Page 6 of Incipient

Before I could even make sense of the literal flames swirling in her iris’s, Nikki pushed me back, sending me sailing clear off her front porch with the kind of power I’d never felt from her before.

“Come here again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” she warned and then slammed the door shut.

With my ass still planted on the floor, I looked back at War and groaned in pain. “What the fuck was that?”

Unfazed and unimpressed, he calmly strolled over to me and held out his hand. I grabbed a hold of it and let him pull me off the ground and back onto my feet.

“She’s feeding off the fetus’ power,” he informed, his eyes darkening into something that was void of any color. “And she will protect it at all costs.”

3. SIGN OF THE TIMES

The ride over to Temple was uncomfortable to say the least. Not only was my backside still aching from being tossed onto it by Nikki and her newfound power, but War’s earlier premonitions, or whatever you called them, were beginning to make a serious dent in my head. He was right about Nikki being pregnant, and he was right about the way she would react to me—the way she would protect her unborn child.

And I was petrified to my bones to find out what else he may be right about.

If the baby was already powerful enough for Nikki to feed off of, I could only imagine the strength it would have once it was actually born. The damage it could potentially do if it were to fall onto the wrong side of the line (as War was so grimly predicting).

Walking into Temple with a Horseman of the Apocalypse should have been a lot stranger to me than it was. Somehow along the way, I’d gotten used to a life that was anything but normal. Demons. Vampires. Hellgates. Spawns of Lucifer and all the joys that came with it were just another day in the life.

When the hell did that happen to me?

“We need to talk,” I announced as I waltzed into the Senior Magister’s office without knocking.

“Oh, Jemma. Yes. Of course,” said William, his hand gesturing for me to come in. “Please close the door behind yourself if you don’t mind.”

“Sure thing,” I said as I reached into the hallway and grabbed a hold of War’s barbarically big bicep and hauled him into the room with me.

William’s jaw all but hit the floor. He wasn’t even speaking, which was probably a first for him.

“William, this is War. As in one of the Four Horsemen. War, this is our Senior Magister.” I smiled at William’s shocked expression and then took a seat in front of his desk. “Good news. Apparently, he’s onourside,” I added, hoping it would help him find his manners and relax enough to start talking again.

“Oh, well that’s…forgive me,” he said, straightening onto shaky legs and then extending a cautious hand to War. “I’m a little…confused at the moment.”

War took his hand and nodded before sitting down into the chair beside me. My gaze dropped to the legs to make sure they weren’t going to snap in half from his weight. The last thing we needed was a pissed off Horseman landing on his ass in the middle of an important meeting.

“Anyway,” I said, my eyes sliding back to William when I was confident the chair could hold the weight. The Magister was still staring at the Horseman, apparently unable to look away from him. I didn’t really blame him, though. He was quite a specimen. If you liked the ridiculously tall, chiseled, beefy types from centuries past. “It turns out they were never here for any of us. They’re here because ofLucifer.”

William’s eyebrows pulled together over his befuddled eyes. “I’m not sure I follow. We’ve already taken care of Lucifer. You yourself made sure of it.”

“I sure did, but it seems he left us a little parting gift—our very own Son of Perdition.”

William’s blank stare morphed into something that could only be described as horror. “He mated.”

“By our estimate, the seed is already halfway through gestation, if not further,” explained War, his long auburn hair falling freely around his face. “The next few weeks are going to be crucial as its power will continue to double every few days. If we have any hope in stopping this birth, we must act now. As it stands, we are down two horseman and I fear that evenwewill not be able to stop it once it is out of utero. Without the Power of Four, that is.”

“The Power of Four?” asked William, the confusion clouding his eyes as he tried to follow what War was saying.

Been there, done that. Wasso notbuying the t-shirt.

“My brethren and I were created for this reason alone. To stop the Son of Perdition from being born and bringing about the end of days,” answered War, his voice void of any natural human emotion. “It is only when the four of us are together that our full power can be awoken. It is the way we were created.”

“Who…createdyou?” he asked on a breathless note.

War’s chin rose ever so slightly as he met William’s probing eyes. “The Angel Court.”

The room fell silent with questions that had yet to be formed. William’s gaze appeared to be dancing around the room as though the questions that needed asking were floating around him, just there for the taking. I expected him to ask what this Angel Court was, or if they could be reached again to, you know, send in a replacement horseman. But that wasn’t what he asked when he finally spoke. Either he’d already heard about the Angel Court or he was keeping his lack of knowledge on the subject under wraps.

“Why have we never seen you until now?” His paused for a moment. “Why is there nothing in our books about you?” he added, trying to fill in the missing pieces. And let’s be real. There was a shit-ton of them unaccounted for at this point.

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