He sighed. "Then the humans will care for it. Come on, Lil, you're usually more pragmatic than this."
"Pragmatism goes out the window when it comes to motherhood." Putting my finger in his face, I waggled it with as much threat as I could muster. "This is your last warning, Gabriel."
He grabbed my hand in his. "I’m so sorry, but you know this isn’t over." Without a warning, he disappeared.
Huffing, I stomped upstairs to join Lucian. What a night.
"Can I come with you today?"I asked Lucian as he pulled on his shoes. I'd gotten up early and got ready, putting on stretchy maternity jeans and a cute top with a stork on it. "I don't feel like being alone."
Of course, that freaked him out. "What's wrong?" He tied his shoe and crossed the kitchen to me. "Are you okay?"
Laughing, I used his thick arm to steady myself as I stepped into my flats. No heels for me, as much as I loved them. I'd worn them for most of the pregnancy, but I was too unsteady on my feet now. My balance had shifted. "I'm fine, worrywart. Just hormones." Anything was excused by hormones. "They make me want to be near you."
He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed my back. "I'd love for you to come. Bring your laptop. You can edit while I work."
"Okay." I grinned at him and pushed up onto my tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. "I love you, Lucian."
And boy, did I love him. My Lilith memories were firmly planted in my head. I knew the importance of getting him back to Hell. And though nothing could happen until I had the baby, we'd have to kill him after. He'd understand, of course. If not for the baby, Lucifer would always vote to return to Hell to right the problems there. He'd been forced into the creation and stewardship of the realm initially, but over the years he'd grown to love his home and took pride in his job.
He pinched my butt as I walked away to get my laptop. "I'll start the car."
When I entered the office, Gabriel sat in my desk chair. "Lil, we have to get that baby out of you."
"Not yet," I hissed, stepping back into the hall to make sure Lucian was in the garage. The rattling sound of the garage door opening filled the air, so I sighed and turned to Gabe. "There has got to be another option. Have you consulted God?"
Gabriel scoffed and spun the chair around. "Of course not. You know how he is."
God spent most of his time focusing on small, day-to-day human matters. They fascinated him. He was omniscient, so he knew what was happening with us, of course. He knew everything, but he chose not to interfere. He wanted us to make our own paths, right our wrongs, and so forth. He'd changed over the years, growing more interested in being a Watcher instead of a Doer.
"I think this is escalating to the point of asking for a little help." I grabbed my padded laptop bag and tried to bend over to unplug the charger, but the belly got in the way.
Gasping, I reached further down, the baby's bulk pushing up into my lungs and shoving all the air out. "Stop," Gabriel said. He laughed at me and helped me upright again, then unplugged the charger for me. "Lilith, I'm not doing this to hurt you. I'm doing it to save the world. You know what would happen if all of the demons got out of Hell."
They'd swarm the Earth and attack humans. It would be pure chaos. And humans couldn't kill demons with a gun or knife. It wasn't that easy... Nothing but Light could kill a demon. And the stronger the demon, the stronger the Light had to be. There were a few weapons, forged by the Archangels, that would do the job, but they were hard to make and took hundreds of years to grow. They wouldn't be a lot of help if the millions of demons in Hell escaped. It was bad enough when one of the tiny ones slipped out. Human possessions and the like came from those tiny demons.
He was right. We had to get Lucifer back to Hell pronto.
As soon as the baby was born. Nothing else mattered to me as Constance or Lilith. Let the world burn.
"I gotta go." I slipped my laptop into the bag and left Gabriel standing in my office.
Lucian smiled as I slipped into the passenger seat of the car. "What took so long?"
Blame it on the pregnancy. "Had to pee."
He chuckled. "You're always peeing nowadays."
I peered around the parking lot of Lucian's insurance office. We were the first ones in for the day. He had a secretary, Linda, but she didn't roll in until nearly ten. She was near retiring and didn't give a rat’s patootie. But Lucian swore she kept the office running smoothly, and he didn't know what he'd do without her when she retired, so he pretty much let her do whatever she wanted to.
I walked ahead of him, looking around for anything that could endanger his life. At this point, the fact was that his life was more valuable than mine despite the pregnancy. Baby or not, if the entirety of the demons were free, the Earth would be a goner.
A robber with a gun, a giant ax mounted behind a door, ready to swing down on his head.
Gabriel had an interesting sense of humor, there was no telling what he'd come up with.
If it weren't for the baby, I'd join him in finding a fun way to kill Lucian to send him back to Hell. That, and the fact that Lucian was like a dream husband. Men like Lucian simply didn't exist in reality. His biggest flaw was a lack of flaws.
That was another concern in itself. How would we find out why Lucian was so different from Lucifer? Even though we were born on Earth without our memories, we were the same soul. Our personalities weren't all that different in a human body or angelic. So, why was Lucian all the best parts of Lucifer and none of the bad? Where was his cynicism? He'd been blessed with a healthy dose of skepticism, that was gone. One of Lucian's few flaws was naïveté.
