Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (5 page)

Nate struggled against Deacon’s hold, desperate to be upright and stop the relentless pounding in his head.

“Maybe a shot of juice would make him travel-worthy?” Raguel offered. “His melon is dented pretty good, but it would at least keep him from dying in his sleep.”

“Nice, Ragu. Like he needs to worry about that,” Ruth chided.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to move!” Nate tried to rise to his feet again, then turned his head and yakked into a quickly produced trash can instead.

“Yep, that’s a concussion all right. Who’s off duty tonight?”

Ouriel made his way to the front of the huddle. “I am, boss. Dare and I got meal detail tonight.”

“Try to heal him, Oreo. He didn’t care for my energy the last time I tried to help him, and I can’t risk being depleted if we’re about to face Camael. Dare, you’re back on duty.”

The reapers backed away, leaving Ouriel plenty of room to work his reaper Reiki magic.

“Careful, Oreo. Don’t overdo it. We don’t want to short-circuit anything.”

Ouriel’s hands began to glow with the green light Nate had learned to associate with healing. Placing his palms on either side of Nate’s head, Ouriel pushed the warm light into him and for a split second, he could feel it fill his skull like candlelight in a jack-o’-lantern.

Nate chuckled.

“Think that’s enough, Oreo. Our boy here seems to be feeling better,” Deacon warned.

Ouriel withdrew his hands and retreated into the small crowd of on-looking reapers. Nate scanned the faces and breathed a sigh of relief, happy his eggs weren’t scrambled and that the pounding had subsided.

The momentary feeling was quickly replaced with mounting anxiety. They needed to go. Now.

There was one of them he trusted implicitly to be his immediate backup. He looked at Deacon. “You got my back?”

“Absolutely. You heard the man. Foster and Stearns, people. We’ll see you there.”

Bo nudged his head under Nate’s arm and helped him to his feet. Nate’s fingers curled into the scruff of his neck and the three of them flashed to the now empty alley.

Nate didn’t know which was worse: the screams emanating from the bar or the laughter he heard underneath them.

Maeve’s laughter.

Chapter Six

Wait.” Deacon grabbed Nate’s arm and pulled him away from the steel door.

“You hear that shit? We can’t wait.” Nate drew his short sword from the vertical scabbard along his back.

“We need a plan. When we walk through that door, we can’t just start slicing and dicing this time. The demons are going to look the same as the civilians. We need time to recon the situation.” Deacon drew his scythe and held it tight against his leg. “We need a distraction.”

Bo growled low and bared his teeth at the door.

Deacon nodded at the dog. “How ‘bout we send Bo in first? He can smell demons through the door already. He won’t have any trouble picking them out for us.”

Nate stroked the beast’s head. The last thing he wanted was for the dog to get injured, but he was a
hellhound
, for God’s sake. He’d probably outlive them all.

“All right.” Bo licked his hand in agreement. “Then what?”

“Then we keep them occupied until our reinforcements arrive. After that…we clean house.”

“And Maeve?”

“If we can capture her and somehow render her unconscious, it will buy us some time to figure out how to expel Camael without hurting her in the process.”

“Time is wasting. Let’s go.”

The melee inside the bar reached a crescendo as Deacon opened the door and Bo slunk through, his head and chest low to the ground, though still as high as Nate’s upper leg when he followed behind him.

The second Nate spotted Maeve,
the
plan
left his brain. He forgot to even worry about Bo. His one, all-consuming thought was to reach Maeve. Without even processing the pleas of the remaining bar clientele, he edged around the main dance floor where the demons had herded them like sheep, then zigzagged through the maze of overturned tables and chairs. His boots peeled from the sticky floor covered in spilled beer, mixed drinks and worse things with each step.

He felt like he was trudging through quicksand in slow motion, almost as if he were still in a dream, but this time, all of his senses were firing. The dank smell of vomit, sweat and booze filled the dark bar. It was the smell of all bars. It was the smell of desperation.

Nate didn’t hesitate as he crossed the last few feet to Maeve and when she turned to face him, amusement animated her face as her mouth tipped into a gruesome smile.

Maeve, but not Maeve.

His body began to hum with anticipation. He felt his aura manifest before he saw it—an electric blue cloud of color that turned Maeve’s amusement into fear. Whether it was her reaction or Camael’s, he didn’t know.

He reached for her.

Maeve turned her gaze to the floor in front of her and he heard the floorboards groan then crack. A portal was opening. The demons abandoned their mission and pushed through the crowd to stand along the thin fissure, riding the hardwood surf as it spread open. Six inches. Twelve.

The smell of sulfur steamed from the fissure.

The still-souled bar patrons coughed and gagged in the stench as they stumbled toward the red exit sign at the back door just as it opened, revealing the rest of the Authority. The team filed in like S.W.A.T., making straight for the demons who were now separated from the rest, courtesy of Bo.

Without thinking, Nate tackled Maeve to the ground and all hell broke loose.

A bright, electric-blue force field encompassed them both and the chaos around them fell away as Maeve’s Reiki light latched onto Nate like a lifeline. Maeve fought and struggled beneath him for her weapon. Involuntarily, he continued to draw in her energy in great waves. He watched an internal struggle play out across her face as she fought Camael for control.

Digging deep, he began to recite the one exorcism incantation he knew. The one that had worked on Kylen’s demon.

“
Ex is vir everto, Camael, solvo is humanus vacuus vulnero physical vel mental, ex is vir nunquam ut reverto ut alius victus res a vomica super vos ut nunquam iterum reperio refugium in terra plagiaries
.”

An icy chill filled their electric blue bubble and his breath chuffed out in small white clouds as he continued to chant. Maeve flailed and clawed at him, tearing his clothes and skin in her struggle, but she couldn’t penetrate the bubble. Nate watched as the Authority fighters dispatched the demons in silent warfare, carefully avoiding the partially opened portal.

After Nate’s third recitation of the verse, the light around them blazed, then arced from her heart to his, and an invisible fist closed inside the center of his chest in a brief but sizzling compression, preventing his heart from beating.

He was dying.

Maeve’s energy filled him, racing through his body in shafts of fire until he was sure he would burst into flames. Then he saw the first tendrils of oily black smoke ooze from the center of her chest. Her heart chakra.

Camael was abandoning his host.

Fear crawled up Nate’s spine as he brought himself up to his knees beside Maeve. Camael wouldn’t willingly leave her, not while her body lived.

So she was dying, too.

Camael’s essence continued to stream out of Maeve, pierced through the blue energy field and into the partially opened portal, filling it with a smoldering roil of black fog. Maeve lay boneless and unanimated. Seconds later her chest rose several inches from the floor and a smaller gray stream followed in Camael’s wake as he slipped into the portal and vanished.

Camael was stripping her soul on his way out.

Nate closed his eyes and reinforced the aura field, actively drawing forth Maeve’s energy this time, hoping beyond hope her soul would follow the powerful flow. There was no way in Hell Camael was taking her with him again, not any part of her.

Closing his eyes, he visualized the stream of gray flowing into him and willed her soul to him.

There was no reason for him to believe it would work. He wasn’t a reaper.

Pressure built against his chest and when he opened his eyes, he realized her soul was pressed against him. It couldn’t seem to break through. He reached for Maeve’s body and took her hand in his, sparking another arc of power. Instinctively, he opened his mouth to receive her soul.

The soul streamed into him, drawn inside like he was a vacuum, and pummeled against its new restrictions like a caged beast. Maeve’s body remained still as stone beside him and the last of her light extinguished, allowing the sounds of the bar to return to his senses.

But there were no sounds.

The bar was silent as a grave as the Authority reapers stood and gaped at Nate.

***

“Somebody want to explain to me what just happened?” Zachriel asked, toeing his boot at the severed head of the host before him.

“Looks like Nate just found his mojo.” Deacon approached him cautiously, hands out in a supplicating, calming gesture.

Bo moved to Nate’s side and growled a low, rumbly warning at Deacon.

Nate looked from the unconscious Maeve to the reapers and back again.

What the hell had happened?

He reached for Maeve’s neck, feeling for a pulse. It was faint and irregular, but it was there. Thank God.

He pulled her head and shoulders into his lap as Bo edged nearer, snugging up against him, literally guarding his back. Nate glanced around the bar at the remaining carnage. Dozens of beheaded demons and dead humans lay scattered across the floor, but no wanderers or living humans remained in the bar. Samkiel must have already gathered the wanderers and ferried them to the Purgatory holding area. The other reapers would clean up the bodies.

He could only imagine what tomorrow’s headlines would be as the survivors’ stories made it into the press. There would be no putting the genie back into the bottle now.

He hoped he hadn’t been too late for Maeve.

Maeve didn’t stir other than the faint breath that passed her parted lips. Nate had a ridiculous urge to kiss those lips, but he resisted. Most of the Authority still gaped at him and the rest of the bar stank of demon.

Wrong time, wrong place was an understatement.

He gathered Maeve into his arms and rose to his feet. She weighed nothing and her body was cold against his. She was practically a wraith. A shudder ran up his spine. Since she was as un-souled as one of the wanderers, that thought was a little too close to home.

“Dare, perhaps you could take Maeve to Purgatory. See Rashnu, no one else. He’ll find her an appropriate place to…rest,” Deacon said.

Dare stepped forward to relieve Nate’s burden, but stopped when Nate felt his chest vibrate with a warning growl of his own.

“Nate?” Deacon asked.

“He’s not taking her to Purgatory. She’s mine. My partner. My responsibility.”

“You reaped her soul, Nate.”

“She’s not dead.”

“She wouldn’t want to live this way, Nate.” Kylen flanked around Nate’s side, but stopped when Bo turned to face him, baring his teeth.

“You of all people, Kylen, should understand why she’s not going anywhere,” Nate said.

“I never lost my soul, Nate.” Kylen took a step closer.

“Neither has she. I’m holding it for her. That’s all.”

“Dare?” Deacon cut his gaze to Dardariel.

“One holding cell is the same as the next I suppose. But she can’t be left alone.”

Deacon scrubbed a hand down his face, shaking his head. “This is a terrible idea. Camael may be gone, but he’ll find another body, then another. At least he won’t be riding a reaper anymore, though, which means we have another chance to shut this shit down.”

“Tell us what to do, boss.” Leo walked to the edge of the jagged, still-open abyss and looked in.

Nate heard the wail of sirens in the distance heading toward the bar.

“The rest of you…clean up this mess. Nate, take Maeve home. For now. We’ll talk more there.”

Bo pushed up against Nate, his head pressed through the crook of his arm, resting in Maeve’s lap. A bright light filled the bar as Dare and Ragu gathered the decapitated bodies in their reaper glow and dissipated.

It sure beat burning the bodies. Another one of Nate’s past duties.

Nate concentrated on his trailer and willed them into the consecrated subway. As exhausted as he was, the room shimmied and wavered much longer than usual before he felt the pull.

What had he done?

Chapter Seven