serious issues with one another.
Nefta tips her chin up. “Anyway, I’ve already handled the issue.”
Taz narrows his eyes on her, while Delta and her mates share a look.
“What do you mean you’ve handled it?” Tazreel demands. “You can’t have handled it, because I’m fucking handling it!”
Nefta gets to her feet, shovin’ her chair back so she can prop her fists on the table, leanin’ in toward him. “No, you’re not. This is Legion business.”
“The hell it is!” he snaps, already on his feet and leanin’ in toward her too. “Your Legion keeps fucking losing him!”
“Good Lord,” I grumble to myself.
“Yep,” Delta says to me from across the table. “This is what I’ve been dealing with. Our birth parents are assholes.”
“Hey!” They both say, turnin’ their fierce gazes on her.
Delta doesn’t even seem troubled at gainin’ their ire. “What? It’s true.”
“This is a task for the angels,” Nefta argues, her gaze once more swingin’ to Tazreel. “You have an errant demon who attempted to create his own realm and fill it with mindless followers to do his bidding.”
“Exactly. He’s a demon,” Taz stresses, “which means we will handle him ourselves.”
Nefta scoffs. “Oh, please. Your Pride army is small. You’re too damn picky and arrogant to build it up properly. Only the ‘best of the best’ for Tazreel, right? But sometimes, numbers are numbers regardless of the level of experience.”
Taz stiffens, the muscles of his shoulders tense. “My army is the best out of all the Seven Sins. As you put it yourself, they’re the best of the best. One of my soldiers is worth ten—no, twenty—of your Legion pip-squeaks.”
Her purple eyes flash. “The Legion is the best army in all the realms,” Nefta fires back.
“Oh, I don’t fucking—”
“Pardon me.”
At the abrupt interruption, everyone’s heads snap over to Strut where he’s standin’ in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back. Pleased at havin’ gained the room’s attention and forced Nefta and Taz to shut it, he turns to look at Rafferty. “You have armored visitors on the lawn, sir.”
The blue horned demon blinks at him with confusion. “Armored visitors?”
Strut inclines his pasty head. “On the lawn,” he repeats. “And they seem to be on the verge of a fight.”
Nefta and Taz glare at each other. Delta groans. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, did you guys invite your damn armies to our house?”
They don’t reply, which I guess is answer enough, because Delta and all of her mates jump from their seats and start hurryin’ out of the room, followed closely by Nefta and Taz, who start bickerin’ again. They even both try to shove through the doorway at the same time, not wantin’ the other one to go through first. They end up crackin’ the doorframe as their wedged shoulders and wings shove through the damn thing.
I blink at the space, hearin’ the stampede of their steps as they rush outside. I shake my head. “Those two have their noses so high in the air they could drown in a rainstorm.”
Flint and Alder chuckle and get to their feet, and I stand up too, reachin’ forward to pluck a peach slice from the fruit platter. I bite into it, givin’ Flint a wink as I slurp up the juices.
“Alright, we better go on out there,” I say as I snag both Flint’s and Alder’s arms. “And then after, I need to call my parents. My mama is gonna lose her mind when she hears we had demon and angel armies in the front yard.”
“She’d probably insist on cooking for them all,” Flint teases as the three of us walk out.
“You’re not wrong, Countertop,” I tell him solemnly. “You’re not wrong at all.”
29
Alder, Flint and I walk out of the mansion, headin’ to the front door where the others filed out. I’m expectin’ some kind of brawl to be goin’ down on the manicured lawn of the Perdition Estate, but when we make it out the front door, I stop on the steps, my mouth hangin’ open at the sight.
Just like Strut said, there are indeed armored visitors all over the damn lawn on the other side of the gravel driveway. I make a low whistle under my breath as I take in the sight of the glares and sneers bein’ lobbed back and forth between the dozen or so soldiers that Tazreel apparently summoned, and the same number of Legion that Nefta called.
I can immediately tell which side is which, because the armies match either the armor that Nefta or Taz is wearin’.