“That was a sex noise,” Celix purred.
“I won’t tell my mom you got turned on eating her recipe.”
“Dude!”
“You’ll meet her at my sibling’s birthday. We invite Nero’s family, but Kujo’s mom can get fucked.”
“She’d curse us out and probably assault us if wedidinvite her, but it’s the principle of the thing. We’re snubbing her even if she wouldn’t come.”
“I might have found something,” Celix said. “We’re looking for a volcano where tropical fruit grows, but also remote enough that no one would find a man in a cage being taunted by an imp. I found a dormant volcano in the rainforest. It’s a tiny one, but it killed a lot of people ages ago. It’s considered cursed because anyone who tries to get close to it never comes back.
“It’s a bit of a thing with some of the mortal influencers. They think it’s haunted and they try to go looking for ghosts. The video always violently cuts out when they get close. Most people think it’s a scam for likes, but there’s some people in the comments claiming to be their family that say local authorities won’t do anything because they won’t go near it.”
Shit. After a few years of desperately wanting to meet him, a few decades of hating his stupid guts, and then finally agreeing to just never think about it, I might finally lay eyes on the man who contributed sperm to my creation.
“Relax,” Nero said, petting my hair. “None of us speak Enochian. We don’t knowhowto open that cage. If someone has kidnapped the King of Hell, they won’t trust just a cage and an imp. There’s going to be Enochian spells protecting the place and some of them might have taken out the ghost hunters.”
“The princes might be conspiring against each other and one of them probably kidnapped him, but sincetheystarteda rebellion, they made damned sure the rest of Hell was at a disadvantage, so they couldn’t. None of us speak Enochian. We don’t know any Enochian spells.”
“Good thing you know someone who does and can vouch for one of the fallen,” Wrathhog said from the door.
“Shit, are those your mom’s cookies?” Kujo asked, marching over and stealingmyfood.
Dick.
Wrathhog saw how I was glaring at him and laughed.
“Don’t worry, I thoroughly kicked his ass while all of you were in here researching.”
“You wish,” Kujo said, flipping her off.
Wrathhog just blew him a kiss. Yeah, I could tell those two were getting along.
“My dad will help. I’m not sure if he’ll be able to convince Abaddon to come off of the bench. He got a little lost to the bloodlust during their rebellion and swore he’d never get involved with anything like that again. Dad, Lucifer, and Abaddon were the strongest of those who fell, but Dad said Abaddon can go too far in the heat of battle. Someone would have to had have drugged Lucifer to get the jump on him, but they can’t take on Dad at full strength.”
Excellent. I didn’t know what was more terrifying. Facing whoever got the jump on the devil or facing my father.
Lucifer had a damned war room in his mansion. I barely had any closet space at my house and he had a whole damned room to plan war in when Hell had put all these precautions in place so no one ever rose up against him. We honestly could have done this in the living room, but Satan meant business.
“Abaddon won’t join us and that doesn’t surprise me. The fallen you’ve met are theonlysurvivors of our rebellion. We were grossly outnumbered and those of us who did survive were a combination of cunning and brawn. Some of us were one or the other, but some of us were both. Your dad was both.”
“So, why has he been in a cage my entire life?” I asked.
“If this had happened thousands of years ago, I’d say it was because he was drinking heavily after Kir got murdered and made it easy. But he’d been better. Clearly, if he’d been sneaking off to the mortal realm to have a secret affair. Someone would have had to have drugged him. If he thought he was drugged, he would have portalled to my house if he was in Hell when it happened. So, Lucifer’s secret affair wasn’t all that secret and I’m pretty sure whoever captured him did so in the mortal realm.”
“Tell us about this cage. I’ve never heard of it before,” Kujo said.
“You wouldn’t unless you have angel blood. The metal is nearly indestructible, but particularly powerful angels can blast through it, especially archangels like Lucifer. So, it’s covered with spells to basically neuter our magic. It’s a bitch breaking someone out of them because there are about a million combinations to weave the spell and there’s usually some kind of alarm on it so the person who cast it knows someone is meddling.
“I don’t know if one person took Lucifer, or it was a group effort. The only fallen that would take on both meandLucifer in a direct fight is Abaddon. The rest of them probably wouldn’t, even working as a group. The spells on these cages make it nearly impossible for anyone to locate them, so if Kujo managed toseeit, he’s probably going to be one of the strongest seers to ever exist. It’s alsowaytoo convenient that an imp was left as his caretaker.”
“I don’t know much about imps except what their dicks look like,” I said.
“You let an imp near the heir to Hell?” Satan said with an eyebrow cocked.
“You wanna take that one, champ?”
Kujo just rolled his eyes and flipped me off.
