Chapter 45
Alex froze, her hand on the kitchen light switch, blinking against the glare at the woman pouring water into the teapot at the counter. Despite the dark in which the stranger had been working, she had laid out matching china cups and saucers, sugar, milk … wait. Cups and saucers? I don’t own cups and—
The woman turned, teapot in hand, and gestured toward the chairs. “Please. Sit.”
It didn’t occur to Alex until after she’d obeyed that she might object—that she should object, given that this was her kitchen. By then her midnight visitor had set down the teapot and taken the other seat at the tiny bistro-style table, making protest seem petty to say the least. She waited.
Her visitor pushed a plate of muffins toward her. “Eat. If you keep losing weight the way you are, you’ll make yourself ill.”
Alex curled her hands into fists on her lap. “You—”
Silver eyes met hers. Calm, radiant, crystalline in their clarity.
She tried again. “Who—?”
“You know who I am, Alexandra.”
Oh, fuck. Hastily she tried to erase that last thought from her mind. A corner of the woman’s mouth tilted upward as if she knew exactly what passed through her brain. Alex added a silent but heartfelt shit to her list of mental transgressions.
“Tea?” the woman asked, reaching for the pot.
Tea? She had the One, the Almighty Creator herself, sitting in her kitchen offering tea? She had to be kidding. Alex’s gaze sought the cupboard over the fridge where the more appropriate beverages were stored. The One slid a filled cup toward her in its saucer.
“Tea,” she said. “I need you alert and sober.”
Alex looked at the kitchen doorway and the darkened hallway beyond. Seth slept at the end of that hallway. Would he wake? Hear voices? Come to investigate? She shivered at the thought. She could just imagine his reaction at finding her having a midnight tea party with his mother. She pushed cup, saucer, and muffin-laden plate away.
“What do you want?”
“Your help.”
“With Seth.”
“Yes.”
“I already told Michael—”
“I know how much you love him, Alexandra. And I know why. But he’s not your responsibility.”
Alex, she wanted to correct, my name is Alex. But the words stuck in her throat, held captive by the utter gentleness of the One’s voice. Her chest went tight. The One reached out and covered her hand with a tiny one of her own, fingers barely capping Alex’s fist. Alex focused on the touch. Warm and dry, it held none of the power she had expected. Not so much as a tingle, never mind a surge. In fact, there seemed a remarkable lack of anything about her that she would have termed godly, or even remotely divine. Alex drew away, defiance sparking in her.
“No, he was your responsibility,” she said, “and you failed him. Just as you failed us.”
The One’s mouth tightened for a fleeting instant. “I might have failed in a great number of my responsibilities, child, but Seth is not one of them. Choices have consequences. My son should never have made the one he did.”
“He should never have chosen you.”
Even unspoken, the words were a like a fist driven into Alex’s belly.
“You know I’m right,” the One said. “You’ve thought the same thing yourself. It is that which stands between you, not Lucifer.”
Alex shook her head, but her objection refused to be voiced. The One’s hand covered hers again.
“Not even I can save everyone, Alexandra. Seth is responsible for his own decisions, just as you are. When he chose you, he did so over the fate of all humanity. And he did it knowingly.”
You’re wrong. I can’t believe that of him. I won’t survive knowing that. I’m not strong enough.
“You’re stronger than you think.”
No, I’m not. I’m tired, and I’m hurt, and—
The tiny hand on hers squeezed with a fierce, surprising strength. “I know, child. And I’m sorry I must ask this of you when you have already given so much. But you are strong and you can do this.”
Alex ripped her voice free of its bonds. “And us?” she grated. “What about us? If he does take back his powers and he becomes like you again, what happens then? To him and me, to the rest of the world?”
The One didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“So that’s it.” Alex looked down at the hand covering hers. She pulled away. “Your little marital spat nearly ended my life—twice—and it will destroy humanity, and this is your answer? You really expect me to turn my back on the son that you and all of Heaven already abandoned? Do you have any idea what that will do to him? And for what? You can’t even promise it will do any good.”
“No, but I can guarantee the outcome if you don’t help.”
“That’s the best you have? A guilt trip?”
“The truth.”
Alex shoved back from the table. Scowling, she towered over the One, the Creator of All, and said, very clearly, “Get out. Take your little schemes and plots and get out of my kitchen. Get out of my life. Get out of Seth’s life.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine. Then sit here and drink tea by yourself. I’m going back to bed.”
She made it two stomps across the floor, her bare feet slapping painfully against the linoleum, before the quiet voice stopped her.
“Alexandra.”
Nothing else. Just her name—and an unspeakably compelling, impossible-to-ignore demand that she turn. She resisted until her entire body vibrated with the effort. Then, clutching the door frame for support, she glared over her shoulder.
The One’s crystalline gaze lifted from the table and fastened on hers, seeming to reach inside to the very core of her soul. In the space of a heartbeat, Alex felt herself weighed, measured, and wrung dry of her every awareness and every intention, conscious or otherwise. Her heart turned cold. Panic licked through her. Wait … what about Seth? If anything happened to her, what would he think? How would he cope? What would he—?
The One closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “Sit,” said the One.
“We’re done—”
“I. Said. Sit.”
The words, and the tone in which they were spoken, rang with the divinity Alex had previously deemed lacking.
Absolute divinity.
She returned to the table and sat.
The Creator’s eyes opened, glittering diamond-hard. “You’re right, Alexandra. I have failed. Many times and on many levels. I created Lucifer as my companion, as the yang to my yin. In my arrogance, I believed I had created the perfect creature and that, because he was perfect, he could do no wrong. I believed in him. I trusted him. I loved him with every fiber of my being. But I remained a creator. It is what I do. What I am. And so I continued to create. The stars, the planets, the galaxies and universes … all the skies that you see and infinite others beyond those. And then I created Earth and seeded it with the potential for humanity.”
The One stood, pacing the cramped kitchen: table to sink, sink to fridge, fridge back to table. “I loved watching your planet’s evolution, the birth of humanity, your discoveries, your growth. I wanted to believe Lucifer shared my joy, but in truth, your every success drove another wedge between us. He resented the time I spent watching your world unfold, hated that I could find happiness in anything but him. I ignored the warning signs, found ways to justify his outbursts, tried to soothe his jealousy. I gave him a”—she paused in both step and sentence, straightened her shoulders, and continued. “I gave him a son, thinking a child of his own would assure him of my love for him. But he wanted nothing to do with Seth, and before I had recovered from the birth, he turned the Grigori against me. Against you, my mortal children.”
Alex wanted to run from the One’s confession, from a story that, surely, she had no right to hear. But she stayed seated, held in place by the tale of betrayal and the Creator’s raw, unspoken grief.
“He ga
ve me an ultimatum,” the One continued at last. “Him or humanity. The rest of the story you know … except for this. When part of the host followed Lucifer and we went to war to defend your world, I did try to stop him. To destroy the monster I had created. And I failed.”
Chapter 46
Resting an elbow on the arm of his chair, Lucifer idly rubbed a forefinger over his eyebrow. He stared at the journal on his desk, a pen laid across its blank page. Each of the entries he’d made over the last month had been progressively more difficult to write, and now this. Nothing. No words, no inspiration, no desire.
No need.
It was as if he had emptied himself. As if he found himself in Limbo, where nothing existed anymore. Where nothing mattered.
Oh, he still cared—his whole existence was about caring, for all the good it had done him. He’d just run out of reasons to write about it.
And this interminable waiting didn’t help.
He snatched up the pen and pitched it across the room, scowling when it stuck point-first and quivering in one of the fireplace stones. What in bloody Heaven was taking Samael so long? Finding the Naphil’s sister was such a simple task, the last piece in his plan, and the goddamn Archangel couldn’t get his act together long enough to complete it.
The dish of peppermints on his desk followed in the pen’s wake, shattering against the mantel and sending a shower of glass shards and candies across the room.
Lucifer pushed out of his chair. He wouldn’t put it past his aide to be focused on the whole Mika’el and Seth issue rather than on his orders. Samael’s ability to think strategically might be his greatest asset, but it could also be his most annoying one. The Archangel was forever searching for hidden motives where none existed. Or worse, where they might exist but didn’t matter.
He closed the journal on his desk and turned to slide the volume back into place in the bookcase. Then he paused, staring at the top row of books, the ones at eye level. He inspected the Roman numerals on their spines, neatly lined up in ascending order. Except they weren’t. Not entirely.
They couldn’t be, because the fourteenth journal was missing from its place.
His gaze swept the row, then the room, then returned to the shelf. He released his hold on the journal he’d replaced. Sliding his hand between volumes XIII and XV, he pushed them apart and scowled. Not just missing from its place. Missing, period. As in gone. As in someone had entered his domain and taken his private property. Had dared trespass against him.
Disbelief unfurled in his gut. A snarl of fury—cold and visceral—drove it out. He whirled and stalked around his desk. If he had to rip apart the whole of Hell, he would—
The door opened as he reached it. A diminutive Cherub stood in the opening holding a tray, eyes wide and startled. “Light-bearer!”
Lucifer stopped short of plowing over her. He glowered down. “You’re in my way.”
“I’m s-sorry,” the Cherub squeaked. The dishes on the tray rattled as she held it out to him. “I have your tea.”
Lifting his arm to brush both the tray and the Cherub from his path, he saw her gaze dart past him. The pupils of her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. He went still, resisting the impulse to turn and look at what he already knew she’d seen. The gap between the books on the shelf. His own eyes narrowed as the Cherub’s dropped. Her breathing quickened, and the pulse at the base of her throat hammered. Lucifer stepped back and aside, turning his raised arm into a sweeping invitation to enter.
“Raziel, isn’t it?” he murmured.
Shocked blue eyes lifted to his. “Yes, sir.”
Raziel, favored informant of Samael for several hundred years after the Fallen had departed Heaven. His nostrils flared. Bloody Heaven, he’d rip the Archangel apart with his bare hands.
“You can leave that on the desk.” He smiled and, hands in his pockets, wandered toward the fireplace. “Thank you.”
Thank you for solving my mystery for me.
Raziel hesitated for a second more and then scurried forward to set the tray, now jangling in a most irritating manner, on his desk. She slanted a glance at him. “Weren’t you going somewhere?”
“Hm? Oh. It can wait. I think I’ll have tea first.”
She hovered, biting her lip, and for a moment, he wondered if she might not confess on the spot and save him the trouble of digging for the details. But with a quick last glance at the bookshelves, she sidled toward the door. It slammed shut as she came within reach of it. She stopped in her tracks, a hiss of air escaping her.
“Stay,” Lucifer said. “We’ve never had a chance to chat. I’m sure you have much to tell me.”
The Cherub turned to face him. Her gaze, hollow with the knowledge of what was to come, met his. He smiled, and with a soft mewl, she crumpled to the floor.
Chapter 47
Alex waited for the burn in her throat to subside, then poured a second, generous portion of whiskey. Swirling the amber liquid in a slow circle, she stared at her reflection in the dark kitchen window.
“So you’re not really all-powerful.” Even now, with one drink already warming her belly, her brain kept dancing around the idea. The blasphemy behind it. Except the One herself had said it, so was it really blasphemy? She slugged back the second shot of whiskey.
“I have limits,” the One agreed.
“How? How can you have made all of this”—she waved an encompassing hand—“and still have limits?”
“Everything I’ve made is a part of me, a tiny bit of my essence. My power, if you will. That holds true of Lucifer as well, only he is more of me than my other creations. A great deal more. I wanted a helpmeet in him. A partner. I wanted him to be my equal, or very close to it.”
The liquor in Alex’s stomach gave an uneasy roll. Lucifer, equal to the One? That didn’t sound good.
“The real problem,,” continued the One, “lies with the part of myself I used to create him. Whether because of instinct or a need to retain at least an illusion of control, I wanted him to be just slightly less than what I was. I didn’t want him to feel lesser to me, however, so I compensated by giving him the illusion of equal power … more of my yang than my yin, I suppose you could say.”
“I don’t understand.”
“At one time, I was the All, the everything. I was balance itself, both Creator and Destroyer, both light and dark. When I made Lucifer, I gave him more of that darker side of me. Now, while I create, he is more prone to destroy. I love, while he holds my capacity to hate. I am the champion of good. He … is not. All that he is, I no longer am. And what I am, he can never be. It isn’t that I don’t want to rise against him or his Fallen followers, it’s that I can’t. I don’t have the strength—and I gave him my will.”
“So how in Hell,” Alex grated, “did he get the name of Light-bearer?”
“In the beginning, he was the light of my existence. Now he is the light of truth—the truth about me. My failure, my arrogance, my ultimate demise.”
“De—” The empty glass dropped from Alex’s grip, floated above the floor for an instant, and rose to settle gently on the counter. She stared at it, then at the One. “What demise?”
“It’s how I will stop him, Alexandra. The only way that I can. It’s the reason I ask you to do the unbearable and convince Seth to take back what only he can possess. Holding this world together against my son’s discarded power is taking everything I have. If Lucifer turns to open warfare—and it’s only a matter of time until he does—I cannot stand against him as long as Seth remains mortal.”
Alex wrapped her arms around herself and hung on for dear life as what little remained of reality shuddered, splintered, and crumbled to dust. She opened her mouth to speak but found no voice. Swallowing twice, she tried again, managing a bare whisper. “What about the angels? Michael and—the others?”
“They can stop the Fallen from destroying you outright, but not from inflicting great damage. Should Lucifer himself decide to get involved, things will not
go well.”
“And the Nephilim?”
“They, I’m afraid, will remain humanity’s burden.”
“So if I don’t convince Seth, humanity will absolutely be wiped from existence, and if I do convince him, you’ll die and we’ll still have the Nephilim to deal with.”
“Not die. Become other. I will bind my energy to Lucifer’s to become what I used to be a very long time ago, before I took a form.”
“There will be no one left?”
“My angels will remain to watch over you, and there will be Seth.”
Seth. Many times damaged Seth, asleep in the other room. Asleep, waiting for her, with no idea of the treachery taking place in his own kitchen. She thought about the cool politeness to which they had resorted in their dance around what neither wanted to discuss. Her job. Aramael. The unsettling question of why he had allowed a Fallen One into his life. The continued, looming presence of Lucifer between them. The lack of his concern for anyone but her among humanity.
And now, Heaven’s request that she, too, betray his trust.
Silence settled between them. Alex tried to imagine a world without its Creator. Her world without the man she loved if he stepped back into his immortal birthright. She tried, too, to be angry with a deity that could have let things go this far, get this out of hand, become this hopeless.
But all she could manage was emptiness. Sadness. A single question. “How soon?”
The One rose from the table. “As soon as you can,” she said. “And, Alex … for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Chapter 48
Alex slipped back into bed and lay beside Seth, listening to his deep, steady breathing. Light and shadow played across the ceiling as cars passed by in the street below. Pain stabbed beneath her ribs with every beat of her heart.
Sliding an arm under her head, she glanced sideways at the glow of the digital clock. Four a.m. Another hour and she had to be up. The effort of trying to go back to sleep almost wasn’t worth it. Except facing the day would be harder. She closed her eyes. Heaved a shaky sigh. How in all of Heaven and Hell and Earth combined was she going to find the strength to do what the One asked? It didn’t matter that she understood now why Seth needed to go back, she was still going to lose him. She was still going to hurt him.
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