Suddenly, a screaming vortex of lightning stretched from the ceiling to the floor, coming down on top of the Dark Lord, swallowing him whole.

“Hurry,” Reaver yelled, and yeah, duh. Nothing was going to hold Satan for long. They had thirty seconds at best before the king of demons burst out of the lightning storm and squashed them like flies.

Clenching his teeth against the pain of his wounds, Revenant shoved to his feet to face Raphael and Gethel, both of whom had come free of their bonds during the battle. Raphael was armed with an elemental sword, which harvested nearby elements to form the blade. Lightning made his blade pretty badass, and as he hacked into Gethel’s shoulder, a blast of power knocked her into the electrical tornado. Cool. Two down, one to go.

Raphael turned on Revenant. “Bastard! You and your whore of a mother should have died down here —”

Revenant’s bellow of rage knocked the archangel off his feet. Rev was there before Raphael hit the ground, and in a single, fluid sweep, he hurled the motherfucker into the vortex to join Satan and Gethel.

“I can’t hold it!” Reaver’s shout was barely audible, eaten by thunder and electric snaps and the furious screams of the three assholes inside the funnel.

Rev limped to Reaver, the hole in his midsection and the deep laceration in his chest running with rivers of blood. He wasn’t healing, and Reaver wasn’t in much better shape. The room spun in sickly crimson and gray blurs as he swung around beside Reaver so they were shoulder to shoulder. Reaching deep, all the way to his soul, he drew power from the realm around him, so much power that he buzzed with it, burned with it, became it.

In his mind, he chanted, visualizing a giant magma crystal box reinforced with Heavenly currents of power. As the crystal trap formed around the three beings, Reaver transferred his energy into it, infusing the thing with another layer of angelic power to create a prison of good and evil unlike anything ever created. Hastily, he looped a thick length of chain around the cube and anchored one end to Heaven and the other to Sheoul. He wasn’t even sure where the ability or idea to create such a thing came from… instinct, the Pruosi book… he didn’t know. All he knew was that he and Reaver had one shot at this, and Revenant would spare no effort.

The lightning died down, but the wind picked up and began to suck in the malevolent atmosphere that permeated the temple. Inky shadows shrieked as they were pulled into the vortex and sent spinning into oblivion.

The building shook and trembled, the floor bucking beneath their feet. Revenant could barely see through the hair that whipped in his face from the wind that would put an EF5 tornado to shame. Furniture, stones, and who the hell knew what else battered him and Reaver as they tried to hold on to the trap and keep it solid.

“I can feel Satan and Lucifer pushing back from inside the box,” Reaver shouted. “We can’t hold it much longer!”

“I know!” Revenant dug deep for every last drop of strength. “Ready?”

“Go!”

Closing his eyes, Rev attempted to repeat the gathering of energy inside him that took place when he’d lost his shit at the archangel meeting. But instead of blowing himself up, he needed to redirect that same power at the trap.

His body buzzed with energy, filling him with drug-like ecstasy until once more it burned. Threatened to sear him to ash.

Time to let loose.

In a whoosh of fiery agony, power exploded from him, engulfing the whirling trap in a nuclear blast. But as the shock wave blew back and Revenant prepared for another wave of pain, it fizzled. A light breeze caressed his face, all that remained of the detonation.

A light. Fucking. Breeze.

“Revenant! Watch out!”

The energy he’d sent at the trap suddenly rebounded, striking him like a speeding train as it reentered his body. He felt his bones snap like toothpicks, his organs liquefy, and his teeth get torn from his gums. He screamed as the power tore him apart… and then put him back together.

Holy shit. Wielding that kind of power was both heavenly and hellish, wonderful and terrible.

And it hadn’t worked to seal the trap. The box was too strong. Ironically, its strength was protecting those inside it, allowing them to reinforce its walls with their own powers.

This was going to fail, and then Revenant and Reaver were going to die.

“Reaver,” he gasped.

“Why the hell are you waiting? Do it again!”

“It’s not going to work!” Revenant’s eyes stung as grit and dust ground into them. Yeah, it was the grit. He wasn’t tearing up. “I’ve got to do it from the inside.”

“The fuck you do!” Reaver’s hair was plastered to his sweat-drenched skin and he was bleeding from dozens of wounds, but his gaze was fierce as he looked at Rev. “Do it like we planned!”

It wouldn’t work, and he knew it. In order to seal the box, he had to damage its occupants and interrupt their flow of power.

“Reaver…” His voice was raw from yelling, and he wasn’t sure his twin could even hear him. “I’m glad we got to be brothers.”

“What? No! Rev, don’t —”

“Keep Blaspheme safe. Tell her… I wish I could have seen her butterfly wings.”

“No!”

Revenant reversed his powers, sucking them back into his body. Every cell vibrated at a level so intense that he saw himself glow with searing heat as he dove into the cage. He had a brief glimpse of Satan and Raphael throwing themselves against the walls, their roars of rage rolling through the air in a constant thunder.