“Can we go now?” Blaspheme asked.
Revenant started to say yes, but a door on the far end of the hall opened up, and two Ramreel guards dragged a beaten, bloody vampire inside.
Gethel gestured to the rack across from the chaise where she was lounging. “Put Thanatos’s minion there. I want to watch him die slowly.”
Fuck. As the Horseman’s Watcher, he couldn’t let this go.
“Come on,” he said as he took Blaspheme’s hand. “Let’s get you back to the clinic.” He’d deal with Gethel and her bloodsucker toy once Blaspheme was safely back at Underworld General.
He flashed them to UG’s parking lot, and the second they materialized, Blaspheme yanked away from him. “You’re just going to let that vampire die? Take me back. Let me help him.”
“You’re not going back. The vampire is none of your concern.”
“He was injured,” she said, incredulous. “Of course he’s my concern!”
Sudden anger rolled him like a rogue wave. Why couldn’t she be selfish, petty, and immoral like a proper False Angel should be?
“Toughen up,” he snapped. “You can’t save all the kittens, vampires, and butterflies. And sometimes you have to crush something under your boot to get what you want. Deal with it.”
She slapped him. Hard enough to make his cheek sting. “You bastard.” Raw, burning hatred rolled off her in a wave that scorched his skin. “Is it so easy for you to ignore suffering?”
She really did want to see the worst in him, didn’t she? “What changed, Blaspheme? What kind of message did you get on your phone that made you suddenly hate me so much?”
“Hate you?” Her voice lashed at him, striking as viciously as the demons had done when he was slaving in the mines. “It’s me I hate. I knew I shouldn’t let you in. I knew I shouldn’t allow myself to care about you. But I was a fool, and now I have to live with myself.”
She cared about him? Was that caring now past tense? “I hate to tell you this, angel, but we all have to live with ourselves.”
He didn’t wait for a response. She was too worked up, and he had a situation to handle. Not to mention the drill of a summons in his head that was getting worse the longer he ignored the sender. Satan did not like to be kept waiting, and if Revenant didn’t obey soon, he’d be in for a nice flogging or another organ-ectomy.
Funny how he used to respond to Satan’s demands right away, but now that he had his memory back, screw it. Revenant was going to take tardiness to the limit. Probably not the brightest thing to do, but it seemed that the rebellious streak he’d had while working in Satan’s mines as a child was making a comeback.
Revenant flashed back to Gethel’s place, where the Ramreels were securing the vampire to the rack. “That, boys, is a no-no.”
He flicked his wrist, and the horned demons flew across the room to land in unconscious heaps on the tile floor.
Gethel shoved to her feet, sickly black, scaled wings spread, blue veins snaking across her skin. Her eyes had gone oily, and an aura of power pulsed around her.
“You will not ruin my playtime,” she growled.
He ignored her as he strode over to the barely conscious bloodsucker. He willed the metal cuffs to open and caught the vamp as he slumped over. A blast of power slammed into Revenant’s skull, knocking him into the rack and sending it crashing to the floor.
“You bitch.” He swung around, readying his own power, but Gethel nailed him again, this time hard enough to break his jaw. It healed almost instantly, but now he was pissed.
He dropped the vampire and caught Gethel by the arm. She cursed at him, lashed out with nonstop blasts of power that snapped his bones and crushed his organs. Every step he took was pure agony, but he didn’t slow down, didn’t stop until he had her slammed against the fallen rack and strapped to it.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
Guards rushed in from every door, armed and ready to take down the threat to their Dark Mother, but when they saw that Revenant was the threat, they skidded to a halt as one unit and stood there, unsure what to do.
“Leave her like that,” Revenant commanded them. “Leave her until morning. If I come back and she’s free, whoever let her go will answer to me.”
Ignoring her curses and shouts, he gathered the vampire and then, with a dozen raunchy curses in a dozen languages, he went to the pantry and grabbed the basket of fucking kittens and flashed to Thanatos’s Greenland castle. Thanatos and his wife, Regan, were seated at their dining room table with their son, Logan, who had mashed peas all over his face. The boy’s pet hellhound, Cujo, made an immediate run at Revenant, fangs bared, drool dripping from gaping jaws that could swallow a lamb whole.