As his world transformed into a roaring inferno, he distantly heard Meph shout, “Motherfucker!”
There was blood. There was fire. And there was rage. So much rage.
He was going to use that rage to burn down the fucking world. He was going to exterminate the stain that was humanity, end the pathetic race of struggling mortals. He was going to kill his brother. He was going to kill everything until nothing remained but blood and bones. And as every soul breathed their last breath, they would die knowinghehad delivered their deaths. They would bow before him in subservience and fear as they bled out from their throats and watched their own bodies burn into—
A splash of ice-cold water hit him in the face.
Bel blinked and found himself back in his kitchen, still clutching a knife in one hand. Raum stood in front of him with an empty mop bucket that had contained the water he’d just thrown. Amopbucket.
But that wasn’t the worst part. Oh no.
Meph was cursing him to Hell and back and cradling his hand to his chest, blood streaming all over his arm. Iris was beside him, screaming and swearing in tears and panic. Ash, Eva, and Sunshine hovered around.
It was a goddamn party.
And there were three tattooed fingers sitting in the middle of the parmesan cheese. Cheese that had turned red with Meph’s blood when Bel had, apparently, chopped his brother’s fingers clean off.
“Fuck,” he breathed, staring at Meph’s stumpy hand in horror.
“Yeah, fuck!” Meph shouted at him. “You cut my fucking fingers off, you fuck!”
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Iris was saying, gripping her hair and looking a little too pale.
“It’s gonna take me a week to regenerate, I have a fucking show in a month, and I need to work! I can’t fucking work without fingers, Bel!”
Meph was pissed. Meph was never pissed.
Bel didn’t think he’d ever seen Meph actually angry, in all the years they’d been brothers. Sure, he snapped occasionally, but he was always the first to bounce back.
“We need to stop the bleeding!” Iris shouted, gripping his shoulder. “We need to—”
“He’s fine,” Sunshine said, hurrying forward to take control. “Everything’s okay.”
“Those were my favorite finger tats!” Meph hollered, gesturing at the bloody mess on the counter.
Iris wailed, hands fluttering around Meph like she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“They’ll grow back,” Sunshine assured her with a hand on her shoulder. “He’s perfectly fine. Come, I’ll close the wounds and bandage him up, and you’ll see that everything’s okay.”
She gripped Meph’s non-bloody arm and Iris’s hand and practically dragged them from the room, leaving Bel and the others in a painful silence. A moment later, after giving Bel a long, penetrating look, Ash took the hint and led a shell-shocked Eva back outside, leaving Raum and Bel alone.
Bel stared down at the knife in his hand, still wet with his brother’s blood, and then he tossed it onto the counter like it burned him.
“Fuck,” he said again, and then he dragged a hand through his hair. He groaned when his fingers got stuck on the now-long strands.
His hair grew to chest length whenever he flew into a rage. He always kept it short because he hated being reminder of his anger when he looked in a mirror. But that meant he needed ahaircut every time he lost control. He was so goddamn sick of getting haircuts.
“What happened?” Raum asked. He didn’t accuse Bel or jump to conclusions. He didn’t even look pissed on Meph’s behalf. He just calmly stowed the mop bucket back under the sink and then straightened, propping a hip against the counter and waiting for Bel to speak.
Bel almost wanted him to be mad. He felt like shit. He felt like he deserved it.
“I was chopping, and Meph was pissing me off. Eating the cheese when I told him not to. And he was going on about how shitty my life was, living here by myself when I used to have a lair full of horny women and legions dying to go to war for me. And then … I lost it.”
There was silence. Bel stared at the severed fingers among his ruined food. It was gross, but he’d seen worse. It was more the sight of his failure that he couldn’t stand.
To his vast surprise, Raum chuckled.
Bel’s gaze shot to him.
