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venture inside clearly written across his expression, right beside the scars that served as Lucifer’s permanent reminder about who truly ruled Hell.
    “I warned you this could take a while,” he said. “They’re Nephilim. Without Guardians we can eavesdrop on, we have no way to trace them other than through the woman.”
    Lucifer’s nostrils flared, and the hand he rested on the desk curled into a fist. Across the room, Sam shifted. Lucifer didn’t bother telling him it was the thought of the woman that irritated him and not Sam’s news. He liked the former Archangel this way: a little nervous, a little cautious, a lot respectful.
    No, Sam wasn’t the issue. The woman, on the other hand . . . now,
she
infuriated him. The defiance, the sheer insolence . . . His fingers curled tighter. Killing his child, maiming herself so she could not bear another . . .
    He glowered at his aide. “Have we made
any
progress?”
    “We’ve located where the woman works, and we’re watching her around the clock. It’s just a matter of time until she reaches out to her sister.”
    “
Watching
her? Why in bloody Heaven would we sit back and
watch
? Take her, damn it.
Make
her tell you where to find the sister.”
    “That might not be wise. The Archangels have been watching her, too. At first it was only Aramael, and I thought it was personal, but now Mika’el is hovering over her. We don’t know what his interest is, but if we take her and he wants her . . .”
    His aide’s voice trailed off.
    “Bloody Heaven!” Lucifer thrust back his chair and rose, stalking to the window. Weariness wound through him. What was the Archangel up to now? The warrior had been
such
a thorn in his side. The only being in all of Heaven, other than the One, powerful enough to take him on and not be decimated in the process. First rallying the Archangels to force him across that damnable Hellfire barrier, then derailing his attempt to mold his son, and now returning to interfere yet again.
    Bracing a hand on either side of the window, he stared out at the gray, brittle landscape. The gardens that defied his efforts to recreate Heaven had declined yet further. Nothing remained but the withered corpses of what he’d intended. Bitterness filled him, settling like dry dust on his tongue.
    For the first time in his existence, disquiet slithered down his spine. A possibility he’d denied for more than six thousand years took form low in his belly, gelled into certainty.
    I’m going to lose it,
he thought.
I’m going to lose it all.
    Maybe not now, maybe not even soon, but eventually.
    It was inevitable.
    For an instant, the realization paralyzed him. Held him as a fly might be held by a spider, passive and unmoving, tangled beyond hope in strands of unbreakable silk. He shook off the suffocating cling of the metaphor. Loss might be inevitable, but it wouldn’t happen yet. Not if he could help it.
    Not until he had ensured humanity’s absolute, total destruction. He spun back to face Samael.
    “What about the Nephilim? Are we at least ready for them?”
    “We’re working on it. The city we chose has been abandoned for a long time. It’s not an easy task readying it without drawing attention to ourselves.”
    “You’ve had human interference?”
    “Not in Pripyat itself, no. We caused the radiation levels to spike, so they’ve shut the area down tight. The only way in is through checkpoints, and we control those. Making arrangements for supplies without alerting the Guardians has been interesting, but so far we’ve managed. The pregnant humans, however, are another matter. We’ve had to assign a watcher to each of them to prevent them from ridding themselves of the babies.”
    “Can we not just move them to the site right now?”
    “And end up fighting the war with Heaven in the midst of your unborn army? That might not be the wisest course of action. We’re better off waiting until after the births. We’ll only need a few