Chapter 78: Chapter Sixty-Eight

Sinclair and I followed Damien back upstairs, knowing that what we'd just done was only the beginning. Amelia had caused Damien to lose the one thing he cared about, and now that she was gone, nothing was stopping him from being the ruler all vampires had come to fear. Before he found Bast, Damien had a reputation of ruling with an iron fist and was known to slaughter vampires buy the hundreds, simply for doing something he didn't like. Regardless of if what they did was illegal or not, he didn't entirely care as he would kill them anyway. Finding Bastet gave him a new outlook on his rule, which in turn, caused him to be a ruler that many respected rather than feared.

"Here," Damien said, tossing both of us a change of clothes before going upstairs and into Bast's room. Sinclair went into the study while I went to Damien's room to change, then threw our clothes into a burning bin on the driveway, and waited for Damien to join us.

"Bartholomew, are you leaving?" Damien asked as he came down the front steps, looking over to Bartholomew and some of his guards who were still cleaning the blood out of the grass, and taking down the wedding decorations.

"My king, if it's alright, I would like to stay and help. I know you'll be going on a rampage, and though I don't know and love your bride as you do, I've still the utmost respect for her." Bartholomew said as he came over to us, stopping a few hundred feet away to fall to his knees, bowing his head. 'Of course, you have respect for her, thousands of vampires do. After all, she's the reason Damien stopped killing vampires for even looking at him wrong.'

"Do you have someone to watch over your continent in your absence?" Damien asked as he tossed his clothes into the fire, nodding to Bartholomew as he bowed, telling him to stand.

"You were a groomsman in your king's wedding, yet you still feel it necessary to bow every time you speak to him?" Sinclair asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We've tried for a century to get him to stop, he won't," I responded with a shake of my head. Bartholomew was a friend to Damien just as much as I was, but he still bowed every time he spoke to Damien. After over a century of telling him it wasn't necessary, he still did it. After a few decades, Damien and I stopped trying to tell him to stop.

"Do you wish to know what you are asking to be a part of? If you are going to fighting alongside me during this, I'd suggest you start calling me Damien, as we will be in public and you cannot call me King or Lucifer." Damien asked him, taking out his phone and dialing a number, but waiting for him to respond before starting the call.

"It's not needed, as I will fight any battle you find yourself in. Yes, I've my lieutenant watching the continent, and he can do so without being watched." Bartholomew said as I went back into the house to get him a change of clothes. Though he was used to wearing clothes drenched in blood, the humans don't look kindly on that type of attire. After grabbing him a new set of clothes, I returned downstairs to hand them to him.

"Go to the library so you can still hear us," I said to him as I turned to face Damien, curious as to who he was calling, but didn't want to piss him off by asking, so I waited instead.

"Hello, this is Damien Edge." He said as the person on the other line answered the call, then pulled the phone away from his ear with a soft growl when the woman's voice raised to a high-pitched squeak.

"Damien Edge? Oh my god, oh um... How can I help you, sir?" She asked, trying and failing to regain her composure.

"I heard that my client, Bastet Morris was taken into custody?"

"Your client?" The woman asked incredulously, then pulled the phone away from her mouth to muffle the "That lucky bitch." Statement she made, but for obvious reasons, we could all hear it regardless. I shook my head at Bartholomew as he came back outside, telling him not to speak. "Yes, she turned herself in a few hours ago. Are you coming to speak to her?"

"Yes, have her taken to an interrogation room, I'll be there in ten minutes," Damien said, then without waiting for the woman to respond, he ended the call. He sighed and shook his head before turning to face Sinclair, Bartholomew, and me. "Bartholomew and Sam, go find out where Amelia is hiding. Bring her to me when you find her. Coming back empty-handed is not recommended. Sam, with me." He said before turning on his heels to walk into the garage. I raised an eyebrow and held the passenger side door open for him before walking around and getting into the driver's side.

For the first few minutes, we rode in silence as Damien looked through Bast's case files again, trying to find something he hadn't seen before. But we both knew he wouldn't find anything new, no matter how many times he tried.

"What did she think this would solve, Alastair?" Damien finally said with an exasperated sigh, tossing the file down with a growl.

"I don't know, Lucifer. Maybe she wasn't thinking about what it would solve long term, it's plausible that after what just happened, it was the only thing that made sense to her. After all, being in jail is the only way she could get away, no offense." I said with a shrug, racking my brain to try to understand her reasoning, but I honestly couldn't. *'Being in jail solves nothing, but maybe she just wanted some time away, and this was the only solution she could find. There is nowhere else she could have gone, where Lucifer couldn't find her. He can still find her in jail, obviously, but he can't get to her.'*

"Saying no offense does not make the statement unoffensive, Alastair." He said, turning to look at me with a glare, his electric eyes alive with unspoken pain and misery. "Perhaps you are correct, though I wish you weren't. She wanted to get away, and jail is the only place on this earth where I can't reach her unless it's over an interrogation table."

"I don't think we are taking her condition into account through all of this," I said as my eyes widened, realizing what I'd overheard between Sinclair and Bast earlier, before the wedding. *'That is the only thing that makes sense out of this entire thing! It's the baby doing it! Jesus, why didn't I consider this before?'*

"What do you mean, condition? Are you referring to my child as a condition?" He asked me, his eyes turned blood-red as he waited for my response. Thankfully, we arrived at the station, and I was able to get out of the car. Being in such a confined space with Damien, while he was pissed, bodes well for no one. Least of all the one who pissed him off.

"That baby is powerful. Powerful enough to make Sinclair afraid to hug Bast." I said as I stepped out of the car and leaned against the back door, watching as Damien stepped out and looked towards the station. He tilted his head back slightly, breathing in Bast's scent before he relaxed and looked back at me, waiting for me to explain.

"Sinclair was afraid to hug Bast?" He asked as he tried to hide his amusement, closing his eyes as he shook his head. "That's new."

"Yes. He said the baby got pissed off any time someone other than you got too close to Bast, and sometimes he gets pissed off when you get too close. Shit, hold on." I said as I pulled out my phone to dial Sinclair's phone. I shouldn't have been surprised when he didn't answer, but it still pissed me off nonetheless. So I called Bartholomew instead, knowing he'd never purposely ignore a call from his king or his kings lieutenant. "Hand the phone to Sinclair," I said when he answered, waiting for the sound of them to stop running.

"What do you want, Alastair?" Sinclair asked with a sigh.

"You said the baby gets pissed off when someone gets too close to Bast, is that just your ability to know what the baby is feeling?" I asked, watching as Damien raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to get to the point.

"No, the baby has this ability to put its voice in my head. I'm not sure why it only does it to me, maybe it's because my ability makes it easier for it, but the thing does it whenever I'm close to little Bastet regardless."

"Stop calling my child a thing, Sinclair," Damien growled, then shook his head with a sigh. "How does that have anything to do with Bast turning herself in?"

"If the baby can put its voice in Sinclair's head, from inside the womb, what are the fucking chances that he can't do it, Bast?" I said as I leaned against the car, trying to rack my brain to figure out the words to describe what I was thinking. "Sinclair, how do you know it's the baby?"

"I know what my thoughts sound like. I was locked up with only my thoughts to keep me company, so when the baby is talking to me, in my own inner voice, I know it's the thi- baby."

"So the baby can put its voice in Bastet's mind, like her inner voice, so she thinks it's her thoughts, but it's the baby. Do you think the baby told her to get away after what happened, and in the baby's ignorance, he thought it was a good idea to have her put in jail?" I spoke aloud as I tried to organize the thoughts in my head, but simply saying something like this sounded farfetched. *'Is it even possible for a child to have an ability like this? Being a hybrid? Most vampires don't grow into their abilities for centuries, and sometimes not until they turn recreant. Like Damien and Sinclair.'*

"That's the most plausible explanation, yes. Why did I not consider this a possibility before? Lucifer, I'll come to you." Sinclair said before ending the call. It was only a few minutes before he and Bartholomew arrived at the police station, looking around to make sure no one saw them, as to the human eye it would have appeared that they came out of nowhere.

"Why would you come here, when I gave you instructions to find Amelia?" Damien asked Sinclair, raising an eyebrow as Sinclair ended the call before either of us could speak.

"The baby can speak to me, Lucifer. Which means it can also read my thoughts. Being able to talk to the child may be what you need here, after all." Sinclair responded, reaching past Damien to grab a pair of sunglasses Damien kept in the car.

"Seems like a good point," I said as I turned to Bartholomew and nodded, telling him to continue. "Take a few guards with you. She is likely ready for this, and will be prepared."

"Yes, Sir," Bartholomew said before leaving.

"Let's go," Damien said as he began walking up the steps to the station. As Damien was well known as a lawyer and had hundreds of clients, he didn't need to be shown to the interrogation room where Bast was already waiting.

"Of course." She responded when she saw Damien, Sinclair, and I enter the room, rolling her eyes. "You don't know how to accept rejection, do you?" She asked Damien, her green eyes dark in her hatred as she glared at the three of us.

"Little Bastet, it's the baby that's making you think these things," Sinclair said as he pulled her into a hug. "Have you lost all love for Lucifer?"

"Yes." She said, then narrowed her eyes, cocking her head to the side as she thought about it. "Well... no. Yes. I don't know."

"That is because the baby is making you think you do. Try and concentrate, focus on your feelings, and not the voice in your head." I said as I sat down across from her. I turned back to look at Damien who remained in the doorway, watching Bast closely, like he was afraid of getting too close.