“Let’s say you’re successful in taking out Red… Who takes the throne?” Wren Black asked. “I support a woman on the throne, although there hasn’t been one in my lifetime. I do foresee some factions of Hell not agreeing with your reign. They’ll use your inexperience and gender against you.”
“Thank you for your support, but I have no plans of taking the throne. My father, Lucifer, will retake his position. We’re currently searching for him so he can join the fight and hopefully lead our army, just like he did for the Battle of Heaven.”
Gabriel laughed, drawing everyone’s attention. “Some would say your father lost that battle,” he guffawed. “Your other father literally kicked him out of heaven and watched him fall. Doesn’t seem like he’d be that great of a General.”
“Love is complicated, as anyone who has experienced it can attest,” Diana said, drowning her words in a dangerously saccharine sweetness that knocked Gabriel down a peg. “Him losing isyourperspective. I’m sure many of the people in this room would see his disgrace as a win. Lucifer created free will, a place for the less than holy to congregate and build something truly beautiful. Spoiler, Gabriel, more of the world falls short of your standards than you think...and they end updownstairs.”
My smile reached from ear to ear, practically splitting my face Joker style. Diana came up with that all on her own. And her delivery was beyond perfect. If Lucifer didn’t want his throne, and Diana somehow ended up with the position, she had the bullshitting down pat.
“Anyway,” Mal said, steering the conversation along, “We do have a surprise for everyone. Earlier in the week, we were attacked by Damon Morningstar. We were able to detain one of his soldiers, and figured we’d question him in front of you all. He may know something, he may not. Either way, torturing him should be fun. Who’s in?”
“Me!” Ares and Judas yelled. Their faces beamed with glee as they jumped around like it was Christmas morning.
“Yeah, why not,” Bash said, standing from the table and patting Ares on the back. “This can be like the time we ran into Judas when we were dumping that body in the Mojave desert.”
“Yeah! We were dumping bodies from the same gang. Turns out they fucked us both over. Their mistake. The murder spree we went on that afternoon was one for the books, boys,” Judas threw his arms over Ares and Bash.
“That vacation was so much fun. We got to meet Cher, and we ate at that buffet afterward, remember?” Ares asked, his vision glazing over as he remembered what was probably one of the best days of his life. He wasobsessedwith Cher.
“I’ll go get him out of the holding cell. Let’s have some fun!” Judas exclaimed before he burst into a cloud of bats and flew from the room.
Chapter 20
Everyone in the room rose from their seats, congregating toward the outskirts of the room while Mal rearranged the furniture, teleporting all the tables away and moving the chairs in a circle around the perimeter. A few more people spoke to Diana while we waited for Judas, and I saw her shake hands with them. The little sparks that flew out from their joined hands meant that a deal was made. She was a natural at forging alliances for our cause. Beautiful, smart, political, and thick as fuck.Diana is the perfect woman; thank the stars she’s mine.
Her tight cunt is yours. You should fuck it after this meeting is over, the voice inside my head whispered. Today, he sounded like that comedian with the stand-up special on Netflix about machines.Better yet, instead of torturing this useless foot soldier, why not publicly fuck Diana in front of all these people. Show them who she belongs to and who’ll be annihilating them if they so much as think of crossing her.
Those were some dangerous thoughts, partly because I wanted to do that so badly. The only reason I didn’t was because this meeting was important. People needed to take Diana seriously, and that would be hard to do if her ass was in the air, covered in handprints with jizz dripping down her thighs.
You’re no fun,the voice whined.Eventually, you’ll give in… you can only hold your crazy in for so long before it erupts and hits everyone with lava.
Judas came back with two guards and the masked soldier. Our prisoner smelled like piss, fear, and defeat, a heady combination for sure. We’d been holding him in the dark, with minimal food and water, since we took him hostage from Brooklyn. The guys wanted to question him right then and there, but I had persuaded them to wait.Keeping him in the dark and letting his fear take over would make our jobs easier in the end. I also wanted Diana to see it, and she had been MIA at the time. She deserved to watch her enemies die. Good thing we’d waited, because torturing and killing him at the meeting was a stroke of genius. A show of strength and conviction?Brilliant, as Bash’s fancy British ass would say.
Judas knelt our prisoner in the middle of the room, where everyone could see him. He still wore his original outfit, clad head to toe in combat black. His magical cuffs and the blindfold over his mask meant he couldn’t move or see anything. The light tremor that overtook his body meant my tactics were working.I bet we can crack this nut wide open in less than half an hour.
“Make him sing like a fucking canary,” Diana ordered from her front-and-center spot in the audience. “I didn’t appreciate them trashing my fucking bedroom.”
What LG wants, she gets.
I removed his blindfold while Mal worked on his mask. He struggled against it, crying out against the ball gag we had in his mouth, but Mal chuckled to himself when he teleported the mask away, revealing a human-looking creature with light green skin, beady black eyes, and pointy ears. His visible skin was covered in tattoos and symbols, with barely any blank space.
“A moon creature?” Oisín asked. “All of those pointy-eared fucks attacking us in Brooklyn weremoon creatures?”
Moon creatures were an anomaly for sure. They didn’t actually hail from the moon, but were descendants of elves. The name came from the fact that they worshiped the moon as a deity. They weren’t high on the magical food chain and seemed like a weird, unexpected alliance for Damon to make…seeing as how they lived in the shadows or underground to avoid the human population.
“Seems so. Why would they align themselves with Damon of all people? I thought they were all about peace and understanding?The moon loves and nourishes us all,” Bash quoted their scripture, which had become a slogan for their people over the years. He removed the ball gag from the moon man’s mouth so he could answer our questions.
“Oisín, get your ass up here! You should be fucking shit up with us, not sitting on the sidelines,” I yelled over to him. Diana’s family was my family now, and Oisín radiated BDE–Big Deranged Energy. That made him my people regardless of who he was related to.
“Yeah, O! Get over here and get the first dig in!” Judas was so excited that he practically erupted. Another guy with thick BDE.
“Well, if you insist,” Oisín said. He got up from his chair and walked over to his sister. “Diana, pick a deadly land mammal. Somethingscary.”
“Hmmm, a moose,” she answered, not joking in the least.
“A moose?” Desmond asked. “You want to pick amoose?”
“Have you seen those things in internet videos? They gouge people with those big rack antlers. Charge like they’re running into Nordstrom Rack on Black Friday. I’m immortal, and I still wouldn’t want to cross one out in the wild. Those giant fucks mean business.” Diana put her index fingers to her head like horns to demonstrate her point.