I started down the stairs, still in my comfy sweats. I didn’t exactly look powerful and intimidating. I didn’t have makeup on or a perfectly coiffed hairstyle. I didn’t even have the sword that I had kept so close to me for so long. It seemed like the sword, which was tied to Lucifer, would probably choose the master who forged it over the person who had carried it for a few months.

No, I didn’t look like much. And maybe to the average person neither did the ragged band behind me. But all of us had defied expectation in one way or another, over and over again. That had to count for something.

“What are you planning on doing when you get outside?” Nathaniel asked.

“I didn’t have so much of a plan as a general idea,” I said.

“Which means she hasn’t got a clue and she’s just going to roll with whatever happens,” J.B. said from behind Nathaniel. “You should know better by now.”

“Yes, I should,” said Nathaniel.

“You don’t have to sound so agreeable when you insult me,” I said, but I wasn’t really annoyed.

As we got closer to the end of the stairs my fear was rising. I wasn’t really sure what I would do at all. I had said “talk” to Lucifer, but he obviously wasn’t in a talking mood. The roof-pounding continued, and plaster was falling down from the ceiling.

Part of my mind was still upstairs with the baby, even though I knew Beezle and Samiel would defend him with their lives. It was hard to overcome that immediate instinct to be the one to protect him, to believe that only I could properly keep him safe.

But it had to end. Ever since I’d discovered I was Azazel’s daughter, my life had become a gradually escalating series of horrible events, each one worse than the last. I paused at the bottom of the stairs. Once I went outside, I’d be committed.

I might also be dead, and my child would grow up an orphan, a toy in Lucifer’s court.

“No,” I said out loud.

Nathaniel gave me a puzzled look.

“I won’t let Lucifer take my baby away, whether he kills me or not,” I said.

That thought gave me courage, and I pushed open the door. We crowded into the foyer, peering through the glass to the nightmare outside.

Lucifer’s body still stood between his two stalwart brothers, but there was a black shadow that rose from his open mouth and up over the house. This was the part of him that was currently pounding out his fury on my roof.

The other two didn’t appear to be doing much of anything except presenting a united front with Lucifer. I had to wonder again why either of them was working with a brother they claimed to despise, and why Daharan wasn’t there—on my side or Lucifer’s.

I took a deep breath, and suddenly I was hyperventilating. I was about to do something beyond frightening, something so terrifying that I could lose my life, my child, my love and my friends all in one fell swoop.

Nathaniel put his hand on my back and drew me close. He didn’t say anything, only breathed slow and even, waiting for my breath to fall in rhythm with his. And eventually, it did. The connection between us opened wider, and our power mingled, giving both of us strength.

“You see?” he murmured against my hair. “We are stronger together. We can face him. We can defeat him.”

I nodded, and I pushed open the door.

It was frigid outside, colder than winter, and I shivered all over as soon as the howling wind touched me. Rain lashed at my house. Thunder rumbled, a constant growl of menace above. Lightning struck the lawn several times as I watched.

Puck noticed us cautiously moving out onto the porch. He lazily tugged at Lucifer’s arm, his eyes bright with speculation. I’m sure he wondered just what the hell I thought I would do. I was thinking the same thing.

“Lucifer!” I called. My voice seemed to disappear into the roar of the wind, but he must have heard me.

The shadow shrank down and reentered Lucifer almost immediately. The wind and rain disappeared, though his demonic visage did not.

“Madeline,” Lucifer said, and his voice was a terrible thing that vibrated over my nerves and through my bloodstream. I truly understood for the first time that he was a monster. His heart, though born of the sun, was black as a moonless night. Whatever humanity Evangeline saw and loved in him was an illusion.

“Lucifer,” I said again. “Now that the formalities are out of the way, you can move along and stop trying to wreck my house. My property value has dropped to nothing since I met you as it is.”

Puck sniggered with laughter, covering his mouth with his hand. Lucifer glared at him, and Puck immediately went back to serious soldier mode, although his eyes still danced, as always.

“Madeline,” Lucifer said, rolling my name around in his mouth like a fine delicacy. “You still have yet to understand. All that you are, all the power within you, comes from me. You cannot defy me.”

He lifted his hand toward me and I felt something twist inside me, like he’d somehow grabbed my heart and my lungs and was crushing them in his grip. I staggered and fell against Nathaniel. The pain was searing, ten thousand times worse than the childbirth I had so recently endured.

Nathaniel shot at Lucifer with a bolt of nightfire and Lucifer batted it away casually, like a man waving at a fly. He held out his other hand toward Nathaniel, to hurt him, too, but Puck stayed him.

“He is not yours,” was all he said.

“The boy attacked me,” Lucifer said.

“He is not yours to discipline,” Puck said, and Lucifer nodded.