Blaspheme gripped her mother’s pale hand and sank into the chair next to the bed. “Don’t talk. You need to rest.”
Ignoring her, Deva opened her eyes, the vivid aqua now hazy with pain and meds. “Where… where am I?”
“You’re at Underworld General. Don’t worry, you’re safe. Angels can’t enter.”
The problem was that Devastation couldn’t stay here forever, and clearly, she couldn’t return home. She could find a place to stay in Sheoul, but if Heavenly angels had located her, it wouldn’t be long before fallen angels such as Destroyers, the Sheoul equivalent of Eradicators, found her as well… and then there wouldn’t be a safe spot for her in the entire universe.
Vyrm, the forbidden offspring of an angel and a fallen angel, weren’t tolerated by Heaven nor hell, and neither were their parents. After nearly two hundred years of frequent moves, name changes, and close calls, Blaspheme was all too aware of that fact.
“How… bad?”
Blaspheme couldn’t lie to her mother – hell, she wasn’t the best liar to begin with. “The surgery went well,” she said. “But there are some complications from whatever weapon you were attacked with.”
As if on cue, Deva inhaled a rattling breath, and on the exhale, blood sprayed from her nose and mouth. “The angel… he used… grimlight.”
Shit. Grimlight, a weapon used exclusively by Eradicators, confirmed what Eidolon had said. Blas reached for a bedside tissue and gently dabbed away the blood on her mother’s face as she let the reality of the situation sink in. Heaven had found her mother, which meant they couldn’t be far behind Blaspheme.
“I’m going to die, Blas.”
“No.” She squeezed her mom’s hand. “I always knew this day could come. I’ve done a lot of research into grimlight —”
“The damage… it can’t be repaired.”
“I know, but you can survive it.”
“I’ll be weak.” Deva coughed again. “A shell of myself.”
“You could never be weak,” Blaspheme murmured.
Damn, but Blas wished she could use her angelic or fallen angelic abilities to at least attempt to heal her mother, but the spell that disguised her as a False Angel was still blocking her powers even as the FA ones failed. Why her mother had chosen a False Angel as her cover, Blaspheme didn’t know, but as far as wimpy demons went, False Angels were at the top of the list.
For the millionth time today, she glanced down at the barely visible scar on her wrist, the one she’d gotten just moments after her birth, when her mother performed the ceremony to conceal Blaspheme’s vyrm identity within a False Angel aura. Practically speaking, she had been a False Angel, with all of the strengths and weaknesses inherent to the species.
But now, two hundred years later, the aura was wearing off, and when the scar was gone, so would be Blaspheme’s cover. Oh, as a vyrm she’d be far more powerful than a False Angel, with the ability to flash wherever she wanted, summon fiery weapons, heal almost anyone of thousands of afflictions… but she’d also be hunted into the ground.
“Daughter,” Deva rasped. “You need to perform the ritual. Before I die, I need to know you’re safe.” She sighed. “And I was so looking forward to Sanguinalia.”
Blas patted her mom’s hand and stood. “Stop being dramatic,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “You aren’t going to die. And we already discussed this. I’m not going to sacrifice a False Angel so I can maintain my disguise. I’ll find another way. Another way to save both of us.”
Before her mother could argue, Blas kissed her on the forehead and got the hell out of there. She had work to do and frankly, she didn’t want to dwell on the fact that between Deva’s injuries and Blas’s rapidly fading disguise, they could both be dead by the end of the week.
Blaspheme got a fitful night’s sleep in an on-call suite close to her mother’s room. After a groggy breakfast, a pot of coffee, and a quick check to verify that her sleeping mother was doing fine, she got to work.
Now she was just trying not to dwell on things out of her control as she put a series of stitches in a Huldrefox’s lacerated scalp. The furry female had gotten into it with a werewolf, and from the number and severity of her wounds, it looked like the Huldrefox had been less of a worthy opponent and more of a chew toy.
“Doctor?”
Blaspheme yelped, startled by a dark-skinned lion-shifter nurse named Mbali as she pulled back the cubicle’s fabric curtain just enough to poke her head inside. “My, you’re jumpy today,” Mbali said. “You okay, imayama?”