Lorelia huffed. “Have any of you seen Reaver lately?”
Limos, looking like a slightly pregnant armadillo in her samurai armor, narrowed her violet eyes. “Why?”
Revenant was curious about that as well.
“Because I asked,” Lorelia snapped. “Have you seen him?”
Everyone clammed up tight. Stupid angel. Had she not figured out that these hard-headed horseshits didn’t do demands well? He’d learned that you definitely caught more horseflies with honey than with blood.
In the uncomfortable silence, Revenant studied his nails. Then brushed a bit of dust off his leather coat. Then used his boot to scratch his name in the sand. It was fun to draw attention to the awkwardness.
Finally, Lorelia ground out, “My superiors want to know where Reaver is. It’s important.”
“We haven’t seen him in weeks.” Ares’s hard leather armor creaked as he ran his hand through his short reddish-brown hair. Known also as War, he tended to keep things simple and to the point. “No idea where he is. He does this sometimes.”
“Now, why are you asking?” Reseph, his beach-bum platinum hair gleaming in the sun, bounced a volleyball from hand to hand as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His carefree attitude was deceptive though; of all the Horsemen, he’d proven to be the most dangerous. The human world was still recovering from the hell he brought down on it as Pestilence.
Revenant had liked him better as Pestilence.
“None of your business,” Lorelia said icily. Revenant wondered if she’d noticed the huge-ass hellhound creeping up behind her. Ares rarely went anywhere without one of the fucking things.
“You’re the grumpiest Watcher ever,” Reseph said. “I thought Gethel was bad. And Harvester. And Revenant—”
“I get your point,” Lorelia interrupted. She shot him a look of disgust. “It must have been so much easier to deal with you when your mind was broken.” She turned to Revenant before she could see Reseph’s expression darken. Why was she antagonizing them like this? “Maybe you could share why you’re here?”
“Gladly.” He was so going to take advantage of being the good cop. Any opportunity to make a Heavenly puke look bad was worth jumping on, and Lorelia was making it easy. “The underworld is abuzz with the news that your ex-Watcher, Harvester, has been rescued from Satan’s favorite torture chamber.”
“So?” Thanatos, whose Horseman name was Death, stared at Revenant, his yellow eyes flashing with impatience.
“So…” Lorelia drawled, her tone contemplative, “if Reaver is missing, maybe he’s involved with Harvester’s escape.”
Limos scoffed. “Why would Reaver help that bitch? She tortured him, tried to start the Apocalypse, and helped Pestilence try to kill Thanatos’s son.”
“I’d like to know the answer to that, as well,” Lorelia said.
“Maybe he didn’t go to rescue her,” Reseph offered. “Maybe he went to kill her.”
Ah, so they didn’t know Harvester had allegedly been a spy for Heaven. Granted, it wasn’t common knowledge even in Sheoul; Revenant knew only because his Watcher Council had filled him in and Satan had, for some reason, included Rev in his inner circle. But Revenant would have thought Reaver would share the information with the Horsemen, given that Harvester’s machinations had helped them behind the scenes.
“Well?” Limos tapped her foot in the sand. “Are you going to tell us?”
He was tempted to reach out and strangle her, but that would ruin the good-cop thing he had going. Plus, she was pregnant, and while he didn’t give a shit about the brat, he had rules to follow, and the rules said he couldn’t strangle pregnant biblical legends or in any way harm said biblical legends’ children.
“Harvester is a traitor,” Rev said. “She was working for Heaven.”
All eyes went comically wide and fixed on him.
“Yup. True story. Heaven arranged her espionage plan before she fell.”
“Are you really saying,” Ares began in his deep, resonant voice, “that she infiltrated Sheoul in order to be a spy? She didn’t actually fall?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Apparently, everything she did was done to avert the Apocalypse and help you guys defeat Pestilence.” He shrugged. “She hasn’t admitted to it, even under severe torture, but it’s pretty obvious what happened.”
“But she was working with Pestilence,” Limos protested.
“She pretended to be working with him.” Revenant couldn’t hide his disgust. He’d always been more of a stab-you-in-your-chest kind of guy than a stab-you-in-the-back sort. He liked his enemies to know he was coming. “I don’t know the whole story, but Reaver learned the truth around the same time he learned he was your father.”
Lorelia let out an impressive snarl. “That stupid angel,” she spat out. “If he went after Harvester, then he’s the traitor. His foolish actions could start a war between the realms. We’re already dealing with what Lucifer’s birth could bring about if he’s born.”
If? Odd way to phrase that.
“You’re talking about our father.” Limos’s voice cracked like a whip. “So I’d be very careful what you say next.”
“Spoiled brat.” Lorelia’s dove-gray wings flared high. Girl was pissed. Although… there was something a little off about her anger. It was… overdone, and again he wondered what she was up to. “You do not speak to me in that way.”
Thanatos stepped closer to the Watcher. “She speaks in whatever way she wants to. Especially to angels with sticks up their holy asses.”
Oh, this was getting good. Revenant wished someone would make popcorn.
Lorelia roared in anger and struck out with a lash of power that lifted Thanatos off his feet and hurled him into the side of Limos’s party hut. Thanatos went through the wall like a cannonball.
“Bitch!” A sword appeared in Limos’s hand, and the yellow flower in her hair wilted.
Revenant contemplated extra butter on his popcorn as in a blur of motion, Limos went after Lorelia. The angel flashed out of the way and materialized behind her.
The next few seconds were a shock of thunderous booms and flashing light as Lorelia hit Limos with a blast of acid fire before following up with blows for Ares and Reseph when they tried to help their sister.
Revenant dove to the ground to avoid the aftershock of a particularly powerful downburst of Angel Storm. Shit, that bitch was out of control. Screw the popcorn; she’d have scorched the shit out of it.
Summoning his own power, he rolled to his feet, prepared to defend himself. But the scene he was faced with… unholy hell. He stood, stunned, as he took in the carnage. Lorelia, her arm bleeding from what looked like a bite from the dead hellhound a few feet away, crouched next to Limos, her palm hovering over the Horsewoman’s abdomen. She and her brothers had been… demolished. They’d heal in time, of course, but right now every one of them had been pulverized.
Revenant once told them he could blow them up inside their armor and pour them out like a liquid.
Lorelia had just done that.
Fury built in his chest. “Lorelia! We have rules.” He stalked her, the anger bubbling up and getting hotter with every step. “You can’t wreck the Horsemen just because they piss you off. You broke the rules.”
She came to her feet and didn’t meet his gaze as she tucked something into her pocket. Then, before he could grab her, she flashed away. But that didn’t mean she was getting away.
Rules meant order. Without order there was chaos, and unlike most Sheoul denizens, Revenant hated chaos.