If anything good could come from all this, anything at all, I'd be grateful. Because so far, it'd been a shit storm.
3
"Why am I not surprised?" Mary shook her head and opened the door wider. "Where's the other one?"
"Gabriel?" I asked. "He's checking out the leaders of the world."
Mary hissed a laugh through her teeth. "I'm glad you fools are still here. Let me have a look at you."
We stopped in her small living room, and she turned her shrewd gaze to us. "Oh, you've gone and done it, haven't you?" She shook her head. "Come on. I was making tea. Come tell me what's going on."
We followed through to her kitchen, and she pointed at the table. She wanted us to sit.
We sat. Even Lucifer. He was too cowed at the moment to argue with anyone, anyway.
"Now," Mary said.
She set a mug in front of each of us. Mine was black with a big yellow sign on it. It read Caution. This might be witch's brew.
I snickered. "Cute mug."
Michael showed me his. Witch, please.
He grinned. "I like it."
"I'm so relieved you approve of my coffee mugs. Here." She set her gaze on Lucifer as she took his mug and poured hot water over a teabag. "What's wrong with you?"
"I don't have powers," he said sullenly.
She burst out laughing. "Boy, you sound like my grandson when his mama takes his video games away. Is that all you're made of, your powers?"
Lucifer's jaw dropped, and he started to look indignant, but then his puffed-out chest collapsed. "Yeah."
She rolled her eyes and plopped a teabag in my mug. "You gotta teach him better than this. You know we take them to raise when we marry them."
I gave my pouting mate a wry look. "Technically I didn't marry him, does that mean I can let him figure it out on his own?"
She chuckled and filled Michael's mug. "It's your headache."
Luc glared at us with his chin on his palm, and Michael tried not to laugh.
"Start at the beginning," Mary instructed. "Go through it all. Maybe something will come out that we can use." She poured herself a mug and grumbled as she did it. "Angels and demons in my house, thousands of years old, but can't figure out their own problems."
I couldn't pretend that that hadn't stung, but she was right. When it came to matters like this, unless we had help, we were powerless.
"The beginning," I said. "Okay. Well, it started when Gabe woke me up from my Earth cycle."
"And that is?" she prompted.
"Oh, we're going that deep." I hadn't realized she needed that much explanation. "Okay, Angels and Fallen are connected to the fibers of the Earth realm, especially Archangels. If we don't live on Earth as humans every five hundred years or so, our power weakens. We usually die within plenty of time to get Lucifer back to Abaddon, where he must be to maintain the magic of the walls of the Realm that keep the demons inside."
"So, you were happily churning on as human, but Gabriel..." She looked at Michael. "Not you, the other one, he tried to get you to remember? Why?"
"Michael remembered first," I mused and looked at him. "Do you know why?"
He shook his head. "I knew who I was from sometime in High School. I had to watch you and Lucifer live your lives as Lucian and Constance." He scoffed. "That sucked."
"Yeah, Connie always thought you were just creepy and inappropriate." I winked at him.
"It came off that way, but I just missed my wife," he said.
"Well, Gabe had been waiting on us to die, as we always did, before the walls of Abaddon weakened," I continued. "But then time dragged on and on, and we didn't die. Then, I got pregnant."
"Is that relevant?" she asked.
"I'd say so," Lucifer retorted. "As our daughter is still kidnapped."
Mary held up a hand. "Okay, okay. I just meant to the whole mess going on with you."
I jumped in before Lucifer pissed her off and she stopped helping us. "Sandalphon coincidentally decided to help us get pregnant because he'd heard my inner lamentations over all the years that I couldn't have children. It worked out in favor of Raphael somehow, because he's got Ariel and we're left panicked and feeling hopeless."
She nodded. "That child has to be something special."
I couldn't stop myself from glancing at Lucifer after Mary said that. He'd been irate that I'd given Ariel up to a human family to raise. He hadn't believed for a moment that she'd been fully human, but at the time, I'd thought she was.
He very purposefully stared at his tea.
"So, you knew what was going on." She pointed at Michael. "And you finally got your memory back?" She pointed at me.
I nodded. "Lucifer was harder. We needed him to die because when we're in our Earth cycles, when we die, we go home to Abaddon, which is where he needed to be to bolster the gates."
She nodded. "Right. But you couldn't kill him."
"No. Nothing we did worked. Then, I had the baby, and we took her to my human friends and started trying in earnest to kill Luc. We got a piece of the True Cross from the humans."
She held up a hand and looked at Michael. "You're angels. Don't you have access to Objects of Power?"
"Nothing significant," Michael said. "Raphael is a collector. If we came across anything, even if it wasn't his to keep, in Elysium, we would take it to him for safekeeping. His collection is heavily warded."
"And you can't get to it?" she asked.
"It's been cleaned out," Michael replied. "The big, heavy hitters are all gone. The large piece of the True Cross is gone."
"Carry on, then." She waved her hand as if permitting me to speak.
"Okay, so we got the small piece of the True Cross and used it, but it was only enough power to get Luc his
