Revenant

Ah, his ego loved the stroking. He definitely wasn’t getting dressed now. “I believed I was fallen for five thousand years, give or take a century or ten.” He knocked back the neon-green liquor, relishing the stinging burn down his throat. “Then, a little over three decades ago, Reaver did something bad again. He broke a huge rule and was punished. Want to guess how?”

“Ah… memory loss?”

“Yep. Well, that and he lost his wings. Went to work at your hospital. And here’s the kicker. The agreement Heaven made with Sheoul when we were born said that whatever was done to one of us had to be done to the other. So my memory was wiped. Again.”

The alcohol sting in his throat turned bitter. Breaking rules resulted in chaos and pain and all kinds of shit, and Reaver’s reckless disregard for the rules had done exactly that.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “So you lost five thousand years of memories in an instant?”

He nodded. “Reaver at least knew that he was being punished. Me? One minute I was… ah… doing fallen angel stuff, and the next I was wondering why the hell I was standing in Sheoul’s Horun region, covered in blood, and standing over the body of some vyrm.”

The color faded from Blaspheme’s cheeks. Her physician self must be appalled by the killing Revenant had done.

He poured another drink. “Like I told you earlier, hunting vyrm and other undesirables was my job. I was Satan’s little assassin helper. I didn’t know that at the time. I only remember now.”

He’d been a straight-up badass hell-bent on destruction, and he’d been proud of it. Now, knowing he had Satan’s blood running through his veins, corroding his body and soul like Drano, the memories left him confused. He was evil – how could he not be? But he was also an angel whose mother had loved him.

His fingers curled around the shot glass so hard his hand shook. Fuck, he was lost.

“I wandered around for a year after the second memory wipe, scrounging out a living in Sheoul, turning myself into a hired hand. And then Satan’s minions came for me. He told me the vyrm must have erased my memory before I killed him, and that I had been a fallen angel for thousands of years, blah fucking yadda.”

Blaspheme’s skin was still pale, but some of the color had started to return. Good. He didn’t like seeing her upset.

“And then your memory came back a couple of weeks ago?” she prompted. “How did that happen?”

“Reaver again. You sensing a pattern?” Revenant was struck by an urge to seek out his brother and start another brawl. “He rescued Harvester from Sheoul and saved the realms or some crap. For his actions he was raised to Radiant and given his memory back. And because whatever is done to one of us has to be done to the other —”

“You were turned into a Shadow Angel.”

“You got it.” He raised his glass in a begrudging toast. “To my heroic twin brother and his shiny halo.”

“But why wouldn’t you be a Radiant? I mean, you’re an angel, right?”

The liquor went down smoother this time. “Because there can only be one at any given time. There has to be a Shadow Angel for balance, and Reaver won the hero lottery while I was fed Satan’s blood as an infant. It corrupted me, gave me all of the qualities and abilities of a fallen angel.” He tongued a fang. “Including these.”

“So your inner angel is masked,” Blaspheme mused. “Interesting.” She climbed out of bed and started dressing. What a shame. “You said your mother was imprisoned when she was pregnant. What happened to her after you were born?”

He should have expected the question, but it still stabbed him in the heart. “She died after a couple of decades of torture.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as she fastened her bra. “Did you know her at all?”

“Yeah.” The alcohol in his belly turned sour, and all he wanted now was to vomit. “Can we not talk about this?”

“I should be going anyway.” She tugged on her pants. “We had a deal, remember?”

Yeah, he remembered. And he was kicking himself in the nuts for making it. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He should be; he’d never had a problem letting a female go in the past. But suddenly, he was aching at the thought of parting from her.

It’s that damned False Angel magic.

Of course. Hopefully it would wear off once she was out of his sight. But what if it didn’t? What if she was intentionally enchanting him? That was one of a False Angel’s many methods of finding sustenance. They used their pheromones and seductive skills to enchant, their aphrodisiac powder to seduce, and then they severed ties and gorged on the emotional agony they caused. The more heartbroken the male was, the more energy she took from him. If she was lucky and he died, she feasted.

That wasn’t going to happen to Revenant. He was stronger than that. If Blaspheme thought she could play him, she was going to be brutally disappointed.

He clothed himself in an instant, going with jeans and a black Four Little Ponies of the Apocalypse T-shirt, and then he watched her finish dressing, wondering if she’d make some sort of flirty play to draw him in even further. Sure enough, as she slipped on her shoes, she shot him a teasing smile.

“That was fun.” Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she strutted over to him and drew her finger down his chest, halting at his waistband. “Interesting T-shirt choice.”

“It annoys the Horsemen’s stallions.”