Reaver
Authors: Larissa Ione
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For my readers and my friends. How lucky I am that they so often overlap. I love you guys!
First of all, I want to thank everyone on the Grand Central Publishing team for everything they’ve put
into this book, with special thanks to Madeleine Colavita for all her help. And a massive thank-you
goes to my editor, Amy Pierpont. Oh, my God, we did it!!!!
Special thanks go out to Kim Whalen for being a great shoulder and agent. Yay, Reaver!!!
And thank you, Bryan, for being home when I needed you. Now that you’re home full time, the rest
of this crazy journey is yours to share too, so brace yourself!
Agimortus—
A trigger for the breaking of a Horseman’s Seal. An agimortus can be identified as a
symbol engraved or branded upon the host person or object. Three kinds of agimorti have been
identified and may take the form of a person, an object, or an event.
Boregate—
Portals that allow demons to travel inside Sheoul. The precursors to Harrowgates,
Boregates are either unpredictable or inflexible. Some run back and forth between two realms while
others take users to random locations within Sheoul.
Daemonica—
The demon bible and basis for dozens of demon religions. Its prophesies regarding the
Apocalypse, should they come to pass, will ensure that the Four Horsemen fight on the side of evil.
Dermoire—
Located on every Seminus demon’s right arm from his hand to his throat, a
dermoire
consists of glyphs that reveal the bearer’s paternal history. Each individual’s personal glyph is located
at the top of the
dermoire
, on the throat.
Fallen Angel—
Believed to be evil by most humans, fallen angels can be grouped into two categories:
True Fallen and Unfallen. Unfallen angels have been cast from Heaven and are earthbound, living a
life in which they are neither truly good nor truly evil. In this state, they can, rarely, earn their way
back into Heaven. Or they can choose to enter Sheoul, the demon realm, in order to complete their fall
and become True Fallens, taking their places as demons at Satan’s side.
Harrowgate—
Vertical portals, invisible to humans, that demons use to travel between locations on
Earth and Sheoul. A very few beings can summon their own personal Harrowgates.
S’genesis—
Final maturation cycle for Seminus demons. Occurs at one hundred years of age. A
post-
s’genesis
male is capable of procreation and possesses the ability to shapeshift into the male of
any demon species.
Sheoul—
Demon realm. Located deep in the bowels of the Earth, accessible to most only by
Harrowgates and hellmouths.
Sheoulghul—
Tiny, extremely rare crystal spheres that allow angels to partially charge their powers in
Sheoul. The origin of these crystals is a closely guarded secret, and little is known about them, but
some users claim to have heard them make weeping sounds.
Sheoul-gra—
A holding tank for demon souls. The place where demon souls go until they can be
reborn or kept in torturous limbo.
Sheoulic—
Universal demon language spoken by all, although many species also speak their own
language.
Ter’taceo—
Demons who can pass as human, either because their species is naturally human in
appearance or because they can shapeshift into human form.
Watchers—
Individuals assigned to keep an eye on the Four Horsemen. As part of the agreement
forged during the original negotiations between angels and demons that led to Ares, Reseph, Limos,
and Thanatos being cursed to spearhead the Apocalypse, one Watcher is an angel, the other is a fallen
angel. Neither Watcher may directly assist any Horseman’s efforts to either start or stop Armageddon,
but they can lend a hand behind the scenes. Doing so, however, may have them walking a fine line,
that, to cross, could prove worse than fatal.
Fate was not a word angels tossed around lightly. But as Zachariel, First Angel of the Apocalypse,
wrote the final chapter of
Verrine/Harvester: An Unauthorized Biography
, he couldn’t help but think
about how fate had screwed her over.
And so it was that, five thousand human years ago, the angel Verrine fell in love with the angel
Yenrieth. But Verrine, in her innocence, fled from his affections and sent him into the waiting
arms of another.
Verrine finally realized her mistake, but it was too late. She came upon her beloved Yenrieth
fornicating with the succubus Lilith.
Unbeknownst to Yenrieth, Lilith became pregnant. Verrine, however, was aware of the
pregnancy and for reasons known only to her, she kept the knowledge from Yenrieth. She did,
however, swear an oath to find and watch over Yenrieth’s offspring.
In time, Lilith gave birth to four infants, three boys and a girl: Reseph, Ares, Limos, and
Thanatos.
After many years of searching in secret, Verrine finally located the boys, who had grown up
with human families, placed there by Lilith.
But the girl, Limos, had been betrothed to Satan and had made her life in the underworld. Only
when Limos emerged from the dark depths of hell did Verrine feel as though she could finally
tell Yenrieth about the existence of his children.
But as fate would have it, Limos’s arrival in the human realm was disastrous.
Yenrieth’s children, upon learning from Limos that they were not human but were, in fact, half
angel and half demon, started a war between the earthly and demon realms, causing destruction
and chaos that bordered on Armageddon.
As punishment, Yenrieth’s offspring were cursed to become the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, their fates to be determined by prophecy. Should the Seals that bound them to the
curse break, they would become Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, but whether they fought on
the side of good or evil had yet to be determined.
No one knows what became of Yenrieth after this, but Verrine, in order to hold to her personal
vow to watch over his children, approached three archangels with a plan—to infiltrate hell and
use whatever means at her disposal to be assigned one of Sheoul’s most coveted tasks: Sheoulic
Watcher of the Horsemen. She intended to act as a spy and manipulate events in order to prevent
the demon bible’s version of apocalyptic prophecy.
Three archangels, Metatron, Raphael, and Uriel, approved her request and, knowing she would
never see Heaven again, Verrine became the fallen angel Harvester.
It took three thousand years of proving herself to her father, the fallen angel and lord of the
underworld, Satan, before she was granted a position as Watcher. For the next two thousand years
she covertly helped the Horsemen keep their Seals from breaking and pretended to work against
each of the Horsemen’s Heavenly Watchers, Shiresta, Barabus, Gethel, and Reaver.
And when, in the Year of our Lord 2010, a Seminus demon named Sin inadvertently broke
Reseph’s Seal and turned him into the demon known as Pestilence, Harvester’s work began in
earnest. The
Daemonica
’s version of the Apocalypse had begun.
Harvester, corrupted by thousands of years of evil, performed tasks that would eat at her soul
and scour away what little goodness was left in her heart. But ultimately, her actions saved
humankind, and the Apocalypse was averted. All worked out according to plan… until Gethel, a
traitor to Heaven, betrayed Harvester to Satan.
And Harvester, unable to ask the very people she saved for help, was dragged to Sheoul to
suffer an eternity of torment at Satan’s hands.
Zachariel paused to dip his angel-feather pen into the sacred ink blended from the blood of twenty
archangels. Crimson drops dripped from the nib as he lifted it from the crystal bottle, and he wondered
how much more he should write. Yenrieth had been scrubbed from the history books and from the
memories of all but a select few, and Zachariel wasn’t sure how much he should reveal. His own
memories of Yenrieth had been returned just recently, and only so he could record Harvester’s story.
Blood ink spattered on the desk, and Zachariel realized the finality of the situation. Harvester was
gone forever. There was no more to write. Thanks to Harvester’s sacrifice, humanity was safe, and so
were Yenrieth’s children. She, more than any angel in history, had shaped the future of all the realms.
Harvester was a fallen angel. And a fallen hero.
Zachariel let the pen fall back into the bottle, and with a silent prayer for Harvester’s soul, he closed
the book.
