“And what, exactly, is your job?”
Startled, Raika wheeled around to the owner of the raspy, female voice. “Funny you should ask,” she said calmly, hoping to hide the fact that she’d been caught by surprise. Again. “My job is to capture you.”
“Me?” The demon, an eyeless, sharp-toothed, ugly-ass thing half-concealed in shadows, cocked its head. “Why me? You’ve been stalking me for weeks. Who are you?”
Raika slipped the little bead back into her pocket and summoned another blade. She fought best with two.
But she wasn’t ready to fight yet. She liked it when her prey knew their fate. She liked…foreplay.
“Why you?” Raika purred. “Because you’re a demon who escaped your fate when Azagoth destroyed Sheoul-gra and freed you.”
“My fate?” The demon hissed in anger. “That bastard sealed me in a statue of agony for centuries. He freed me! My fate is now my own.”
“Nice try, but that’s not how Heaven sees it.”
The demon retreated into the shadows. “You’re an angel?”
“If only you were that lucky.” Raika clanged her weapons together and grinned. “I’m a Reaper, bitch. And it’s time to reap.”
One of the best things about being an angel was being almost impervious to extreme temperatures. It was something Gabriel had taken for granted.
Because, as an Unfallen angel, he felt the cold. He felt the heat. He felt the fire Lilith liked to burn him with, even as she made him lie proneon blocks of dry ice.
Right now, he felt every inch of his blackened, scorched skin and frostbitten flesh. With the exception of one exploded eye, his face didn’t hurt, but that was only because Lilith had healed his shredded cheek.
“I don’t want to mar your beauty, my lovely Gabriel,” Lilith had told him. “I like my lovers pretty.”
Once, he’d been stupid enough to tell her that he wasn’t her lover. She had a very loose definition of the word and had shown him, over and over in the most painful and vile ways possible, that he was, indeed, her lover.
Bile filled his mouth at the memory of the things she’d done to him and forced him to do to her.
Don’t puke. Don’t puke. Do. Not. Puke.
Desperate to avoid the misery of choking up vomit in his raw throat, he focused on two pieces of straw a few feet away. Not long ago, he could have blinked them out of existence with a mere thought. Or impaled them in the walls. Or transformed them into blades that would decapitate the horrid bitch.
But now, the little bits of straw just lay there on the stone floor, mocking him. Hell, he couldn’t even make them move when he blew a breath at them. Not that he had any breath to spare. He could barely breathe through his agony, and what little air moved through his lungs felt like fire.
Everything hurt. Even his ears. His eardrums throbbed, sending pulses of pain into his brain. The rhythmic thumping grew louder, hurting more. It drove him crazy—so crazy he thought he heard shouts. Clanks. Strange thumps.
Wait… He lifted his head and concentrated. Footsteps? Curses? Battle?
The noises drilled into him, and excitement made his heart leap. He knew what fighting sounded like, and that was definitely the clang of blades on blades. Screeching. Bloodletting.
He opened his one good eye, but his eyelid was sandpaper across his tender cornea. Blurry images of what he thought were two females formed before him. By the shape of her body and the shock-white color of her short hair, he knew the one getting her ass kicked was Vanthora. But who was the curvy warrior in black? And why was she fighting the demon?
Not that it mattered. He’d root for anyone who could destroy Vanthora.
They danced a violent, bloody routine across the floor, weapons flashing, curses flying. The dark female controlled the battle, her movements graceful and effortless as she beat his tormentor to a pulp. Victory in increments. Death by a thousand cuts.
Vanthora went down, and excitement burst through him as the other female performed an exquisite, fluid routine that a ballerina would envy, almost mocking the prone demon before slicing her head clean from her body.
Who is this magnificent warrior?
Wings erupted from her back, arched in victory. Shiny black at the pointed, clawed arches, the feathers gradually turned crimson at the tips in a stunning ombre effect.
He coughed, and her wings flared as she spun around, her blades dripping blood.
His vision was still too blurry to make out her face, but her silhouette left an impression that would have had him thinking naughty thoughts if his brain and body weren’t so broken.
