Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,22
came roaring in on the heels of that thought. Hawkyn, Maddox, Journey, Emerico...they had been his anchors after his fall from Heaven, but as Hawkyn liked to say—taken from Trek, of course, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one.”
Which meant that if the risk of rescuing him was too great, he’d become a sacrifice for the greater good. It made sense. But that didn’t make it suck any less.
“Can I turn around?” Lyre’s smoky voice startled him into the present.
“No.”
He tapped on the keyboard, the sound of clicking keys as satisfying as a cold beer on a hot day. He even typed out a few unnecessary strokes just so he could hear the sweet music as he brought up the files containing all the research he’d done to find Azagoth’s children in the human realm.
The thousands of files on hundreds of kids had been organized into age groups, with the largest collection being the oldest of his Memitim children. The plan had been to bring in the oldest first, allowing them to get the lay of the land and get settled in before bringing in the younger ones who would need more care. Before Cipher was kidnapped and dragged to Sheoul, they’d been in phase one of the operation.
It had been several months since then. The oldest children should have been collected and safely ensconced inside Azagoth’s realm by now. He’d give Bael that list, and while the bastard’s minions were hunting the children, not knowing they’d already been gathered and taken to Azagoth, he could be plotting an escape.
He punched a few keys, and the list popped up. Forty names, kids in their teens spread out all over the world. Hopefully, all were safe.
Please let them be safe.
He couldn’t be responsible for the death of a single one of them.
“What’s the matter?”
He started, glancing over at Lyre, who had turned around at some point. “Nothing. Why?”
“You look like you’re having second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts?” He snorted. “About giving a monster access to the Grim Reaper’s innocent children so he can do God knows what with them? No, it’s really no problem.”
“Innocent? Memitim?” She waved her hand in dismissal. “They’re warriors, same as every other angel.”
He frowned at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” Her long fingers drifted to the blade she always kept at her hip, and he suddenly wondered how good she was with the thing. Was it for show, or could she really dance with danger? “I mean, they aren’t full angels with wings, but they do have powerful fighting abilities.”
She didn’t know. She truly didn’t have a clue. “This isn’t a list of adult Memitim. It’s a list of the little ones still living in the human realm with human parents. They don’t even know they’re angels, and they don’t get their powers until they’re adults.”
“What?” Her fingers faltered. “I didn’t know it was those ones. I thought he wanted Memitim.”
“Would it make a difference?”
She gave a haughty sniff as she looked down at her boot. “Of course not.”
“Of course not,” he muttered. “Do you know what he plans to do with them?”
“No idea.” She glanced back up at him. “So what is this list anyway? I mean, obviously it’s a list of his children, but why is there a list of them at all? Doesn’t Azagoth have thousands of them?”
Many thousands. The dude had been prolific over the eons. “You know how he sired over seventy children a year for thousands of years to create Memitim, right?”
“Of course. That’s basic angel knowledge.” She gazed up at the ceiling as she recited Azagothic knowledge straight from the history tomes. “His children, born to full angel mothers, are given to human families to raise. They don’t learn the truth until adulthood, when they’re told the truth about their roots. As their new angelic powers emerge, they’re trained to be earthbound guardian angels, working to keep special humans called Primori safe until they eventually earn their wings and ascend to Heaven.” A fierce blush spread across her cheeks when she saw him staring at her. “He was one of my favorite historical characters, so he was my focus in my history courses and research.”
“Research?”
“It was sort of my job when I was an angel.”
Sounded boring as fuck.
“Yeah, well, now that he’s mated, he’s no longer siring Memitim and wants to bring all children who remain in the human realm to Sheoul-gra.” Cipher casually deleted all remaining files related to Azagoth’s kids and then ran the