I’d been such an ass, a dangerously ignorant one.

I’d returned to Vegas seven years later and found out Zeke had needed more help than anyone could give him, though Griffin had tried his best. Zeke could blame Heaven, he could blame Hell, but most of all, he could blame me for that dead baby, but he should never blame himself.

Then Eden House had come for him after he and Griffin had been with me for a few years. No coincidence there, either. A raven had led their way to me. Recruitment had always been the eventual plan. Hell’s and Heaven’s. It seemed Heaven didn’t trust their own House. It had turned out with Trinity that they were right. That Eden House had found an empath along with telepathic Zeke seemed only lucky to them. Hell’s luck. My luck, my doing. Trinity would be raging internally that Solomon hadn’t let him in on that part of the plan . . . if he’d still been alive.

“Bring me the Light, Zerachiel,” Oriphiel demanded. “Serve your Heaven. Serve your God. The Light belongs to us. You belong to us.”

I’d told Zeke he’d have a choice to make, one only he could decide. Here it was: the blind obedience he’d known the majority of his existence or . . . something else. The green glow of his gaze, that same rare flash on the sea’s sunset horizon, turned to Griffin—Glasya—and was met with a pale blue that could herald a killing blizzard. The sleek lizard face, the jaw that could rip a human into pieces and no doubt in its time had. Demon. A creature Zeke had fought all his life, Above and on Earth.

“No,” Zeke said firmly and without hesitation as he held out his hand.

“Glasya-Labolas.” From Solomon’s mouth the name was stone. “Bring me the Light. You who have slain thousands and laughed as their blood fell thick as rain, seize who you are. Seize the Light for Hell. Beleth will reward us both.”

Griffin moved, and it was our Griffin, not Glasya-Labolas. It was the Griffin who needed to be needed, needed to protect the innocent, to save whom he could, to take care of Zeke until his dying day. The one who tried so hard to make up, but for what he didn’t know . . . until now. He clasped the arm held out to him, hand to forearm. “No,” he said as solidly as Zeke. “Never.” An angel and a demon joined together. And neither Above nor Below had been able to stop it.

Now we were missing only one thing, one promise to keep. I covered the wound in my stomach again. I held back the blood well. Not a trickle seeped through. “Eligos, it’s your party,” I said to the air, showing no pain or breathlessness. No such satisfaction for Oriphiel or Solomon.

He appeared behind Oriphiel and, with a massive swing, cut off the angel’s head with one stroke of those flaming swords I’d been thinking of earlier. He gave that cocky grin that was almost permanently carved into his face. “Souvenir from the Penthouse. They’re a dime a dozen up there.”

Oriphiel’s body disintegrated into thousands and thousands of crystalline pieces with the sound of glass bells ringing in their own deaths. Eli dropped the sword, flames dying away, on top of the pile of glass and raised his eyebrows at Zeke. “A spy in their own House? Not very trusting, to be so wholesome and holy and chock-full of choirboy goodness.” He looked down at Trinity’s crumpled body. “Although apparently the pigeons had every right to be suspicious. I’m surprised they were that smart.”

I didn’t care about Trinity or Oriphiel right now. I cared about one thing. “You have proof?”

“You guessed, then. Spoilsport.” He held out a hand toward me, and my bracelet jerked free of my wrist and flew across the twenty feet to rest on his palm. “I have your proof.”

“Leo, take the Light.” I pulled it away from my chest and held it up. Lenny/Leo left my shoulder, spread his wings, and grew—twice the size of a pterodactyl. One black foot closed around the Light, while one wing curled around Zeke and Griffin—I couldn’t think of them as Zerachiel or Glasya—and scooped them off to the side while keeping aloft with the thrashing of one wing. The two didn’t struggle. After all of this and a brand-new history dumped into their brains, I’d be surprised if either of them could form a coherent thought.

“Show me,” I told Eli.

“Darlin’, I’d say be prepared to be as astounded and surprised as if you’d seen my equipment at work, insert porn music here, but I have a feeling you knew all along.” Eli opened the tiny locket and balanced the scale on his finger as he muttered a few indecipherable words under his breath. The scale spun slowly, then faster and faster before finally flying through the air to hit Solomon in the throat. For a second, less maybe, I saw him as he was—like he’d refused to let me see him before. He was a dark gray demon dappled with silver and eyes that were bright, shining, wholly empty mirrors—empty and cold—and then he was human again. Human and moving toward me with those human teeth bared.

He could now. Neither he nor Oriphiel had tried before because I had held the Light—the one shield absolutely nothing could breach. They couldn’t take it from me, thanks to Trinity’s activating it by shooting me, but Zeke and Griffin had been touching me, inside its protection. They could have.

They hadn’t.

But Leo held it now and the soft clear light enclosed him and Zeke and Griffin while Solomon moved closer to me. The human form he’d gone back to didn’t extend to the eyes. They were still pools of mercury as silver as a heart-piercing dagger. Appropriate. He’d torn out my heart long ago. He kept coming right up until the moment Eli asked me curiously, “Why aren’t you in shock?” You might also say he topped that curiosity with a healthy dose of suspicion. I had no illusions he was actually concerned for my health, and he didn’t bother to fake it as Solomon had.

At Eli’s words, Solomon stopped.

“As a matter of fact, why aren’t you dead by now?” Eli tilted his head, the blond streaks in his brown hair gleaming in the sun. As he went on to talk about death, he glittered like an angel himself. “You should’ve bled to death, at the least gone comatose or had a seizure or two. I’ve inflicted my share of those deaths. I’m more than familiar with how they go.” He frowned. “We have a deal, remember? No flopping around like an out-of-water fish until I get what you promised me.”

I took my hand away from my stomach and waggled fingers at him. There was no blood on my hand, none on my stomach. I gave him the same answer Solomon had given Trinity. “I lied. That’s what I do, Sunshine. That’s who I am.” I shifted and lifted my eyes to Solomon and said with mock solemnity, “And didn’t I do such a good job? The years of ‘Will she or won’t she’? All that unresolved sexual tension. Pushing you away, but never completely away. The kiss, the reluctant pulling from your touch, savoring your warmth despite my weak little self, letting you sleep with me. Hold me. I was trusting as a lamb, so vulnerable. Wasn’t that sweet? Who would be so good as to fool you, a demon? Only my kind, only me . . . the ultimate liar.”

“Trickster,” Solomon snarled, all pretense at being the most regretful of the Fallen, the demon who was fluffy and warm as the Easter Bunny and never spilled a drop of blood, was gone. Gone every bit as quickly as the snap of Trinity’s neck.

“ ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,’ ” I quoted. “And above Hell,” I added.

I stood and stretched, felt that lifetime-familiar electricity spread through me; my hair lifting in a most nonangelic halo around my face. “So easily you forget us pagan-kind, forget the païens.” I was pagan all right, as I’d told the boys—so pagan that I was one of those that the pagan humans had worshipped . . . for thousands of years until these Johnny-come-latelies had spread their way far and wide. “You forget that we belong here too, but that doesn’t stop you from casually killing us if given the chance. You thought our season was over.” I pointed. “You, Solomon, are especially fond of killing our kind if you can. I’ve studied you. It’s a hobby for you, isn’t it? Four hundred of us have you destroyed over the past two thousand years,” I growled. Not a female growl, not even a human one. “To you and the angels we are nothing but leftover vermin from a world you refuse to share.” I fixed my eyes on the demon, who didn’t move. Didn’t blink. That was smart of him.