The Trouble with Twelfth Grave

He rushed to get me a T-shirt and a pair of lounge pants with a drawstring. I dragged them on in record time. They still hung off me, but at least they wouldn’t fall down.

“Shoes?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

“Charles, you need to go to the Loehrs. You need to move them somewhere I don’t know about.”

“He can read my thoughts. I’ve caught him doing it more than once.”

Garrett sank onto the arm of his sofa. “Then we’ve lost. He’ll find her.”

“No. We just need to keep you hidden until I can get Reyes back. He’s in there, Garrett. He’s keeping Beep a secret. He wouldn’t even let Rey’azikeen see her. It’s like he’s blocking the memory of her. I have no idea how, but he’s in there. I just need to find him and bring him out.”

He nodded. “I’ll get word to the others. Just to be safe. We’ll move the Loehrs again tonight. They’re not far.”

He stood and headed for the door, only to find Rey’azikeen blocking his path. Completely naked, engulfed in fire with smoke billowing around him and lightning crackling along his skin, Rey’azikeen grabbed hold of Garrett’s throat and looked into his eyes.

But he’d caught Garrett off guard. And he got what he’d come for.

“There,” he said softly, a microsecond before he snapped Garrett’s neck again and disappeared.

I ran and caught Garrett as he crumbled to the floor, healing him for a third time, when I realized he did it for a reason. Rey’azikeen. He broke Garrett’s neck again for a reason. To slow me down. He knew where to find our daughter, and he didn’t want me interfering.

Garrett had been thinking of the location at the exact moment Rey’azikeen looked into his eyes. He saw it. He saw where Garrett had hidden her. And he wanted to get to her first.

“Garrett,” I said, my voice breathy with fear, “where is she? Where did you hide her?”

He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Did he break my neck again?”

“Yes, and he knows. He saw her location in your eyes. Where is she?”

His lids rounded. “She’s in Santa Fe. She’s at the Loretto Chapel.”

“The church? The one with the staircase?” The Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe was famous mostly due to a staircase that was built there in the 1870s. Because of several anomalies surrounding the staircase, many believe the carpenter who built it was Saint Joseph, or even Jesus himself.

He nodded. “They’re keeping her in a back room. I thought, you know, sacred ground.”

I saw the famous church in my mind’s eye and materialized there in an instant. I showed up just in time to see Rey’azikeen lift Beep from her crib and cradle her in his arms. I showed up just in time to see a dozen hellhounds rise from the ground and emerge through walls, snarling and gnashing their teeth. I showed up just in time to see a hundred angels materialize around the vengeful god, Michael leading them, swords drawn, wings outstretched.

Then I realized I was still straddling the earthly plane and the celestial one, because the room we were in was tiny. There weren’t a hundred angels surrounding us but a hundred thousand. They spread as far into the celestial realm as the eye could see.

God had sent His army.

The angels nearest to Rey’azikeen closed in, swords at the ready. The hellhounds, Beep’s guardians for life, crept forward, heads down, teeth bared. And Rey’azikeen stood in the middle of the mêlée, so impossibly beautiful with our daughter in his sinewy arms.

The smoke that billowed around him covered his more carnal parts, but only to me. If another human walked in, they’d get an eyeful. They would no more see the smoke than the advancing hellhounds or the avenging angels.

I lowered my hand to the ground, palm down, and lifted Artemis into it. She rose growling, bearing back on her haunches, readying to launch herself into the fray.

In the next instant, time slowed as the forces charged. Swords arced from every direction with the sole purpose of shredding my husband. Three hellhounds had made it close enough to rip him apart. They lunged forward, their teeth centimeters away from tearing into his flesh.

The whole thing played out like a dream. A nightmare. Partly because he was still my husband and partly because he was holding our daughter.

I held up my hands and slowed time even more. Brought everything to a full stop. It was all going too fast. The world was spinning out of control. And a vengeful god was holding my daughter.

Artemis awaited my command. My own general, a celestial being I’d named Mr. Wong, materialized by my side, sword in hand, head bowed awaiting my command as well. But I stood stunned. The picture frozen before me was the most surreal I’d ever seen.

A dozen swords were suspended in midair, the razor-sharp tips a hairsbreadth from Rey’azikeen’s skin. His major arteries. His heart. One sword was even above him pointed down to sever Reyes’s spine at the neck in what I was certain would have been one skilled thrust.

But the angels surrounding him had obeyed my command. I couldn’t imagine why. They stood suspended in time awaiting further instruction.

The same held true for the hellhounds. Their jaws open wide, ready to rip into flesh and bone. But their teeth stayed steady, the needlelike tips pressed impatiently against his skin. One hound stood on a cabinet overhead, his massive jaw spanning the circumference of Rey’azikeen’s skull, salivating for the chance to bite down.

I inched forward, glancing at the bundle in his arms. At the soft cheeks and large, dark eyes. So like her father’s.

“Rey’azikeen, please,” I said softly. “Please don’t do this.”

He tore his gaze away from her and planted it on me. “And what is it you think I’m doing?”

“Reyes kept her location a secret from you. That tells me you mean her harm.”

“Does it?”

“Val-Eeth,” Mr. Wong, my most trusted advisor, said at my side, calling me by my celestial title: god. “He could vanish at any second. We must take him now or risk losing Elwyn Alexandra.”

I nodded, knowing he was right. But I couldn’t give the order that would see my husband ripped apart. The order that would risk my daughter’s life. So I did something else instead. I summoned the one Being I hoped could get through to him. I summoned his Brother.

He appeared on the opposite side of me, His power startling. The form He’d chosen was so startlingly similar to Reyes’s, I had to think that perhaps it was His true form. Perhaps He looked stunningly similar to His brother. Not quite as beautiful, but similar nevertheless.

Rey’azikeen scoffed and scolded me with a glare. “Siccing the puritan on me? I thought you had better taste than that.”

I ignored him and spoke to Jehovah, more than a tad annoyed with Him myself. “You sent Your army. You swore You wouldn’t.”

The barest hint of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “I did not send My army, Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia. You did, just as I said you would.”

I furrowed my brows in confusion.

Rey’azikeen narrowed his lids on me, then focused his attention on his Brother.

“You tricked me. You imprisoned me. You allowed the traitor Lucifer to use my energy to create his son.” Disgust lined Reyes’s face. Disappointment.

“You took life, Rey’azikeen. Your temper could not be controlled.”

He lowered his head and scowled from beneath thick lashes. “You’re wrong. I had perfect control.”

Beep made a squeak and kicked out against the restraints of her blanket, but her face, so painfully perfect, turned up to look at the being holding her. And she seemed fascinated. Happy even.

Jehovah drew in a deep breath. “I’d hoped through these trials you would learn all life is precious.”

“You think I don’t know?” He glanced at me, his anger palpable.

Then I remembered what he told me in the Jeep on the way to El Paso. Would I trust him when the time came? When he found the object he’d been searching for?

Beep’s fascination sank in. She wasn’t scared in the least. In fact, she was the only one in the room perfectly content.

She squeaked again, and I began to relax, realizing if he were to trust me, I had to trust him, just as our daughter obviously did.

I stepped closer and called his bluff. “I have loved you since the first time I saw you.”

He cast a suspicious scowl. “You’ve loved Reyes. Rey’aziel even. Not me.”

“You’re wrong,” easing even closer. “Why do you think I begged Jehovah not to send you into that prison?”

“The same prison you sent me into?”

I grinned. “You did insist.”

He ground his teeth, his long lashes trapping the glistening wetness between them.

“You stole Lucifer’s fire to release me from the hell you created for me. You. Not Reyes. Not Rey’aziel.”

He closed his eyes and bent his head, relief flooding every cell in his body as a slow, gratified smile widened his mouth.

“You knew I’d call Him,” I said, surprised. “Your Brother.”