“He was a deadbeat who took off as soon as he found out my mom was pregnant. The internet wasn’t a thing when I was born, and neither was social media. It was a lot easier to fuck off if you didn’t want to take responsibility for anything. My mom was a strong woman. Fuck him. I don’t want to meet him, and if I did, I’d maul his nuts, too.”
“Um, our team specifically extracts Cambion, which are half-demon kids from Earth when their power first shows up. Our alarm went off, and we found you.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m perimenopausal, and the hot flashes have started. You saw my tits for nothing. You've got the wrong person. I’ll bet you meant to grab my neighbor’s kid. He’s a little shit.”
“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Nero said. “Sorry, I’m an incubus.”
“You weren’t staring; your tattooed friend was.”
“Kujo is a Cambion like you. His mom was a Fury, so he’s a bit of a hothead. We meant to grabyou.It hasn’t happened in a very long time because they stopped doing it, but the children of the Monarchy don’t get their magic until puberty.”
“Uh, that ship has also sailed. Flannel and Kurt Kobain were really popular when I was going through puberty. I’m too old for this shit.”
“Um, you’re actually going through demon puberty. It’s how it works with kids of the monarchy.”
“Oh, fuck no. The first time was bad enough.”
“You’ll have some really cool magical powers and you could save Hell and Earth,” Nero said.
Celix elbowed him.
“Ease into that, yeah?”
“Sorry, I thought I was having a ‘monster fucker’ dream and not the ‘chosen one; trope. No one does that with my generation because we’d tell you to get fucked and forget you know me.”
“You’re actually not dreaming or hallucinating. This is actually easier with kids, and they bite,” Kujo said from the door with a tray of food.
Nero grinned at me.
“I’d pinch you, but I don’t want to get kicked in the balls.”
Yeah, I kind of liked that one. He was a little goofy, and he was definitely hot. So was Celix, for that matter. They’d both been trying to ease me into this. This was all way too crazy to be real though, right? Three hot demons whisking me off to Hell to tell me I was demon royalty?
“I’ll pay you to pinch her,” Kujo said.
“Oh, fuck you.”
Nero snatched the tray away and presented me with food. Itlookedlike burgers and fries, but I could also smell it. It smelled amazing. I was pretty sure you couldn’t smell food if you were concussed in the shower. Nor could you taste it when I took a bite.
“Fuck me. Tell me more about being a demon princess.”
“Finally!” Kujo snapped. “I thought we were going to take you to the bad parts of Hell.”
“We wouldn’t,” Celix said.
Nero looked horrified at the idea. I was pretty sure the area they were talking about was the parts they talked about when they wanted to scare people.
“So, Hell is run by the Monarchy. It’s the angels who rebelled and were kicked out of Heaven. The air down here twisted them. They are still angels, but they are also demons now. Cambions are the offspring of demons and mortals. Nephilim are the children of angels and mortals. Hell’s monarchy is more than angels and more than demons. They stopped having kids with mortals a very long time ago because their children wereverycomplicated,” Celix said.
“And angels don’t like half-angel kids, cupcake,” Kujo said. “They don’t fetch them and bring them home like we do. They think they are abominations and obliterate them. Care to guess what they think about people like you?”
Nero’s tail shot out and smacked Kujo on the back of his head.
“Don’t be mean.”
“Why soften things? She’s not a child.”
“This is why kids bite you and set you on fire,” Nero said.
