Rogue Rider

Eight

Jillian’s friend Stacey was a hardass. Reseph had decided within thirty seconds that he didn’t like her. He did, however, approve of her as a friend for Jillian. Reseph was sure the cop had clawed her way out of some bitter acid pit in hell, but he couldn’t fault her protectiveness of her friend.

She’d walked into Jillian’s house like she owned it, gave Reseph the evil eye, and then interrogated him as if he were the prime suspect in a plot to assassinate the president. Whoever the president was. Not Washington, apparently.

It wouldn’t have surprised Reseph if Stacey had broken out a bamboo cane and a pair of pliers for the next level of questioning. When he told her as much, she’d been less than amused.

No sense of humor, that one.

He’d left Jillian and Stacey alone for a few minutes to talk while he rummaged through the kitchen. When he went back into the living room where Jillian and Stacey were seated on the couch, it was with a cup of hot tea. Crouching at her knee, he put the mug in Jillian’s hand.

“You’re shivering,” he said softly. “Drink.”

Her startled eyes snapped up to his, and he was glad to see that at least they’d lost the stunned glaze. The Wilsons’ deaths had hit her hard, and he’d seen how difficult listening to Stacey question him had been.

“Thank you.” Jillian graced him with a smile that made his pulse kick up a notch before she turned to her friend. “Stace, why are you handling all of this? Shouldn’t the state police be in charge of the investigation?”

Stacey shifted and averted her gaze, and yeah, that chick was hiding something. “The state police are passing on this,” Stacey finally said. She paused for a few taut seconds before she continued in a low, conspiratorial voice. “We’re supposed to keep this under wraps, but there are paranormal investigators coming to look into the killings.”

Jillian’s hand shook so hard that tea sloshed over the rim. “I thought you said animals were responsible.”

“From what I understand, it’s just a precaution.” Stacey eyed Reseph as he grabbed a napkin and mopped tea off Jillian’s arm. “I haven’t seen either crime scene, but I’d feel better if you came into town and stayed with me.”

“I can’t leave the animals,” Jillian said.

Reseph took the cup from her before she spilled more. “Maybe you should go with Stacey. I can take care of the farm.”

“No!” Jillian’s voice was little more than a snarl. “I will not live in fear again. Do you understand that? That… thing… will not win. You can both go to hell if you think I’m running away—”

“Hey.” Reseph took her hand, and when she jerked out of his grip, he took it again, more firmly. “It’s okay. No one is forcing you to run anywhere.” He slid Stacey a give me a nod of agreement right now look, and she did. “If you want to stay, I’ll stay with you.”

Jillian’s face flushed, and he had a feeling she was a little embarrassed by her outburst. She didn’t need to be. She clearly was harboring a trauma that was simmering hot. The release of steam could only be a good thing.

Stacey pushed to her feet. “I need to get back, but Jill, you know if you need anything…” She left the rest unsaid, the bond between the two friends needing nothing further.

“Thanks.” Jillian gave her friend a fragile smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Stacey grabbed her parka and shot Reseph a meaningful stare. “Care to walk me to my car?”

It wasn’t a question. It was an order full of do it or I’ll shoot you subtext. The women in this part of the country loved their guns, didn’t they? Sexy as hell.

Jillian huffed. “Stacey—”

“It’s okay,” Reseph said, heading off any tension. “I’ll be right back.”

He followed Stacey out to her police cruiser, where she rounded on him, a bundle of brunette fury.

“Listen up, whoever you are. Jillian has been through hell, and it’s only been in the last couple of months that she’s come out of her shell. She doesn’t need you hanging around here like some mangy tomcat carrying God-knows-what kind of baggage.”

Mangy? And he really wanted to know what kind of hell Stacey was talking about in regards to Jillian. “It was a demon, wasn’t it?”

“That killed the Bjornsens and Wilsons? I don’t know.”

“No. That put Jillian through the hell you just mentioned.”

Stacey’s expression went utterly flat. “That’s none of your business. I want you out of here by morning. With you gone, maybe she’ll come stay with me.”

Fat snowflakes began to fall in lazy swirls as he casually reached out and braced his hip against the roof of her car.

“Yeah, see, that won’t happen. You have a point about the baggage. And it’s cool that she has a buddy like you to look after her. But she also has me to do that. We both know she’s not leaving her farm, and as long as there’s something out here killing people, I’m not leaving her alone. I won’t let anything, or anyone, threaten her.”

Her chin came up. “What if you’re the threat? Can you honestly say that you aren’t? What if you wake up tomorrow and remember that you’re a serial rapist? Or a drug lord? Or slave trafficker?”

Stacey the Hardass had just tapped into Reseph’s own fears, but her examples didn’t even come close to where his thoughts had gone. He couldn’t explain it, but he got the feeling that if he was going to be a scumbag, he’d make a drug lord look like a playful kitten.

Not that he’d tell Stacey that. “If I were any of those things, I think the last place I’d be is in the middle of nowhere. I’m guessing you don’t have a huge drug or slave problem in your one-stoplight town.”

“Two,” she snapped. “There are two stoplights.”

“Oh, well, then, I’ll see if I can get the slave trade going in your thriving metropolis.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, which just made him grin. “Just keep in mind that if you hurt her, I’ll come after you with everything I have.”

She shoved his arm out of the way, got in the vehicle, and took off. The slight fishtail from hitting the gas too hard probably pissed her off, but it amused the hell out of him.

At least, he was amused until he felt a presence. He listened to the fading sound of Stacey’s vehicle, and then he listened to the forest. An owl’s hoot pierced the night, but other than that… nothing. But he felt like he was being watched. The odd thing was that this time he didn’t get a danger vibe. The opposite happened, in fact. There was something comforting about the feeling he got.

“Whoever you are,” he said quietly, “I’d like to see you. Because right now, I’m thinking I might be a little touched in the head.”

No one popped out of thin air or stepped out of the woods. Naturally.

“Come on, you damned voyeur. Throw me a bone.” He did a three-sixty, looking in every possible direction. “I don’t suppose you can tell me who I am. No? Well, fuck you.”

He waited another minute, and the sensation faded, leaving behind only an awareness that he was outside in the cold, in the dark, and Jillian, who was warm and light, was inside.

Frustrated, he went back into the cabin, alarm spiking when he didn’t see her. He checked the kitchen, and then found her in the unlit bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Did Stacey read you the riot act?” Her voice was gravelly, with a note of tears.

“Little bit. I think she wanted to shove that nightstick up my ass. And not in a fun way.”

She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. She’s a good friend.” He climbed onto the mattress and stretched out, wrapping his arms around her to pull her down beside him. “You okay? Is there anything I can do?”

“This is perfect.” She snuggled into the crook of his arm. “Too perfect, I think.”

“How can anything be too perfect?”

“Because,” she whispered. “That’s when everything falls apart.”

Reaver was happy to see that Reseph was doing well. The Horseman seemed to have adjusted to life in the human world, and he certainly hadn’t looked any worse for wear when Reaver had spied on him and the female deputy from the cover of the Khote.

The same couldn’t be said of Reaver.

Harvester had gotten him out of Sheoul-gra as promised, but he was still bearing the wounds he’d gotten from the demon that had been eating him slowly for the last three months. And Harvester, the bitch, hadn’t even offered to heal him. Not that he’d have taken her up on it. But still.

As an angel, Reaver healed quickly… unless the damage had been inflicted in Sheoul or by a particularly powerful angel. Then all bets were off and he got to look like he’d spent some time in a meat grinder.

So as he strode down the pristine white walls of the Archangel Multiplex, his bruises and raw skin added a much-needed splash of color. He had, at least, taken the time to stop by his residence to shower and change out of Harvester’s pajamas and into jeans and a blue T-shirt. In Heaven and a few places on Earth, angels could snap their fingers to clean up and change, but he’d opted to enjoy the feel of hot water sluicing over his aching body. His time spent as a fallen angel had given him a taste for simple pleasures, and he really didn’t give a damn if his fellow angels looked down their perfect noses at him for that.

Ahead, crystal arches marked the entrance to the compound’s Watcher headquarters, where teams kept track of the goings-on of beings all over the world. This was where Reaver’s bosses worked, as well as the bosses for other classes of overseer angels, such as Memitim.

Reaver took a hard right at the second archway, passing through a sparkling membrane that acted as a sound barrier. Inside the seemingly endless room, angels flipped through books and perused scrolls, monitored screens that hung in the air like holograms, and chatted among themselves like office workers around a water cooler.

Angels liked to think they were so much better than humans, but Reaver hadn’t seen much evidence of that.

With nothing more than a thought, he created a stage in the center of the space, leaped up on it, and made sure his voice carried—again, all it took was a thought.

“Hey! Fellow angels.” Yeah, so not protocol, and Darnella, a snooty ginger-haired angel who took extreme pride in wings that matched her hair color perfectly, called him on it.

“Reaver. Have you no shame?”

“I’m standing here in jeans and a T-shirt, with a split lip, broken nose, and black eyes. Do I look like I have shame?” He could have dressed appropriately formal—or at least business casual—for this, but screw it. He was feeling rebellious today. He looked out at the two dozen annoyed angels. “I don’t suppose anyone has seen Gethel?”

Blank stares were his only answer.

“Okay, let’s try this. Does anyone know what she’s done?”

Modran, a dark-haired male wearing a ridiculous jeweled silver robe, stepped forward. “She’s no longer part of our department. Why would we have seen her or know of her activities?”

Reaver had no idea where she’d been reassigned after Reaver had taken over for her as the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watcher, and he didn’t care. He also didn’t have access to high-ranking angels who might know, but some of these idiots did.

“I just thought you’d like to know that she’s gone bad. Really bad. She colluded with Pestilence to kill Thanatos’s child and start the Apocalypse.”

There was much scoffing. And skeptical expressions. And flat-out calls of “liar.” Fools. Problem was, he didn’t have a lot of credibility. It didn’t matter that as a fallen angel he’d helped save the freaking world a few years ago; the only thing these morons focused on was the fact that he’d been fallen in the first place. They were going to flip their halos when they learned about his newest stunt. Tossing Reseph into the human realm wasn’t going to go over well.

Especially since Gethel knew Reseph was out there and was trying to find him.

Darnella arched an eyebrow. “And you have proof of this?”

“I have witnesses. Thanatos among them.” He explained what had happened, and gradually, shock, sadness, and fury replaced the skepticism.

“More than three months have passed in the human realm,” Darnella said. “Why did you wait so long to bring this to us?”

“I was stuck in Sheoul.” Reaver braced himself for the rest of the confession, but before he could speak, a blond male Reaver didn’t recognize moved forward, dressed from head to toe in white.

“I’ll speak with the Archangels to determine if an investigation is needed and if Gethel will be required to hand over her sheoulghul.”

“If?” Reaver snorted in disgust. And Gethel was in possession of an artifact that allowed for recharging angelic powers in Sheoul? Most battle angels didn’t have access to sheoulghuls, and battle angels were the ones who needed them most. “I’m telling you that she’s gone bad. She’s sided with the bad guys—you remember them—the demons? Even now she’s plotting to bring Pestilence back.”

“And how, exactly, does she plan to do that?” Modran asked, skepticism dripping from his deep voice. “Pestilence is dead.”

Reaver winced. “Not… exactly. Thanatos used the wrong dagger. Reseph was sent to Sheoul-gra with Pestilence locked away inside him.”

Murmurs resonated through the crowd, and Darnella spoke up. “That’s unexpected, but good news. We stand a better chance of winning the future biblical Apocalypse with an extra Horseman on our side. We calculated the odds of success without him, and they were, sad to say, not encouraging.”

“Not encouraging?” Reaver was always amazed at his brethrens’ capacity for understatement. “You are aware of the theory that Reseph’s death could unravel history? Overnight, every reference to four Horsemen would be erased, including those from the Bible, and everything Reseph ever affected in any way would take a new course. If he’d died, we could all have woken up to a very different world.”

It was something that had happened before, when the Horsemen, before their curses, had started a war. Angels had stepped in and changed human history and memories with little consequence. But Reseph had been around for five thousand years and had affected countless lives and events.

Darnella smiled coldly. “Speculation. And irrelevant, since he’s not dead. Hopefully he’s suffering a million deaths right now.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, and Reaver prepared himself for a flaying that just might be physical as well as verbal.

“He’s not in Sheoul-gra,” he said abruptly. Rip the bandage off quickly and all that. “I wiped his memory and turned him over to the human realm.”

Stunned silence. And then furious roars and a few screeches of, “You did what?” Calls for Reaver’s wings to be severed followed next, along with too many offers to do it right now.

Reaver held up his hand, but the cacophony only died down a little. “It gets worse. Yeah, that’s right; save your insults and demands for my expulsion from Heaven for later.” He looked out over the furious crowd and wondered how long it was going to take for his Watcher duty to be taken away from him. Or worse. “Gethel knows Reseph is free, which probably means every key player in Sheoul does, too. As I said, she’s trying to bring Pestilence back, and if she finds him, she could do it if she subjects him to evil again.”

“How do you know this?” Modran asked—through clenched teeth.

“Harvester told me—”

“Harvester?” The jewel-robed guy practically screamed her name. “You trust the word of a fallen angel?”

“Not normally,” Reaver said. “But she has reasons to speak the truth about this. And her Watcher Council has known about Reseph’s release from Sheoul-gra for months, thanks to loose-lipped demons. Now that you know, you can confirm everything I’ve said.” He hopped down from the stage, letting it poof away. “I have an angel to hunt. I suggest you put the wheels in motion for others to be on the lookout for Gethel as well.”

“You’re going to be punished for what you’ve done,” Modran swore, as if Reaver had been at all unsure about that.

Reaver ignored Modran and strode toward the exit. He’d do everything in his power to find Gethel, but first he had to check in on the Horsemen.

And given that he’d missed a birth, a wedding, and who knew what else, he had a feeling that explaining his absence to them was going to be a lot more difficult than explaining it to angels.