Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

“Just leave New Orleans alone,” I said. “We like color. The louder the better.”

Michael lifted his hand, and I rotated in the air, my eyes suddenly level with his sparkling baby blues.

“I will forget, for the moment, who your father is,” Michael said, his gaze sharp. “You are not correct—I can see that you have lived more than a half-life, for most of it. You had a full heart when your mother lived. And a full heart with your vampire and your mage friends and your home within the…loud, colorful place you love so dearly. It was only in those dark years after you lost her that you wandered, and that, I think, is understandable. Now, here you are, thinking of others above yourself. Desiring peace and balance not only for yourself but for all the worlds. You are in tune with goodness, Miss Reagan Somerset, even if you do not always display it. The balance of your mother and your father has done you well, though it partially pains me to admit it. Your father is intolerable.” He paused for a moment. “I will help. You desire someone stronger to keep your father in his lane. It is a job I will happily take up.”

“That’s not what she was asking,” Lucifer drawled.

Michael’s smile was slight. “Rest assured, Reagan. When you awake, all will be right. Thank you for the part you have played. We will do our due diligence from here on out.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d helped or hurt. But it was clear they wouldn’t be able to push too much, since Lucifer would be here to push back.

My lids slid shut—still not my doing—and blackness overcame me.

Twenty-Two

Deep shadow draped across the familiar surroundings of my bedroom when I opened my eyes. Darius sat in the corner with an ankle over his knee, his gaze focused on a romance novel he must’ve pulled from my shelf. Moonlight streamed in through the window, and I could just see a smattering of stars spread across the slice of sky in my view.

“Getting some pointers?” I asked, taking stock of my body.

He lowered the volume and allowed it to close around his thumb, holding his place. “No. This one is ridiculous. The supposed hero is a pushy ape who speaks in grunts. I’m expecting him to grab the heroine’s hair and drag her back to a cave at any moment. If I were in the story, I would kill him instantly and take his prize without breaking a sweat. The heroine clearly does not know that if she would like to flirt with danger, there are better options at her disposal with a lot more charm and tact.”

“Are you forgetting that it’s fiction, or is there a sore point in your past I’m not aware of?” I pushed to sitting and marveled that I didn’t ache anywhere. Sliding back the covers, I saw that my leg was in tiptop shape, no marks or scars or pain whatsoever. My arms didn’t have any bruises from fighting, and my energy was in full force.

He reopened the book and went back to reading without comment.

I laughed softly, stretching. No sore muscles. Better and better.

The last thing I remembered was Michael telling me he would help. Clearly he had healed me, and someone had brought me home.

I checked the time. Three o’clock.

“What day is it?” I asked, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. A tank top hugged my torso and only panties covered my lower half. Darius must’ve dressed me for bed, then. He knew this was my normal sleeping attire when I wasn’t planning on getting lucky. Not that that would have stopped me.

He flipped a page. “Friday. You have been sleeping for nearly two days.”

“And you?”

“I am on the second book in this accursed series, and I need to know how it ends.”

“So you haven’t slept, then?”

“No. Once you were healed, I took some of your blood. I apologize for not asking, but Michael assured me that it would do you no harm, and I assumed you wouldn’t want me to take from another.”

“You assumed correctly,” I muttered, thinking back to that pretty unbelievable scene in the sky.

“He is repulsed by me, by the way. He is not a fan of vampires in general. It did not trouble me in the slightest.”

I laughed. I could definitely see that. It would probably make my father like vampires that much more.

“That really happened, huh?” I shook my head, gazing out the window but not seeing what lay beyond. “My father called down angels to help me. Angels.” I gave Darius a wide-eyed look he was too distracted to notice. “There is a fourth world—which I’d been told about, sure, but seeing is believing—and there are actual, real, honest-to-God angels living in it.”

“Yes. And now they appear to want to take more of an interest in the worlds. I would hazard a guess that it is because Lucifer will be doing his own dabbling.”