Page 21 of Providence

I lifted her from her seat, sitting down and pulling her into my lap. There. Now we were both touching her and we were all happy.

Hope’s eyes were laughing at me, and I quirked an eyebrow. She looked around Dippy to Marco. “I think she has one too many alpha’s too,” she said, and he grinned, although I didn’t get the joke.

He signed,I don’t care if she has a hundred alpha jerks for boyfriends, as long as she lets me be one of them.He switched his gaze to me.Hope can read my thoughts if she’s touching me.

Well fuck. Note to self, do not touch the pretty redhead.

Then I realized he’d basically signed for my benefit. Dippy hadn’t been looking and no one else knew ASL. I lifted my chin at him. “Right back at you, Brother.”

Dippy and Hope continued chatting, Hope confiding that she was pregnant. There was this kind of weird, high-pitched squeal thing that happened, and lots of hugging. Hope was worried it was twins. Dippy joked at least it wouldn’t have wings. On and on it went, comparing horror stories.

The subject turned to Hope’s dead twin sister, who I’d briefly met while she was kicking ass at the Clubhouse in, I don’t know, ghost form. Apparently she’d been killed by Tenebrae, and the mood dampened considerably.

Gusion finally spoke. “You will not need to worry. I will ensure you are both safe from Tenebrae. You and Hope, Madoc and our babe. There will not be a single Tenebrae member alive by the time the Fallen Angels of Hell are done with them.”

Dippy winced, but I was actually kind of impressed. That was a gift better than two head of oxen and a parcel of land, or whatever men sold off their daughters for in the Dark Ages. Better than a shitty car when you graduate high school. The blood of your enemies on the ground was something that would have a tangible result on the rest of their lives.

My respect for the big golden Angel grew. Hope just smiled indulgently and stroked her thumb over his wrist, like he wasn’t talking about mass murder. They were a fucking weird bunch, but they seemed to work.

“Kahlila-I mean Serendipity,” Gusion stuttered out, and I could feel Dippy get tense beneath my hands. “You have to know, if I’d known you lived I would have searched the ends of the earth for you.”

Her body vibrated beneath my hands, and I stroked my palms up the outsides of her thighs soothingly. “I understood, somewhere around the 300 b.c., that you thought I died. I met a monk who said he was visited by a black winged demon, whose visage was so dark and terrible that it was like looking into the abyss of your soul,” she looked over at Mephistopheles, “I’m going to assume that was you.” Memphis gave a half-smile and lifted a shoulder. “Anyway, he had an alternate history to tell about the Great Fall. I mean, if you fell to Hell because of my death, then it stands to reason you would have looked for me if you’d known I was alive.”

Gusion leaned forward, his face wild with earnestness.

“I would have. We all would have,” he says, his voice almost pleading. Poor bastard. Memphis puts a huge hand on his shoulder.

Dippy nodded, just once. “I know. But by then, I’d starved to near-death a dozen times. If I hadn’t been cursed with this fucking immortality, I would have been as dead as you’d believed me to be. I’d been beaten, tortured, burned at the stake. I was a woman, alone, in a brutal age. The things I had undergone didn’t give me much leeway for sympathy or understanding. Bitterness grew in my soul until forgiveness for you was unfathomable. I had been punished for your sins. Over and over again.” There wasn’t any accusation in her tone, she just said it like she was stating a fact. Somehow, it made it all the more terrible.

Gus dropped his head in his hands and cried. Fuck. I wanted to cry with him. Instead, I pressed her closer, my body wrapping around her like I could absorb her pain through my pores. I didn’t blame her for her anger. If it had been me, I would have slit Gusion’s throat as he walked through the door.

But Dippy, she had such a big capacity for love, more than I could ever possess. She had to. She looked at Goliath and didn’t see a psychopath bathed in blood. She saw someone who could be saved.

To prove my point, she reached across Hope and put her hand on Gusion’s head.

“Don’t cry. It’s the past and your tears can’t help the girl I was. It doesn’t hurt me anymore. I know what happened, but can’t remember details. It’s all a blur, my mind saving itself probably.” She lifted his chin and looked him straight in the eye.

He tried to drop his head again. “How can I not cry? You suffered so much because of my hubris. Because I believed I could have the love of the Heavens and the humans. I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

She smiled softly at him. “I still need you. Madoc needs you. We both have a chance to right the wrongs of history with him.”

He finally met her eyes, his huge golden eyes shining like luminous suns. It was almost hypnotizing. “I won’t fail you again.”

His words skittered across my skin, and it was more than a promise. It was a vow.

Dippy nodded. “I don’t need you anymore.” She looked over his shoulder, and I realized Cain had returned with the baby. Cain walked over, gently shifting Madoc into his grandfather's arms. “But he needs you more than ever.”

Gusion looked down at the baby like he was a gift he didn’t deserve.

I kissed the back of Dippy’s neck. Fuck, I loved this woman.

11

Marco

After the world’s most intense fucking conversation between Sera and her father, the afternoon hadn’t been too bad. The fact I could sign to Solomon and Sera, and Hope could hear my thoughts, I’d felt more included in the party than any other I’d been to since I was eight. The fact that Sammie and Cara had never been safer, that I wasn’t solely responsible for their safety, was a weight off my shoulders, even if it was just for an afternoon.

Somewhere in that last few weeks I’d begun to trust these fuckers, and it was an odd sensation for the bastard son of a mobster, who’d been on the street since he was nine. Family. It was a weird fucking concept to me. Maybe that was why I was so attracted to Sera; like a lonely fucking hearts club, we’d seen something in each other and then our souls had clung to each other like the last port in a storm.

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