Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (4 page)

And he had the perfect one in mind. A supernatural soul no less. With it, he could hold open the Hell portal indefinitely and all of Lucifer’s children could stream out and claim what was meant for them.

Are you ready, my dear?

Does it matter?

Camael’s laughter rang through her head as they made their way downtown.

Chapter Four

The reaper kitchen was part
Animal House
, part Army mess hall, and part
The Waltons
. It was clear to Nate which part the reaper Raguel fell into as he tried to impress the three women of the household by tossing pizza dough into the air.

“You see? Nothing to it. A child could do it.” Ragu caught the dough over his arm and let it slide gently to the granite tabletop.

“A child
is
doing it,” Samkiel offered, accepting the full wrath of Ragu’s playful glare.

“Ah, but you’ll be begging for more very soon, my friend. Once you’ve had Ragu’s saucy meat and dough, you won’t go back to any other.”

A brief moment of stunned silence followed, and then laughter exploded around the room. It had been a long time since most of them had had anything to laugh about. Even Ruth was in the kitchen tonight, although in a wheelchair, visibly pregnant and under the fierce eye of Temperance, her guardian angel. Or more accurately, the unborn child’s guardian angel.

Even though Ruth was only four-and-a-half months along, she was advancing quickly. Maybe reaper pregnancies were different. Deacon had been no help in that department. Being born himself was his only source of knowledge on the matter. Besides, the guy was scared to death with worry over her most of the time, so even gentle questioning nearly pushed him into full-blown paranoia. Nate had learned to get his answers elsewhere.

He’d been caring for Ruth as best as he could, getting occasional advice from the OBGYN at Oakland Hospital since St. Mary’s Hospital was out of commission. Permanently.

The media has pegged the disaster as an earthquake along the New Madrid fault line. It was the biggest disturbance that had been measured since 1811. The building wasn’t even salvageable and demolition had already begun. The place was sorely missed in the community. Being at the city’s epicenter, it had also cared for a steady stream of homeless people who were now so far from Oakland’s ER, the EMTs and several off-duty docs and nurses had formed a team of their own to offer triage and minor care in an empty warehouse clinic nearby the former hospital’s location.

Olivia had been a mitigating force behind the group’s formation, and she had even set up a free kitchen that fed the homeless downtown. Kylen had forbidden her to conduct any nighttime visits. Not that Nate could blame him after what had happened the last time she was downtown alone.

Nate sat heavily on a chair, as exhausted as if he hadn’t slept at all. Of course, with those dreams of Maeve, it almost felt as though he hadn’t.

“’Bout time you turned up in here.” Deacon crossed the room and took a seat next to him. “What happened to you last night? We debriefed after everyone got in, but Oreo said he saw you head straight to your trailer. What gives?”

Bo circled, chasing his tail three times around, then settled onto the floor beside him, resting his head on Nate’s lap with a sigh.

Nate threaded his hand through the hellhound’s fur. “Just didn’t feel like recapping a night full of failure.”

“It’s more than that. We need to keep track of how many demons we see, how many we kill, how many are potentially left. We’ve made a real dent these past few months. We need to keep the pressure on. Which means every pair of eyes is important. Yours included.”

Nate felt every pair of said eyes in the compound settle upon him.

“You know Bo and I weren’t looking for demons, Deacon.” Nate stared hard at the reaper.

They’d had this conversation several times. Deacon was the leader of the reapers now. The Powers. But he wasn’t Nate’s boss. Not really, because Nate wasn’t a reaper.

The rest of the Authority crew could now enter and travel through the consecrated subway from unconsecrated ground. They could also consume the unhosted demons, destroying them in a permanent manner as a result of their allegiance to the Authority. And a few had other gifts. Like the ability to transport the wanderers to a holding cell in Purgatory.

Those gifts were a little bit special. While Nate had always been able to travel through the consecrated subway from wherever he pleased, he did not share most of their other gifts. The dreams were new, however, and he needed to tell Deacon about it… Still, he couldn’t bring himself to lay it bare before the entire group.

“Nate—”

“Don’t start with me, Deacon. If it was Ruth out there, your priorities would be elsewhere, as well.”

“It’s not just that we need you and Bo to track demons for us, Nate. We can’t protect you if you’re out there doing the Lone Ranger thing.”

“Bo is with me. He can protect me. You’ve seen him shred a demon.” Bo gave a little whine in agreement and licked Nate’s pant leg.

“I agree that finding Camael is imperative. It’s your methods that worry me. What will you do if you do find her without us to back you up? Bo may be enough to protect you from a few demons, but you won’t stand a chance against Camael alone. At least stay within sight or sound of one of the teams. Promise me that.”

Nate shook his head. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“Dammit, Nate—”

“Pizza’s ready! Dinner…is served.” Ragu pulled a steaming pizza out of the former fireplace turned wood-fired oven to cheers of appreciation.

Nate’s stomach growled. Deacon gave him one last hard look and retreated back to Ruth, filling a plate with pizza for her as he made his way through the food line. Nudging Bo’s twenty-pound head off his lap, Nate joined the back of the line. He was starving.

Ruth’s close encounter with a reaper coma had been all he needed to convince him to take care of himself. So far, knock on wood, he hadn’t needed to replenish anyone since they’d set up the new compound. Even though the other reapers acted like a bunch of frat boys in their free time, they were dead serious about maintaining their health and their strength.

Each had been chosen for their particular skill set by Grim himself and recruited to the Authority. Except for Maeve, who was fairly new, and Ruth, who was brand-spanking-new, the rest of them had been reapers for well over a hundred years each. Deacon and Kylen were two hundred plus some change. The only active reaper older than them was Grim. Yes,
the
Grim Reaper. Grim had enjoyed the sunset of his career mostly free of demon activity. But now that was in the past.

Thinking of nasty demons brought Nate full circle, back to the puzzle of what to do about Maeve. How was he ever going to be able to anticipate where she would be next? He certainly wasn’t going to be able to capture her and exorcise the angel if he couldn’t lay physical hands on her. Camael was too smart to walk onto a demon trap even if it could hold him. Besides, Nate had only successfully accomplished that once—with a demon. He’d never trapped an angel. Didn’t even know if it was possible.

It had to be possible. After all, for every yin there was a yang, right?

Last in line, he grabbed a slice of pizza and tossed it over to Bo, who snatched it from the air and swallowed it in one gulp.

Damn, that dog can eat.

Nate piled three more face-sized slices onto his own plate, stacking them like pancakes and headed back to his chair. He almost made it, too.

Then his head exploded.

Chapter Five

Maeve made her way down a narrow alley—Camael’s puppet—weaving around overfilled Dumpsters toward a neon Pabst sign, swinging from its one remaining hinge in the little torrent of wind that stirred up like a dust devil.

A storm was coming.

She blinked and felt that troubling sensation again in the back of her conscious mind, an itch she couldn’t scratch. One she dared not acknowledge. It was the same as when she’d sensed Nate in her mind, watching…waiting. She wanted to close her eyes, to silently warn him off, but her body was at Camael’s mercy and his thoughts and her own battled within her.

Of course, she needn’t have worried. Camael was oblivious to her current quandary. He was single-minded and determined. This nightclub was much larger than the bar they’d hit last night.

Music pounded through the heavy steel door as he leaned her back against the cold bricks and waited. He sent his senses into the night and called his demons. Once created, the demons could cycle endlessly through host after host. With seven billion plus people on the planet, they would live as parasites in one body after another until every human host was depleted. By then, Lucifer would have perfected a satisfactory form for them to animate indefinitely. He was close even now.

The dark one had a vivid imagination. Camael was confident the new evolution would thrive in place of mankind.

As it was meant to be.

Scanning the alley, she could sense Camael’s growing impatience even though it had been mere seconds since he’d sent the call. He still had at least a thousand demons scattered about the city despite the reapers’ incessant meddling. They’d had a larger impact on his work than he had anticipated, but after a few more nights, he’d have everything he needed. Everything except the sacrifice, that was, and for that he’d have to wait. Because without it, the portal would never stay open.

Ridiculous how such a small thing could make such a tremendous difference in the success or failure of his plan. Of course, failure wasn’t an option. Lucifer didn’t have to clarify it for him. Camael had known what he was signing on for from the very beginning. He was going into this eyes-wide-open.

The ember of hatred still smoldering within his now black heart helped him remember what had gotten him here. And exactly who was responsible.

He raised Maeve’s face to look up into the night sky and she noticed the faded Sunbeam Bakers advertisement painted on the side of the alley wall. The little blonde girl, hands folded in prayer under the words “Not by bread alone.”

Indeed
, Camael thought.
Neither bread nor prayer was going to help the souls beyond this door.

He smiled as the first of the demons walked toward him from the street, his yellow eyes shining.

***

Nate opened his eyes to a sea of faces, all way too close to his own. He was lying on the floor next to the granite bar, his pizza nowhere in sight. Raising his head, he quickly thought better of it and resumed his position, waiting for the Tweety birds to stop flying.

Deacon held him down to the floor with a hand pressed to his shoulder. “You stay where you are a little longer. Get your bearings. Given the way your head cracked on the bar when you went down, I’m pretty sure you have a concussion.”

Concussion? Yeah, that seems about right.

He raised his hand to his forehead and felt the goose egg growing there. He didn’t have to see it to know it was already purple.

How long had he been out?

One minute he was filling his plate and the next he was in an alley and Maeve—

He attempted to jerk himself upright again. “I know where she is.”

Deacon’s brows inched toward the center of his forehead. “You know where who is?”

“Maeve! I know where she is right this minute. We have to go.
Now!
”

“You’re in no kind of shape to go anywhere…now or later. You’re going to stay here and rest.”

“She’s downtown near Foster and Stearns. There’s another bar. A big club. Camael is gathering his demons. Again. This might be our only chance!”

“And you know this how?”

Nate swallowed hard. He was not a fan of the overshare, but if he was going to convince them to get going, it was now or never.

“I saw it. Through her eyes. I’ve been having dreams…visions.”

“For how long?” Deacon asked.

“A few weeks now.”

Deacon’s brow furrowed more. He was obviously wondering how any information from a man who’d just hit his head hard enough to knock himself unconscious could be trusted. Nate didn’t blame him, but he’d recognized the advertisement on the side of the building through Maeve’s eyes. He knew he was right.