Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) Read Free Page B

The nameplates attached to the various stone urns and boxes hadn’t been discernable in the darkness. There were hundreds of cemeteries dotting the Arkansas countryside, twenty-eight in Meridian alone. She could be anywhere.
    Nate took some comfort in knowing she was still nearby, relatively speaking, and not in Hell. He’d been to Hell before, and he didn’t need a repeat performance. The only thing that could drag him back there was if he had a snowball’s chance of bringing Maeve back with him, alive and without Camael. But he knew that fighting Camael on his home turf would be a suicide mission. Camael commanded legions of demons in Hell on behalf of Lucifer and now thousands on Earth.
    Here. In Meridian.
    With a population just north of half a million, the initial demon impact hadn’t been noticed immediately, but now? After an entire bar clientele had been obliterated tonight, the city’s finest wouldn’t be able to contain the collateral damage any longer.
    Nate dragged a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes as his other hand twisted his sheet into a tortured ball. His stomach growled as his sight adjusted to the pitch-black interior of the trailer.
    How many meals had he slept through?
    Still wired from his dream, he went through the motions of battle prep and was dressed and armed in record time.
    When he pushed his trailer door, it met with immediate resistance. A tuft of black fur curled around the edge of the door, and then a fist-sized black nose followed as Bo rose from his guard position in front of Nate’s trailer door. A smile curled up the corner of Nate’s mouth. He was starting to dig that dog. The dumb beast had better not get himself killed in all this mess. That was, if a hellhound could be killed.
    Seemed like every other damn thing around here was immortal, or nearly so. Everything except for him. He was plain old vanilla human compared to the rest of this motley crew. Well, vanilla with some sprinkles maybe. A human with benefits. A human deluxe. A human… Oh, shut the hell up already .
    He stroked Bo’s ears and was rewarded for the gesture with a hot, pink tongue snaking around his wrist, leaving a Pacific-banana-slug-sized trail of drool along his arm.
    Nice.
    Wiping the dog sludge onto his black tactical pants, he made his way to the shared kitchen in the growing darkness. Now that the leaves had fallen from the trees, there was no ground foliage to hinder his view. His eyes followed the landscape behind the house, up the Ozarks Mountains to the horizon and the last vestiges of the setting sun.
    Another night of hunting ahead of him.
    Another chance to find Maeve.

Chapter Three
    Camael had rested his still-new body for long enough and was up and moving again. It took an ungodly expenditure of energy to open a portal to Hell. He was just as spent as this body, or he wouldn’t have stopped to rest for the night, particularly not in this dank crypt. He was far too high on his success to want to take a break. Unfortunately, rest had been very necessary and a vexing concession of his current condition.
    Meridian National Cemetery was the closest place to downtown where he could seek respite after wreaking his beautiful chaos. He could have traveled through the fresh Hell portal he’d opened for the demons, but his lingering angel essence made it agonizing for him. The last time he had tried it after possessing Maeve’s body, had led to several days of painful recovery in his suite in Hell. Thankfully Maeve’s body was unaffected, but his lingering angel essence had been fried. It had felt like he was being skinned alive.
    Recovery was pure torture.
    Not a problem for the demons since they were born for this, their essence woven from the very fabric of Hell. They shed their hosts as soon as they arrived and then awaited their next opportunity to arise topside. Camael, on the other hand, didn’t have time for another long recovery. He wanted to preserve this body for as long