"Stop talking about me as if I'm an idiot child."
Twelve
SHE captured everyone's attention with the sharp rebuke. Even her mother's hand stilled upon her. When Jonah's dark gaze flickered back to her, she felt something from him, a tightly suppressed emotion that speared her own heart, brought an ache to her throat, but she couldn't react to it now.
Dante sank onto his haunches. The dark hair spilled down his right arm, the left braced on the rock, lean muscle tense in his biceps and shoulders, breath barely moving the expanse of smooth chest. He reminded her of Lucifer there, his dark, sensuous energy and fearful potential. Because of her focus on her father and the other powers in this chamber, she couldn't gauge his intentions or thoughts.
But it didn't matter. No matter his power, she knew his fate rested with her. Mina watched her with almost an identical inscrutability. She wondered if that eerie stillness was a Dark Spawn thing.
Alexis drew a deep breath, prayed she wouldn't faint. "Pyel, I realize how I look. The past two days have been the most horrible of my life. That place . . ." Her voice faltered, and Anna made a noise. At first Lex thought the wave of powerful emotion came from her, but its source surprised her. It was David. Though his stance did not change where he stood at his commander's right shoulder, hands still on his daggers, she felt his reaction.
Seeing the shadow cross his eyes, she remembered. He'd been nearly tortured to death there. While Mina was often a closed book to her, she sensed the seawitch reaching out to him in her mind, with her heart, her eyes moving toward him.
The bond between them was something innate, hard to explain. Just as this was. But she had to do it, or Dante would be sent back. And that wasn't acceptable to her.
Swallowing, she spoke to Jonah again. "No one should be there. Not him, not anyone. I'm not deceived. I feel his darkness, as you do." She shifted her gaze to Mina. "But perhaps what you don't feel, that I can, is his light. It's there. He didn't want to be born there. He has survived all these years, focusing only on escape, and he used what means he had at hand to do it. He could have treated me much worse, but he didn't."
With relief, she saw Jonah was listening. The father who was enraged and worried was still there, his feelings grasping at her like sharp claws. It made her long to run to him, let him wrap his strong arms and the comfort of his wings around her, let her shudder out all the fear and terror of the past two days. In Anna's embrace, she'd had the barest start of how much of that she wanted to do. But she'd just told him she wasn't a child, and she wasn't addressing her father. She was talking to the being who'd made thousands of judgments on life or death.
"You all know my gift. I can see the core of what he is, and what he can become."
You were given this gift for a reason. She let the thought bolster her where her own physical strength couldn't. Hang in there. Somewhere at the end of this will be your bed and a long, hot shower.
"Yes," Jonah inclined his head. "I do not doubt that, Alexis. But I also know it can make you blind to other forces."
"Those were the mistakes I made as a child. I am not that child any longer." She bit back her impatience as he seared her with a glance.
"If you are not a child, you know every being has the potential for good or evil. Which they become depends upon their choices. Their environment may push them, but in the end, it comes to a choice. He made his."
To survive in my world, we kill. To have anything, we kill. Firming her chin at the recollection, she shook her head. "In his world, his choice was only to live or not to live, and to live however he could. There is no morality there, Pyel. No good to protect by making choices against evil. Now he has more choices, and if you let him remain here, he has the chance to make them."
She pressed on, galvanized by the flicker in his expression. "Myel once told me that, soon after I was born, you took me flying over the water. She remembered how you stopped flying, hovered over the waves, holding me up in your arms so the moonlight shone on my skin, gleamed on my wings. She said they were no bigger than your hand then."
Pausing, she let the memory sink in, weave a picture between the two of them. "There were tears in your eyes."
Anna's breath drew in behind her. Jonah's gaze moved to her, then back to Alexis. She noted she'd even captured Dante's cautious interest, though he and the other angels remained far too fixated on one another. "You said you saw everything I could possibly be, all my potential, and you wanted to give me every chance to reach that potential, to achieve the highest pinnacle of happiness in my life. That's what I'm asking for Dante. This is his birth. He is an infant, and he deserves that chance."
Perhaps it was ludicrous to compare the tall, muscular vampire with flaming eyes and bared fangs to a tiny infant, but she pressed on. "Please. I understand you have to think about it. But please don't send him back. Give him the chance to have a life here."
Jonah looked toward Mina. Angels at his level could speak into the minds of others, and if a being thought directly at them, they could hear them. It was clear an intense communication was occurring. Lex wished she knew Dante's thoughts, because the only emotions she was clearly receiving from him had to do with impending violence. But since he'd been forced to live by his wits long before he gained the upper hand on the Dark Ones, she hoped he was using his brain rather than testosterone. The cavern was overloaded with it.
"There's merit in her words," Mina said at last. "Perhaps a probation period, thirty days, under supervision. While we sort out all the issues involved."
"He could stay with me," Alexis said.
"When Lucifer decides to build an amusement park in Hell," Jonah responded.
"I'm his surest chance of success here." She turned her appeal to Mina. "I'm the only one who can sense his intentions, help him navigate this world without misinterpreting his actions. He won't hurt me. I know it."
Jonah pivoted. Everyone in the chamber tensed, with the exception of Mina, but her father merely used his wings to go to the ledge where she and Anna sat. When he squatted before Lex, she couldn't suppress the full force of his emotions. In his face she saw what these past two days had done to him. That, and his closeness, his strength and familiar scent, undid her. She couldn't help it. Tears came, and her limbs trembled anew.
"Pyel," she whispered.
She was in his arms, those wings wrapped around her and her mother as he brought them both into his embrace. They slid their arms around him as well, burying fingers in his wings and hair, faces in his chest, while he tilted his head over theirs, murmuring incoherent words that Alexis didn't need her gift or ears to understand. He spoke right to her erratically beating heart.
His Legion was his family, of course, but she and Anna, they were his blood, his heart and soul. The emotion from him was overwhelming. Despite all the years of battle experience and training that had kept him focused on how best to bring her back, he'd feared, deep down, he was going to lose her. Because of that, Lex knew that not only was Dante lucky to be alive at this point, it was fortunate the cavern was still standing. It made it all the more difficult to push her father, but with the determined cruelty of the young, she knew she had to do it.
Raising her head to look up into his beloved face, she repeated it. "He won't hurt me, Pyel."
Jonah lifted her hand to his lips. Even as he pressed a kiss to it, his fingers slid over the bruises on her forearms, his gaze taking in the state of her broken wing, her battered face and weakened body. The symbols burned into her flesh, now clearly visible with the blood washed away. "Yes, I can see that."
"There's more to it than that."
"I need no supervision," Dante said. As he straightened to his full height on the ledge, the three angels closed ranks.
Jonah lifted his head, turned it toward Dante. While Lex couldn't see his face, the warm emotions were replaced by something utterly cold. "You would be wise not to speak, Dark Spawn."
When his lip curled back, showing fangs, Alexis spoke hastily
in her mind. This world is very different from the one you left. You know this. You'll need someone to help you get accustomed to it, to avoid pitfalls that might convince them you're too dangerous to be here.
I do not seek to please them. I will be no one's pet.
His voice in her head was a welcome brush on her frayed nerves, despite the tense circumstances. Lifting her gaze to him, she peered over her father's broad shoulder. It's not like that. Please give this a chance.
Mina spoke then. "There is a way to ensure he does no physical or magical harm to innocents while he is here." She glanced at Jonah. "And it won't hamper his ability to explore this world with your daughter."
Jonah blew out a breath. "He is not staying with my daughter."
"Pyel, it's my choice."