by Kim Loraine
“I know. I feel it too. Whoever this is holds more power than I thought possible.”
“Well, we’ll have to kick their bloody arses, then, won’t we?” Izzy’s lilting Irish accent makes me smile, but fear creeps into my heart as well. She’s standing at the foot of the stairs with her sleeping baby in her arms.
“Izzy, you just had a baby.”
“And I’m right as rain. Healing potions work wonders when you’re at full power.” The little bundle squirms and gives a small noise of discomfort. “Hush now, Mackenzie. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
She pats her daughter’s bum and rocks from side to side. The motion makes me ache for when my own child is born. We’ll get through this. If we don’t…that’s just not an option.
“You’ve named her,” I say.
“Yes, after Grant’s mum’s side of the family.”
“Where is he?” Ruby asks.
The big shifter in question steps into the living room and takes Mackenzie from Izzy. “Right here.”
The walls shake as the magic protecting them is continually tested. “We have to do something before they bring down the entire house.” Helena looks from corner to corner. A crack has begun to spread up the wall.
Ruby nods and grabs my hand, then takes Izzy’s. Helena joins us and we form a circle. Instinctively we begin an incantation to fortify our protection, but we’re knocked back, quite literally. The four of us fall to the hard floor.
Lance and Brooks let out alarmed cries and rush for me. Both of them helping me up. “Are you all right?” Brooks asks.
I brush my hair out of my eyes and take a slow breath. “Fine. Bloody hell, that was some powerful counter spell.”
“We’ll have to take them out. We can’t stay here and wait for them to get to us.” Izzy practically growls the words. “The bastards.”
“You’re not going out there alone,” Grant growls.
“She won’t be.” Lance steps forward. “She’ll have her coven. She’ll have us.”
“And me,” Grant says.
“No. You have to stay with Kenzie. She’s the most important thing in our lives and you know it. If anything happens to her…” Izzy’s voice quavers and Grant goes to her, pulling her close with the baby between them.
He looks down at their little one and closes his eyes, taking a long breath. “Have a care, Beauty. I cannot live this life without my mate.”
She kisses him, long and deep, and both Brooks and Lance take my hands. “We’ll bring her back to you,” Brooks says. “You have my word.”
Grant cocks a brow and says, “I’ll hold you to it, Nephilim.”
The walls shake again and the crack spreads. Izzy jumps and clenches her teeth, fighting a sob I can see in her face. “No. You can’t stay here.” She presses her palm to Grant’s chest and whispers a few words even as he tries to step back.
“Beauty, no—” But he and the baby are gone.
Izzy falls to her knees and lets her walls down, gut-wrenching sobs filling the room.
“What just happened?” Lance asks under his breath.
“She sent them somewhere safe. Probably Grant’s home in the English countryside.” I lean into him, taking comfort in his warmth. “He’s going to be spitting mad, but it’s for the best. He’d likely come for her even though it will be dangerous. Shifters are possessive.”
Brooks stiffens at the sound of glass breaking somewhere in the house. He unsheathes Excalibur and holds it at the ready. “We have to go.”
He’s right. Linking hands with my sisters, we wait for my king and my knight to place their hands on my shoulders, and together, we transport ourselves to just outside the property line.
Brooks
As soon as we materialize on the other side of the protection spell, war breaks out. The witches send balls of blue flame into demons, turning them to dust while others attack, slashing at Lance and me with razor-sharp claws. I make quick work of them with Excalibur, but Lance’s weapon doesn’t have as much power. He fights like the warrior he is. In a shorter amount of time than I’d imagine, we’re standing amid piles of ashes with the wind blowing around us.
“That was too easy,” Helena says. She’s right. In all my years of fighting adversaries, I’ve never experienced an easy battle.
The ground beneath our feet shifts and shakes, a loud rumble building from somewhere low and sinister. “Fucking hell,” Izzy says.
Then, a screech, loud enough to make my ears ring, fills the air. It rattles my bones. A dragon, blood red and breathing fire rises from the edge of the cliff before us. It releases a stream of flame and the witches throw up a protection spell in the nick of time. I feel the residual heat, but know if it hadn’t been for them, we’d all be nothing more than charred remains.
“A fucking dragon?” Ruby’s astonished question echoes my own thoughts.
“How the hell do we kill a dragon?” Izzy asks.
I look at Lance. He and I are the legendary knight and king. We slay the dragons. With a cursory nod, I run past my wife and her sisters, into the path of the dragon. Lance follows, but he’s stopped by Gwen, just as I knew she would do.
Raising Excalibur high in the air, I swing it around my head and launch the blade straight between the dragon’s eyes. I see the glow of fire in the back of the beast’s open mouth, and know it’ll be too late to save myself, even after the blade splits the dragon’s skull. Flame shoots toward me, a fiery line of pure hell. But I don’t die. I don’t burn.
The dragon falls, and the world shakes. Then, Merlin appears in front of me, releasing the protective shield he threw up between me and my demise.
“What in the blazes do you think you’re doing? You can’t face a dragon with no magic.” His scolding is welcome and I pull him into an embrace.
“Where have you been?”
“I had business to which I needed to attend.”
I look back at Lance and Gwen, both of them wearing relief like cloaks. “Thank you, Merlin.”
“You finally slayed a real dragon. Well done, boy.”
The air shifts between us and my ears pop. An angel has deigned to grace us with his presence. Turning to look behind me, I see my father. His expression wary.
“Merlin,” he says, nodding. “I see you kept him alive.”
“I did.”
I frown. What is happening?
Another shift in the air has me turning to face my allies. A tall man with wavy blond hair and wearing biker leathers has joined them.
Ruby calls out, “Gabriel,” before she runs to him.
Pain flashes across his features and he moves to pull her against him, but seems to think better of it, instead choosing to turn away. Ruby visibly crumbles, but as I watch her, she fortifies herself and straightens her back and squares her shoulders. She doesn’t leave his side, but they don’t touch, speak, or even look at one another.
“Oh, this is a fascinating turn of events,” my father says, a laugh in his voice.
“Can’t you see their pain?” I can’t believe my father, a man who fell from Heaven for love, would laugh in the face of these two.
“He’s getting what he deserves. Centuries of judgment have been cast down on me for not choosing to follow our Father’s orders. Now he understands.”
My heart squeezes with unease. “Why are you here, Father?”
“To aid you in your task, my son. Why else would I have come?”
Merlin stands at his side, shifting from foot to foot. “Let’s go. We have too much to do to stand around. We have the sword, now we need to do what has to be done.”
Gabriel strides across the grass, concern on his face. “Who are you?” he sneers, looking me up and down. “And how did you get Excalibur?”
Gwen is hot on his heels. “This is Brooks. He is…well, he was Arthur once upon a time.”
“Look at him, all high and mighty still. Pompous arse,” my father says, but Gabriel doesn’t flinch. Neither does Gwen.
The a
ngel holds out a hand as though he wants to shake mine. I take his offering and he lets his power flow through my arm, just like Tamiel did when we first met. “You are Nephilim.”
I nod. “I am. I told Tamiel as much.”
“He mentioned you. But I haven’t sensed your presence. Even now, if I weren’t staring right at you, I don’t think I’d see you.” He frowns and stares at a spot behind me, exactly where my Father and Merlin stand. He can’t see them. Why would they hide? “Why did you come in search of Gwen?”
“My father sent me. He said she’d need protection.”
“And what is the name of the fallen who sired you?”
My father chuckles behind me. “Go on, tell him. I want to see his face.”
“Samyaza.”
Gabriel’s eyes go wide. “That’s not possible. Samyaza is dead. I had the extreme displeasure of smiting him myself over a century ago.”
Then everything shifts as I feel the world around us grow heavier. My father and Merlin lift the veil between themselves and the rest of the world. Gabriel’s jaw clenches and his hands ball into fists as his glowing white wings spread. A shadow falls over all of us, and when I turn around, my father’s own wings are extended, black and singed and dripping with blood.
“Lucifer,” Gabriel breathes.
“Good to see you again, brother. I see you’ve met my son.”
Chapter Eighteen
Brooks
Shock rolls through me, punching me first in the gut, then in the jaw. My father is Lucifer. He’s lied to me all this time?
“What are you saying?” I ask him. “He just called you Lucifer. That’s not who you are. You can’t be.”
He smiles. “Oh, yes, I can.”
“So…you never loved my mother? All that stuff you said about true love and falling from grace for her, that was bullshit?”
Lucifer’s mouth turns up in a wicked grin. “I loved her. In my own…special way. She was one of the best fucks I’ve ever had. And, she gave me you. The son I always wanted. The one I needed.”
Anger builds in me until I can’t contain my scream of rage. I rush him, Excalibur raised and ready to run him through. He just laughs and says, “Merlin, put my boy in a time-out, would you?”
Merlin nods and stops me with a wave of his hand. The sword falls from my grasp and every muscle in my body atrophies at once. I can’t move. I can barely breathe.
Gabriel steps forward and extends his wings, his grace glowing so bright I have to wince at the brilliance of being next to him. “Stop this, Lucifer. You’ve lost. We have the key and the sword.” He gestures to Gwen, who stands bravely with magic crackling between her palms. Lancelot has joined her, Excalibur recovered from the ground, drawn and at the ready.
Lucifer snarls and brandishes a pitch black blade, a red haze emanating from the razor-sharp edges. “I’m going to enjoy this fight, brother. We’ve never truly been able to work out our differences.”
He leaps into the air, his broad wingspan causing a shadow to fall over all of us. Gabriel manifests his own weapon, a longsword with white flames surrounding the steel, and follows, the two of them flying high into the clouds.
“You traitor!” Lancelot screams at Merlin.
The wizard cackles. “You may think that, but I was always working in service of my master. From the time I was sent to Arthur as a boy, I was grooming him for this moment. It was a pity the two of you interfered the first time. The man was driven mad by his love for you. It was a mercy killing in the end. I did it for Arthur’s own good.”
“You…you killed me?” I ask.
“Oh, boy, don’t take it so hard. I stored your soul until it was ready. It took a long bloody time, but when you’re given immortality by Lucifer himself, time is one thing you don’t have to worry about.” He sighs. “It was your mother that took so long to find. She was difficult. But we’re lucky Uther Pendragon had so many bastards running around. His blood finally gave us a female to put in Lucifer’s path. Thank the devil she was such a whore.”
All those years, he was working against me, not with me. And I was a fool. “Don’t talk about my mother that way, you son-of-a-bitch.”
He laughs and looks skyward. “Hm, things seem to be heating up between those two. I do love a good bout of sibling rivalry. My money’s on Lucifer.”
The archangel and the king of the fallen clash and strike blow after blow, their swords creating thunder and lightning in the sky.
“Why does he want me? I am not the one who is said to close the seal.”
Merlin twists his wrist in the air and my knees buckle. “You’re not. You are the seal.”
No. No. No. No. This can’t be true. But now I see it all so clearly. He sent me to Gwen, he cloaked my presence from the angels. He wanted us to fall in love so they could take Excalibur and use me to end the world.
Gwen screams and rages, her anger causing the clouds to open and rain to pour down on us. Then a bolt of lightning strikes Merlin down, turning him to ashes.
What looks like a flaming meteor falls from the sky, crashing into the ground fifty feet from us and Ruby screams Gabriel’s name. We’re losing. We’ve lost. Lucifer is going to win.
My father…no, Lucifer, lands with practiced grace, his wings retracting and his sword dripping blood. He sheathes it and the blade disappears. “Such a mess,” he says, shaking his head. “Gwen, you really need to learn to control your temper.”
His focus drifts to Ruby who has rushed to the smoking crater that must house Gabriel. “Poor girl. She’ll get over him.”
“You killed him?” Gwen asks.
He shakes his head. “No. Unfortunately I can’t smite an archangel. I…clipped his wings, you might say.” He inspects his fingernails and grins. “He won’t be able to help you.”
“Let them go,” I say. “I’ll come with you. I’ll do whatever you need. Just let them live.”
A dark chuckle falls from his lips. “Oh, Brooks, I don’t need you alive. I need your heart. I’m going to carve it from your chest and use it to open the rest of the seals. A sacrifice from my bloodline. It’s time to speed along this process.”
It’s then I realize what has to happen. I stare at Lance, so brave and handsome, standing there with Excalibur drawn. I try to tell him without words how much he means to me, how this is the only way. I spread my arms and nod, but he shakes his head, his eyes filling with heartbreak as the realization hits him.
“I love you,” I say, looking to him and then Gwen.
She puts a hand to her lips and lets out a sob.
“Oh, isn’t this moving?” Lucifer chides. “Perhaps I’ll make you watch me fuck her first? Would you like that? I have heard rumors.”
Gwen stiffens and spits, “You would never be able to please me. I’ve heard rumors about you as well. A dick the size of a Vienna sausage. That’s my favorite one.”
He snarls and the air heats with his rage. “Stupid little whore of a witch.”
He reaches for her, but his body won’t move, and a growl rips from him. “What did you do?”
Gwen smirks. “It’s not me. That’s the power of the Siren Coven. They’ve bound you, Lucifer.”
“You still can’t stop the seals from opening. No matter how long you hold me bound. They’ll open and the world will end.”
I swallow back the fear in my chest. “Not if they close the first seal.”
He laughs. “They won’t.”
Lance steps forward, pressing the point of Excalibur directly over my heart. “They will,” I say through a tight throat.
Lucifer’s eyes widen, but Lance hesitates.
“Do it,” I tell him. “Save us all.”
Then, with an anguished scream and a single tear running down his cheek, my knight, my best friend, my love, drives Excalibur straight through my chest.
Lancelot
Brooks can’t ask this of me. He can’t expect me to kill him, to end everything between us before it can really begin. But I’ve seen
that determination in his eyes before. When he was my king.
“Do it,” he says, teeth clenched. “Save us all.”
I know it’s now or never. Sacrifice one to be the savior of many, but my gut twists with pain at the knowledge I won’t get him back. If I do this, I’ll lose him. Lucifer’s gaze holds a glimmer of fear and it becomes more clear than ever that killing Brooks is the only way to close the seal.
A sob catches in my throat and I lock eyes with Brooks. In him I see only love and acceptance. I press forward, quickly because I don’t want it to hurt him, because I can’t risk losing my nerve, because if I hesitate again, I know I won’t do it.
A gut-wrenching cry fills the air around us as the sword sinks all the way through his chest and I realize it’s coming from me. Brooks’ grunt of pain tears through my soul, but I don’t take my eyes off him. I watch, the trickle of blood that falls from his mouth proof I hit my target. His body relaxes, his head droops, and Lucifer lets out an almighty howl.
Then blinding pain is all I know.
Gwen
I want to scratch my eyes out as I watch the light fade from his deep, dark irises. He’s gone. Brooks is really, truly gone. A blast of power explodes from Excalibur’s hilt, hitting Lance square in the chest and toppling him over. He groans and writhes as the magic works its way through his system.
“No!” I scream. I can’t lose them both. My vision will not come to fruition.
My sisters rush to my side, the three of them pulling me away from the men I love. “Lucifer escaped,” Helena says. “He cut off Gabriel’s wings, and as soon as Lance closed the seal, the bastard vanished.”
“We have to get home. Gabriel is badly wounded.” Ruby’s words are tight and pained.
I push free of them and run to Lance’s side. He’s alive, his hands burned where he held the sword, but his eyes are open and locked on me. “I…I killed him. Oh, God save me. I killed my king.”