Mia nodded. "Fine."
"There," I said. "Try to do it."
"Do you have a trinket that would let you return to the place where Raphael kept you?" Lucifer asked. The only indication he gave that he'd nearly burned to a crisp was a slight twitch of his finger.
She nodded. Reaching into her pocket, Ariel pulled out a coin and handed it to us. "I have to touch it with my blood."
Mary whistled. "Blood magic. He got this from a Nephilim."
"How does this work?" I asked.
Lucifer stared at Mia with an intense gaze. "Is this the only way in or out of the realm?" He leaned forward so his nose was nearly touching hers. "I will know if you're lying."
"No," she said shakily.
I nearly chuckled. Lucifer was the Lord of the Morning, after all. He was damn intimidating.
"This is the only one," she whispered.
"If you have found a way to lie to me, I will possess your soul and own it forever, do you understand that? I have that power."
She nodded rapidly. "I believe you," she whispered.
He stepped back and looked at the coin. "Then I should be able to destroy this. With Raphael gone..."
"Gone!" The little boy piped up for the first time. "What do you mean gone?"
He clenched his little fists and glared at us. "What did you do with my Daddy?"
Ariel began to cry. "Where's Daddy?" she asked Mia.
Hearing Ariel call that monster her father gutted me. How dare he? He told her he was her father? As if he could hold a candle to Lucifer.
Mia knelt and gathered them both close. "It's okay. He's had to go away for a while. But you're safe. They won't hurt you."
I ached to hold Ariel and comfort her. But I was a complete stranger to her. Mia was the only mother she'd ever known. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them back.
Lucifer turned to me, hiding his face from the other angels and Mia. His eyes were full of tears as well, but I knew he didn't want anyone to see.
Michael and Gabriel gathered close. "What do we need to do?" Michael asked in a hushed voice.
"I'm not completely sure. We'll blast this thing with magic and see what happens." Luc looked at me uncertainly. I shrugged. "We have to try. Otherwise, we'd have to go there and try to do it from there."
He focused on the coin, but nothing happened. "Let me try." I took it from him and held it up between two fingers. Lucifer pushed control of all the power over to me. I nearly trembled feeling it running through me. It wasn't like the power of the souls in Purgatory, but it was still pretty heady.
Lucifer most likely had tried to blast the coin. It needed something with more finesse, though. I trickled the smallest strand of magic into it and worked my way around until I found the spot where the magic to open and close the realm rested within the coin. For such a small object, it held a massive amount of power.
Unfortunately for the coin, so did I. I filled it with more and more power until it began to strain the confines of the spell on the coin. Then, I directed the magic to branch out and search for weak spots or points of exit while still feeding more and more into it.
If we couldn't destroy it by attacking it, then we'd destroy it from within.
It took more time than I would've liked. Ariel and the boy, whose name I still didn't know, sat on the grass with Mia and leaned against her.
Eventually, the coin began to grow warm. I used another tendril of magic to support it without it touching me. Heat began to radiate off of the silver circle until we all felt it.
"Everyone get back," I exclaimed. "I think it's going to blow."
Mia jumped up and pulled the kids back.
But the heat from the coin kept growing. "Luc, if I keep on, this explosion might be more than I can contain," I said.
He, Michael, and Gabriel conferred beside me and soon threw up a ward around the coin and me.
"Lilith, if it gets bigger, it might incinerate you as well," Gabriel said. "You're going to have to stop."
I couldn't step back through the ward or it might've severed my connection to the coin.
But he was right. The energy in the coin was going to explode, and I was the only thing in its path. "Get the kids out of here!" I screamed, no longer sure even the ward they'd put up would hold it. The angels would recover from any blast outside the ward, but the children wouldn't.
"I'll take them to the Academy," Joel barked. He pointed at someone and a female angel ran forward and put her arms out. Mia took her hand and her son. Joel held his hand out to Ariel. As they disappeared, I noticed Ariel trying to squirm away from him.
At least she'd be at the academy where the Nephilim could keep her safe. They wouldn't kill a child.
20
"Everyone scatter!" I yelled. The angels and Fallen took off, the angels going to hide behind Purgatory's gates and the Fallen into Abaddon.
All my focus was on keeping the energy in the coin from exploding. Somehow, it had flipped, and instead of me feeding energy into the coin, it was sucking the magic from us. "It's draining me," I said in shock. I didn't know how much longer I could hold on.
But nobody was around. I'd told everyone to leave.
I nearly jumped out of the ward when Lucifer's voice came from right behind me. "Hang on," he said. "I think the realm itself is eating the energy. I'm about to pull life force from the demons in Abaddon."
"Shit!" I yelled. "I told you to scatter!"
I looked over my shoulder, but as I did, the coin surged. I no longer had to hold it up with magic, it rotated in
