“Killing everyone who threatens us is not a life plan.”
“Are you communicating with my daughter right now?” Abaddon asked with his eyes narrowed.
“She is me, and I am her.”
Okay, she was also channeling The Riddler. My head was a crowded space.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anything like you,” he said.
I growled and Indigo echoed it out loud. I didn’t like him referring to either of us as a thing. I was a person, and so was she. We were born together, we’d live together, and one day would die together. By some miracle I’d found our match in Hudson who harbored his own creature. Indigo’s agreement warmed my chest.
“Let me back to deal with our father,” I told her.
“I don’t trust him.”
“Neither do I, but for some reason, he’s hesitant to act against us together. I think we are safe.”
She grumbled as she shrank back and allowed me to break free. My father’s forehead crumpled as he eyeballed me.
“It’s remarkable how you’ve trained her.”
“Give me a minute and I can train him also,” Indigo growled. He clearly didn’t realize we could hear him no matter who was in control. Meaning he was now trying to play me off against Indigo, even though we’d revealed we can communicate.
He finished the last of his soda and placed the empty glass on the table. “You must retrieve The Red Dragon from your grandmother, humanity’s fate is in the balance.”
“No more so than usual.”
“Wrong. If Eloise succeeds, she will alter the fabric of civilization and will usher in a new and disastrous era. How much blood on your hands will it take for you to see the sacrifice of the few is for the good of the many? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?”
I shook my head. “That is not a path I’m willing to travel. All life is sacred.”
“Your precious humans pray to a god who sacrificed his own son for the many.”
I blinked. “Are you trying to draw parallels between Jesus Christ and this situation? Because you are purposefully omitting some very important details.”
“Like?”
“Jesus was God’s son.”
“And you are my daughter.”
“Are you chiding me for letting the book go to save a life, or saying I should be sacrificed? Because I’m one hundred percent sure my death will not help this situation. My grandmother might shed a tear for a missed opportunity to control something new and powerful, but it wouldn’t prevent her from enacting her plans and crowning herself queen of all that lives.”
“I was there when they nailed him to the cross. If I believed sacrificing you would stop what’s coming, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“Then you’ve come full circle, admonishing me for protecting those I love. Is that not what Jesus did? Protect those he loved by dying?”
“As you’ve pointed out, you aren’t sacrificing yourself, you are risking the sacrifice of the masses. Selfish in name, selfish in nature.”
I’d been called many things, but selfish wasn’t one of them. “You are trying to provoke me and I don’t have the slightest clue what you hope to gain from it. But let me reassure you that after navigating Eloise Roberts all of my life, this is child’s play.”
He lurched forward and grabbed my arm, causing my breath to stutter in my chest. “You want to witness the end of civilizations? The utter decimation of life as you know it?”
The room spun around us and disintegrated, giving way to a dull landscape. My father released my arm as I twisted toward a billow of smoke in the sky. Rows and rows of people dressed in vertical striped clothing clung to the caged fence surrounding them. Screams echoed from a building and I slapped my hand over my mouth as ash rained down from the sky. War-torn Poland was a poignant place to start as a warning against tyrannical rulers intent on world domination. I squeezed my eyes closed.
“Of course, no greater evil has been committed than by those that do so in the name of the Lord.”
I opened my eyes just in time to see the first fatal flight hit the tower and forever alter the Manhattan skyline. The world spun and a double decker bus passed me on a busy street before a deafening explosion rocked the world. Screams of terror surrounded me as tears leaked from my eyes.
