“All the Fallen were stripped of their celestial weapons, so none of them have a flaming sword. They forged their own weapons when they fell, but they’d never been able to reproduce a metal that won’t melt under celestial fire. Lucifer tried to create a sword he could light with Hellfire, but never could.
“It is very difficult to kill an angel or even a Nephilim. You have to know how and you have to have the right weapon. Someone cut off Kir’s wings. That alone is enough to kill an angel from the pain alone. My son was brutalized, but Lucifer taught him how to defend himself and he knew how to sense angels. If he felt an unfamiliar angel, he would have gotten his lover back home. Kir only would have let an angel he knew and trusted close enough to hurt him like that.”
I guess it was a good thing my trust issues had trust issues because I didn’t want to go out like that. Lilith had given us a lot, and I didn’t need her to get graphic about my half-brother’s murder. I didn’t want to upset her.
I still didn’t know who did all this, but they clearly had a cruel streak. And I could understand why Lucifer spiraled so deepand how long. No one should find their child like that. I knew I should be worried about who did all this, but all I could think about was what my father had just gone through recently and everything I’d heard about how he reacted after Kir.
“Thanks. How is he?”
“I know what you are worried about and don’t be. If you doanythingto hurt Lucifer, it just pisses him off. It’s different with his kids and there are basically different levels. Basically, if your new boyfriends break your heart, he’s going to be a complete menace about ruining their lives. If someone actuallyhurtsyou, he’s going to blame himself.”
“I mean, I’m a menace in my own right. Some of that could just be my sparkling personality.”
Lilith just gave me a small smile.
“I’m sure you are a complete menace when you want to be, but you’re an amateur compared to Lucifer. He rebelled against God and pissed off alotof powerful people. And he’s a lot on a good day. He kicked me out so he could get naked like I haven’t seen all that before, but said I could come back and help him once he was under the bubbles. This isn’t a prudish thing. He won’t say it, but he doesn’t want to be seen like this. He’s an archangel, so he won’t look like this for long. You’re all really annoying with the divine healing.”
Meeting my father wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. I hadn’t spent much time around him yet, but he was cool. I got why Mom fell for him.
Once he was cleaned up and had whatever divine healing Lilith was talking about, we needed to discusseverythingabout his forty-six years in captivity. They used Kir’s face to torment him and hide their identity, but I was betting there were little clues and mannerisms that Lucifer could use to identify who was hiding behind Kir’s face.
Iknew a lot about angels because I paid attention in school, but I was realizing how much I either didn’t know or completely underestimated. I knew they were hard to kill because they had divine healing, but now that I’d seen it in action, I realized how in the dark I was.
When Lucifer came out with Lilith, he was clean shaven with a haircut. The resemblance between Sydney and Lucifer was even stronger once he was cleaned up. He was less gaunt too. I mean, he pickled himself in the bubble bath for what seemed like forever and Sydney got a little squirrely because she moved from being terrified to worried. But he wasn’t in there long enough to fill out as much as he did.
And Sydney was Sydney. She walked right up to Lucifer and poked him in the chest.
“Are angels like those capsules when I was a kid that you threw in the bathtub and it grew into a dinosaur? Because you just look like you took the Master Cleanse too far.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but it was a valid question. He was still thin, but he was no longer emaciated. Lucifer just booped her on the nose and smiled.
“I wasn’t born. I was created fully formed and the magic running through my veins tries very hard to restore me to how I was created. It was part of why I was too weak to figure out how to break out. My body was being starved and my magic was trying to overcompensate. It was a trick both sides used during the war when we needed to keep someone alive.”
“Uh, I was born. Can I do that?”
“You’re more angel than any Nephilim that’s existed before, but I honestly hope to never find that out. I’m an archangel, but I don’t know what choir your other angel ancestor was with and we all have different duties and powers.”
“Which one blows shit up? Because I keep doing that when I get emotional.”
“Seraphim. We called themthe burning ones.But that shouldn’t be possible. They are the closest to my father and never leave home. I didn’t know your mother when she was old enough to manifest powers, but if itwasa Seraphim, then your mother had way more of that DNA than you did. She would have blown things up too.”
“Uh, was my mother a completely different person when you dated? She was completely unflappable. Mom could be utterly terrifying without losing her temper. You can asked my third-grade teacher since she’s probably currently in Hell being tortured by demons who look like precocious kids.”
“Actually, she was. Your mother could be quietly terrifying, but she was also a firecracker when she wanted to be. Your mother and I were sitting next to a gentleman at a bar ranting about the Pregnancy Discrimination Act that had just passed and she completely obliterated him. I had to holdherback. It was quite sexy.”
“I have a question,” Sydney asked. “Mom got sick when she was in her sixties. My magic showed up when I turned forty-six. I’m guessing Cambion and Nephilim have their magic build, but it doesn’t set off your alarm until it manifests. I’m guessing that has to do with emotions? I just had a really infuriating call with my soon to be ex when I exploded my bathroom.”
“Yes,” Kujo said. “Mine manifested when my abusive foster father was trying to hurt me, but I’d been having this feeling something big was going to happen soon.”
“Excuse me, infuriating call with your soon to be ex?” Lucifer said.
Lilith just rolled her eyes like she knew Lucifer was about to get completely ridiculous about Sydney’s ex.
“So, if I tell you this, you’dbetterprotect him, but Nero took care of it.”
Sydney had alotof trust issues, but she’d obviously let some walls down with her father. She was fiercely protective of all of us. When she killed Kujo’s family to protect him, she knocked us all out, but we weren’t hurt. She wouldn’t have breathed a word about what Nero did to her ex to anyone who would have punished him for it. Lucifer’s eyes glittered as they landed on Nero, but he wasn’t angry.
“Good. I don’t even need to know what he did. He upset my child and he had it coming. He’s human, so there’s no magic for the curse to permanently latch onto. It’ll eventually wear off. And I voted against it being illegal for you to use that magic. So did Satan and Abaddon. We were outnumbered. My otherbrothers don’t like that you can manipulate their feelings or completely knock them out. My argument was don’t give you a reason to.”
