“Not today.” He lowered his head as though giving a silent order, and legions of angels appeared behind him. Hundreds upon hundreds as far as the eye could see—but there was a lot of smoke—all ready to fight.
“Michael,” I said as though disappointed. “This is getting embarrassing.”
And behind me, thousands and thousands of departed materialized. Beep’s army. I called forth every name Rocket had ever written, and they stood like a sea of warriors. Ready to fight for my daughter, because if she was going to survive, she needed her father. I needed her father.
“Like I said, this is not the time.”
“He made a binding promise,” Michael said. “All three gods of Uzan. Off this plane. For all eternity.”
“You tricked him.”
“I let Rey’aziel trick himself.”
“But that’s not really his name, is it?”
He didn’t answer that. Instead he looked past me at the flames that were now a hundred feet high. “He will soon go nuclear and level this town, if not several more. We aren’t in the habit of giving passes to those who would see hundreds of thousands die.”
“Seriously? Do you even watch the news?”
“Humans killing humans. Not my jurisdiction.”
“I know Jehovah may not care about his brother, but I damned sure do. And you will not take him.”
He worked his jaw in frustration. Torn. Weighing the odds in his mind. In the end, he sheathed his sword. “When the time comes, Val-Eeth, you will not be able to save him.”
“That’s funny. I don’t think he’s the one who needs saving.”
Another cloud of smoke billowed around us, swallowing us whole. I heard a rustling of wings, and when the smoke cleared, they were gone. Every angel had vanished.
I turned to Mr. Wong, his golden armor shimmering as much as his mischievous eyes. “I thought we were going to have a battle.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It would’ve been good practice.” He turned toward our own army. “They need to get in shape.”
I snorted. “Can the departed get in shape?”
“I will leave you, Val-Eeth.” He bowed over my hand.
“Charley, please.” Being called a god was a bit much.
He bowed again and disappeared. A microsecond later, Beep’s army evaporated, as did the hellhounds.
Artemis looked back and whimpered. Michael was right. Reyes had lost control. I dematerialized and stepped into the fire. He still held her tight, but he had incinerated her. All that remained of her body was an outline of ash.
He touched her face. It cracked like burned paper and flew away, the glowing particles floating around him. Then she crumbled in his arms and slipped through his fingers like sand through a sifter.
And the fire grew hotter. It burned. Even in the intangible world it scorched my skin. I realized he was lost. He couldn’t control his powers.
Been there, done that.
Maybe he was just the opposite of me. Maybe if he learned his true name, he would be better able to control it.
What did I have to lose? I stepped closer, kneeled down to him, cupped his face in my hands, and whispered, “Rey’azikeen.”
Nothing. The agony he felt scorched to the marrow of my bones. I said it again and again received no response.
This was not happening. Then I realized it didn’t have to be permanent. I took out the god glass. If I didn’t stop him, he truly would level the town and possibly more. He could sink half of California into the ocean.
The fire grew even hotter, the flames loud and relentless. I reached over to get his blood. I would only leave him in there for a moment. Just enough to calm him down. To disorient him and bring him back to me.
I put my nails on his wrist and scraped as hard as I could.
He finally looked at me, his gaze glowing and glistening. So I repeated his name. “Rey’azikeen. You have to stop. You’re going to burn this town down.”
He looked through the fire. He’d already leveled the park.
“You have to stop.”
He furrowed his brows. Looked down at his sister’s ashes. Bent down and covered his eyes with his fists.
That was when I saw them, rising over the god before me. I fell back and looked on in awe. He was covered in fire, his outline almost translucent. But the fire arced over him, too, and created the illusion of wings. Massive, angelic wings folded in and wrapped around him.
I forgot all about the impending nuclear disaster. I watched my husband as he sat back on his heels and laid his head back, trying desperately to get control over his emotions. He was solid muscle. Tense and combustible and so beautiful I ached. And he had wings. The fires licked over them, shaping and molding them. He dropped his head into his hands again.
Before I could snap out of it, another being walked into the fire. A departed. She laid her hand on Reyes’s head, and he opened his eyes. Looked up at her. Almost collapsed when she kneeled down and folded him into her arms.
“He was trying to draw you out,” Kim said, more beautiful than I’d ever seen her. “He knew that you’ve been following him.”
“What?” I asked, appalled. I stood and walked over to him. “You were following him? An evil, malevolent god? Was this one of your secrets? Because I don’t remember this coming up during our last conversation.”
Kim laughed softly, stood, and hugged me. I hugged her back for a long time.
“I understand so much now,” she said, then looked back at her brother. “I know how special you are. Both of you. I knew you were, but not like this.”
“Kim, I wish we could have told you more,” I said.
Reyes stood and looked at her like she was the sun and he’d been raised in total darkness. His fire still billowed around him.
“You don’t understand,” she said. Her face brightened. “My name is on Rocket’s wall. I was sent.”
“Kim, that’s amazing,” I said, not sure what else to say.
She nodded and leveled a loving gaze on her brother. “I was sent here for a reason. I know it. And I promise to guard her forever.” She put one hand on my face and one on Reyes’s. “I’ll be your eyes and ears. I will give you minute-by-minute updates on how she is. What she’s doing. Her first words. Her first steps.” She lowered her head and smiled. “I’m an aunt of the girl who is destined to save the world. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
“Oh yeah?” I teased. “Well, I’m her mom. That’s right.” I blew on my fingernails and polished them on my shirt. “You can be jealous.”
She chuckled, but Reyes was still lost. The fire still raged. Her loss still cut.
I stepped forward, drew him down to me, and put my mouth on his. Then I tamed the fire. I cooled it with my breath. With the beats of my heart. With the pulse of my energy.
The roar of the fire was replaced with a crackling sound as ice spread from under my feet, along the boardwalk, and up walls and posts and amusement park rides. The fires around us died immediately, and black smoke rose in its place, the scent pungent and acrid.
I pulled back. Reyes’s wings were gone, and his fire had calmed though certainly didn’t disappear. He was made of fire, so it was no wonder.
“Only she can tame the beast,” Kim said.
I looked at her in question. “It’s something Rocket said to me.”
“Ah. He’s smarter than he seems.”
She nodded and pulled us both into a hug. “Would you like to see her?” she asked us in the softest whisper.
“Yes!” I said before Reyes could say no. When he gave me a wary look, I said, “I don’t even have my light right now. Just for a minute.”
His head still not quite in the game, he nodded, and in the next heartbeat we were in a convenience store. A couple in front of us was oohing and aahing as they served themselves cups of coffee.
“Your light is not as visible,” Kim said, “but you’re still not really human. The supernatural world can sense
that. You must be quick.”
“I promise.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the carrier Mr. Loehr had set on the counter while Mrs. Loehr doctored their coffees.
They were chattering about what color curtains to put in Beep’s room. And Mr. Loehr needed to call the gas company the second they arrived. They were on a trip, across country from the looks of it. Were they moving them again?
I glanced around and saw the outline of a hellhound nearby. It backed away when it realized who we were, as did the other three.
A coo sounded from the carrier, and my breath came out too sharp, too loud, when I heard her. The Loehrs tensed instantly. Mrs. Loehr scooped the carrier up while Mr. Loehr stepped in front of them. A barrier. A protector. And then they recognized us, and relief rushed through them both.
I smiled, put an index finger over my mouth, and gave a secretive wink. Surprised, they smiled back and pulled me into a group hug.
“Is everything okay?” Mrs. Loehr asked.
Reyes nodded and took his would-have-been mother into a fierce hug. He did the same with Mr. Loehr while I stepped closer to the carrier she’d put back on the counter.
I could see her essence before I saw Beep herself. Then I saw her. A tiny hand at first. A pudgy arm. And then huge, coppery eyes that dominated a round face. For the first time in over a month, I saw my daughter.
I put a hand over my mouth, she was so beautiful. She smiled at me, her dimpled cheeks bright pink and full of life. Her eyes sparkling.
Mrs. Loehr looked on proudly. She tipped the carrier so I could see her better. “They say it’s gas.”
“Gas?”
“That makes babies smile at this age.” She leaned in and whispered, “They’ve never met Miss Elwyn Alexandra.”
She beamed at me and then at her husband. They seemed so happy despite the danger we’d put them in. They seemed grateful.
Reyes came to stand beside me.
I laughed softly, the joy in my heart so overwhelming. “She’s dark and powerful and fierce,” I said to him. “And she’s no more human than you or I.”
He squeezed me to him and then bent over the carrier. Beep took hold of his finger, and he laughed, as amazed as I was.
Kim looked down at her, too, her face aglow. Literally. She was no longer the stressed, nervous, skittish woman she used to be. As painful as it was to think about, death suited her.
I looked back at the Loehrs. “Her soul is made up of a million sparkling lights. Of stars and galaxies and nebulas.”
They exchanged fascinated glances, then I realized something else.
“Reyes, she’s a portal.”
He looked closer at her. “You’re right. But to where?”
“I guess we’ll find out someday.”
“May we hold her?” Reyes asked Mrs. Loehr.
I seconded the question with a nod, my brows raised.
She looked at us like we’d just escaped our padded cells and said, “Of course.”
With Mrs. Loehr’s help, we gathered her up, certain we would break her, it’d been so long. I pushed her into Reyes’s arms and then wrapped my own around them both.
“How did you find me?” I asked him.
He touched her tiny chin. “I asked Osh.”
I tore my gaze off my daughter. “You asked?” My voice rose an octave. “Osh?”
He nodded.
“So, you saw him?”
“You mean in the fetal position you left him in?”
He saw him.
I knew I had to get back sooner rather than later. But I just kept thinking, one more minute. One more minute.
“And he just told you where I was?”
“He didn’t want to, but I applied pressure,” he said. “He was already in a lot of pain. It didn’t take much.”
“Reyes,” I said, appalled and feeling more than a little guilty. “Is he okay?”
“Define ‘okay.’”
Kim put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s time.”
I panicked. “Just one minute more.”
She only smiled at me, and that was all the convincing I needed. She was right. We were risking our own daughter’s life by being here. Not to mention the Loehrs’.
A painful sigh shuddered through my chest as Reyes handed her back to Mrs. Loehr. And then something amazing happened. Beep looked at her as though she recognized her. She looked at her lovingly. There was no mistaking it, and I almost cried.
“Thank you so much,” I said to her. “You will never know how grateful we are.”
“No, thank you,” she said. “You don’t know what this means to us.”
I hugged her to me again, deeper this time, and I could smell Reyes in her clothes and on her skin and in her hair. A part of him truly was human. The good part. The loving part. The important part.
She bounced Beep in her arms. “We owe you everything.”
They both watched us go, Mr. Loehr with his arms wrapped around his girls, and I could only hope Mrs. Loehr didn’t drop Beep when we dematerialized before their eyes.
28
The fact that there’s a Highway to Hell
and only a Stairway to Heaven
says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.
—MEME
By the time we got back to Garrett’s apartment, seventeen minutes had passed, thanks to how much we’d manipulated time. Osh lay on the floor, writhing in agony, his head thrown back, his teeth welded together. The fissures in his body had cracked open and were leaking vast amounts of light, the unimaginable energy melding the molecules in his body together. It was like watching a nuclear reactor in a meltdown.
Reyes was right. Osh had only seconds.
I straddled him, pulled him upright, grabbed his jaw, and placed my mouth on his. Taking back my light, my energy, was comparable to swallowing a hydrogen bomb. I drew it out of him as quickly as I could before it killed him, and the atoms in such an excited state burst inside me. It was like brain freeze times a billion.
I wrapped him tighter in my arms. Held his head as he went limp. Took as much of me back as I could. I kept drawing out energy, sucking venom as though he were a bite victim, but he didn’t wake up.
“Dutch,” Reyes said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You’re killing him.”
“No,” I said with a sob, pulling him to me and placing tiny kisses on his face. “I’m sorry, Osh.”
My light was out of him, but what was left was much worse. He was covered from head to toe in deep gashes, long lesions where the light had crackled across his body, trying to escape. His face, his skin normally so perfect, was a garish replica of the original as though an artist had decided to sculpt what he would look like in a horror movie.
And yet he was still so beautiful. So intrinsically handsome. So supremely broken.
I held him for a long time, rocking him.
“Dutch—”
“We need to get him to a hospital,” I said, cursing myself for not having thought of it before. “Hurry.”
Reyes kneeled beside me. “Sweetheart, look.”
The wounds were already beginning to heal, the skin closing at the tips of the lesions, leaving dark red trails in their wakes.
I looked at Reyes. “He’ll be okay?”
“Unfortunately.”
I laughed softly, knowing he didn’t mean it. They’d started out as enemies but had become very close. Like prizefighters who were friends outside the ring. Fair-weather friends, but friends nonetheless.
Pulling Osh to me again, I held him close, reveled in the heat of his body because that meant he was alive.
“There’ll come a point,” Garrett said from a few feet away, “where this will be considered a form of molestation. I might have to call this in.”
I looked at him. “How many beers have you had?”
He grinned and raised his current bottle of Corona in salute. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I’m sorry, Garrett. I didn’t even think of what this might do
to you.”
He shook his head. “All’s well that ends—”
“I didn’t particularly care at the time, but looking back…”
A throw pillow hit me square in the face. I giggled, almost giddy with relief that Osh would be okay. Or at least alive. He may never be the same again, but he’d live.
“We need to take him back to the apartment.”
Reyes shook his head. “I don’t want to risk anyone seeing us carrying an unconscious body into the building.”
We both turned to Garrett.
“I don’t exactly have a guest room.”
We looked at each other and nodded.
“Ready?” I asked.
We gathered him into our arms, and I was surprised at how gentle Reyes was with him. But carrying an unconscious Daeva was like carrying a limp lion made of spaghetti.
“By all means,” Garrett said. “Take my room.”
“Gawd, he’s heavy,” I said, grunting.
“You know, I could get him myself.”
“No, I got this,” I said, right as I slammed his head into the doorframe. “Shit. You think that’ll bruise?”
Reyes fought a grin and lost.
* * *
We got Osh settled in Garrett’s bed. Swopes wasn’t nearly as annoyed as he pretended to be. He was concerned. He was traumatized. Cookie was on her way over to help watch over him. We’d agreed to take shifts until he woke up.
Reyes and I took first watch as Garrett went out for sustenance.
I lay beside Osh on the bed, touching the lines that were getting lighter and lighter. Only a few gashes remained. We’d stripped him and bandaged the worst of them.
Reyes was sitting in a chair across the room, his shirt unbuttoned and open, a beer in one hand and resting on a knee. He was so fierce. So powerful. And he was just sitting there drinking a beer. Eyeing me as though trying to figure me out.
“How did you do it?”
I tucked a strand of hair behind Osh’s ear. “It’s called god glass.”
“That’s what you had in New York?”
“Party favor. Kuur brought it, but he didn’t know the rules of the game. He didn’t bring enough for everyone.”
“And how does it work? How does one trap a god, for instance?”
“They must be in a form where you can draw blood. You put one drop on the god glass, say their name, their true name, and presto. They are trapped until you decide otherwise.”