“So, we know witch power and hell prince and archangel power is compatible. And according to anyone who’s gone head-to-head with these rebel demons, they have powers they shouldn’t.” Bianca didn’t want to dwell too much on how powerful those demons were. Indolex had terrified her.
Celeste sniffed. “Ending other demons for instance, should be a power only hell princes can control.”
“But these demons can,” Bianca said. “So, it’s not a far reach to think that a being as powerful as Indolex would be compatible with a witch’s power.” The idea of Emma in Indolex’s grasp made her blood run cold. “In short, Indolex can use Emma’s power and he wants Emma because she is so powerful.”
“To what end?” Sophia tapped her index finger on the desk.
“That.” Bianca allowed her building frustration to escape in a sigh. “Is what we’ve been concentrating on while you were away.”
Celeste clicked her tongue. “To make any progress, we had to make another assumption. If Emma was the earth representative of the three, then the other two would need to be of hell and heaven. And they had to be as, if not more, powerful than Emma.”
Sophia’s eyes widened. “How powerful?”
“The most powerful. They certainly searched long and hard to find the most powerful witch,” Bianca said and waited for Sophia to put the pieces together.
“Heaven and hell.” Sophia took a deep breath. “You mean a hell prince and an archangel.” She looked aghast and shook her head. “They couldn’t actually believe that they could capture either or both of those.”
Celeste broke the bad news. “Belphegor is missing.”
“But she often goes off on her own.” Sophia shook her head more vehemently. “Honestly, I don’t think we can say that Indolex has her.”
“But we also cannot assume that he hasn’t got her,” Celeste said. “We have consistently underestimated our foe to our disadvantage.”
“With that much power, he’s planning something big.” Bianca put another book in front of Sophia. “Something big enough to need that much power. But also, we’ve been working on the basis that the end of days will end all of us, Indolex included. But what if it didn’t?” She looked to Celeste for support and got a tight nod. “Why would Indolex go to this much trouble only to bring about his death? And then we had to ask ourselves if Indolex has found a way to survive the end of days.”
“That’s impossible.” Sophia read the spine of the book Bianca had given her. “A Codex of Ancient Beings.”
“I’m sure those gods would have said the same,” Bianca said. “In their time, they would have believed nothing could come after them.”
“But it did.” Celeste looked grim. “They were vanquished and replaced by hell princes and archangels.”
Sophia paled. “Vanquished but not destroyed.”
Bianca had been shocked to discover there had been beings before archangels and hell princes. Celeste had filled her in. The battle for souls had been taking place for eon upon eon, further back than even the hell princes and archangels knew.
“Fuck!” Sophia sat bolt upright. “They’re trying to destroy the current order.”
Celeste took a careful breath. “And they need the horsemen to do that.”
“And replace it with what?” Sophia frowned.
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Celeste murmured.
“We think.” Bianca indicated herself and Celeste. “That it’s a question of replace it with who.” She tapped the Codex. “And that’s what we need to find out.”
The impact of repairing Lucifer’s seal had been the hardest on Eddie. Perhaps because it was her third repair, or perhaps because she didn’t share a deeper connection with him like she did with Wrath and Shade, but the repair of the pride seal had drained Eddie to the point where she’d slept for twelve hours.
Ramiel and Wrath had helped heal her, and Shade had left with her not ten minutes earlier. Ramiel had assured them she was fine, but Wrath and Shade had refused to even consider attempting another repair without the hell princes there to assist.
“Which puts the pressure on all of us to get our parts done,” Raphael said lounging on an ice-blue linen chaise and quaffing another glass of the excellent port Lucifer kept for him. “We need to stop the rest of this fuckery before the seals grow so disastrously weak again.”
When Ramiel and Vexia had left, it had been all Lucifer could do not to ask them to swing by Sophia’s realm and check on Bianca for him. “Or find that angelic Nephilim.”
“Or that.” Raphael sighed. “Michael and Ava are on that.”
That distracted him from his thoughts. “They’re working together?”
“Uh, no.” Raphael chuckled. “Michael is trying to hide what he’s up to, and Ava is determined to find him and take over from him.”
Fuck! They all needed to stop the infighting and the bullshit. Surely, if anything was wrong with Bianca, someone would have told him. Or maybe not. Maybe they all thought he didn’t deserve to know after his last interaction with Bianca. She was his though, of course he deserved to know. The best would be if he went to Sophia’s realm and saw for himself.
“Are you listening to me?” Raphael raised his eyebrow.
Lucifer studied his immaculate gardens, but even they didn’t give him a sense of peace. “Yes.”
She would refuse to see him. What was she doing with her time? His haglette didn’t like being idle. She must be happy to have Leona back. He’d bet his left ball, and his right, that nobody had bothered to tell her he’d given up Ashe to get Leona for her. The most inexplicable part of the Ashe business was that it didn’t feel like a sacrifice, so he had no reason to expect praise for it.
With the defection of so many of his horde, only a handful of demons were in the gardens raking, trimming, and weeding his painstakingly created paradise. He didn’t think Bianca had seen the gardens when she’d been there. She hadn’t even had Eggs Benedict.
Like most witches, Bianca loved nature, but she would love it in its wildest and purest form, and not his manicured and maintained gardens. She would hate the controlled rigidity.
“Lucifer.” Raphael joined him at the window. “You’re deep in thought.”
“Do you remember, Rafe, why I designed the garden like this?” Not a stray leaf or petal, not one grass blade longer than its fellow.
Raphael gave him a quizzical look. “You crave order. You always have done.”
