“You look like a mental patient,” Garrett said, sitting back down. “All I see is you rolling around, talking to my carpet.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked her as she gnawed on my jugular. “He called you carpet. Bad Garrett.”
Then she stopped and stared off into the great unknown. A low growl rumbled from her chest. Her lips pulled back to reveal a killer set of canines.
“What is it, girl?”
This only egged her on. I lay there trying not to giggle. This was very serious. Trespassers would not be given quarter. No mercy!
I’d shifted and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but in true canine fashion, the slightest noise set her hackles on edge. She lowered her head and eased toward the window. Then, like a bullet shot out of a gun, she leaped through the wall and was gone.
She was so entertaining.
I laughed and turned back to the two men watching me.
“There really is a game tonight,” Osh said.
“This is bigger than a game.” I scrambled up and sat next to him again. “It’s bigger than—”
“We get it,” Garrett said. “Total annihilation. But can’t it wait until after the game?”
“No. I have a plan, but first I have to tell you what my secrets are, because if I tell you my plan first without telling you … never mind. Just listen.” I cleared my mind and thought how best to tell them that my husband, their friend, was created from an evil god. I steadied my resolve and decided. “My husband, your friend, was created from an evil god.”
Osh took another sip of beer while Garrett thought a moment, then took another sip of beer.
“Okay, let me back up.” This needed more explanation. They needed to understand what it could mean for all of us.
“Do you remember in New York in the warehouse when the evil emissary Kuur tried to kill me?”
They both shrugged at the stupidity of my question and took another sip.
I bit my lip. Closed my eyes. Scraped up all the bits of courage that remained on the bottom of my courage barrel and swallowed them. I was about to reveal something to them that could change the fate of the world. The god glass had been buried in the 1400s for a reason. The monks who buried it meant for it to stay buried.
“He wasn’t trying to kill me.”
I felt, rather than saw, their interest pique.
“I’m a god. Apparently not just anyone can do that. But I can be trapped. He was trying to trap me, and that’s what happened to the evil god Satan used to create his son Rey’aziel.”
Osh was wearing his best poker face, the one where he barely looked like he was paying attention. But I felt something jerk inside him. Like a puzzle piece falling into place.
I continued. “Okay, the story goes like this. In desperation, God, the God Jehovah, created what is called god glass. It’s an entire dimension, a hell dimension, inside a piece of glass. It looks like a jewel. Like an opal. It is absolutely indestructible and a hundred percent inescapable. Only the person or being who puts you in it can let you back out again. Jehovah created it to trap one god.” I held up a finger. “To lock away one god and one god only inside a hell dimension. A vast nothingness that stretches on for an eternity.”
“Which god did he create it for?” Osh asked.
“That I don’t know. Kuur didn’t tell me everything. I doubt he actually knew everything. He was working for Lucifer. Surely the prince of the underworld wouldn’t reveal his whole hand.”
“If Jehovah created it, how did Lucifer get ahold of it to use it to create Rey’aziel?”
“See, that’s the thing. The details get fuzzy here. For some reason, this god didn’t get sent into the god glass, but I have no idea how it ended up in the hands of Lucifer. Neither do I know how, but he used it to trap one of the gods of Uzan for the specific purpose of creating a son. Reyes.”
I waited. Let them absorb the information.
When they didn’t say anything, I added, “After he created Reyes, Lucifer gave it to one of his worshippers here on Earth who, as you might imagine, used it for pure evil. A group of monks finally captured him, sent him into the hell dimension then, because god glass cannot be destroyed, traveled across the ocean, found a spot, and spent months digging a hole deep enough to bury it for what they’d hoped would be forever.”
“And Kuur dug it up?” Osh asked.
I nodded. “He found it and tried to use it to trap me. To get me off this plane so Lucifer could get to Beep. So he could kill the being destined to destroy him.”
“This is like a supernatural soap opera,” Garrett said, growing frustrated. “How the fuck does that shit happen? I thought gods were nice and benevolent and answered prayers and shit. But no. In this episode, the gods have all been possessed and are evil and plotting to destroy the world.”
“Gods don’t get possessed,” Osh said.
“Right. Sorry. So there are actually rules?”
Osh frowned. “The gods of Uzan, at least the ones I’ve met, are so far beyond anything Lucifer could have thought up, it’s unreal. And Lucifer used one of them to create the son.”
Then he did something I’d never seen him do before. He paled. The blood drained from his face as he sat there, stunned.
I studied the carpet. “This is bad, right? I mean, I don’t know. How much of Reyes is an evil god and how much is … Reyes?”
Osh’s hands curled into fists as he thought. “Wait,” he said. “Did you see it? The god glass?”
I pressed my lips together, then reached into my pocket and pulled it out. “I took it after I trapped Kuur inside.”
Osh’s jaw dropped. He didn’t move. “You … you trapped him?”
“Don’t act so surprised.”
“Sorry. So Kuur told you about Reyes? About how he was created?”
“No.” I went back to studying the carpet, resisting the urge to gaze lovingly at the god glass. It was like a drug. Mesmerizing. Pure. Beautiful. And yet inside lay a hell dimension. “No, Kuur didn’t tell me. My dad did.”
Garrett’s expression changed from frustration to concern.
“That’s how I got my memories back. My dad—he crossed through me to force me to remember who I was. What I was. And to pass on the information he’d gathered while he was doing recon in hell. He learned a great deal.” I looked at Osh. “You honestly didn’t know any of this? You didn’t know how Reyes was created?”