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Chapter

Twenty-Seven

SIN

“ H oly shit. You weren’t exaggerating when you said the sky was on fire, were you, Chris?” I murmured as we stood outside and stared at the wall of flames streaking across the sky as far as the eye could see. It looked like someone had clawed through the sky like it was a piece of paper and everything on the other side was burning.

“You know what this means, right?” Chaos asked, his eyes also trained upward.

“Uh . . . am I supposed to?”

“The next Prince was released,” Malice answered for me.

“That’s four. Fucking hell.”

“Oh shit, you know it’s bad when Grim sounds frustrated.” I could feel the heat coming off the trail of fire. It reminded me a bit of that one time I tried tanning. Warm, but not unbearable. Still doing plenty of damage.

“We made it one full cycle without them finding us. That’s got to count for something,” Malice said.

“Only if it continues to be the case,” Chaos replied.

“You think their odds are better now that there are more of them?” Grim asked.

“More Princes means more Knights means a fuck ton more creatures looking for us. That’s a lot of ground they can cover.”

“The wards are strong,” Christian offered. “I set them myself.”

“How strong?” Grim wasted no time with platitudes. It was one of the things I liked about him.

“Strong enough they keep strangers from finding this place. No one stumbles upon the chateau.”

A stream of water had begun slipping past us and toward the nearby pond, the seemingly meaningless detail calling my attention to the melting snow. “Hey, would you look at that. I guess no one can deny global warming anymore.” I nudged Malice with my elbow.

He glared at me. “Not the time to get political, Sinclair.”

“If not now, when?” I shot back.

Shaking his head, Mal returned his attention to Christian. “What do you need in order to strengthen the protection we have? Not allowing us to be accidentally found is well and good, but we need this to be a fortress. The Knights are powerful. The Princes more so. They’ve no doubt been combing the world looking for us, and it’s only a matter of time before they find Merri.”

“They aren’t the ones I’m worried about,” Grim admitted.

Malice shot him a questioning look.

“Lucifer,” he answered. “He’s been too quiet. He’s up to something. Scheming and plotting. There’s no way he’s leaving the fate of this apocalypse in any hands but his own.”

“I will do what I can to shore up the wards, messieurs. You have my word. But... if it is Lucifer himself we are hiding from, I can only do so much. He is very powerful.” Christian’s face had gone deathly pale as he spoke.

Clearly he didn’t love the idea of the Prince of Darkness showing up on his doorstep.

Same, buddy.

“Notify me as soon as it is done,” Malice ordered before Christian nodded curtly and left us.

“You’re bossy,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Great. Glad we established that. So what the hell are we going to do about this situation? Merri isn’t going to like it, and she’s not exactly safe here until we know those wards are at full strength.”

“So?” Chaos asked, startling me.

“What the fuck do you mean, so?”

“That’s been the case since the day we brought her to Grim’s penthouse, and it's not going to change no matter what the fuck we do. Lucifer and his pets are hunting her. Period. We can add as many wards as we want, but one day, probably sooner than later, he’s going to find her. She’s too important to his end goal.”

“That’s why we have to get her pregnant,” Grim said, little tendrils of darkness pooling around his feet and hands, betraying how upset he was. “She’s useless to him as soon as that comes to pass.”

“I’m just gonna say the thing we’ve been ignoring, even though you guys aren’t going to like it,” I blurted.

Malice’s gaze swung to me. “What thing?”

“Knocking her up doesn’t keep her any safer. It doesn’t end when she’s got a bun in the oven.”

“What do you mean?” Chaos snarled.

“Lucifer is either going to find her and make a baby, or he’ll find her and kill her when she’s not useful to him. We are going to have to protect her from him until he’s dead or locked up.”

Chaos loosed a slow breath, his expression hard and eyes trained on the distance the way they usually did when he was contemplating strategy. “The antichrist is only one way that Lucifer wins. He’s going to be obsessed with it since it’s essentially an automatic victory, but even without Merri to help him make his heir, he can still fight his way to the top. That’s the whole reason he’s building a fucking army.”

“So no matter what happens with Merri, if we want this to truly end, we have to kill him,” Grim said.

“Can Lucifer even be killed?” Malice asked.

“If there is a way, I’ll find it,” he promised darkly.

“We know he’s been caged before. So there’s that. Could be a way to put things on pause while Grim figures it out,” I offered.

The way those shadows coming from Grim darkened told me I had hit a nerve, but I didn’t feel the least bit guilty. We all knew the truth. Merri was in danger. She would be for as long as Lucifer walked freely.

Malice’s phone began ringing from his pocket, the blare of his ringtone cutting through the tension like a hot knife through butter. He pulled the slim device free and glared down at the screen.

“It’s Hades.”

All this talk of Lucifer and the possibility that he’d been masquerading as Hades during the last call put all four of us on high alert.

“Answer it,” Grim demanded.

“On speaker,” Chaos added.

Mal nodded and answered. “Hades, what is it?”

“Do you not know how to return a damn phone call?”

“You seem to think that my schedule revolves around you. Newsflash, it doesn’t.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the world is fucking ending.”

“Yes, I gathered that. I’m pretty well informed on that particular topic.”

Hades heaved a very in-character sigh before clearing his throat. “Well, while you were gallivanting all over creation doing God knows what, I’ve been trying like hell to figure out how to save the damn world from Helene’s fucking apocalypse. Think you could put aside your project and help?”

Little did he know our project and his were perfectly aligned.

The four of us exchanged looks. We still couldn’t know for sure that this was actually Hades. But if it was Lucifer in disguise, it might be the opportunity we needed to figure out what he was up to and then use that information to keep Merri as far away from him as possible. At this point, I didn’t think we really had any other options; we had to follow this lead. And from the resigned set of Grim’s shoulders, he agreed.

“Tell us what you know,” Grim barked.

“Oh, you put me on fucking speaker, Malice? Nice to hear your voice, Grimsby. Are the rest of your little band of brothers with you?”

None of us answered.

“Get over yourself and give us the information you so clearly have,” Grim grumbled.

“Not over the phone. This is a conversation best had in person. As you so clearly demonstrated, you never know who is listening in.”

“Fine,” Grim growled. “Usual place?”

“I can be there by nightfall.”

“Are we even sure that’s still possible?” I asked.

Proof that I was yet another secret listener had Hades swearing up a storm.

“Nightfall. Don’t be late.”

The line went dead, and the four of us stood in heavy silence.

“Are we sure we want to do this?” Malice asked. “It could still be a trap.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Chaos said. “Whether it's a trap or not, this might be our only chance to smoke Lucifer out on our own terms.”

Hearing War echo my own thoughts made me feel pretty fucking good about myself. I was so much more than a drop-dead gorgeous face. And body. And dick.

“Someone needs to stay with Merri. We can’t just leave her here with Christian as her only protector.” Grim glanced over his shoulder at the house, a light blazing in Merri’s window making it clear exactly where she was.

It was on the tip of my tongue to volunteer, but Chaos shocked me by beating me to it.

“I will.”

“You don’t want to run off into the thick of battle?” I asked.

“I’m the best choice to stay behind and play bodyguard. I literally tore that Knight’s head off to save her.”

He had me there.

Nodding, I conceded to him. “As you were.”

“Why don’t you stay with him?” Grim said. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

“Is that safe?” Malice asked.

“You and I are more than capable of dealing with Hades.”

“And if it’s not Hades?”

“Then Merri still has a chance because out of all of us, Chaos and Sin are the most likely to succeed.”

It was a shocking vote of confidence. And mildly terrifying, if I was being honest. I don’t think Grim had ever said a kind word about me. But more than that, I don’t think I ever heard him admit that he could lose.

And wasn’t that the fucking scariest possibility of all?