Luce squared his shoulders, but his eyes softened. “I can’t change the past, only learn from it.”
“You cannot change the past,” Foster grinned, slow and sharp, “butIcan change the future. And now I have the power to make things right. To make them as they should be.”
“Don’t do this,” Luce pleaded. “I’ve seen what happens when people meddle with things that should not be?—”
“It is not for you to decide!” Foster thrust his hand toward Luce, a blinding arc of light whipping from his palm. Faster than Luce could move aside, Bal was there between them, lifting his own hands as if to catch the bolt like a ball.
“Balthazar,” Luce gasped, and the other man winked at him, letting the energy funnel down his arms from his palms to his chest. The light seemed to wrap his form like a second skin, before dissolving into his body.
“I can still withstand a good hit or two,” he said with a smile, but it was taut with effort. “I’m not so out of practice.”
“What about three? Or four?” Foster sneered, already amassing energy for another assault. He lifted his arm, but a broad hand gripped him by the forearm and twisted his arm behind his back.
“You think you can defeat all of us?” Rag’s tone dripped with contempt, and he fisted his free hand in Foster’s disheveled waves. “We tried to be kind, Foster, and now you’re forcing our hand.”
He refused to break eye contact with Foster, who—to his credit—simply glowered in the larger man’s hold.
“Are you quite finished?” the demigod drawled, arching a brow. “If so, I would ask you to remove your hand before I remove it fromyourarm.”
He was slipping further into a cold shell, detached and distant. After centuries of dancing on Lucifer’s every nerve, Remi knew exactly the best way to draw the younger man’s ire and bring back some of his spark.
“You sound like your father.”
The effect was instantaneous and exactly as expected. The wave of pressure weighing down on the property grew heavier, even drawing a small gasp from Mags as she was pressed flat tothe Earth. Cami struggled to stay on her feet, eventually caving and falling to her knees beside her husband, who was struggling to reach Rag’s side and help restrain Foster.
A spark lit in the storm clouds that had been building behind dark eyes, and Foster’s face twisted in a snarl of rage. “I am nothing of my father!”
He wrenched his head free of Rag’s grip, ignoring the sting and the slide of golden blood down his tanned neck as a clump of hair tore away. Lightning fast, he spun and dashed his knuckles across Rag’s face. There was a crack, a loud pop, and a spray of black that looked like tar.
Foster looked curiously at the substance coating his cracked and swollen knuckles, and then back to Rag. The other man’s head had snapped back upon impact, but now he straightened, laughing, and wiped the thick black blood from his broken nose with the back of his palm.
“That’s right, little boy.” Rag’s grin was savage. “Fallen Angels bleed black.”
“Fitting that I enjoy the color then, as I plan to coat myself in it.”
“A warrior’s soul,” Remi sounded almost impressed. A short pause, and then with a grin, she taunted, “just like your father.”
Foster roared, lunging forward. “Stop saying that! I am nothing like him!”
He gripped her by the neck and yanked, angling to try and bring Remi’s face down to meet his other fist. She twisted free, apparently untouched by the power crippling the others if she stayed within a certain distance of Foster.
“This is your best effort?”She drew back her fist, and an angry red aura seeped from her pores, wrapping around to coalesce into the spiked brass knuckles she favored.
“You do not want my best effort,” Foster warned, rubbing his palms together quickly and building a ball of white energybetween them. The shape warped as he twisted and spread his hands, elongating into a disk and then what appeared to be a glimmering broadsword.
Remi laughed. “Delusions of grandeur can only take you so far.”
“Then allow me to prove myself!” Foster charged in, sweeping his blade upwards, only to catch against the handle of Rag’s mace. The redhead glowered down at him, heavy streaks of dark orange marring his face like the swipe of claws.
“You telegraph your movements.” Rag shoved, knocking the younger man back, and spun quickly to the side to bring his mace down on Foster’s shoulder. Foster howled, ducking to avoid a second strike, only to be caught in the chest by a surprise blow.
“Stop!” Luce cried out, seizing the momentary lapse in pressure to stagger a few steps toward his son. “Raguel,please,stop.”
“We can’t!” Remi protested, “Foster is determined to be the death of us all.”
“Only you,” Foster said, eyes glinting with fury, “and perhaps my father.”
Without warning, his legs were swept from under him, and Foster found himself staring up at an overcast sky, the air knocked from his lungs. Remi sauntered forward, placing a heavy boot on his chest and leaning down to grin viciously at him.
