CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Apollo walked out of the bedroom where the injured half-breed Seer rested. The large living room was filled with people waiting for his words, good or bad, on the outcome of his healing attempts on the woman. His eyes scanned the room, pausing on the Seer of Empathy. Sadness flashed over her vision and he sighed; she already knew. Damn, that girl had become a power to be reckoned with in the last few months. Her control had grown in leaps and bounds, and now she could read people when she chose to instead of twenty-four hours a day.
Turning his gaze to Gabriel, he ran his hand through his hair. The angel looked gaunt, weakness threaded through his whole form, not that Apollo could blame the man. The woman behind the door was his daughter—estranged or not they were still blood. Gabriel was a warrior. He knew when bad news was coming and he steeled himself, lifting his chin and pulling his black wings tightly to his back.
“How long does she have?” Despite it all, his voice broke.
Apollo sighed and looked at the demons in the room. Aria was one of the Seers. If she died, their chances of defeating Michael and the remaining angels was slim to none—they all knew it. He wished he had better news for them. The blade she had been impaled with had not been anything special. He should have been able to heal such a paltry wound. It infuriated him that he couldn’t get ahead of whatever it was in her body that fought against his attempts at healing her.
“I am not sure. Whatever it is that is pulling her toward death fights harder when I try and heal her. I have never treated one such as her. I don’t know how Nephilim physiology responds to prolonged treatment like this. Hell, for all I know, it is that blood which is fighting against me.” Abbadon offered him a glass filled with amber liquid, and he took it gratefully. Sipping from the tumbler, he savored the whisky and watched Gabriel as he dropped his eyes to the floor.
“Thank you, thank you for trying. I put you all in more danger by bringing her here.”
“Oh, shut up, Gabriel.” Mammon’s voice broke the torrid mournful silence in the room, his arm slung over his wife’s shoulder. “She is a Seer, that makes her family. You helped us, that means we owe you. It is not like you can just go back to Michael, now, is it?”
“Trust Greed to get to the point of the matter in the bluntest way possible.”
Mammon glared at Abbadon and flipped his brother off. The pair looked daggers at one another. Apollo felt a smile pull at his lips. It was amazing to see Mammon whole again—well, less dark and brooding anyway. That had been down to Isabelle.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” The calm, collected voice of Lucifer broke through the bickering of the two younger brothers. Apollo turned to him and shook his head.
“If I knew more about Nephilim, maybe. But as much as Gabriel told me, it wasn’t enough to heal her. I will reach out, see what I can find. I am not the only healing god still around. Bast might know more. There were many more Nephilim around in her day, before the Malakhim wiped them out.”
“Don’t you let her catch you saying that. She will scratch your eyes out for implying she is older than you.” Lucifer had a point. Bast was and always would be a woman who expected to be worshipped. She was as prim and proper as the cats that represented her; she even had the claws to boot.
“I need to return to Hades. Remember, you swore to Persephone you would all attend her early Christmas dinner. I don’t think your father has much longer. I feel Thanatos waiting for him. I think he is holding off for her sake, so she has time to say goodbye properly. I suggest you all make time for your goodbyes. As loyal as Death is to your father, he is still Death, and he has a job to do—even for the soul of Hades.”
All the demons in the room dropped silent, a heavy air settling over them. It was not like any of them had the best relationship with the God of the Underworld or anything. But Apollo knew he was their creator, their father. He had brought them into this world and given them reason for being. And despite his moods swinging from terrible to his most recent of actually being fatherly, they did have some emotional ties. Even he felt some pain knowing his Uncle was passing into shadow.
Apollo looked at the angel. Gabriel looked severely guilty in that moment, and so he should. Michael taking down Hades had been a big fucking mistake. With Hades’ death, all hell would break loose, literally. No one else could hold the prisons of Tartarus closed, not even his sons—and they held some of his blood in their veins. If Michael’s back-up plan had been to release the Titans upon the human world, then he was well on the way for that to happen in little under a week.
“Gabriel, I would go and spend the rest of this time with your daughter.” The angel nodded slowly and flicked his wings out a little.
“Thank you, Apollo, for trying.”
“I wish I could have done more, angel, she deserved better than assassination by demon.” Apollo looked at the Sins again and nodded to them before his body burst into a million pinpoints of sparkling light.
Lucifer pushed himself to standing. Knowing Thanatos was waiting in the wings to take his father’s soul did not sit well with him. He hated it, but he understood that the God of Death was doing his job. Hell, at least someone was. Rubbing his hand over his mouth he let out a long sigh and faced the angel. Gabriel was still staring at the door to his daughter’s room, as if going in would make things worse.
“Angel, just go in there. Trust me, you will regret not being able to say goodbye to her if she passes.”
“And if she tells me to leave?”
“Then she tells you to leave, but at least you will get a chance to speak your piece. Grow a fuckin’ pair and get in there before it’s too late.” Lucifer turned and stormed from the room, heading to his office. To think he had been considering not going to Alaska next week. But knowing that Death was waiting put everything in stark perspective.
He supposed he should have been more worried about the gates of Tartarus falling, but losing his maker, his father, it was all becoming far too real. Lifting his hand, he rubbed the top of his arm where his mark lay branded into his skin. The mark of Pride. He had been the first of the Seven Sins to be created that fateful night when Pandora opened the box, the first to take form and realize his obligations to humanity.
He never expected it to turn out like this, a world overrun with humans, the task of keeping man’s sin in check astronomically impossible. It had become painfully apparent to him long ago they had to focus only on those mortals that would cause the worst Blights. Smaller sins went unchecked, and only the largest swarms of Blights were cleansed to prevent catastrophes. Hell, he felt like they were just putting their fingers in the dam and patching up the holes.
One day soon something would break, and they would not be able to stop the surge. Part of him understood what Michael was trying to do, even if the idiot was going about it the wrong way. The sound of his phone ringing broke him out of his musing. Looking at his phone, he let out a groan. Deus. No doubt he wanted more money or something. He did not even give his brother time to talk.
“I just transferred two hundred thousand into your account. I swear, Asmodeus, if you hav—”
“I found him!” Deus literally shouted down the phone, interrupting Lucifer in the middle of his speech about money and responsibility.
“What?”
“Wrath, he is here. In Stillwater. No memory apparently, but he is here, Lucifer!”
Lucifer sank slowly into his chair. Relief ran through him, his eyes slipping closed. God, was he crying? Pressing his fingers to his eyes, he just sat in silence for a moment as his ears rang and his brain processed the information.
“Lu? Luci? You there?”
“Don’t call me Luci, asshole! That is fantastic news. I’m going to send Abbad—”
“NO. I mean, things are complicated here. Look, if what the Seer told me is true then he has no memory of us, of Father. I don’t think shoving Abbadon of all people in his face is the best course of action. Besides, it looks like he has a woman, a Seer herself. If you can believe it, Satanus, of all demons, found a woman who can put up with him.”
“Deus, try and stay on subject.” He couldn’t believe it. Tanus was alive. He had amnesia, but that could be fixed. Hanging his head, he listened to his brother speaking, a smile on his lips.
“And get this, his Seer? She has a kid. Tanus with a kid, that must be like watch… shit, I have to go. Lexi is coming, she is the twin. I got this under control, Lucifer, trust me.”
“Last time you asked me to trust you and I was stupid enough to do it, I ended up on that pirate ship off the coast of Jamaica.”
“Purely by accident, Luci. When have I ever let you down?”
“You want the list? And stop calling me Luci!”
“Yes, Lexi, I am coming. I will call you soon. Let the others know he is alive and safe.”
“Asmodeus! Don’t forget next week!” Lucifer hissed down the phone but his brother had already hung up.
Sighing, he dropped his phone on the desk and smiled. Even with the shadow of Thanatos hanging over the family something good had finally happened. Tanus was alive, he was clearly back in human form, and it sounded like he had found himself a Seer. No doubt Lucifer had the Seer to thank for his brother regaining his human form. Now they needed to find him and bring him home, if he even wanted to come home. If he had no memory of them, what reason would he have to trust the random stranger who was about to show up with a crazy-ass story about being his brother and the Sin of Lust?