Her startled gaze lifted to his. For a moment, he thought she was going to chastise him, but after the initial surprise, she nodded.
“You should have.” Carefully, she flipped the safety on the pistol and laid it on one of the barrels before squatting down next to a dead pig. “That monster.” She moved to the goat that had been disemboweled. “Definitely should have made it suffer.”
The image of himself surrounded by demons flashed through Reseph’s head again, bringing with it a streak of pain at his temples. Ruthlessly, he shoved it away, hoping like hell it wasn’t truly a memory. Maybe it was a remnant of a nightmare he’d had.
Keep telling yourself that, asshole.
Jillian was looking at him like she was trying to figure him out, probably because he was standing there like some delicate princess with the vapors. Fuck. He needed to get his head out of his ass.
“If you check the animals in here, I’ll see if I can find the goat that ran out.” Reseph gripped the machete tight and headed outside. He’d check on the goat, but he was also going to patrol the area for more of the fuckers.
He found the goat a dozen yards away, trembling in the snow behind a tree. He performed a rapid exam, feeling for broken bones and bleeding, but all of the blood on the animal seemed to have come from its barnyard pals.
The goat didn’t struggle as he hefted it into his arms and carried it back to the barn, where Jillian was doing her best to calm the surviving animals with treats and soothing caresses.
“This one seems fine.” He settled the little doe in one of the empty stalls and stepped out in time to see the dead demon on the floor fold in on itself and disappear before his eyes. “The demon’s gone.”
Jillian popped her head up from inside Sam’s stall. “Gone?”
“Disintegrated. Guess that explains why the general population didn’t know demons existed until a year ago.”
“No dead bodies to study.” She slipped out of the horse’s stall and joined Reseph, wrapping her arm around his waist. He absorbed her weight, drawing her against him. He’d hold her like this all night if she wanted him to. Hell, he’d do it anyway. The confrontation with the demon had rattled him to his bones. “I’m glad you were here, Reseph. I don’t think I could have dealt with that… thing… on my own.”
“Bullshit.” He ran his palm up and down her arm, noting the slight quiver under her skin. “You were a badass with that gun. No hesitation.”
“Because it was attacking you. If you hadn’t been here—”
“Hey.” He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You were amazing and brave. If I weren’t here you would have done what you had to do to protect your animals and yourself. One of those things might have attacked you, but it definitely didn’t destroy you.”
Her smile was shaky. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“Right.”
Except that was a lie, wasn’t it? Too often, what didn’t kill you came back to finish the job. He had no idea how he knew that, and honestly, he didn’t want to know. All this time he’d been longing for his memories, scouring the Internet, searching his brain—hell, he’d called out to the empty air for help.
Now he was afraid he’d get exactly what he was looking for.
“You bitch.” Reaver stared at Gethel from inside the quantanum, the plane of existence that was invisible to humans but allowed some beings, such as angels, to travel at accelerated speeds. He’d been hunting Gethel, tracking blips of her signature that he could sense when she channeled Heavenly power. Oh, she’d been smart about it, using it only in short bursts and weak doses, but Reaver had been patient, knowing she’d eventually use a little too much for a little too long.
Today, as she held court with two Soulshredders and a bald fallen angel near a hellgate deep inside the Nicaraguan Masaya volcano, she’d made the mistake Reaver had been waiting for.
She spun around, simultaneously hurling a massive ball of lightning. The crackling sphere filled the tunnel, giving Reaver no room to run. If he flashed out, he’d lose her.
He threw up an elemental shield, which borrowed properties from the area around it. The surrounding volcanic rock absorbed the lightning’s impact, but the force knocked Reaver a dozen yards down the tunnel. He crashed into a stone pillar and crumpled to the ground.
Damn, that hurt.
Gethel’s cackle echoed off the walls. “You can’t hope to defeat me on your own, Reaver.”
Reaver shoved to his feet. “I don’t have to defeat you. Not yet. I just have to stop you from finding Reseph.”
Her smile was cold. “Time’s on my side. From what I hear, it’ll take decades, probably centuries, for his mind to heal.”
“If you’ve got all this time, why are you and Lucifer striking now?”
“Please,” she said. “You’re not that dense, are you?”
Apparently, he was.
“Humiliation.” A miniature lightning ball popped out of her hand and bounced between her fingers. “Satan is extremely embarrassed by his defeat. He’s ordered that everyone who played a role be either destroyed or get involved in restoring Pestilence and neutralizing the other Horsemen.”
Too bad Gethel hadn’t been lumped in the destroy category. Reaver strode toward her, keeping his power skating along the surface of his skin, ready to go in a split-second. “What happened to you, Gethel?”
“I told you. The Horsemen—”
“Yeah, yeah, they couldn’t find it in their hearts to say good-bye when your Watcher duty was taken away. Big deal. You’re either a big whiny baby, or there’s more to the story.” He was pretty sure there was some mental instability written between the lines of that story as well.
Behind her, the Soulshredders hissed and snarled with every step Reaver took. The fallen angel just watched, his dead shark eyes glued to Reaver.
“Who are you?” Reaver called out to the fallen angel, who seemed to be a big fan of black leather.
The male bared his teeth. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Ah, cryptic. That’s so original.” Reaver rounded on Gethel. “So, which is it? Big whiny baby or more to the story?”
“Fuck you, Reaver,” she spat. “You know nothing. I loved them.”
“I know, but… oh, wait.” Reaver was nearly blinded by the lightbulb that went off in his brain. “You didn’t just love them. You loved them.” He smirked. “Which one, Gethel? Ares? Thanatos?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Limos?”
She threw the lightning ball, and he easily swatted it away. “Did I touch a nerve?” With a snap of his fingers, he sent a boomerang of angelfire at her, aiming for her head, but when she dove aside and it merely scraped her shoulder, he wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t going to just roll over and die, after all. “Let’s see if I can figure this out,” he mused, as she doused flames in her clothing. “You didn’t seem to be causing much trouble for Ares. At least, not that I know of. But Limos, you did send khnives after her husband.”
Cursing, she launched herself at him. He met her midair in the tunnel, and the collision rumbled the very mountain.
“You think you know everything, don’t you?” she screeched as she slammed her fist into his jaw. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer, and Reaver grunted, blinking to the tune of cartoon birds circling around his head. “You think you’re so superior.”
He pounded his fist into her chest, a quick double-tap before backhanding her in the face so hard she fell out of the air and landed awkwardly on her neck and shoulder.
“I am superior,” he growled.
She rolled to her feet and blasted him with her favorite weapon, a storm of sparks that burrowed through living flesh. He leaped to the ceiling of the cave, avoiding most of them, but a handful cut into his leg, and agony drilled into him in the form of fine-bore holes.