One corner of his exquisite mouth rose to transform his smile into a lopsided grin.
He’d wanted his Brother here to witness. He’d brought all this on to confront Him, to prove to Him what he’d become.
But his Brother wasn’t finished with him yet. “This is how you control your temper? Your actions?” God asked him. “By ravaging? By pillaging?”
I offered Rey’azikeen a conspiratorial smirk, encouraged him to reveal the real reason we were all there.
“No, Brother. By this.”
He took his right hand and sliced his palm open on Michael’s sword. Rich, dark blood rushed out, and he placed his palm on Beep’s forehead, then lowered his own and whispered a protection prayer in an ancient celestial language. A spell. An incantation.
When he was finished, he lifted his palm. Beep’s skin absorbed the blood in a shimmer of light. It faded into her, and her only acknowledgment that her father had just cast a powerful protection spell over her was another soft squeak and a loveable wiggle, as though nestling against him.
His face brightened and he beamed down at her.
“What did you do?” I asked him, fascinated myself.
“I have made her invisible to all who would cause her harm. Our enemies will not be able to find her until she wants to be found.” He looked at his Brother. “I will protect her with my life. And with that, I will prove who I am. I will prove that I’m worthy of—”
“Forgiveness,” Jehovah said, His expression a mixture of surprise and knowing. “It was always there, Rey’azikeen, waiting. I knew you’d take it when you were ready.”
He glanced back at me, the grin on his face turning playful. “Call me Reyes.”
Jehovah nodded and disappeared without another word.
I just wanted to be closer to my husband and daughter, so I picked my way through angel wings and hellhounds and swords, scooting the latter to the side as I walked through the statues, still at the ready.
“Careful,” Reyes said. “An angel’s sword is very powerful.”
I grinned. “So is my husband.”
Humor shone brightly in his dark irises. “Perhaps you could call them off?”
With hardly a thought, they vanished. A split second before they disappeared, Michael turned to me and nodded, confirming that we were good. Then he was gone. They were all gone, except Mr. Wong.
I turned to him. “Thank you.”
He performed a deep, reverent bow, then disappeared into a sea of shimmering light. Dude was so cool.
I turned back and wrapped my arms around my husband and daughter.
“I needed you to trust me,” Reyes said. “In all my incarnations. And I needed her safe.”
I looked down at the bundle in his hands. At her rosy cheeks and pink mouth.
“For what is to come,” he added.
“And what is that?”
“A demon horde.”
I lifted a brow. “Yours?”
He lowered his head in shame. “Yes. When I created the god glass and the hell within, I created hundreds of thousands of guards. Wraith demons. Depraved. Bloodthirsty.”
“Because what’s a hell without a few thousand goblins?” I asked, teasing him.
“They felt me awaken. I had to find her to keep her safe, but a part of me couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let me find her, just in case.”
“Reyes.”
He nodded. “It’s an odd feeling, not trusting oneself.”
“I’m certain it is. The way I see it, if we can get through the last few days as unscathed as we have, we can get through anything as long as we’re together.”
“I apologize for the deception.”
I looked at our beautiful daughter. “You could have told me earlier.”
“I had to prove this to you. To prove I could be trusted.”
“Maybe you needed to prove it to yourself even more.”
“Perhaps. We’ll need that when the time comes. That bond. That unconditional trust.”
“Which will be when?”
He glanced at an imaginary watch on his wrist. “Any second now.” He looked down at me, his expression grave. “I fear the end is nigh.”
I sighed aloud. “If it’s not one nigh, it’s another.”
“So,” he said, playing with a tiny dark curl on the top of Beep’s head, “the center of the sun?”
“Right. About that—”
Before I could explain where that little nugget had originated from and ask him if Reyes had placed it in my dreams, Mrs. Loehr walked into the room. “Charley?”
“Oops. Hold up, Mrs. Loehr.” I slipped off the loungers Garrett had given me, the T-shirt plenty long enough to cover my most valuable assets, and bent at Reyes’s feet. He stepped in the legs and I slid them up and tied them at his waist.
We gazed at our daughter a good while longer, then handed her back to Mrs. Loehr, who was confused but thankful.
When we showed up at Garrett’s, he was ready for us. Or, ready for Rey’azikeen. Kind of. He raised a gun the moment we appeared, aiming the barrel at Reyes’s heart. Not that it would have done any good, but it’s the thought that counts.
“It’s okay, Swopes,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “He’s Reyes again. And Rey’aziel, and Rey’azikeen. But he’s just going by Reyes for now.”
Reyes, who was standing in Garrett’s loungers, cleared his throat and had the presence of mind to look repentant.
“Reyes,” I said, “is there anything you want to say to Garrett?”
Reyes lifted a shoulder. “Sorry I killed you. Repeatedly.”
“Garrett,” I said, turning my admonishing attention to the most understanding guy on planet Earth, “is there anything you want to say to Reyes?”
Before I could stop him, Garrett dropped the gun into his left hand and swung, his large fist making contact with Reyes’s jaw. The sound was awful, a hard, crunchy sound, and I didn’t know what was hurt worse, Reyes’s jaw or Garrett’s fist.
But, being manly men, neither of them gave up the game. Neither showed weakness. They stood for an hour, give or take fifty-five minutes, glaring at each other nose to nose, before Garrett asked, “Beer?”
Reyes gave a single, solitary nod, then all was right with the world. In an instant, the plane had righted itself.
I sat in Reyes’s lap at the table as we explained everything that happened at the chapel, including how Reyes ended up with Garrett’s pajama bottoms.
Pari sat enthralled, and Garrett took it remarkably well, mostly because he was astounded by the whole center-of-the-sun thing. I had to repeat that story three times, a little astounded myself.
But our regaling had to be cut short when Garrett’s date, the one he forgot to cancel, showed up with lasagna and breadsticks. Zoe from Hope Christian Academy. Garrett made the introductions all around, but when he got to Pari, the look that passed between the two women could only be described as thunderstruck.
With an arm wrapped around my husband’s neck, I looked into his eyes and said, “So, the dark, whooshy things in our apartment, that wasn’t you swooshing around, was it?”
He shook his head. “The wraith demons. Our apartment is ground zero. The hell dimension is expanding exponentially, and it’ll take over this world if we don’t stop it. This entire dimension.”
“You didn’t think of that before you shattered the god glass inside our humble abode?”
A sexy grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “Sorry.”
“Don’t ever leave me like that again.” I wrapped my hands around his throat and pretended to choke him. “Promise.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered there as he said, “You first.”
Just as I was about to kiss the man I’d loved, quite literally, for millennia, my phone rang in my bag. I dug it out as Pari insisted on helping Zoe with plates and flatware. Poor Garrett. Still, served him right. He needed to set things straight with the mother of his child.
I checked the phone. It was Cookie, and I silently chastised myself for not calling her sooner.
“Hey, Cook. We’re all alive. I meant to call—”
“Ch-Charley?”
The sound of Cookie’s voice straightened my shoulders. “Cook, what’s wrong?”
“Charley, something … something happened. She…” The phone went silent for a moment before Cookie broke down, sobbing into the phone.
I shot out of Reyes’s lap. Dread dumped adrenaline into my system by the bucketsful. “Cookie, what happened? Where are you?”
“What’s going on?” Garrett asked.
“The school,” Cookie said, her voice cracking. “She’s here. I thought she was at her school in Albuquerque.”
Reyes stood and listened beside me.
“Which school? Is it Amber? Cookie, did something happen to Amber?”
“The—the School for the Deaf.”
With hardly a thought about Zoe and what this would do to her, I dematerialized instantly and rematerialized at the New Mexico School for the Deaf in Santa Fe. Emergency vehicles of all shapes and sizes swam around me. Lights glared into the darkness. Kids and adults stood around a border the emergency crews had set up. I followed the flashing lights to the parking lot beside the gym.