Revenant got out, but as he dematerialized, he realized Thanatos was right. He did belong in hell, and he always had.

Twenty-Five

Despite a crazy childhood that involved a lot of moves and name changes, Blaspheme had always felt like she was on the right side of luck. But lately, it seemed as if her luck had run out, and maybe it was a coincidence, but it all seemed to have started the moment Revenant came into her life.

She’d known better, but he’d wormed his way past her defenses with his oddball charm and heart-wrenching vulnerability when he told her about his childhood. And then he’d gone and saved a patient she’d nearly killed, earning her eternal gratitude.

Then it turned out that Revenant was exactly who she’d thought he was from the beginning.

A cold killer with no conscience.

Gods, what an idiot she’d been. And really, she had no one to blame but herself. She couldn’t even blame Revenant. He was a meat-eating shark, like he’d said, and she’d expected him to become a vegetarian. Tiger sharks couldn’t change their stripes, and neither could a Shadow Angel.

Of course, vyrm could change their stripes, couldn’t they? All they needed was a blood sacrifice and a few magical chants. Maybe she should have done the ritual her mother wanted her to do. If she had, she’d have mustered up the stones to destroy Lucifer today. Instead, her vyrm was showing, her angel half rising like a phoenix from the ashes of her False Angel aura to give her a conscience.

As a result, she was now standing in Underworld General’s staff lounge telling Eidolon that she’d failed to inject the solarum into Lucifer. Reaver was there, too, listening intently to her every word.

It didn’t matter that no one was angry; their disappointment was even worse.

“I tried,” she said. “I just… couldn’t.”

She couldn’t even lay the blame for her failure on Revenant, no matter how much she wanted to. She’d hesitated from the beginning, and ultimately, it was her fault that Gethel was going to give birth to the evilest of evils.

“We can try again,” Eidolon said. “Reaver can get another dose of solarum —”

“No,” he said roughly, “I can’t. It took hundreds of years to distill just that amount. It was all we had.” He cursed. “There’s got to be another way. Harvester is getting sicker, and I can’t sit by and let it happen.”

“Harvester?” Blas frowned. “What does she have to do with this?”

Eidolon shoved a paper cup under the coffee machine nozzle and mashed a button with his thumb. “Lucifer is drawing energy from his siblings. It’s weakening her. I paid her a house call earlier today… she lost twenty pounds overnight.”

Reaver clenched his fists, and the blue of his eyes turned stormy, like lightning striking the ocean’s surface. “Wraith located two of Satan’s sons and one daughter, and they’re all wasting away. Another reportedly died this morning.”

Oh… oh, gods. If Harvester died, it would be Blaspheme’s fault. Harvester’s, and all fallen angel deaths, would sit squarely on her shoulders, and why? Because she’d been too self-righteous to put an end to a great evil, simply because it couldn’t yet defend itself?

No, that wasn’t entirely true. Lucifer had nearly crushed her skull when she tried to listen to his heartbeat, so what if she had managed to inject him? Would he have been able to lash out? To kill her, even?

No matter what, she should have tried.

“I’m so sorry, Reaver. I didn’t —”

He silenced her with a gesture. “We don’t have time for regrets. We need action. I’m going to scour Sheoul from top to bottom to find Gethel, and I don’t care if I have to battle Satan himself to do it.”

“Reaver, think about —” Eidolon broke off as Reaver vanished. “Son of a bitch. That maniac is going to get himself killed.” He swiped his cup of coffee off the machine platform. “Did you at least get a sample of amniotic fluid?” Wordlessly, she handed him the syringe. “Good. I’ll get an injection prepared for your mother. Can you get her in here this afternoon? I heard she sort of checked herself out.”

“I’ll send her a text right now.”

The door burst open, and Bane stuck his blond head inside the room. “Blas, do you have a minute?”

At Eidolon’s go-ahead nod, she slipped out into the hall with the other Seminus demon. Last night she’d asked him for a favor, and she hoped he was here to tell her he’d done what she’d asked. If so, she owed him ten weekends off.

“Tell me you got the book,” she said, resisting the temptation to cross her fingers like a superstitious twit.

He grinned. “Yep. Come on.”

She followed the towering Sem to the hospital’s Harrowgate. The wall lit up with multicolored map outlines, which he tapped until the door opened into a featureless, dark, cavernous area.

“Um… I thought you said you had it.”

He shrugged, his thick shoulders rolling beneath his blue scrub top. “My moms have it. They wouldn’t give it to me until they met you.” A sheepish grin added a boyish cast to his handsome face. As incubi, all Seminus demons were impossibly hot, but somehow Bane and his brothers took hot to a scorching new level. “Okay, that’s a lie. You have to get it from them.” He patted her on the back as they stepped out of the gate. “Good luck.”

“Wait… your moms?” Despite the lack of light fixtures, a hazy luminosity from above allowed her to see Bane… but nothing else. “As in, more than one?”