Page 3 of Providence

Gusion looked up at Cain this time, his golden eyes meeting deep brown ones. He inclined his head, finally looking around the room at all the men who had tied their lives to his daughter. His eyes stilled on Goliath and the baby and he swallowed hard. He tried to force a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “At least I know the baby will be protected. But I’ll rend you limb from limb myself if you hurt either of them. Any of you.”

Goliath growled, and Solomon reached out and put a reassuring hand on his arm. “She is safer with us than she has ever been with your kind,” Solomon said matter of factly. “And so will he.”

Gusion stroked Serendipity’s hair once more. “She looks just like her mother.” His eyes got wet, and his body shuddered. He looked over his shoulder at Luc. “I have to go. Hope… I have to tell them.” Lucifer hugged Gusion tight to his body. I was so fucking shocked by the display of fucking warmth, I almost fell over. The Devil never struck me as a hugger.

“Go, Brother. They will both be safe here. My Horsemen will protect them.” The ‘or else’ wasn’t even subtly implied.

Gusion sent both Sera and the baby one last longing look. “I’ll return.”

He walked over to Eli, Hope’s father so I guess Gusion’s father-in-law, and held out a hand. Eli still looked pale and a little shell-shocked. He lifted his hand in a small wave, then Gusion wrapped his arms around the man and they both disappeared.

It was just us again, the Horsemen and their fucking General.

He looked us all over, his eyes calculating like he was wondering how hard it would be to steal both Sera and the baby from us. My body vibrated with tension, waiting. Instead, he just sighed.

“You hold the true heir to Hell in your hands. A baby born of the Great Fall. Many will want him. Some will try to take him. Let me be clear right now. If anything happens to either of them, there isn’t a level of Hell depraved enough to describe what I will do to you.”

He stepped toward Sera, and I moved to block him. “We will protect them both, even from you, Lucifer.”

He smiled at me like I was a good dog that had just done a brand new trick. “Especially from me.” His eyes softened when he looked at the sleeping Sera again. “The last time I saw her, she was the size of this one. So beautiful, so new. Proof that life happens outside the whims of Heaven. My heart broke for my best friend when she was taken from him. From us.” His lips curled. “And now she has given us further proof that Heaven isn’t the only deity with a sense of humor. Fate is a fickle bitch. As you modern humans say, my consort is going to shit when she finds out.” He let out a low chuckle. “I’ll be watching, Horsemen.”

Then he was gone too. It was just the five of us and our beauty who slept. And a tiny baby born with wings.

Life just got interesting.

2

Goliath

It had been five hours. She was still asleep. Completely unmoving. Solomon had rested his head on her chest to make sure her heart was still beating. Cain sat in her rocking chair, the baby resting against his chest, asleep. It’s tiny violet eyes, too clear for a newborn, had watched me silently for an hour before they had blinked closed. In that hour, I’d fallen completely in love with that baby. Head over heels, lay down my life, in love.

And I was fucking terrified. I wanted to rewind three hours and stay out of this room. Not hold my hands out to take the baby from Judas. Maintained the fucking distance between my head and that shriveled black organ in my chest that was supposed to be a heart. But I hadn’t, and now I was fucked.

My world was crumbling around me. But I’d made a promise to the woman. To Serendipity. I would take care of him. Protect him.

“How long until she wakes up?” I growled, and Solomon looked at me from the other side of the room. His eyes looked tired and sunken, and he hadn’t drifted more than five feet from her side in hours.

“I don’t know. The angel said her body needed rest. It could be fucking weeks.” I’m pretty sure he’d fade and die if it was weeks. I didn’t particularly feel like force feeding my Brother like he was the baby, but I would if I had to.

That brought up an entirely new problem. The baby would soon get hungry and we honestly knew nothing about babies. The last child we had any interaction with lived and died decades ago. My heart stuttered in my chest at the thought of that smiling, gummy face, and I pushed the grief down into a box at the back of my mind. I didn’t have time to unpack all that shit right now.

Maybe the problem was that I had nothing but time.

“Kid is going to be hungry soon.” I looked at Marco, whose face was a neutral mask, even though I knew he was feeling this whole thing just as deeply as us. “You’ve had a kid recently. What do we do if she doesn’t wake up?”

He signed slowly, and Solomon huffed. “He said he isn’t volunteering to boob feed.” Marco stepped closer to Serendipity and stroked her hair. He kissed her forehead, and there was a world of feeling in the gesture that didn’t need any kind of translation. He loved her.

He turned back to Solomon, signing quickly. Sol nodded. “We are going to need bottles and formula. We are going to have to hope that angel babies and human babies have the same nutritional needs.” Marco continued to sign, and I was going to have to learn fucking ASL so I had some goddamn clue what the psycho fuck was saying. Sol continued. “Sure man. Go, I’ll tell you the moment she wakes up. The kids will be freaking out.”

He kissed Serendipity’s head once again, then with a last torn look, left quietly.

“Maybe we should get Sweetie up here. She’d know what to do,” I muttered.

Cain raised his eyebrows. “And how do we explain the wings?”

He was fucking right. I couldn’t beat Sweetie into silence. Until Sera woke and told us what she wanted to do, the whole place had to go into lockdown.

Judas had been silent up until then, lost in his own thoughts. Now he looked at Solomon. “Go get what you think we’ll need. Get more than you think we’ll need.”

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