Chapter Twenty
“Once we prevent the apocalypse, will we still have group dinners like this?” Zavier asked as he passed the platter of cranberry-braised brisket. Maisy had chosen the recipe in a nod to Christmas being ten days away. And turned on Michael Buble’s crooner of a holiday album in the background. “I like it when we all hang out together.”
Liss bit her lip to keep from giggling at the very uncharacteristic comment. Gideon didn’t handle his surprise as well. His fork clattered as it dropped to the plate, rebounded, and landed on the floor. “Did you just voluntarily share your feelings?”
Those dark eyebrows drew together into their usual scowl. “It’s a simple question. About food. Which we all eat at a minimum of three times a day. Don’t make a big thing of it.”
Rhys snatched Zavier’s wrist. Held two fingers at his pulse. “Steady heart rate. You don’t feel clammy or hot.”
Zavier twisted out of his grip. “What the hell?”
“You’re clearly sick. Maybe some brain-dissolving parasite picked up in New Zealand? Because Zavier Carranza doesn’t…emote.” The Nephilim burst into laughter while Zavier scowled.
Tapping her knife against her wineglass to settle them, Evangeline said, “Leave him alone. You think a man can’t evolve after eighty-eight years? Let’s get on with the planning.”
Liss shot her a grateful smile. Zavier had been popping out statements like this since he huffed the wing blood. Nothing outrageous. Just…normal. Not as shut-down or quiet. He hadn’t turned into the garrulous Gideon, but it was as if he’d finally looked up and noticed the blue sky overhead for the first time in decades.
“Maisy and I make a good team in the kitchen. Hanging out with her’s an easy way to pass an afternoon. I’m in if she is.”
“Zavier, I’ll give you a pass this one time. You’ve only had Rhys and Gideon for your entire life, so I get that you are adjusting. But here’s the thing.” Maisy got up to encircle his broad shoulders from behind. “We’re all your family now. Me and Eva and Liss. You won’t shake us. You won’t scare us, or bore us. We love you. The six of us are a unit. Forever.” She kissed his temple and then yanked hard on his earlobe. “So don’t ever ask anything like that again.”
Zavier caught her hand and sandwiched it between his. “Understood.”
Forever, huh?
What if forever ended in a week?
Liss took a large swig of cabernet and brandished her fork. “Action is the antidote to anxiety. I don’t like feeling scared. Let’s make a fantabulous action plan.”
“I’ve made a damn thorough spreadsheet.”
“We’re taking down Evil with Excel? That feels like an oxymoron,” Gideon quipped.
“Ever since our tournament, Nephilim have reached out. Pledges to join the fight. Passing on of whispers, rumors, remembered actions that didn’t add up. Those we already trusted, we put on intel gathering.”
Rhys flattened his palms on the table. “Do you need a drum roll?”
“A true partner would’ve already done it,” Zavier shot back. “Don’t be that sloppy and slow in battle.”
Liss scooped out a second helping of the blue cheese gnocchi. Calories wouldn’t count until this war was over, one way or the other. “Did you get enough? Do we have a short list of rogue suspects?”
“ Technically , yes, we’ve achieved a short list.” Zavier started with his hands an inch apart, then spread them to at least a foot. “But it’s too long for my liking.”
“We’ll rage at those idiots another time. Or, if we’re lucky, get to beat the living shit out of them in battle,” Gideon said with great cheer. “Sooner than we’d hoped, too. Surprise will be a huge advantage for us. We can’t risk waiting for the rogues to make their move.”
With a grim scowl, Zavier said, “Especially if they noticed Furfur’s gone. That could’ve tipped them off. Sped up their timetable. The fluidity of how time lags in Hell is the only thing giving us breathing room right now, but that won’t last.”
“And we definitely can’t risk any more murdered Nephilim or Keepers,” Maisy added.
Rhys splayed his hands on the table. Leaned forward, locking eyes with each of them. “We’ve got to do…whatever it is we think up tonight…before Christmas. Within a week’s ideal.”
She’d barely begun shopping. Their house and the WatchTower were decorated, but there were still at least ten classic holiday movies that needed to be watched. Two cookie baking sessions. And now they were supposed to prevent a whole huge coup first?
“The lead angel and demon working together are nailed down for sure. We’ve got multiple guesses at Auriel’s second in command. Aamon’s doing the heavy lifting under Astaroth. Then the much longer list of boots on the ground—or in the clouds. Rogue angels, demons, and Nephilim .”
Rhys high-fived him. “Knowing your enemy is step one. We’ve got enough to take this to Caraxis.”
Gideon held up three fingers. “We already know step three: how to defeat them.”
“Bringing back Atlantis and a full fighting force of angels.”
Zavier waved his knife back and forth. “What we’re hazy on is step two. How do we find the Tree of Life?”
“I know!” Maisy waved a paper in the air.
The Nephilim all looked at each other, then Maisy, with patronizing smiles. “That was easy. Now tell me who is going to win the Super Bowl?” Rhys teased.
“I’m not pretending to be a trashy late-night psychic. I actually know . Hariel left a note. He figured it out.”
Eva checked her phone. “Thanks for the reminder. Time for me to go look in on our sleeping angel.”
Hariel had still been unconscious when they returned from the summoning. And still was. But his pulse and breathing were even. None of them knew, well, anything about full angels. Aside from Eva saying that her aunt had mentioned sleeping for a year after the Fall.
They were going with the assumption that’s how angels healed. Keeping him warm and safe would have to be enough.
Maisy waved the paper again. “I can find the Tree of Life.”
“That’s impossibly convenient.” Rhys snorted as he topped off his wine. “Are you sure Hariel wasn’t pranking you?”
“Does he ever do that? He enjoys a good joke, but he’s not exactly lighthearted after losing a wing and being stuck in the Stronghold for centuries.”
Gideon clasped his hands, brought them to his mouth as if thinking, and then pointed his index fingers at Maisy. “Why you? I know you’re special, but what makes you eternal-Tree-revealing special?”
“Well, I’m not. The correct answer is that any Keeper could do it.”
Evangeline nodded as she sat back down. “Mmm. The shard of the First Light that you’re imbued with. Makes sense.”
“Does it, though?” Liss spotted a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the explanation. “That’s the same light that shines from angels’ halos. Why isn’t it constantly revealed as they swoosh around the sky?”
“The glow from a halo just… is .” Maisy outstretched her hand, palm up, in a move that echoed Spider-Man casting a web. “I can focus the First Light, aim it with intention. Any further explanation I’m lumping under ‘cool magical power.’ Hold your questions until Hariel wakes up.”
“He probably doesn’t know, either.” Eva gave a quick stroke to Gideon’s arm before continuing. “We’ve all been researching through the scrolls that appeared when you called, Liss. Many of them looked like they hadn’t been touched, well, since before the Stronghold was built. We’re only finding bits and pieces of intel and making enormous leaps in logic to glue them together.”
The vein popping at Rhys’s temple marked him as not fully behind the plan. “You’re saying we make this the linchpin of our entire plan without multiple corroborations and basically crossed fingers?”
“Unless you have a better one,” Maisy said coolly. “Is your objection that I was wholly human seven months ago? That someone with more power and experience should be trying this once-in-several-millennia trick?”
Wow. Someone wasn’t getting sex tonight. Rhys had really stepped in it.
…
“Fucking Hell.” Zavier looked at Liss, then Eva, and back to Maisy. Then he swept his arm to encompass them. “These women who’ve joined our lives are more powerful, more interesting, because they’re hybrids. They’re the linchpins.”
“You’re babbling. Or sucking up. Either way, you’re not making sense,” Rhys said.
He pushed back his chair so abruptly that it toppled backward. “It’s the women. They’re why this will all work.”
“Thank you, Zavier.” Maisy blew him a kiss across the table. “Nice to see you so enlightened, unlike others at this table.”
“I’m not throwing shade. You know I love all of you.” Gideon’s face turned as serious as if he were about to face the Phillipine Ibwa demon that feeds on dead bodies—and particularly enjoyed making fresh ones. “But I need context.”
Zavier could do that. Because it all fit. How had they never seen it from this angle before?
“We’ve never believed in coincidence. The rogues drained their powers by disappearing Atlantis. It took until right now for them to regain enough to make an attempt at a coup. What else happened, right now? We left the Order. We’re the first and only Nephilim to do so.”
Gideon’s face still wore the prove it scowl. “We already know we’re stronger, better, and willing to think outside the box. But does that really mean we’re predestined to stop this?”
“No. It’s layers. Timing.” They could keep trying to poke holes. Zavier was certain . “Not just us. Maisy became Keeper. Ahead of her time. Eva had no idea what she was until a few months ago. Suddenly, she’s revealed as the first and only Dark Nephilim .”
Maisy used a breadstick to reach across and tap him, gently, on the wrist. “Not to burst your theory, but technically she’s been one her entire life.”
“She didn’t know it. Couldn’t access the powers. Tried to get rid of them. Until the six of us began forming this unit.”
Liss waggled her hand in the air. “But I was an accident.”
“Maybe.” Zavier shrugged. “Maybe not. All we know is that now you’re part Nereid and part Nephilim . Probably the first time that’s ever happened. You’re a powerful addition to our wheelhouse. Right when the world needs strong defenders more than ever.”
“If we’re predestined, that means we’ll win, right? I can stop worrying?”
“No,” Rhys spat out. “There’s a shit ton of worrying—more than enough to go around. Like, once the Tree is revealed, then we get to the nearly and probably impossible task of reappearing Atlantis. Furfur couldn’t explain how to get from Step A to Step C.”
Man, his friends were slow. He’d laid everything out. “That’s my point. It’s Liss. She’s Step B.”
She made a time-out sign with her silverware. “I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like the sound of it.”
Zavier didn’t either. He didn’t like Liss being involved at all, let alone playing such a vital role. But she’d hammered into him over and over that she both wanted to help and would do any and everything within her power to help.
He couldn’t box her out. Couldn’t keep this revelation to himself just to keep her safe.
Zavier took her hands. Attempted to sound calm and…encouraging? It’d been so long since he’d made that sort of an effort. “You already used your power to find lost things. When you pulled all those important books from the Stronghold’s library with your song.”
“A book is different from a whole island. I don’t remember enough geometry—physics?—to quote the formula for calculating density, but I know there is one and it’ll say that little ol’ me can’t pull an entire island out of whatever alternate dimension it’s in!”
Her voice rose, both in tenor and volume with every word, until she ended in a squeak that sent Lika into a distressed scamper around the candlestick by the salad bowl. A tiny blue zap of firepower punctuated his displeasure.
“Holy fuck, Z, that’s brilliant. You’re right.” Gideon stood and mimed doffing his cap while bowing.
Rhys slowly stroked the spot on his chin where he’d sported a beard in the sixties. Well, one of the sixties. Maybe a month, tops. “We’ll need to pro-slash-con it, but yeah, you solved it. I’m willing to say I’m optimistic about our chances for pulling this off now.”
“So it’s okay with all of you if I’m a sitting duck, out there in the middle of some ocean, solely responsible for bringing back Atlantis…while Aamon is dead set on kidnapping and torturing me for the foreseeable future?” Silence fell over the room. A weighted silence, like a theater dropping the fire curtain.
Shit.
“Liss, can I talk to you in the kitchen?”
“What’s the point in leaving the room? We’ll just listen through the door,” Gideon complained. “You’re such a pain in the ass, Z.”
Liss stood with a righteous haughtiness Zavier had last seen on Queen Sirikit of Thailand when he’d saved her from a Gajasimha half-lion, half-elephant demon. Except that Liss wore the very un-regal jersey tee that said this is my Hallmark Christmas movie watching shirt over skinny black jeans.
In the kitchen, Zavier filled a glass of water. Drained half of it to buy time to think of an approach.
It didn’t work.
But they weren’t beating-around-the-bush-type people. “So you know.”
“Yes. No thanks to you.”
He slammed the glass onto the counter. “How was I supposed to tell you that you’re in danger of being kidnapped—because of me ?”
“You already did!” Liss yelled.
And man, she probably hadn’t used her Nereid power, but the anger fueling her words punched him in the gut. “Huh?”
“Weeks ago. The night you picked me up at Aradia’s belly-dance class. I complained about you acting like my bodyguard. You said that I had a target on my head from being friends with all of you—and a mere human.”
Right. Hellfire . “I did, didn’t I?”
“Word for freaking word.”
He crossed his arms. Widened his stance into a firm enough foundation to kick a demon across a clearing. In other words, he was ready for a fight. “This is different.”
“No. No, don’t backslide into Zavier version 1.0, aka The Martyr. This isn’t your fault. You were the victim. Full stop. Anything that happens as a result of your horrible time in that demon’s dungeon is not your fault .”
“Telling you would’ve made you worry. More . Nothing else would’ve changed. Why would I do that?”
“You’re using it as a reason to keep your distance from me. Trying, anyway. Poorly. I deserved to know why. Especially if you’re running hot and cold for an almost legit reason for once.”
Everything Liss said sounded so…reasonable. How come he hadn’t gotten there in his head? “It is…incrementally more dangerous for you now that Aamon’s stated his intentions.”
“We’re on top of each other constantly with the whole ‘don’t let them bring back the Titanomachy’ mess.” Liss made finger quotes. Had to be the first time anyone crooked their fingers to mock the actual Titans. It was adorable. “I’m as safe as…as…your underwear.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody’s willing to pay a ransom for my underwear.”
Liss danced her fingers along the waistband of his jeans. “How do you know without asking?”
“You can’t flirt while we’re fighting.”
“I can, actually. Multitasking is what my generation does best, old-timer.”
Confused was an understatement. “Are you still mad at me? The flirting’s got me thrown off.”
“I’m still mad on principle. I’ve had a day to simmer down. You’ve got to promise me you won’t pull this nonsense again. Whether we’re friends or something more, you have to be honest with me. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“Understood.” Hand over his heart, he dropped into a half bow. “I promise. It was a thoughtless choice on my part.”
“But I get why you did it.” Liss leaned in, pinching his nose between her knuckles. “To recap, we’re a team, you and me. Don’t leave me out of decisions, even if you think you’re protecting me.”
“Understood.”
“As to the other reason why I’m mulling being mad at you”—she let go and boosted herself up to sit on the edge of the sink—“you really expect me to make Atlantis show up? I don’t have control over my powers. I don’t know the extent of my powers. And, oh, the fate of the whole world is riding on me?”
“Because you’re the one. You can do this.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“You turn yourself inside out to do what you set your mind to. You want to help. Have you proven that you can? Nah. Doesn’t change you being our best shot.”
“We need a plan B.”
Zavier patted his chest. “The demon said a Nephilim could do it. And I will, Liss, if you decide you want to hang back here with Hariel.”
“I get to decide? The world might end, but I get a vote? Wow, you really were paying attention thirty seconds ago.”
“The most important vote. The freedom to choose. Isn’t that what we’re fighting for?” He parted her legs and stepped between them. “I want you safe, Liss. My every instinct is to protect you. But that makes you a prisoner. It isn’t fair. I can’t choose for you.”
That was the hardest thing he’d ever said. Forming the thoughts alone had been hard. Pushing away all of his ingrained need to keep her safe. And then telling her…
Zavier was as drained as if he’d just fought a djinn.
“Well, if you’re going to be big enough to give me space, I guess I have to make that gesture worthwhile. I’ll do it. As long as you promise to stop using Aamon’s threat as some sandpaper-covered buffer between us.”
“For the sake of the world? Sure.”
“Ooh, so slick,” she teased. Then Liss wrapped her legs around his hips. Transferred all of her weight to rub against him. “How about you prove it?”
“Right now? Before we finish strategizing?” Forming his mouth into a grossly shocked O , Zavier continued, “Before dessert ?”
“We all have to make sacrifices. But I think you’ll like this one.”
Zavier didn’t bother with the stairs to his bedroom.
He flew .