Christine Warren - Huntress

Something about this, though, niggled at the back of her mind. She read it again.

Valiant knight .

She looked back at the apocalyptic page, then back at the verse that intrigued her.

Prince both dark and fair .

As if in the distance, she could hear Aaron still talking and knew he was trying to get her attention, but she had felt an idea, still amorphous and shaky, grab hold of her and tug her insistently back to the page with the knight and dragon illustration. She quickly skimmed through the other three verses and discovered with a jolt that each of them shared a common theme—a battle between two single adversaries, one dark and one light, who would settle between them a greater dispute between their peoples. The dark warrior would have superior numbers, superior funding, and greater overall power, but the bright warrior would be able to win the battle by paying a kind of forfeit that would not only avert the coming war but would somehow undermine the loser’s ability to rise up again.

Lilli felt a sudden rush of understanding. Excited, she turned to look back at Aaron and hushed him with an impatient gesture.

“I think you’re wrong,” she said, almost laughing when Aaron recoiled as if she’d just told him she thought he was Jack the Ripper.

“I beg your pardon?”

Then she really did laugh. He sounded so indignant.

“I think you’re wrong,” she repeated, “and I’ll tell you why. I’m sure Samael would very much like to bring about the apocalypse if for no other reason than to curry favor with Lucifer. He’s always looking for a way to suck up to the head honcho, but that’s not what I think he’s after at the moment. Sam doesn’t need the book to bring about the apocalypse. If he wants to do it, all he needs is to perform the right actions in the right order and, voilà! Instant Armageddon.” She shook her head and pointed to the verses on the next page. “I think this is why he wanted the book back. Specifically, I think this is why he wanted the book away from you.”

She waited while Aaron skimmed through the verses, then looked up and shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why would Samael care about these prophecies? They have nothing to do with the apocalypse page. I don’t even think they were written by the same oracle. They’re in a completely different style, almost nursery-rhyme-ish.”

“I know, but just think about the main characters in all of them—a dark prince and a valiant knight?”

“So?”

Lilli rolled her eyes. “I think they’re referring to Samael and you.”

“What?”

“ ‘Dark prince’ is pretty self-explanatory, don’t you think? I mean, come on, that one is practically handed to us. It took me a minute to think through the ‘valiant knight, brilliant mind, acquires a page’ thing—that’s a little more esoteric—but it has to be you. You said your uncle left you the house and the contents, right? Including a whole lot of pages. Books full of them. Including this one. Because you were his favorite. He loved you.”

“But—”

Warming to her topic, Lilli didn’t let him finish. “And the brilliant mind thing is a given. I’d bet you a year’s income you’ve got an entire bowl of alphabet soup after your name. You probably got perfect scores on your SATs.”

“I still don’t see what that has to do with anything. Why would Samael care about four badly written rhymes about an interpersonal conflict between the two of us when he could be instigating a rebellion that would lead to the destruction or enslavement of the entire human race?”

Sheesh . For a smart guy, Lilli realized, Aaron could be really thick. “Because if one of these ‘badly written rhymes’ comes true first,” she explained patiently, “Samael wouldn’t be able to start a rebellion. He’d be finished, at least for the foreseeable future. And you, my friend, are the one who’s going to bring him down.”

Three and a half hours later, Aaron found himself standing around his uncle’s basement and feeling like an idiot while Lilli drew a huge circle on the floor with a thick stick of white chalk. Dawn was still more than an hour away, which according to Lilli meant that Samael and his hologram would leave them alone a while longer. He would pop back up once Lilli’s time ran out for retrieving the book for him, but he wouldn’t want to be caught in this realm for very long with the sun approaching. His powers were already weak on earth, and the sun would only drain him further, so he would wait until the last possible minute before he showed his face outside of Hell. When he did, the wards would keep him outside the house, unless someone invited him in.

That should give Lilli just about enough time to answer one more question for Aaron.

“Tell me again why this idea is not completely ridiculous and suicidal,” he urged, leaning against a bookcase with his arms folded defensively in front of him. He was trying not to stare at her ass while she crouched down to draw her circle, but frankly, it was an extremely fine ass, and he could still remember the way it had felt cupped in his hands upstairs.

Aaron swore and shifted. The erection he’d sported then had finally subsided and he really didn’t think now was an appropriate time for its return. Unfortunately, the fire that fed it seemed disinclined to go out as long as Lilli was anywhere within a fifty-foot radius of him. It was becoming damned inconvenient.

“I already told you, I’m sure this is going to work,” she said, setting aside her chalk while there was still about a twelve-inch gap at the base of the circle. “The prophecy says so. You’re going to kick Samael’s ass, the apocalypse will be averted, and then we can call live happily ever after and you’ll know you’re the one who made that possible. Think of the sense of satisfaction that will give you.”

“I’m too busy thinking of the sense of pain I’ll feel when Samael decapitates me with his bare hands and uses my head for an impromptu game of Hacky Sack.”

Lilli shot him a quelling look as she began to place white and black candles around the perimeter of the ten-foot-wide circle. “Your pessimism is not going to be helpful.”

Aaron threw up his hands. “You know what would be helpful here? Automatic weapons. Before today, I was always an advocate of strong gun control laws. No one needs a machine gun to defend themselves unless they’re being invaded by the Turkish army, I told myself. But you know what? I’ve changed my mind. Give me an Uzi; give me an AK-47. Hell, give me a Gatling gun. I don’t care. Just give me something that will allow me to pump the maximum amount of lead into Samael’s body in the minimum amount of time. That’s all I care about. Just call me Charlton Heston with a death wish.”

“Oh, relax. You know as well as I do that bullets are like mosquito bites to a devil as powerful as Samael. A gun wouldn’t do you as much good as a letter opener with a good steel blade. An iron fire poker would work even better.”

“Really? I’ll just run upstairs and get one, then.”

She stood and put her hand on his arm. “Aaron, it will be fine.” Her fire-colored eyes, the ones he now knew came from a true devil of a father, glowed up into his, warming him. “I’ll be right there with you. And I believe in this prophecy. You have nothing to worry about, because you’re going to beat him. I promise.”

Aaron felt the predictable tightening of his body the instant she touched him, but this time he felt something else, too. Something just as strong, but softer somehow. Something new, like a kernel waiting for the right time to flower.

He uncrossed his arms and lifted one hand to her cheek. Cupping her face in his palm, he lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers. When this was all over, he promised himself, they were going to finish what they’d started on the table in the kitchen. He didn’t care if Lucifer himself interrupted.