Suddenly, Beep’s words about Hayal not being as honorable as she’d hoped made sense. Each rock transformed into one of the creatures. Another of the Nepaui.
Once they’d taken shape, they shook off the last remnants of whatever they had been.
“How can that come out of a small boulder?” Angel asked.
“There are ten,” Garrett said to Robert. “You have to have a trick up your sleeve. You have to know something.”
“This is new to me, too. I have no idea how to get in there. How to bring this down.”
Before he finished, the battle began. Marika sank to her knees and covered her face, unable to watch. But Garrett couldn’t have torn his gaze away if he’d been paid to. His lungs forgot how to work as the fight began anew.
Almost as fast as Beep, the demon sprinted toward one of them, scaled it in one giant leap, and sliced its throat before it could even react. Then he jumped onto the next one’s back and dispatched it the same way.
By the time he got to the third, however, they were catching on. One of them sliced its claws through the air, shredding the demon’s shoulder. But he didn’t stop fighting.
Beep did much the same, only she moved even faster. Too fast for them to follow. Before they knew it, two of the creatures were falling to their deaths, their spines severed at the neck with her spear, but a third had caught hold of her. Her tiny body in its massive claws. She struggled to break free as it closed its fist.
The force would break her. Would crush her lungs and shatter her bones. The edges of Garrett’s vision darkened, and the whole world tilted sideways until the beast let out an earsplitting scream. Beep fell to the ground. Buckets of blood followed in her wake as the creature held its severed hand.
The girl got her footing, then looked across the field. The demon took down another and had only two left. He slid between one’s legs and sliced through its Achilles heel in much the same way Garrett had.
But the fifth one was waiting for him, its spear at the ready. As the demon slid out of the melee, the creature raised the spear.
Beep jumped to her feet and sent her spear flying. Her aim was so fast and true, the creature had no idea that he’d been killed by a spear through his skull. He sank to his knees just as a spear burst out of Beep’s chest.
Garrett stood in disbelief for a solid minute, unable to make sense of the metal tip protruding from the beloved girl’s sternum. It wasn’t real. None of this was real. He heard someone yelling her name over and over, beating on the barrier with all of their might, and realized it was him.
Beep looked down, her face expressionless, and sank to her knees before collapsing in the wild grasses.
The demon made quick work of the one he’d disabled and looked toward the other side of the field. He stopped as though stunned, as shocked as Garrett, then bolted forward.
He threw the knives effortlessly. They spun like boomerangs and cut the throat of the one whose hand Beep had sliced through, the one whose spear had pierced her tiny chest. The knives spun back to him and he caught them easily as Garrett’s fingers curled around Hayal’s fallen spear.
He raised it and sent it flying across the field toward the last of the ten monsters. The one who’d raised his foot and was about to slam it down onto Beep’s fragile body.
Without looking back, the demon ducked the deadly weapon as it sailed over his head, then he slid to a stop beside Beep. The spear flew true to Garrett’s aim and impaled the creature dead center between its eyes. It stood frozen, as though in disbelief, for several agonizing seconds before it accepted its fate and fell straight back, landing with a loud thud.
Garrett turned toward Beep. Before he could stop the demon, it broke off the tip of the spear then pulled the shaft out through her back, wrenching an air-shattering scream from her.
“No!” Garrett yelled. She would bleed to death even faster.
He raced forward, but it was too late. Blood gushed like a geyser out of her chest. Garrett stopped and looked on in disbelief. The demon had kneeled down and gathered her, unconscious, into his arms.
Garrett’s hand landed on his sidearm as he ran forward. His entire team followed, raised their weapons and trained them on the demon. All except Robert. He would never put Beep in danger. He walked onto the battlefield as though he’d done it a thousand times. He’d been an angel, however. Perhaps he had done it a thousand times.
Garrett motioned for the rest of his team to lower their weapons.
She wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t moving. The demon lowered his head and put his mouth on hers. He exhaled, and Beep’s chest rose, but mouth-to-mouth would do nothing to stop the bleeding.
Garrett started forward again. Robert stopped him with a hand on his arm.
After a moment, the demon stood with her tiny body draped over his arms, watching them from behind a curtain of thick black hair.
“We need to get her to medical,” Garrett said to him, straining to talk past the lump in his throat.
The demon stepped forward, keeping a wary gaze on them. The way he carried her, his every move as gentle as a summer breeze, spoke volumes. He’d been following her to help keep her safe. Only a fool would not be able to see that.
Garrett distanced himself a little more from the maddening crowds to ease the demon’s concern.
Just as he got close enough to take her, Beep’s eyes fluttered open.
Garrett looked down at her, his knees almost buckling, and thanked any and all higher powers for the odd placement of her organs. “You’re lucky your heart is in the wrong place.”
“Or in the right one,” she said weakly, the barest hint of a grin lifting one corner of her pretty mouth.
He went to take her, and she grimaced through a bout of what he could only imagine was agonizing pain. The demon stopped and waited for her to recover before moving again.
When she did, she looked up at him and gasped softly. The gasp was followed by another grimace, but despite what it must’ve cost her, she lifted her hand to his face.
Confused, Garrett took a closer look. Then he blinked as recognition shocked him to his core.
Beep said the name they were both thinking, her voice whisper-soft and as fragile as butterfly wings. “Osh’ekiel.”
He lowered his head, his expression unreadable.
It was him, but it wasn’t. He was more demon and less human since their last encounter. Even so, Garrett recognized the angular shape of his jaw. The arrogant set of his chin. And the eyes. Before he looked away, he saw those deep bronze eyes that had always fascinated him. The things he must have seen over the centuries.
Robert stepped closer just as Osh handed Beep over to Garrett.
“Osh,” Robert said, as stunned as the rest of them.
The minute the girl was out of his bloodied arms, Osh stepped back and slowly dematerialized, soaking in the image of Beep one last time before disappearing entirely like sand on a breeze.
Garrett looked down. The little hellion was unconscious again, so he could move more freely. The hellhounds and Artemis wanted to check on her personally, but they didn’t have time. Despite their whimpers, Garrett jogged to the truck with Beep where Marika and Eric waited with a medical kit. They put her in the back on a blanket and pressed on the wound in her chest.
“How did you do that?” Marika asked him.
He lifted her into Eric’s waiting arms, and asked, “What?”
“You…you broke the barrier.” She grabbed the medical kit and tore it open.
He jumped into the truck and helped Eric place her on a tarp as Donovan and Robert jumped in, too. Donovan tore open Beep’s shirt while Robert applied pressure to her wound even though the bleeding had slowed drastically.
“How did you do that?” Marika asked again, handing Robert a gauze pad. “You broke through it. The barrier. You brought it down.”
Garrett glanced up, but only for a second, just long enough to realize everyone was staring at him like he’d grown an extra head.
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“No. It just vanished.”
“After you broke it,” Robert said. He seemed impressed.
“Well, I have no idea what happened. Eric, can you drive?”
“You got it.” He jumped out of the truck, wiping blood onto his jeans, and hurried to the driver’s side.
“Where are we taking her?” he asked over his shoulder.
Robert answered. “To medical. We can’t take her to a hospital.”
“What?” Marika asked, stunned.
“It’s okay, hon,” Garrett said. “She’s already healing.”
She looked down and nodded, not completely convinced.
Eric drove as fast as he could without jostling his precious cargo too much. Beep remained unconscious the whole way, her body using all of its energy to heal, but she did ramble every so often on the way back.
“Osh’ekiel,” she said in her sleep.
Marika took her hand and squeezed.
Beep smiled. “He found me.”
Chapter Thirteen
You only need to find yourself.
Everything else can be Googled.
—Meme
“It’s definitely blood,” the doc said, handing the bracelet back to Robert. “See those?” she pointed to several tiny, elongated beads. “Those aren’t beads. They’re vials filled with blood. His, I’m assuming.”
“Osh used the bracelet to track her,” Robert said. “To be able to keep an eye on her from anywhere. That’s why he made it.”
“But where has he been?” Garrett asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Hell,” Beep said, still weak, her voice hoarse. It had only been a few hours since they got back, but she’d lost a ton of blood before she began to heal. And she was tiny. She couldn’t have had that much to lose. “He’s been in hell,” she repeated.
Garrett took her hand into his. “Like Lucifer’s hell?”
She took the bracelet back and gazed at it lovingly. “Yes. I could smell it on him.”
“What does that mean?” Garrett asked. “While Charley and Reyes were fighting the Shade demons, he was sent back to hell?”
“Dragged,” she said. “He was dragged back. After all, what does Satan do best?”
“Lie,” Robert said.
She grinned weakly. “Okay, second best.”
Robert lowered his head knowingly. “He takes advantage of every situation. While we were looking to the left, he stole in on the right and dragged that poor kid back to hell.”
“He only looked like a kid,” Garrett reminded him. “He is centuries old.”
Robert sank into the chair beside Beep. “But he was a slave in hell, Swopes. An escaped one, prophesied to be by Elwyn’s side during the uprising. To help bring Lucifer down. Lucy does not forgive easily.”
Garrett hadn’t forgotten. His son had been prophesized about in a very similar way. “What you’re saying is, it probably wasn’t a day at the spa for him.”
“That kind of torture…it changes a man. Even a Daeva.”
“How did you do it?” Beep asked Garrett for the seventeenth time.
He laughed softly. “I don’t think I did. I think when Hayal died, the barrier came down of its own accord.”
She shook her head. “Elemental light doesn’t work like that.”
He took her hand. “I don’t know what to tell you, sweet pea. I mean, Osh got in. How did he do it?”
“That’s number 1,248.”
“Twelve forty-eight?”
“Yes. My list of questions for when I finally get to talk to Osh’ekiel.”
“That’s a lot of questions.”
“You should see the list I have for my parents.”
He laughed. All Garrett remembered was the spear protruding out of Beep’s chest. The others told him how it’d happened. How he’d hit the barrier until it cracked and light streamed out of it like lightning. As though it short-circuited. They swore the lightning went through him, but he never felt it.
The doc finished going over Beep’s chart, seemingly oblivious to their conversation, and gave Beep a quick once-over. “How are you doing, love?”
“Good. Can I go home now?”
Her face softened. “You are home, sweetheart.”
“Oh, right.”
“But you can have all the ice cream you want.”
The transformation from pre-ice-cream comment to post-ice-cream comment was nothing short of miraculous. The mere mention of the creamy dessert seemed to breathe new life into her patient. “Really?”
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Did you hear that?” Beep asked both men. “You’re my witnesses if Grandma asks.”
Garret chuckled. “Okay, but if it comes to fisticuffs, I’m crying off.”
* * * *
“Garrett, we can hardly get married when you’re still in love with another woman.” Two weeks later, Marika lay in Garrett’s arms. The lovely ones with all the muscles and tattoos.
They were in his suite with Zaire asleep in what used to be Garrett’s guest room. They’d moved in, but he kept insisting that they get married. So, she kept coming up with excuses why they couldn’t. She’d just gotten her latest test results back.
Their situations were turning out startlingly similar to his growing up. Girl tricks man into getting her pregnant, then she dies and leaves child to face the world alone. Only Zaire would have Garrett, and he was a fantastic father.
“What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about?” he asked her. “I haven’t dated another woman in years.”
“Her,” she said, trying to coax the sad truth out of him.
“Her?” he asked.
“Charley.”
He choked on absolutely nothing and coughed for a solid minute.
“Charley? As in Davidson? Charles? As in the wife of Reyes Farrow, the son of Satan, the guy who is a god and is now some kind of celestial space matter floating around us and being all…not here? That Charley?”
“Precisely.”
“And here I thought you were the stable one in this relationship. The sensible one.”
“Garrett, you’ve been in love with her for years. You were in love with her when we met. I knew she would be my only obstacle, because the love, the romantic love, was unrequited.”
“This is better than going to the movies.”
“She loved you, Garrett. You need to know that. So, so much. I saw it every time she looked at you.”
“With contempt and derision?”
“And you…well, you loved her, too. Deeply.”
“Yes. Like I love my truck. Or my favorite sitcom.”
“I just think—wait. You have a favorite sitcom?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I do.”
“What is it?”
For some reason, it was important to her. So naturally, he refused to answer. “I’ll tell you what,” he said instead. “You guess, and if you guess it right, I get to kiss you wherever I want.”
Excitement at the thought bubbled up like champagne fizzing inside her.
“Every time you guess wrong, you have to kiss me wherever I want.”
“Absolutely not. You’ll cheat.”
“I would never.”
“Please.”
“Okay, I’ll write it down, and you can keep it. But you can’t look. That way, you’ll know if I cheat.”
“Yeah, after the fact.”
“Fine. If I cheat, I’ll cook you my famous low-carb cinnamon pancakes for breakfast.”
“With bananas?”
“With bananas. Although that kind of screws up the low-carb genius of it all.”
“Deal,” she said before he changed his mind. She reached over him and grabbed a pen and paper from his nightstand.
“Don’t look,” he warned, so she turned her head. Reluctantly.
After a few seconds, he folded the paper and handed it to her. “Okay, guess away, but get ready for deep—oh so deep—exploration.
She wiggled in anticipation. “Well, it’s probably something manly. Like Full House or The Golden Girls.”
He laughed softly and made a circle in the air with his index finger, indicating he wanted her to turn over, so he could get at her backside, but he stopped mid-twirl and frowned over at her. “What did you say?”
“Full House or The Golden Girls.”
“What the f—? Did you look at the paper?”
Her jaw fell to her chest. “Are you kidding me?” She tore open the note. “Your favorite sitcom is The Golden Girls?” She fairly screeched it; she was in such disbelief.
“You looked at the paper.”
“I most certainly did not.”
“Then you watched me write it, and you figured out what I wrote by the movement of the pen.”
“Is that even a real thing?”
“Yes. And if not, how did you do that?”
She shrugged. “It’s my favorite, too.”
“Really?” he asked, seeming surprised.
A soft knock sounded on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” Garrett said.
“No, wait,” Marika squeaked, then ducked her head under the covers.
She peeked out in time to see Elwyn walk in carrying a breakfast tray. “Surprise!”
The girl’s enthusiasm was contagious. And she looked amazing.
“I can’t believe you’ve healed so quickly,” Marika said as Elwyn put the tray on their nightstand. “You look like a different girl.”
“It’s the ice cream.”
“You think?” Garrett asked, his grin just as infectious.
“I brought Marika orange juice.”
“Oh, thank you.” She sat up, careful to keep the covers at a decent level.
She watched as Elwyn took out a scalpel and cut a thin line across her wrist. Marika gasped as she put three drops of blood into Marika’s glass then stirred it up with a spoon.
She handed it to her and said, “Drink.”
Marika didn’t take it. “Oh, gosh, I am stuffed. I couldn’t fit another drop.”
The girl, so wise beyond her years, smiled patiently. “I have always loved you.”
“Elwyn, I’ve always loved you too.”
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