaver.
Every time they’d faced off since regaining their memories, they’d battled it out, and Revenant’s words to Reaver during one particular encounter still echoed in his thoughts.
The very day I learned about you, I came to you as a brother. But all you saw was an enemy and a fiend. Now that is all you will ever see.
Revenant had cooled his jets a little since that moment a couple of weeks ago, but the fact remained that five thousand years ago, before their memories were wiped—the first time—Reaver had rejected Revenant, and to this day, nothing had changed.
So, no, Revenant wasn’t expecting Reaver’s four legendary hellspawns to welcome Uncle Rev with open arms.
And yet he was standing in front of Thanatos’s Greenland castle, wondering if the Horseman known as Death would willingly open the door. More likely, Revenant would have to barge in and lay everyone out in order to get a peek at the rare books Thanatos hoarded in his library.
An electric tingle on the back of his neck alerted him to the presence of angels a split second before Harvester, the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and Reaver himself materialized in front of him.
Fuck.
“Revenant.” Harvester’s smoky voice had always made Rev think of cat-o-nines wrapped in silk. She looked the part as well, dressed in tight black leather pants and stiletto-heeled boots, a lace corset binding her waist and plumping her perfect breasts. She looked a little paler than usual, though. Maybe getting her halo back after thousands of years of being a fallen angel wasn’t sitting well with her. “Why are you here?”
“I’m the Horsemen’s evil Watcher,” he said, getting a kick at how his brother winced at the word evil. “I don’t need a reason, nor do I answer to you.”
“But you will answer to me,” Reaver said.
Revenant snorted. Reaver had been sending out mental invitations to meet for weeks, but Revenant hadn’t answered. He wasn’t going to answer to his brother now, either.
“Bite me.” He flashed himself closer to Thanatos’s keep, but a heartbeat later, Harvester and Reaver were forming a wall in front of him again. How tiresome. “I was going to give Thanatos the courtesy of knocking on his door, but you’re giving me no choice but to flash inside his residence with no warning. The last time I did that to a Horseman, I caught Ares and Cara in a… compromising position.” He shrugged. “But whatever. Let’s see what Thanatos and Regan are up to, shall we?”
He started to dematerialize, but Reaver snarled and gripped his arm, tethering him to his current position. “Just tell us why you’re here.”
Well, hell, maybe Reaver could give Rev the information he needed. He held up the copies of the Bible, the Quran, and the Daemonica in his hand. “I want to use Thanatos’s library. I need to find references to Shadow Angels and Radiants, and these cryptic, contradictory tomes aren’t exactly helpful.”
Reaver released him and stepped back. “You want to know more about what you are. About what we both are.”
“Um, yeah. Duh.” Wasn’t his brother a genius. “It isn’t every day you get promoted to the highest-known rank of angel, and it isn’t like there’s a fucking manual anywhere that outlines the job description.”
No, there had only ever been a handful of Shadow Angels like Revenant, and Radiants like Reaver, and since there could only be one of each in existence at any given time, there was no one to ask about it.
Reaver shrugged. “It’s learn as you go.”
“That’s very helpful, brother.”
Reaver made a sound of impatience and jammed his hand through his perfect mane of shiny blond hair. Revenant changed his hair color to match. Just to be a tool.
“We were given those ranks together,” Reaver said. “And we can figure it out together.”
Revenant laughed. “Now you want to play big brother? Now that I don’t need you?”
“You do need me,” Reaver said. “We need each other.”
“Really,” Revenant said flatly. “And why is that?”
Reaver’s voice went low and ominous. “Because Lucifer is about to be reborn, and his birth is going to cause seismic shifts both on Earth and in Heaven.”
This again? The Heavenly types got so worked up about reincarnated fallen angels. Okay, sure, Lucifer, as Satan’s former right-hand man, wasn’t your run-of-the-mill fallen angel, and the fallen angel carrying him, Gethel, had conceived him while she was still rocking wings and a halo. Oh, and in Lucifer’s newest incarnation, he was also Satan’s son. Which meant Lucifer was extra, extra special.
The asshole. In a few short years, he’d reclaim his place at Satan’s side, and he’d spend his life trying to ruin Revenant’s. It wouldn’t matter that Rev would always outmatch him in sheer strength and ability—Lucifer would have Satan’s ear and clout. When Lucifer gave a command, it would be followed as if given by Satan himself. Just the way it had been before Lucifer went and got himself killed a few months ago.
Revenant cleared his throat. “A, I don’t care. B, when you cut off Gethel’s wings to prevent Lucifer from being born fully grown, you reduced his powers, so stop with the ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it’ bullshit.”
Harvester shook her head, her black-as-pitch hair swinging around her slender shoulders. “It’s not bullshit. We reduced Lucifer’s powers, but he’s still the most powerful fallen angel to ever be reincarnated. His birth will still send shock waves through the heavens.”
“And,” Reaver said grimly, “he’s growing stronger every day. Harvester can feel him.”
Ah, so maybe Lucifer’s growth was the reason Harvester was looking particularly pale, and maybe a little gaunt. As Satan’s daughter, she was connected to all of her siblings, born and unborn. Not that Revenant gave a shit. But it explained why Reaver did.
“It gets worse,” Harvester said. “After Lucifer is born, he’ll keep growing stronger, until he’s reached the pinnacle of power. Once that happens, he and Satan can join forces—with you. The Trifecta of Evil, the archangels call it, because you’ll be the three most powerful beings in Sheoul. Together, there would be very little that could stop you from wreaking hell on Earth. Reaver will be forced by the biblical prophecy to break all four of the Horsemen’s Seals and kick off the End of Days.”
The Heavenly types were as obsessed with Armageddon as they were with fallen angels. It was all getting old. “And what do you want me to do about it?”
Reaver folded his arms over his chest. “Give us Gethel before she gives birth to Lucifer.”
Another rerun. Yawn. They should syndicate this shit. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re an angel, Revenant. Metatron told me that we need to work together—”
“Did he now? Funny, because he won’t even respond to my request to meet him. Has he sent me an invitation to Heaven? No? Then go rot.” He flashed out of there, no longer caring about getting answers about what being a Shadow Angel meant. Besides, Satan’s summons was buzzing around in his skull like an angry hornet.
Interesting how Satan had his knickers in a twist about talking to Rev, while Metatron couldn’t be bothered to se. . .
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