Reaver(27)

Reaver held his breath until the Nightlash was across. The approaching demons were halfway down the cliff face now.

“Hold my hand,” he said to Harvester. “We have to run. If the bridge collapses, I’ll fly us across.”

He just hoped it didn’t come to that. Flying in Sheoul was like trying to fly in water. The effort involved in even short flights would drain an angel in mere minutes.

Taking her hand, he darted across the bridge. As they stepped on firm ground, a bear-toad howled.

The demons were on the other side of the bridge, where Harvester and Reaver had been standing just moments before.

“Run!” Harvester yelled, as if Reaver needed the prompt.

They hauled ass through the mountain tunnels with Calder in the lead. Vines dripping with acid grabbed at them like octopus tentacles, and their feet crunched on demon remains littering the ground. The obstacles didn’t slow the bear-toads, and the sounds of their pursuit grew louder with every passing moment.

“We’ve got to take a stand,” he said, as they leaped across a wide stream flowing with a brown gelatinous substance that smelled like rotting flesh.

“I can feel a Harrowgate nearby,” Calder yelled back. “I’ll find it.” Before Reaver could protest, the demon put on a burst of speed and dashed off, disappearing in the murky darkness ahead.

“Shit.” A vine grabbed at Harvester, and she yanked it out of the wall by its roots. Blood dripped from her palm where the acid had eaten her skin away, but she didn’t seem to notice. “The demons are close.”

Too close. Reaver could practically hear the bear-toads’ growls. They were in for a battle, and they had to find a place to fight that would give Reaver’s team every advantage they could get.

They ran hard, finally slowing when the passage widened into a cavern, its ceiling extending so far into the darkness that Reaver couldn’t see it. Massive, sharp stalactites jutted like fangs from above, and spiky stalagmites erupted from the floor.

Exit tunnels on the far wall sat just beyond a pool of oily black stuff that Harvester eyed like it was poison. When she actually said, “It’s poison,” he wasn’t shocked.

“I guessed that.”

“You guessed,” she said. “I knew.”

“Why is everything a competition to you?” Calder had better have located the Harrowgate, because if they had to spend another day down here, Reaver was going to kill her. Or himself. “We need to work on our—” He broke off at the low-pitched drone of a howl.

Harvester wheeled toward the opening they’d come through. “Here they come.”

Dammit. He had no idea which of the tunnels Calder had taken, and even if he did, he couldn’t risk getting caught by the demons in a narrow space where he couldn’t fight.

They had to make their stand here.

The battle angel in Reaver leaped into action, rapidly taking a tactical measure of their surroundings, escape routes, and potential weapons. He and Harvester had the advantage if they struck first, hitting the enemy as they filed out of the crevice that opened up into the cavern.

Calder, where the fuck are you?

He glanced over at Harvester, and for a brief moment he drank in the sight of her facing in the direction of the enemy, her expression feral, her lithe body squared for battle. The clothes he’d chosen for her left little to the imagination, clinging to every curve, every muscle. And to every bone that lay too close to the surface of her skin. He hated that her hips and ribs stood out so starkly.

But she wasn’t afraid. After all she’d been through at the hands of demons, the only vibe she was giving off right now was the electric tingle of anticipation.

She wanted revenge.

Good girl. Hold onto that. “Do you have enough power to summon a weapon?” he asked.

When she shook her head with obvious reluctance, he held out a dagger. “It’s a—”

“Dragon Biter,” she finished. “I know. Goes through thick hide and scales like butter. I used to have one before it was stolen by a Bathag I let get a little too close to me.”

“Why?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “Why do you think? I wanted something from him.”

“Sex?”

She snatched the dagger from him. “Why does sex automatically come to mind?”

The bear-toads howled, their bloodthirst carrying through the tunnels like a banshee’s wail and sending a chill up Reaver’s spine. “Maybe because you blackmailed me into having sex with you for twenty-four hours at some random time of your choosing?”

A thick shock of hair fell over her eyes, and she thrust it back with an impatient shove. “You know, most males wouldn’t whine about having to have sex.”