Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (33 page)

His one consolation was that his children were clearly better than he had ever been. Strong. Powerful. Fiercely loyal. He didn’t expect or deserve forgiveness in any form. But now that his angel body had been restored, albeit temporarily, he gloried in these first and last moments with his family, however warped the reunion was.

How different would the past quarter-plus century have been if he’d only known they still lived? How many lives had he taken because he’d let grief twist him into a monster? Regret formed a steady beat inside him. He’d nearly destroyed the only good he’d ever brought to this world.

His children.

He had no illusions about the future that lay before him once he left this realm. There would be no redemption for him. He’d be stripped of his essence, decommissioned and then scattered to the winds in retribution for his many sins. The angel equivalent of death. The Lord would employ his full-scale, old-testament wrath against him.

It was nothing less than what he deserved.

But his brief respite, this last chance to say goodbye, made his impending death worth the price. Nothing Lucifer had offered him could compare.

Camael placed one hand over Elaina’s forehead and the other over her heart and closed his eyes. Spreading his wings as best he could, he summoned all his energy and pushed it outward and through his wings. He curled the tips of his wings around her fragile body and engulfed her in his angelic embrace, sending the last of his healing essence into her. If this didn’t reignite the spark within her, he feared nothing would.

In his selfish quest for vengeance, he’d forgotten what it meant to love another. His heart had become so twisted with hatred and constant proximity to evil that the emotions he was experiencing now felt foreign and strange.

Her body was still too ruined to produce her own light right now, and the light that animated her came from her children and Camael. The light of loved ones could only maintain her for so long. To live—truly live—she would need to begin generating her own light once again.

Maybe that had been the secret to success for Maeve’s reinsoulment. Her own light hadn’t yet been extinguished.

The floor below him cracked and a board splintered under his foot as Lucifer pressed from below, goading him to finish his original task.

“Camael,” Nate warned.

“It’s not me,” Camael snarled, not wanting to waste any of his precious energy on anything other than healing Elaina.

As he continued to pour energy into her, her body arched off the bed. She pulled in a gasping breath and her eyes sprang open and locked with his. Recognition filled her face.

“Elaina.” Camael covered her completely with his wings and pulled her into an embrace. Protected from the prying eyes of the others in the room, if only for a moment, he kissed her mouth and she sobbed into his kiss.

There was so much to say to her, but their time was up. Boards began to pop beneath the bed. Camael withdrew from Elaina’s embrace and looked out the window to see the ground sinking into a depression that was slowly making its way toward the house and the room where he stood. Lucifer would have his way. He would open the portal where Camael stood and demand his sacrifice.

And Camael was more than happy to make it happen.

***

Activity flurried around Camael as he stepped back from the bed and toward the window.

“It’s time, Camael,” Rashnu said, standing beside him.

“Yes. It is,” he confirmed.

Camael spread his wings and the glass windows before him shattered. Ice cold wind raced into the room and the ground split before him, the portal tearing open before him across the frozen ground. As the consecration broke, so did his binding. He leaped through the broken window and stalked into the yard, standing on the edge of the quickly opening portal.

“No!” Nate yelled, as Deacon and the others raced after him. Camael turned to face them and spread his wings to their full expanse, light radiating from them upward as he drew power from down below. He was a creature of both the light and the dark now, and could draw energy from both forces. He allowed the mixed energy to build inside him until it leaked from the tips of his feathered wings, singeing the ends until smoke roiled around him and his wings ignited.

“Rashnu, now would be the time to stop him!” Deacon called through the cacophony as the first demons rose from the depths.

Camael took a step away from the abyss and sent his senses into the night, calling his demons to him. Now that the circle of protection had been so catastrophically breached, they were free to answer his summons. Abandoning their hosts, they streamed in through the forest in what seemed a never-ending wave of darkness stretching across the night sky all the way from Meridian.

The disembodied demons circled over Camael and the expanding portal like a reverse whirlpool of evil.

“Rashnu!” Deacon demanded again.

As Camael turned to nod at Rashnu, Nate raced out of the room and drew his scythe behind his back, swinging the blade through Camael’s neck in a great arc. The angel’s body tumbled into the abyss, and fire exploded from the fissure like a great molten volcano that had suddenly been awakened. Flames rose hundreds of feet into the night sky from the pit, and sulfurous gas seeped from the crevasse. Camael had summoned the demons to him, commanding them to follow him one last time, so they plunged after him as he fell to his complete and final death in the pit of Hell.

Chapter Forty-Three

Deacon and Rashnu sealed the portal behind Camael after the last of the freed demons followed in his final and complete fall. Camael had managed to prevent any new spawn of Satan from escaping. Days later, Nate was still in shock. Elaina had been moved to the upstairs bedroom in Rosemary’s Healing Center, and he stood there beside her bed now. She had not yet offered any real conversation, but she’d uttered Camael’s name in her sleep and spoken a few words, which gave them all hope that she was on the road to recovery.

Nate and the other reapers took turns feeding her light infusions, just as they’d done with Maeve, and her physical body was improving rapidly.

Nate was exhausted. Each of the members of the Authority had been working to locate and reap the souls that had been left unattached and scattered when the demons fled to Camael. Reclaiming the lost souls was the priority now.

Many wanderers had remained behind as well as free-floating souls. Nate had reinsouled those he could, but some of the humans’ bodies had been destroyed in the assault and other souls had simply been detached too long to survive the process. Human bodies weren’t as resilient as reaper ones. Still, he’d had a few successes and that was some small comfort to him. Maeve had collected hundreds of souls and ferried them to Purgatory in her new capacity as valkyrie. He was proud of her, but her new position would demand her services on battlefields and disasters across the globe. She would be drawn to death much more powerfully than when she was only a reaper. Nate hoped he could accompany her on her travels when things settled down at the coven and the reaper compound, but he wasn’t going to hold his breath. There was still much to do to atone for the sins of his father.

When Camael broke free of the coven’s binding and escaped from Elaina’s room, Nate had thought the bastard meant to open the portal and free the waiting demons. Instead, Camael had sacrificed himself so he could drag them all back to Hell. Nate’s beheading him had helped to seal the deal.

It was too early to tell, but it seemed as though all of the loose demons had followed him through the portal.

Unfortunately, Raguel was still missing.

The Authority had spent every hour since the portal was sealed cleaning up the carnage of Meridian and searching for their comrade. His soul had not been reaped nor had his body been discovered. Rashnu assured them that his soul still existed on the Earthly plane, but couldn’t tell them where. He was out there…somewhere. And they would find him no matter how long it took.

Nate looked out the window and watched as the coven board, along with every living board member past and present, circled the burned ground where the portal had opened, casting one final spell. They had reconsecrated the ground and recast the circle of protection immediately after Deacon and Rashnu closed the portal, but they wanted reassurance that no future portals could be opened on the grounds.

Rashnu assured them that Camael had perished as a result of his last act. His soul dissipated into the ether, never to reinhabit another body. Destroyed in his angel form, he was now well and truly dead. He had expended the last of his angel essence in summoning the demons and pulling them to his death. Not even an angel could survive that. Or beheading. Nate’s act had spared his father an eternity of torture in Hell.

Nate’s feelings for Camael were mixed at best. He still carried an intense hatred in his heart for the chaos his father had wreaked on Meridian, but without his final sacrifice, today would have been day seven of Hell on Earth.

Ruth sat asleep in a nearby chair with Bo curled around her feet like a living bear rug. Most of the Authority reapers had returned to sleeping, when they could, at the reaper compound, but Deacon had insisted that Ruth stay with the Blackburns after they extended an invitation. Deacon spent every available moment with her, but his free time had been sparse lately as the Authority continued to clean up the mess that was Meridian.

The city remained on lockdown even though the disappearances had stopped. Bodies had littered the streets after the last major attack of the demons. There was no whitewashing a problem so large. Civilians had watched it happen, and while they didn’t truly understand what they’d witnessed, the news coverage had incurred rampant speculation, from stories about alien attacks to the onset of the apocalypse. Neither of which were far from the truth.

City officials, state police, FBI—none knew if or when their troubles might resume. The Authority couldn’t exactly hold a town hall meeting to proclaim that their enemy had been vanquished. Nate took comfort in the knowledge that was indeed true. For now. Camael wouldn’t be back, but Lucifier was not likely to give up so easily. Or at all.

Nothing made Rosemary happier than tending to her family, and she had already adopted Ruth and now Deacon into that category. Temperance, returned and reinstalled with Ruth’s blessing as the guardian to her unborn baby, Elaina Grace, stood by the doorway as the clock chimed 12:00 a.m. on New Year’s Day.

The coven had constructed an arched altar to Janus above the site of the portal. Janus presided over the beginning and end of conflicts, over war and peace, and was the sentry of doorways, gates and arches. It seemed appropriate.

The demons were gone. Ruth was safe. The baby was safe. And Camael was gone. Forever. The father he’d never really known was possibly the worst creature he’d ever encountered, but at least he’d managed to die in an act of unselfish redemption.

It didn’t make things any easier to process. In fact, his mind was a jumble and his heart was brimming with so many confused emotions that he felt at sea. Maeve put a hand on his back and he turned to face her, pulling her in close.

“We almost lost everything.” Nate pressed his face into Maeve’s hair, breathing her in.

“But we didn’t. As awful as Camael was, he did manage to stop Lucifer’s plan.”

“For now.”

“Sometimes the present is all we have, Nate.” She cradled his face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his. “Come downstairs. You need rest.”

“I’m sorry my family has gotten so out of control.”

“You’re lucky to have your family, Nate. All of it. The good.” Maeve kissed his neck. “The bad.” She kissed his ear. “And the ugly.” She smiled then kissed his mouth.

“I don’t think rest is what I need.”

“Then come downstairs and take what you need.”

***

Maeve led Nate to his basement bedroom. She didn’t understand everything that had happened, but she did understand one thing. Her feelings for Nate had crystalized. She had been transformed over the past few weeks, both physically and emotionally. If the portal had opened, this next hour would have been spent in the fight of their lives. Instead Maeve ran her hands up and under Nate’s shirt, across his warm, hard chest.

She had survived not just Camael’s possession, but her transformation into a valkyrie. Life was much more precious to her now, and she didn’t want to waste a minute of it.

Peeling Nate’s shirt up his torso, she kissed the line of invisible energy chakras from his bellybutton to his throat, then pulled the shirt over his head. She unbuckled his scabbard and let his scythe drop to the floor behind him.

“Let’s hope you won’t be needing this again for a while.”

Nate closed his eyes as she unbuttoned his jeans and slid them and his underwear down his thighs. He stepped out of them and she kneeled before him, cupping his balls in one hand and his butt in the other. She urged his erection into her mouth.

His hands threaded through her hair as he pushed into her with a moan. His balls tightened in her hand as she stroked his shaft with her mouth. He needed release and Maeve needed this connection with him. When she sensed that he was close, she slowed her pace and backed away, shimmying out of her own clothes. Groaning, Nate cupped her breasts in his hands and slid his thumbs across her pearled nipples. A shiver of energy skittered down her spine as she drew in his light.