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Eddie’s slow brain chewed out a conclusion it didn’t like and immediately rejected it. She turned to Dee. “Dee? What’s going on, Dee?”
“Oh bugger!” Dee’s shoulders slumped. “Eddie, this is Ramiel. Archangel counterpart to Wrath, and here because Wrath is here.”
“None of you should be here.” Chris scowled at all of them. “This is a direct contravention of the terms of the treaty.”
Ramiel turned to Chris with a look of distaste. “Be quiet, human. You will speak when you are spoken to.” He heaved a massive sigh and pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt. Crouching beside Chris, he cuffed his hands behind his back. “And those will keep you civil until I tell you that you can speak.”
“You dare.” Chris struggled against the cuffs.
Ramiel held his massive hands out in front of Chris. “Be quiet before I smash your head like a fig. My patience is stretched thin as it is.”
Eddie was insanely relieved when Chris took the threat seriously and snapped his mouth shut. She did not want to see head crushing. Nope. That would really suck.
Standing again, Ramiel turned to Wrath. “Explain yourself.”
“Shade has been trying to end me.” Wrath disappeared his wings. “I have had to resort to extreme measures to protect myself. And now he has come to earth to use my daughter in his war against me.”
“What?” Sophia recovered first and spun on Wrath. “You attacked Shade. He had to hide on this plane to get away from you while he was grievously injured.”
“I never touched him.” Wrath threw up his hands. “My horde and I have been hunting him after he and his attacked us and nearly wiped out half of my horde.”
Ramiel glared at Shade. “You tried to end Wrath?”
“No,” Shade bellowed. “He’s the one who is trying to end me.”
Wrath yelled something back, and then Sophia shouted at him. Ramiel bellowed at Sophia. And they were all yelling at each other.
Eddie had heard enough and not nearly enough. With her fingers in her mouth, she let out a piercing whistle.
All four beings turned to stare at her.
“Right.” Eddie’s hands shook as she smoothed her hair back. “I’d like us to circle back to the daughter thing.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
“Dee?” Eddie stood and stared blindly at the view of the town of Paradise outside her bedroom window. With it being summer, the small park across the way from the theatre was filled with people. A woman was power walking the paved path around the perimeter. The woman was nodding along to whatever was playing through her AirPods. Eddie had been that woman, not even three weeks ago. She’d been going about her normal life, thinking she was a normal woman, in a normal world. Now she had archangels and hell princes arguing in her greenroom, and apparently, she was the child of one of them. She glanced at Dee sitting cross-legged on her bed in a bright pair of lime green leggings and an off the shoulder cerise shirt. “Is it true?
“Oh, Eddie-girl.” Dee pushed her turquoise tortoise shelled glasses up her nose and sighed. “I really hoped we would never have this conversation.” She rested her palms on her knees like a spry Buddha. “Your mother was…lively. She had a mind of her own.”
Eddie snorted at that one. Rosabella had been born on a tear and continued to live her life that way. “But a hell prince?” She pictured Wrath’s mammoth shoulders and resting asshole face. “And that one?”
“She always did like a bad boy.” Dee grimaced. “And you may not feel like this now, but judging by who else she had swarming around her back then, you got the best option.”
Wow! The women in this family had horrible taste in men. Dee with her cradle robbing, Rosabella with…well, whoever, and her with this ridiculous thing she had for Shade. When she thought about it like that, she didn’t judge her mother too harshly. They had a way about them, these hell princes, and it was more than their ridiculous good looks. Not to say the looks didn’t nudge a woman’s hormones on a bit, because they definitely did.
“By now you know how they all feel about Nephilim.” Dee waved her hand in the direction of the raised voices drifting up the stairwell. “I wasn’t going to let anyone harm you.”
Eddie didn’t bother to hide her hurt. “But you never told me the truth.”
“Eddie, the truth was a hard one to tell.” Dee’s kingfisher blue eyes filled with tears. “And as you grew older and none of your powers manifested, I began to think…hope…that you would never have to discover who you truly were. I wanted you to have the most normal life you could.”
“Other than living on top of a hell gate?” In the park, a family were having a picnic under the shade of a towering maple. As a child, she’d dreamed of being part of a normal family—mom, dad, siblings. Instead, she’d been the home-schooled granddaughter of the outrageous woman who ran the local theatre. Not forgetting being the daughter of the woman everyone hid their husbands from.
“Other than that,” Dee said. “And we were born into that. Guardians are always from the same families. It’s how the council controls the information from getting out.” Dee shrugged one shoulder. “It’s the sort of thing that could create widespread panic if people found out about it.”
As Eddie had been experiencing a low-level panic since this entire thing had begun, she could get that, and she nodded. “Now what?”
