by Ivy Asher
“You’re too kind. I should say no, but we both know I’m not going to,” he confesses on a dazzling grin, and the two angels laugh and hug again.
I share a bewildered look with my guys. Who knew Taz would actually be liked enough to have a friend? And an angel friend, no less.
“What are you doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but when I was given word that we had a party from Hell make a surprise drop-in, I didn’t think it would be you,” Louquin states, curiosity filling his eyes.
“Ah, yes. I’m hoping you can help me, old friend. I would have announced the visit, but you see, I’m just as surprised to be here as you are to see me,” Tazreel starts.
Louquin looks like he’s dying to know what’s going on, and I look over at the guys to see they’re still on guard but as amused and curious by the interaction as I am.
“It’s been brought to my attention recently that I’ve sired a child. The wee thing was dropped right onto my doorstep,” Taz says, motioning toward me like I’m some frail baby in a bassinet just left for him out of the blue.
I tilt my head and release a sigh that says come the fuck on, but my incredulous sound goes ignored by them both. Louquin eyes me speculatively, taking in my appearance.
“Unfortunately, I’m not certain of who the mother is,” Taz goes on. “I applied a tincture to track this bundle of joy’s bloodline, and it led me straight here. She must have a maternal relative on base. I’m hoping you can help me track them down so the little whelp’s mother can be located,” Taz finishes.
I snort, not at all amused by the technically accurate, but very misleading tale that my sperm donor just wove into existence, as though he’s reading bedtime stories instead of trying to solve the problem of his whoring ways.
“Well, first let me congratulate you,” Louquin offers with a blinding smile before his brows lower slightly. “But I don’t know how we’d be able to find the relative. That isn’t very much to go on,” he adds.
“This is true,” Taz nods. “Luckily, my progeny has very unique markings, which I’m certain come from the mother’s side. It might be possible to identify a relative that way,” Taz offers, fluffing his hair and wings, like my unique coloring is an affront to his Abdicated good looks and the neutral color palette that Heaven dipped him in when he was created.
“Hmm, that might be possible. Where’s the little one?” Louquin asks, looking around for what he expects to be a little kid.
Echo and I both snicker under our breaths. I step forward, my scythe still in Swiss Army battle mode, and wait for the Legion Major’s green eyes to settle on me.
When they do, I offer him a wide smile. “Hi, I’m Delta. Oh, and apparently I’m this asshole’s kid,” I add, just to be sure that everything sinks in. I gesture to Tazreel with my scythe and don’t miss the irritated look he shoots my way at my blatant disrespect in front of a friend. I give him a shrug. That should teach him to pop into bathrooms uninvited or describe me as a whelp.
“Wait...” Louquin stammers, wide eyes flicking from me to Tazreel. Taz gives a confirming nod.
The angel’s green eyes immediately hook back onto me, taking in my electric purple hair and wings before his disbelieving eyes move to my scythe. He takes in the details slowly, like the facts are puzzle pieces he’s trying to put together.
And then, the strangest thing happens. The last piece snaps into place, and realization comes with his mouth dropping open.
I watch as the blood completely drains from his face as recognition seeps into his dark green eyes.
That can’t be good.
19
“It can’t be,” Louquin states adamantly, but his new ghost-white pallor and the shocked set of his features tells a different story.
He looks back to Tazreel, but instead of the jovial light in his eyes and the sense of brotherhood that was just in his countenance, all that’s left now is astonishment and disapproval.
He shakes his head and manages to get a hold of himself. I watch a wall of detached professionalism slam down over his features as he steps back from Tazreel and turns to one of the soldier angels that are still in the room. “Private, bring the Colonel here immediately. If questioned, state simply that we have a situation that needs immediate attention, and you are following orders.”
The soldier angel salutes the Legion Major by tapping his fist to his chest twice and then spins on his heel and rushes out.
The Major’s green eyes flit to me and then quickly look away, as though my presence pains him. Unease wafts through me, but I feel a soothing caress run down my arm as one of Echo’s shadows traces the outline of my elbow. I look over to find his black eyes watching me with concern. I try to give him a small smile, but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes because I’m nervous as fuck.
Louquin knows who my relative on base is. And what he experienced when it dawned on him did not look like a welcome revelation. I feel a little bad for the way he just shut Tazreel out, but when I look over at my formerly loquacious father, he doesn’t seem like he has a care in the world.
I’m not sure I’m buying it.
“How old are you, child?” Louquin suddenly asks me.
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“In demon years?” he presses.
I let out a small huff. “No, in human years.” I turn to Tazreel. “What is a demon year, anyway?” I ask, realizing I still don’t know the conversion.
“Human years?” Louquin states as if that confuses him even more than my mere existence.
But before he can ask anything else, the door flies open again, and in swoops the returning soldier angel, completely breathless.
“Out of the way, you dolt,” someone barks from behind him. The soldier scrambles to move and make way for the impatient fucker behind him.
I spot her purple hair and gold armor all at once, and then my brain clicks over to slo-mo as all the other details of the Colonel sink in. Royal purple hair. Rich, amethyst-colored wings. Eyes the color of Concord grapes.
All of these facts slap me right across the face, but the look that comes over her when she sets sight on Tazreel boxes it all up in a nice little package with a purple fucking bow on it.
“You!” they both snarl in surprise as recognition and anger explode into the room like someone just set off a rage bomb.
“You’re Legion?” Tazreel demands, outrage surging out of his every pore as he gapes at her.
“What are you doing here?” the Colonel barks out at the same time, and everyone’s heads volley back and forth between them like we’re watching a tennis match.
“Looks like Taz did fuck an angel after all,” I mumble, oddly numb by what’s unfolding before my very eyes.
I hear snorts of amusement from all of my demons, and the Colonel’s eyes snap over to us, looking lethal as fuck and very unamused. I can tell that she’s about to say something rude to who she assumes is the peanut gallery, but then her purple gaze lands on me, and her mouth drops open. I can practically see the biting retort she just loaded on her tongue shrivel up and fall right off.
There’s a long, awkward, heavy pause as the two of us just stare at each other. She seems stunned in place, while I’m doing my best not to squirm. I’ve never been good with attention.
So what do I do? I give her an awkward as fuck wave—and then ratchet up the uncomfortableness of the situation another thousand degrees by saying, “Hey, angel-mom.”
Her eyebrows shoot so far up into her royal purple hair, I’m surprised I don’t see them go falling out the back of her long locks braided tightly behind her back. Nothing worse than having to pick up your eyebrows off the floor and reaffix them in front of the daughter you abandoned and the demon you fucked. She looks to Tazreel and then back to me, and just like that, the emotion and surprise is gone. In their place is a steely acceptance and a hardened soul.
“What is going on?” the Legion Major demands, stepping forward with judgment and distaste written all over his gorgeo
us face.
“Really, Louquin, you’re going to pretend it’s not obvious?” she asks, calling him out, her tone mocking and filled with bite.
“Nefta, this is serious,” he chides.
“That’s Colonel to you. Watch yourself,” she rebukes, and he immediately straightens up and adopts a more respectful and stiffer stance.
“Apologies, Colonel,” he offers like a good little soldier, and Nefta—aka the Legion angel who gave birth to me—gives a terse nod and then turns away from him, like he’s no longer worth her attention.
She focuses a hostile stare on Tazreel, who at this point might as well have steam coming out of his nose and ear. He is one pissed off demon.
“How did you find her?” Nefta demands, very matter-of-factly.
I’m a little taken aback by the lack of denial or regret I see in her eyes. Or even a greeting. Maybe I didn’t expect a hug and tears, but I expected something. But she hasn’t even spoken a word to me and is now talking about me like I’m not even here.
“How did I find her?” Tazreel repeats, incredulous fury pouring out of every word. “How does she even exist?”
“Oh, come on now, Pride. After all these years, even you should have been able to stop looking in the mirror long enough to learn the birds and the bees,” she tells him evenly. “You see, the female, when fertile, produces an egg. She then drinks her weight in booze, picks a couple fights, flirts with anything that has wings, and then decides to take her friend up on her claim that fucking a demon is life-changing,” she says with a roll of her eyes.
Clearly, she doesn’t think the demon-fucking was anything to write home about. I guess I can put that in the things I don’t have in common with my angel-mom pile.
“You should have told me what you were,” Tazreel snarls at her.
“Oh, please. You told me your name was Sophocles and you were a Duo,” she tells him. “Let’s not pretend that you weren’t just as cagey as I was that night.”
“Sophocles? Really?” I ask, unable to pass up the opportunity to bust Tazreel’s balls.
“Now is not the time, Delta!” he snaps at me, and Nefta’s eyes widen slightly at my name and then narrow at Tazreel’s censure.
“How did you find her?” she growls out again, like that is the most important thing to know in this scenario.
“I shouldn’t have had to find her!” Taz yells back. “If you didn’t want her, then she should have been turned over to me. You left her in the mortal world, for Christ’s sake!”
“Oh, don’t try and bring him into this. I know exactly what I did,” Nefta answers evenly. “As soon as I found out who you really were, I knew the last place she should ever be is in your care,” she spits out. “Now, are you going to tell me how you found her, or am I going to have to make you?”
I watch the two of them, knowing I need to intervene before they come to blows.
“You know...you could just ask me,” I tell her, mostly because I want to force her to acknowledge me and talk to me directly.
Nefta’s eyes snap to mine, and she considers my words like it’s not something she realized was an option. “Did he find you?” she finally asks me, her tone pragmatic and lacking any softness or emotion. She’s all tactical soldier right now, and I’m not sure if that’s just who she is or if she’s purposely keeping me at arm’s length.
“No,” I answer. “I found him.”
My words seem to confuse her for a beat. I can almost see her dissecting them in her mind and putting them back together to make sense of them.
She might be cataloguing my words, but I’m cataloguing her appearance. We have the same nose. My lips are fuller than hers, and I clearly have Tazreel to thank for my gray eyes, but Nefta and I look alike. I trace her gracefully arched eyebrows and long black lashes with my gaze. The slope of her nose is so familiar, and I don’t know what to think about staring at someone who looks so much like me.
She looks like she could be my sister—not in a creepy that’s what guys tell the mom to get in her good graces kind of way—but legitimately, she only looks like she’s a handful of years older than me.
“I don’t understand,” she finally admits after a couple of seconds.
“Oh, sorry, allow me to explain,” I say, trying to take on the same detached tone as her. “So it all started with a Help Wanted ad. That job led to a Hellgate and me being told that I was a demon by these four Guardians here. Then add in a couple trips to Hell, almost getting killed and/or kidnapped by some Ophidian dude’s minions who attacked us, accidentally falling into the Nihil Ring, and meeting this douche and finding out he’s my biological father. Then he took some hump blood, and we all followed my magical scythe to find you. That about sums it up,” I finish.
She just continues to stare at me.
“Your turn,” I chirp. “Go ahead, and if you could start with: why you had me, left me in the Mortal Realm with no intention of ever telling me what I was, and thus leaving me ultimately defenseless when the blocks you put on me failed, that’d be great,” I say with a mock-smile. “Oh, and also, what’s the deal with this scythe, and how the hell does it work?” I ask, holding the scythe out and noticing that it’s once again gone dormant.
Fickle little fucker.
“The Ophidian?” she balks. “How in Hell—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” I tell her, cutting her off. “That’s not what I asked.”
Her eyes flash with authority, clearly not liking my tone or line of questioning. But fuck it. Despite wanting not to care, her immediate brush-off hurts me.
“Don’t try to pull that call me Colonel shit with me like you did him,” I tell her, jutting my chin toward where Louquin is still standing at attention. “I’m not in your fucking Legion, and you owe me some answers,” I warn her coldly.
Challenge flashes in her eyes, but for a moment, so does pride. I watch as she takes a minute to decide how she wants to move forward. I clearly inherited some of Taz’s arrogance, because I probably shouldn’t behave like this to an angel Legion Colonel, but if she’s not going to show me even a scrap of respect, why should I show her any?
Thunder suddenly booms so loudly it shakes the walls, and out of nowhere, I hear little plinks of raindrops start to hit the glass of the windows all around us. As soon as I turn my head in distraction, Tazreel starts in on Nefta, and the two of them start bickering, but I don’t hear what they’re saying.
A violent downpour has started outside, and my eyes become stuck on the dark view out the window. My vision tunnels as fear claws up my throat, and painful memories I can never seem to push out come flooding into my mind.
Half of me is aware of what’s going on in this room, but the other half is trapped in my own head—in overwhelming panic and traumatic memories. And that’s the half that dominates me.
I whimper, feeling my limbs trying to lock up. My head swivels wildly as I try to find a way to get out—out of this room, out of my head, out of the panic that’s now seizing my every muscle. My first instinct is to find something loud enough to drown out the sounds of the storm. That’s what I do at home—I blast the rock music and hide behind the drawn curtains, waiting it out.
But there’s nothing in here except bitterness, accusation, and the fucking color white.
Terror slams through me as I realize I’m stuck. I’m trapped in here, surrounded by the pelting sound of rain, with flashes of lightning and the brutal sound of thunder that shakes the building.
I immediately bring a hand up to cover my nose so that I don’t smell the rain. I can maybe—and this is a tiny maybe—ward off the horrible memories that I associate with the sounds of a thunderstorm. But I can’t ward them off if I smell the rain.
Short puffs of breath hit my cupped palm as I breathe against my hand, my eyes bouncing from window to window. I can’t do this here. I can’t break down in front of these strangers. I don’t care if Taz and Nefta are my biological parents—they don’t belong in my emotional turmoil.
&n
bsp; Dread fits on top of me like a second skin, which only seems to add to the hysteria I can feel floating to the surface of who I am.
A streak of lightning arcs through the sky, the electric tendrils looking like gnarled limbs coming to rip me apart. I slam my eyes closed and grit my teeth, but then another crash of thunder erupts in the air, shaking the very foundation of my soul. A strangled noise slips out of my throat, and memories, horrible memories push and pull and pinch at me, refusing to be ignored.
“Jeter, what’s wrong?” I hear Crux say, but I can’t focus on his voice or find his face in all the panic. All that exists is thunder and lightning and rain and pain.
“Take a deep breath, Delta,” Echo encourages, but I can hear the rain falling even harder, and I know that if I breathe deeply, I’ll smell it.
A sob slips out of my throat despite my efforts to swallow it back down, but I realize it’s too late. I’m too late. I have none of my usual tricks to stave off the panic attack.
The moment another crack of lightning splits in the air, the last of my resolve splinters. Memories slam into me like sledgehammers crushing me to a pulp. All I can do is relive it over and over again.
Thunder booms all around me, and the lights in the living room flicker. Sitting up on the couch, I lean over the back of it and push down one of the slats in the blinds covering the window and see the torrential downpour that’s going on outside.
My stomach growls, and I check the time on my watch again. Where are they? It’s already six, and dad promised we could grab pizza from Antonio’s tonight. I stare at the cordless phone charging on the wall and debate calling them again, but I’m too lazy to get up.
A flash of lightning catches my attention outside. I count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and then the thunder rumbles through the walls of our house. A car turns onto the street, but I quickly realize it’s not my parents. It’s a cop car.
That’s weird.
