“Humans tore our world apart too.” Her hand fell back to her side. “Lucifer is an abomination that should never have been thrown to Earth. He should have been taken care of by his own kind instead of foisted off onto humans and later demons. You have always had a concept of the angels being the good guys; yet they are the ones who started this whole mess six thousand years ago, and now you humans have brought our war into your realm by opening the gateway. There is no good and evil as you think of it; there are only different realms, each with its own purpose and balance, and now those balances have been tipped.”
Rising to my feet, I almost went to her to draw her into my arms and give her the comfort I knew she needed. Instead, I compelled myself to walk over and retrieve another bottle of wine.
My hand clenched around the bottle. She was mine, and I could not have her. It was not only my life or hers hanging in the balance, but the millions of humans and demons who still lived and would perish if Lucifer continued to grow his army and made a move to conquer the humans.
Turning back to her, I walked over to the table and poured another glass of wine before settling into my seat. “I have known much of what you humans would consider evil in my lifetime. You are as far from that as anyone I’ve ever known before,” I told her.
Her head tilted to the side and her mouth parted as she studied me with a look of partial longing and gratitude. I’d require vats of wine to stay away from this woman. “How can I be part demon if Lucifer was still on Earth when this child was created?” she inquired.
“Because he was already changing, warping into something more. That’s where your ability for fire comes in. It is a solely demonic trait, not an angelic one. You may have other demonic traits as well, but we will discover that as we train. Premonitions and visions are possessed by demons and angels; that is a trait shared between our species.”
Walking over, she remained standing as she lifted her goblet and finished off her wine. “Did the other angels leave offspring behind before they entered Hell?”
“They did, but their lines have all perished over the years. Many historic figures sprang from their lines and yours.”
“Like who?” she inquired.
“Like Jesus, Moses, Job, Abraham, Joan of Arc, Noah, Rasputin, Hitler, Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Ghengis Khan, Vlad Dracula, and many others. Their lineage is how some of them were able to communicate with God, walk on water, part seas, get millions to follow them, and so on. Of course, not all of the children of the angels had such strong displays of abilities. Many of them had more latent abilities or they kept them hidden.”
She gawked at me before speaking again. “Jesus was the son of God.”
I shrugged. “More like grandson.”
“Jesus Chr… ah… shit,” she finished and glanced nervously at the roof of the tent.
“You will not be struck dead,” I assured her.
“Yeah,” she muttered, but her eyes went to the roof again. “How can you be so sure all of those angel lines are gone too?”
“Demons kept track of them for a long time or tried to, but eventually they were unable to do so anymore. We believedallthe angel lines had perished, until four years ago when Bale received a vision that Lucifer’s line continued. We had no idea what to expect. If you would be male or female, young or old, we only knew you still existed and that you would possess at least some of the abilities of your father.”
“I have no idea what abilities my father could be capable of. He left my mother when he learned she was pregnant with me and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Your father is Lucifer.”
CHAPTER 22
Kobal
She shot me a look, her mouth pursing at my words. “If you’re right, there are six thousand years in between me and his actual child that disagree with you,” she retorted.
“He is the creator of your line; he is your father.”
“A line that never should have existed,” she murmured.
There had been many times over my life I had cursed the existence of Lucifer, of the chaos and death he’d wrought upon our world, a world that was supposed to bemineto lead. He’d twisted what was supposed to have been a thing of function and necessity and turned it into a perversion of what it was meant to be. He’d slaughtered countless demons over his lengthy time there, and he sought to disrupt the balance between Hell and Earth. If he could figure out a way to get back into Heaven, I knew he would seek to destroy it too.
He’d tried for many millennia to get free of Hell in order to bring death and destruction to the mortal realm, but through bloodshed and sacrifice, the Palitons had fought and succeeded in keeping him suppressed. I’d often cursed the day Lucifer had been tossed through those pearly gates. However, looking at River now, I would have thrown him through those gates myself to have her here.
The realization rattled me so much I nearly crushed the goblet within my hand. My breath rattled out between my teeth.
Mine.
Fuck. I took another drink of wine as I grappled to keep demonic instincts, which I’d never experienced before, buried. She simply couldn’t be what I was beginning to suspect she might be.
“What is it you want from me exactly? Why were you looking for me?” she asked.
I was grateful for the distraction her question gave me from my musings. “Lucifer somehow figured out how to get into our world; he didn’t shut the gates behind him, my ancestor did, but there is hope an heir of Lucifer’s would be able to close the gate as he once opened it. And according to Bale’s vision you, River, are his only living relative.”
