Slowly, realization dawned. There was a reason the Twelve didn’t follow me. They were going after Beep. My hand flew over my mouth, and a paralyzing fear gripped me.

“Sweetheart,” Donovan said, trying to coax me back to him.

“I have to go back. Now!” I started for Misery, but Donovan tucked an arm around my waist and hauled me toward his bike. “I’ll take you. We’ll come back for your Jeep later.”

“Yes. Yes, good idea.” I hopped on the back of Donovan’s Harley and wrapped my arms around him. “Please, drive fast,” I said before he brought Odin, his Harley, to life with a roar.

“My favorite way to drive!” he yelled back to me. Only after we started back did I realize I’d left Cookie hanging on the phone, probably frantic. And my phone lay somewhere between here and there.

15

LIKE THE SUICIDAL RACCOON,

I, TOO, WILL FUCK UP YOUR ALIGNMENT IF YOU RUN ME OVER.

—T-SHIRT

The second we pulled to a stop, I tore off the bike and ran for the front door despite Donovan’s insisting otherwise. When I got inside, I was met with exactly the scene I’d been expecting. The first things I noticed were the bloodied bodies of Osh, Garrett, and Reyes. Denise sat in a corner, her fear so great, she was probably crippled by it. And the hounds, the ones who couldn’t come onto sacred ground, stood encircling Beep’s bassinet.

My lungs seized when I saw their silvery black hides shimmer, then disappear, their massive heads more shadow than substance, and their razor-sharp teeth glinting off the low light. A terror of nightmarish proportions ripped through me so fast, I could hardly focus. With legs shaking, I lowered myself onto one knee.

I had so few options. With Osh, Reyes, and Garrett down, what could I do?

I could slow time, but they would only match it before I could reach Beep. I could let the energy inside me explode, the light like acid on their hides, but they’d recover too quickly for me to get to her. I could offer my life, but could hellhounds be bargained with? And Lucifer wanted Beep, all because of a few verses some guy wrote centuries ago. He wouldn’t settle for me when he had the very being prophesied to destroy him at his fingertips. Or his hellhounds’ claws.

Artemis took up position beside me, her hackles raised, a low growl reverberating from her chest.

Garrett was out cold, but Osh got slowly to his feet, a smile on his face as he dusted himself off. “I live for this shit,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at the hellhounds. In fact, the hellhounds seemed quite at ease. He was looking at Reyes as he followed suit and stood. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders before testing his jaw.

I blinked in confusion. Was Osh betraying us after all? Reyes hadn’t wanted to trust him, but I thought we could. I really thought he was on our side.

I rose to my feet to try to reason with him. Osh, I could reason with. The Twelve, not so much.

“Charley, no!” Denise said. She started to get up, but I held up a hand to stop her.

Still, her cry was enough to get the attention of the others in the room.

“’Bout time,” Osh said, doubling over and panting as the bikers came in behind me.

Reyes watched Osh for a moment, turned his attention to the bikers, then focused on me. And I suddenly understood. The man before me, while in Reyes’s body, was not my husband.

He stared at me a long moment, and what I saw was like something from a dream. Black fog drifted off his shoulders and down around him like a great cape. It pooled at his feet. His lips parted and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. Or, Reyes’s bottom lip.

Enough with the gawking. “Lucifer, I presume.”

“You are more beautiful in your true form, but this isn’t bad either. You’ll taste good, I’m sure.”

“What did you do with my husband?”

“You mean my son? The son I created to carry out a mission, and he couldn’t even do that.”

“And yet you don’t seem disappointed.”

Osh was easing closer to me. Lucifer offered him a disinterested glance, then asked me, “Why would I be disappointed when my son did exactly as I knew he would? He always defied my orders. Why should my order to kill you be any different?”

“So, you knew he would disobey you?”

“It’s in his nature. He was never one to follow the rules. And I knew he would want to be with you, the Val-Eeth, the last of her kind, the most beautiful and the only pure ghost god ever to exist. He always was attracted to power.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know that you are the first god of pure light, the first pure ghost god born of two ghost gods ever to exist. I know you are the thirteenth. I know you have inherited all the power from all the gods ever to exist in your realm, and yet here you are, playing games with me. I am honored and appalled that you would think so much of these humans to risk your life for them. You must realize you have left your realm vulnerable. No telling what you’ll go back to.”

“What do you want?”

“So many things. Where to start?”

The conversation left me fighting for air. It was Reyes. It was his voice. It was his beautiful face. But absent his mannerisms and his convictions and his compassion. This being was nothing like my husband. And yet I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone in this room, including my precious daughter, was still alive. Clearly, he could sic the hounds on us anytime he wanted. What was he waiting for?

“Actually, I have all I want right here. I’ve taken over my son’s body, a feat that took some doing, as I first had to weaken him by making him worry about you and your creation so much he couldn’t sleep. I had no idea it would take months to get him to the point where I could overtake him, but it was certainly worth the wait. I mean, look at this.” He flexed and stretched, trying out his new body. “I do believe he is as beautiful as I was.”

“More so, I’m sure.”

“Well, there you have it. I made a good choice, because the other choice was to track down the champion, the escaped Daeva, and take him instead. I’m just not sure I would look good in teenager.”

Lucifer’s admission surprised Osh, who’d clearly had no idea that he had been an option.

“But don’t worry, traitor. I have plans for you.”

“Why do you need a body at all?”

“Have you seen the looks my kind gets in this world? Also, I didn’t want to live like a vampire. We can live in the light only if we have a human host. But you know that. Do you also know that no human can contain me? So I created a son.” He checked his nails and smiled in approval. “You should understand before we go much further, I’ve been preparing for this very day for centuries. But one doesn’t just escape from hell. One needs a map, so the mapmakers slaved for thousands of years to create a key to the gates that held me in. We lost millions to the void in the process. I couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands, so I imprinted it on my son. In him, actually, thereby creating not just a map, but also a key, a portal. Then I destroyed the original and all those who helped create it, save one.”

He focused on Osh again, accused him with a glare. “One was never found. Naughty boy. Did you eat my mapmaker?”

Osh said nothing.

“I wondered where he’d gone off to, but since you are the only Daeva ever to escape hell and make it to the other side, I’ll assume you had something to do with his disappearance. And so,” he said, refocusing on me, “I was stuck once again. I was hardly going to risk the void without the key, but then one day, I was minding my own business, melting the faces off a few thousand humans, when my son decides to risk a trip back home for that trinket on your finger.”

The orange diamond. I pressed my mouth together to keep from gasping.

“Following him out of the void undetected proved far easier than I imagined. It’s such a vast thing and he was traveling at the speed of light, him being a portal and all. And then I was free. Well, free-ish.”