Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
B ianca felt the weight of Eddie’s hostile stare all down the right side of her body. There was nothing to be gained by putting this off any longer. She met Eddie’s scowl. “I owe you an explanation.”
“Yes, you fucking do.” Eddie jerked her head. “Lucifer can fill them in about the children. You and I are going to talk.”
Why didn’t that sentence ever mean the good kind of talk?
Eddie led Bianca into her bedroom and shut the door.
A hard thud sounded against the door.
Sighing, Eddie opened it again, and Xerxes and Cronus ambled in. One of them—she couldn’t tell who was who—drew level with her and growled a warning.
He’d have to take a number. Eddie had first dibs on tearing a shred off her.
“You manipulated the board into doing Macbeth ?” Eddie took a seat on the bed, and the hounds crowded close to her.
“Yes, I did.” And she’d hated not being able to be honest with Eddie at the time. But she hadn’t known Eddie that well, certainly not well enough to tell her all of it. Maybe if Dee had been around, she would have come clean. She’d already admitted to Dee about knowing about the hell gate and a bunch of other stuff. Eddie had been an unknown and had no idea herself at that time that she was Nephilim or any of the other mind fuckery that had happened in the past months. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
Eddie folded her arms. “Why?”
“I needed to activate the hell gate.” If she was ever going to have a relationship with Eddie in the future, she couldn’t withhold facts. “The witches in my coven were going missing. I needed the witch’s curse in Macbeth to activate the hell gate so I could summon a hell prince.”
“Why?” Eddie’s expression sat firmly between grim and hostile.
“You’ve already worked out that I’m a witch.” Her eventful night was catching up to her and Bianca wanted to sit but didn’t dare getting closer to Eddie. “I belong to a local coven, and if you don’t know by now, so does Patty.”
Eddie gaped at her. “Patty? Our Patty is a witch?”
“Yup.” Maybe if everyone had been more amenable to sharing information, things might not have gotten this desperate. “She’s been our representative keeping an eye on the hell gate.”
“Patty.” Eddie shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Really?” Bianca found that difficult to believe. Patty was hardly your run of the mill senior citizen.
Eddie grimaced. “Okay, maybe I can see it. I just put her eccentricities down to typical theatre people stuff.”
That tracked, and Bianca moved on. “Like I said, our witches have been disappearing, and we can’t find any trace of them. Even if we did, we didn’t know what we were facing. We wanted a hell prince to help.”
“You didn’t think of trying the police instead?” Eddie scoffed, but she was looking slightly less pissed, and the hounds had lowered their heads and blinked at her sleepily.
Or maybe that was their hungry look. “You ever tried explaining magic and witches to the police?”
Eddie flushed. “Good point.”
“We summoned Shade first.” Bianca needed to get this all off her chest. “But you got to him first. To be honest, we didn’t anticipate the hounds.”
Eddie smiled and stroked the massive heads on either side of her. “Me neither.”
“Then when we found out what happened to you and Wrath with the amulets, we?—”
“How did you find that out?” Eddie bristled.
Both hounds’ eyes snapped open.
Bianca felt a momentary flicker of guilt as she dropped Patty in the crap, but the time for hiding was over for all of them if they were going to stand a chance of finding their witches. It was all about cooperation now, and she was sure Patty would agree. Maybe after poking her with a knitting needle. “Patty is very good at listening and not being seen.”
Eddie’s eyebrows rose. “You mean spying.”
“Yes, spying.” There wasn’t a way to pretty up that particular truth. Best to move away from that detail. “You see, our coven has learned how to make those amulets.”
Anger tightened Eddie’s features.
Bianca hurried on before she could get the wrong idea. “Not for how they’re being used now and never for anyone other than ourselves.” She held her hand up, hoping to forestall the tirade she could see brewing in Eddie. “We use them to store our own power. Like a sort of extra battery.” Eddie seemed to simmer down, but not by much, so best she get to the point. “We now believe that whoever took our witches, is using them to make the amulets.” Her legs wanted to give up, and she edged closer to Eddie’s bed. “And that’s a far bigger enemy than we can tackle, so we went for another summoning. This time, we went for Lucifer.”
Eddie sat in a thoughtful silence before she said, “Is that what happened to the children’s mother?”
“Leona. Yes, we believe so.” What the hell. She was so tired it might be a relief if the hounds actually ate her. She took a seat beside Eddie. “But Emma is even more powerful than her mother. We are afraid they’ll come for her next. Lucifer thought this was the best place to keep her safe.” She made it sound like she’d had any option. “Actually, Lucifer pretty much insisted we bring them here.”
Eddie frowned. “If they took her mother, then why didn’t they take her?”
“Leona bound her magic to keep her safe.” Bianca didn’t want to think about what it meant that Leona’s binding had failed. “With Leona gone, so is her binding spell.
Lucifer was rapidly losing patience with the raging argument in the greenroom. By the seven fucking seals, sometimes this group argued strictly for the sake of arguing. None of these beings had any concept of time and how precious that commodity could be. Instead of working to protect two young humans, suddenly they all wanted to die on the hill of what to do with those humans.
Chris Fellows and his merry men were trying to insist the children be handed over to the guardians and taken to a safe house. Guardians were still human but their close contact with heaven and hell often prolonged their life spans and increased their abilities.
“They’re human.” Chris glared at the gathering. “We are the best choice to take care of their needs, because we actually understand their needs.”
Bianca stirred at this side. “But they don’t know you. After the trauma they’ve been through, I’m not going to hand them over to strangers.”
He had insisted Bianca be part of this meeting.
“Lucifer is a stranger to them,” Fellows said with the exaggerated patience of a man trying not to bellow.
“But Emma has bonded with him.” Bianca stuck to her guns. “And she trusts him.”
“He’s not human,” Chris snapped.
“You don’t have to be human to understand a child’s needs,” Haziel said in her sweet voice.
Lucifer found it hard to believe Wrath had managed to convince the beautiful seraph to join him in his demesne and become his mate. Although he was a big supporter of the changes Haziel had wrought on his brother. Wrath hadn’t tried to end him once tonight and had only glared at Ramiel. He’d also not as yet threatened to rip the wings off anyone.
“Exactly.” Wrath came out in immediate support of Haziel. “Children need attention, security, and boundaries.”
Haziel beamed at Wrath. “And love.”
“And love.” Wrath’s harsh features softened. “Always love.”
Ramiel shifted and clenched his jaw.
Served the fucker right. Ramiel had knowingly put Haziel in danger because he’d been jealous. Lucifer would love to taunt the fucker and drive the knife deeper. Ramiel should have woken up sooner to what Haziel meant to him and should never have exposed her to the horsemen. Too bad Lucifer was too interested in Emma and Ethan’s futures to take such a ripe opportunity.
“Although they’d be safe with you,” Eddie said to Wrath and Haziel, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to place them somewhere so unfamiliar.”
“Safe!” Chris gaped at her. “How can you call Wrath’s demesne safe? The seals are breaking, and the demons are running wild.”
“As opposed to being hunted on earth.” Eddie was all delightful fire and fury in defense of her sire.
Lucifer hoped when this was over, he’d get to know his niece better. Eddie was a good being, despite her unfortunate parentage.
“Anywhere we send them carries risk.” Sophia was dressed as a Victorian woman, ready for her rehearsal later.
Gabriel had been searching through the records, trying to find a rule that would prohibit Sophia from acting. Not that it would be any good. The archangel for chastity had grown a rebellious streak he admired. Sophia had always been beautiful, but this new wild side made her even more attractive.
Lucifer avoided tangling with the heaven contingent as a rule. For too much rigidity for him, but this new version of Sophia intrigued him.
“Concentrate,” Bianca hissed in his ear.
He massaged the sting left over from her pinch and longed for the days when smiting was a thing. “I am concentrating.”
“On Sophia’s boobs,” she whispered.
In fairness, Sophia had a spectacular figure, but his response had a lot more to do with irking Bianca as he said, “They’re incredible. As is everything else about her.”
“Like she’d give you a chance.” Bianca snorted.
“I’ve never had that trouble before.” He smirked and got the satisfaction of anger sparking in her iris-blue eyes. They were the most remarkable shade between blue and purple. He’d rarely, if ever, seen their like.
She rolled those lovely eyes at him. “God, you’re insufferable.”
“And tired of this argument.” He clapped his palms on his thighs and stood. “Right! This is what we’re going to do.”
All gazes swung his way.
You had to catch this lot by surprise. “The children are staying here with Eddie, Shade, and Sophia. It’s close enough to their home to be familiar, and there’s enough protection to keep them safe. Plus, help can come through the hell gate at any point.”
Chris Fellows frowned. “So can?—”
“Shit!” Wrath looked at Lucifer speculatively. “He actually makes sense.”
“Dee and Eddie can take care of their human needs, and they know and trust Patty.”
Shade cocked his head. “You’re right,” he glanced at Wrath. “Lucifer is making all kinds of sense. And that’s a sentence I never thought I’d speak.”
“Stop.” Eddie slapped Shade’s thigh. Then gave him a tender smile that spoke volumes about how Shade’s old-fashioned courtship was going.
Their gazes locked, and Lucifer wanted to gag on the sweetness. He’d never before wanted that kind of connection with another being, but it had a certain appeal.
Bianca stood and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, haglette.” She needed to remember all that had happened between them, and he was going to make sure she didn’t forget. “You and I still have an account to balance.”
She gaped at him. “Are you seriously still pissed about the summoning?”
“Perfectly.” He leaned into her space. “Your actions have consequences, Bianca, and I’m going to demonstrate that. One of those consequences is for the summoning and the other is binding my power.”
She sputtered. “I’m getting that back for you.”
“You should never have bound me.”
Her dark eyebrows shot to her hairline and her jaw tightened. Her breath ghosted across his lips as she said, “You can try, Lucifer. I’m standing right here.”
The audacity! The unadulterated fucking audacity. He loved it.
“But first.” He stepped away before he enjoyed her closeness too much. “You said you could track those amulets.”
She blinked at his subject change and looked wary. “Yes.”
“I’m going to say goodbye to Emma and tell her where we’re going, and then you’re going to track some amulets for me.”
The feral haglette bared her teeth. “Damn straight.”