It took every ounce of self-control not to grind my teeth to dust.
This wasn’t the work of a few puppies. She’d been feeding.
Naughty girl.
Who the devil had she been feeding from? It most obviously wasn’t the only devil she should want in her life—me.
“Horsemen. Bloody fucking menaces, the lot of them,” I muttered under my breath.
She looked up as a puppy licked her neck. “What was that?”
“Who has been feeding you, crabapple?”
Eyes widening, she placed the puppies back in the basket before lifting her chin defiantly. “Why? Are you going to try and pretend to be him?”
Wanting her focus fully on me, I vanished the mongrels with a wave of my hand. “No. Those days are over.”
“If only I believed you.”
“Why shouldn’t you? I’ve never lied to you.”
Her mouth fell open, and a harsh bark of laughter escaped as she got to her feet. “Excuse me? What planet are you living on, buddy? All you’ve done since you came into my life is lie to me.”
“Not about anything important.”
“You don’t think lying about who you are is important?”
“Not when the content of our conversations was pure.”
I didn’t understand why she was so upset about this. I may have used Cole’s name and visage—okay, and his voice—but the man she interacted with was me. Everything I said to her was from the heart.
“Pure? You call trying to infiltrate my dreams, pretending to be someone else, and attempting to seduce me so I would fuck you and carry your devil spawn pure?”
“Well, yeah.”
She laughed again.
“How else would I convince you? The world is filled with bullshit rumors about me. The only way to combat them was to have you get to know me, the real me, first. Otherwise you’d deny me from the jump. Unfairly, I might add.”
“You’d be perfect on a dating app. In fact, you probably invented them.”
I smirked. “Darling, I wish I could take credit for that one, but alas, I was imprisoned during the genesis of that particularly hellish experience.”
“The fact that you want to take credit is telling.”
“What do you want me to say, crabapple? I’m the world’s favorite scapegoat. I get blamed for quite literally every misfortune that befalls humanity. Every now and then, it would be nice to actually be responsible for what I’m accused of.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t give Eve the apple to force them from the garden? You didn’t start a holy war against your father? You didn’t whisper in the ears of your followers and encourage the Satanic panic?”
I snorted. “Why would I do any of that? Eve was hungry. That prat of a husband she wasforcedto be with, by the way, was hoarding all the food. What is it the bible says? For I was hungry and you fed me? Seems to me I was simply ahead of the curve. And it wasn’t a holy war. I left home. Struck out on my own. Wanted to be my own angel. Daddy dearest didn’t like that, so he disowned me. If you really think about it, he should be the one apologizing to me. Children are meant to fly the coop.”
I took a deep breath before continuing. “As for the rest of it, why in the glorious skulled gates of hell would I be interested in ritual sacrifice? I have no use for goats, or babies, or even virgins, for that matter. I don’t mind the blood, truth be told, but that was all them. I was merely a means for them to justify their bloodlust. And by them, I mean the Christian nationalist kookswho coined the term Satanic panic to fearmonger the general public. It wasn’t ever real, you know. None of it. But they sure got people to fall in line with their anti-me propaganda.”
Wow, I hadn’t realized how much I was still carrying after all this time. It felt good to get it all off my chest. Perhaps I should kidnap a therapist after this was all over.
Merri was looking at me with a flood of conflicting emotions in her eyes. I could tell she wasn’t sure what to believe, and that despite her very best efforts to the contrary, she sensed the thread of truth in my words.
“If all that’s true, why bother with the apocalypse? Why use me to get your antichrist?”
