One of the demons got in a lucky strike, nailing Harvester in the sternum. With a grunt, she crashed to the ground, only to be stomped on by the second demon.
“Harvester!” Reaver bolted to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg, and flicked a shower of drill sparks at the demons even as he took flight. He went for the closest target, the bear-toad, reversing course at the last second to drive both boots into its hindquarters. The creature flipped head over paws and splashed down in the poison pond.
Reaver didn’t give the thing a glance. He went after the demons, who were now swatting at the sparks, but wait… why weren’t the fiery pinpricks drilling into their flesh?
He got his answer when one of the sparks came at him. No longer pure spark, it had warped into a winged insect with a needlelike spike protruding from its eyeless face. Son of a bitch. Now he and Harvester had to battle not only the demons but whatever new hell had been bastardized by his magic.
Extending his wings, he shot upward into the stalactites, drawing off a swarm of the sparks. The massive effort of flight down here slowed him as he flew toward the ceiling and at the last second, he banked hard and dove. The sparks spattered all over the rock like paintballs, leaving behind tiny wisps of sizzling smoke.
He used his downward momentum to skim the ground and scoop up Harvester a millisecond before one of the demons brought a sledgehammer down on her head. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight, her fiery skin burning against his.
“Thank you.”
Her barely audible words of gratitude astonished him so completely that he pitched forward and nearly did a header into the poison pool. He recovered just before he hit the dissolving body of the bear-toad, and in one seamless swoop, he dropped Harvester on her feet and slammed into a demon. They both tumbled like bowling pins into a pile of boulders.
Reaver, panting with exhaustion, still managed to recover first and swipe the male’s sword. Spinning, he brought the blade down on the demon’s thick throat, severing its ugly head. He pivoted, ready to make a matching set of headless hellspawn, but midturn, a searing, biting agony ripped through his back.
Muscles locked, he went down, catching a glimpse of a shiny black rope in the demon’s giant fist. What the hell? A whip that could paralyze an angel? Not good.
In his frozen position he couldn’t see Harvester. The demon with the whip took off, leaving Reaver to stare at the ground, helpless to do anything but blink his eyelids.
The sound of fighting rang out, the clang of metal on metal, grunts of pain, thuds of dull objects striking flesh. And finally, a splash and a scream.
Harvester? He thought his pulse was racing and his heart was pounding, but he couldn’t feel anything. All he knew was a breath-strangling anxiety he couldn’t quell no matter how many times he told himself that it must have been the demon that went into the pool.
Footsteps approached. Reaver swallowed. The paralytic agent was wearing off, but it was taking its sweet time.
“Reaver?” Harvester kneeled next to him, and he would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could. She rolled him so he was on his back, looking up into the blackness. “You were hit with an anti-angel weapon my father invented. He’s creative that way. You’ll be okay. It wears off quickly.”
She put her hand on his chest and leaned in so he could see her face. Her cheeks were smudged with dirt and her bottom lip was split open, but she appeared to be unharmed. And yet, as she looked him over, her eyes grew haunted.
“It sucks to be helpless.” Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. She stroked his face with her fingertips, and his heart lurched in his chest at her gentle touch. He felt her thumb swipe his jaw, and it came away with blood.
Suddenly, her gaze, which had been full of tormented shadows, became… hungry… as she looked down at the pad of her thumb. Her lips parted to reveal rapidly lengthening fangs.
Don’t do it… don’t do it…
She did it. She moaned as she slid her thumb into her mouth. She sucked greedily, eyes closed, and shit, he was torn between watching her fellate her thumb and worrying that the taste of his blood was going to lead to her wanting more. If she fed from him while he was paralyzed and unable to stop her, she could be swept away by bloodlust and drain him. He wouldn’t die, but he’d be comatose for days. Weeks, maybe. They’d never get out of here.
And where the ever-living fuck was Calder? Not that Reaver wanted that bastard to come back while Reaver was helpless. The assassin might be a professional, but he was also a demon with powerful, cruel instincts, and a vulnerable angel might be too much of a temptation.
“You taste… incredible. Like sex.” She swirled her tongue around the tip of her thumb as if giving him a visual to go along with her words. Damn, that was hot.
Her eyes popped open, and anxiety spiked. They were still green, but flecks of the deepest, darkest black were spreading, swallowing the whites.
Her evil was starting to show. Had his blood done that to her?
Her lips curved into a sinister smile. “We were in a similar situation not long ago. You were helpless. At my mercy.”
No shit. She’d cut off his wings and kept him immobilized and miserable, then she’d tried to get him addicted to marrow wine. At the time, he’d believed she’d enjoyed herself. But now he knew she’d been playing for Team Heaven… so had her enjoyment been an act? Or had all that time in Sheoul corrupted her enough that she truly had loved every minute she’d spent hurting him?
Harvester slid her hand up to his throat and lightly stroked his skin. Or maybe it felt light only because he was so numb.
“I didn’t want to do it, but orders are orders, aren’t they?” There was actually a thread of remorse woven into the dense malevolence in her voice. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. “You know what’s funny?” He loved how she asked questions when he couldn’t answer them. Harvester had really never needed physical implements of torture. Talking alone was adequate. “I liked having you at my place. I didn’t like for you to be in pain…” She licked her lips, catching a smudge of his blood that lingered in the corner of her mouth. “Well, not much pain.”
Her fingers trailed up and down his jugular, and both alarm and his hackles rose. Would she do more than talk him to death? She could wreck him with the Dragon Biter if she wanted to.
Or drink him into a coma.
“I was supposed to hurt you more than I did. I was supposed to blind you.” She brought her palm to his cheek and smoothed her thumb over the sensitive skin under his eye. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I held back out of compassion. I have none.”
Maybe not right this minute, but he was still going to call bullshit. He’d been on the receiving end of her care after Pestilence had beaten him half to death. He wondered if she was even aware that she was lying.
“I held back because I dislike being told what to do.”
Well, they had that in common. But he still didn’t buy that she’d spared him pain out of an unwillingness to follow orders. But why the hell was she yammering on like this? Although he supposed there was nothing else to do while they waited for his paralysis to wear off.
“So,” she said, as if she hadn’t just rehashed one of the weirdest and worst times of his life. That he knew of, anyway. Anything could have happened during the thousands of years that were a black hole in his memory. “What shall we do to pass the time?” She grinned, a real wicked I’m-a-naughty-girl special. “I wonder if every part of you is as hard as your limbs.” Her gaze traveled down the length of his body, and if he hadn’t been stone-cold frozen, he’d have hyperventilated.