by Anne Hope
“Regan, you need to trust Cal to do the right thing. You know the drill—no Watcher can deviate from the plan. If you do anything, anything that compromises the mission, you will be labeled a Rogue. And you know better than anyone how the Watchers deal with Rogues.”
They hunted them down and exterminated them. The idea of that happening to Regan tore a painful strip out of him. He’d spent too many years training her, working alongside her, fighting to keep her alive, to lose her now. Had she been capable of reading his thoughts, she would’ve argued that she was the one always bailing him out of trouble, and she would’ve been right. She’d saved him more times than he could count. They were a team, more in tune than most, able to regenerate each other with nothing more than a touch, thanks to the Watchers’ bond.
The truth was, he couldn’t picture his life without her.
Losing the battle, he clasped her arms and turned her to face him. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
She tensed at his touch, inclined her head to look at him. “Define stupid.”
Those sweet-looking lips hovered inches below his, too damn appealing to ignore. Right there and then, standing at the edge of a deadly overhang ensnared by Regan’s smoky gaze, Marcus understood the precise meaning of stupidity.
He was tempted to demonstrate, but he didn’t. Releasing her, he secured a safe distance between them. “Just think before you act. That’s all I ask.”
She visibly deflated, and he could’ve sworn disappointment momentarily flittered across her face. Above them, the sun’s dying rays struggled to pulse against a sky determined to suffocate them. Regan grabbed another pebble and sent it whizzing through the air with a note of finality. “Thinking is overrated.”
A bitter laugh rumbled in his throat. If he wasn’t so damned disciplined, he would’ve agreed.
Cal sat in his office, tracing the beloved carvings on the ancient silver band he wore, drawing great comfort from the soft, fluid strokes.
A comfort that was abruptly shattered when the air crackled, and a fissure rent the atmosphere. A tall, familiar figure stood at the heart of his office, swathed in moonlight and shadows.
He stared at the apparition, half convinced he’d finally lost his mind. “Lillith?” He waited for the vision to fade, for the insanity to pass, but it persisted.
“How sweet of you to remember.” The sound of her voice left no doubt that she was indeed real. “I feared you wouldn’t.”
Consternation rippled through him. He hadn’t seen his old lieutenant since the Great Flood, when the Seraphim Council had imprisoned the fallen in the third layer of heaven for mating with mortals and spawning the Nephilim.
Only Cal had been allowed to remain on earth.
He stood and approached her. “What’s happened? Has the council released the others as well?”
A shadow passed behind her eyes, and he knew whatever she was about to say wouldn’t be good. “They didn’t release me, Calliel. I escaped.”
It took a few seconds for her words to register, and when they did, their full meaning struck him with all the wrath of heaven. “Are you out of your mind? They’ll hunt you down, destroy you. There is no place in heaven or on earth where they won’t find you.”
“I’m aware of the risks, but I had no choice. I had to warn you.”
“Warn me? About what?” Cal took in the ragged sight of her. She wore a loose-fitting, fog-gray surplice, but neither the baggy dress nor the thick black cloak that hung around her shoulders succeeded in concealing her emaciated form. Five millennia of imprisonment had not been kind to Lillith. Still, he’d never known her to be suicidal. “What could possibly be so important that you would willingly bring about your own destruction?”
“I overheard two guards speaking. It appears a rebellion is brewing in heaven.” She gave him an ominous look, and her voice dropped a notch. “And the Seraphim Council is behind it. They’ve sent the false prophet.”
Ice crusted along Cal’s spine. For countless centuries he’d anticipated those words, had dreaded them to the point of obsession. A dread that had only escalated the second he’d gazed upon Ben. Now Lillith had shown up, confirming his worst fears.
“How do I stop it?”
“There’s only one way to save humanity now.” She reached long, graceful fingers beneath her cloak and pulled out a familiar dagger. One made of pure gold, crowned by a ruby hilt, rumored to have been forged by the archangels themselves. If the legend was correct, this dagger had the power to kill anything, including a human soul.
She let the blade lie on her outstretched palm. Compassion swam in her eyes, as did the hard glint of determination. “The false prophet’s soul must be destroyed.”
Chapter Six
Regan tossed the ball at Ben, who promptly moved aside and watched it zip by.
“You’re supposed to catch it,” she told him, an exasperated smile tugging at her lips.
The early April sun beat down on them, and the warm air finally hinted at spring. Beneath them, the grass carpeting the ground had lost its sickly yellow tint, displaying a bright new coat of vibrant green.
It was the perfect day to take the boy outside and ease his glum mood. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to agree. “When can I go home?”
Ben was unable to grasp that his old life had come to an abrupt end, that there was nothing left of home to go back to. He’d seen what had happened to his parents, and yet he failed to accept they were truly gone.
Unsure what to say, she retrieved the football, which had once belonged to one of the Hybrid children living at the complex. Children that Kyros, Athanatos’s firstborn son and now the new leader of the Kleptopsychs, had ruthlessly slaughtered mere months ago. The memory of that day was still clear in her mind, a constant reminder that—despite the fact that the sun shone and new flowers bloomed—they were still at war.
“Let’s try this again. Ready?” She flung the ball, purposely aiming high to give Ben a chance to catch it.
The ball hit the ground with a muted thud.
“Something tells me the kid’s not into sports.” She turned to find Jace standing behind her, studying the scene with a wry grin. An unspoken taunt glimmered in his eyes. “You never struck me as the ball-throwing type. I always figured knives were more up your alley.”
“You’re probably right.” She gave her son a playful shove. “Haven’t had much practice with this sort of thing.”
She hadn’t been there for Jace when he was a kid. She’d never taught him how to throw a ball. She’d never tucked him in at night or feathered a kiss across his forehead as he drifted off to sleep. Now the infant she’d abandoned was a grown man, a fact she sometimes had trouble wrapping her brain around, especially since she still looked like she was in her twenties. In truth, she was pushing sixty. That was another perk of being the cursed spawn of the fallen—no age spots or crow’s feet.
She studied his familiar face. The green eyes and brown hair he’d inherited from his father, David Cutler, but the hard slant of his cheekbones, his skin tone, even the shape of his mouth were the mirror image of hers.
Again she wondered how he’d looked as a child, whether the mental picture she’d always carried with her was accurate. Had his gaze been as guileless as Ben’s? Had his cheeks dimpled whenever he’d smiled? Were there once freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks?
She’d never been one to dwell on the past. Regret wasn’t something she made a habit of allowing into her mind or heart. But Ben had changed that. He’d awakened all the maternal instincts she’d buried, and now she couldn’t shut them off.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Her voice sounded gravelly and left a scratchy feeling in her throat. “When you were growing up.” She’d never apologized to him before. Not officially. She’d explained her reasons, and that had been enough…until now.
All amusement vanished from his face. “Forget about it. The past is dead. Let’s keep it that way.”
&nb
sp; Jace didn’t like to remember his childhood, so he did everything in his power to avoid talking about it. Hybrids, once turned, had no real recollection of their human lives. That wasn’t the case with her son. Since his soul had returned to him, the memories had come flooding back, and most of them weren’t pleasant.
“I didn’t mean to poke at old wounds. It’s just something that needed to be said.”
He nodded his understanding. “Is that what you’re doing here?” He gestured toward Ben, who now crouched on the ground, combing the grass in search of a bug or two. “Making up for past mistakes?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. When I left you to David Cutler’s non-existent mercy, I was convinced I was doing the right thing. I was giving you a chance to be human. I was saving you from having to grow up in the middle of all this.” With a sweep of her arm, she indicated their surroundings. Despite the small patch of grass upon which they stood, concrete and metal hemmed them in, as much a prison as anything. “I never once stopped to think you might’ve needed me there to protect you.”
“I managed all right.”
Remorse was a funny thing, sharp and insistent one minute, bittersweet the next. “Yeah, you did.” She fought the urge to wrap her arms around him and squeeze him the way she should’ve done when he was a boy.
Marcus was right. Something weird was definitely up with her. If she’d found herself in the same situation last week, she would’ve handed Jace a blade and challenged him to a friendly duel, more than happy to wipe the floor with him. She most certainly wouldn’t have stood here contemplating hugging him.
“You okay?” Nothing escaped her son. He was as bad as Marcus where she was concerned.
Before she could offer a reply, Marcus came charging into the small courtyard, his face set in an uncompromising scowl.
Speak of the devil.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys. Cal wants to see us. There’s been a development.”
A development was rarely a good thing. More often than not, it implied that blood would be shed. Regan had lived this life long enough to recognize certain patterns. When Cal called an emergency meeting, something pretty nasty had usually happened, like a terrorist bombing or a mass murder. It meant they would soon don their battle gear, coat their blades with angel’s blood, and go kick some serious butt.
So when Regan walked into the conference room with Marcus and Jace to find only Cal and Lia waiting for them, she was thrown for a loop. “Where is everybody?”
Cal looked up at her, his expression grave and pensive. An impressive collection of television sets lined the wall behind him. Tuned to numerous news channels to keep the Watchers abreast of the latest happenings, they normally flickered with color. Today they were turned off, their screens blacker than death. “I called a private meeting. I don’t want to alarm the others just yet.”
Regan warily claimed a seat at the table, bracketed by Marcus and Jace. Lia, who sat at Jace’s left, offered her a reassuring smile, but Regan lacked the presence of mind to return it. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve intercepted another message from the angels,” Cal informed them. Something passed behind his eyes, a flicker of hesitation. “It’s about the boy.”
Her heart kicked, hard enough to crack a rib, if her ribs weren’t so damn indestructible. “Ben?”
Cal nodded. “Long before we learned of the prophecy concerning Jace, there was another plan. A last resort. I thought the angels had forsaken it, but it looks like I may have been mistaken.”
“And what exactly was this plan?” Jace’s voice resonated with wariness. Having been the subject of one of these so-called prophecies, he had no particular love for them.
“It was said that, if the corruption grew too great, the angels would send a prophet to earth—a false prophet, whose purpose wouldn’t be to deliver a message of hope and salvation but one of death and destruction.” Cal’s tone was flat and lifeless, void of its usual fire.
Marcus leaned forward, his blue gaze gleaming with interest. “Are you saying the angels have decided to trigger the Apocalypse? How?”
“By setting in motion a series of seemingly unrelated events that will ultimately lead the false prophet to whoever rules the Kleptopsychs. At the moment, that would be Kyros.”
The Kleptopsychs were of pure Nephilim blood, as calculating as they were ruthless. What made them a significant threat, apart from their impressive number, was their ability to plan and execute grand-scale feedings. These feedings often claimed hundreds, sometimes thousands, of human lives.
Cal’s blank expression matched the empty bleakness of the monitors behind him. “If Kyros were to ingest the false prophet’s soul, he’d be even more dangerous than Athanatos. He’d possess all the powers of the seers, be able to mold the world around him and will anything he wishes into existence.”
Jace shook his head and frowned, reaching for Lia’s hand. He’d never put much stock in Cal’s predictions of doom and gloom. Marcus remained statue-still, and Regan fought the urge to curse. Deathly silence filled the room, four pairs of incredulous eyes trained on Cal.
“Why the hell would the angels do something like that?” Marcus finally asked.
“To force God’s hand. To bring forth another great flood, a cleansing.”
“Wouldn’t that be considered mutiny?” Jace countered.
“That’s not how they see it. Their mandate is to protect humanity from corruption any way they can.”
Regan tamped down an undignified snort. “How is wiping out humanity protecting it?”
“Sometimes,” Lia answered, “in order to kill a growing cancer, you have to damage healthy cells as well.”
Cal nodded his agreement. “Thank you, Lia. I couldn’t have said it better myself. The angels have become desperate. The Kleptopsychs and the Rogues are growing their numbers at alarming speed. They’re spreading across the globe, corrupting and poisoning everything they touch. They need to be stopped, and what better way to do that than to destroy their major energy source?”
Regan scratched her head in confusion. “There’s something I still don’t get. What does any of this have to do with Ben?”
Cal filled his lungs with air, exhaled slowly. “Benjamin’s is no ordinary soul. He is the false prophet.”
Her lungs constricted painfully. “No. You’re wrong.”
“I wish I were.” Regret darkened Cal’s steel-colored gaze, and she realized how deeply he meant it. Cal wasn’t making assumptions. He truly believed what he was saying, was convinced Ben was the weapon the angels would use to wipe out humanity.
“That’s why you insisted on testing Ben.” Regan’s voice dropped to a whisper as the truth dawned on her. “You weren’t trying to determine if he’s a Hybrid. You were trying to prove he’s this prophet of yours.” The word tasted bitter on her tongue, as foul as a curse.
“Yes,” Cal answered without hesitation. “And everything points to the fact that he is.”
Marcus leaned forward, his hands clenched into fists on the conference table, his shoulders taut. ”In that case, we have to make damn sure Kyros never gets his hands on the kid’s soul.” It was just like him to go straight to the crux of the matter. He was a man of action, always contemplating the next step, always ready to shoulder the weight of the world. Like Cal, he seemed driven by the unrelenting compulsion to right some elusive wrong.
Remorse twisted Cal’s features, as did a heavy measure of guilt. “There’s only one sure way to guarantee that.” Everything inside Regan cringed in dreadful anticipation of his next words. “We must destroy it.”
Chapter Seven
This couldn’t be happening.
Regan paced around her room, her stomach tied in knots, her mind reeling, while Ben busied himself assembling a puzzle. She slanted a glance his way, noted the perplexed arch of his brow, the awkward, uncoordinated nature of his movements as he struggled to piece the image together. Sorrow tangled her insides, an unfamiliar twist in
her abdomen that left her aching.
How could she stand by and do nothing? How could she live with herself if she allowed an innocent boy to be destroyed over some prophecy that might never come to be?
Again, she was faced with an impossible choice—defy Cal or see a child murdered. At least with Jace, she’d known death wouldn’t be the end. Only his humanity had been at stake. Even then, she’d been unable to stand on the sidelines and watch him die. So she’d lied to Cal, to everyone. With Ben, the stakes were even higher. Everything would be sacrificed—his body, his soul, his very existence.
And over what? Some silly angel rumor? How did Cal keep getting his hands on this kind of information, anyway? None of them had ever as much as seen an angel, but Cal had an endless supply of angel’s blood, was versed in Enochian script, and was apparently privy to all their discussions.
What was the deal with that?
“Regan, can you help me?” Ben’s small, timid voice jolted her out of her thoughts before doubt could morph into outright suspicion.
Forcing a smile, she went to sit beside him on the concrete floor. “What’s this supposed to be?”
“A pirate ship, but none of the pieces fit.”
The tightening sensation in her chest amplified. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, Regan guiding his clumsy little hands as he labored to assemble the puzzle. From the looks of it, the kid hadn’t had much practice. “When’s the last time you worked on a puzzle?” she asked him.
He hitched his shoulder, his gaze flitting briefly to her face. “Never.”
“Never? Didn’t they ever make you do one at school?”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t go to school.”
Surprise stilled her hands. “Why not?”
The boy visibly shrank. His shoulders turned inward, his spine curling. “Mommy and Daddy were afraid I’d do something bad.”