Lethal Rider

Thirty-six

Thanatos had never been so afraid in his life. “Eidolon? What’s happening? She’s unconscious.” And there was blood. So much blood.

“Thanatos—check her pulse.”

Than pressed two fingers against Regan’s throat, his own pulse pounding as hard as Regan’s. “It’s strong. Crazy strong. That’s good, right?”

“Fuck!” Eidolon’s inability to do anything but change out soaked towels for dry ones had released his temper. His eyes, once brown, now glowed gold. “Not good. Her body is trying to compensate for the loss of blood. I think she’s had a uterine rupture.”

The word rupture was never good. “What’s that mean?”

“It means she’s bleeding out, and I can’t do a damned thing about it.” Eidolon cursed again. “The baby is protecting her, and ironically, giving birth to it is going to kill her.”

“No.” Thanatos shoved to his feet. “You have to do something. Regan said The Aegis bastards were going to deliver him. They found a way—”

“If they found a way, it was with evil magic,” Eidolon interrupted. “Too dangerous to attempt even if we had time to figure out what they planned.”

“Then let me do something. Please.”

“You can monitor her pulse and breathing.” Eidolon tossed a soaked towel to the floor and glanced up, his dark eyes grave. “And if worse comes to worst …”

Than’s stomach bottomed out. “Don’t say it, Doc. Don’t.”

Eidolon said it anyway, the bastard. “You might have to perform a C-section and hope to hell she doesn’t wake up.”

Thanatos’s mind raced. Someone had to be able to help. “You have a daywalker at UG. Get him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullfuckingshit! I saw him. I recognize a daywalking vampire when I see one.”

Eidolon grabbed more towels. “I swear to you, Horseman, I do not have a daywalker on my staff.”

Fuck. Okay, wait… Reaver had been a doctor at UG before he regained his wings. He’d come back from the Hall of Records a split second before Regan screamed.

Than didn’t waste time. Hit the great room at a run. “Reaver, hurry.”

They charged back to the bedroom, the stench of blood slapping him in the face. He’d grown scent-blind to the smell of blood over the centuries, but this was different. This was Regan’s, and it might as well be spilling from him, too. As soon as they were inside, it became clear Reaver wasn’t going to do anything.

“Reaver?” Than’s voice cracked. “Come on, she’s dying.”

“I can’t touch her.”

“Can’t,” he spat, “or won’t.” At this point, Thanatos didn’t give a shit about Watcher rules or prophecies or the goddamned laws of physics that kept the planet spinning. He wanted—needed—Regan to survive.

“Both. As a Watcher, I’m not supposed to help, but even if I risked breaking that rule, it doesn’t matter. I can’t make contact with her any more than Eidolon can.”

“I can touch her.”

Than whirled to see Gethel standing in the doorway. Thanatos had never been happier to see his ex-Watcher. “How?”

“I’m an angel,” she said simply. “Only the Watchers are prevented from making contact with Regan.” She glided over to the bed and placed her hand on Regan’s belly. “The child is doing well.” She sank down on the bed and gathered Regan in her arms, almost as though she was going to rock her to sleep. “Poor thing. Humans are so frail.”

Eidolon stripped off his gloves and reached for another pair. “I hate to be rude, but she doesn’t have much time.” He looked between Than and Gethel. “If you can’t stop the internal bleeding, we need to get her to Underworld General and I’ll talk you both through surgery.”

Thanatos so did not like that idea, especially since Regan had said she couldn’t tolerate medications. Which meant no sedation, no pain control, no transfusions, no clotting agents. Eidolon didn’t say it, but Thanatos knew the surgery wouldn’t be to save her. The operation would be to get the baby out.

“I can handle this, demon,” Gethel said, putting a sour note on demon. In her arms, Regan gasped, her eyes peeling open.

“Regan.” Than started toward her, but even as Regan screamed in pain, Gethel inclined her head in a slow nod, and then, in a flash of light, she and Regan were gone.

“Hell’s fucking rings,” Shade snapped. “Where’d she go?”

Thanatos was close to hyperventilating. He’d trusted Gethel for thousands of years, but he did not like this. He needed to be with Regan. He needed to be there when his son was born.

“Horseman?” Eidolon asked. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he rasped. “Reaver, do you know anything about this?”

Reaver looked like he’d been shot between the eyes. The stunned confusion in his expression did little to reassure Than.

“Reaver?”

Reaver swiveled around to him. “Can you sense the baby?”

Fear spiked, cold and urgent. “Yeah.”

“Ares!” Reaver’s bellow made everyone jump, and then Ares was there, barreling through the doorway, armed and armored. Reaver turned back to Than. “Gate us to your son.”

Lore shouldered his way past Ares. “I’m going too.”

The more the merrier. Everyone poured out of the keep, and praying the gate wouldn’t slice into Regan on the other side, Thanatos threw it open and leaped through into some sort of candlelit chamber. His internal GPS told him they were exactly where he’d predicted Pestilence would take the baby; the island of Steara in Sheoul. But what he hadn’t predicted was the instant fury and horror that seared him, all heated by betrayal.

He’d found Regan. She screamed in pain and terror as she bore down on a contraction. Behind her, hanging from the ceiling with razor wire, was Idess, battered and bloody.

And running the entire show was Gethel, standing before an altar, her hand on Regan’s belly, and Pestilence, waiting, a blade poised and ready to drive into the baby that was moments from being born.

Reaver burst out of the Harrowgate with Ares and Lore, and he didn’t waste time with niceties. “Traitorous bitch.”

He blasted Gethel with hellfire, a minor weapon meant for only the lowliest of demons, but he couldn’t risk anything more powerful with Regan and Idess so close.

Thanatos and Ares dove at Pestilence as Lore went for Idess, but Reaver couldn’t afford to help either of them. Gethel was his priority.

The sounds of battle and pain came from the Horsemen. Regan screamed, and Reaver swore he’d make Gethel scream, too. He blasted her again, but she returned fire with a white hot bolt of lightning that slammed him into the stone wall behind him.

“Get Regan out of here!” There was a shout, a shot, a thump. As he rolled to his feet, he caught a glimpse of Lore and Thanatos, scooping up their females, and Ares, gathering an unconscious Pestilence.

Relief was tempered with apprehension. The qeres had worked. But for how long?

Twin flashes, and they were gone.

“Clever, using the qeres,” Gethel snarled, as she hurled a ball of blue fire at Reaver’s head.

Reaver ducked and retaliated, the flames from his fireball singeing her tunic before she could dive behind the altar Regan had been laid on. “Clever, hiding your tracks behind Harvester. You knew we’d suspect her first.”

She popped up on the other side of the altar. “How did you figure it out?”

As a battle angel bred for destroying demons, Reaver had a few tricks up his sleeve, and he called forth one of them now, focusing on her eyes to hold her with his gaze.

“How? I admit, I didn’t put it together until a few minutes ago. Earlier, Limos confronted Harvester about the khnives that attacked Arik. Only someone very powerful could summon more than one or two, and no one inside Sheoul would use low-level spies as assassins. I remembered the book you were reading in the Hall of Records.” He inched a little closer, narrowing his gaze to focus the stream of holding power into a more concentrated laser.

“It was a Sheoulic book of summoning,” he continued. “You were a little extra twitchy when I found you. So, out of curiosity, I went back to the Hall and found the book. It’s filled with khnive summoning spells.”

She sniffed. “It’s also filled with a thousand other spells.”

“True. Which is why I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you were researching the angelic ward used against Kynan and Wraith at Aegis Headquarters … that spell is also in the book. But then you took Regan and all the clues fell into place.”

“What clues?”

“While we were in the Hall of Records, you mentioned that The Aegis Headquarters was in Scotland. You shouldn’t have known that… unless you’d employed spies. And then there was Pestilence’s attack on the headquarters in Berlin. You knew that Thanatos had grabbed Regan, didn’t you? It would have been easy for you to alert Pestilence so he could track Thanatos’s movements before the Harrowgate trace grew cold. And what about Harvester’s pendant? She claimed you took it, and I didn’t believe her, but you did. You gave it to The Aegis, along with false information … you convinced them that if they killed Regan’s baby, it would end the Apocalypse, and those fools believed you because you are an angel.” He cursed. “I’ll bet you released the vampires at the Berlin headquarters too, didn’t you? You were hoping they’d kill Regan. You must have been pissed as hell when one of them actually saved her.”

She smiled. “Look at you. You should have been a detective. So bloody smart.”

Reaver’s foot came down on the dagger Pestilence had intended to drive through the baby’s heart. “And look at that,” he said. “Wormwood. Last I heard Pestilence was looking for it. You must have known The Aegis had it. How did you get them to hand it over?”

She licked her lips, slowly, as if savoring her genius. “I traded Harvester’s charm for it. So easy. All I had to do was say that the charm would only provide power if something of equal value was given in exchange.”

Devious bitch. “Why? You said it was powerless. Granted, you’re a big hairy liar, but still … what’s its purpose?”

“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

Reaver ground his molars. Now she decided to shut up. “One other thing I don’t get. Why send the khnives after Arik? What was the point of killing him?”

“Fun. What, you don’t believe me?” Her dramatic sigh made him grind his teeth harder. “Fine. That really was just pettiness. With Arik dead, his soul would default to Pestilence. He’d be tortured into saying Limos’s name, and she’d have been sent to spend eternity in Satan’s claws.”

What. A. Bitch. How could he have not seen all this coming? Oh, right, maybe because she was a full-fledged heavenly angel who was supposed to fight on the side of good.

“But why save him later, then?” he asked. “When my soul and Limos’s were cast into his body, why did you save his life?”

She shrugged. “He and Limos were already married. Letting him die would serve no purpose, but saving him…”

“Would make you look like a hero, and if anyone was suspicious about you at all, it would remove any doubt that you were playing for Team Good.” Devious.

“See? Smart.”

“But why, Gethel?” As pissed as he was, he was also saddened by this. Gethel had been the one to give him his wings back. She’d guided him through the early days of the transition. He’d felt as though he owed her a debt of gratitude. “When did you turn from our side?”

She hissed, as if Reaver had pushed the button that triggered her evil bitch side. “You took them away from me, you bastard. You were accepted back into Heaven and given the assignment to handle the Horsemen.”

Taken aback, he stopped moving toward her. “I was told you relinquished the duty freely.”

She snarled. “Would you argue with Michael if he suggested that perhaps it was time to turn the duty over to someone else?”

Well, yeah, Reaver would, but he’d never been cautious with his tongue. He could see how others might not argue with the archangel, however.

“And the Horsemen,” she spat. “They didn’t come to my defense. They didn’t care that I was replaced.” Her eyes flashed. “I loved them, and after all I did for them, they didn’t so much as wish me pleasant travels.”

Reaver experienced a moment of sympathy, but it was quickly squashed when she brought down a rain of tiny electrical shocks on him—tiny in size, but each one carried the power of a nuclear power plant. Pain ripped through him, burning his blood and turning his skin to ash. His vision doubled, as if one Gethel wasn’t bad enough.

“Your demon-fighting tricks don’t work on me, Reaver.” Her voice was both amused and cold, laughter hung with icicles.

With a cold smile of his own, he summoned a flame sword and spun it low, letting himself experience a grim satisfaction when it buried itself in her gut. Her cry of agony and fury rattled the chains hanging in the room. She launched herself a foot off the ground and spun, becoming a whirlwind of white.

Reaver hurled himself to the floor as she unleashed a storm of sparks that bored holes in everything they landed on—including Reaver.

Groaning, his body riddled with through-and-through holes that turned him into a giant sieve, he lurched to his feet. Time to play dirty. Spending time with demons while he was fallen was going to pay off.

He threw off the pain, channeling it into anger, and called forth one of his favorite weapons, one he rarely got a chance to use. The shear-whip’s handle was hot in his hand, but ice-cold compared to the molten metal that comprised the scourge part of the weapon.

Gethel’s eyes shot wide. “It’s against angel law to use this weapon against another angel!”

Reaver bared his teeth. “You’re no angel. You’re Fallen. You just haven’t had the decency to lose your wings.”

Pivoting, he snapped the whip, and in the softest whisper, it severed one of her wings. “One down.” He snapped it again, cutting into her rib cage and shattering every bone in her upper body.

This time her scream of rage and pain exploded inside Reaver’s head, the agony so intense he crashed to his knees. Blood spurted from his nose, ears, eyes.

A rolling thunder rang out, like a million buffalo hooves on stone. Demons, presumably summoned by Gethel, came at him from all sides. They swarmed him, hundreds of clawed, fanged mutants.

“You…won’t…win,” he rasped, but had no way of knowing if Gethel heard him.

She was crawling away, her broken body failing her. No way. She wasn’t escaping. She needed to either die or be brought to justice for her crimes against humanity and Heaven.

Reaver dug deep into his power reserves, his body buzzing as the current that started at the base of his skull and in his wings formed a circuit. A golden glow surrounded him, blinding the demons that were almost on him. Their shrieks filled the air and added to Reaver’s already throbbing eardrums. He gritted his teeth against the pain and let his banked power loose.

He went supernova, shooting blasts of Heavenly light from every pore. The demons disintegrated, their screams fading to echoes as their ashes drifted to the floor.

But among the ashes was a glow. Wormwood. Its hilt, etched with a word Reaver couldn’t make out, radiated with azure brilliance absorbed from Reaver’s Heavenly light. It was an angelic weapon.

Breathing deeply, Reaver caught himself on the altar as he bent to pick up the dagger. When he read the four-letter word carved into the hilt next to a star symbol, he fumbled it, barely catching the blade before it tumbled to the ground.

DOOM.

The Doom Star cometh if the cry fails.

Oh…oh, damn.

The Aegis had been wrong about the Doom Star in Thanatos’s prophecy. It wasn’t Halley’s Comet. It was Wormwood.

Now Reaver had a decision to make. A decision that rightfully belonged to the Horsemen. But as he weighed Wormwood in his hand, he had a feeling he knew which decision they’d make. And it wasn’t the one Reaver wanted.

Closing his eyes, he decided to do something he swore he’d never do.

He was going to break a Watcher rule.

And dear God, he was going to pay.