Page 114 of Carnal: The Beast Who Loved Me

“Rosie,” Kellareal began, “has been doing a self-imposed time out in a dimension that is host to a special project of mine.”

Deliverance nodded. “I know. I was there. So what’s the problem?”

Though delivered with Deliverance’s special brand of belligerence, Storm and Litha were both secretly glad that he’d given voice to exactly what they were thinking.

Kellareal said, “The problem is that your daughter,” he looked at Storm and Litha, “or granddaughter as the case may be,” he looked at Deliverance, “just wiped out an entire subspecies of hybrids including every trace that they ever existed.” His crescendo flared during delivery of that sentence so that he was practically yelling at the end. “She left three hundred humans and hybrids, assembled on a desert plain to fight a war she started, wondering what the heck they were doing there. Since all memory of the people she obliterated was gone as well.” He fumed.

Storm and Litha both looked at Rosie.

“You can do that?” Litha asked, sounding more than amazed.

Rosie shrugged.

Kellareal was nodding. “Yeah, Mommy. She can do that and a whole lot more. That’s why I’ve been watching her so closely ever since she was born, trying to keep universal bigwigs from getting wind that she exists!” His temper was growing the longer he talked.

“Okay. Okay,” Storm said in his best calming tone. “Let’s all settle down.” He looked at Kellareal. “Take a whiff and a sip of that tea and pull yourself together.”

Lines had formed between Litha’s brow and she looked worried. “That’s why you’ve been around so much?”

Kellareal softened just a touch. “It’s not that I don’t like you, Litha. I do. But yeah. Your kid is the big fish fry.”

Litha looked at her daughter. “Why’d you do this, Rosie?”

“I fell in love.” Rosie sniffed. “With one of the hybrids.” She glared at Kellareal. “He left them enslaved to an open ended bad deal. He gave them freedom in exchange for protecting humans that weren’t worth protecting.”

“That’s not for you to say,” said the angel.

“Well, it wasn’t for you to say that the Exiled should have to spend eternity fighting and dying to protect people who despised them, just so they wouldn’t be kept in cages like breeding animals.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Kellareal protested.

“It wasexactlylike that!” Rosie shouted. “At the very least their indentured servitude should have had an expiration date.”

She and Kellareal glared at each other.

“You fell in love and…” Litha quietly prompted, trying to get Rosie back on track and emotions under control.

“They killed him.” New tears started running down Rosie’s face. “So I killed them.” As she wiped her face with the tissue her mother gave her, she raised her chin, looked at the angel with defiance and said, “All of them.”

Kellareal barked out a laugh. “You really don’t seem to get the enormous consequences of what you’ve just done.”

Storm was trying to think his way around the mind-blowing idea that his baby had god-like power. “Why don’t you tell us?” he asked calmly. “About the enormous consequences.”

“Arbitrarily changing the natural progression of things,” he looked pointedly at Rosie, “in this magnitude, creates ripple effects all over the Earth dominion. Cross-dimension. An event like this in one dimension could change the history and future of the entire planet. Remember the overlap I told you about?” He shook his head. “I should have killed you as soon as I knew what you were.”

Deliverance flew off his barstool as he lunged at the angel and the two of them fell to the kitchen floor in a tangle of elemental limbs and wrought iron legs. Storm sat quietly, but looked at Litha with a sigh and a WTF expression as they exchanged a wordless dialogue.

“Rosie,” Litha said. “I don’t suppose you have the ability to break that up, do you?”

Rosie turned her swollen face to her mother. “Stop!” she commanded. The angel and the demon froze in place in a viral-worthy freeze frame.

Storm and Litha took a moment to consider the implications of having a daughter, a somewhat immature daughter with questionable control, who could bring about such a physics-defying event. One that affected creatures as powerful as angels and demons.

“Gods almighty,” Storm said, staring at the two on the floor.

Litha looked at Rosie. “Normally I wouldn’t condone this,” she gestured toward Kellareal and Deliverance, “but your father and I would like to know what has happened without interference. So let’s leave them like that while we talk. Just the three of us.”

Rosie nodded. Litha got up, fetched an entire box of lotion-laced tissues from a cupboard, and set it down in front of her daughter. “Tell us.”

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