“Shouldn’t you be at the scene or looking at the bus?”
“We’re doing that. We also need to be inthere.”
“So do we. We should be working on thistogether.We need Wrathhog off the streets.”
“And we’ll share information when we have something solid. We want this over just as much as you do.”
“You’d have something solid if you shared information.”
“Don’t ride my ass, dude. I’m not the one who decided that. Have your boss call mine. Can I go back to work now? The quicker we’re done, the sooner you can get in there.”
They looked at me like they wanted to hit me, but definitely didn’t want to lose their jobs over it. Bitches. If they tried, I’d hit them back.
“We done?” I asked.
“Let’s get shitty hospital coffee,” one of them said, pulling their friend away.
“Yeah, do that.”
Because one of my flaws was that I always had to have the last word, even when I clearly got what I wanted.
“Thanks,” Satan said. “They are back where they belong. We really need to get back and figure out how to stop it from happening again. I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than just replacing Lucifer with his kid.”
Yup. I was definitely going to have to read those diaries.
It was supposed to bereallysimple. I was exhausted. If sparring with Wrathhog wasn’t tiring, men usually were. Especially those princes and they crashed my new padtwicetoday. I just wanted to find a big, comfy bed to pass out in and kidnap Nero and Celix for snuggles again.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I yelled when Satan portalled us back to the courtyard.
They were holding some kind of demonic press conference and there were people with cameras all over the place. Asmodeus was up there talking foreveryonelike someone voted him King of Hell and as far as I knew, that hadn’t happened. And I’d been an opinionated little shit since I uttered my first word, so I really didn’t need him speaking for me.
“Did you know about this?” I asked Satan.
“No. Asmodeus is the weakest fighter out of all of us, but he’s the most cunning. Lucifer got saddled with the Prince of Lies title by default, but it should have been Asmodeus. Lucifer told the truth and our father and siblings just didn’t like it. They were so focused on Lucifer and me that they never noticed the other angels with us. He’s up to something.”
“Why does he have to keep getting up to it where I’m living now? It’s late and I’m exhausted.”
“Let him go for a bit and then I’ll get rid of them. We need to get an idea of what he’s doing. Nero, are you strong enough to read him without him noticing?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never tried it on a fallen before. He feels immensely proud of himself. Asmodeus has some kind of plan and it’s all coming together. He’s also oozing greed, and he’s getting off on this.”
Ew. Greedy, ambitious, and cunning. I knew who I’d be looking at a lot harder. But Satan was right. I needed tolistenfirst.
“We’ve been searching endlessly for Lucifer. It’s possible he just doesn’t want to be found. He was never really the same after the unfortunate murder of Kir, which he was never able to solve. We might not be able to findhim,but we did find his daughter. We should put our faith in her. The Morningstar blood that runs in her veins is what is going to stabilize Hell and keep it from breaking apart. She’s just gotten back from handling another breach, so she can answer any of your questions.”
Bastard. I knew one thing for sure. God tied Hell to Lucifer as a curse. It tied him to a certain place. He could take his walkabouts, but he couldn’t leave forever or he’d destroy two realms.
I was fairly certain it wasn’t a generational curse. Lucifer was immortal, and the angels weren’t going to kill him because hewas tied to Hell. Pretty sure tying one of his kids to Hell was a loophole. I didn’t know Lucifer, but several of these assholes would have just left their kid to keep Hell stable while they went out and partied.
I was also fairly certain Asmodeus had figured that out, and he was setting me up for failure. Dick. He wantedmeto think I could do this, too. He wanted me sitting on my ass complacent as Hell broke apart. I was pretty sure there was a solution to shoring up the Gates of Hell and he’d figured it out. Asmodeus was going to let shit get dire and then swoop in to save it.
Which meant I needed to find those diaries and find it first.
Also, I wasn’t stupid, and I was tired of people in Hell either thinking I was weak and a dipshit. Asmodeus might be the weakest of the fallen, but he still had magic and I didn’t, so I guess we’d be having a battle of the wits for now.
And the butt munch decided not to call off his stupid press conference without giving me a chance to speak. I was a writer, andI did high school before the internet. If you wanted to insult someone, you did it to their face. You had to always be prepared to respond to any insult at any time so you didn’t look weak. They could smell blood in the water like sharks.
I marched up there and accidentally slammed my fist in Asmodeus’s dick when I was shoving my way to the front. He grunted but didn’t react. Kujo caught my eye. His eyes were glittering like he wanted me to maul this angel’s nuts, which was weird because he seemed to have big opinions when I went after his nards.
