Reaver (Lords of Deliverance 5)

“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.

“Shit.” A vine grabbed at Harvester, and she yanked it out of the wall by its roots. Blood dripped from her palm where the acid had eaten her skin away, but she didn’t seem to notice. “The demons are close.”

Too close. Reaver could practically hear the bear-toads’ growls. They were in for a battle, and they had to find a place to fight that would give Reaver’s team every advantage they could get.

They ran hard, finally slowing when the passage widened into a cavern, its ceiling extending so far into the darkness that Reaver couldn’t see it. Massive, sharp stalactites jutted like fangs from above, and spiky stalagmites erupted from the floor.

Exit tunnels on the far wall sat just beyond a pool of oily black stuff that Harvester eyed like it was poison. When she actually said, “It’s poison,” he wasn’t shocked.

“I guessed that.”

“You guessed,” she said. “I knew.”

“Why is everything a competition to you?” Calder had better have located the Harrowgate, because if they had to spend another day down here, Reaver was going to kill her. Or himself. “We need to work on our—” He broke off at the low-pitched drone of a howl.

Harvester wheeled toward the opening they’d come through. “Here they come.”

Dammit. He had no idea which of the tunnels Calder had taken, and even if he did, he couldn’t risk getting caught by the demons in a narrow space where he couldn’t fight.

They had to make their stand here.

The battle angel in Reaver leaped into action, rapidly taking a tactical measure of their surroundings, escape routes, and potential weapons. He and Harvester had the advantage if they struck first, hitting the enemy as they filed out of the crevice that opened up into the cavern.

Calder, where the f**k are you?

He glanced over at Harvester, and for a brief moment he drank in the sight of her facing in the direction of the enemy, her expression feral, her lithe body squared for battle. The clothes he’d chosen for her left little to the imagination, clinging to every curve, every muscle. And to every bone that lay too close to the surface of her skin. He hated that her h*ps and ribs stood out so starkly.

But she wasn’t afraid. After all she’d been through at the hands of demons, the only vibe she was giving off right now was the electric tingle of anticipation.

She wanted revenge.

Good girl. Hold onto that. “Do you have enough power to summon a weapon?” he asked.

When she shook her head with obvious reluctance, he held out a dagger. “It’s a—”

“Dragon Biter,” she finished. “I know. Goes through thick hide and scales like butter. I used to have one before it was stolen by a Bathag I let get a little too close to me.”

“Why?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “Why do you think? I wanted something from him.”

“Sex?”

She snatched the dagger from him. “Why does sex automatically come to mind?”

The bear-toads howled, their bloodthirst carrying through the tunnels like a banshee’s wail and sending a chill up Reaver’s spine. “Maybe because you blackmailed me into ha**g s*x with you for twenty-four hours at some random time of your choosing?”

A thick shock of hair fell over her eyes, and she thrust it back with an impatient shove. “You know, most males wouldn’t whine about having to have sex.”

“Most males wouldn’t be ha**g s*x with you,” he pointed out, and were they really doing this when demons were almost on them?

“Most males should be so lucky.” She reached into her boot and fished out a stone. “But does it really matter if I wanted sex from a Bathag?”

No, it didn’t. But for some reason, he didn’t like the image that was now searing itself into his brain, of her rolling around with some pale-skinned, silver-haired mine-dweller.

“I don’t care who you sleep with.” Another howl rang out, chillingly close, and he summoned his power, what little there was, readying it for battle.

“You sound a little grumpy for someone who doesn’t care.”

Her tone was singsongy, meant to goad him into a fight, but they’d have one of those soon enough. The steady pounding of running footsteps came from only a few yards away, and he put himself in front of Harvester.

Who, naturally, moved into the path of the enemy.

A bear-toad burst into the cavern a split second ahead of its master, its gaping maw exposing several rows of sharp teeth. Reaver hit it with a blast of balefire as it leaped at Harvester. The thing screeched and went off course, crashing through a stalactite before crumpling into a steaming pile of goo.

The bear-toad’s handler, a fifteen-foot-tall demon from a species Reaver couldn’t identify roared with fury. Harvester hurled her blade, catching the creature in its throat. The Dragon Biter sprouted claws from the handle and sank them into the demon’s elephant-like hide. The dagger would now use its claws as leverage to push deeper and deeper, until either it came out the other side or the demon died.

The demon didn’t seem inclined to die anytime soon. It came at Reaver with a weapon that looked like a crude cross between a sword and an ax, and with the first swing, it nearly caught Reaver in the chest. He leaped back, shoving Harvester out of the way as he fired off another round of balefire.

The demon swung his blade, deflecting the cylinder of balefire and sending it into a stalactite hanging low from the cave ceiling. The other demons and their bear-toads charged into the cave, and suddenly the battle turned violent, bloody, and desperate. A blade came out of nowhere, spinning wildly through the air at Harvester’s head. Reaver flew upward in a flare of wings and knocked the sword away, but a crushing pain and tug on his leg brought him crashing down on top of the bear-toad clamped down on his calf.

He kicked the bastard in the head, then jackknifed up and slammed his fist into its jaws to deliver a one-two punch of physical strength and angelic power. The animal released Reaver’s leg, its skull crumpling like an eggshell.

Reaver didn’t have a chance to bask in victory. Across the poison pond, the demon Harvester had impaled with the Dragon Biter finally went down, but that still left her battling the remaining two demons with nothing but her fists and feet, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t be easy. Harvester’s weakened condition left her on the defense. The remaining bear-toad was in a full-out charge, her throat in its sights. She was holding her own, but barely, her graceful spins and leaps slowing with every move.

One of the demons got in a lucky strike, nailing Harvester in the sternum. With a grunt, she crashed to the ground, only to be stomped on by the second demon.

“Harvester!” Reaver bolted to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg, and flicked a shower of drill sparks at the demons even as he took flight. He went for the closest target, the bear-toad, reversing course at the last second to drive both boots into its hindquarters. The creature flipped head over paws and splashed down in the poison pond.

Reaver didn’t give the thing a glance. He went after the demons, who were now swatting at the sparks, but wait… why weren’t the fiery pinpricks drilling into their flesh?

He got his answer when one of the sparks came at him. No longer pure spark, it had warped into a winged insect with a needlelike spike protruding from its eyeless face. Son of a bitch. Now he and Harvester had to battle not only the demons but whatever new hell had been bastardized by his magic.

Extending his wings, he shot upward into the stalactites, drawing off a swarm of the sparks. The massive effort of flight down here slowed him as he flew toward the ceiling and at the last second, he banked hard and dove. The sparks spattered all over the rock like paintballs, leaving behind tiny wisps of sizzling smoke.

He used his downward momentum to skim the ground and scoop up Harvester a millisecond before one of the demons brought a sledgehammer down on her head. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight, her fiery skin burning against his.

“Thank you.”

Her barely audible words of gratitude astonished him so completely that he pitched forward and nearly did a header into the poison pool. He recovered just before he hit the dissolving body of the bear-toad, and in one seamless swoop, he dropped Harvester on her feet and slammed into a demon. They both tumbled like bowling pins into a pile of boulders.

Reaver, panting with exhaustion, still managed to recover first and swipe the male’s sword. Spinning, he brought the blade down on the demon’s thick throat, severing its ugly head. He pivoted, ready to make a matching set of headless hellspawn, but midturn, a searing, biting agony ripped through his back.

Muscles locked, he went down, catching a glimpse of a shiny black rope in the demon’s giant fist. What the hell? A whip that could paralyze an angel? Not good.