Forgetting the popcorn, she hurried to the living room… and stopped in her tracks at the raw stench of fresh blood. A cold fist of fear squeezed her heart as she backed slowly toward the kitchen, her only thought to grab a butcher knife off the counter.
“Blaspheme.” The familiar voice rasped through the room.
“Revenant?” Very cautiously, she pressed her back to the wall and inched toward the sound of labored breathing. As she peered around the corner, she caught a glimpse of Rev’s giant boots on the floor on the other side of the couch. “What the hell?”
Rushing forward, she was shocked to find him sitting on the tile, propped against the wall, his clothes shredded and charred, a massive laceration extending from his right pectoral to the bottom of his left rib cage. Blood seeped between his fingers as he held pressure against the wound.
“Oh, shit,” she said as she crouched next to him. “What happened?”
“Bomb… blast,” he breathed. “I fucked up, Blas. Fucked up so hard.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the blast, but right now what mattered was getting him fixed. “I’m going to get you to UG —”
“No.”
“You’re in bad shape. You need —”
“What is with people?” He snarled, flashing fangs. “I said no.”
Okeydokey, then. “Let me grab my medic kit.”
As she pushed to her feet, his hand snaked out to circle her wrist. “I mean it. No hospital.”
“Yeah, I got that.” She peeled his fingers away. “I’ll be right back.”
Quickly, she grabbed her old paramedic jump kit from the cupboard beneath the bathroom sink and returned to him. His head had fallen back against the wall, and he was paler than he’d been a moment ago, his blood spilling in a pool beneath him. So much for her cleaning deposit.
“Must have been a hell of an explosion to wreck you like this,” she said.
Closing his eyes, he nodded. “You don’t even know.”
“I’d like to.”
His eyes opened. “Would you really.”
The cynicism in his voice pricked at something deep inside her. Did he think that people were always bullshitting him? Maybe it was a fallen angel thing, because her mother was the same way. Blaspheme might not be the most trusting person on the planet, but Deva left her in the dust.
“Whatever it is,” she said slowly, “you can tell me. Doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“I thought you weren’t held to human standards.”
Ouch. Way to throw that back in her face. “I pick and choose.” She unzipped the bag. “So spill.”
He closed his eyes again. “What’s your mother like?”
Whoa. Talk about a change of subject. But hey, if that was what he wanted to talk about and it would keep him calm, she’d humor him a little.
“She’s extremely high-strung,” she said as she fetched a pair of scissors from her bag and started to cut away his shirt. “But she’d do anything for me. She’d sacrifice… anything.” Including False Angels.
“My mother was like that.” His burned hands tightened into fists, and a shudder went through him. “She was such a fool,” he whispered.
Gently, she moved his hand away from his wound and pressed a blood-stopper pad against it. “She was a mother,” she said. “That’s what they do.”
“Fuck that.” He laughed, a nasty, bitter sound. “Got any alcohol?”
“Of course I have alcohol. I’m a False Angel,” she reminded him. False Angels drank liquor by the gallon, their bodies converting the stuff to the powdery aphrodisiac that coated their wings. Blas didn’t drink for that particular reason, especially now that she wasn’t producing the powder anymore and what was left on her wings was all that remained, but her disguise did make her crave it. “But it’s not a good idea to drink right now.” When his upper lip curled in a silent snarl, she threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine. But when you pass out from blood loss and alcohol, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She replaced his hand on the pad. “Apply pressure. I’ll be right back.”
She fetched a bottle of Smirnoff from the liquor cabinet and handed it to him. He immediately guzzled half of it. Gods, she hoped he had a high tolerance. He was a pain in the ass when he was sober; she couldn’t imagine what he’d be like under the influence. She’d bet her favorite set of scrubs that he was a mean drunk.
Settling in next to him, she laid out the supplies she’d need to sew him back together. He watched her with curiosity as she performed a rapid exam to determine the extent of his injuries, but aside from the near-evisceration wound, all she found were burns and abrasions.
She carefully cleaned the surgical area and threaded a needle with absorbable thread. “I don’t have anything that will numb the area, so this is going to hurt.”
He took a deep swig. “Trust me, you can’t do anything to me that hasn’t been done before.”
Setting the needle and thread aside, she unwrapped a sterile scalpel. “Sounds like you’ve had a violent life.”
He snorted. “Who hasn’t?”
“I haven’t.” Thanks to her mother’s paranoia, Blaspheme had, for the most part, stayed out of trouble.
“Isn’t that special.” Revenant held up the bottle in a salute. “Good for you.”
“Yeah, good for me.” She scooted in closer to Revenant and tried to ignore the heat coming off his muscular body. “I need to excise the damaged skin on the edges of your laceration. Try not to move.”
He didn’t move at all. He closed his eyes, put his head against the wall, and half an hour later, she was finished cleaning and prepping the wound. Next up, stitches.
“In the deepest parts of this lac, I need to put in internal sutures. It should only take a few minutes.” She pierced his flesh with the needle. “Lucky for you, most of the cut is fairly shallow.”
“You know you don’t need to go to a lot of trouble,” he said, his voice starting to slur a little. “I’m immortal. I’ll heal on my own eventually.”
She looked up at him. “That’s why I’m not worried about infection or making this pretty.” She pulled on the thread. “But you shouldn’t have to be in pain until you heal.”
His lids opened, just a crack, but she felt his intense gaze scorching her skin. “It’s been a long time since anyone gave a shit about my pain.”
She stopped breathing. She could tell him that she only cared because it was her job to care, but she sensed that when he said a long time, he wasn’t talking about a few years, or even a few decades. Maybe not even a few centuries. Was he that awful of a person that no one could care for him? Or did he push people away so they didn’t have the chance to care for him?
Either way, it was kind of heartbreaking.
“Just relax, and you’ll feel better in a few minutes.”
One corner of his mouth curved into a half smile. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“We’ll see.”
Bending over the laceration, she got back to work. “Not very trusting, are you?”
“Because people aren’t very trustworthy.”
She’d have argued, because she’d met a few standup humans and demons, but he’d closed his eyes again, and his breathing had settled into a deep, steady rhythm.
She spent the next forty-five minutes stitching Revenant up in silence, and as she finished, her cell buzzed with a text from Eidolon.
Meet me in my office tomorrow at 2 PM.
Doc E had never been one to mince words. She set the phone aside and turned back to Revenant.
“What was that about?” Revenant’s voice was drowsy and his eyes were still closed, but he somehow managed to radiate a sense of alertness most people couldn’t match after ten hours of sleep and five cups of coffee.
“Nothing.”
His lids lifted as his features settled into irritation. “There is very little that pisses me off more than being lied to.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “It was
something, but it’s none of your business. That’s not a lie.”
He pegged her with his black gaze. “I’m not the enemy. You know that, right?”
“Actually, no, I don’t.” She smoothed a bandage over his wound. “You’re a fallen angel. You, more than anyone, should know that fallen angels aren’t exactly honorable.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” The bottle he seemed to have forgotten about became his best friend again, and he took a swig. “I’m not fallen. I’m a one hundred percent, full-blown, Heavenly angel.” His voice lowered, became thick with liquor. “What a fucking joke.”
Now he was making no sense. She reached for the bottle. “Let me just take that —”
He jerked it way. “Mine.”
She huffed. “As your doctor, I’m ordering you to give that to me.”
“Mine.”
“Hand it over,” she said between clenched teeth.
His gaze roved over her in a frank, unhurried sweep. “Mine,” he growled, and her body flushed with heat, as if it thought he was referring to her.
“I give up,” she muttered as she shoved her medical supplies back into her bag.
He gave her a lopsided grin. “I like that you give in to me so easily.”
“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to give in to anything else. If you want a hangover for the record books, that’s your problem. Don’t come asking me for aspirin.”
Half-lidded eyes swept her again, and the heat intensified. “There’s a pub song about how women get better looking at closing time.” He held up the bottle in salute. “You’re already hot as hell. But now you look like an angel.”
“Aw, I’ll bet you say that to all the doctors who sew you up.”
“Nope. Just you.” He squinted at her. Looked at the bottle. Looked back at her. “I don’t know what’s in this booze, but I swear it’s making you look different. Like an angel is trying to break through some sort of blurry overlay.”
He frowned again at the bottle, completely oblivious to the fact that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Had the alcohol given him the ability to see through her disguise?
Do something. Fast.
“Ah, hey.” She gestured to his wound. “You need to get some rest now. The wound should be healed by morning.”
Standing, she held out her hand to help him up, but he popped to his feet without her. And then, as if his legs were made of rubber, he collapsed. Only the wall and her quick thinking kept him from crashing to the floor.
“Criminy, you’re heavy.” Holding him with one arm slung around his waist, she casually took the liquor from him and set it on the coffee table.
He leaned heavily on her as she made her way past unpacked boxes toward her bedroom. “She gave up everything for me, Blaspheme,” he mumbled. “She… she… aw, fuck.” His big body trembled, and his voice, which was so deep and powerful, shook as hard as the rest of him. “It’s my fault. Everything that happened to her… it’s on me.”
“Shh.” Wondering who he was talking about, she eased him toward the bed. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he moaned. “It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay. She told me not to break the rules, but I did it anyway. She paid for it, over and over. And then she died at the hands of a monster.” He glanced down at his own hands as if they didn’t belong to him.
“Come on, Rev.” She pushed him down onto the mattress. He sat heavily, remaining like that, his head hanging on his shoulders, his chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon. She lifted his feet and swung him around so he was forced to lie back, his gorgeous ebony hair spreading out over her robin’s-egg blue sheets. “Get some rest.”
“Lay with me.” He stared up at her, his glazed eyes going in and out of focus. She’d seen enough pain and intoxication to know that those things could be the cause of his visual responses, but this went deeper than that. Behind the alcohol muddle and the haze of pain was an open wound no medicine could touch.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she murmured.
“Please.” There was so much vulnerability in that one simple word that she couldn’t turn away.
Wondering how the hell she’d gotten herself into this mess, she climbed onto the opposite side of the bed and stretched out next to him. Naturally, he flipped over, slung his arm around her, and tucked her against him so they were spooning. Despite his condition, she expected him to try something sexual, but within a few heartbeats, his body had stopped shaking, and he was breathing in strong, even respirations.
As she relaxed in his powerful arms, she realized he was right. She did give in to him easily.
Too easily.
Twelve
Hours after Revenant had flashed himself away, Reaver was still staring out at the charred landscape. He had no idea how to handle his brother, no idea how to get through to him. Revenant was angry, hurt, and he possessed way too much power to be so unstable.
Reaver knew firsthand how badly that could go, and he had a lifetime of regrets to prove it.
Reaching out with his senses to locate Harvester, he flashed himself from the New Mexico badlands to the sandy beach of a Greek island he knew well.
Harvester was wading in the crystal surf, her blue-and-white-striped sundress catching the waves as they lapped at her ankles. She wasn’t one for soft, feminine styles, so the fact that she was dressed like she should be at a polo match in the Hamptons was a clue that she was having a difficult day.
That made two of them.
Silently¸ he sat down in the sand, prepared to simply watch her. They’d been separated for five thousand years, and sometimes, like now, he wanted nothing more than to soak up her beauty and marvel at the angel she’d become.
Sure, she was still ornery, maddening, and sometimes, downright mean, but he wouldn’t have her any other way.
She slid a glance at him from underneath the wide rim of her floppy straw hat. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.” He leaned forward and braced his arms on his knees. “What’s wrong? You don’t usually hang out at Ares’s place without a reason.”
Ares, Reaver’s son and the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, known to many as War, didn’t mind anyone in the family hanging out here. But Harvester’s relationship with the Horsemen was complicated, starting with the fact that she was their Heavenly Watcher… and she’d once been their Sheoulic Watcher.
She smiled sadly, and was it his imagination, or was she even paler than she’d been this morning? “I saw Whine today. He goes by Tracker now, but it seems so strange to call him that.”
“Do you regret giving him up?”
“Never,” she said with a brisk shake of her head. “My father would have tortured or killed him to hurt me. Besides, he has a better life with Reseph and Jillian than I ever could have given him.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
She sniffed, got that muley look he knew so well. “I’m not upset. When have you ever known me to be sentimental?”
“Never.”
“There you go.” She started toward him, kicking through the waves. “But while I was waiting to talk to Tracker, Revenant showed up.”
Reaver went on instant alert. He was trying to be patient with Revenant, to give his twin a behavioral pass because he’d truly been given the shaft, but Reaver wouldn’t tolerate anyone messing with his family.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “It was something he said about how it’s easier to be evil than good.”
“And?”
“And it reminded me how close I came a few times to giving in to evil instead of staying on the path I’d intended.” She sank down in the sand beside him, the warm breeze bringing her sun-kissed scent to him. “What if I’d done it? I mean, I left Heaven with a goal, but there were times when I lost sight of that goal. When it seemed like the very side I was fighting for was fighting against me, I kept wondering why I was sacrificing myself for people who hated me.”
R
eaching for her, he took her hand. “But you stayed strong, and in the end you managed to do exactly what you set out to do. You saved the world, Harvester. Don’t let the what-ifs drive you crazy.”
“I’m not. But what about Revenant?”
He blinked at the sudden change of focus. “What about him?”
“He’s lost. He just found out he’s an angel. An angel who was forsaken by the people who should be welcoming him. And now that he knows the truth about himself, he’s struggling with who he was, who he is, who he wants to be, and who he thinks he should be. He doesn’t know if he’s good, evil, both… I know how that feels, and I know it can send you down a road to the wrong place.”
Baffled by her out-of-character compassion for someone she hated, Reaver just stared. “Why do you care?”
She laughed, but she sounded tired. “I don’t. He’s a jackass.” Her fingers were warm as she squeezed his hand. “I care for you. He’s your brother, and no matter what I think of him, I know that if you don’t try to help him down the right path, you’ll regret it forever.”
“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”
She gave another haughty sniff. “Of course I know that.”
Nope, the transformation from fallen angel to haloed angel hadn’t changed Harvester a bit. He shifted, putting his face to the salty breeze. “How are you feeling?”
“You mean, is Lucifer sucking my energy?” She shook her head. “I can barely feel him at all. I’m feeling better, in fact.” He thought she might be lying, but then she smiled, the sultry one that made his blood run south and his brain stop functioning. “Now, let’s go home and I’ll show you how much better I’m feeling.”
There was nothing he’d like more, but there was something he had to do first. “Rain check? I need to speak with the archangels.”
“Hurry,” she said in her husky bedroom voice. “Or I’ll start without you.”
Erotic images flooded his brain, and he groaned. No doubt this was going to be the briefest meeting in angel history.
Thirteen
“Fuck me, Revenant.”