“Feel what?” Kyanna frowned.
“That shot of…of…soothing warmth.” Niklas shook his head, visibly grasping for the appropriate words. “Like…warm fuzzies.”
Xander finally joined the conversation. Though his demeanor was still uncharacteristically tranquil, he said, “I did. Like a wave of peace washed through me.”
“Did you do that?” Niklas asked, turning to Maggie.
“I…I don’t know.” She glanced helplessly at Kyanna. “Did I?”
Kyanna shrugged, baffled.
“Gideon would know, he’d be able to sense the push of power, but I swear I felt it. And it felt like it came from that side of the table,” Niklas insisted, pointing at Maggie.
“It seems our Halfling is discovering new abilities right and left,” Xander remarked, crossing his arms.
Uncomfortable with this new focus, Maggie turned back to Niklas. “Please…you were telling me about demons feeding.”
“So, as we need human food to sustain our bodies, in order to keep our essence—our life force—strong, in order to maintain our powers, we must absorb human souls as well. But we’re careful never to feed from the innocent. Only from those with evil intent, guilty of heinous crimes that would otherwise go unpunished by human law.”
“And how do you absorb these souls?” she asked cautiously.
Xander glanced at Kyanna, his gaze troubled…guilty.
“We place our palms over the human’s chest, and pull their soul through the connection, basically sucking it into ourselves.” He glanced to Niklas, seeking extrapolation.
“That about sums it up.”
“Doesn’t sound very pleasant for the human. Is it painful?”
“Excruciating,” Xander whispered, frowning down at the tabletop. Maggie watched as Kyanna reached over and gently squeezed his hand.
“So you’re telling me that you and Xander…and Gideon…all of you…um, feed this way?” Maggie looked around the table for confirmation.
Xander nodded.
“And Sebastian,” Niklas added, but then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “Well, I don’t anymore, I guess. I haven’t had to since I bound my essence to Carly’s soul.”
“I don’t either,” Xander said. “Not after I stole half Kyanna’s soul.”
“Wait, what?” Maggie whipped around to gape at Kyanna. Kyanna seemed to realize she was rubbing the heel of her hand against her breastbone and quickly lowered her hand to her lap. She left her seat and crawled onto Xander’s lap, gently touching his cheek.
“Don’t, Xander,” Kyanna said softly, shaking her head. “It was an accident.”
He captured her hand, pressing a tender kiss to her palm.
Maggie stared at Kyanna for a moment, and then she remembered Niklas’s comment about binding his essence to Carly’s soul. She looked across the table to Carly. Both women seemed fine, healthy color riding high on their cheeks. Okay, one thing at a time. She had enough on her plate to deal with without touching on those revelations.
While it shocked her at first, oddly enough, the whole feeding thing wasn’t bothering her nearly as much as it probably should have. Then again, she’d just found out this morning that she was pregnant. By a demon.
And now here she was, sitting at a table, surrounded by demons and their mates, calmly discussing the unconventional eating habits of her child’s father.
God, could her life get any more messed up?
“There’s something else you should know.”
Dragging her attention back to Xander, she waited for what felt like the other shoe to drop. Like ripping off the bandage, she told herself. Best to do it all in one shot and have the worst of it over quickly.
“Xander,” Niklas warned.
“If he hasn’t told her about feeding, do you think he’ll be in any hurry to tell her about Michael?”
“No,” Niklas allowed. “But—”
“She needs to understand why Michael hates Gideon so much, why he’ll redouble his efforts to kill Gideon once he finds out about the babe. Gideon’s going to need all the help he can get watching his back.”
She glanced back and forth between the two demons as they seemed to be waging a silent debate.
“I don’t understand. Why would the sperm donor—” Carly and Kyanna gasped and choked. Niklas and Xander elevated eyebrows to hairlines. “Excuse me, Michael… Why would Michael be trying to kill Gideon?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Gideon and Michael were like brothers, before the Fall,” Xander rasped. He cleared his throat, and picked up his glass, taking deep gulps, grimacing in between.