A silent snarl rose up in Rev’s throat. Fuck it. He didn’t need his angelic family. He had… okay, so he didn’t have a family. But hey, as long as he had a warm female in his bed, he didn’t need one.

“I have no desire to be welcomed into Heaven’s loving embrace.” But would it kill them to offer? To at least give him the opportunity to choose for himself? He was an angel, after all, just like all the other haloed pukes. Just like his brother.

Satan’s doubtful smile said he wasn’t buying it. But then, the Prince of Lies was suspicious of everyone. Liars assumed everyone lied. “Then you’ll have no problem proving it to me, right?”

“And if I do have a problem with it?”

“Then you should ask Harvester what happens when someone close to me pisses me off. Now, I’ll ask you again: You’ll have no problem proving your loyalty to me, right?”

Fuck. There wasn’t an inch of Harvester’s body, outside or inside, that Satan and his cronies hadn’t peeled, smashed, cut, macerated, or defiled… and she was his daughter. The only one of his offspring to be conceived while he was still an angel. He’d actually loved her, so what would he do to Revenant, whom he barely tolerated?

“Of course not,” Rev ground out.

“Then here’s the deal, son.” His black gaze lifted to the wall behind Revenant, where hundreds of bone rings hung from hooks.

Halos, they were called, because they’d been cut from the skulls of angels. Revenant’s own mother was up there, hanging in a place of prominence and ultimate insult – from a mounted upside-down crucifix.

“You,” Satan continued, “will bring me the head of an angel. And not some simpering, wimpy Cherubim or Seraphim. I want an angel from the Order of Thrones or higher.”

As far as strategies went, that was brilliant. The moment Rev killed an angel in cold blood, Heaven would close all its doors to Revenant.

What Satan didn’t know was that Heaven hadn’t opened any doors to begin with.

Satan slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair – which, fittingly, had been fashioned from human arm bones. “Your answer.”

Revenant bowed his head. He’d never liked angels anyway. “Your will is mine.”

“Is it?” Satan’s eyes glowed with unfathomable evil as he locked gazes with Rev. “Do not fail me, my son. You’ve seen how I punish traitors, but what I’ve done to them will be child’s play compared to what I’ll do to you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Because taking out a single angel is just the beginning. As a Shadow Angel, you can go places I can’t and take out entire legions of angels. Your power will be my sword, and your primary objective will be to decimate Heaven’s angel population, including my darling daughter, Harvester,” Satan said, and Rev saw his relationship with Reaver go from antagonistic to full-blown Cain and Abel. “You have until Sanguinalia to bring an angel’s head to me.”

Sanguinalia, one of Sheoul’s most important holidays, would take place in a week. Which meant Revenant had seven days to get everything he wanted from Heaven before he killed an angel and confirmed to everyone that he’d deserved to be the twin who was left behind in Sheoul after his mother gave birth.

“Go,” Satan continued. “Take care of Gethel. I want Lucifer to be born healthy and powerful. I’m eager to have him at my side again.”

That fucker. Lucifer had been the biggest bastard, next to Satan, Revenant had ever known. Rev had partied for a week straight after Reseph tore Lucifer apart and sent his soul to Sheoul-gra. Now the dickhead was going to be reincarnated, and in a few short years, he’d replace Revenant as the second-most-prominent being in Sheoul.

Unless…

No. Rev couldn’t go there. If he destroyed Lucifer, his suffering would become legend. Generations of demons would share stories of his misery while they toasted marsh rats around the campfire.

So no, Revenant couldn’t kill Lucifer. Not if he wanted to live.

But someone else… he grinned.

Because Revenant might not be in a position to prevent Lucifer’s birth, but he knew someone who could.

Three

Deva’s surgery, performed by Eidolon and his sister-in-law, Gem, lasted ten hours. Blaspheme had begged to scrub in, but Eidolon had relegated her to “the box,” where she could do nothing but observe through a glass window. She hadn’t doubted that her mother was in the best hands in the world, but she’d still hated being so helpless.

Now, as her mother was being wheeled into post-op, Blaspheme waited anxiously for Eidolon’s surgery report.

He met her in the staff room outside the OR, and the moment she saw the bleak expression on his face, her heart plummeted to her feet.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

The stethoscope around his neck bounced against his broad chest as he walked toward her. Like all sex demons, the black-haired doctor was impossibly gorgeous, something she’d have appreciated on any other day. Something she did appreciate on any other day. He was mated, but Blaspheme wasn’t blind.

“The surgery went well,” he said, a note of compassion softening his matter-of-fact voice.

“But?”

He jammed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “I was able to set her broken arm, repair her lacerated stomach, colon, and liver, and treat the burn on her leg, but I couldn’t use my healing ability. Something interfered with my power.”