“Go away,” I said weakly. “You can’t have him. He’s mine.”
“No,” Lucifer said. “He is mine. As are you. Mine to manipulate, mine to control, mine to keep forever.”
He started toward our little cluster of people, then stopped abruptly, fury rising on his face. J.B.’s head was just above mine, and I saw him smile with satisfaction.
“I put a circle around us,” he said. “This is my kingdom, and it should have a little more oomph than your regular ordinary spell circle.”
“Ah, I thought the trees looked familiar. This is the woods around Amarantha’s castle,” I said. “Apparently my brain directed us somewhere safe.”
“How would you know what the trees looked like?” Beezle said, his eyes still covered. “You burned down half the forest.”
“How many times do I need to say it was an accident?” I said.
Lucifer pounded his fist on the invisible wall of the circle. “You cannot stay in there forever. You belong to me, and so does your child. And when you emerge I will claim what is mine.”
“I belong to no one but myself,” I said. “And my baby is mine, mine and Gabriel’s.”
I had a moment to wonder why on earth Puck and Alerian were with Lucifer; then I suddenly felt it. It was happening. It was happening right now.
“He’s coming!” I shouted to Nathaniel, and I gave a tremendous push, pouring all of my remaining energy into giving birth to my son.
It seemed like the world narrowed to this one action, just me and Nathaniel and the baby between us, and then the pressure abruptly ceased, and he was free.
Nathaniel wiped the baby’s face with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, and my son gave a loud, angry cry.
“Let me see him,” I said, trying to sit up. “I want to see him.”
Beezle peeked out from between his fingers. “He looks like an alien.”
Nathaniel held the baby up so I could see him—a perfectly normal-looking human baby, his skin mottled purple and red from the birth. As I watched, tiny little white wings unfolded from his back.
I burst into tears and reached for him.
“I need to cut the umbilical cord,” Nathaniel said, and used his magic to do so.
A moment later my son was in my arms, his angry little face being cleaned with my tears. My wings unfolded from my back and closed around us, keeping us safe inside. My son and me. My son.
“He’s mad that it’s so cold out here,” Jude said.
Nathaniel quickly unbuttoned his shirt and handed it to me to wrap the baby in.
“Shh,” I said. “Shh, it’s all right.”
He quieted immediately, blinking up at me with eyes the color of the sky in deepest space. His hair was as black as mine and he had a full head of it, wild and thick.
“He can’t really see you,” J.B. said. “But he knows your voice.”
I stared at the baby in wonder, at the tiny perfection of his little eyelashes and lips, at his so-small fingers and toes.
“He’s perfect,” I said.
Beezle fluttered over to my shoulder, peering down at the baby. “I still say he looks like an alien. He looks just like you did when you were born.”
“Then he will be beautiful,” J.B. said, and kissed the top of my head.
The ever-practical Nathaniel had been cleaning me up and fashioning a kind of skirt out of his coat for me to wear while we were all cooing over the baby. J.B. helped me to my feet, and Nathaniel wrapped the cloth around my waist. I wobbled a little as I stood.
Nathaniel and J.B. flanked me, both of them helping me stay on my feet, and Jude and Samiel joined the line. Beezle had clung to my shoulder throughout. Now we all faced the furious Lucifer and his brothers.
Puck winked at me. Normally this would make me want to blast him in the face with nightfire, but I was feeling so at peace at the moment that I couldn’t work up the energy to be mad. The birth of my child and the revelation that I didn’t need to use the shadow to exercise my power had gone a long way toward improving my feelings about the world.
Of course, we were basically trapped inside a circle inside J.B.’s forest, and Lucifer waited outside for us to get tired or go crazy. Obviously this situation was not sustainable.
“What are you going to call him?” Beezle said.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I guess I thought I would have more time to think about it.”
I didn’t say that I’d always secretly been worried that he would be a monster, like so many of Lucifer’s children, and that it had seemed like bad luck to think of names for something that might have to be destroyed or locked up. It seemed like a miracle that given this child’s bloodlines he was completely normal—or as normal as a kid with wings could be.
Lucifer seemed to grow in size as we watched. I remember he had done this once before, to try to stare me down when I’d been insubordinate. Puck seemed vaguely amused by Lucifer’s display. Alerian appeared bored.
I felt the waves of frustration and anger coming from Lucifer, and then it seemed like there was more pressure in the air than there had been before.
“He’s trying to break the circle,” I said, holding my baby a little closer. After the initial bout of crying, he had settled down, and now seemed to be looking around in curiosity with his unfocused eyes.
“The circle should hold,” J.B. said. “He’s not in his kingdom. He’s in mine. This is my ground, and my power comes from here.”