“Then you let your powers guide you.” Dorn sipped at his coffee, clearly enjoying his new vice. “I’ll help you learn to tap into it.”
“And the new archangel?” Karly asked him. “Didn’t you say we needed to stay close for the forming of his trium…quadumvirate?”
“We can get to him in a moment baby.” Kassern tilted her hand, studying the glint of light fracturing from the countless rubies embedded in her ring.
“What if we get separated again somehow?” Lucian moved as if to stand, but Jessie's touch settled him back beside her. “We don’t have enough control over our powers to guarantee anything. The last time we tried, we either overshot or failed entirely.”
“We’ll have to spend some time training you. We’ll do that for the next week and pray Toren forms his quad in a timely fashion.”
“What about…” Devyn pointed to the room down the hall. “Those things?”
Dorn and Kassern exchanged glances that didn’t make Lucian feel safe. “Not sure yet,” Kassern said.
“And what about these marks on all of us,” Lucian said. “The right side of my face throbs from whatever happened, surely that can’t be good. What if they have some kind of way to track me like with Sally?”
Dorn put his perfect bare foot on his knee. “It’s not a tie, but it is a doorway. That means you have control over whether it stays shut or not. When it’s open, spiritual traffic of all kinds are free to pass. The key that opens it is sin. So stay pure.”
Lucian choked. “Stay pure? As in perfect?” Images of himself and Jessie making love flowed through his mind. The things he did to her and her to him…surely that wasn’t pure. If it were, so many wouldn’t believe it was dirty. And if that were the case, they were doomed.
“No, not perfect,” Kassern said. “As in if you fall down, you get your ass promptly back up.”
“So how and when do we start training us and those other things in there?” Karly wondered as Kassern returned his attention to her hand.
“I’d say we need to all get stronger before we start.”
“Like how?” Lucian asked.
“Coitus.”
An awkward silence filled the air just as a man in a white robe materialized in the center of the room.
Kassern was the first to stand and Lucian recognized him as the one that took a sample of Karly’s injury. “You have news?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have enough to be certain,” the man said. “I’m requesting she be hospitalized for a few days to run tests we’ve set up.”
Kassern began speaking in another language, not sounding happy. The man responded in another language as well, the same, Lucian assumed, only his voice was a wisp of silk.
Kassern’s eyes slowly closed and he let out a heavy sigh. “When do I bring her?”
“I will send word as soon as they are ready for her.” The man nodded as his physical presence seemed swiped away.
Lucian had forgotten about Karly’s bite. She was another possible link to the dark. This was stupid. “I’m guessing our lives will be at constant risk during this entire debacle.”
“A certainty,” Dorn said. “To prevent a triumvirate from forming is their first priority. If they fail at that that, destroying them once they’re formed is their second.”
“How can they do that?” Jessie asked.
“By getting us to sin,” Troy said. “When we sin, our strength levels fall.”
Lucian remembered the battle at the hotel. “Does this apply to the angels?”
“Especially,” Dorn said.
Kassern took Karly’s hand and began leading her out the room. “Don’t disturb us unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Lucian’s brows raised and he looked at Jessie to see what she thought of that. When he found a pink flush in her cheeks, his body responded. He would do anything the angels said, even things he'd always thought sinful. Especially things that felt as right as making love to the woman he loved with all his soul. He leaned to her ear. “Wanna go build our strength?”
She smiled and nodded barely and Lucian made the same exit as Kassern and Karly had, his parting words quite similar.
CHAPTER SIX
Toren was extremely proficient with chaos and unpredictability. In fact, it was his specialty. But the second Samantha passed out in his arms, his outstanding mercury counterpart scattered to the four winds, leaving him confused and spinning in every direction with no clue which way to turn. He figured it all had something to do with the highly unforeseen problem of him being distracted by her beauty, wit, and charm.