Gates of Death - Rae Foxx Page 0,36

quiet power. The behind-the-scenes power. He was the flash and muscle, but I was the snake that slithered through the garden. Not literally. That had been him at the time, but that wasn't important at the moment.

"So, you're going to make me force you?" I asked. "I think you know I can."

"But why bother?" she asked. "It would be so much easier to let him do it. Your job would become infinitely easier."

I narrowed my eyes on the beautiful woman as she drained her whiskey and reached for the glass she'd offered me. She sipped it and closed her eyes.

Gathering my power, I held it close. "This is your last chance, Genevra. I've already destroyed one of your cohorts today. I'd rather not hurt you until you've been given the chance to tell me what I need to know."

She smiled around the rim of the glass and sipped again. "You're welcome to try," she said. "He will save me."

It all made sense in that moment. She was stalling because she believed Raphael would come save her. I highly doubted she mattered that much to him, but I burned with curiosity. Why would she think that?

"Why in the world would Raphael save you?" Lucifer asked.

Genevra smiled and touched her stomach. "He has incentive."

Oh, sweet Abaddon. She was pregnant. Angels could have children with other angels, of course. How else would we have bolstered our ranks once God stopped creating angels? But it was exceedingly difficult for a female angel to get pregnant. We suspected God made it that way on purpose, so we didn't overflow the universe with angel babies. I probed her with a tendril of magic to confirm her words. Sure enough, a little nugget grew inside her.

Part of me wanted to congratulate her. Another part wanted to strangle her. While I wouldn't kill a pregnant woman, not even an evil one, I could still do plenty to get her to talk. Including bluff.

"Do you think that will stop me?" I wrapped her in power and lifted her from her chair. The amount of magic I used was negligible, but by the expression on her face and how tense her muscles were all over her body, she was expending all hers to try to fight me. Bless it.

"Do you think an abomination of a baby will make me hesitate to kill you as I try to find my child?" I pulled her close and for the first time, her face changed from weary resignation to fear.

"You'd kill an unborn child?" she asked.

I knew what happened to the souls of unborn children. As soon as the heart took its first beat, the little tadpole's soul formed. Usually, those souls were rebirths. Sometimes they were new. Either way, if the pregnancy was terminated, the soul didn't die. It was nurtured and cherished and given another shot.

Still, I wouldn't hurt that baby. It wasn't in me. But I smiled at Genevra and nodded. "In a second." I had a reputation to consider, after all. Queen of Abaddon, and all that.

She screeched and fought harder, enough to make me slip out another tendril of power to wrap around her. "Calm down," I said. "We're not at the point of hurting you yet. But it may come to that if you don't have the information I want," I whispered.

Reaching out my hand, I waited for Lucifer to slip his warm fingers through mine, then I moved us from the bar in Colorado to the barn in our backyard. Or close enough, anyway.

It was empty save for the blood still all over the place. Ugh, I hated the smell of old blood. "Why didn't someone clean this up?" I asked.

Lucifer shrugged. "I don't know, I was with you."

I gave him a sharp look, and he winked at me. It was hard not to giggle, but that would've ruined the big badass Lilith image I was trying to portray.

"Whose blood is that?" Genevra whispered. "Why is there so much of it?"

"Don't you know?" I asked. "When all the blood is removed from a body, especially an angelic body, it looks like so much more than it is. Due to our wings, we have more blood than a human. Fun fact." I put another half-crazed smile on my face and internally congratulated myself for my acting skills.

I hadn't been acting with Vincent when I'd ripped him limb from limb. But I hadn't seen Genevra's aura yet. I hadn't passed any judgment, so that rage that had fueled