Temptation, Chronicles of the Fallen, Book 3 (20 page)

“But you’re eating the same things we are,” she pointed out.

“Not
eat
. Feed,” he clarified. “We take sustenance like this”—he waved his hand at the table—“to keep our physical bodies healthy and functioning. But we require more.”

“You mean like a…like a vampire or something?”

“Sort of. But we don’t exist on blood.” Niklas looked to Xander, who nodded. “Well,” he clarified, “most of us don’t.”

“Oh!” Kyanna gasped. Then, clutching her throat, she whispered, “Mikhail…”

Niklas and Xander remained stubbornly tightlipped, clearly refusing to discuss Mikhail. At length, Niklas resumed his explanation. “Our immortal souls were stripped from us when we fell.”

“Like your wings?”

Nodding, Niklas added, “And our gifts.”

“Like your voice?” she asked, turning to Xander.

Across the table, Carly sucked in a soft breath. But Maggie’s gaze remained on Xander. He said nothing at first, simply stared at her as silence held reign. Fine lines appeared at the sides of his mouth as his lips compressed. She hadn’t thought of how her question might affect him before she’d blurted it out. Now she could have kicked herself. She’d not intended to hurt him.

Maggie leaned forward, frowning in concern. Oh, she wished she could take the pain she’d carelessly caused away. Xander leaned back in his chair, a serene expression on his face.

Niklas shot forward in his seat. “Did you feel that?” He glanced from Kyanna to Carly to Xander. “Did anyone else feel that?”

“Feel what?” Kyanna frowned.

“That shot of…of…soothing warmth.” Niklas shook his head, visibly grasping for the appropriate words. “Like…warm fuzzies.”

Xander finally joined the conversation. Though his demeanor was still uncharacteristically tranquil, he said, “I did. Like a wave of peace washed through me.”

“Did you do that?” Niklas asked, turning to Maggie.

“I…I don’t know.” She glanced helplessly at Kyanna. “Did I?”

Kyanna shrugged, baffled.

“Gideon would know, he’d be able to sense the push of power, but I swear I felt it. And it felt like it came from that side of the table,” Niklas insisted, pointing at Maggie.

“It seems our Halfling is discovering new abilities right and left,” Xander remarked, crossing his arms.

Uncomfortable with this new focus, Maggie turned back to Niklas. “Please…you were telling me about demons feeding.”

“So, as we need human food to sustain our bodies, in order to keep our essence—our life force—strong, in order to maintain our powers, we must absorb human souls as well. But we’re careful never to feed from the innocent. Only from those with evil intent, guilty of heinous crimes that would otherwise go unpunished by human law.”

“And how do you
absorb
these souls?” she asked cautiously.

Xander glanced at Kyanna, his gaze troubled…guilty.

“We place our palms over the human’s chest, and pull their soul through the connection, basically sucking it into ourselves.” He glanced to Niklas, seeking extrapolation.

“That about sums it up.”

“Doesn’t sound very pleasant for the human. Is it painful?”

“Excruciating,” Xander whispered, frowning down at the tabletop. Maggie watched as Kyanna reached over and gently squeezed his hand.

“So you’re telling me that you and Xander…and Gideon…all of you…um, feed this way?” Maggie looked around the table for confirmation.

Xander nodded.

“And Sebastian,” Niklas added, but then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “Well, I don’t anymore, I guess. I haven’t had to since I bound my essence to Carly’s soul.”

“I don’t either,” Xander said. “Not after I stole half Kyanna’s soul.”

“Wait, what?” Maggie whipped around to gape at Kyanna. Kyanna seemed to realize she was rubbing the heel of her hand against her breastbone and quickly lowered her hand to her lap. She left her seat and crawled onto Xander’s lap, gently touching his cheek.

“Don’t, Xander,” Kyanna said softly, shaking her head. “It was an accident.”

He captured her hand, pressing a tender kiss to her palm.

Maggie stared at Kyanna for a moment, and then she remembered Niklas’s comment about binding his essence to Carly’s soul. She looked across the table to Carly. Both women seemed fine, healthy color riding high on their cheeks. Okay, one thing at a time. She had enough on her plate to deal with without touching on those revelations.

While it shocked her at first, oddly enough, the whole feeding thing wasn’t bothering her nearly as much as it probably should have. Then again, she’d just found out this morning that she was pregnant. By a demon.

And now here she was, sitting at a table, surrounded by demons and their mates, calmly discussing the unconventional eating habits of her child’s father.

God, could her life get any more messed up?

“There’s something else you should know.”

Dragging her attention back to Xander, she waited for what felt like the other shoe to drop. Like ripping off the bandage, she told herself. Best to do it all in one shot and have the worst of it over quickly.

“Xander,” Niklas warned.

“If he hasn’t told her about feeding, do you think he’ll be in any hurry to tell her about Michael?”

“No,” Niklas allowed. “But—”

“She needs to understand why Michael hates Gideon so much, why he’ll redouble his efforts to kill Gideon once he finds out about the babe. Gideon’s going to need all the help he can get watching his back.”

She glanced back and forth between the two demons as they seemed to be waging a silent debate.

“I don’t understand. Why would the sperm donor—” Carly and Kyanna gasped and choked. Niklas and Xander elevated eyebrows to hairlines. “Excuse me, Michael… Why would
Michael
be trying to kill Gideon?”

Chapter Nineteen

“Gideon and Michael were like brothers, before the Fall,” Xander rasped. He cleared his throat, and picked up his glass, taking deep gulps, grimacing in between.

Maggie couldn’t process Xander’s revelation, could only stare in shock.

As if by unspoken agreement, a grim Niklas took up where had Xander left off. “From the time we were all created, Michael and Gideon were like brothers. When Gideon chose to follow Lucifer, Michael took it as a personal betrayal. Every time there’s been a confrontation since the Fall, Michael has made a point of going after Gideon with a vengeance. Now that you and Gideon…well, you’re Michael’s daughter. He’s going to see this as another betrayal. A personal attack on Gideon’s part. He’s going to be gunning for Gideon with both barrels now. Despite the fact that Michael is an angel, he can be one vicious SOB.”

Maggie leaned back in her chair, her appetite gone.

“Maggie, I think there’s something else you need to understand.” Niklas leaned forward, pushing his plate away and bracing his elbows on the table.

“No more, please,” Maggie said, shaking her head as she closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can take any more revelations tonight.”

“This isn’t exactly a revelation. But you do need to understand one very fundamental thing about Gideon.”

Maggie pressed her lips together. Resigned, she nodded, waiting for him to go on.

“Gideon may be a strategist at heart—and he’s not afraid to fight dirty—but it’s hot passion that drives him. Passion and a righteous rage, not the cold ruthlessness it would require to use a child as a pawn in this fight. That’s why he loses control when he battles. He might believe himself capable of most anything. And he probably is when he’s Temptation. But there’s one line Gideon’s never crossed, even in demonic form and mindless with battle rage. He has never hurt a child. And I would personally vouch that he never will.” Niklas stopped to draw a breath, studying her face. “Something like that? Creating a child to use as a pawn? It never would have even crossed his mind.”

Maggie bit her lip, her gaze skating away. Dear God, she wanted to believe him. But trust didn’t come easy to her.

“Why did you say it like that? When he becomes Temptation? Isn’t he Temptation all the time?”

Niklas frowned. “It’s how he sees himself. Like there are two halves of him. There’s Gideon. And there’s Temptation. Two separate beings. I guess it’s how he deals with the rage, separating himself from it. But he hates that side of himself, that part that loses control. And he fears it too. Fears what he might do to one of us…or do to you.”

Maggie stared down at her plate, overwhelmed by all the revelations she’d learned that night.

Gideon slowly straightened, removing his hand from the now motionless chest of his last meal. His skin crawled, and he fended off a shiver. The bastard had been evil, pure putrid evil to the very recesses of his shriveled soul.

Nevertheless, the power pulsing inside Gideon, now that he’d fed again, was unbelievable. He felt like he could move a mountain. Hell, he felt as if he could conjure one without breaking a sweat. He popped his neck to one side, then the other, stretching the tight muscles in his neck. Tipping his head back, he let the meager beams of moonlight filtering down through the dingy warehouse skylights bathe his face.

He was slightly sick to his stomach, disgusted that in order to feel this good, he’d had to do something that despicable. An unfortunate side effect he’d been dealing with for longer than he cared to think about.

Shake it off. There’s nothing for it. Besides, I need to be in top form, especially now. I have a woman and a child to protect. My woman. My child.

A wave of power shifted through the air somewhere nearby, followed closely by a second wave. Angels—Gideon knew instantly. Only an angel gave off that silvery resonance. Caution dictated he leave the area at once. Curiosity got the better of him. Why were angels there of all places?

He slipped out the small side door, and eased around the back of the building, slipping into the shadows of the alley.

“The child went missing in this neighborhood.” A soothing male voice drifted to him.

Samuel, Gideon guessed. One of Michael’s flock. Samuel had always been levelheaded, weighing all the facts—all the circumstances—rather than categorically meting out justice. After Kyanna had been discovered, Samuel had made several attempts at contact. But Xander and the rest of the Fallen, hell even Kyanna herself, hadn’t trusted the angel’s intent.

A tiny grin tugged at Gideon’s lips when he remembered the message Kyanna had demanded Samuel deliver to the rest of his compatriots when she’d thought an angel, namely the Archangel Gabriel, had killed Xander. She’d cussed like a sailor and threatened every last Heavenly being ten ways from Sunday with all manner of vile things. Bad old Lucy himself couldn’t have done better.

For a moment, Gideon considered making his presence known.

“This is the same neighborhood in which several other children have gone missing, is it not?”

Michael
, Gideon realized. He’d know that voice anywhere. He’d been meaning to have a little chat with the angel about a number of things, primarily about his daughter. About the fact Maggie was now his mate. And about the fact she carried their child. Michael’s grandchild…and that realization gave him a moment’s pause. How messed up was that?

Oh, hell. Might as well get it over with.

“It is.” A moment passed, and then Samuel added, “Do you feel that? I sense…a demon presence.”

Oh, this wouldn’t be awkward, not at all. He drew a deep, bracing breath.

“Out slumming, are we?” he asked as he stepped from the shadows.

“Traitor,” Michael hissed, dropping instantly to a battle stance, his attention never leaving Gideon. A flaming Sword of Justice appeared in his hand, crackling and whooshing through the air.

Samuel had stepped to the side, assuming a safe distance from Michael’s sword, to say nothing of his unfurled, lethal wings. Samuel did not summon his own sword. Instead, he frowned and his eyes turned completely white, the way they did when he was “weighing” a soul.

Normally, Gideon would have had some witty bit of banter ready to poke at the angel. But he had too much on his mind, and matters were far too serious at the moment.

“Michael, we need to talk,” he said, holding his empty hands up to show he meant no harm.

“Talk?” Michael sneered. “You’ve just murdered an innocent. I can feel the surging power inside you.”

“He was no innocent,” Gideon countered, scowling now but working to keep a level head. Getting into a pissing match with Maggie’s father would get him nowhere.

“So you say,” Michael accused, taking a determined step forward, angling his sword, obviously preparing to attack.

“The bastard I just drained was one of Maggie’s foster dads.”

Michael hesitated, all the blood seeping from his face.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Gideon said. “Maggie. You know, your daughter? Remember her?”

Michael shot an uneasy glance over his shoulder. But Samuel looked on, his expression carefully blank, as if he’d tuned the entire conversation out. Maybe he had. His eyes were still all white. The process usually only took a matter of seconds. By the saints, were Gideon’s sins so numerous that he was still weighing him, even after all these minutes?

“How did you—”

“Doesn’t matter how,” Gideon growled. “The fact is I did.”

Michael started forward once more, his demeanor even more dangerous than before. “If you hurt her—”

“Oh, don’t even try to play the protective daddy card. You haven’t earned it,” Gideon said. “Do you have any idea what that bastard almost did to your daughter?”

Michael continued to advance, not really hearing a thing Gideon was saying, to Gideon’s everlasting frustration.

Gideon was aware that Samuel had gone still, his eyes returned to normal, his rapt gaze bouncing between the two of them. Michael finally stopped advancing.

“His name was Randy,” Gideon said, hurrying to explain, knowing he’d only have a small window of opportunity before Michael’s hate got the better of his personal judgment. “He was one of the foster dads Maggie was placed with as a child. He was also a pedophile. One that came dangerously close to molesting Maggie when she was just a kid. Only reason he didn’t succeed was because she managed to fend him off with a steak knife she stole from his own kitchen.”

“You lie,” Michael hissed. But Gideon could see the doubt creeping into his blue-green eyes and furious color bloomed in his cheeks.

“Samuel knows I speak the truth. But you’re too blinded by your own hatred to plainly see what’s before you. Weigh me for yourself.”

Michael hesitated for a good long while, visibly struggling between doubting Gideon just on principle and his own inherent need to acknowledge the truth. Finally, he gave in to his nature. Easing forward, he peered hard at Gideon, his eyes turning white.

Shock, sick disgust filled Michael’s countenance. When his burning stare returned to the present, to the corporeal demon before him, he demanded, “Where is Maggie now?”

“She’s safe.”

“With you?” Incredulous fury had taken over Michael’s disgust. “With your legion of traitors?”

“Yes, with me and mine.” Now his own hackles were rising. “You didn’t exactly do a bang up job protecting her, now did you?”

“Michael,” Samuel called soothingly. “I believe Gideon mentioned talking. I think it best we hear what he has to say.”

The Archangel stared Gideon down, chest heaving, nostrils flaring, rage suffusing his features. In a flash, the flaming sword was gone and Michael launched himself at Gideon, viciously pummeling him with bare fists. He caught Gideon in the mouth with one punch, in the eye with the next. Not to be outdone, Gideon blocked the next jab with his forearm, his other fist connecting with Michael’s nose with a satisfying crunch. The two broke apart, circling each other.

“Damn it,” Gideon huffed, dodging another blow. “Listen to me. Maggie is part of the Prophesy.”

“The hell she is.” Michael spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground, his fists bobbing in front of his face.

Spatters of blood flew, muscles were bruised and bone snapped as the two went at each other like prizefighters.

“She’s a first generation Halfling,” Gideon reminded Michael in between blows. His head snapped to the side from a brutal right hook to the jaw.

“No one knows about her. She’s been hidden.” Michael swung again, missing when Gideon wised up and ducked, driving a fist into Michael’s ribs.

“Everyone knows about her, you stupid dipshit.”

That gave Michael pause. Using the advantage, not caring that he was taking a cheap shot, Gideon slammed another fist into his stomach, driving the angel back and doubling him over.

“Stolas has the Sword of Kathnesh.” Gideon propped his fists on his hips, fighting to suck in a breath around the searing pain in his kidneys from a couple of Michael’s own cheap shots.

“That’s a myth,” Michael wheezed, hands on his knees, blood dripping from his nose.

“It’s not.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Because we have the Arc Stone.”

Nearby, Samuel sucked in a sharp breath. In the fight, Gideon had forgotten the angel was still around. He angled now, so his back was to the warehouse. Easing to the side, he edged along the wall so the angels weren’t blocking him from both sides. In theory, he could shimmer away, but he remembered all too well the toll shimmering took on Maggie. He would not do that to her again—not if he could help it.

“Stolas?” Michael straightened. Gideon took great pleasure seeing both Michael’s eyes were beginning to swell shut, and that blood was still streaming from his broken nose. “But he’s a prince. Lucifer’s own grandson.”

“If you think that lot has loyalty to any save themselves, then you’re even more stupid than I thought.”

Michael growled low in his throat and took a staggering step forward. A Sword of Justice ignited in his hand once more.

“If you kill me,” Gideon said, shoving his wrist up in the space between them so the streetlight at the end of the alley glinted off the hammered cuff, “you’ll kill her too. The cuffs are bound, and Mortikaï has the key.”

Michael’s flushed face turned a nice sickly shade of green. “You bastard,” he hissed.

Michael vanished the sword and rushed Gideon again, tackling him to the ground. Gideon kicked Michael in the stomach, sending him flying overhead. The Archangel was on his feet in the blink of an eye, and charging into Gideon, shoulder lowered, head down. Gideon absorbed the blow, his breath leaving him in a whoosh. He let his fists fly, jabbing into Michael’s lower back and sides. The two went tumbling along the filthy concrete and crashed noisily into a dumpster, sending a pack of rats scurrying into the night.

Another set of hands wedged in between them, tearing them apart. Samuel forced his body between them. He used his wings and his arms to restrain Michael as he stared hard at Gideon.

“Why have you done this?” Michael asked, eyeing first the cuff, then Gideon himself.

“At first, it was to keep her safe. To get around the curse so I could take her to safety.”

“And now?” Samuel asked, his voice and his face filled with strain as Michael raged and fought to get at Gideon.

Gideon straightened, watching Samuel struggle to hold Michael at bay. Though Samuel had just as much reason to hate Gideon and the others, he appeared to be willing to listen at least. Did they have an unexpected ally in the Heavens then?

Using the back of his wrist to wipe the blood from his mouth and chin, he eyed Michael. Telling himself he had nothing to feel guilty over, calling himself a rat-bastard liar for even trying to justify his actions that way, he lifted his chin, stare locked on Michael though he spoke to both angels.

“I’ve claimed Maggie as my mate,” he said loud and clear, watching as Michael all but exploded with fury, his face turning purple.

Samuel, using his entire body now to restrain the Archangel, gritted his teeth and shook his head, looking to the skies as if praying for…for what? Divine intervention? Mercy on Gideon’s black essence? The strength to keep restraining Michael in all his murderous fury? Protection for Maggie?