“I know.” She looked down, remembering the cup of coffee in her hand, and took a drink. It was cold and stale, but it felt good going down her parched throat. “She tangled with an angel.”

One dark eyebrow shot up. “That explains it.”

“Will she be okay?”

Silence. It only lasted for a heartbeat, but it was enough to curdle the creamed coffee in her belly. “I don’t know. I repaired what I could, but whatever weapon the angel used scrambled her insides. It actually reversed my healing ability and caused more damage, which means it was a specialty weapon, like grimlight or haloshiv.”

Which meant a specialty angel had wielded the weapon. A specialty angel like an Enforcer. Or, as Deva claimed, an Eradicator, Heaven’s extermination specialists. With the ability to see through enchantments and sense things other angels couldn’t – like angel DNA inside someone who shouldn’t have it – they were Enemy Number One to beings like Blaspheme.

“So what are you saying?” She knew, but she needed to hear it. Needed it to be real, or she’d live in a world of make-believe where everything was happy-happy and her mother would recover all by herself, the way fallen angels always did.

“She’s still in danger,” he said. “I’ll look into some alternative treatments, but for now, it’s a waiting game. I’m sorry, Blaspheme. I wish I had better news.”

“Thank you,” she said numbly. Her brain had shut down after the word danger, leaving her disoriented and reeling. “I, ah… I want to see her.”

“Of course.” Eidolon rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “If you need anything, let me know. Take off all the time you want.”

She gave a noncommittal nod, but she wouldn’t be taking any time off. She had nothing else to do but work, and as long as her mother was in the hospital, she’d be here, too. Besides, she loved her job, had never felt as needed as she did when she was elbow-deep in someone’s chest cavity. There was just something about giving life.

No number of saved lives can give back the one you took.

The nagging voice in her head was always there to keep her feet on the ground. Technically, she hadn’t taken a life. But one had been sacrificed for her, and she was going to honor that. She had no doubt, in fact, that her guilt had been the reason she’d chosen a career in medicine.

Leaving Eidolon, she hurried to the recovery room, where her mother was hooked up to machines Blaspheme could operate blindfolded, but right now she couldn’t even remember what they were called.

“Blas.” Deva’s voice was barely a whisper.

Blaspheme gripped her mother’s pale hand and sank into the chair next to the bed. “Don’t talk. You need to rest.”

Ignoring her, Deva opened her eyes, the vivid aqua now hazy with pain and meds. “Where… where am I?”

“You’re at Underworld General. Don’t worry, you’re safe. Angels can’t enter.”

The problem was that Devastation couldn’t stay here forever, and clearly, she couldn’t return home. She could find a place to stay in Sheoul, but if Heavenly angels had located her, it wouldn’t be long before fallen angels such as Destroyers, the Sheoul equivalent of Eradicators, found her as well… and then there wouldn’t be a safe spot for her in the entire universe.

Vyrm, the forbidden offspring of an angel and a fallen angel, weren’t tolerated by Heaven nor hell, and neither were their parents. After nearly two hundred years of frequent moves, name changes, and close calls, Blaspheme was all too aware of that fact.

“How… bad?”

Blaspheme couldn’t lie to her mother – hell, she wasn’t the best liar to begin with. “The surgery went well,” she said. “But there are some complications from whatever weapon you were attacked with.”

As if on cue, Deva inhaled a rattling breath, and on the exhale, blood sprayed from her nose and mouth. “The angel… he used… grimlight.”

Shit. Grimlight, a weapon used exclusively by Eradicators, confirmed what Eidolon had said. Blas reached for a bedside tissue and gently dabbed away the blood on her mother’s face as she let the reality of the situation sink in. Heaven had found her mother, which meant they couldn’t be far behind Blaspheme.

“I’m going to die, Blas.”

“No.” She squeezed her mom’s hand. “I always knew this day could come. I’ve done a lot of research into grimlight —”

“The damage… it can’t be repaired.”

“I know, but you can survive it.”

“I’ll be weak.” Deva coughed again. “A shell of myself.”

“You could never be weak,” Blaspheme murmured.

Damn, but Blas wished she could use her angelic or fallen angelic abilities to at least attempt to heal her mother, but the spell that disguised her as a False Angel was still blocking her powers even as the FA ones failed. Why her mother had chosen a False Angel as her cover, Blaspheme didn’t know, but as far as wimpy demons went, False Angels were at the top of the list.

For the millionth time today, she glanced down at the barely visible scar on her wrist, the one she’d gotten just moments after her birth, when her mother performed the ceremony to conceal Blaspheme’s vyrm identity within a False Angel aura. Practically speaking, she had been a False Angel, with all of the strengths and weaknesses inherent to the species.