by Jane Hinchey
“Where are Gabriel and Michael?” Dacian asked. “I should check in before I get dragged to HR again.” He clapped a hand over his mouth and looked from me to God and back again, as if just realizing what he’d said.
“He knows everything,” I assured Dacian, patting the chair to my left. “Come sit. I assume you wanted Dacian here for a reason?” I directed my next words at Dad.
“Michael and Gabriel are no longer in Heaven, nor do they hold positions of power at Angel Towers,” Dad told him. “Instead, I want to talk to you about a promotion.”
“Oh?” Dacian squeaked, then, adjusting his collar, said in a lower tone, “Oh?”
Dad smiled. “I would like to offer you the position of Vice President of Defense. You’ve practically been doing the job anyway, and there is no one more worthy than you. You will be directly responsible for Heaven’s armies and defense. You’ll also receive the appropriate remuneration. Interested?”
“I would be honored.” Dacian bowed his head again, and I bit back a snort. He deserved this. He’d earned it.
“What about the Vice President of Invention?” I asked.
“I will recruit for that position, as well as your old role, Lucifer—Vice President of Galactic Expansion. It’s time for some new blood and new direction.”
“That’s what you used to do, Lucy?” Levi asked. “Vice President of Galactic Expansion?”
“Yup. I looked after housing, development and population control in Heaven, and I supervised planetary exploration.”
“Wow, that’s…huge.”
I grinned. “Not as huge as being the CEO of Hell.”
“Ashliel would make an admirable Vice President of Galactic Expansion,” Dad commented.
I shot him a look. “Oh, no. No poaching my staff. Plus, Ashliel loves it in Hell. I doubt she’d want to return here.”
“Have you asked her?”
“Dad, don’t push me on this. Post your vacancies. If she wants to apply, she can, but you are not to approach her and offer her the position. Understood?”
“You’ve gotten pushy,” he grumbled, but the smile turning up his lips told me he wasn’t angry.
We lapsed into silence, each lost in our own thoughts, until Dacian turned to me and said, “Your energy is still off.”
“What?” I was surprised. I felt normal, despite my mood being all over the place, but then that wasn’t surprising, given all that had happened recently.
“Haven’t you noticed it, Levi?” Dacian asked him.
Levi shrugged. Wait? Had he noticed and not said anything? Why? “Levi?”
“It isn’t Levi you should be asking, my child. It is your father.”
We all gasped, heads spinning toward the female voice that came from behind us. I hadn’t heard the elevator arrive.
“Lilith!” Dad stood up so fast his chair toppled over. My eyes drank in the raven-haired woman before us.
Mother.
20
“Hello, Lucifer, my darling.” She strolled in, tall and elegant and so, so beautiful. I was lost for words. Dacian lunged to his feet and took up a protective stance in front of Dad.
“It’s okay, Dacian.” Dad rested his hand on Dacian’s shoulder. “Stand down.”
Dacian didn’t move a muscle, ignoring Dad’s instructions. Lilith chuckled.
“Insubordinate little angel.” She winked at Dacian. “I like him.”
“Lilith.” The words came out choked, and Dad cleared his throat.
I glanced at him to see his eyes glassy, full of tears. He still loved her. After everything that had happened, he still loved her. I turned to look at her, this stunning woman who had given birth to me. While technically I knew she was my mother, I didn’t feel that connection with her. She was a vaguely familiar stranger.
“No hug for your mommy, Lucifer?” She opened her arms wide, waiting for me to rush into them. I stayed seated, turning my head to gaze instead at the table top.
“Well,” she puffed, “that’s disappointing. But not entirely surprising.” I felt her pass behind us, her hands trailing over the back of our chairs. Levi was ramrod straight next to me, barely breathing. I had so many questions, yet couldn’t voice a single one.
“And Elohim, my love.” The purr of her voice had a cold edge beneath it, and I winced. She was the only one who called Dad by his given name. It felt strange to hear it again. “Have you missed me?”
She had almost reached Dacian, and I suddenly felt afraid for him. Lilith was powerful. I hadn’t realized it before—had no clue, since I barely remembered her—but like me, she was the daughter of gods. She wasn’t without strength.
I pushed myself to my feet, and she spun, a hand catching my chin as she examined my face. She moved in close, and I could feel her breath against my face. I bit back the urge to cringe. This wasn’t the reunion I’d daydreamed about as a child.
“Release her, Lilith.” Dad found his voice, his tone demanding once more.
“She grew into a beauty.” Lilith smiled, dropping her hand and turning her attention back to my father. “Where are my sons?”
He ignored her question. “Why are you here?”
“You knew I would come,” she chided him, tutting as she about-faced and slowly, deliberately walked the length of the table until she was standing opposite my father, the length of the table between them.
Without word or warning, she threw a fireball at him. He deflected easily, before any of us could react.
“Really, Lilith? Stop with the parlor games.” He shook his head, as if deeply disappointed in her. Which I supposed he was. Levi and I eyed her warily.
“Stop? Oh, my darling, the fun is just beginning! You took longer than I expected to get out of Hell.” She shrugged, her red lips curled up in a smirk. “But now that you are, well, let’s just say there’s more to come.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask me that?” Her anger rolled through the room, and it felt familiar to me. I was my mother’s daughter, after all. No wonder I was so suited to running Hell. Fire was in my blood. “You forced me into this, Eli. I left my family for you. I turned my back on my own heritage for you. And what did I get in return? I was ignored and turned away, time after time, when I begged for your love. You were too busy. You always had one more thing to do. Once I’d delivered the children you so desperately wanted, I was nothing to you. Nothing. And I couldn’t go home. I was banished for choosing you over them. You left me with nothing. And now that is what I shall leave you with.”
“Lilith, I’m sorry. So sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know, ever believe. But I loved you, I truly did. Still do.”
“You love the idea of having a dutiful wife,” she spat, the air thick with tension. Thunder rolled outside, so familiar to my own angry rumblings that I shivered. Seeing her after all this time was so surreal, yet here she was, bristling with hurt and rage.
“No. I tried to contact you. Over and over again, I tried. But your family blocked me and destroyed any gifts I sent.”
“But you never came in person, did you? Never cared enough to come yourself. Instead you sent messages, a token gift or two.”
“I couldn’t get away. I was—” He stopped himself, realizing what he’d been about to say. He’d been too busy creating Hell. His marriage had been falling apart and he’d made Hell his priority. Not his wife. Ouch. No wonder she was pissed.
Her chin tilted in apparent triumph. “You were saying?”
“What can I do to fix this?” he whispered, the agony apparent in his voice. He truly did love her. A love so great that hundreds of years apart hadn’t dimmed it, yet that love had destroyed her. My mother was so full of rage that I wondered if she even had the capacity to love anymore. And my heart ached at the thought.
“Fix it?” She laughed. A crack of lightning struck the table, leaving a black scorch mark. “You can’t fix it. I will fix it. By destroying you—and all you hold dear.”
He sucked in a breath. “You
would harm our children?”
Again, she laughed, only this time without the lightning. “See? This is what you do. Why would you think I would harm my own children? The children you kept from me? The children that I gave birth to and love? Oh no, my dear Eli, it is you I will harm. I will turn them against you, make them see that the foolish love they think they have for you is nothing but a lie.”
“I do love them, as I love you. With all my heart.”
“You can keep saying that until your dying breath, and I will never believe you. Now where are my sons? I demand to see them!”
“They’re not here.”
“Summon them,” she demanded, waving a perfectly manicured hand through the air.
“I will not.” I was surprised he’d defied her.
“Very well. I will start with Lucifer. She will be the most challenging, after all.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“You have always been your father’s daughter. Gabriel and Michael were mommy’s boys, but you? You were daddy’s girl. But you need to see him for the flawed man he is, Lucifer.”
“We all have flaws. No one is perfect,” I replied. I really didn’t want to get dragged into this, but if their disagreement was going to put Earth in jeopardy, then I’d do my best to help them resolve their differences. Only right now, Mom wasn’t looking like she wanted to mend fences. She wanted to burn them down.
“You don’t know, do you?” She tapped a finger against her ruby lips, eyes running from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and back again.
“Know what?”
“Has anyone else noticed it?” Ignoring me, she looked at Levi, then Dacian. Dacian shook his head, but Levi lifted one shoulder.
“What?” I whispered to him, but he wouldn’t look at me. He had his eyes trained on my mother and his body was so tense it hurt to look at.
Lilith tipped back her head and laughed, long and loud. “This is too easy!” she chuckled.
“What? What is going on? Someone tell me!” I had that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Tell her, Levi,” my mother commanded him.
He shook his head. “No.”
“What? Levi, what is it? What don’t I know? And how do you know?”
“I see your reasoning,” Mom said to him, then turned her attention back to my dad. “How about you? Care to tell your daughter the truth about what you did?”
Silence.
“Dad?” I whispered. This was bad. This was so, so bad. I knew my world was about to change irrevocably, and I was powerless to stop it.
A tear slid silently down my father’s cheek, and my own eyes welled in response. What had he done? What was so bad he couldn’t tell me? That Levi wouldn’t tell me?
“Very well.” Mother sighed in mock irritation just as Dad yelled out, “No!” She ignored him. “Lucifer, your father took your child from you,” she said calmly, without inflection.
“What? What child? What are you talking about? I don’t have a child.” Levi shuffled from foot to foot next to me, and Dad dropped his head to his hands on the table, sobbing. What was going on? Dacian looked as confused as I was.
“When he took your magic to heal himself, you were pregnant. He took your child to sustain his own life,” Mother said.
I stopped breathing. Moving. I couldn’t so much as blink. I’d been pregnant. How had I not known I was pregnant? Then it began, like a movie playing in my mind. The lovemaking in my office, when Levi had bitten me, marked me like I’d marked him. I saw it now, that tiny spark of life he’d planted in my womb. My hand automatically went to my abdomen, but as much as I searched for it, I knew it was gone. She was right. He’d taken my baby.
“Lucy?” Levi slid his arm around my shoulders, but I shrugged him off, for the biggest betrayal of all was that he’d known. On trembling legs, I stepped away from him.
“Lucy, please.” Now he was begging, like my father had been begging my mother only minutes earlier. I looked at her now, expecting to see triumph on her face. Instead I only saw compassion. Who better to understand the loss of a child than a woman who’d lost her own?
“You knew,” I whispered to Levi, my voice broken. So broken it hurt to talk. “How?”
“My connection to you. Our bond. I sensed our baby’s arrival. I wanted you to discover it for yourself, so I didn’t say anything. Then, when your dad used your magic to heal himself, I knew it was gone. I knew what he’d done, whether it was intentional or not—and Lucy, I’d like to think it was unintentional—I figured, why tell you? You hadn’t known you were pregnant. You were only pregnant for a few brief hours. Why upset you more than you already were?”
“That’s why your energy has been off,” Dacian muttered. I looked at him without seeing him. At least he hadn’t known. At least he hadn’t kept this from me.
“You knew, though, didn’t you, Dad? When you sucked the life out of me, you knew you’d taken my baby’s life.”
He continued to cry, head down on the table. It was all the answer I needed.
“Lucy.” Levi reached out to me and I stepped away. I was frozen inside and I knew that when I defrosted, I was going to be in pain, more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life. She’d been right. My mom had been right.
“Come, sweetheart.” She held out her arms to me. I walked into them, too numb to cry. She wrapped me in her embrace and she smelled so familiar. I closed my eyes and clung to her.
“Lucy! Please. Don’t do this. I’m sorry,” Levi pleaded with me. But I couldn’t look at him. I’d been wrong. The ice in me was starting to melt, and in its place came red-hot anger. I pulled away from my mother to look her in the eye.
“You haven’t won me,” I told her. “You knew this would hurt me beyond anything. You did it purely to hurt Dad. Well, congratulations, you’ve succeeded. But in destroying him, you’ve destroyed me.”
“You deserved to know, Lucifer,” she said defensively.
“Yes. I did. And it should have been by you.” I turned to my father, pointing at him. He sat up, his face wet. “That’s why you didn’t stick around, isn’t it? You ran! You ran hard and fast so you wouldn’t have to face the truth of what you’d done!”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t realize I’d taken your child until I felt it—her. But know that she is a part of me now. She is safe.”
“Safe? Are you fucking kidding me? She isn’t with me, in me, where she is meant to be! And you!” I turned my rage on Levi. “You knew. All this time you knew and didn’t say a word. My mood swings. My strange energy pattern. You knew.” The last was said on a sob, my own tears falling thick and fast. I spun, turning my back on them all.
I felt him behind me, his hand coming down on my shoulder, trying to pull me into his embrace. No! Never again. I threw him away from me, not caring when I heard the table smash where he landed on it.
“Do not touch me. Do not speak to me. I don’t want to see you—any of you—ever again.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was as if a stranger were speaking.
I didn’t know if this was what my mother had intended when she arrived in Heaven, but as I departed, angry red clouds sending even angrier red bolts of lightning into Heaven, I was beyond caring. I was no longer interested in her story, in her and Dad’s marital strife, or in her quest for so-called vengeance. I didn’t care anymore, about anything.
I’d been betrayed by everyone I held dear, betrayed in the worst way. And I’d lost my baby, the baby I hadn’t known about, and my heart shattered in my chest at that loss. As I flew back to Hell, there was one thing clear in my mind.
Come hell or high water, they would pay.
Epilogue
Levi
Lucy flung me across the room, and I grunted as I smashed through the heavy wooden table. I couldn’t blame her. If I were her, I’d fucking kill me. My own heart hurt at the pain I’d seen in her eyes. She’d been shattered. Ripped apart. And here I was, saying trite words like “I’m sorry
.” Fuck, this was a mess of epic proportions.
Dacian held out a hand to help me up from the remains of the table, and I accepted. His face revealed nothing, and although I knew his loyalties lay with Lucy—and rightly so—I was glad he hadn’t taken it upon himself to kick my ass. I got the feeling he was reserving that right for Lucy.
“Well, that didn’t go as expected, but the result was spectacular, wouldn’t you say?” Lilith crowed in triumph once Lucy had departed.
No one answered. We all must have been shocked that she didn’t seem to care about the pain she’d just brought down on her own daughter.
“You think I don’t care about her?” she said, as if she’d read our minds. Maybe she had. “That’s where you’re wrong. I love her as only a mother can. You both lied to her, continuously, to save your own sorry hides. So don’t go blaming me for this. If she’d known the truth it wouldn’t have worked, now, would it?”
She spun on her heel and left. I looked from Dacian to God and back again. I had no idea what to say. God was a mess. While he’d stopped sobbing, tears still leaked from his eyes, and I looked away, uncomfortable at his distress. I briefly wondered if I should be angry about what he’d done, but a part of me had always known he hadn’t absorbed our child on purpose. Desiccated, he’d drawn on Lucy’s magic like a man dying of thirst.
I should have been furious with him, but the newly-developed demon side of me was keeping me level-headed. This wasn’t his fault. Could he have handled it better? Shit, yeah, but then again, the same could be said for me. I should have told Lucy right away when I sensed she was carrying our child. I don’t know why I hadn’t. But for some reason, I’d wanted to let her discover our child on her own. Perhaps I wanted her to surprise me with the news? I didn’t really have an answer.
“I’m sorry,” God croaked, reaching out a shaking hand to me. I took it and pulled him into my arms, thumping his back in an awkward embrace.