"What do you wear to the end of the world anyway?" I asked. I lifted a pair of really cute blue jeans, equipped with holes in the knees, and then put them back sadly. I'd come back and get them Sunday when the world wasn't over. In movies, when the hero or heroine wore jeans to fight, it always rubbed me the wrong way. Jeans were so uncomfortable, and they allowed for little to no movement. Picturing myself trying to fight in anything except a pair of leggings or sweats was damn near impossible.
Hillary held up a long black dress with long sleeves. It totally spoke to the witch thing she had going on, but it didn't look practical. "Not a dress," she muttered. It sounded like she was talking more to herself than me. She draped the dress over her arm anyway. "Leggings, probably?"
We had a tentative truce, made up this morning while Athena slept. We agreed that she needed both of us around, for different reasons, but that didn't mean we couldn't be civil to each other. At least for her sake. After all, when all this was over and done, I wold return to Louisiana, and Hillary would still be here. We only had three more days of this.
To think I had been so selfish as to put my petty, jealous feelings above my cousin's well-being.
I heaved my shoulders. "You're right." I looked up as the dressing room not too far from us opened. Athena came out wearing a pair of baggy black sweats that hung low on her hips and a rich purple crop top. "You're gonna be cold."
She shrugged. "If the angels can give me the ability to steal a man's life with a look, I'm positive they'll swaddle me with warmth in the battle for my life." She headed back into the dressing room, though, ignoring the weird looks people gave her.
Hillary smiled at the women. "She means steal a man's life with her looks, not a look," she clarified. The women just gave her dubious looks. "Well, I'm positive the angels think you have better sense than to walk outside in a Missouri winter in just a crop top."
Athena laughed. "What if I put a jacket over it?"
"No." She paused. "How about a nice purple sweater? It can offer comfort, style, and unlimited range of motion."
They went back and forth with Athena rebuking every option other than her crop top. I kept searching for something to wear. In reality, my thoughts were on clothes for after the battle. The idea of finding something to wear to possibly die in made me a little uncomfortable. I would throw on a hoodie and some sweats for the battle. Again, why did people in movies wear cute outfits? It just wasn't plausible.
However, Luca had given me his card with instructions to purchase whatever I wanted. We had stopped at this hole-in-the-wall metaphysical shop first. Athena had ran in and came out with a bag full of items, all of which she put in her backpack without a word. It wasn't like I had a problem with spending his money; I just didn't know what to get. Not for a fight anyway.
Lucky for us, the guys had let us go off alone. They tailed us in the car, of course, and they were somewhere in the area, but we couldn't see them. With Mother giving us until Sunday, we decided to ride the grace period and have some fun. Go shopping, see a movie, eat at a restaurant. Stretch our legs and see the sun. Already my mood had improved.
Until I remembered, after each event, that this could be the last time I'd do it.
This time Athena came out with her blue jeans and sweater on. She had opted for some make-up today, and more than a few guys turned their head when they looked at her. "Alright, I'm out of ideas." She put the clothes on the rack outside of the dressing room and walked over to us. The guy at the counter watched her, mesmerized, not that she seemed to notice.
Hillary smiled. "I'm gonna buy this dress."
We followed her to the counter. I watched people move out of the way for us, and I wondered when had that happened for me. People usually skipped past me, despite my height, or they bumped into me. They didn't notice me enough to move out of the way that was for sure. Bella had once described me as the 'hole in the wall' of people—I was hidden off to the back in a place no one would notice, but once someone lucked up and found me, they realized I was popping. Looking back on it, it was a backhanded compliment.
"You plan on throwing some fists in that dress?" Athena asked as we walked out of the store.
Hillary smiled. "I won't have to throw a single punch in this fight," she replied. "I have divine protection." She touched something underneath her sweater.
Shouldn't we all have divine protection?
"You know what I don't understand?" Athena asked. "We're given these cool powers and talents or whatever, and we're blessed by angels, but they kind of sit up there in Heaven and allow life to happen to us."
Her tone held a bitterness I hadn't heard from her before. Her tone made sense, but it still shocked me. I had never asked her how she felt about all of this. Like me, I assumed she enjoyed being a Guardian. Mother aside, it wasn't a bad deal. I liked being special, having a power that separated me from everybody else. The magic that came with my relationship with Luca, being able to help people. Even the bond I shared with her.
"It's because they gave us what we need to survive without their direct influence," I answered. Being a Guardian was something I had taken at face value. There hadn't been enough time for me to truly process what it meant.
Athena gave me a look that implied I was full of shit. "Then what about my dad? Chloe? Anybody else that'll be a casualty of this fiasco? Chloe's gym skills are that advanced she can take on a demon?"
I winced. Chloe hadn't really crossed my mind in a solid day. I prayed for her recovery and protection, but I had been so busy. I had to be the world's worst sister. "I don't know, Teena, but I also know that talking about them won't bring them here." A part of me was frustrated with her questioning. I didn't have answers. I never would have answers for what they did. The other part of me knew she was in pain, though. "It's not meant for us to understand."
She rolled her eyes. "Of course not. Put my life on the line to change the fate of the world and don't even bother to send someone to help our family." She passed by an athletic apparel store, one she talked about going too early.
Neither Hillary or I stopped her.
Hillary tried to answer her this time. "You know the story of Job?"
"Yup. God let Satan kick Job's butt and destroy his life just to prove to the devil that Job loved God."
I opened my mouth. She wasn't wrong. "We went to the same Sunday school for eight years."
She cracked the tiniest smile. "I'm summarizing."
I'll say.
Hillary shrugged. "Maybe that's what it is. This is just a test of your faith. Job lost some people close to him."
"And Jesus sacrificed Himself for us," I added.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hillary give me a look like my statement had been stupid. Athena didn't seem to think it was stupid, just incredulous. "So y'all telling me I'm akin to Jesus and Job now?" she asked.
"Doesn't your middle start with a 'J'?"
"You're an idiot, C." She hooked her arm through mine. "I'm gonna have a long talk with Gabriel when all this is over."
Could we even talk to them like that? I made a mental note to ask my ancestor later when I picked up my saber again. I didn't bother to burst her bubble with my question, though. We needed this day.
We walked in silence for a few minutes. My thoughts bounced around from thing to thing. Mother, Sunday, shopping, fighting apparel, Hillary, Athena, Luca, Chloe, my uncle. Everything needed my direct attention, but I didn't know how to prioritize them. I couldn't do anything about the latter two, but if I ignored my family what kind of person was I? As it was, Chloe and I only had a few texts between us since I came to Missouri. My parents were so focused on her, they didn't have time to talk to me much. I couldn't lie either, so if I talked to them, I would end up spilling the beans. Physically, the doctors had high hopes for Chloe's recovery; however, mentally, she was depressed because there wasn't a chance in Heaven she would ever compete in the Olympics now.
All because of me.
Athena suddenly veered off to the left. The sudden motion pulled me away from my worry and back to the present. My life would take weeks to sort out, and I shouldn't waste my last few "fun" hours thinking about everything that was wrong with it. She stood in front of the cookie store with a grin on her face. "Sebastian and me used to come here all the time," she announced. She had a content smile on her face. Almost as if she had made peace with something. "Like every other day."
Hillary and I switched uneasy looks. We weren't sure what to say because, well, yesterday she was sobbing in the kitchen. Last night she was calling his name in her sleep. This morning she had looked like the world had been pulled from under her feet again. Now she smiled like none of that had happened.
She looked over her shoulder at us. "We can stop pretending he doesn't exist now. I'm over it." She sounded anything but over it, though. "Well, I'm not over it, but—" She stopped in the middle of her sentence to order five cookies, all snickerdoodle. When she had paid, she turned back to us, "I've come to terms with his absence."
Well, that was certainly good. Also surprising.
Hillary squeezed her arm. "We're still here if you need us to talk to."
"I'll keep that in mind." She grabbed a cookie out of her bag and took a bite, leaving the thought as it was. "I'm more worried about my dad, though. Bigger fish in the frying pan, you know?"
Hillary frowned. "Bigger fish to fry, you mean?"
She rolled her eyes. "Why clarify if you know what I meant?" Chloe and Athena may never have met, but they definitely reminded me of each other. "Anyway, defeat Mother, save my father, and then worry about Sebastian. In that order."
"If he comes back, will you forgive him?" Hillary asked.
She shrugged. "With my entire heart." She took another bite of her cookie. "And then I'll tell him I love him."
That didn't sound like someone who had come to terms with his absence. Where did this positivity come from?
"Enough about me. Hillary, how are you feeling about Sunday? Visions be damned."
Hillary had become a nervous wreck the longer she stayed with us. She hung around, only going home at night to sleep in her dorm. When she was here, she dropped things, stuttered a lot, zoned in and out of conversations, and followed Luca and Griffin around. Once, I caught her giving me a disapproving look while I trained and "accidentally" threw one of the knives I was using at her throat. I missed on purpose, of course. When Hillary wasn't here, she was constantly bombarding Athena with texts.
Oh, and she had stopped seeing visions. We hadn't told Athena, but last week Hillary had decided to quit looking for outcomes and let things unfold as they were. Apparently, it "stressed" her out. What was the point of a psychic that didn't use her vision?
"Pretty good," Hillary replied. She looked away, feigning interest in some store that sold dresses for church ladies. "Do you think he'll come back?"
Athena sighed. "I'm pretty sure I said 'enough about me.'"
"That was about Sebastian actually."
What were her plans for him? "You know, the prophecy says he just has to love you. Not that you two have to date," I suggested. "You can go get you a nice, normal boy."
She wrinkled her nose. "You think a normal boy would be able to handle hearing all this? That'll go over so well with him—'Hey, baby, gotta cancel dinner tonight, turns out a demon is attacking a small town in Minnesota, and I need to get there immediately!'"
When she put it like that, it made sense. "Well, it's certainly not a conversation starter, but our ancestors married normal people." One of their normal human wives was burned at the stake in the seventh century, though. I wasn't sure if it was Guardian related or just plain ignorance.
Hillary slung an arm around Athena. "Or she can be single with me. Nothing wrong with that."
Nothing except Hillary was miserable. She thought I didn't notice when she all but dived for her phone every time it unexpectedly lit up. Or the disappointment on her face when it wasn't from her ex, Ricky or Randy or whatever. "My mom always told me the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else," I protested. "There are tons of fine men around here. If you're sticking with the Middle Eastern thing, Athena, we can totally go—"
"Stop before you say something potentially offensive."
I reminded myself not to glare at Hillary. What I wouldn't do to blast her with my shield and send her scrawny behind flying into next year. "I had no intentions of being offensive," I huffed.
"No one plans on being offensive."
I ignored her and jumped into the driver seat of the jeep. Athena jumped in the passenger. She was already one cookie down, and she had another in her hand, ready to bite into it. "I think we should go home," she stated into the tense silence of the car.
It was only tense because Hillary couldn't keep her mouth shut. She had a comment for everything I said. My cousin and her were best friends; she literally had nothing to lose and no reason to dislike me. I tried my best to be friends with her, even when she first got here, but she just annoyed me so immensely.
Hillary leaned forward from the backseat. She drove here; now the driver's seat belonged to me. "Why? We have two more hours left before we have to train."
She sounded as upset as I felt. The last time I visited the movies was over two months ago with Luca on our third or fourth date. Admitting that I felt like Hillary made my skin itch, though. I kept my mouth shut.
"Just wanna go home."
I hoped we hadn't irritated her. I also hoped Sebastian hadn't crept into her mind and made her feel bad, or she received a bad text about her dad. She didn't sound hopeless, though. She sounded mildly annoyed, which made me think we had a little to do with it. "You positive? You didn't buy any clothes."
She shrugged. "There's something at home I need to deal with."
We drove in silence, nothing but the radio to distract us. Hillary alternated between texting someone in the backseat and staring out of the window with a concentrated look on her face.
Sebastian's house was only a twenty minute drive from the mall, but it felt like we arrived way sooner, despite my driving a few miles under the speed limit. With it came a sense of dread and foreboding. I hated being stuck in this house, waiting for my death. I wanted my freedom to walk around.
How had Athena managed this long without going crazy? Picturing myself locked up with Luca every day made my stomach hurt.
As I pulled up to the house, I noticed something was off. Griffin and Luca were here, and they shouldn't have been until around four. Griffin sat outside on the porch, and he hated being outdoors—"Why would I go outdoors when all the beautiful women stay inside?"—with his ankles crossed, a chilling smile on his face.
Griffin stood as we arrived, and although standing was mundane, the way he did was… unnatural. He stood calmly. Too still. Too perfect. The danger that radiated off of him reminded me of how powerful he could be.
"Good to see my jeep is back in one piece," Griffin called out. He stood with his hands in his pockets and, again, it wasn't dangerous, but it held an essence of something. I couldn't place my finger on it.
I followed suit, closing the door behind me. "Barely. There was almost an accident with this 18-wheeler. I'd love to tell you about it over dinner."
He made a pained expression. I hadn't exactly lied. While Hillary drove us to mall, Athena alternated between turning the music up and down, up and down, up and down. It irritated Hillary, and they got into a minor spat. It ended with Hillary swerving into the lane into oncoming traffic. We laughed about it about fifteen seconds later but not when it happened.
"I would love to hear about it. Honestly."
I smirked. "Liar."
Athena strode past us, cookies tucked into the pocket of her hoodie. The expression on her face worried me; her features were molded into rock. Her fists clenched tightly, fingernails pressing into the bottom of her palms. I opened my mouth to question her, but the motion was taken from me.
You promised.
Luca promised to never use mind control on me again. Preventing me from saying something counted as mind control.
This is important. Don't stop her.
What was? Mildly annoyed, I closed my mouth. I'm her partner. I should be there if she needs me.
If she needs you.
His tone made it clear she didn't.
My level of annoyance rose another notch. Hillary stood next to me. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. "Tell Athena I have to go," she murmured. Distance etched itself in her gaze, her words, her tone. Without another word, she darted down the driveway.
Luca reached for me, but I ignored him and made my way onto the porch and into the house where warmth greeted me. Griffin followed close behind me and shut the door. Athena disappeared around the side of the house.
"What's going on, Griffin?" Griffin didn��t know what secrets were. The only secrets he kept to himself were the ones about him.
He looked toward the kitchen. If he stood in the right spot, he could see his actual target—the door that opened up into the backyard. "I'm worried about Athena," he replied. His focus was elsewhere. The way he tilted his head to the side made me think he was listening to what was going on in the backyard.
"Why?" I took my gloves off and sat them on the table. "Is she safe?"
He nodded and put a finger to his lips.
I waited in silence. I had super strength and speed (according to humans anyway), but I hadn't gotten any other cool physical feats. Probably a good thing. Without the super hearing, I had a penchant for eavesdropping that went way back to my childhood. I would be a monster with it.
"Do you understand how Athena has to unlock her full potential?" he asked. He straightened his head up and peeled off his jacket. Did they get cold? Hot? I had never asked. They dressed appropriately for the weather, though.
I shook my head. She remained quiet on her power. We read the journals together, commenting on both of our powers, but she never really said anything about hers.
In another world, she would've been a world-renowned fashion designer. She would've dressed all the A-lister celebrities. Her name could've been something in the fashion world. Or a famous journalist, covering everything on this side of the world and the other. Instead, she had been given a saber and a hard time. I had, too, but I could still kick demon butt and write books. It was a little harder to hold a job with specific hours when demons attacked with no regards to your schedule.
I brought myself back to the topic at hand. My thoughts swirled around my head another second before settling to the current conversation.
"In order to kill someone, you have to be one of three things: angry, stupid, or evil," Griffin explained. Outside, I heard someone screaming. "In order to kill someone in the manner that Athena does it, she has to unlock one of those emotions. Samia suggested going within the darkest part of her, the part that could kill a man with no remorse.
"Because she's Samia, we thought there were other ways to get Athena to use her power how it's meant to be used—to kill hundreds at a time." He paused as the screaming became increasingly louder. "We knew she wasn't evil, nor was she stupid. We had to invoke the only other emotion we could: anger."
The screaming turned into a high-pitched whistle. Silence followed Griffin's words. Only for a few seconds, though. After a few breaths, begging started.
"I went to the Underworld and found the assholes that hurt her dad." He sounded proud of himself. "Luca brought them here. They told her everything except who Mother was; she's a stronger telepath than him, and they choked every time they came close to saying who she is."
The begging had stopped in the middle of his first sentence. Silence greeted us now, along with the feeling of a storm coming. Not a Mother sized, category five hurricane storm. This was more a tropical depression.
"Sounds like it worked."
Griffin looked at me as if it were his first time seeing me today. "Shouldn't you be upstairs working on your punches?"
Weirdness crept into my bones at using my power against my cousin. Using my power on anyone but her could prove dangerous since it disintegrated demons and they happened to be all we had on hand. These were the only things I knew about: besides protecting me, my shield could also kill; my shield was both mental and physical; it didn't always kill, only when I intended for it to do so; if I shrouded a demon within the shield, they would survive; and, lastly, the angels provided the white light for decoration. Once I learned to control my power better, it would disappear.
Athena stood back with Trespasser in her hand. She hadn't said anything about what happened, and I hadn't asked her about it. In due time. But I knew it bothered her. Being a descendant of Samia made me physically ill if I thought to long about it. Having her power had to be even worse.
She opened her free hand, palm turned up. Light smoke danced in her palm. I watched it, entranced.
"Since when could you do that?" I demanded. The sky blue smoke was way cooler than the bright white light.
"I found out a day or two after the fight. Samia didn't say anything about it in her journals, though." She released the smoke, and it danced in the air, traveling over to me. "Stop it."
Huh? I looked back at her in confusion. Then I looked at my saber. I held it in my hand, but I didn't think I was holding it incorrectly.
At my confused look, she smiled with a heavy sigh. "The smoke."
Oh yeah. Officially training started in another hour and a half. Unofficially, practicing with our powers started now. It involved getting more of a handle on our powers. Griffin had given up on the hand-to-hand combat. His theory involved me learning to better control my power to keep the demons away from me without having to move a single defensive muscle.
My shield—both of them—rested below my heart. I tugged it from its place, picturing the white light flooding out of me, surrounding me in its security. The smoke danced near my head one more time before becoming victim to the white light. It dissipated immediately. When I opened my eyes, it was stretching its glow around me. I held it for as long as I could, which was nothing more than a few seconds.
"What were your intentions? Protection? Murder?"
I shrugged. The motion released the shield back to its position. It snapped into me. "I didn't set any. I just thought about a shield." The shield was a part of me. When I moved, it moved. It was like moving my arm, except that I didn't have physical strength with my shield. "Do it one more time."
She opened her palm again. The smoke rose again. More blew toward me.
"And try with your eyes opened—you never want to close your eyes during a battle. That's how both Jesus and Cesar got killed."
I needed her to pick up her bible. In Sunday school it seemed like she had actually listened and took something in. Now I wasn't so sure. "Did you read those stories?"
"Nope. Wasn't enough action." She winked. She totally read it. Most people never saw that part of her. The genius, photographic memory part of her really turned people away; she used to always spout random facts and knowledge. They thought she lorded her intelligence to make them feel less-than. Not the case. She genuinely enjoyed knowing a ton of things.
Rolling my eyes, I decided to keep them open the next time around.
This time, though, she kept the smoke and went at me with her saber. It cut through the air, and I stumbled back in surprise. She kept pushing forward, though, doing her best to try to make contact with me.
"Dude, you're supposed to be using your shield!"
The reason why we were here early. Oh yeah. Before coming here, I vouched for us taking a quick nap before coming out here, but she had insisted. "Okay, fine, but if I hurt you—"
"You won't."
Of course not. Why on Earth would she allow herself to get hurt? It was impractical in battle.
This time when she swung at me, I tossed the shield at her. Trespasser stopped inches away from me. It made a sound like metal on metal that made both of us wince. She recovered faster than I did, pulling back and slamming it against the shield over and over again. For a second, I thought she looked for weak points, but when I saw the tears in her eyes, I knew differently.
"Do you think our sabers have genders?" I asked.
She lifted her head up. The traces of tears disappeared, replaced by confusion. "Huh?"
I kept the shield in place. I needed to work on maintaining it as long as possible. The shield adjusted around me as long as I needed it to. "Sometimes, in my head, I refer to your saber as 'him,' and mine as 'her.'" I reached my hand out for Truth-seeker, and it glided easily into my hands. That would never stop being cool.
"Why does mine have to be the boy?" She swung at me again. She put force behind this swing like she fully intended on beating me up. Again, my shield prevented connection. I only had a few seconds left holding it up, though. "I'm here for female empowerment."
I shrugged and countered her swings. "I dunno. I guess if it's your saber, you can gender it how you want."
"Technically the saber belongs to the Angels." She retreated to resettle herself, looking for holes around me. "If they didn't gender it, why should we?"
I let the shield snap back into place. "For a better connection maybe? It makes me feel closer to Truth-seeker."
Truth be told, it seemed like Athena wasn't as close to her saber as I was to mine. She used it as a weapon instead of a tool for excellence.
"You tryna have sleepovers with your saber? Stay up all night having conversations about boys with it?" She wanted to sound like she was teasing me, but it came off as aggressive. She had no 'off' switch.
I shrugged. "As long as it's not Luca. The ancestors have a problem with me sleeping with the enemy."
They also never gave me advice when I fought with her. You didn't just use the sabers against each other like that. They were silent now, studiously ignoring me.
She laughed bitterly. "At least you're sleeping with somebody."
"Men are in excess for casual relationships if you just want sex."
"I just want to beat Mother, finish college, and… who knows after that?" She pulled away from me and sat down on the ground. Not an ounce of sweat dared to grace her head. "I had an entire life plan, and this messes with it."
A statement I could get behind. Had it not been for Luca and Mother, I would've been on vacation right now with my family and Bella's. We would've been in Mexico. Bella would've been flirting with hot guys while I laughed and picked up a few in my own, quiet right. I would've still been working on my book. I would've finally talked to that cute boy in my class I swore would be perfect for me. Life would have continued on as was—quiet, a little boring, but perfect.
I pushed my shield out, not taking the break offered to me. My work ethic grew three times since coming here. It clung tight to my skin before venturing out, pushing toward Athena. It wrapped itself around her, starting at her feet and progressing toward her head. "I was supposed to be married in two years," I told her. "A best-selling romance novelist. How can I go back to writing romance after this?"
Romance had been my get-away from boredom. Now writing about pure romance seemed so… boring. Demons and werewolves and vampires existed in the world, yet people expected romance after romance about the cowboy and the city girl falling in love despite the culture clash. I needed a wild romance—less culture clash more worlds colliding and the lovebirds hanging on to nothing but each other.
Actually, everything about my old life seemed boring now. Even once the threat of death disappeared, I had no urge to go back to sitting in class, scribbling sentences from my daydreams into the margins of my notebook to write down later.
"There is no 'after this,'" she pointed out. "We'll still be Guardians long after she's put back into whatever layer of hell she came from. We have a duty to protect humans from demons."
True. "I can do that and write books."
"I can't become a full-time journalist or fashion designer and fight demons at night. I need to sleep." To prove her point, she yawned. "I should've taken you up on that offer for a nap."
"Told ya."
I thought about it. Fighting demons for the rest of my life sounded good. I craved excitement and purpose. Writing romance novels had always been a dream of mine, but I knew I couldn't change the world by doing so as I wished. My higher purpose was to help people who couldn't help themselves.
My shield pulled away from her, sliding back into me. The white light shimmered away, and I yawned, too. "How is everything else? You wanna talk about it?" I asked. The phrase "we're here for you" had left each of our mouths no less than fifteen times in the past three days. She required no reminder; she knew.
She battled it in her head before opening up. "When I kill demons, it's because they're attacking me. It feels like self-defense. This time, though, it was different. They stood in front of me, chained up, begging for their lives, and I still killed them. I was just so angry that they almost killed my dad, I—I didn't think, I just took every ounce of their life, and I did it slowly. It felt good, too."
"It doesn't make you like Samia," I clarified. Samia would've taken their lives for half a blueberry bagel.
"I'm not scared of that. I'm afraid to fail." She turned her head away from me, toward the door. "What if we don't succeed and the world ends?"
I thought about it for a second. "It's not our fault. The Angels should've given us more of a head's up. Started our training earlier. Gave us a stand-in Guardian to keep the family line going." One thing I did well was dodge responsibility and put the blame on someone else. It was my second best power.
"Okay, but—"
I moved over so we could sit shoulder to shoulder. "No 'buts.' If we fail, we fail, and the world ends. This was doomed from the start honestly. I can barely walk in heels. I definitely can't fight a demon."
"Those are two entirely different—you know what, never mind."
We weren't going to fail. We couldn't. We would stave off Mother's army for another day, figure out who she was later, and keep the fight going until we found all the virtues and sins. We just needed to get through Sunday.
I opened my my mouth to tell her that, but Luca knocked on my mental shield (it was easier to put up than the physical one; this one just required me to picture a vault closing off my thoughts and then it stayed until I opened it). In the middle of removing it (definitely harder than putting it there), the room cackled.
Sebastian appeared in front of us, looking worse for wear. I heard footsteps running up the hallway.
He grabbed Athena's hand, pulling her up and into his arms. She grinned at him, no fight in her. He turned to me and said, "Tell Lust and Greed to gather our siblings. Lilith is coming tomorrow."
With that, he disappeared, taking my cousin with him.
Luca and Griffin stopped at the door, looking grim.
"Where did he take her?" I demanded. I stood up, pissed at myself. I had a shield, and I hadn't used it.
Again.
Luca sighed. "To the Underworld."