Page 53 of Wicked Savior
“He will when he gets the message I sent him,” I assure him. “Although I think he was here tonight.” I tell Cormal about the man I glimpsed earlier.
He looks at me strangely. “Lucifer wasn’t here tonight.” He grabs my hand. “I know if he received a message, he would have been here.”
The uncertainty I’d been feeling eases. Maybe he didn’t get it?
If it wasn’t him, who was watching my little presentation? It wasn’t Gabriel. He wouldn’t have been able to contain himself with so many Druids in one place.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
LUCIFER
Vargas appears three days later… still translucent.
When I see his current state, my patience leaves me. “This has gone on long enough. You have a family waiting for you. Arden isn’t kidding. She’ll carry out her threat to tell Solandis. Do y—”
Vargas waves a hand to cut me off. “She’s back. In the cave. Conducting experiments.”
“She’s what?” I roar, trying to understand why the hell she would come back and conduct more experiments. “Has she learned nothing? Her experiments are going to get her killed. Goddess or not.”
Vargas shakes his head. “What do you want me to do?”
A thousand options lie before me, but I realize I can’t allow myself to follow any of them. Free will. It’s the very basis of my power and beliefs. She makes her own choices. If she’s hellbent on changing the course of human evolution, there isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop her. But I’ll be there to help her after it’s done.
I force myself to pick up the pen lying on my desk. “Nothing. You need to find a body. Four days, Vargas. The clock is ticking.” He remains standing in front of me.
“Don’t let her do something stupid. ‘Free will’ doesn’t mean shit if you’re alone. Take it from me,” he urges.
“Dismissed.” This time, my voice is implacable. After a second, he leaves.
Security escorts Cormal into my office ten minutes later. “It took you long enough.”
He throws a pissed off look in my direction. “Since you upgraded your security, I had to go through the entrance like a common visitor. Can’t you set me up with special privileges or something? I hate walking through this monstrosity. It’s dark and dreary and full of unpleasant memories.” He shudders.
“Are you always this dramatic when you don’t get your way?” I scoff.
“Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?” he says in a snide voice.
Irritated myself, I narrow my eyes at him. “I wouldn’t have ordered you here if I didn’t. Where have you been? Did you know Evren’s back?”
Cormal sits down with a sigh. “I do. She summoned all of the Druid leaders, and I went to hear what she had to say.”
He takes the bourbon I hand him. “She told them the way to save themselves was to procreate with humans. When they questioned her, she explained their roots came from human and Druid pairings.” He goes on to tell me the rest. It’s apparent by the admiration in his eyes, he likes the decision she made not to give the Druids her blood.
He starts talking about her plan to place bombs in the portal to kill the beasts and all my good feelings go right out the fucking window.
“She’s going to do what?!” I yell, throwing my hands up in the air. “What the hell is she thinking? They’ll devour her.” It took everything Gabriel and I had to close the portal when he opened it. There’s no way she’ll be able to do it, goddess or not. She’s reasonable, right? I only have to talk to her. Urge her to reconsider, or at least take a while to think about it. A few millennia, maybe. After all, the beasts aren’t going anywhere.
“She thinks you’re going to help her. Said she sent a message to you,” he reveals, raising an eyebrow. “Did you get her message?”
I whip around and look through the papers on my desk, but I don’t see a note. “Nothing. Who was your messenger?”
“Calamitas Demon, named Hadeon,” he replies. “He delivered Evren’s message to me this afternoon.”
I call Vargas on our private channel. If anyone can find this demon, he can. He doesn’t answer.
Uneasy, I look at Cormal. “You did not see this.” With a wave of my hand, I bring up a map with millions of red dots. I hover my hand over each section and search. When I find the one I want, I pluck the dot from the map and throw it in front of me.
The demon falls to the floor with a thud. His bloody body is a mass of bruises and deep wounds, the kind made from a sword. I bend over and check to make sure, but he’s definitely dead.
