Revenant (11 page)

“Revenant!” Reaver’s voice barely penetrated the black haze that swallowed him. “Chill out!”

A million pounds of pressure built inside him, demanding release, but all he knew how to do was scream. Scream like he had as a child, when he watched his mother suffer for his deeds.

He screamed. And screamed. And screamed. And when he was done, his voice was raw and his eyes were dry, and all around him, for miles and miles, there was nothing but blackened, scorched earth.

Even Reaver was singed, his face streaked with ash, his clothes steaming. A moment later, his brother returned to normal, and it was as if nothing had happened.

What
had
happened?

He must have asked that out loud, because Reaver kneeled next to him as he lay bleeding on the ground. “You went off like a bomb.” He gestured to the surrounding landscape. “I had a feeling that’s what was going to happen. We’re at an old nuclear test site in New Mexico. Figured you couldn’t do much damage here.”

Reaver’s hand came down on his shoulder, and Rev felt power channel into him, but nothing seemed to be happening. If anything, his pain grew worse. He looked down at himself, and yeah, he was pretty torn up, but it was the gash running the length of his rib cage that was hurting like a son of a bitch.

“Why am I injured?” he rasped. And shit, he was dizzy.

“Metatron told me that we heal almost instantly from any wound,” Reaver replied. “Except those we cause ourselves.”

“That knowledge might have come in handy before I went Hiroshima on my own ass.” Except that he hadn’t done it intentionally. Clearly, there were still some kinks to work out with his new Shadow Angel powers.

Reaver pumped another round of energy into Revenant, and Rev groaned, sure his organs were exploding. “Dammit,” Reaver breathed. “I can’t heal you. We should get you to UG.”

Rev rolled out of Reaver’s grip. “I’m fine.” Black dots appeared in his vision. Yep, fine.

“You’re not fine. I can see your ribs. Your actual ribs.”

A wash of nausea made Revenant sway as he sat there, holding his hand over the wound. “I said no.”

“Stubborn jackass,” Reaver muttered. He jammed his hands through his hair and stared at the ruined ground. “What set you off?” When Revenant said nothing, mainly because pain had locked his jaw in place, Reaver expelled a raw curse. “Tell me what happened, Revenant. Tell me what happened to our mother.”

Fuck that. No way was he telling anyone that he was the reason their mother had suffered so horribly. Yes, Reaver now knew that she’d remained behind intentionally, but he didn’t need to know that every stitch of pain she’d experienced could be laid at Rev’s doorstep.

“I can’t.”

Reaver’s voice hardened. “Can’t, or won’t.”

“Does it matter?” Agony throbbed through his torso, and he sucked in a rattling breath. He needed to get to his place. Hole up. Lick his wounds.

“Dammit,” Reaver growled. “You need a doctor.”

Doctor. Why yes, yes he did need a doctor. One in particular. “You’re right,” he said. “Guess that’s what big brothers are for.”

With that, he gathered his last remaining bit of strength and flashed himself out of there.

Someone was following her.

Blaspheme wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she was certain that someone was tracking her movements. Almost since the moment she left the clinic, a hinky feeling had latched on like a leech, keeping her looking over her shoulder and jumping at every loud noise.

And London had a lot of loud noises.

As she boarded a bus, she cursed her stupidity at renting a flat so far away from a Harrowgate.
The walk will be nice
, she’d told herself.
On rainy days, I can take the bus
, she’d said to her mom.

Great plan, except when there was an emergency, such as some homicidal maniac – or an angel – possibly following her.

She’d tried a repeat of the invisibility thing, but this time she couldn’t fully vanish even for a minute. Some of her body parts were as visible as usual, while others were completely indiscernible, and others transparent, like a ghost.

Her False Angel aura was wearing down, and it might only be a matter of days before angels and fallen angels could detect the truth about her origins.

It was time to ask Eidolon for help.

She dug through her purse for her phone and made a quick call to check on her mother, and after Gem reassured her that everything was fine, she left a message with Eidolon’s answering service. She needed to meet with him as soon as possible. She used the excuse that she had Gethel’s test results, which she hadn’t been able to share with him earlier. He’d been stuck in surgery all day with multiple victims of a Nightlash massacre, and she had a feeling he’d be pulling an all-nighter with that one.

The bus curbed it at her stop, and she made a speedy dash to her flat a couple of blocks away. The sensation of being spied on had gone, but the icky, oily sensation of having been watched left her feeling like she needed a shower.

Which meant that her mystery spy wasn’t Revenant. If he were observing her, the shower she’d need would be an icy-cold one.

As she entered her place, she didn’t think she’d ever been so exhausted. She dumped her bag on the floor of her flat and negotiated the maze of moving boxes on her way to the kitchen, wondering if she had the energy to make a sandwich. Turned out, she had the energy but not the ingredients.

She hadn’t been shopping in days, and pretty much everything in her fridge had gone bad.

Cursing her stupidity at not picking up something from the market down the street, she grabbed a cold beer and scrounged through her cabinets for microwave popcorn to munch on while she relaxed in front of the TV with her favorite show. It was
Doctor Who
night, and tonight’s new episode was supposed to be a game-changer.

Her phone rang, and she was tempted to let the machine get it, until Eidolon’s number popped up on the caller ID.

“Doc E,” she said. “Hello.”

“I’m sorry I missed your call.” His deep voice rumbled over the phone line. “I got the copy of Gethel’s lab results you left on my desk. But I had a question about the other item you left.”

“The tracking device.” Her hand shook as she took a long pull on the beer bottle. “Dr. Soduchi found it inside my mother.”

“How did you know what it was?”

“Revenant told me.”

“He was here?” he barked. “Again? You were supposed to call me.”

She winced. “I didn’t want to bother you unless he requested my participation in another house call in hell. Besides, you were busy.”

“I’m still busy. I fucking hate Nightlash demons.” She heard him take a sip of something she assumed was coffee. “I’m going to research this device. I’ll have Wraith do some snooping as well.”

Eidolon’s brother Wraith had an uncanny knack for locating things no one else could. When his vampire mate, Serena, was with him, there was practically nothing they couldn’t find.

“Blas,” E said slowly, “is there any reason you can think of why your mother would be tagged with a tracking device?”

Even though she’d decided she needed Eidolon’s help, she stood there for a long time, weighing her options and considering how much, if anything, she should tell him. Ultimately, the undeniable truth of her situation became clear. She was in trouble, and if there was anyone in the world she could trust, it was the demon on the other end of the line.

“Whoever put it there might be looking for me.”

There was a moment of silence, and then, “I think we need to talk. Get a good night’s sleep, and meet me in my office tomorrow. I’ll text you with a time.”

“You got it, boss.”

“And Blaspheme?”

“Yeah?”

“Be very careful. I don’t want to lose you.” The line went dead, and her stomach went sour.

What had she done? For nearly a hundred years her mother had stressed that she couldn’t trust anyone with her secret no matter how upstanding that person might be. Feared by angels and fallen angels alike,
vyrm
were born with a price on their heads, a price large enough that few could resist the temptation of either reporting them to authorities or killing them outright.

She doubted Eidolon would kill her for riches or fame or favors, but on the off chance that she was wrong, she was gambling with not only her life, but that of her mother as well.

She glanced at her watch and swore. Now, on top of everything else that was a shit sandwich today, she’d missed the first five minutes of
Doctor Who
.

Forgetting the popcorn, she hurried to the living room… and stopped in her tracks at the raw stench of fresh blood. A cold fist of fear squeezed her heart as she backed slowly toward the kitchen, her only thought to grab a butcher knife off the counter.

“Blaspheme.” The familiar voice rasped through the room.

“Revenant?” Very cautiously, she pressed her back to the wall and inched toward the sound of labored breathing. As she peered around the corner, she caught a glimpse of Rev’s giant boots on the floor on the other side of the couch. “What the hell?”

Rushing forward, she was shocked to find him sitting on the tile, propped against the wall, his clothes shredded and charred, a massive laceration extending from his right pectoral to the bottom of his left rib cage. Blood seeped between his fingers as he held pressure against the wound.

“Oh, shit,” she said as she crouched next to him. “What happened?”

“Bomb… blast,” he breathed. “I fucked up, Blas. Fucked up so hard.”

She had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the blast, but right now what mattered was getting him fixed. “I’m going to get you to UG —”

“No.”

“You’re in bad shape. You need —”

“What is
with
people?” He snarled, flashing fangs. “I said no.”

Okeydokey, then. “Let me grab my medic kit.”

As she pushed to her feet, his hand snaked out to circle her wrist. “I mean it. No hospital.”

“Yeah, I got that.” She peeled his fingers away. “I’ll be right back.”

Quickly, she grabbed her old paramedic jump kit from the cupboard beneath the bathroom sink and returned to him. His head had fallen back against the wall, and he was paler than he’d been a moment ago, his blood spilling in a pool beneath him. So much for her cleaning deposit.

“Must have been a hell of an explosion to wreck you like this,” she said.

Closing his eyes, he nodded. “You don’t even know.”

“I’d like to.”

His eyes opened. “Would you really.”

The cynicism in his voice pricked at something deep inside her. Did he think that people were always bullshitting him? Maybe it was a fallen angel thing, because her mother was the same way. Blaspheme might not be the most trusting person on the planet, but Deva left her in the dust.

“Whatever it is,” she said slowly, “you can tell me. Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“I thought you weren’t held to human standards.”

Ouch. Way to throw that back in her face. “I pick and choose.” She unzipped the bag. “So spill.”

He closed his eyes again. “What’s your mother like?”

Whoa. Talk about a change of subject. But hey, if that was what he wanted to talk about and it would keep him calm, she’d humor him a little.

“She’s extremely high-strung,” she said as she fetched a pair of scissors from her bag and started to cut away his shirt. “But she’d do anything for me. She’d sacrifice… anything.” Including False Angels.

“My mother was like that.” His burned hands tightened into fists, and a shudder went through him. “She was such a fool,” he whispered.

Gently, she moved his hand away from his wound and pressed a blood-stopper pad against it. “She was a mother,” she said. “That’s what they do.”

“Fuck that.” He laughed, a nasty, bitter sound. “Got any alcohol?”

“Of course I have alcohol. I’m a False Angel,” she reminded him. False Angels drank liquor by the gallon, their bodies converting the stuff to the powdery aphrodisiac that coated their wings. Blas didn’t drink for that particular reason, especially now that she wasn’t producing the powder anymore and what was left on her wings was all that remained, but her disguise did make her crave it. “But it’s not a good idea to drink right now.” When his upper lip curled in a silent snarl, she threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine. But when you pass out from blood loss and alcohol, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She replaced his hand on the pad. “Apply pressure. I’ll be right back.”

She fetched a bottle of Smirnoff from the liquor cabinet and handed it to him. He immediately guzzled half of it. Gods, she hoped he had a high tolerance. He was a pain in the ass when he was sober; she couldn’t imagine what he’d be like under the influence. She’d bet her favorite set of scrubs that he was a mean drunk.

Settling in next to him, she laid out the supplies she’d need to sew him back together. He watched her with curiosity as she performed a rapid exam to determine the extent of his injuries, but aside from the near-evisceration wound, all she found were burns and abrasions.

She carefully cleaned the surgical area and threaded a needle with absorbable thread. “I don’t have anything that will numb the area, so this is going to hurt.”

He took a deep swig. “Trust me, you can’t do anything to me that hasn’t been done before.”

Setting the needle and thread aside, she unwrapped a sterile scalpel. “Sounds like you’ve had a violent life.”

He snorted. “Who hasn’t?”

“I haven’t.” Thanks to her mother’s paranoia, Blaspheme had, for the most part, stayed out of trouble.

“Isn’t that special.” Revenant held up the bottle in a salute. “Good for you.”

“Yeah, good for me.” She scooted in closer to Revenant and tried to ignore the heat coming off his muscular body. “I need to excise the damaged skin on the edges of your laceration. Try not to move.”

He didn’t move at all. He closed his eyes, put his head against the wall, and half an hour later, she was finished cleaning and prepping the wound. Next up, stitches.

“In the deepest parts of this lac, I need to put in internal sutures. It should only take a few minutes.” She pierced his flesh with the needle. “Lucky for you, most of the cut is fairly shallow.”

“You know you don’t need to go to a lot of trouble,” he said, his voice starting to slur a little. “I’m immortal. I’ll heal on my own eventually.”

She looked up at him. “That’s why I’m not worried about infection or making this pretty.” She pulled on the thread. “But you shouldn’t have to be in pain until you heal.”

His lids opened, just a crack, but she felt his intense gaze scorching her skin. “It’s been a long time since anyone gave a shit about my pain.”

She stopped breathing. She could tell him that she only cared because it was her job to care, but she sensed that when he said
a long time
, he wasn’t talking about a few years, or even a few decades. Maybe not even a few centuries. Was he that awful of a person that no one could care for him? Or did he push people away so they didn’t have the chance to care for him?

Either way, it was kind of heartbreaking.

“Just relax, and you’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

One corner of his mouth curved into a half smile. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

“We’ll see.”

Bending over the laceration, she got back to work. “Not very trusting, are you?”

“Because people aren’t very trustworthy.”

She’d have argued, because she’d met a few standup humans and demons, but he’d closed his eyes again, and his breathing had settled into a deep, steady rhythm.

She spent the next forty-five minutes stitching Revenant up in silence, and as she finished, her cell buzzed with a text from Eidolon.

Meet me in my office tomorrow at 2
PM
.

Doc E had never been one to mince words. She set the phone aside and turned back to Revenant.

“What was that about?” Revenant’s voice was drowsy and his eyes were still closed, but he somehow managed to radiate a sense of alertness most people couldn’t match after ten hours of sleep and five cups of coffee.

“Nothing.”

His lids lifted as his features settled into irritation. “There is very little that pisses me off more than being lied to.”