“What will it do?” A slow smile crept across his face, and the tiny hairs all over my body rose. He truly was unbelievably beautiful, especially when he smiled, but dear God and baby angels everywhere, he was also unbelievably creepy, especially when he smiled like that. His eyes closed and he made a sound that made my cheeks heat. “You won’t just have an air quality problem. The taint will reach across the world, until every land, every sea and all the mountains are coated with the corruption. All that anger, that hatred and bitterness and evil, will work its way into everyone.” He moaned, the sound rapturous. “Brother will turn against brother, mother against child. It will be an unending orgy of violence and depravity. Only the most pious will be spared and even they will suffer great losses.”

Uh.

“That, um, sounds problematic,” I murmured.

Lucifer took a bite of the Pop-Tart as he refocused on the screen. “To you? Yes. To me? I’ll have an influx of long-term houseguests to occupy my time with.”

Roth sat back, dragging his hand through his hair, while Layla gaped at Lucifer.

I glanced over at Zayne, who now looked like he was a second away from throwing the TV through the wall. “We can’t let that happen,” I said. “We’re trying to save the world, not destroy it.”

“No, you’re not trying to save the world.” Lucifer’s attention snapped to me, and it took everything in me not to shrink back from his full focus. “You’re trying to save the world and what awaits beyond this realm. There will be casualties. Untold ones. Souls will be lost. You’re going to sacrifice a whole lot to save everything.”

His words settled heavily on my shoulders, and I could tell they weighed on Zayne, too. He stared at the TV, but I knew he wasn’t aware of what was on the screen.

But would God really do that? Watch the world and the Heavens be saved only for it to slowly be ripped apart? That sounded even worse than the Old Testament God.

“So...” Layla cleared her throat. “That’s going to be the outcome if we kill Gabriel? A world descending in chaos?”

“Pretty much.” Lucifer finished off the Pop-Tart. “Except there is one thing that might happen.”

Everyone in the room was on pins and needles while Lucifer slowly crumpled up the silver foil and tossed it. The Pop-Tart wrapper landed in the small hill of empty junk food containers.

Once Lucifer took his sweet time reclining back onto the couch, readjusting his legs and folding his hands behind his head, he said, “God could always intervene.”

We all stared at him.

He raised one eyebrow.

Zayne’s jaw worked as he bit out, “How could God intervene?”