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Demi looked away and took another shaky breath. She opened her mouth to speak, and then suddenly her entire body went limp and she fell to the mattress, her eyes closed.
“What’s wrong with her?” Evangeline burst out.
“I simply put her to sleep,” said Jolene. “She needs to rest so that she can heal.”
Evangeline’s lips thinned. “And you don’t trust her not to run.”
“No, I don’t,” the Prime easily admitted. “Do you?”
Evangeline averted her gaze. “I’m so mad at her right now. I want to shake her and yell at her. How the hell could she do all this? God, where did I go wrong, Jolene? I thought I was a good mom, I don’t know how I messed up—”
“You didn’t,” Jolene told her, firm. “You’re her mother, so of course you would prefer to take the blame rather than think your own child could do such things. But this isn’t on you, Evangeline. Nor is it on Lachlan. You’re both good parents.”
“She’s right, Mom,” Raini cut in. “You and Dad are the best. Neither of you let Demi down. She let herself down. She made super messed-up decisions—”
“That’s an understatement,” said Lachlan, taking the words right out of Maddox’s mouth.
Having walked in Demi’s mind, he’d felt the darkness in her. The selfishness. The spitefulness. The way she seemed unable to see Raini clearly—always looking at his mate through bitter lenses.
“Maybe you’re right and we didn’t let her down,” Lachlan said to Raini. “But we did let you down. We saw how jealous she was of you when you were kids, but we thought she’d grow out of it. Hell, me and Bram clashed up until we reached our early twenties. Still, when your mom and I noticed the jealousy, we tried nipping it in the bud. We punished Demi, we talked to her, we treated you both equally. She did seem to snap out of it when you were teenagers, but maybe she’d just learned to hide it better. We should have been more on the ball about it or come down on her harder.”
Raini shook her head. “I don’t think you let me down. I think she truly did grow out of it, but that fuck-up with Dwain years ago seemed to spark the jealousy back to life. Some people let that kind of emotion eat them up. She’s one of them.”
Maddox blinked as Celia’s mind all but thumped his own. They’re here, Maddox. Castiel and his halo-bearers are here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I’m supposed to call you home and straight to the courtyard, Celia went on, but don’t come. They just want to trap you like they’ve trapped our entire goddamn lair—Castiel surrounded the monastery with a forcefield so no one can get out. I was the only one outside, so he grabbed me before I could teleport away. Castiel’s calling for you to come face him.
Maddox clenched his teeth and, forcing himself to think through the rage that pumped through both him and his demon, asked her, What about the cathedral? Have they apprehended it?
No, Celia replied.
Good. Sit tight. Without hesitation, Maddox teleported himself, Raini, and Carmen to the attic of the cathedral.
“What the fuck?” Raini burst out, blinking rapidly. “Why are we here?”
“Castiel has come,” Maddox told her, striding toward the small arched window, knowing that no one below would see him through the stained glass. His demon hissed at the sight of the monastery contained by a forcefield. It looked much like the ones that Maddox could form, except that it crackled with white and gold energy.
A tall, winged man stood a few feet away from the energy construct, laughing at a ranting Celia, who stood so unnaturally still that it was clear some sort of power was holding her in place. Two dozen halo-bearers were also present, glancing in every direction, clearly waiting for Maddox to appear.
Beside him, Raini gasped. “Oh, fuck. I’m guessing that’s Castiel.”
“Those shit-eating bitches,” snarled Carmen. “He’s containing everyone so that they can’t teleport to safety or come out and fight him, isn’t he?”
“I would say so,” said Maddox, feeling his nostrils flare. “I suspect he’d be burning down the entire building as we speak if it wasn’t protected from holy fire. He came in the morning because he knew it was the likeliest time to find us all here—other times of the day, some of us are working at or guarding the club.”
“And because everyone aside from us three is in fact home, there are no lair members for us to call on,” said Carmen.
“If it wasn’t for Celia, I could have killed the bastards in one swoop with psychic hellfire,” said Raini. “But if I let out a wave of it, she’d get hit, too. Do you think you could, I don’t know, teleport to her and then whisk her away in a flash?”
