6 Under The Final Moon (7 page)

“It’s just an earthquake, people,” Nina said, filing her nails while perched on a stool. The rattling of the earth stopped for a few seconds—long enough for Nina to glare as if daring the earth to continue to shake and possibly interrupt her manicure a second time—before it set to rattling again.

A couple of trolls stepped under the coffee table, little troll hands gripping the pressboard edges of our cheap IKEA furniture. A zombie started to systematically fall apart as his stiff limbs refused to roll with the earth. Nina continued filing, but I noticed she had hooked her Via Spiga peep-toe booties behind the legs of her stool, her thigh muscles tight as she held on. I instinctively heard my second-grade teacher’s voice ring through my head:
Duck and cover!
I dropped to my knees, crawling across the waiting room, looking for someplace to cover. I went for the coffee table, but the trolls growled at me. I could have fit under one of the waiting room chairs if I hadn’t eaten those last five or six dozen boxes of chocolate marshmallow Pinwheels. I made my way to a doorframe and stood there triumphantly as magazines jiggled off tables and the spider plant I had been forced to repot due to similar—though vampire, not natural—disasters fell and broke.

And just as quickly as the growl started and the shaking tore through the place, it stopped. Everything was plunged into an immediate, eerie silence for a beat before we heard the car alarms, the barking dogs, and the sirens.

“Wow,” Nina said, popping off her stool. “That was a good one. Kind of like 1906.” She grinned, a wide, toothy smile, ultra-white fangs gleaming. “You can’t take your eyes off them, can you?”

She was talking about her teeth and I had to agree. “Yeah. The pulsing blue is mesmerizing.” I turned. “Everyone okay in here?”

Everyone was creeping out of their duck-and-cover spaces, and I considered laying into them about letting the only person who could die—whose life could actually
end
should she be clobbered by a falling desk or grandfather clock—fend for herself in the duck-but un-coverable open space of the waiting room. But one look at the pale, nervous faces of the trolls and the sad zombie, shoulder stumps reaching uselessly for arms that were flopping on the industrial-grade carpet, and I decided against it.

“That was quite the shaker,” Vlad said, coming down the hallway. He was grinning too, though his fangs had not gone through the Crest 3D White treatment (probably against VERM policy) and weren’t quite as blinding. He waggled his brows. “Someone’s awake down there.”

Sampson came down the hall next, a few other employees trailing him, everyone looking in on everyone else to make sure there were no (more) lost limbs or lives.

“Are you okay, Sophie?” It was Lorraine, our resident Gestalt witch and Kale’s mentor. Her honey-colored hair was pushed back, over her forehead. Her eyebrows were drawn and her blue-green eyes looked concerned. It warmed me.

“I’m okay, Lorraine, thanks.”

She nodded curtly, and I noticed everyone else was staring at me, wide-eyed, studiously. “I-I’m okay ever yone,” I said, self-consciousness washing over me in pink-tinged waves.

“Oh, good.”

“That’s good.”

I heard the murmuring and a few stepped forward to pat me on the back or touch my arm gingerly, and I was basking in the warmth of this weird, horned, extended
family
that cared, that gave a damn whether I lived or died.

And then, the elevator dinged.

Alex was standing there and it was like the first time I’d ever seen him: his shoulders were thrown back, chin hitched, one lock of wavy hair impishly falling over his forehead. His chest looked impossibly broad, Greek-God like, and when his badge winked from his hip, I felt my mouth water.

Once again, I was:
Sophie Lawson, turned on in the face of disaster.

Alex’s icy eyes cut across the waiting room until he saw me. I saw him suck in a breath, and I was ready to shimmy out of my panties—all the demons cared
and
Alex, too—when the other elevator dinged.

We all waited, no one breathing, until the doors slid open.

Then I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Will was in the second elevator, leaning against the back wall and looking relaxed and comfortably cool, as though he were in an Abercrombie adjust awaiting his scantily clad co-model. His hazel eyes were slightly hooded in that “hey, baby, I’m holding a kitten” kind of way that made my heart bloom and ignited something low in my belly. Between the two of them I was a pile of supercharged horny goo while the whole of the world trembled on the precipice of holy hell.

As I clamped my knees together and gritted my teeth, I was fairly certain that my inappropriate sex drive was half the reason the city was vaulting toward our brimstony demise.

Both Alex and Will stepped out at the same time, each with a set of eyes fixed on me for a brief second before they glanced at each other. Then each seemed to get an inch taller. Suddenly, chests were puffed out and, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m fairly certain that arms were flexed. I would have paused to scrutinize further, but both made a beeline for me, talking at the same time.

“Wanted to make sure—”

“—you were okay down here.”

They stopped talking at the same time, too, glared at each other, then swung to face me and my army of Underworld associates.

“We’re all okay here,” I said, feeling suddenly overwhelmed with domestic love and nearly throwing my arms around the armless zombie and the troll who had kicked me out from under the coffee table.

“Things aren’t okay up there,” Alex said, jaw tense, eyes fierce.

“I’m going to suit up. It’s chaos out there,” Will agreed.

“Will, you’re injured. You can’t go to work.”

He shrugged and I felt a wave of respect for his dedication and annoyance for his stupid hardheadedness. I glanced behind me and saw everyone rapt.

“Well, guys”—I was so appreciating the plural there—“I really appreciate you coming down to check on me, but I’m safe and—”

“I wasn’t coming to check on you,” Alex said, then paused. “I mean, I’m glad you’re okay but—”

“I think what angel boy is trying to say is that this isn’t about you.” Will’s eyes coasted over me and to the group formed around me. “It’s about them.”

“Don’t call me Angel Boy,” Alex growled.

I frowned. “Hey, wait. What do you mean it’s about them?”

“Something’s coming, Lawson.” The muscle along Alex’s jaw jumped, and I knew he was tense, clenching his teeth against saying what he really wanted—or needed—to say.

Will gave Alex a cursory glance and then looked back at me. “I think it’s already here.”

“I know. We all know. Will was stabbed. It’s the Grigori. And the gates of Hell.”

For a group of demons that barely shared a breath between them, the collective air that got sucked in behind me was deafening. I turned to look, and every eye was wide and terror stricken. Mouths hung open.

“Figure of speech?” I said hopefully, trying to wipe the abject fear from the faces of those who usually terrified. No one moved, and I turned back to Alex and Will.

The guys exchanged a glance and a heavy black stone sunk in my gut. There was more. I opened my mouth and then shut it, completely unsure of what this entire encounter meant, but expert enough to know it was bad. Really, really bad.

Will’s cell phone chirped a strident ring that nearly yelled “emergency,” and Alex’s went soon after.

Will grabbed both of my arms. “Stay here until I come back for you.”

Alex nudged Will slightly, his eyes settling on mine for a split second before they went over my head. I turned, seeing Sampson striding down the hall.

“Sampson.”

Both Will and Alex both strode for the elevator and popped in the same one. I vaguely wondered who would make it to the upper world alive. I turned and clapped my hands once. “So, that was weird. Earthquake, them, sorry about that.”

But nobody moved.

“Should we get back to work? Sampson?”

Sampson swallowed hard, sucking in a long, deep breath. “Can you come with me, Sophie?”

I blinked and everyone peeled away silently—even Nina. I tried to catch her eye, to silently question, but either she didn’t see me or she was purposely avoiding me. But it couldn’t be that, because Nina was my best friend. Wasn’t she?

With his hand on my elbow, Sampson led me to his office. He offered me the guest chair and went around to his desk, sitting, staring at me in silence.

“What is it? No offense, but you’re kind of scaring me with all this.” I gestured to the look of consternation on his face, to the way his lips were pulled downward at the corners.

“This isn’t easy to say, Sophie.”

I straightened, pricks of heat walking up my spine. “What isn’t easy to say?”

Sampson seemed to sag, sinking back in his chair. “You know, I never had children of my own.”

I nodded nervously.

“I didn’t want them to carry this burden that I’ve been saddled with.”

“You know they might not—it doesn’t always work that way.” My voice was small and my head was churning. What was Sampson trying to get at? I knew all this already.

“I know. But having you here, especially after your grandmother made me promise to take good care of you, I kind of feel like I have a daughter in you.”

A lump was rising in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down. I wasn’t sure if I was on the verge of tears because I’d always thought of Sampson like a father, or because no one says “I’ve always thought of you like a daughter” unless it’s a college graduation or you’re about to die.

And I graduated college a long time ago.

“But we both know I’m not your father, Sophie. You do have a father.”

“I have a man who added his genetic material to my mother’s to make me, yes. But he’s no father.”

Sampson nodded, taking that in. “Nonetheless, he’s your father.”

I stood, suddenly agitated. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run from the building. I wanted to hop a plane to Tahiti where no one would talk to me in this weird, ominous commentary that said nothing but meant something I didn’t want to know.

“What’s going on, Sampson? Just tell me. I’m not a little girl. And hell, I’ve faced, like, everything. Real murderers, mythical murderers, bat-shit-crazy high school students. Why is everyone looking at me like I’m about to die or burst into flames at any moment? It’s really fucking unnerving.”

“It’s him.”

“Him who? What the hell? Why can’t people just say what they mean? ‘It’s Harry, Sophie.’ ‘It’s Jack, Sophie.’ Why ‘him’? What is everyone trying to keep secret?”

Sampson nodded slightly, the motion nearly imperceptible. “You’re right. It’s Lucas Szabo.”

I sat down hard, feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. “Lucas Szabo?”

Yes, I had known my father was involved. Whispers of “Satan” and “the devil” had been everywhere, casually tossed out in the last two days. But that name—hearing it, molding my lips around it and squeezing out the sound—hit a place so deeply buried in my psyche that I never wanted to revisit it. Lucas was my father, the one who, four days after my birth, abandoned me and my mother, and who, when I was nearly three, caused my mother to take her own life. He was a horrible, spiteful man, but for some twisted and masochistic reason, I had always wanted him to notice me, to want to come back to be with me, to approve of me, his daughter. I knew, intellectually, that could never happen because I knew who Lucas Szabo really was.

My father is Satan.

It strikes a chill down my spine whenever I think about it—which I try to make as little as possible. He had raised another daughter, my half-sister Ophelia. And even though she was evil and cuckoo bananas crazy, he had raised her and loved her and kept her with him—when he had abandoned me.

I know that Hell is no place for a child. And frankly, I’ve never been totally sure of what my father does or what, exactly, being the devil entails. I mean, I was the one swallowing souls, so really, what else was there? I guessed he was in charge of heinous eternities and sharpening pitchforks and all, but I had never dwelled on it. My father didn’t want to have anything to do with me, so even if I wanted to, it wasn’t like he was grooming me to take over the family business or anything. Which I would be terrible at, truth be told. I’m a total softie. I hate serial killers and axe murderers and people who say “supposably” as much as the next person, but damning someone to Hell? That seems a little heavy handed. And actually being the devil? Well, frankly, I look awful in red. Like a big stewed lobster.

“Do you understand, Sophie?”

I shook myself out of my head. “I’m sorry, what?”

Sampson blew out a sigh, but his lips turned up into a twinge of a smile. “Always Sophie. What I said was there has been a prophecy, a foretelling, whatever you want to call it. Are you aware of this?”

I squirmed. “Like the Mayan 2012 thing? Or the Nostradamus thing? Or is there another thing?”

“Armageddon, apocalypse—it’s been called a lot of things.”

I batted at the air and crossed my legs. “Of course I’ve heard of all that end-of-the-world stuff. I’ve seen every zombie/apocalypse movie ever made. And I swear, the way the zombies down here react, you’d think they really believe they’re next in line to take over. Who are we kidding, right? Zombies are going to overthrow us. With what? Half of them can’t keep track of their own limbs to save their . . . lives.”

I knew that wasn’t what Sampson meant. I know because when I’m wrong and I don’t want to face reality or the craptasm that is
my
reality, I babble.

“Satan has been calling people in.”

“Okay.”

“Just like the good, his people can roam free. They are allowed to do as much destruction as they like.”

“Allowed?”

“Well, by his standards.”

I nodded. “Because everyone has free will.”

Sampson bobbed his head. “That’s the spin he puts on it.”

“So I don’t understand. I know he’s my—” I wanted to say “sperm donor,” but it didn’t seem appropriate in the shadow of Sampson’s Boss of the Year trophy. “I know he’s my father, but why does he want to see me? Why now? Why is he”—I pantomimed shaking the earth—“doing all this?”

“Well, Sophie—”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me. The devil works in mysterious ways?”

Sampson gave me a look, and I blew out an exasperated sigh. “It’s been said in all the stories, prophecies, whatever you want to call them that one day the devil will come back and call on all his sons”—his eyes cut to me—“or daughters, as it were, and his family will rise up to overtake the good of humanity.”

“I’m not answering that call. I’m not rising up. I am good. I mean, sure, I’ve sampled a few grapes before buying and yes, I admit it, I did cut that tag off my mattress under penalty of law, but that hardly equates to me being rooted in evil or joining the uprising against, you know, you guys.”

Sampson looked down at his hands. “I’m hardly good, Sophie.”

“Regardless, I have no intention of going into the family business. So what am I supposed to do?”

Sampson clapped a hand over his mouth and stroked his chin. “A lot of people could potentially be in danger.”

“Prophecy, prophecy.” I nodded.

“A lot of our people.”

My eyebrows went up. “Our people? Underworld people? Our people eat my people for breakfast. Or they would if it wouldn’t cause their insurance premiums to skyrocket.”

“Sophie, I care about you. I love you, you know that. But you can’t be here.”

Sampson didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but it felt like he had kicked me in the chest.

“What are you saying, Sampson?”

He pushed back from his chair, stood, and started to pace. “I promised your grandmother that I would always protect you.”

“Yeah, we covered that.”

“But I have a duty to protect the demons of the Underworld, too.”

I pumped my head. “Yeah, yeah.”

“You being here—and Lucas, with this, with”—the words seemed to choke in his throat—“you, is putting everyone down here in danger.”

My body temperature bottomed out. I could feel the icy cold seeping into my hands and feet, swirling through my veins. “Oh.”

“It’s not permanent, of course. Certainly not. You’re still a very important part of the Underworld Detection Agency, Sophie, and you always will be. You are a part of this family—”

“But I just can’t be here.”

The obvious pain in Sampson’s face should have moved me, but it didn’t. “So I give everything I have to the Underworld Detection Agency—to everyone here—and now that I might be the one who needs help . . .”

“You have to understand where I’m coming from, Sophie.”

I held up a silencing hand. “I get it. You have a duty to protect everyone. The good of one versus the good of the many. I know, I’ve seen that
Star Trek
episode.”

“Sophie, please. We’re not abandoning you. We would never abandon you. We’re all here—”

I stood, numb. “But I can’t be.”

“It’s just that we don’t know what to expect with you father. He’s a trickster. And I can’t, in good conscience, risk—”

“Sampson, I understand.”

He dropped his head. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”

I stood up silently, without looking at Sampson, and walked back to my office. I had planned on avoiding the stares of everyone around me, but I didn’t have to. Once they saw me coming, everyone averted their eyes, turned their backs on me, pretended to be busy with anything else.

I had gone from a glowing cocoon of two-man love to being the loneliest person on the planet in a matter of moments.

I stayed in my office and organized and reorganized papers until I was sure just about everyone had left the building. I kept the radio on, my computer speakers on low as newscasters broadcast minute-by-minute updates on the quakes—which streets had buckled, which blocks still didn’t have power, how many people had been freed from the rubble.

Sampson’s words kept coming back to me, and each time they did I turned the volume up a little bit more so that the scientists and seismologists that the radio station kept patching in could explain that earthquakes happened because of shifting tectonic plates and heat and not because a piddly redheaded woman had Satan’s calling card running through her veins.

There were fires and there were tragedies. That didn’t always spell the end of the world—at least that’s what I kept telling myself as I rode up the elevator, listening to the soothing sounds of Jon Secada Muzak.

“Oh. Hey.”

Alex was standing in the police station vestibule, but he was dressed in full SWAT gear and my knees started to shake faster than the earth did. He looked rugged with a five o’clock shadow and dirt streaked over one cheek, his hair plastered back with sweat and grit. He was dressed in all black, his short sleeves straining against his thick, round biceps, showing just the tip end of his feather tattoo. His black-gloved hands were fisted at his sides and even though he had an assault rifle slung across his slim-fitting bullet-proof vest and a six-inch knife strapped to his thigh, I had the overwhelming and unsafe urge to rush him, to throw my arms around him and hiccup-cry until he promised me that no one was abandoning me, that he would always be with me.

Instead, I shifted my weight and cleared my throat, biting back those threatening tears. “You look pretty. Tough. You look pretty tough,” I said, with all the grace of a blubbering idiot.

He wiped a piece of grit from his chin with the back of his hand, and if I hadn’t been served such a heartbreaking blow by my so-called “family” downstairs, I would have tripped over my panties falling head over heels, once again, for Alex.

“You shouldn’t have taken the elevator.”

It wasn’t exactly the sexy, comforting line I had imagined, but the fact that SWAT Alex was talking to me still sent a delighted shiver through me. I realized that the only thing I was in real danger of was becoming a jiggly pool of lady goo.

“Sorry,” was my sexy rejoin.

“Anyone else down there?”

I shook my head. “Why are you dressed like that? You’re a detective.”

“It’s a state of emergency. The city was hit pretty severely by the quake. Power lines are down, windows were shattered on Market. There’s widespread looting. I’m SWAT trained so I was patrolling. People get pretty awful when they think they can take advantage of someone else’s misfortune. Is there a reason you’re staring at me?”

He patted his chest with his gloved hands, and I clamped my knees together tightly.

“No. I was just listening intently to what you had to say. Why did you come back here if it’s so bad out there?”

“Things are beginning to go back to normal. Power is being restored. And you weren’t answering either of your phones. Nina said she’d left you back at the office.”

There was a wash of crimson under the dirt streak on Alex’s cheeks.

“You came to save me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I came to check on you. If anyone is going to be able to save herself, it’s going to be you. Come on.”

He threw an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the door.

“I must be moving up in the world. Usually you would ask how I was responsible for the disaster in progress.”

“Yeah, well, I thought this one was probably out of your realm of expertise.”

Alex pushed open the door for me, and we both scanned the city in the fading twilight. We weren’t staring at the city I lived in; we were staring at the smoky, ruined set of some disaster film. Cars were abandoned in intersections. A piece of street had buckled and split down the center. A Muni bus sat empty, doors wide open, gaping front windows like hollow, sightless eyes. The humming pulse of San Francisco—horns honking, cable cars ringing, the general chatter of
life
in the city—had been snuffed out, and the silence was unnerving.

I shivered. “This is weird.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“That’s okay—I drove today.” I pointed to my little Honda, which looked like it had been fished out of the bowels of the earth post-quake. Most of the spray-painted VAMPIRE graffiti had worn off, and I had fixed the back window with a good dose of duct tape. It wasn’t much to look at, but it moved. Mostly.