The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (31 page)

The brute and stocky guy weren’t backing down. As an angel, the only acute pain he had ever felt was the emotional pain of losing Calise. As a transitor, he was now in real physical pain, and it bloody hell hurt. He was stronger than the humans, but nothing quite compared to his former angelic strength.

The brute came in again. He feinted with his right then connected with a straight left. Shane dabbed his nose, and his fingers came back wet and sticky. He was annoyed, and the pain from his nose and shoulder were beginning to seriously piss him off. The stocky guy held his ground and produced a knife from his pocket. The brute removed a pistol that had been tucked in his pants and pointed it at Shane’s face.

If the brute shot him, his essence was erased. Dead with no chance of return. Dying a transitor was the same as letting your year expire. Immediately sober, Shane knew he was trapped. Realizing at last what is was to be a transitor, he raised his hands in defeat.

The brute smirked. “What? Now you’re scared? Why would you fight for
her
?” he asked and pointed the gun at Anna.

The stocky man nodded, jostling the knife up and down. “I have nothing to go home to. She’s taken everything away from me. We’ll take everything away from her.”

The man pointed his pistol at Alejandro and Anna and cocked it.

Shane had one moment to get the gun. He leapt for the brute’s arm and redirected the gun at the same time as the shot was fired. The stocky guy dropped to the ground, hit. The brute gasped and looked horror-stricken at his crime. “See what she’s done! She is all evil. She’s infected all of us with her misery and lust.” He raised the gun to his own temple.

“Wait!” Shane cried. “It’s not like that. There is no black and white, all good or all evil.”

The man shifted his gaze to Shane and paused. “That’s not how I see it.” He pulled the trigger.

Shane exhaled and slumped. He’d fought them off trying to look as human as possible, yet two were dead and the other five were moaning or unconscious. Alejandro had never moved an inch away from Anna to help him.

Panting, Shane asked Alejandro, “Now what?”

Alejandro shook his head and sat with Anna and the motionless, limp infant nestled in her lap. Blood stains drenched the hammock and dripped into the soil. Alejandro’s lip quivered. He held Anna who quietly sobbed into his shoulder.

“Alejandro, I’m going to relocate these guys up and down the Nicoya Peninsula and erase their memories of Anna, then bury the dead.” He grabbed two of the men by the arms and disappeared. He eventually relocated all the men up and down the peninsula on different beaches. Shane tapped each of their foreheads and implanted scenes of reckless intoxication with immediate plans of returning home.

When he was done and the two men were buried, Shane stood tall in front of Alejandro. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Alejandro raised his head, showing teary eyes. “It…It started a few days ago. Each man that came was one she had lured to sleep with and destroy. They had visions that told them to come to this beach. With the arrival of each old conquest, her belly would fatten and she would go into labor and deliver a still-born child. It’s the prophecy—Why, Father?” Alejandro’s eyes were fixated on the heavens.

Shane knelt in front of them. “Who is she to you?”

“My paired essence.”

“Shit. What happened?”

Alejandro gently laid Anna back in the hammock, and he covered her with a blanket. Her breathing was ragged as the last of the color drained from her cheeks. He led Shane away from his mate. “She fell centuries ago—because I left her to protect the artifacts. Her one earthly life was wrought with pain; she succumbed to evil in her desperation to find me. She’s lived many demon lives, but now that I’ve found her again, she…” He trailed off.

“I wish I knew what to do to help you,” Shane admitted.

“I need to find a way to have her give up the lure without it killing her,” Alejandro said.

Shane gasped. “
The
lure? Lucifer’s lure?”

Alejandro nodded.

Shane returned to the demon and leaned toward her. “Anna. How can we release you of the
lure
? It’s destroying you. Let us help you.” He held out his hand.

Anna turned and her face
demon-strated
as she said, “I want to be rid of it; I’ve had it for so many human lives…” She writhed, in pain from the object that was a part of her.

He backed away as a claw barely missed his chest.

Alejandro approached her rapidly cycling form between human and grotesque demon. “Please, my love. There must be a way. Without any harm coming to you. Let me figure it out.” Alejandro stroked the demon’s scaly face, and she returned to her human visage. “There must be a way.”

She gently rolled the baby to her left side and brought up her right claw to stroke his hand. “I’ve done this to myself—to us—I’m sorry, but you know there’s only one place for me to go.”

“Anna, no!” Alejandro howled as Anna thrust her claw-like hand into her chest, and choking and gagging, began to pull.

Through the snap of cracking ribs, she withdrew a giant fishing hook as big as a dinner plate dripping with her own blood. Satan’s
lure
encased her heart.

“There is no time, Alejandro. Lucifer…needs it…back,” she moaned as she drew her last breath. The lure and Anna melted into dust.

Chapter 29

Calise’s mother’s sitting room

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin

Calise answered the doorbell of her childhood home to admit Ellen. Stogey, freshly released from quarantine, trotted after her and sniffed Ellen before retreating back to the comfort of the couch. Mom had called a mandatory meeting.

Ellen looked ravishing, as usual, in a lime green skirt and fitted white blouse. Short stacked brown heels completed her tailored look. She leaned in to give Calise a quick squeeze hello and her body went rigid. She whispered, “Your mother is just coming back to us, thanks to you, but all
my
senses are sharp. I heard both the heartbeats inside of you at the club. When were you going to tell us you’re pregnant?”

“Coffee, Ellen?” Calise’s mother interrupted.

Calise jumped, shaking her head vehemently at Ellen.
I need more time—I just got him back in my life, I’m not about to scare him away just yet.

Ellen pursed her lips and answered, “Of course, Mrs. Rowe. That would be lovely. It’s good to
see
you again.” She winked.

Mom’s aura was returning little-by-little, and she smiled warmly. Calise cozied up with Lucas and Stogey on the couch. Ellen sat opposite them on the matching loveseat, and her mom brought out a tray with coffee, cups, cream, and sugar and her famous lemon bars. She set everything out on the coffee table. Calise needed to teach Mom how to make a better cup of coffee because here she was again, sipping it in her living room. At least she was using the coffee she’d brought her back from San Jose. Her mother set down a plate for herself beside Ellen.

Seers versus angels.

“Mom, is it okay if Stogey sits on the couch with us?” Calise grinned as Stogey laid his head down on her lap.

“A little late to ask now, isn’t it?” Her mom fidgeted, cutting perfect squares of her bars and placing one in front of each of them. Her hands were shaking as she poured them each a cup of coffee. “Please tell me exactly how my daughter became a
seer
,” she blurted out when she finally sat down.

Ellen’s glow overshadowed her mother’s, but as Lucas and Calise sat across from the two angels, she still couldn’t believe her eyes—her mother and her best friend. She fingered the necklace from Lucas.

“Mrs. Rowe, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am,” he started. “I tried to stay away from your daughter, but…We were trying to be safe,” he mumbled.

A-fricking-dorable.

Calise piped up. “I went to Costa Rica to find answers and got them. End of story. Lucas can teach me how to use this gift—it’s not a curse—that lets me finally see my mother and best friend in a beautiful new light. You even knocked off that demon in the alley the other night. That was amazing.”

Now it was Lucas’s and Ellen’s turn to face her mom, who was beat red.

“What?” Ellen asked.

“Yeah, I saw this demon in a dark alley, and I told him I knew what he was and then
poof,
Mom showed up,” Calise related.

Lucas turned her cheek toward him with his hand. His touch melted her. “I’ve been trying to avoid demons, and you just marched up to one and announced that you knew what it was?” he asked incredulously. “I’m so in love with you right now,” he said. “Pissed, but in love.”

She smirked. “It worked out fine; I’m fine. This necklace was your mother’s, right? When I grab it, angels show up—how?” She looked between the three of them.

The angels stared hard at Lucas. He went to the front window and looked outside. “The two necklaces have been in my family for almost two thousand years. They encase and protect pieces of wood from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. My family descends from Nicodemus, and the angel Alejandro has been with us since the night Jesus was buried, keeping our family and its artifacts, safe. I am a seer like my father and his father before him.

“Nicodemus passed on the sight through his descendants. The necklace can summon an angel when a demon is about to engage in a true act of evil. The artifact seeks to restore balance. The piece of the cross represents the earth itself that is alive in the trees, the water, and the rocks. The earth stores all acts of good and evil that occur. The cross touched the absolute purity of the living God, but that wood itself was used to commit an act of utter atrocity. The wood holds the essence of evil and seeks to summon purity to rebalance the universe. When the demon went for you, and you held the necklace, you summoned the nearest angel, who came to avenge the act of vengeance that was about to be committed.

“I’ve heard that an angel cannot resist a summons and will always fight, but we never know how it will turn out. Calise, I killed Nara’s mother. Her family has long sought to eradicate seers, artifacts, and angels. Now that she knows my family protects other artifacts, she will hunt me and kill anyone close to me. I came to protect you.”

Ellen’s jaw dropped open.

Mom approached the necklace for a closer look. “You’re right, Lucas. I couldn’t resist the call, even though it’s been many long years since I’ve felt the need to be an angel at all,” she said, turning the artifact over in her hand. “Demons commit daily acts of violence. Their violence propagates more violence so it ripples out in huge circles around them. Angels try to commit smaller acts of good which are much slower to reveal themselves and harder to propagate. Ask Ellen. She’s a wonderful angel.”

She modestly shook her head.

Calise took Lucas’s hands in hers. “Let me get this straight. Angels and demons ignore each other unless summoned to fight at the exact moment violence is about to occur?” Her heart was in her throat.

Ellen spoke. “We can be born to any combination of parents. At eighteen, we remember who we are—angel or demon. Angels see demons and they see us, but unless a human is being harmed, we avoid each other, even though we can see each other. We don’t have to be summoned to fight. If a demon engages me, I fight. Or if I’m in the right place at the right time, like at the frat house when we were in college…” Ellen let her words hang in the air.

The memory, freshly recalled from Shane’s visit, washed over her again. She needed to tell them about that.

Lucas squeezed her hands. “I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all this.”

“How many seers and other artifacts exist?” Ellen asked.

“My family is pure, undiluted, as are the descendants of Joseph of Arimathema. But anyone, we are…with,” he coughed uncomfortably, “can get the sight if we connect emotionally and…physically. There are dilute seers all over the world; most people think they’re crazy. I only know the whereabouts of my family’s artifacts, but I’m certain others are in existence. Cali, I told you to avoid demons, not charge up to them and announce you know what they are. You could have been killed.”

“I should’ve been afraid of that demon in the alley, but I was angry. Forget about that, you three need to hear about someone who scared me a lot more than that demon in the alley. Shane paid me a visit. He broke into my apartment and told me to stay far away from Lucas.”

He was on his feet instantly. “Did that
transitor
hurt you? What else did he say?”

“He said his ex-girlfriend, Nara, is after you, and I won’t be safe if you’re around me.” She hesitated. It was so hard to risk saying anything to him that might make him leave her, but she knew Shane was going to be a problem.

Ellen was panting. “Shane
fell
?” She stared at Lucas as if he would have all the answers.

“Yes,” Lucas said. “Shane’s with Nara and her family now. They hunt my kind, especially what we have kept safe for all these years.”

“The necklace?” Mom asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, “and my family’s other artifacts.”

Ellen set down her cup. “Well, that’s it. This is huge. The demons that know you and Lucas exist won’t give up. You both have my vow that I will assist you in any way I can to keep you and the artifacts, safe.”

Mom chimed in. “I agree with Ellen. I’ll convince Uncle Don to hire some angels to be with you at work, and you need to be ready to go into hiding. I’ve been doing that long enough. Lucas, I swear to protect you and my daughter no matter what.”

“There’s one more thing,” Ellen rested her chin in her hand. “I’ve been keeping track of angel and demon births for some time now. There is an underground network of angels that has been watching everything. Angel births are on the rise, and there are an alarming number of missing and abducted angel babies. Something strange is going on. Calise, keeping you safe needs to be our first priority, just in case.”

“In case of what?” Lucas looked at her, puzzled.

Here goes nothing.

“What Ellen is saying is… She’s worried about the chance that… Lucas, Mom, I’m pregnant.”

Lucas showed panic in his eyes while Mom’s face lit up.