“And Khari?” Kaj had to know what they would be dealing with.
“He’ll possess all his memories from every vessel he’s been in.”
“So he’ll be confused?” Acadia asked.
“It might take him some time to get oriented.”
“How much time?” Kaj inquired.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Penelope said, her tone rich with defeat as she turned toward Obsidian, burying her face in his chest.
“Why? Because I chose the male you were raised with as the vessel? Would it be so impossible to understand if it were a stranger? Would you even care?”
Penelope spun around to face him. “But you didn’t pick a stranger. You picked my brother.”
“He’s of no relation to you,” Michael said calmly. “You were both merely raised to believe otherwise.”
For a second, Kaj thought Penelope was going to incinerate the archangel with a glare. He must have thought so, too, because Michael took a step back and held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.
“What if I don’t agree with this?” Penelope prompted. “What if I refuse to let you … take out the vampire?”
Michael’s gaze shot to Kaj, which had Penelope looking over as well.
“Then it’s highly possible my race will die out.” He didn’t bother to tell her that Oliver would likely die because Khari was insistent.
The pain that triggered in her eyes made Kaj like her all the more. She wasn’t a selfish female, that much was a given. He’d been around her enough to see she had a pure heart. Which explained her reasons for wanting to protect Oliver, even if he wasn’t related to her by blood.
“When?” she asked, her voice softer and a tad wobbly.
“Friday,” Kaj told her. “I’ve requested Khari’s body be brought here so we can have your healers available for the human should it be necessary.”
She nodded, then turned to Obsidian. Their eyes met briefly before she stepped around him and left the room.
Kaj hated that this had to be done, and he would’ve argued for more time, but in the grand scheme of things, he did have to put the lives of his race over that of a human vessel. Not to mention, they were in a race against time to save said vessel.
It wasn’t the perfect answer, but it was the only one he seemed to have.
Which meant, resurrecting the original vampire was inevitable.
While the vampires and angels were dealingwith their own crisis, Perfidious was but a few miles away reaping the rewards of his actions.
“Come here, gorgeous,” he crooned to the female standing before him.
After he had introduced his Fae to the shadow beasts, he’d noticed a significant change in their demeanor. It was quite possible they didn’t completely trust him, but they did hold him in high esteem. So much so, they were still congregating within the mountain, more being drawn here every night. It wasn’t every day, after all, that a demon came into possession of a Fae and they were all eager to see her.
Yet here she was.
“How may I serve you, my king?”
Perfidious watched her, admiring her beauty while assessing the minute details of her reaction to him.
Since he’d shed the last human husk, he hadn’t bothered with another choosing rather to maintain his demon form. And over the course of the past five days, he’d found he preferred it this way. He had missed being himself. There was a freedom to be had when one wasn’t ensconced in the vessel of another.
“Kneel before me,” he instructed.
Asmia was naked, as had been the case since the meeting with the shadow beasts. He preferred her this way, in fact. Not only did it give him access to her body, it kept her vulnerable to him, something he enjoyed immensely.
