“You were supposed to torture J.B.? To set the Retrievers on me? To act like a petulant child at every turn?” I asked, feeling anger rising inside me. Adam made a little noise in my arms.
“You would act thus if you were more powerful than the sun and forced to submit to humans,” Michael said. “But all of my actions were approved and condoned by the board. All of them, except two. Working with Lucifer’s son, and working against Judas’s pack.”
Jude stared at him. “You killed my friends. My family. Why?”
Michael’s eyes narrowed, and it seemed the flame in them rose higher. “You were responsible for the death of the one we loved best.”
Jude growled. “You know very well that was not my fault. Lucifer tricked me.”
“It is by your actions that it occurred,” Michael said. “And I have been watching you for many centuries, waiting for an opportunity to hurt you most. When I discovered Alerian’s creature, I knew I had found a way.”
I shook my head, pulling Adam close to me. Nathaniel hovered protectively at my side, keeping an eye on the shapeshifter in case he decided to attack. But the shifter just stood there like a broken robot, its face blank.
“So everything that happened—the attacks on this house, the killing of Evangeline—that was all part of your plan to get back at me?” No wonder the shifter had been able to work its magic inside the house. Only Agents could cross the line of a domicile and use their power freely. Michael’s power had started the line of Agents in the first place.
“And Judas,” Michael said. “Do not forget that. It would hurt him if you were hurt, as it would hurt Lucifer to discover you killed his fiancée.”
“I hate to tell you this, but Lucifer never believed that farce in the first place,” I said. “He just wanted an excuse to lock me up and take my baby, and you gave him what he wanted.”
“And yet somehow you are standing here,” Michael said. “Despite all of my attempts and all of my machinations, you have managed to escape me over and over, and Lucifer’s heart is never harmed, and neither is Judas’s.”
“You won’t have to worry about Lucifer or his heart for a while,” I said. “He’s been called back to his mother, and I think there’s going to be a power void in the Grigori for a while. Oh, and Lucifer’s brother Daharan is watching over me and my kid, so don’t think that messing with us will affect the Morningstar anymore.”
“I no longer care about you,” Michael said. “I only want to kill this traitor, so that I can finally rest after all these years.”
“I told you, Lucifer tricked me,” Jude said. “I loved him as much as you did. You have no idea how I’ve suffered all these years, knowing I was responsible for his fate.”
“I do not care for your sufferings,” Michael said. “I only want it to be over.”
He lunged for Jude, his fingers twisting into claws, reaching for Jude’s throat. I thought Jude would change into a wolf and tear out Michael’s throat, but instead he defended himself as a human, with fists and teeth and the knife that he always kept in his boot.
For a moment I wondered why, because Jude would have a very clear advantage as a wolf. Then I realized that his guilt motivated him to do this, to give Michael a chance to kill him.
I wanted to shout at him, but I was afraid I would distract him and then Michael would move in for the kill.
In the dark it was hard to make out one from the other as limbs punched and kicked and blood splattered. There was just enough light to tell that the fighting was savage and bloodthirsty. Jude wasn’t going to just give in, and Michael was motivated by the contemplation of vengeance for more than two thousand years.
Suddenly it was over. I couldn’t really see how it happened, but Michael was on his back and Jude was at his throat with the knife. Jude’s face was visible in the glare of the streetlamp from the alley, and I saw him hesitate.
“It would be a mercy,” Michael said, and I realized something then. He’d been cast out by the board. He was no longer welcome home. He was just like Lucifer.
“I don’t see why I should be merciful to you,” Jude said, and he stood.
Michael rose to his feet, his white angel’s wings covered in blood. He was no longer powerful, no longer the first of the host. He was fallen. He looked at all of us, and I could see the flame in his eyes was dimming.
He said not another word, but took to the air, and disappeared in the night.
“He will go to the Grigori,” Nathaniel said.
“Fine with me,” I said. “They can have him.”
Jude’s face was impassive, half in shadow and half in light. “It is over, then. I must find Wade and tell him that the threat to the pack is gone.”
“I understand,” I said. “Go.”
He turned into a wolf and leapt over the fence, racing away. I think he needed not only to see Wade, but to run fast and free for as long as possible. He needed to outrun the grief in his heart.
Beezle sighed. “At least there isn’t another dead body to get rid of.”
I wondered whether Nathaniel kept tossing the bodies in the same place, and whether the police were going to start to wonder if there was a serial killer in our neighborhood. Then I realized that with all the other stuff that happened in our neighborhood, a serial killer was probably the least of their worries.
“What about the shapeshifter?” I asked Beezle. Adam was starting to fuss in my arms.
The shifter had stood perfectly still throughout the battle between Michael and Jude. He was still posed like a statue at the edge of the yard. I wanted to approach him, but not while I was holding Adam.
“I’ll take him,” Nathaniel said, lifting the baby away from me.
“I’ll go with you,” Beezle said, knowing what I was thinking.
“And what will you do if he attacks?” I asked skeptically.
“Slay him with my wit,” Beezle said. “Besides, I think he’s broken. He hasn’t moved at all.”
I cautiously approached the shifter. The shifter’s eyes registered my presence, but that was all.
This was the thing that had broken through the defenses of my house. It had taken my guise and committed more than one murder. And yet I felt sorry for it. The shifter had no will of its own. Its will came from his master, and now his master was gone.
“Did Alerian make you?” I asked.
“Yes,” it said. “And forgot me, for many years. Then Michael found me, and gave me purpose again.”
The shifter was too powerful a weapon to anyone who found and controlled it. I couldn’t let it leave, and I didn’t have the stomach to master it myself.
“Give me your hand,” I said to it.
It put its palm in mine, willingly, trustingly. I sent a little questing thread of magic from me into its body, looking for the place where his magic was born. I found it where his heart should have been, and instead there was a changing cloud, a little ball of power that could become whatever its master wished it to be.
I sent my magic inside that cloud, untangling the knots that held the shifter together. The air filled with little droplets of silver water, like the shifting surface of Alerian’s eyes. The water floated up and dissolved as little by little the shifter disappeared.
After a few moments, it was all over.
“Well,” Beezle said. “Yet another unexpected ending. You’ve hardly set anything on fire for days. Are you feeling all right? Do you want to burn the shed down just to get it out of your system?”
I laughed and walked toward the house. Nathaniel and Samiel had returned inside with Adam. “I think we should buy a new place. Too many bad things have happened here. And maybe we’ll be able to keep the address away from Jack Dabrowski this time.”
“I doubt it,” Beezle said. “But we can have a new house if you want to.”
“I want to,” I said as we climbed the stairs back up to my apartment. Nathaniel passed Adam back to me, and I smiled down at him.
“You know what I want?” B
eezle asked.
“What?”
“Chinese takeout.”
“Pork dumplings?” I said, picking up the phone.
“Pork dumplings!” he said, raising his fist in the air.
I looked down into the face of my child, my beautiful Adam, and was grateful. Grateful for him, and grateful for the man who had fathered him as well as the one who would be his father. I was grateful. We were safe. We were home.
I picked up the phone, and placed the order.
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