Her hand found the side of his jaw and she stroked the five o'clock shadow that roughly coated it. "Please," she murmured, closing her eyes. "I know you don't want anyone's loss on your hands, but can't you try something that will give you all a fighting chance to get out of there in one piece?"
"Like what, baby? I've been going over this in my head and no matter who I recruit, chances are, they're not coming back."
"Then, I'll go," she said, withdrawing her touch from his cheek.
"That ain't gonna happen." He sat up and leaned against the hard wall.
"All right, then," she said quietly to keep their conversation private. "Maybe see if Dragon Rider will go with you?" Damali cupped his cheek. "If she travels with you posing as your wife ... and Tobias and Habiba know the route, that's a small squad of specialized skills with no pregnancies or civilians in the mix. I'll be here to keep the teams safe on this end. Once you have a name and the dagger, you all get out of there . . . then we can figure out as a team how to get the target to come out of hiding."
"Yeah, I know," Carlos said, glancing around. "It all sounds so simple, so logical, but you and I both know it never works easy like that."
"I think you are right, Lilith," Nuit said, choosing his words carefully after the Dark Lord had left the war room. He stood slowly, looked around, and then walked to the war board rubbing his chin. "This is not idle, sycophant trivia to gain your favor or to kiss your lovely ass." He pointed to the Middle East. "What could they have possibly gained, personally, from taking their precious Neteru cargo there and exploiting all their forces in Megiddo . . . essentially blowing their loads, and then having nothing left to battle with?"
"What do they care?" Vlad said, standing to pace and nervously avail himself of a goblet of blood. "The Rapture is imminent. They will join the Neteru Councils in Mid-Heaven and become our nemeses from the astral plane, taking their unborn child into that realm--no different than Aset did with the birth of Heru. Why wouldn't it have been in their best interest to gut all of Hell and scatter her dark forces to the four corners of the earth, just like we'd scattered the twelve tribes of humanity?"
"I can see we are at philosophical odds, gentlemen," Lilith said, pursing her lips, striding up to the war board to study it next to Fallen. "But you both bring up intriguing and very plausible points."
"Whether they turn left or right at this crossroads, Lilith," Sebastian said, demanding to be recognized, "I will ensure that, well before the dreaded Light-inspired event they call the Rapture, I will have replenished much of our forces."
"While I appreciate your charming attempt," Lilith said with a hiss, narrowing her gaze on him, "most of our casualties happened with weapons of Light, not the normal beheadings and such. If you study the ground, the ash, most of it contained unrecoverable losses. They even nuked the caverns, hence why we cannot return."
"Then I will raise for you whatever you ask of me, milady," Sebastian said in a forlorn tone.
Lilith's gaze softened as she glanced around the war room. "Things have indeed changed. I'm not sure I like the direction of that, either."
"Madame Chairwoman," Lucrezia said, her green eyes filled with dread, "I will also do the dark empire's bidding, but after these catastrophic losses, I am not sure what you would have me do?" She chewed her bottom lip as Lilith's paralyzing stare captured her. "After the Rapture, when we break the seventh seal to bring about the Great Tribulation ... we will unleash six great plagues, yes? Could I be of service devising a poison for one of those?"
"Yes," Lilith said, drawing out the word and giving Lucrezia her full attention.
"Thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, in plague one," Lucrezia said, counting off the events on her fingers as she spoke. "Then that followed by hail and raining blood, then fire to burn away one-third of the trees and grass. The third plague, also called Wormwood, brings in the comet and mass destruction that will bring on human deaths by bitter waters. I could assist in making the waters bitter. From there, plague four, a third part of the sun and moon and stars will be smitten."
Lucrezia let out a hard breath to blow a stray red curl off her forehead. "For all intents and purposes, any light left in the sky will go dark, permanently--not like this temporary condition now."
"Yes, yes," Lilith said, growing impatient. "We have been over this time and again. The fifth plague at our disposal will unleash smoke from the bottomless pit, otherwise known as Hell. . . and we'll send up demon scorpions and locusts to eat the flesh of humans for . . . oh, I don't recall exactly, but something like five or six months."
"What has any of this got to do with our problems at hand, Lucrezia?" Elizabeth screeched leaning down the table, irate and impatient.
"I don't know," Lucrezia said coolly, "but I am a Borgia, of the House of Borgia, where politics and refined games of treachery are well beyond the average caste . . . perhaps this is why Fallen and I are so well suited for each other. But since the Light allowed their martyrs to assist in battling our force, blurring the lines, and did not immediately remove them after the fifth seal was broken, hence allowing them to interfere with our breaking of the sixth seal . . . perhaps we could make the one thing that humans need more than anything else, beyond air, become prematurely bitter? Water, milady. The Light was late in taking up their martyrs so perhaps we can be early in poisoning the water?"
Nuit chuckled softly and returned to the table with a goblet of blood for his wife, "Brava, my dear." He took up her graceful hand and kissed its cool, porcelain surface. "This is why I love her so ... her mind is an amazing instrument of deception. Vlad, I suggest that rather than brute force, you employ your wife to the more refined arts."
Vlad and Elizabeth responded with a violent hiss as the Nuits laughed and dismissed them with a wave of their hands.
"It might help if all of Heaven was very, very busy sorting and saving the dead and dying," Lilith said in an approving tone. "Humans cannot live long, especially in arid climates, without their elixir of life."
Lucrezia offered Lilith a deep curtsy of respect and then turned her fawning gaze on Fallen Nuit. "Mr. Chairman," Lucrezia said, noting her husband's newly elevated status to rankle her competitors. "If the sixth and final plague that will alter the balance between our side and the Light is the release of the Thirteenth to call the four bound dark angels now shackled beneath the Euphrates . . . and those fallen angels would be able to call forth a fresh, new army, one not yet vanquished or turned into unrecoverable ash, numbering two hundred thousand thousand ... or better stated, two hundred million--which matches the number of angels allegedly in Heaven . . . hmm."
Lucrezia placed a delicately painted French-manicured nail to her ruby lips for a moment as she stared at the world map. "Before I left to live happily ever after, I could envision a parting shot being the assassination of my archenemy's most trusted general." She turned to Vlad with a narrowed, mocking gaze. "You, sir, are not him."
Lilith's gasp sent a shiver through the assembled council. "That is precisely what I would do ... and then I would bear my heir and set him upon my weakened rivals."
"I told you she was deliciously wicked," Nuit said with pride, his seductive gaze raking Lucrezia's body. "Tres bon, ma cherie"
Lilith swept to Lucrezia and held her face, kissing her deeply.
"I will send a dispatch to Lucifer at once. We may not know the Neterus' exact location, but we can place spies everywhere in search of them. We will monitor their movements, we will see if they have found out anything that could lead them to our most-cherished demon. I have been so consumed with niggling details that I had not even considered the sheer recklessness of such a plan . . . which fits their arrogant modus operandi perfectly."
Nuit touched both women's cheeks with a deeply satisfied smile. "And now, dear Lilith, do you see why I love her so?"