"Ew," Luc said.
"The poor squirrel. It was probably possessed." I hated to think of one of my demons destroying the life of such an innocent creature.
"Why would they possess a squirrel?" he asked. "I've never heard of even the lowliest demon bothering with anything but a human."
I stared at him, completely befuddled. "I have no idea." I spotted an alcove in a brick building. "Let's just stand here a minute and take stock."
We leaned against the wall and watched people go by. I listened to phone conversations. "Yeah, it's all over the news," one woman said. "Some people are saying it's a solar flare."
"What are you talking about, Mom?" A young man sounded exasperated as he spoke to his mother. "I haven't seen anything weird."
He must've been the oblivious type because a bird flew past his face—upside down. I didn't know about him, but I'd never seen a pigeon fly upside down, except in a cartoon I'd watched as a child when I was Connie.
"We better get to Michael and Gabriel," Luc said as he watched a woman walk down the street talking to herself.
"I agree." There was nothing we could do to help these people, and this was almost certainly happening all over the world. "Even if we sent these back, they'd just leave again."
He grunted. "Let's go."
I took his hand and this time didn't get distracted as we disappeared.
2
"What the hell?" Gabe gaped at me when we appeared in our living room. "What are you doing here?"
Michael walked in from the kitchen with a sandwich in his hand. "Back so soon?"
Luc glared and walked toward Michael. He took the sandwich from him and took a big bite. "Long story," he said around the mouthful.
I shook my head. "Um, quick rundown. First, why are you two sitting around here like it's Friday night and you've got all weekend?" They just stared at me. “Second, we got to the gates. Raphael was there with Ariel, but Joel was right. She looked about three. Maybe four. I tried to grab her, but they disappeared. Finally, Raphael has done something, and the gates are open. Demons pouring out."
I collapsed beside Gabriel on the couch. "It'll take days for them to all evacuate Abaddon, but it's already going to shit out there."
Michael crossed the room and looked out the window. "I don't see anything."
Good grief. Had he always been this dense? I didn't think so.
Jellybean walked in and sat at Lucifer's feet, silently begging for a piece of his sandwich. Luc dropped some, of course. He was one of the most difficult men I'd ever known, but Jellybean had Luc wrapped around his paw.
"There are potentially millions of demons in Abaddon, but there are billions of people on Earth. They'll blend in. It won't be like a mass type thing, but even standing for a few minutes in downtown Miami, we saw several.”
Gabriel's jaw dropped and Michael turned from the window in disbelief. "Did the humans see them?"
"No," Luc said. He took another big bite of sandwich, so I continued explaining.
"They're on the demonic plane. As are we."
Michael looked from me to Lucifer and back. "So do something. Close the gates."
"You forgot that part," Luc said, then laughed.
But his laugh had a tinge of hysteria in it. He wasn't dealing well with the fact that he'd just been reborn into his Ethereal body, but he had no powers. Not that I blamed him.
"Yeah, when Luc appeared beside me, he discovered he still has no powers."
Gabriel jumped to his feet and whirled around to face Lucifer, who still stood in the doorway, sharing his stolen sandwich with Jellybean. "Do you sense them at all?"
Luc shook his head. "When I was Lucian, and I remembered, I felt them. Like they were just out of reach."
"That's how it felt to me until I figured out how to unlock them myself," I said.
"But now I feel nothing. I imagine this is how humans feel all the time," he mused. "I quite dislike it."
"I'd say so," Michael said bitterly. "So, what's the plan?"
I didn't have a plan. I didn't even have a piece of paper to write the word plan. "How long were we gone?"
Michael looked at Gabe and shrugged. "I don't know, maybe an hour?"
Asmodeus appeared beside Michael, startling him. Michael jumped and a blue ball of energy appeared in his hand. "Cripes, man, I almost attacked you!"
Asmodeus, as was his way, bowed and scraped. "Apologies, cousin."
I hated it when he called my mates cousins. We'd all been created the same way, from the same materials, the fibers of the universe, before even the first planet was created. If that was considered cousins, then we were cousins.
But I didn't consider that to be cousins, because that made it icky in this day and age.
Asmodeus was my brother because all angels were created from Archangels. Asmodeus had been one of the first created using my DNA. I hadn't been fully aware at that point, and we'd been raised as brother and sister.
"What is it?" I asked. I hadn't expected to see him so soon.
"I've found about half of the Fallen, and we're able to get demons to listen to us when one-on-one."
"That's great," I said. "Good work."
He nodded and gave a half-bow. "Thank you, Sister. But that's the only good news. We send them back to Abaddon and they forget our instructions. We can command them to stay within the walls, but as soon as they appear there, they run back out. Though they do return when commanded."
One blow after another. "Find the rest of the Fallen. See if you can create a temporary wall behind the gates to keep them from escaping."
He nodded. "Wonderful idea, Sister. I will go at once."
Asmodeus bowed and disappeared again.
"That won't work," Lucifer said. "The realm was created with my magic. Even you couldn't build a wall like that in Abaddon."
"I know," I said. "But it'll keep them busy and they're useless to us now. Unless
