Reaver must have gotten the same treatment, his muffled grunt joining the sound of stone collapsing around them.
Revenant’s body felt as if it were caving in on itself, but somehow he managed to draw in power, taking it from the very air around him. His wounds began to knit together as he sought a bigger, more powerful form.
“You traitor!” Satan’s voice, deep, guttural, was a weapon in itself, shattering Revenant’s eardrums.
The surge of pain triggered a chain reaction inside him. Anger seared him more intensely than Satan’s fire had. This bastard had been the source of all of his pain. All his mother’s pain. He had to pay.
Leaping to his feet, which were now clawed, huge to match the monstrous form he’d shifted into, he blasted Satan with every weapon in his arsenal. All of them. At once.
The demon screamed and fell back, blood, limbs, teeth, horns… it all burst into the air in a gory mist as Satan’s body exploded. The temple, painted in dripping crimson and internal organs, shuddered, as if it knew something terrible had just happened.
And was going to happen again.
“Reaver!”
Revenant’s twin was a mangled, twisted mess, but with Satan out of commission, he could —
“You fucking cunt!” Satan materialized in front of Rev with a giant sword of lava in his clawed hand. Oh, fuck —
Revenant dove, rolling as he hit the ground. The edge of the blade caught him in the ribs, opening his chest down to the bone and turning his blood to ash. Pain blurred his vision, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reaver, nearly regenerated, limping toward the pentagram he’d drawn with Gethel’s blood in the center of the room.
Satan’s head swiveled toward Reaver.
Keep his attention!
“Fucker.” Revenant staggered to his feet, resisting the urge to wrap his arm around his rib cage. The bleeding, charred flesh wasn’t healing like it should. “You twisted son of a bitch. Did you really think I’d sit by and let Lucifer take what should be mine?” Throwing out his hand, he sent a focused beam of angelic radiation at the demon, severing the bastard’s left arm at the elbow. The sword clattered to the ground, a hand still wrapped around the hilt.
He paid for that with a fist to the gut. No, through the gut. Revenant’s jaw locked in agony as Satan’s fist did a through-and-through, punching out of his back.
“I should have ripped your wings off and shoved them up your ass a long time ago.” Steam bellowed from Satan’s nostrils, and hate glowed in his crimson eyes as he jerked his bloody hand free of Rev’s body. His mouth stretched into a hideous, sharp-toothed smile as he leaned in close enough for Rev to smell his fetid breath. “But no time like the present. Bend over, you stinking piece of offal.”
In a blur of motion, the demon clamped his hand down on Revenant’s skull and spun him, face-first, into the ground. Revenant screamed as he felt one wing rip away from his shoulders. Fuck, this was going to hurt —
The glint of metal flashed in the torchlit temple. Still pinned to the ground, Revenant caught a glimpse of Reaver slashing his palm with a dagger. The pentagram flared to life, pulsing and glowing as if hungry for the blood that ran down Reaver’s arm in a thick rivulet. Even as Satan roared a curse, Reaver dropped to one knee and slapped his hand in the center of the pentagram.
Suddenly, a screaming vortex of lightning stretched from the ceiling to the floor, coming down on top of the Dark Lord, swallowing him whole.
“Hurry,” Reaver yelled, and yeah, duh. Nothing was going to hold Satan for long. They had thirty seconds at best before the king of demons burst out of the lightning storm and squashed them like flies.
Clenching his teeth against the pain of his wounds, Revenant shoved to his feet to face Raphael and Gethel, both of whom had come free of their bonds during the battle. Raphael was armed with an elemental sword, which harvested nearby elements to form the blade. Lightning made his blade pretty badass, and as he hacked into Gethel’s shoulder, a blast of power knocked her into the electrical tornado. Cool. Two down, one to go.
Raphael turned on Revenant. “Bastard! You and your whore of a mother should have died down here —”
Revenant’s bellow of rage knocked the archangel off his feet. Rev was there before Raphael hit the ground, and in a single, fluid sweep, he hurled the motherfucker into the vortex to join Satan and Gethel.
“I can’t hold it!” Reaver’s shout was barely audible, eaten by thunder and electric snaps and the furious screams of the three assholes inside the funnel.
Rev limped to Reaver, the hole in his midsection and the deep laceration in his chest running with rivers of blood. He wasn’t healing, and Reaver wasn’t in much better shape. The room spun in sickly crimson and gray blurs as he swung around beside Reaver so they were shoulder to shoulder. Reaching deep, all the way to his soul, he drew power from the realm around him, so much power that he buzzed with it, burned with it, became it.