Chapter 15 #2
“We’re hers. End of.” Grim stopped in front of the door to our suite, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Right, no one is questioning that. I just mean, we were all gung ho to stop this from happening, and now we’re just going to Uno Reverse and accept it?”
I snorted at Sin’s assessment. “We were okay with the world ending before. Sort of built an entire existence around it.”
“But that was before Merri.”
“If she wants to keep the baby and let the world burn, then fuck it, she can have whatever she wants,” Malice said fiercely.
“You might be on to something, Mal.” I reached for the doorknob, but hesitated when Sin held up a hand.
“Aren’t we supposed to be Team Save the World now?”
“We’re Team Merri now.” Grim leveled his gaze on me.
I nodded. “Now and always.”
Malice didn’t speak, but he gave a nod of agreement as well.
Sin broke out into an obnoxious grin. “Great. Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”
He made to open the door, but I slapped his hand away.
“The fuck was that for?” he asked.
“I’m going in first.”
“Who died and made you boss?”
Ignoring his petulant question, I glanced at the others and explained, “I want to make sure she’s okay with company before we all go barging in and bombarding her with our emotions.”
“You’re right. She’s already had a group of men talking over her at once. We can wait.” Sin stepped back and leaned against the wall.
“Let us know when she’s ready,” Grim added.
Malice huffed, but fell back as well. “We will be right here.”
With a final glance at them, I knocked softly on the door before opening it and calling, “Merri?”
I spotted her straight away, but it was obvious that despite my attempts to alert her, she hadn’t heard me. She was pacing back and forth behind the suite’s couch, muttering angrily to herself.
“Red,” I tried again, careful to keep my voice low so as not to startle her.
Creeping closer, I put myself in her path and caught her before she slammed into my chest.
“Chaos, fuck! I didn’t see you.”
“I noticed. I’ve been trying to get your attention since I walked into the room.”
She glanced around, searching for the others.
“I asked them to stay outside until I made sure you were okay with us being here.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seemed pretty over company when you stormed out.”
“Well, yeah, but that was”—she waved an arm wildly—“other people. Not you guys. Last I checked, none of you were trying to force your decisions down my throat.” Tipping her head to the side, the ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Which, come to think of it, is a big departure from your norm.”
“We’ve learned a few things these last couple of weeks.”
“Have you?”
I glanced back toward the door. “Yes. All of us have taken past experience to heart. Just say the word, and we’ll all be here to talk this through.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip before responding. “I get final say, but since it impacts all of us, I think it should be a group discussion, at the very least.”
“Agreed.” As I turned to walk to the door, she stopped me with a hand on my arm. “What?”
Face stricken, she looked into my eyes, then cast an uncertain gaze down. “What if it’s not yours?”
My gut twisted at the unease in her question. “Mine specifically or one of the horsemen’s?”
“Both? Either?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t change anything.”
“How can you say that?”
“As far as we’re concerned, any child of yours is ours. Period.”
Her posture relaxed so quickly she reminded me of softened butter. “Oh,” she murmured, her eyes glowing with what I thought was pleasure. “In that case, definitely let them in.”
I’d barely finished calling, “Come on in,” over my shoulder before Sin stumbled through the door with all the grace of an oafish cartoon character.
He might have agreed to give us space, but that didn’t mean privacy.
I’d bet my horse he’d been pressed against the door, sharing every word we said with the others.
I had to fight back a chuckle because I got it. I’d have done the same.
Righting himself, Sin feigned nonchalance as he shot Merri a wink and sidled up to her.
Malice was right behind him, with Grim bringing up the rear.
Once all of us were in the room, Grim leaning up against the door while Sin and Malice hovered on either side of our girl, I returned my full attention to her.
“All right, Red. We’re all here. Tell us where your head is at.”
She shrugged, her expression shifting between exhaustion and apprehension. “I don’t know where my head is. We’ve been trying for this very scenario all this time, but now things are different. Lucifer isn’t our adversary, he’s our—”
“If you say ally, we’re going to need access to a dictionary. That man is not our ally.”
Merri cut me a razor-sharp look at my interruption. I held up my hands in assent.
“He’s part of this group now. There’s no way to deny it. I can’t choose between any of you, including him. It’s all of you or none.”
“None isn’t an option,” Grim was quick to say, shadows erupting out of him.
“Duh. That wasn’t a real option, Grimsby,” Sin said, before second-guessing himself and asking, “Right, kitten?”
She nodded, stepping into Sin’s arms to reassure him in the best way she could. All of us loved touching her, but Sin thrived on physical connection. He visibly relaxed as soon as she buried her face in his chest, his fingers stroking her hair and lips pressing against her crown.
“What if it’s the antichrist?” she asked, voice small but the question looming large.
There was a beat of silence as we all weighed our various answers.
Malice surprised me by being the first to speak. “We’ve always been okay with the world’s eventual end. So really it just comes down to finding a safe place to ride it out.”
“Do you have one in mind?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hell seems like the most obvious bet. If Lucifer really is part of this group now—with it being his realm and ultimately being unaffected by what happens to Earth—he would ensure our safety.”
“You’re forgetting something,” I said.
“What?”
“The horsewomen aren’t just going to step aside and let Lucifer keep his throne. The antichrist will ensure his apocalypse, but now that they’ve shown their cards, it's obvious they have no intention of letting him rule. Which means hell will be every bit as much of a battleground as Earth.”
Grim huffed. “We’re talking in circles. Hell will not be safe, nor will Earth. Heaven isn’t an option either. It will be the first thing to be obliterated once the apocalypse is completed.”
“There are other realms. Ravenndel, the underworld, Novasgard,” Sin offered.
“What makes you think we’ll be welcome in any of them?” I asked. “They don’t have any loyalty to us.”
“Or owe us any favors,” Grim added.
“I think you guys are missing the bigger picture. We can’t just fuck off and abandon the rest of humanity,” Merri said.
The four of us exchanged glances. We were far less concerned with humanity than she was, but she still saw herself as part of them.
“All we care about is you and the baby,” I told her.
She made a face. “I’m sure that’s supposed to sound very romantic. And it sort of does, but I care about humanity.”
Malice huffed out a breath. “Which means we have to as well.”
“Right.”
“Then it looks like we’re back to the drawing board, as it were,” Grim grumbled.
“Does anyone have any other useful solutions? So far we have death, or death.” Sin’s frustrated tone matched exactly how I was feeling.
“Did someone say death? That is one of my special interests,” Lucifer announced as he sauntered into the suite without an invite.
I glanced at Grim, my body tensed and instinctively ready for an altercation.
The fallen angel was our enemy until very recently; I couldn’t help my reaction to him.
It was very clearly the same for the others, the temperature in the room dropping several degrees as everyone except Merri glared at him.
“What? Did I interrupt?” he asked, entirely unfazed.
“You know you did,” Sin said, temper giving his voice an edge.
Lucifer shrugged. “Yes, well, you’re going to want to hear what I have to say. And from what I overheard, it’s obvious you weren’t coming up with any winning strategies on your own, so allow me to swoop in and save the day.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough already?” Malice asked.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t set your sights on Merri in the first place,” I snarled.
“That was destiny, my dear Chaos. I had no hand in that. Merri and I were fated to be together.”
“Just as the four of you are meant to be mine,” she added, easing some of my jealousy.
Lucifer waved a hand as if that was entirely irrelevant. “Regardless of who has the most legitimate and true claim,” Lucifer fake coughed and added under his breath, “It’s me,” before coughing again and returning to his normal volume, “I know how we can stop this.”
“Stop what? The pregnancy?” Merri protectively cupped her belly. “I already told you that’s not an option.”
She hadn’t actually said those words, only that it was her decision, but something about hearing them now filled me with fierce pride.
Lucifer leveled his gaze on her and offered a placating smile. “No, crabapple, the apocalypse.”
“Why do you suddenly care about stopping it?” I asked, suspicion heavy in my tone as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “I have a mate and a little one on the way.”
“That never seemed to matter to you before,” Malice pointed out.
“I know, color me surprised, but here we all are. Who knew I could be such a bleeding heart?”
“Stop grandstanding. How do we end it, Morningstar?” Grim bit out.
“We have to unmake the one who started it.”
“What?” Merri asked, removing herself from Sin’s grasp and joining me as I faced off with Lucifer. “You know how to do that?”
Lucifer sat in the armchair near the fireplace and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled. “There’s always a failsafe, even during an apocalypse.”
“And you’re just conveniently mentioning this now?” I accused, not trusting a word coming out of him.
“It didn’t exactly behoove me to mention it before.”
“But when your brothers asked, you said we couldn’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,” Merri said, her brows furrowed over stormy eyes.
“So maybe I fibbed a little. Sue me.”
“What happened to not being a liar?” she snapped.
His eyes were unreadable when they lifted to hers. Realizing we were about to get off track, I dove in. “What’s the failsafe, Lucifer?”
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s like that stuffy vampire Gavin said.
You have to unmake the one who started it.
And to be fair, I didn’t know how to unmake someone, so it wasn’t a viable solution anyway, but now that I have access to the book, that’s no longer an issue.
” He cracked his knuckles and sighed. “You’re welcome. ”
A heartbeat passed before the meaning behind his words became clear. Then I lunged forward, lifting him out of his seat with a single hand. “Allow me,” I growled, the room quaking as power snaked out of me.
“Oh no,” Grim crooned, his shadow form looming large. “This sounds like Death’s domain.”
“Wait! We can’t kill him. We have to unmake him. You heard the guy,” Sin protested. “Torture it out of him. Mal, go get the book!”
Lucifer appeared mildly panicked as he shouted, “Hold your literal horses. You’re forgetting a very significant detail. I didn't start this.”
I shoved him away with a curse. The fucker was right. The four of us knew it because we were all with the one who did.
Helene.
“We have to unmake a horsewoman,” I said. “We have to kill Hel.”
“If we’re going to unmake one of them, we have to unmake them all. They are a unit, not a single entity. The horsewomen have never existed apart from one another. As long as one survives, the remaining mantles must be taken up,” Grim said.
“Your stern compatriot is right. We won’t be able to unmake Helene permanently unless the others are taken down as well.” Lucifer inspected his cuticles, casual and calm, as though this wasn’t a monumental undertaking.
“Great. Perfect. Wonderful,” Sin said, pacing in the opposite direction of Malice before stopping in the center of the room and throwing up his hands. “How the fuck do we do that?”
Malice made a soft humming sound before looking up. “Seems the best place to start is with Lilith’s book.”