Chapter 26

Chapter

Twenty-Six

DASH

“Beer?”I went to the fridge and grabbed two of them. Jay wouldn’t turn me down.

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to scare your baby mama. I caught her when she started to drop so she didn’t hit her head, and then I went back through the portal. Jo thinks it’s a good idea to keep this one open, but you’ve got innocents here, one of which is your daugh—child.”

My head snapped to him. “Did you— Did you say daughter?”

“No. No I didn’t. I didn’t say that. Forget I said that. Son of a... Scotty’s going to kick my ass.”

I chuckled. “I already had an inkling. So, what do you really need to tell me?”

“We found Nyx, Scotty and me. She’s indeed in the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan with Erebus and their followers. You have to get them back here. There’s a portal there that feeds the crater, though that’s not commonly known. Jo hasn’t closed it yet because it will attract a lot of attention when it goes dark. That’s how Nyx and her followers got out of Droh.”

“Fuck. Did Beelzebub talk to Lucifer about unsealing the entrance to Droh?”

“Yeah. It’s being taken under advisement. There’s something you should know, Dash, and I only found out recently. Lucifer and Nyx have a bet. If she’s able to take over the Human Realm, he’ll let her have it without a fight. He’s already ordered the princes not to participate—including me. I’m sure I’ll be punished for telling you this.”

How did my eyes not pop out of my head? “Jay, without the demons, we don’t stand a fucking chance.”

Jay rubbed the back of his neck. “I never said I wasn’t going to fight. I just said we’ve been told to stand down. I won’t let you and Keir fight this alone. I’d rather be eliminated than watch those I love be ruled by a ruthless leader.”

I sipped my beer, my head trying like hell to process what he’d told me. If the only ones fighting Nyx were Keir and me, we would surely lose. Something else occurred to me. “What if Nyx is unsuccessful at taking over the Human Realm?”

Jay glanced up with a smirk on his face. “She and her followers will be eliminated.”

“So, you’re telling me that Lucifer pulled back the assistance of the demons, but if we can somehow manage to banish her from the Human Realm, he’ll keep his word and follow through with the bet? He’ll eliminate her for all eternity?”

“I don’t remember that condition being put on it, just like I don’t know how long she’d be allowed to rule the humans, but if she’s allowed to rule the Human Realm, I wouldn’t want to be alive.” Jay tipped his beer and downed it.

“Yeah, I guess. What about the Archs? Will they fight if the princes aren’t?”

Jay exhaled. “I’m not sure. Scotty was going to go talk to Jo and update her. She’ll probably show up soon, but I wanted to tell you that I believe we found Nyx because she wanted to be found. She’s ready to fight, so you better get ready too.”

“Yeah. I need to get Lilith to come over so we can draw some of her blood for me to have on hand.” I dreaded that, but if it helped me fight, especially in light of Jay’s news, I was doing it.

Jay stood from the stool at the peninsula and stretched his arms over his head. I stood and took our bottles to the recycling bin when something occurred to me. “Oh, hey, hang on a minute.”

I jogged back to our bedroom and found the scroll on top of the dresser. Keir had put it into a freezer bag because of its fragility, so I gently picked it up and took it to the dining room where Jay waited by the door.

“You have any idea what this is?” I opened the bag and carefully pulled the scroll out, unrolling it a bit so Jay could see the writing.

“Do I look like a university professor?” Jay chuckled as he pulled out his phone and took a picture of it.

“Not in the least, but I thought maybe since you were a prince of Hell, you’d have some insight. Sorry for putting your ignorance under the microscope.”

Jay gave a raucous laugh. “Fuck you too. Let me show it to my better half. He’s been around longer than me, and if he doesn’t know, I’ll ask him to show it to Michael or Jo. They’ve been around for eternity.”

I agreed with him and walked him toward the door. “Thanks for coming by. Don’t be a stranger. I don’t plan to come to your neighborhood again any time soon.”

Jay laughed, stepped onto the porch, and removed his shirt. He scanned the area before his huge wings appeared from behind his back and he took to the sky, disappearing in an instant.

I quickly put the scroll away and grabbed the keys to my SUV, heading down the back stairs to the garage. I sent a message to Keir that I was on my way, and I hit the road.

July turned to August,and Lake barely looked pregnant. We’d gone with her to her five-month checkup, and the doctor assured us the baby was doing fine. We got to see her in a sonogram, though it wasn’t at an angle where one could tell if she was a boy or a girl. I hadn’t told Keir it was a girl because I knew he wanted to be surprised, but it was hard to keep the secret from everyone.

I finished setting up the Tranquility Parlor for a funeral we were having on Thursday morning. Keir had assessed Amelie as she performed her first solo embalming earlier in the day, and now they were dressing the guest, Mr. Omar Merlin.

Mr. Merlin was thirty-five when he came out to his family, who continued to set him up on blind dates with women. His very Muslim family didn’t believe him and continued to bully him into dating while he continued to insist that he was gay.

When Omar suffered a terminal brain aneurysm while at the gym on the elliptical machine, his sister was devastated. He wouldn’t be able to have a traditional Muslim funeral because of his orientation, and she was beside herself with grief.

Omar’s sister was an acquaintance of Vale’s at Sacramento City College where Vale was taking classes to become a funeral director. The evening of Omar’s death, the sister had to leave a study session because of Omar’s death, and Vale went with her.

After she identified the body at the coroner’s office, Vale gave her Keir’s name, and of course, my husband never said no to anyone. The service was in the morning, and then Mr. Merlin was to be cremated. His sister was going to sneak his ashes to the nearest mosque and sprinkle them without the family’s knowledge.

I knew nothing about the Muslim faith, but maybe it made Mr. Merlin’s sister feel better to have a small service at the funeral home? All I knew was that I was driving the body up the road to Steinbeck’s in the morning at eleven.

I was hungry, and a burger sounded great, so I went downstairs to the mortuary to see if I could tempt my husband with a thick greasy bacon cheeseburger. “Hey, babe, you hungry?”

Lake was making up Mr. Merlin while Keir was at the desktop running some kind of program that flashed strange images on the screen. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to see if this language is recognizable by the linguistics mainframe at MIT. I’ve hit a dead end every time I try to find its origin. I can’t figure out why my father had it.”

I walked over and put my hand on his neck, leaning down to kiss his cheek before glancing at the monitor. The images flashed so quickly that I could barely register them. “Good luck. Want some lunch?”

“Sure. Where are you going?”

“Dan’s Diner, unless you want burgers from somewhere else.” I spun Keir’s chair around and straddled his lap. “Don’t look, Lake. We’re being inappropriate.”

Her ringing laugh made us both smile. “Carry on.”

I began playing with Keir’s hair at the nape of his neck while I looked into his eyes. “So, bacon cheeseburger and curly fries?”

Keir pulled me closer, our dicks rubbing against each other through our clothes. “Mmmm. I’d love one.” He nipped at the hair on my chin with a little growl, which I found sexy as hell.

“I’ll have a veggie burger and a chocolate malt.” Lake giggled after calling out her order. Just as I was about to go hunt down Amelie to get her order, she came into the embalming suite. “Just in time. You want lunch? Dan’s Diner?”

I stood and grabbed a piece of paper on the desk to jot down the orders. Amelie pointed to the paper in my hand. “Studying ancient Latin, Keir?”

He quickly spun around to meet her eyes, and then he looked at the back of the paper I was holding. I’d thought it was scrap paper, but it was a copy of part of the scroll Keir had from his father.

“You recognize this?” Keir stood, taking the paper from my hand and giving it to Amelie.

“Yeah. It’s Latin, but it’s from several centuries ago. It’s a precursor to French but was spoken in northern France and southern Belgium. Where’s it from?”

“It’s from a scroll that was in some of my father’s things that my mom found when she was gathering things for donations. How do you know this?” I could see Keir was getting wound up.

“I’m a bit of a philology nut. That means I like to study the texts of ancient writings. Been doing it since the librarian at my private middle school introduced me to philology.”

Amelie studied the paper for a moment before handing it back to Keir. “It’s some sort of a magic spell. Why don’t you go to the library in Sacramento and talk to the librarian in the romance languages room? I bet they could help you.”

I glanced at my handsome man to see a light in his eyes. “You wanna go to Sacramento? Let me go get us some lunch. You change, and I’ll drive. I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”

I left the three of them to discuss the writings and went to my car through the receiving bay. I went to Dan’s Diner and put in our order. I was reading the news on my phone, happy to see a dirty politician who had been found guilty of several felonies.

“You need to have Keir draw blood from me so you have it on hand. Things are heating up, I’m told.”

I glanced up to see Lilith standing next to me. “What are you doing here?”

“Quinn loves this place, so I came to pick up lunch for the guys at the garage... after I was alerted that you were here alone. What’s up?”

“I’m still stewing over what Jay told me. Are you going to sit the fight out as well?”

I was still pissed about the double cross from Lucifer, but what did I expect? I was warned against making a deal with demons.

The server stopped to deliver an iced tea for me and gave Lilith a glass of water. She rattled off an order for the young woman and thanked her. Then she turned to me. “No, I’m not. Lucifer barred the princes, but he didn’t say shit to me, so I’m right there with you, Key. I’m quite fond of you, so I’ll go toe-to-toe with that bitch.”

I felt a lot better about things knowing Lilith had my back. “We need to have a plan to get everyone at the garage and the rest of our family away from here if this is where the fight is going to be. Lake is pregnant with our child, and I don’t want her in danger.”

“I got it. I’m going to contact the rest of my sons to come topside to form a little safety unit. That okay with you? They’ll have strict orders not to drink from any of you, but you can’t keep them from feeding off others. They don’t kill, okay? Just a sip now and then.”

I chuckled as I sipped my iced tea. “Hey, how are you with languages? Ancient languages? Keir got this scroll in a box of his father’s things his mom sent him. Amelie says it’s an ancient Latin language. Hell, I forget what she said, but she told him to go show it to a librarian in Sacramento. I’m a little worried about doing that.”

I was fucking scared, in all honesty, for anyone I didn’t know to look at that scroll and figure out what it said. With the shit going down in our lives, I didn’t trust a stranger with the information.

“You know who in your circle is an expert? Dr. Carl Lopez. I happen to know he and Adonis are good friends. Talk to Adon. Oh, and if you see some strangers biking through your neighborhood or working on yards, they’re my boys. They all have gorgeous silver hair, so you’ll know them immediately.”

“How many of them will there be?”

Our orders were delivered, and Lilith grabbed her bag and walked out, laughing the whole way. That wasn’t an answer, was it?