Reaver(75)

But as they approached the gates to the massive city, Reaver had a feeling things were going to get a lot less dull.

Khepri demons—scarab-headed humanoids—guarded the gate, their skinny antennae swiveling like radar dishes. Flanking them were Sobeks, their humanoid bodies too small for their giant crocodile heads.

Reaver had never encountered any of these demons, which Harvester said no longer traveled away from this realm, but the stories of their cruelty went well beyond the realm’s borders.

He leaned close to Harvester, and her scent made his body stir again.

“Are they going to let us in?”

“Of course,” she said, as if he’d asked an insanely stupid question. “It’s letting us out that’ll be the problem if they find out who we are. And they probably will.”

Harvester was definitely a glass-half-empty person, wasn’t she? But she was right, and the guards opened the gates that were tall enough to allow entrance to Godzilla. Inside, the gray that defined the outskirts of the city was replaced by rich reds and greens, golds and silvers. Great pillars and statues dotted the city, which could have stood in Egypt and no one would have known the difference.

“Charming place,” he muttered as they moved past Neethul slave markets and arenas where demons fought to the death.

Harvester nodded enthusiastically, as if he’d been serious. “I know, right? There’s a pub a few blocks over that serves the best pomegranate wine in all of Sheoul. Costs a fortune, but it’s so smooth. You’d never know they use Soulshredder blood to make it.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“I hear sarcasm.” She tsked. “What is it humans say? That sarcasm is the lowest form of humor?”

He shrugged. “Only for people who don’t get it.”

She laughed, and he missed a step. He’d heard Harvester laugh before, but there had always been an evil undercurrent to it, a morbid amusement that came from things normal people wouldn’t find funny. But this was a pure, bubbly laugh of genuine delight, and it filled him with the strangest giddiness, like a feather was tickling his heart.

As if she felt it too, she slid him an almost shy glance, a lopsided smile curving her luscious mouth. He didn’t say anything, because by now he knew that calling attention to anything pleasant would turn her back into an acid-tongued fishwife. Idly, he wondered if Eidolon had anything for her particular brand of demonic bipolar disorder.

“We’re almost there,” she said, pulling him to the side of the road to avoid being trampled by an elephant-like creature being ridden by an Anubis.

Almost there. If everything went smoothly, then in a few more minutes the nightmare would be over. This part of the nightmare, anyway. They still had to face the archangels, and the things they could do to him made all the miseries of Sheoul seem like a day at an amusement park.

The Harrowgate hung between two gold columns at the top of hundreds of steps that led to a building Harvester said was Lucifer’s palace.

“Will we be able to walk right into it?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Gethel will probably be heavily guarded.

At the top of the steps, demons milled about, but it was the armed Silas demons standing nearby that hot-loaded a massive dump of adrenaline into Reaver’s veins.

“Shit,” Harvester said, her voice so low he barely heard her. “Silas demons are coming up behind us.”

Reaver cast a covert glance back, and yep, they were being flanked. When he looked ahead, Silases were moving toward them, too.

They were blocked.

Instinctively, Reaver reached for his power, but there wasn’t so much as a spark. Harvester had been right. He couldn’t even kill a hellrat.

“I don’t suppose you have any tricks up your sleeve,” he asked.

“I have a lot. Unfortunately, they won’t work in this situation.” She shot a covert glance at the Harrowgate. “I say we forget Gethel for now and make a break for it.”

As much as he’d love to end Gethel and Lucifer right now, he had to admit that without their full range of powers, any attempt would be suicide. But that didn’t mean he was admitting defeat. No, right now the smart thing to do was to escape and live to fight another day.

“On three,” he said. “One.” The demons behind them began to jog. “Two.” The demons in front of them raised their swords. “Three.”

He and Harvester bolted toward the gate, scattering civilian demons like bowling pins. Harvester flung several bursts of lightning at the Silas warriors, turning them to ash. They were within five yards of the gate when a net fell on them, the threads shrink-wrapping them so tightly that their skin sliced open, their blood sizzling when it hit the mesh. Pain tore through Reaver as they crashed to the ground, kicking and fighting, but the netting only squeezed tighter, until they were back-to-back and unable to move more than fingers and toes.