8 6| Clare

"So," I said, leaning against Luca as he ran his fingers through my hair, "tell me about your family."

After our conversation about the demons and Athena, we had returned to much lighter topics, although a weird heaviness stayed in the air. It was almost worrisome, but, at the moment, Luca was detangling my hair with his long, nimble fingers, and I couldn't focus on anything negative. For the first time in days, I wasn't having a panic attack or feeling like I was about to have one.

He made a quiet noise that could've been amusement, could've been contentedness, or it could've been something else entirely. "What do you want to know?" he asked, his voice light and airy. He seemed relaxed with his crossed ankles and slow, lazy movements. I was laying in his lap, my legs stretched out in front of me, a quilt blanketing me from shoulders to feet.

I would've apologized for prying, but he had just gotten deep into my family history of my crazy uncle and might-be-crazy cousin. "What're they like? Your siblings." I had met two of them: Griffin and Sebastian. I hadn't gotten bad vibes from them, just that they were different. Probably because they were adopted or something like that. They were, however, incredibly handsome.

Luca sighed. "I have five brothers, one sister all adopted. There's Griffin, which you met, and it sometimes seems like there's so many of him I can't keep up with which one is really him, if that makes sense." It didn't, but I nodded anyway, and he grinned like there was a secret I was missing. "He's greedy and selfish, as well, thinking only of himself.

"You also met Sebastian, and he's lazy, but he's also very protective. He holds a grudge against us because his mom was taken from him as a child, whereas we had ours well until our teenage years." He paused for a second, lost in thought, his fingers now nimbly massaging my scalp. I fought the urge to close my eyes and nap.

If I lost either of my parents, I would be a mess. For years. I couldn't hold that against Sebastian. I didn't understand blaming his siblings, especially the adopted ones, but people grieved in different ways. His anger was probably misguided, and he couldn't be mad at the person he was truly upset with. I didn't pry, though, because that was Luca's family business. He had yet to meet anybody in my family besides Bella.

"Then there's Elias. He doesn't come around too often because he's usually very jealous of everyone. I mean, he has everything we do—money, women, job, all of that—but still." Luca shrugged, fingers pausing. "It's like nothing is good enough for him, and it worries me that that'll be his downfall one day. Last time I checked in on him, he was traveling the world, enjoying city after city, girl after girl, desperate to show us that he has it all. Not that we care.

"Angelo was born in Italy. He eats and drinks way more than he should and won't gain a single pound. He eats all day. Actually, there's not a single day I remember him going more than three or four hours without food." He laughed, fingers resuming. "I would say I enjoy him the most. He never comes home empty-handed, and he's the most pleasant to be around. Funny, loud, and never takes anything serious.

"Now, Patrick—our mom used to call him 'Rooster' because he's so prideful. I can't say I know that much about him. He's the second youngest, but he came to us last, so we were all just about out of the house when he arrived. Worried about other things. He used to get into a lot of fights, but that stopped after a few years. To my knowledge anyway.

"Lastly, my sister Kela. She's the embodiment of the saying 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'" Luca stared off in the distance, shuddering. "She lives in the Bahamas right now, I believe. She likes to be alone because everything makes her angry—and when she gets angry, bad things happen. We often joked that hurricanes and tornados were her fault because they had an uncanny ability to appear during one of her tantrums." He chuckled.

"When she's not angry, though, she's irritable and sarcastic, but not in an annoying way. She's funny, serious, and she'll help out in her own way and in her own time."

I tilted my head to the side, glancing up at him. "Like God—He don't answer when you call, but He's always on time?"

Luca, in a very un-sex God-like way, snorted. "You cannot compare any of my siblings to God. Quite the opposite actually. Some would say we're quite… devilish." There was that grin again, like he was in on some secret I knew nothing about. "Kela is more like some old shoes: not your first choice, but they're decent enough in a bind."

I laughed. "That doesn't seem like a very nice way to talk about your sister."

"That's because you haven't met my sister." Although he smiled, Luca had a serious glint to his eyes. I changed the subject—no heavy topics to kill the mood. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn't want to go back to that feeling of crippling anxiety on my chest.

"So, are all of your siblings attractive or just the three I met?" I asked, smiling up at him.

Both Bella and I agreed it was unfair that they all looked that good. None of them even came close to a normal type of beautiful. Luca had that rich, American CEO attractiveness going on with the muscles, tailored designer clothes, long blonde hair and blue eyes—the kissable lips, proud nose, and square jaw. The type of man that looked like he would simultaneously break your heart but treat you like a perfect gentleman in the process. He possessed a "My daddy started this company, and it was mine for the taking from the second I was born" look.

Griffin, with his soft, wavy black hair and fair skin, was handsome in a sneakier way, like you could give him your heart but he'd also take your furniture when you turned your head. He wasn't as tall, and he had a slimmer build than Luca. He also looked to be of Asian descent with a unblemished skin. He looked a bit younger than Luca, though. His smile, while friendly and encouraging, made me think he would trick someone into falling for him just because he could.

Sebastian looked like every handsome, brooding guy in the movies with his honey-colored skin and dark hair, muscles, and all black. He would definitely break your heart, but he would fall head over heels in love with some girl.

Luca arched an eyebrow, eyes glittering as he looked down at me. "You think my brothers are handsome?"

"You're obviously the best lookin', but yeah." I wasn't even lying, though. There was something about Luca that was just real pleasing to my eyes. And my heart, if I was being honest with myself. "Do you have pictures of the others?"

"Yes, we took a family photo some time ago." He pulled out his phone and scrolled through a few rows before showing me a picture that could��ve been taken yesterday. Luca looked exactly the same, except his eyes were a little mischievous in the picture. He had his arm around a tall, dark skin woman with piercing gray eyes and a tight black dress on. She wore a scowl that twisted her otherwise beautiful features, and her waist-length hair was so black, it looked blue. "That's Kela," he explained, "if you can't tell by how angry she looks."

She looked more irritated than angry. "She's so beautiful," I murmured. I found myself weaving her into a book—a girl with lightening in her veins: a love story about an explosive girl with a troubled past who meets a just as explosive boy looking for trouble and trouble they find. Maybe that had been written already. Probably.

Luca smiled. "Yeah, she is. She's so protective, too" he continued. "She's the oldest, so she was the one who showed us how to—how to navigate life. We came from different backgrounds, different walks of life, and our parents couldn't handle that. She used to pull us together, stop us from fighting. Even when she was battling her own demons. I attribute my success to my older sister."

He spoke so affectionately he became choked up.

He made me want to call Chloe and spend time with her. I hadn't spent a lot of alone time with Chloe in months; I was in college, and she was middle school. She had a busy schedule, too, between the yoga, soccer, and other team sports. Not to mention she had friends galore.

Luca cleared his throat before continuing. "Next to her is our redheaded step-child, Patrick." Patrick was, indeed, redheaded. Tall and skinny, too. He had his chin tilted in the air, a half-grin on his face. He wore a black button-down, but it was opened, showing his lack of muscles. His pants were tight, too, and he had a pair of sharp, dark green eyes that somehow felt like they followed me throughout the picture. "He's my brother. That's all I have to say about him."

I laughed. "That bad?"

"Not at all. Patrick is just a piece of work, and it would take years to explain everything that went wrong with him." Luca shook his head, blonde hair brushing against his shoulders. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but I didn't. I waited for him to speak again. "For about ten years, I thought he was Irish, but he was born in Kansas."

For some reason, that made me laugh. "Like Dorothy."

"Wasn't she an orphan, too?" Luca asked. "Maybe Patrick can find something in common with her."

I grinned. I doubted it. Dorothy was kind of annoying, and I hated The Wizard of Oz, but it was a tradition with Daddy to watch it every year for Thanksgiving, so I sucked it up and sung the cute little jingles with him. "I doubt it," I told him, stretching. "I just feel like Patrick wasn't swept up in many tornados that led him to flying' monkeys and melting' witches."

"The witches, no, but the flying monkeys are plausible. He may find more in common with Oompa-Loompas, honestly."

"He likes songs and general mischief?"

"No, he's just short compared to us."

I laughed. "Okay, next sibling, Patrick isn't even here to defend himself." I looked back down at the picture. Standing toward the back was a guy I could only describe as jolly-looking. He wore a big grin, and his arm was slung over another one of the siblings. He was medium-stature with a healthy build, dark brown eyes and chestnut brown hair he had slicked back and resting on the nape of his neck. His skin was tanned, kind of like Sebastian, but they had different features. This guy looked like a Latin American singer. "Let me guess… Angelo?"

Luca nodded. "How did you guess?"

"He looks happy, and if all I did was eat and drink without gaining an ounce, I'd be happy, too."

"You should see him when he's hungry—gives Patrick a run for his money on the least favorite of us." He pointed to the last one, a surly faced guy who was staring off to the side, eyebrows furrowed over his eyes. He looked the youngest with his tanned skin and light green eyes, sharp jawline, and black hair he had cut and messy. He had the beginnings of a beard but not a full one. There was a mischievousness in his eyes that made me wonder if I had food in my teeth or something. "Elias. Both of his parents are Greek. He's the calmest of us all."

Elias looked, in my opinion, the sweetest of them all—it could've been his baby face, or even the way he looked off to the side with his lip curled but no true malice in his face. "I like his face," I told Luca. "Something about him…."

"Calls to you? Yeah, he gets that from me."

Luca returned his phone to his pocket, and I remained quiet, reflecting. There, I had seen all of his siblings, knew them by names and faces and what he thought of them. I wondered if we'd last long enough for me to meet them one day. I hoped we would, but life tended to get in the way of my dreams. I wanted to go to New York for grad school, and Luca had mentioned many times how much he loved New Orleans had no intentions on leaving anytime soon.

I probably shouldn't have gotten my feelings this deeply involved.

"How does he get that from you?" I asked, pulling myself from my reflections.

"He gets something from all of us. It's just that, instead of my intelligence or good looks, he chose to mimic my natural charm," he answered.

"Ah." I sat up, swinging my legs over the sofa. "So, I came over to watch a movie, and, so far, we have not watched a single second of a movie."

He arched an eyebrow. "And here I thought my conversation was entertaining."

I waved my hand in a so-so motion. "It was okay " I teased. "I just really like scary movies." Which wasn't exactly true. When you watched scary movies with guys, they wrapped you in their arms to make you feel comforted and safe. I liked that, so, technically, I liked scary movies, too.

He made a hmph noise, but he got up and put on the movie anyway. When he sat back down, I settled back into his arms. He squeezed me once, and even though I was freaking out about Mother, freaking out about school, and had the weirdest feeling my life was about to change drastically, I felt like, as long as I was right there in Luca's arms, I would be safe.

I spelled my name in the sand with my finger. C-L-A-R-E I-S-A-B-E-L-L-E W-A-L-K-E-R. The water kept washing it away, and I wrote it over and over again. I didn't look down at my twenty-year-old hands but my eight-year-old hands—small hands with chipped, pale blue nail polish.

A red bucket was upturned a few feet away from me, and I thought of my parents' warning: don't get too close to the water, the current will pull you in.

I got close anyway.

Lightning and thunder appeared in the clear sky, and I jumped—scared, surprised. Thick, sticky raindrops fell onto me.

A black hole in the sky opened up.

I looked around to see that I was alone on the beach, except for Sebastian and Luca. They fought each other while ignoring me. It looked like Sebastian was winning.

"Clare—run!" Luca shouted, glancing at me.

Dark water swept over my feet, harsher than the earlier waves. On the other side of me, the safe side to run, the sand split in two and trembled. The ocean grabbed my ankles, pulling me down. I didn't scream, didn't feel afraid. Instead, I dug my fingers into the sand to avoid being pulled under. This was just a dream. A very bad dream, but a bad one nonetheless.

"Clare, run, please," Luca begged, but I had nowhere to go. I looked down, saw that it wasn't water that held me but blood. Ropes of it tried tugging me back into the ocean. It dripped off the letters of my name. It's your blood she wants, it whispered.

Too bad, I thought, but I said nothing aloud.

I closed my eyes, ignoring the sound of hell raining over and around me. It would sound worse than this if she got out. The ground thundered this time, competing with the sky for who could shake the world worse. Instead of thunder, though, the ground's beat came from millions of steps erupting from the split. I looked up, saw Sebastian and Luca standing side by side now, dark swords glistening in their hands, terror painting their faces white.

"I'm sorry," Sebastian said to Luca. "We could've done this together."

Luca didn't respond. He looked at me. "Clare, get up. You can do it. Get up." I didn't know if he was referring to me physically getting up, or me waking up. Either way, I needed to. I pushed myself off the ground, dripping with blood. "We can't do this alone. Where are our siblings?"

Sebastian shrugged. "We need Wrath."

Wrath? That was such a weird name to call someone. "Wrath?" I questioned, but no one answered me. To my left, black shadows came running forward. Tall and thin. Short and fat. The shadows turned to physical beings the closer they came. They had horns. Dark eyes. Rotting skin. Bugs crawling on them. Green and purple and yellow skin. Demons.

I swallowed.

Sebastian took a deep breath. He looked toward the sky. "Athena," he said, and the name was as familiar and loved as a prayer on his mouth. It wasn't a cry for help, but a plea for safety. He didn't want her here; he wanted her safe.

Athena? Was it my Athena he knew? Or rather, did I know his Athena, considering the time that had passed without me and my cousin speaking to each other?

He brought his head down, eyes shiny with tears. Luca sighed. "Lambs to the slaughter," he said. "We should've listened. We should've put our differences aside. We should've saved Greed."

Greed? Wrath?

The ocean screamed at me, a wave coming up and crashing against my back. It wanted to consume me. "Let me go," I murmured, watching the scene pan out in front of me.

Something white came forward, though—one bright white spot I recognized as huge, white wings. An angel. It carried a small girl, dark brown in skin color with mischievous eyes and curly hair. She wasn't dressed for a fight with her heels and a pair of black jeans and a black crop top hoodie, but she held a blade gleaming white in her hands.

Athena!

Her presence both made me feel fear—for her—and excitement.

Following behind her were more angels, dropping off four more girls, all of various sizes and shapes. Then, lastly, a tall boy with a grin that made me want to pinch him, and messy brown hair. Everybody looked prepared for battle.

Sebastian was furious. "I told you to—"

"And," Athena replied, cutting him off, "I told you not to boss me around." She stood next to him, kicking off the heels and leaning into his chest. "Whatever happens, it happens together, Sebastian." If he said her name like a prayer for redemption, she said his like an anchor.

Behind the six of them were six angels. Still, it seemed as if something was missing.

You, I thought.

Athena looked over at me, a little smirk on her face. "Clare, you wanna join us? Wouldn't want you to miss out on the doom and gloom."

"Of course not," I replied, and like that, I was free. The ocean shrieked in response to my release. Heat surged through me.

"And we need a Protector," the girl beside her said. I took my spot on the other side of my cousin. The angel brushed a soft hand against my shoulders.

The mischievous boy with the messy brown hair looked straight ahead. "We are vastly outnumbered."

It was true. Our odds didn't look good.

"Yeah," Athena said, "but, if it makes anybody feel better, I did the math, and we have a one-fourth chance of winning."

Everyone looked at her.

"It's better than nothing," she defended. She reached behind her and grabbed another sword—no, it wasn't a sword, but something else—and handed it to me. They were identical, except for the jewels in the hilt of them. Hers was onyx, mine was opal. The blade fit perfectly in my hands, and when I touched it, it sang to my soul.

"Gabriel," I whispered, and it glowed. I stepped closer to her. She repeated his name, and her blade glowed, too.

The boy took a deep breath. "I'm not good with speeches, although I guess that's supposed to be my 'thing,' but it wasn't in the manual, so all I have to say is, let's not all die tonight."

"Let's not die at all," someone muttered, two people down.

"What happens if we lose?" I asked. Chills rose on my arms.

Luca sighed heavily. "Let's hope we don't find out."

We had a good idea, though. I looked down, saw my toes were no longer chipped, but that they covered in a translucent white. My arms were long, and my tattoo was back. Athena grinned at me. "About time you join the big kids," she teased. She looked ill at ease for someone going into a battle.

Looking back down, I saw my name still etched in the sand, except someone had added some more letters M-U-S-T D-I-E.

"Run, Clare," Luca whispered to me, voice filled with terror.

Then the ocean screamed, and Mother rose.

For a second, I was trapped between the fading remnants of another real-feeling dream and my consciousness. Clare Isabelle Walker must die. I was beginning to think these dreams were more than a coincidence. There had to be some truth to them.

Opening my eyes, I was met with tanned walls instead of the white walls and huge flat-screen TV I had fallen asleep to. I was stretched across a king-sized bed filled with soft pillows and thick blankets. I took a deep breath, trying to get my senses together. My heart wasn't racing, but I did feel odd… Like I had witnessed something bad and resigned myself to it happening.

None of it had made sense, which was on par for me lately. From Luca's interest in me to the dreams plaguing me, none of it had fit into the boxes of my average life.

Despite the knowledge that my dreams were more symbolic than realistic, I couldn't shake the feeling that the dream was a warning of some sort. As it was, the blood seemed to linger on my skin, and my fist remained curled like I carried the hilt of the blade. Gabriel, I thought, and a thrum went through me. I couldn't explain it other than I was going crazy.

"No more sugar before bed, Clare," I told myself, sitting up. The bedroom was plain, obviously a guest room, and the door was cracked just enough I could somewhat hear Luca speaking from wherever he was. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood, stretching toward the ceiling and back until I heard my bones pop.

Outside of the room, I made a left and padded down the hallway until I saw Luca's shadow. He leaned against the wall, drinking whiskey out of the bottle and talking on the phone. "Mother will find a way to rise, regardless of what we do," Luca said, placing the bottle on the table with a thud. "So why don't we save our asses and sacrifice one of them?"

Mother? The same Mother I was talking about?

Sacrifice?

The person on the other end was quiet for a second. "There are only two of 'them:' Athena and Clare," he said, and I recognized the voice for who it was—Sebastian. "You won't let a single hair on Clare's head get touched, so I'm assuming you mean Athena." He sounded flat, but the bubbling anger made me want to shrink back into the guest room.

Luca snorted. "Of course I mean Athena. I would never give up Clare."

At first his words made me happy—Luca liked me—but then I thought about it. Luca not wanting to sacrifice me meant that someone else wanted to sacrifice me, and also that someone needed to sacrifice me.

"You've never cared about me, Lust."

If I was a cartoon character, question marks would've appeared over my head. Lust? A memory tugged at my thoughts, trying to pull me to something that would connect the nickname—but my brain was still jumbled from the dream I was struggling to make sense of.

"You sound like one of many affairs, Brother. If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't suggest giving up your love to Mother," Luca told him, sounding like he was tired. "In order to save ourselves in the long run, we must sacrifice something."

"And what would you be sacrificing?"

"Well, Sloth, our friendship for one." Luca sounded entirely too cheerful for someone talking about sacrificing someone else. "You won't forgive me for giving Athena to Mother, no matter how happy you are to survive."

Sebastian laughed without humor. "We were never friends, barely siblings." He paused, the silence unsure as if he didn't quite know if he wanted to ask the next question. "How is it that you always find a way to sacrifice for me?"

Luca waved his comment off. "It's always what's best for you. You didn't need your family holding you back from reaching your potential. You don't need Athena either. Women and come go, my brother.."

How many Athenas were there in the world? It couldn't have been that many. Actually, I just needed to narrow it down to Athenas in Missouri, especially ones in close proximity with Sebastian. Either way, I didn't want her to be sacrificed. If it came down to it… whoever survived.

Sebastian made an inhuman growl. "You don't make that decision for me. If you come close to her, Clare dies. I won't wait for an explanation." The threat sent chills down my spine. His voice left no room to even suggest there might be a chance of my survival.

Luca's hand tightened around the bottle until it shattered. I jumped, but he didn't notice me. "Fine, then both of them survive. It was only a suggestion, Sloth," he muttered, looking down at his bleeding hand. He shook it a few times. The entire room smelled like whiskey now. He turned on the faucet, sticking his hand underneath it. "So what do you suggest we do? Eventually, she'll rise, and then what? We beat her? How?"

However, Sebastian either didn't care about his question or was still reeling from the suggestion of giving Athena up to Mother because he didn't answer him. "Greed showed up today, using his powers and attempting control of Athena ."

Luca turned the faucet off. His hand was clean—no scratches, no wounds. Nothing. I blinked in surprise. "You know how Greed is. If he wants something, he'll take it. Honestly, between him and Envy, I'm not sure which one is worse."

Powers? Greed? Envy? He was obviously talking about his siblings.

You're going crazy, Clare, I told myself for the hundredth time in a week. None of this was real. This was just another one of those crazy dreams. I pinched myself. "Ouch," I mouthed. Nope, I wasn't dreaming.

Sebastian sounded angrier. Instead of saying something, though, there was a more feminine voice in the background. Hey, Bash, Griffin is Greed, right? she asked. Her voice was Southern-accented, a little country, a lot of honey. It had been more than ten years since I last heard it, but I recognized it immediately. Athena. Did she know the predicament we were in? Or at least what Luca and Sebastian thought we were in? Oh, sorry, didn't know you were on the phone. She couldn't. She sounded way too cheerful, too upbeat.

Griffin is Greed. Envy. Lust. Luca. Elias. Lust. Envy. Greed. The words repeated in my head. I was the creative cousin, not the smart one. A bell was ringing, but I couldn't figure out why. I knew but didn't know.

Luca stopped suddenly, peering around the door frame. "The Seven Deadly Sins, Clare. That's what you're missing." He smiled, sitting down in the chair and motioning to the seat in front of me. "I thought I would wait a few more dates to tell you I'm one of the most powerful demons you'll ever meet, but there's no time like the present."

Next chapter