The demon with the sword narrowed his yellow eyes. “Who came down with you?”
I’d had enough of demons asking me questions, but before I could react, Lucifer stepped over to Galilee and wrapped her in his arms.
It took my breath away with surprising pain. He’d been so shocked to realize who she was, I’d thought that would drive a wedge between them, but how brief his horror had been! He wascomfortingher, right in front of me, as if he hadn’t loved us both, bedded us both, mother and daughter. Why had I expected him to be repulsed? He was the Devil; he might even enjoy the taboo of it. My lip curled in disgust, and Lucifer’s arms tightened around Galilee, who still radiated wild light from her palms, even as her eyes were numb and white.
“I’m not real,” she whispered. “I’m notreal.”
It was a fair conclusion to draw—she’d been made to be a tool, a toy,and her whole life had been one brief and terrible manipulation, but wasn’t that all of us under God?
“Ignore the angel,” Lucifer murmured to her. “Deziel is nothing, just a desperate relic burning out.”
Oh, he was trying to hurt me because I’d hurt her, but he’d dealt me the greatest wound long ago. Nothing he did now could really compare. I didn’t respond to the insult, and Lucifer glared at me.
“Answer Levi’s question,” he snapped. “Who came down from Heaven with you?”
I showed him my teeth. “Who do youthink, Morningstar?”
The Devil inhaled a short, sharp breath. “No,” he whispered, as realization struck him heavily.“Michael?”
Oh, I was cutting him with the truth, destroying the image of his brother in a new direction. It was delicious, and I twisted the knife gleefully. “He lay with me, right here on earth.”
Lucifer stiffened, assaulted by the same memories I had—of our excursions into the flesh, our games, our play.“No,”he said again, like it would change the truth. “Michael wouldn’t—he didn’tbelievein that.”
I laughed out loud. “And you think he would betray me. Michael bent his precious moralsfor me, so we could create a weapon against you. That’s what your destruction is worth to him: the compromising of who he is.”
Galilee had gone deathly pale. “What the fuck is she saying, Luci?”
I snaked my head toward her. “I’m saying I came down to earth with an archangel, not too far from Kincaid land. I’m saying we found a human, a fisherman named Gifty Williams, and I changed my form, and Michael took him as a vessel.”
Lucifer’s rage was flat and dark. “You fucked Michael,” he snarled, as the truth finally slapped him in the face. “You let himgive you a child.”
I shrugged, knowing it would infuriate him further. “That was the whole point, Lucifer. Michael insisted on using a vessel; we weren’t evensure it would work with me in this form, but it did. Once we knew I was with child, Michael returned to Heaven, and I stayed with the fisherman.”
My daughter let out a broken gasp, but I was floating in my memories, a small smile on my lips.
“He loved the land and the waters, knew them like the back of his hand, and he thought you were his, Galilee.” I sighed, remembering the months I’d spent in that little cabin. “Maybe you were, a little, who knows? Certainly, nothing like you has existed before. But Gifty loved you from the moment he knew you were forming within me. He had no memories of being taken by Michael—a mercy I insisted on—and he’d sing to you as fireflies rose at night, out on the front porch. When labor started, it was just the two of us, and Gifty caught you in his hands. Cut the cord.”
Galilee choked back a strangled sound. “Where is he now?”
My smile never wavered. “I cut his throat right after,” I answered. “He fell to his knees—he was a big man, you know—and the blood jumped out of his neck like it was singing to be somewhere else, and I held you up in it. Bathed you in all that love of his.”
It had felt transcendent. He had loved my child, and I had slaughtered him for it, certain that his blood held all that power, that the new baby would be marked by it, whatever she turned out to be. I couldn’t have let him live. If not at my hand, then he would have died at Michael’s. The archangel never meant to leave any loose ends.
“Galilee.” Lucifer was saying her name low and urgent. “Pull it back.”
I returned to the present to see my daughter’s power spilling white-hot in her eyes, bright and streaming from her hands, light wrapping tendrils up her arms. How strange that it would take this little story of a man she didn’t know to pull her apart like this!
“Why did you do it?” Galilee’s voice held new guttural tones, and the air trembled.
I leaned in, my eyes hungry. “Because I could. Because your powerneeded a sacrifice, and he loved youso much, Galilee. Do you think this power you use even now isfree? Did you think no onepaidfor you? Gifty paid, my child, so that justice to the Devil might be served one day.”
I was looking directly at her when the rage took her over. Her light flared around her body, gathering in a whirlwind of wailing bright armor.
“Pull it back!” Lucifer’s voice was raised, but it made no difference. My child was no longer Galilee Kincaid. She was what her fathers and I had made her into: a weapon, a howl of fury, a senseless burning thing. The floor of the room buckled, and the stone plinth leaned as half the demons shouted.
“The ward is failing!” one of them yelled. “Lucifer,even the angel’s ward is failing!”
My laugh was drunk and warm. She could break my wards; she had Michael’s power after all. I couldn’t wait to tell him.
