“Who are you?” she snarled, going into full honey badger mode, putting herself between us and the bed. I loved Clary. Both Memphis and I must have both topped her by a foot, and Memphis was scary as fuck, but she was still ready to take us on singlehandedly.
It occurred to me that we had never met in person. “I’m Ace. This is Mephistopheles.”
“Ace? As in Cady’s Ace?” I nodded and flashed my wings for a second.
“And this is the Mephistopheles?” He nodded. “Huh. That never gets less weird.”
I laughed. She was the shiz. “Sorry to hear about Uncle Seamus. He was one of my favorites.”
“Because he boozed, cracked skulls and womanized?” she asked, arching an eyebrow primly.
“Pretty much. He had the best stories.”
Clary opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated. “Is Uncle Seamus…?” She pointed toward the floor.
“In the gift shop?” She scowled and I laughed. “He is almost definitely in Hell. Trust me when I say that’s as much as you wanna know.”
She went over to Arcadia and settled her in the bed, her gentle yet firm grasp repositioning Arcadia to prevent sores, fluffing pillows and making her as comfortable as possible.
I watched on as Clary fussed over her best friend. They were both such great examples of the capacity humanity had for good.
“Eli told me you managed to get her soul restored. It’s how it should be.” She sat down on the hard plastic chair as if she were defeated. Perhaps she was.
“You talk as if she isn’t going to recover.” I sounded more accusing than I intended.
She heaved a sigh. “I’ve seen a lot of death. I sometimes feel like I’m part Banshee. I can smell it. She’s gonna die if something big doesn’t happen soon.” She wrapped her fingers in Arcadia’s and I could see her facade cracking. She would hate crying in front of strangers, I knew that much from my years as her pseudo-bestie. I reached over and squeezed her shoulder.
“Don’t lose faith yet, Clary Mulligan. We have a lot of fight left in us; me, you and Arcadia.”
With that, I left her to her grief.
We sifted to the apartment to find it in chaos. There were babies crying, Adnan was howling hysterically and Nazir was standing over him, teeth bared. It was barely seven a.m.
“What the hell…?”
Lux was trying to get Nazir out of the way, as Eli attempted to get to the crying Adnan. Oz held Estrella, rocking, and was using the other hand to soothe Hope.
“Enough!” I boomed, taking a page out of Luc’s books. The room went still, even the babies stopped crying, for about two seconds. Memphis went over and picked up Hope, and the baby instantly calmed. Once her sister stopped crying, Estrella settled in Oz’s arms. I strode over to the other occupants in the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a calm voice.
Eli stood beside me, his voice just as neutral. “Adnan tripped on his crutches and opened the wound slightly on his leg. Nazir saw the blood and is having a moment of PTSD and won’t let us near him. I don’t have any sedation here, and I don’t want to manhandle the boy.”
I nodded. I took in the wide-eyed feral look in Nazir’s eyes. He wasn’t in an apartment in SoHo. He was somewhere much worse.
I pushed some of my angelic light toward him. “Be still, Nazir. Eli is going to fix Adnan.” I reached out and touched his head, and his body slumped on contact. Lights out. Lux caught the boy before he hit the ground. He picked him up as if he weighed nothing and cradled the boy with gentleness that belied his rough exterior. I noted the bite marks and crescent gouges in his arms. He walked down the hall to the boy’s bedroom.
Adnan was still sobbing, but it was probably more from fear than pain.
“Hey now, tough guy. It’s okay.” Eli lifted him up and set him on the bench. “It’s not too bad at all. We’ll just put some stickers on it and cover it back up.”
Eli went to work, and I stroked Adnan's dark hair. Poor little guy. Eventually, he nodded off to sleep too. “Whoops. Must have still had a little juice in the tank,” I said, as he listed to the side. Eli caught him up and walked him down the hall on silent feet. The boys shared the second bedroom.
A minute later he crept back down the hall and flopped onto the couch. “Who’s with Arcadia?”
Lux handed him a beer, then gave one to Oz and Memphis. “Clary’s there. Just got back from Boston.” He offered one to me. “It’s not even eight in the morning.” Lux raised an eyebrow. He made an excellent point. I took the beer.
“Where's everyone else?” I asked. We all needed to talk.
“Ri is at the bar, Valery has gone to chase down some weird medicinal herb that he is sure will cure her cancer according to the Internet, but Eli will veto immediately. Sam and Tolliver are hiring a management team to take care of the foundation while we figure this whole thing out,” Oz said, sucking down half his beer in one gulp.
Lux’s phone rang. I didn’t need angelic hearing to pick up Clary’s frantic words.
“She’s crashing!”
I’d never sifted with three humans before, but we had no time to waste. Memphis offered to stay with the kids, and it was a testament to Lux’s fear that he didn’t even protest.
I sifted us into a supply closet, and the effort made my knees buckle. Lux and Eli were out the door in a flash, but Oz bent down and hoisted me to my feet, a hand around my ribs keeping me on my feet as we ran towards Arcadia’s room. The doctor was there with the crash cart, trying to shock her heart back to life, the eerie whine of her machine threatening to break my world apart.
“Clear!”
The thumping pulse of electricity hitting her chest rocked me. But it was followed by the modulated beeping of her heartbeat on the monitor.
I released the breath I was holding. And Oz. I hadn't realized I was clutching his forearm like a lifeline. It was a wonder I didn’t snap his arm.
The doctor spoke in a low voice to the nurses, before turning toward our fragile little group. He placed a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “It’s too late, my friend. There is no time left to wait for a viable organ.”
Lux growled a low, ominous sound. “She can have mine.”
Eli shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Besides I had us all tested. None of us would be a match.”
The doctor had on his warm compassionate mask. “It’s time to say goodbye.”
With that, he left us alone with Arcadia. Clary went back over, and straightened her skewed gown, placed a pillow back under her head.
Eli walked over and laid his head on her chest. And cried. He cried until his body shook with the force of his sobs.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he just repeated it over and over. “I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save you, no matter what I did, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t something I couldn’t do, that your death was preordained. My fucking pride wouldn’t let me believe that and now I failed you and I’m so fucking sorry.” The force of his pain tore at my skin, at my soul.
Lux sat in the chair and covered his face with his hands, letting out a feral sound of pain that was only partly muffled by his palm.
Clary was surprisingly calm. She moved to Oz and took the big man in her arms, stroking his back as he cried silent tears of pain.
I was numb. Battered by their pain, I knew this wouldn’t be the end for Arcadia and I. We would see each other again. But I still mourned the life she could have had.
“Please, please,” Eli was beginning to sound more desperate, and I was glad that I didn’t have Arcadia’s soul with me right now. She’d be ruined seeing these three in that sort of pain and unable to soothe them.
The door opened and closed, and I ignored the sounds of nurses fussing around. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from tragedy playing out before me.
Another nurse slammed into the room, the sound of the door hitting the wall making me jump and whirl around to look at her, my irrational anger flaring to
life. We wanted to mourn in peace, how hard was it to give us just one moment?
The newcomers cheeks were flushed red and she was out of breath. “A heart has just become available, right in this hospital. We have to get her to theater now.” She stopped what she was doing and just blinked at us, wide eyed. “It’s a miracle.”
I raced out into the hall, and watched a man wrapped in the world's ugliest poncho walking down the hall, completely unseen by the humans around him. He raised a hand in greeting, but he never turned around and met my eye.
My smile threatened to crack my face in two.
Chapter Forty
“Would you please take it easy,” Sam chastised as he took the basket from Arcadia’s hands.
“Nope,” she said, rising up on her toes to kiss her Viking.
I puked a little in my mouth at the sweetness. Cady looked at me and laughed. “The expression on your face is priceless. It’s not that bad.”
I toed the corner of the picnic rug until it was straight.
“It’s not that bad, maybe once or twice, but seriously you lot totally overkill it with the public displays of affection. It’s so sweet it’s giving me cavities.”
Arcadia snorted. “Says the person who had sex in the middle of the town square in an Italian village. I shudder to think where else you have gotten it on in the public eye.”
She eased down on the ground, and I passed her Estrella. It had been two months since her surgery aka the longest seventeen hours in history aka my new version of hell. But she lived.
I don’t know if it was Eli ditching his pride and begging that changed the Big Guy’s mind, or if it was the fact that he was the last redemption, or if the Father was just having a good day. I didn’t care. The important thing was that she lived.
A month after she came home from hospital, they decided to move from SoHo to a massive estate outside of Boston. The rural lifestyle wasn’t as fun as New York in my opinion, but hey, if this was what made them happy, so be it. And it was closer to Clary and all those crazy Mulligans. Besides, the kids probably needed a yard.
I watched Adnan race around the yard on his new prosthetic. It was state of the art, of course, and the kid adapted to it since day one. He was being chased around the yard by Nazir and his therapy dog, Muffin. When Tolliver had suggested a PTSD support animal, I’d been all for a support chicken. But apparently a Labrador was a better fit for a twelve year old boy. I’d only pouted for a week.
I looked over and caught Arcadia staring at me. Again. “What?”
“I just can’t get used to you sitting beside me. Speaking out loud. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up to tell you about this really weird dream I had and I’m halfway through explaining when I realize you aren’t in my head anymore.” She smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. I knew the feeling; it had been a little like losing a limb there for a while. I looked at Adnan. Probably the wrong turn of phrase.
But I wasn’t going to tell Cady that. “Toughen up. It’s not that bad.”
She laughed. “It has been nice having sex without the peanut gallery, though.”
I wanted my eyebrows. “I’ve seen all your guys naked. There ain’t any peanuts in those galleries.”
Tolliver came over, Hope in his arms. He passed her to me and sat down behind Arcadia, his whole big body wrapped around hers. Ugh, more PDA’s.
“Is Luc coming?” he asked, and I shrugged.
“I think so. A coup broke out in one of those tiny Middle Eastern countries so he’s pretty busy, but he said he’d pop in. Gus and Memphis should be here soon though.”
Oz walked over to us too, carrying a cooler. He handed me a beer. “Like this party wasn’t a big enough sausage fest.” He clinked his bottle to mine and sat on the cooler. It groaned a little ominously.
Arcadia and the guys were having a housewarming potluck. I was just here to see the fireworks when the strict Roman Catholic Mulligans realized that Arcadia was a partner to all seven of the guys.
Arcadia was staring again.
“I love you, Acerezeal, you know that right? Even though we are two people now, you are still a part of me.”
I turned away from her earnest face and nodded, blinking rapidly because I had an eyelash or a twig or something in my eye.
“You too,” I squeezed out. Apparently near death experiences made people prone to throwing deep and meaningful things out there in normal conversations.
Oz slapped me on the back. “Luc’s here. Saved by the Devil.”
I watched Luc stop and talk to the boys halfway across the lawn. He made a football appear in his hand and the kids whooped with joy and the dog barked happily. That ball was gonna last two seconds if Muffin got hold of it.
“You know what I think has been the most romantic thing about this whole experience?” Arcadia asked, and apparently it was rhetorical because she just barreled along anyway. “This whole thing, from start to finish, has been your love story, Ace. Your happily ever after. A fairytale about how far a man would go for the woman he loves. It’s beautiful,” her eyes misted up and I resisted the urge to roll mine. No more Nicholas Sparks books for her. I was putting a blanket ban on it.
I'd never admit it to her, but she was right. Through all the pain, the arduous journey to get the guys redeemed and then to save Arcadia, Luc’s love for me was a force in the background, unwavering in its intensity. I laid Hope on the picnic rug and stood, walking toward my heart. He met me halfway.
“Good afternoon, my love. You look beautiful, as always.”
I turned my face up for a kiss and he was all too glad to supply me with a one that made my toes curl.
“I love you, Luc.”
“I know, Acerezeal. I love you too, with a force strong enough to tear the heavens apart.”
Sheer happiness, finally, made my face stretch wide in a smile.
My smile turned mischievous though, when Grandmammy Mulligan, eighty year old Matriarch and all around Irish Catholic badass, arrived and was mentally doing a headcount of the ratio of men to women. This was gonna be good.
Let the fireworks begin.
Epilogue
21 Years Later
It wasn’t often that I got to mix work and pleasure, but today was one of those days. I stood in the back of the large auditorium, invisible to the world leaders that filled its seats, but not to the woman on stage. She saw me all too well, and her smile lit up my heart like a Christmas tree. She looked beautiful on the stage, her deep red hair ethereal under the lights pointing at the lectern. Hope. That tiny baby had turned into this beautiful, strong, intelligent woman, and I couldn’t be more proud.
I gave her a thumbs up as she began to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed leaders of the world, I thank you for inviting me to speak at the World Humanitarian Summit. I know that you wished for my father to speak here tonight, but unfortunately they are caught up in Hurricane Katherine in Polynesia, where they have been building clinics and schools in the poorer island nations. But as the director of the NRH foundation for the United States, I can assure you I am more than qualified to speak in his place.
“As many of you know, NRH started as seven people with an idealistic idea to use their wealth to better the lives of others by dressing as ninjas. Hence the Ninja Robin Hood name.” There was a muted laugh from around the room. “Since then, NRH has spread across the globe, teams of people working on the ground to better the services and facilities available to all. My parents were the first team on the ground, and they will continue to do so until they can do no more. Luckily, between them all, they make quite the team.” There was another small chuckle from those who knew the story, who’d read the tabloids that ‘exposed’ them as a polyamorous group. Hope continued.
“Our mission is to globally raise the level of healthcare and education to a standardized level, so everyone can have an equal opportunity to survive and thrive. And whilst we are doing that on the ground, we also want to do that on a much
larger scale. We want to eradicate viral diseases that can cripple whole countries. The pharmaceutical wing of NRH has purchased half a dozen patents to crippling diseases such as the vaccines for aids, hepatitis and the omega virus. We have also purchased the patents for the new cancer cure for twenty-seven billion dollars and intend to distribute it at cost price plus 1%. Our working model is that if it pays itself off before the patent lapses, which is unlikely, we will make the patent public for free use by other companies. We do not want to make money, we want to eradicate needless deaths.”
Hope continued, and I dragged my eyes away as I felt a presence beside me. I almost started when I realized it was Michael. I nodded my head in respect. “Archangel. What brings you here?”
He smiled at me, in that beatific way, but his eyes stayed on the stage. “She speaks beautifully, does she not?”
I nodded warily. Michael laughed. “Don’t look so worried, Acerezeal. I am just touching base? That’s the human phrase, no?”
I nodded again. “How are they doing? Your Arcadia and her redeemed Sins?”
“They are well, bettering humanity as Hope said. Banging like monkeys in their down time. Seriously, if they don’t cut it out, one of them will have a heart attack.”
Michael frowned at me disapprovingly, but he couldn’t hide the shine of amusement in his eyes.
“I am glad it all worked out in the end. There has been too much animosity through the ages and it has led to attitudes like Uriel and Azriel’s, though I think Azriel may be tested soon.” He looked back at the stage, and I didn’t blame him. Hope looked magnetic. Michael continued. “Lucifer, for all his faults, fell because he cared too much not to question the Father. There is so much heart in him, more than he gives himself credit for. But there’s a faction that believe in following the Father's word to the letter, and then twist it to go down the path of near cruelty,” Michael sighed.
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 31
