“Uh, the only people capable of taking Satan are Lucifer and Abaddon. Lucifer is missing and Abaddon is now a pacifist who just wants to live his life surrounded by lots of incubi,” Celix said.
“Well, if itishim and he thinks we’re onto him, he’ll kill us all before we can say anything.”
Yeah, we needed to play this carefully, but I just didn’t get vibes it was him. I’d been wrong about men before, though.
Karl was a giant, projectile vomiting example of that.
Everyone but Wrathhog was here, and a little dazed, but completely fine. Kujo was being totally cool about the fact that I blew up his entire family. Satan being the big bad felt logical, but that also could just be marketing from the mortal realm. He seemed to be the only one who actually gave a shit about finding Lucifer, and I didn’t think he was faking that.
Kujo kept staring at me, and I didn’t know if he was pissed at me. If I could have ripped cancer’s testicles off and then choked it with them for taking my mom, I would have, but I also had a very different relationship with my mother.
“Shit, dude, you’re mad.”
“Killer, you probably saved my life. The only thing I’m half mad at is that I didn’t get to see them die. You have no idea what those people did to me.”
“I only met her a few times, but she was nasty. The rest of them weren’t any better. They thought Nero, and I were lower than dirt and our kind should be exterminated.”
“The rest of them were starting to mess with our minds when she tried to attack Kujo. Whoever told them Kujo was developing into a strong seer had to have told them they’d protect them for going after Wrathhog,” Nero said.
“That’s why I don’t think Satan is the bad guy,” I said. “Even if he secretly hated Lucifer, he treats his daughter the way Mom treated me. If Mom were planning a hostile takeover of an entire realm and were lying to me about it, she’d never put me in a position where I’d get hurt. He’s like, seven feet tall and his thighs are the size of my waist. Can you even fit enough drugs on a dart to take him out?”
“All the plants here were brought over from the mortal realm, including psychedelic mushrooms and plants you can get high on. They didn’t know that at the time; they just grabbed everything. There’s magic in Hell and the atmosphere is different. It wasn’t just the animals that changed over time. They are loads more potent than their Earth counterparts now. If someone knew the right combination, they could totally take out an angel. If that’s actually the case and we aren’t all being played,” Kujo said.
“It’s your theory, dude, so you can be the one to bring it up to Satan.”
“No way. I’m not stupid. You’re the one who can take killing magic from a Fury and blow people up. You do it. You have no problem being a menace to the other princes.”
“You do bring up their daddy issues a lot, but we should probably avoid asking the Prince of Wrath if he’s trying to overthrow Hell.”
“For the record, I’m not,” Satan said.
I shrieked, and my wings were the only thing that stopped me from jumping fifty feet.
“Shit, wear a bell. How are you so quiet with big, stompy feet?”
“War, Sydney. It’s ugly, and it changes you. We weren’t fighting faceless enemies. We were fighting our brothers. Those of us you’ve met are the only ones who lived through the rebellion. Some of them I don’t much like anymore, but I don’t want to hurt them. Lucifer and Abaddon are about the only two whose company I enjoy, and Abaddon prefers the company of an incubus. It wasn’t me who kidnapped him, but I still don’t know who did.”
For what it was worth, I believed him. It looked like Nero and Celix did too. Kujo must have had more trust issues than I did because he looked like he had a heaping dose of doubt.
Honestly, one of us should, because if itwasn’tSatan, someone knew all our business.
Iwas taking Satan at his word, but I knew Kujo well enough to know that look on his face. He was going to keep digging, and I was going to help in whatever way didn’t piss Satan off and get me smote.
Right now, we needed to take care of Sydney. I didn’t have wings, but when they first came in, they were fragile. If I could prevent hers from being damaged so she never got to experience flying, I was doing that.
“How long am I stuck in bed?” she asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know. You’re the child of a fallen archangel and the grandchild of a Nephilim. The angels usually kill Nephilim, and down here, there’s not that many of us. We were all created and not born, so weshouldn’tshare DNA, andit’s been a disaster any time we’ve tried to test that. There were typical inbreeding problems any time we’ve come close to creating a mix like you.
“The children ended up wrong and none of them ended up surviving. Everyone agreed to stop doing that. Some people have a little more angel in them than others, but it’s distant. You weren’t actually possible in Hell.
“Your magic should have come in slowly, and then your wings. Your wings came much earlier than expected, and I’m fairly certain it was the adrenaline from the Fury attack that triggered something. Stress can affect our magic.”
“Ya think, big guy? I blew the roof off my bathroom, three demons showed up, I got kidnapped naked and found out Lucifer is my dad, and everyone expects me to fix all this shit. I’vebeenstressed.It’s like Marty McFly really fucked his mom and screwed the whole timeline up. You see how this would be fucked up for me, right?”
I reached out and started playing with her hair. She was starting to glow a bit, and while she didn’t kill us like she had the Furies, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus after the first time I got hit by her magic. I wasn’t going to tell her to calm down because I had a ton of sisters and I wasn’t stupid.
“This is why I asked my brothers to leave. Smiting usually involves flaming swords, pillars of salt, or just way less messy than what you did to my front lawn. We weren’t even doing that during the war. I don’t knowhowto do that. Your magic is mature enough to protect the people you care about. We just need to make sure you can do that again before we unleash my family on you.”
