“Turn up ahead,” Mal called back. “Left. Take a left.”

Lanterns swayed as we turned.

“Take a left,” Samael ordered the troops at our back, and the message was passed down the line.

The procession slowed.

“This is it,” Mal said.

Azazel and Conah parted to let me through. Cora raised the lantern she was holding to illuminate the door better.

A blue rusty door.

Mal pressed his hand to the metal and a sense of déjà vu washed over me.

Weird.

And then the door swung open with a soft whine.

We were in.

The Keep was shrouded in a silence so deep the wrongness of it resonated in my bones. It was the calm before the rage of a storm, the silence before an ambush, and my instincts went instantly into high alert.

“Something’s wrong,” Cora said, echoing my thoughts.

We came up into the kitchens—an epic room filled with stoves and long wooden tables and so many pots and pans it made my eyes ache to look at the shiny copper.

Mal put a finger to his lips and stalked over to the doors. He cracked one open, peered out, and ducked back in with a frown on his face.

“What?” I mouthed the word.

He shook his head slightly then peered out once more, for longer this time.

He retreated into the room with a strange look on his face. “This is odd.”

Samael strode to the door and looked out. His shoulders tensed and he slipped from the room.

Mal followed

Fuck this. I joined them to find blue jackets in various slumped poses, dotting the length of the corridor. At first glance they looked dead, but on closer inspection their chests rose and fell in even breaths.

“They’re asleep,” Cora said from beside me.

She crouched by the nearest one and prodded him.

He didn’t rouse.

Up ahead, Mal and Samael were engaged in a similar activity. These were our men. Lilith’s men. And they were all knocked out.

What the hell was happening here?

Azazel, Keon, Conah, and Lilith joined us in the corridor. Conah dropped to his knees by the guard Cora had tried to rouse. He checked his pulse then pinched the guards jaw to force his mouth open so he could sniff his breath.

“Pulse is regular,” Conah said. “There’s no scent on his breath to indicate the use of a sleeping drug.”

“Magic then,” Lilith said.

“You think Mammon coerced our Cardinals to use their power on our troops?” Samael asked.

Lilith frowned. “No, they’re loyal. They would rather die than betray their queen.”

“Then what?” Mal pondered.

My gaze fell back to the guard Conah had just sniffed to find him staring right at me.

Fuck. My pulse spiked but slowed rapidly when I realized his gaze was blank.

But his eyes had been closed a moment ago.

“It doesn’t matter,” Azazel said. “We need to find Mammon and—”

The guard blinked, and I let out a yelp.

“He’s awake.”

The guard sat up with stiff unnatural movements, as if invisible strings were maneuvring him.

“Um…Guys…” Cora sing-songed. “We have activity.”

Around us the guards were sitting up, eyes open but glazed.

My nape prickled, and once again déjà vu washed over me. The door, the blue fucking door and these guards’ eyes.

I’d seen them…

My dream came rushing back to me. Cain’s hand on the blue door. Following on the heels of that was the memory of the hooded figure we’d caught and held in a magical cage at the Dominus quarters. The tulpa’s eyes had been glazed like this, and Cain had been in control, which meant Cain was—

“Hello, guests.” Cain’s voice spilled out of the guards’ mouths.

Samael drew his sword, wings snapping open as he spun to search for the intruder.

“You won’t find me here, father,” Cain’s tone was saturated with derision. “But I’m not hiding or running. I’m waiting for you in the Throne Room. Come, bring all your friends. We have a lot of catching up to do, and Seraphina… You and I need to have a chat about privacy.”

The guards slumped down again, but my heart battered my ribs.

Cain was here.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Fee

The throne room was filled with piles of bodies. But these were Mammon’s men, daemons, and demons not in uniform. Frothing mouths and black-veined skin greeted me.

Poison.

Sickness.

And the reason was sat on the throne, ankle resting on knee, sipping from a golden goblet. Hulking figures stood either side of the throne, dressed in black long-sleeved tops, cargo pants, and boots. Their faces were smeared with blood, and their eyes were brimming with the lust for more.

The super vamps.

They’d infected and killed Mammon’s men. Mammon himself sat propped against the pedestal the throne was on, chin against his chest, fast asleep.

Samael stood tall, wings tucked against his back, arms loose at his sides in an unthreatening pose.

Lilith was a mass of tension, ready to defend her lover if needed.

“Hello, Father,” Cain said. “So nice of you to join us.” He sipped from his goblet again. “You took your time. I sent fake emissaries out hours ago.”

Fake? He’d lured us here.

“I know you’re angry,” Samael said evenly. “But I stand by my decision to lock you away. I thought my mark would help you control your darkness. I never expected you to find a new darkness in the use of your mother’s magic.”

Cain frowned and sat forward on his throne. “My mother is a bitch,” he said. “A filthy, lying bitch.”

“Enough!” Samael snapped. “Your quarrel is with me, not with her.”

Cain made a sound of disbelief and set his goblet down on the arm of the throne before standing. “You think I give a damn about you? No. I don’t care a jot what you think, do, or feel. You were never there. You weren’t a father to me. Adam was. I mourned him when he died. You…I couldn’t care less about.”

“And yet you’re here. Why?”

Cain rolled his eyes. “To kill you of course. Nothing personal. Just a means to an end.” He pulled his sleeve up to his elbow to reveal the mark Samael had given him. The mark of Cain. “I want this gone, and the only way to do that is to kill the giver…You.”

“But…” Samael sounded confused. “Son, if you remove the mark, you too will die.”

Cain’s smile was tired and jaded. “I know.”

Fucking hell. Wait a second. “You want to die.”

Cain looked at me for the first time. “Yes, sister. I want to die. I never asked for this immortality. I was never given a choice. It was thrust upon me to control a darkness that was given to me by birth.” His gaze flicked back to Samael. “You cursed me with your darkness and then cursed me again with everlife. I had a wife. I had children. I was happy. I wished to see them grow, and marry, and have children of their own. I did not wish to see them grow old. I did not wish to outlive them.”

He’d had a life. A family. It was strange to think of him as anything but a threat.

His lip curled slightly. “When my wife started to age and I did not, I wondered, but I believed your blood gave me a longer life span, that maybe I aged slower because of it. But as her hair turned gray and her face wrinkled, I suspected there was something wrong. The day she died in my arms I wanted to die with her. I took a dagger and stabbed myself in the heart.”

His throat bobbed and it was impossible not to feel his pain.

“She was my life,” he continued. “There was nothing for me without her. I wished to be with her, but I could not die, and then my mother”—he spat out the word as if it was a fly that had accidentally flown into his mouth.—“revealed the truth. I was immortal. It hit me then how she had not aged either.” He stepped off the podium. “She was feeding off my immortality, using it to stay alive and wait for you, her epic love, while I…I had lost mine.” He closed his eyes, pain flashing across his features “The injustice of it all built inside and then blasted out in a wave that decimated my whole village.” He opened his eyes and locked them on me. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

A righteous wave…the righteous blaze. He’d had it first. He’d used it without realizing, but the darkness in him had twisted it, resulting in the loss of innocent lives.

“You didn’t mean to kill the innocent.” I stepped forward. “I believe you.”

“My mother told Samael I’d killed in cold blood.” He focused on Samael. “And you acted without speaking to me. You acted as judge, jury, and executioner, locking me away.”

“Eve wanted you to live…“ I came abreast of Samael. “She wanted him to live so she could live.”

“She was afraid I’d find a way out of my curse,” Cain said. “And I did. Locked away, I created tulpas to do my bidding, and I discovered that the only way to end my life was to end the life of the person who gave me this mark.” He looked to me. “But the only way to wake up was to end my bloodline.”

He just wanted to die. How could I be mad at him for that? What Eve did to him was despicable. But I couldn’t let him kill Samael, because that would be wrong too.

Not that Cain cared about that, but maybe… “If you kill Samael, you’ll get what you want, but thousands of innocent demons and daemons will die.”

Doubt flickered across his face. “What are you talking about?”

“Samael is linked to this realm. If he dies, this world will die, taking every living creature with it.” I put out my hands palm up. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, and you have every right to be furious. You should have the right to die, but not if it means taking thousands of innocents to the grave with you. That isn’t who you are.”

He tucked in his chin for a long beat, and for a moment hope that my words had hit home flared in my chest. He was considering my argument. But when he raised his head, his face was a mask of indifference.