Two thousand years.
For two thousand years, Ambrosius Severus Agrippa fought in the ceaseless Forever War that, since the time of his death and damnation, endlessly campaigned against target after target. He had died glorious in battle against the great monster of Barca. He had stood as one of the thousand Triarii who guarded Orcus' Palace in the Underworld of the Latin Peoples. He fought until his blood pooled around him as Lucifer slew his god and stole all of his many riches. He spent centuries as a slave-warrior, one of a scant handful of people to survive an entire day in the Bleeding Pits on two separate occasions. He volunteered to serve in the Prince of Flowers' and the Duchess of Iron's Legions of the Damned, and rose to being their Legate Damnatio. He had seen twenty centuries of warfare and blood.
And now, he was tasked with picking up a twitching imp out of the hedges.
His aquiline face showed contempt well; if there was one perk of having a fairly rigid beak, it was at least twisted into a scowl. Agrippa sighed, snagging the imp by the back of his collar and lifting him out of the brambles. He was still smoking slightly, and stank of ignited cologne. Truly, Agrippa's day was certainly coming to a nadir, having to deal with this one.
"Ooooow fuck that was nasty," the imp in his grasp said.
"So you are not dead. I will inform the master," Agrippa said, beginning to haul him toward where the garbage pit was situated.
"Takes a lot more than that to kill me," the imp said. "Also; what the FUCK just happened?"
Agrippa continued walking, not looking at the ridiculous hellspawn. "Per my mistress' orders, the edges of the balconies and windows have been electrified," Agrippa said.
"Don't tell me y'all did that on account of little old me?" The imp attempted a cherubic expression, which somewhat fell flat because the small creature had teeth like a rip-saw and all the innocence of a slave murdering his master.
"You were amongst the stated reasons," Agrippa said. If today was a distasteful day, then he would suffer it with grace and stoicism. He did not last this incredible amount of time in the bowels of Hell just because he was a dab-hand with blade, spear, and bow.
"See? I told ya I could change things up 'round here," he said with a chuffed expression. Agrippa suppressed the urge to sigh again. He further suppressed the urge to just kill the little fool. He had a duty. That duty today was to take out the trash.
As they rounded the corner of the palace, they came into view of the third of it which was currently on fire. And it was precisely one third. The flames refused to reach past a certain point. Either a fool or a wise-man would say that it seemed that the flames were afraid to breach that unseen containment. They were. Agrippa could only shake his head at the mistress' newest fit of pique. Whatever had inspired it was not supposed to be for men like Agrippa to know, as he figured it. His was to sooth his mistress' rage, and to fight his masters' enemies.
"What'd you do this time, Dad?" the voice of the heir came around a decorative hedge. Agrippa sighed, as that meant the master was there too.
"Oh, your mother's just in one of her moods. Don't you worry about a single thing, Starfire," his master answered her. Agrippa had done little to raise his children, so often was he away on campaign, but even he knew that Prince Stolas' method was asking for a delinquent child. He rounded the hedge to see the two of them, standing side-by-side in a gazebo that overlooked the bedlam that currently immolated one third of the palace. Specifically the third of the palace which was for the storage of, display of, and aggrandizement of the things which Stolas had gathered unto himself in his even longer life.
"I'm not worried about her moods. I'm worried you're letting that red dickhead get too close to you. What if he gets hired to kill you?" she asked. A proper question, as well.
"And kill my meal ticket? Are you fuckin' high?" the imp demanded loudly. That turned both of them from the spectacle of the fire to the eagle-demon who was attempting to throw the imp into the garbage where he rightly belonged.
Domina Octavia turned with a flinch to the smug imp dangling from Agrippa's grasp, and sighed loudly, palming her face in dismay as was appropriate for the impropriety of the situation. "Kill me now," Octavia pleaded.
"Blitzie!" Imperator Stolas said brightly, casting his arms wide. "Oh you are so very thoughtful, Ambrosius, bringing my beloved straight to me!"
"Yes. Of course. That was my intention," Agrippa lied with a perfectly flat tone. He let go, dropping the imp onto the solid gold bricks which formed the walkway in this portion of Stolas' gardens.
"Just the fella I been lookin' for!" Blitz said, strutting like a peacock toward the man who stood as far above him in the social order as a Senator did to a slave. "I hope you're ready for me, 'cause if you ain't, this is gonna get messy."
"Could you just... not?" Octavia asked of him, recoiling in disgust.
"Soon as you start doin' this kinda shit, you'll stop bein' so priggy about it, kiddo," Blitz told her. Agrippa rubbed at the ache which was beginning to swell up betwixt his eyes. "Now correct me if I'm wrong, but ain't that your house that's on fire?"
"Darling Stella is annoyed about something," Stolas said with a dismissing gesture. That 'something' was that she had been forced to cast away one of her greatest war trophies, because the Prince of Flowers couldn't learn the meaning of the term 'discretion'. "But the guest house is still not on fire, so perhaps we can go there, and ѢѥѥѨ Ѿѭѭ my ѺѶѤӃ while you ӁӤ until there's nothing left but ash!"
"Kinky, but I had somethin' specific in mind," the perverted imp told him, before clambering up the owl-demon more easily than a rope and whipping him toward the guest house as though he were a horse. Again, Agrippa was glad that there were some perversities that his mind simply wouldn't allow him to understand. Twenty centuries in the service of the pen-penultimate powers of Hell meant that sanity was dependent upon ignorance.
"So. Incredibly. Gross," Octavia said.
"Indeed," Agrippa agreed. But he didn't say that for all his behavior was utterly unacceptable, and his infatuation with that pleb beyond the pale for his standing, there was a joy in the Prince of Flowers that had been sorely lacking for nearly a century now. In fact, before that imp came along, Stolas was borderline despairing, kept afloat solely by his responsibilities as a father – the one aspect of his current persona that Agrippa could find absolutely no fault in. "I will attempt to calm your mother before she sets fire to the guest house as well."
"Would you? Dad is just so... ugh, right now," she said, lacking the rhetoric to enunciate her justified disgust. Agrippa gave her a bow, then began toward the doors. It was a failure in Agrippa that he had been making Stolas a cuckold for slightly less than Octavia's entire lifetime, now. But considering Stolas very likely knew, and very obviously didn't care, a less observant man would think that the imp was Stolas' revenge for Stella's infidelity. Agrippa knew better. Stolas was smitten with that little cretin. He straightened his back as he began to hear the wrathful roaring, and prepared himself for what was to come. It always took all of his guile to bring her to civility. Today would prove no different.
"I'm not even going to ask what kind of meat that is," Sam said, as Alastor walked beside him, delicately consuming strips of raw, bloody flesh held from his fingertips.
"You should try it. It was butchered mere hours ago!" Alastor said.
"By you?"
Alastor just chuckled, grinning wide. Strange, how he ate such bloody flesh, but no blood ever stained his teeth.
"The trick worked, by the way," Sam said.
"Your little experiment?" Alastor asked, taking a moment to lick his chops. "Ordinarily something like that would be years in the making. You come up with a plan to kill, and then True Kill a Sinner in an afternoon and it goes off without so much as a hitch. I'm proud of you, my boy. With a bit of time and elbow-grease, I'll turn you into something magnificent!"
"It helped that I have bullshit powers and my teacher knows pretty much everything there is to know about Magic," Sam admitted, shifting his grasp on the barbecued bastard he was trying to bring home. Even with his Regeneration working, Sam had a notion that this guy wasn't particularly big. Maybe a touch bigger than Niffty. "It actually surprised me that nothing went wrong."
"Your paranoia does you credit, Samuel. Most teachers here in Hell intentionally mislead their pupils, forcing them to learn the true path at a cost of pain," he gave a rich chuckle at the thought of the poor fools floundering to grasp some scrap of knowledge. "Oh, you are truly fortunate with your unusual eyes. I would have gladly killed to have them when I was alive. It would have made my ascent so much smoother. I might not have even died."
"Don't break the arrow, Alastor," Sam chided.
"Don't mistake my intention, I would still come to Hell. I just would have taken a note from Enoch's playbook, and arrived here ALIVE," he said.
"Which I now have proof is a thing which can happen," Sam said.
"Your victim, whomever it was that so inspired your outrage, is far from the first living person brought to Hell against their will. A rather distasteful industry revolves around snatching mortal men and women for use in Asmodeus' brothels. After all, they are living, and not yet definitively damned. The Pride Wall stands as thin as air for them."
"Nice to know that sexual slavery is a thing here as well," Sam rolled his eyes. He already knew two people in that Hotel who'd been under that exact weight. And neither Wendy nor Angel Dust wanted to talk about it, which he understood completely. Sam rounded the last corner to the Hotel, but Alastor didn't follow, staying there and fiddling with his cane. "Not coming?"
"Just fulfilling an oath made under duress," he said pleasantly. Sam raised an eyebrow, but let him be. Just who in all of hell even could duress the Radio Demon? Well, Alastor was almost as prolific a liar as Apoc was, and just as vehement that he was no such thing. So whatever kept him at that street corner was his business, not Sam's. Sam continued onward, to the doors, which opened in his face.
He didn't even have time to flinch before he was launched backward by the same kind of blunt force that the Exorcist had battered him with, driving him into the side of Charlie's limousine's engine block. If nothing else, he managed to keep the poor bastard he was carrying from taking much of the hit. When the stars fled from Sam's vision... he saw something uncanny.
It was the tired man.
He glared at Sam for a moment, then lowered the hand that he had thrust forward. Draped over his other shoulder was the corpse of the Exorcist that Charlie had killed. "Stay out of our way," the tired man said.
Another came out behind him, covered in ballistic plate armor from head to boots. This one flexed, and a pair of brilliant white wings erupted from his back, spreading across the street and causing anybody who wasn't currently crumpled against the front of a limo to run the fuck away. Angels. Actual angels in Hell.
"I know you," Sam blurted out. The tired man, who was in the midst of turning toward the armored one, paused, and looked at him.
"No," he said flatly. "You do not."
Things began to bend and twist to Sam's particular vision, as though what he were looking at were mere projections. Just as a three dimensional object cast a two dimensional shadow, something higher, something greater cast the 'shadows' which were the tired man and the armored man. That greater power welled up, the armored one's wings spreading wide in tune with it. Then, there was a great flap of the wings, and the two of them shot up into the sky, vanishing quickly from sight, whatever projecting force had dropped their shades across Hell departing back whence it came. A moment after they were gone, there was a flash of light, as they breached the dome of Hell and carried on into Heaven. Sam just stared at what madness had come to the Hotel while he was away and busy, only called out of it when a pair of red shoes clacked into place beside him.
"And just like that, all is normal within Hell once more," Alastor said.
"Not..." Sam let out a grunt as he pushed himself to his feet. That hurt less than it would once have, but it was still a pain in his back to intercept an engine block. "...gonna tangle with angels, are you?"
"If there's one thing my mother always taught me, it was 'never get involved in a fair fight'," Alastor said, wrapping one long arm around Sam's shoulders and bearing him into the Happy Hotel. Although now that Sam had a chance to notice, somebody vandalized the sign on the roof. Charlie wasn't going to be happy when she saw that she was now the owner of something called the 'Hazbin Hotel'. Still, it wasn't his problem, until she asked him to fix it.
Chapter 14
Don't Take Shit From Other Demons
Today was interesting.
Most of Striker's duties as a Gun of Satan revolved around killing people, finding people, and finding people in order to kill them. This was a bit of a stretch, but entirely within his reach. After all, he needed to know what was going on inside that hotel. Until he had a decent idea of what was going on inside, one more accurate than what the rumor mill was churning out, he wasn't about to traipse into the demesne of the Heir of All Hell. Being a Gun of Satan meant that he had a lot of tricks that let him kill, but not many that kept him from getting killed, and the Princess's current sweetheart had a violent streak from here to Sloth. Maybe one day he'd go full hog and get adopted by Satan and become one of his Sons. For the time being, he valued his freedom more than his safety.
Getting an informant proved to be rather easy. Just wait for the cyclops to leave the building, and start to tail her. That ended up being a bit more of a wait than he'd expected; she didn't seem to want to leave the building often. But lo and behold, eventually she did exactly that, and Striker was right there to pounce on the opportunity.
"Well howdy, darlin'," he said as he fell into pace with her. It was easy for him, for his legs were longer than hers – a rarity when an imp was paired against a Sinner. "Don't see your kind 'round here often."
"Hm? Are you talking to meeeee...?" the cyclops trailed off as she looked him top to bottom, and a grin came to her face. "Wow. You look hard. Hard like old leather."
Striker couldn't help but chuckle at her observation. "I've been favorably compared to it. What's your name, darlin'?"
The girl started, and held out a hand. "I'm Niffty! And I'm supposed to be busy right now but honestly fuck them this is more important."
"I'm charmed, really, I am," Striker said, taking her hand and planting a kiss on it. She almost swooned. Oh, this was going to be simple, he thought.
And it had been.
Getting her to talk about the Hotel was as simple as taking her for a cheap meal, and just shutting up. Until today, he'd been as in the wastelands licking the bottom of leaves for condensation, scraps of information that might be relevant; the moment he got his hands on her, it was trying to drink from a fire-hose. Her eagerness to converse blasted him with a deluge of possibly important and possibly irrelevant details, factlets, opinions, and minutia.
Striker lamented that he hadn't had the forethought and preparedness to wire himself for a recorder. He hadn't thought he'd get so much so soon, after all. And physically taking notes was out of the question, as that was not what one did 'when on a date with a pretty girl'. Let her think what she would of his time. He got info. That was worth more than Souls, gold, or a ticket to Earth.
The dancing that followed was just prudent follow-up.
She seemed to really respond to his overtures, offering more and more information as to her schedules, which, importantly, intersected with everybody living in that building. She had names, routines, employment times and locations when applicable. He knew that there were three 'clients', including a porn-star former-underling – in several senses of the term – to the Overlord Valentino, a former sex-slave of little renown, and a bodyguard to the Goat of the Goddamned Apocalypse. The building was protected by the Pride's-own Swindler Incarnate, a vivisected Sinner of no power worth mentioning, and obviously the Princess of All Hell. One personage created a further confusion. Why would the Goat of the Apocalypse keep a bodyguard who couldn't follow him to six-sevenths of his job-sites? Something didn't add up to the sum he was supposed to reach. While Pride was probably the Goat's busiest Ring, he was known to make house calls to the Deadly Sins and the entrenched aristocracy in Lust and Greed. Such a job would necessarily leave that man behind.
That left Alastor as the odd man out. While Niffty was bewilderingly forthcoming as to his comings-and-goings, it painted a confusing portrait of the Radio Demon as he was involved with the Hotel. True to Striker's earlier presumption, the Radio Demon had taken on a protege, teaching that bodyguard his vast array of magic. And that bodyguard was a quick study, for a Sinner. And he was a sinner. An Elemental, like the Radio Demon. Niffty was also eager to offer gossip she had about the 'guests' of the hotel, that bodyguard included. Such as the fact that he released a 'rude guest' into the hotel, which by her description was a fucking Exorcist. And if he was reading between the lines correctly, the bodyguard, the fuck-puppet, and the Swindler Incarnate managed to keep the thing from killing them for quite a while. If that all actually happened, then it was rather impressive. And honestly, he had little reason to doubt she was telling as much truth as she was aware.
As the night went on, she then went on to more personal aspects of the people living there. That the Princess killed the Exorcist with her bare hands, as could have been expected. That the bodyguard almost True Died when the Exorcist got its hands on an actual weapon. That said bodyguard and the Radio Demon had been being extra shifty of late, whether because of said bodyguard's close scrape, or for something else, he didn't know, but he was quickly starting to develop a theory.
If Birch's belief was still accurate – which Striker was more and more bringing into question – then the Radio Demon getting out of Pride was a two-man job. Why a historically solitary Demon would suddenly involve himself with another's affairs made sense when somebody needed to be trained how to hold the door open behind you. The timing lined up. The breaches of the Pride Wall started not long after the bodyguard's arrival at the Hotel. And perhaps the entire reason the bodyguard was involved in that stupidity which was the 'Happy Hotel' was to work for his real master? Perhaps there was no altar of power, no locus of control within that building that needed to be destroyed in order to pin Alastor into Pride where he belonged. All he would need to do is kill the bodyguard and all that work would have gone to waste. It was certainly better than having to storm a building protected by such dangerous forces.
"Can we do that again?" Niffty asked from where she'd been handcuffed to the bedpost.
"Maybe," he said.
Then his night took an odd turn. Just when he thought she was running out of information for him, she pulled a knife on him and tried to gut him. At first, Striker thought that he'd been made, that he'd pushed to hard and showed his hand. But then when he disarmed the pixie demon and started to strangle her, she got really into it. So into it that it actually gave him pause. And when he stopped, she demanded he keep going.
Strange, how before Striker met Blitzø, he'd never heard of an imp able to fuck his way so far above his weight-class. And in his wake, Striker got his first piece of Sinner sly. Frankly, he was going to have to be strongly coerced to go back to imps, if Niffty was any indicator of what Sinners were capable of. Striker ran a clawed hand across the slender moustache that rode his lip, and came up with a plan. Get the bodyguard on his own. Put some Moonsilver-Stygium rounds into him. Then tell Birch that Alastor was stuck in Pride for a while until he came up with a new patsy. All the pay from Satan and prestige from his benefactors, without having to actually go toe-to-toe with the Radio Demon. And he'd be able to take on side-jobs again.
"If you don't come over here, I'm gonna go over there, even if I have to drag this bed with me!" Niffty swore, her eye looking a little bit manic.
"Fine, fine. But after this, it's cuddlin' and sleep, ye hear?" he said. Niffty's grin was wide. Honestly, for all he was the most talented imp in hell, even the best had limits, and this girl was pushing him perilously close to his.
Blitz was starting to wonder if there even were limits to his stamina anymore. Between marching a hundred miles in a day while ripped out of his mind on Pervitin, rowing across the Sea of Okhotsk riding one chip of wood while paddling with another, to killing dozens of tank crews with nothing but a knife while drunk off his ass during some big fuckin' city battle, he'd quickly learned that when push came to shove, Blitz just didn't have a wall to crash into. Which was weird, because he knew for a fact that the first time he got horizontal with Stolas, that thirsty bird almost fuckin' killed him. Maybe twelve years in the Human World had done him a favor after all.
Stolas was recovering, and the burning cigarette dangled from Blitz's lips as he hopped down from the bed and made for the book. "Alright, now that the foreplay is outta the way, what'd'ya think I bring in my surprise?"
"At this point... I think... I'm ready for anything..." Stolas was swimming in a state of post-coital bliss, so Blitz took that as permission. He flipped the book open, and ran a finger down the page until some of that indigo energy gathered across his fingertips. Loona had been kinda cagey about the book when he tried to take it. She only relinquished it into his care when he told her he was making a booty-call and that he needed it for Stolas's happy-making. Whatever was goin' on with her, he'd figure it out later. And kill whoever was responsible if the need arose. Right now, though, he dragged his hand across the air in Stolas' guest chamber, smearing a portal that opened onto the scene that he'd selected. Interdimensional, to-token; Blitz's business card.
It opened to a bathroom, with a beefy brown human staring at herself in the mirror. She didn't even notice he was there until he cleared his throat loudly. When she did, she turned to him and flinched, clutching her bathrobe closer to herself as she did. "WHATTHECURRIEDFUCK?" she demanded.
"Howdy bitch!" Blitz said with a big wave. "I got an offer for ya!"
"You're real? That wasn't a really fucked up dream?" she stared at him. First at his face, then down to his best friend, then up at him. "Oh god help me."
"Oh, he's got nothin' to do with what I've got planned for the next couple'a hours," Blitz said.
"Myew," something said.
"The fuck was that?" Blitz demanded. And then recoiled slightly, pulling into a fighting stance as something fuzzy walked out of the portal, staring up at him past whiskers with eyes that looked like a snake's. "Back the fuck off, buddy or I will bury you under a rose-bush!"
"Myew?" that fuzzy thing said.
"Smudge!" the human said, and moved forward, scooping up the fuzzy thing. It had a look of dismay on his face as she held it close to her breast. "Look. What happened last... I guess earlier this morning, that was messed up. And now I have to wonder if somebody's gonna try to kill me today."
"So what I'm hearing is that you're up for some demonic dicking to clear your head?" Blitz said.
"Are you out of your little fucking mind?" the human demanded. "I just–"
The human was cut off when a series of explosions ripped through the apartment behind her, and the portal was quickly choked with rubble. The human fell silent, staring at what used to be her apartment. The fuzzy monster began to make a rattling sound as it squirmed against her, and the human just stared.
"That motherfucker just blew up my apartment," she said.
"D'ya wanna go back?" Blitz offered.
She turned to him, fury etched deep onto her face. "No. Get your friend to attention 'cause if I'm gonna do what I think I'm gonna do, I might as well fuck a demon before I do it."
"Horrah!" Stolas said from the bed with a flourish of glee.
"That's what I was sayin'. She seemed like good people," Blitz said. "Now how 'bout you get on the bed and..."
Blitz was cut off by a slap across his face. "You will do what I tell you to do," she said, as she took up her fuzzy creature and moved to the doors. She kicked them open and hailed an imp standing out there to attention.
"Not gonna lie, that's hot in a different way," Blitz admitted.
"Don't let this little bastard run away, and don't eat him," the human said.
"Um, is Lord Stolas aware there's a human in..." one of the imps out there asked.
"Don't. Let. Smudge. Escape," the human said, again dipping into Domme Voice.
"Yes ma'am," came the meek reply. She turned, and as she stormed back into the room sans fuzzy monster with an expression that promised the angriest, most violent of sex, she cast her bathrobe aside and grabbed Blitz by the horn, dragging him along.
"What's your name, bitch?" Blitz asked.
"On any other day, you can call me Delilah. But for the next few hours, you will call me GOD," she said. Stolas was clapping his hands with gleeful expectation. This was already turning out far better than Blitz could have hoped.
"Um, Sam? Who is the charred carcass on the sofa?" Charlie asked, as Sam slowly heated up a pipe joint on the number two boiler.
"Still alive?" Sam asked, feeling the copper heat up between his fingertips. If there was one piece of Elemental Bullshit that he was forever glad of, it was that he was a walking welding torch.
"Well, yes, but..."
"That's good, because I honestly do not know," Sam said. Angel Dust complaining about spotty heat in his room sent Sam on a wild goose chase throughout the heating system in the hotel, pretty much traipsing him across the whole floorplan of it until he finally traced it to one leaky joint right outside the boiler itself.
"Sam, what happened?" she asked, with the tone of a teacher who had just walked into a room that was grey with chalk dust.
"Long story or short story?" he asked. "The short one is that I found a guy who'd been napalmed in an alleyway, and I thought he should have a safe roof over his head while he regenerates."
"Uh huh. And why him in particular?" she asked.
Sam paused for a moment, using that moment to dribble solder into the elbow. It sucked in beautifully. "He is trying to protect somebody," Sam eventually said.
"He told you... he didn't need to tell you you can read his mind," Charlie said. "So do you know who he is trying to protect?"
"Not a clue. Only that he's desperate to do it, and he'll regenerate faster here than he would between a pair of dumpsters," Sam said. He gave the pipe a prod, then nodded. That would probably do, and if it didn't he knew where to go to fix it. "I talked to Alastor about something that might help him, though. Get him up and around faster, if it works."
"The only things that would get him 'up and around' would be powerful magic or a soul-surgeon," Charlie said. She nevertheless smiled. "I'm glad you're looking out for people. This city needs more people that want to protect instead of take."
"Felt like the right thing to do," he said, striking dust from his pants and turning to leave the boiler room. "So what was up with those people who made me dent your limo?"
"Oh, that was Uncle Mike. Don't worry about him," she said.
"Uncle Mike as in Michael? As in The Michael? He Who Is Like God? Saint Michael the Taxiarch? Michael Who Treads Upon The Dragon?" Sam asked.
"Dad doesn't like to talk about that one," Charlie said with a shrug. Sam frowned.
"Was this about the Exorcist?"
"Yup. They just wanted it back so that Dad wouldn't turn it into a weapon against Heaven," she said.
"Which he absolutely would," he said.
"Oh, of course," she answered.
"How was he?" he asked. Despite the man's words, there was no doubt in Sam's mind that the tired man and Michael were one in the same. Which meant it was by Michael's hand that Sam was cast into hell.
"Kind," she said.
"Charlie..." Sam said, because he needed a bit more information than that.
"He seemed so tired," she said quietly. "I thought that he'd be just like Dad, full of power and glory. That he'd speak with the crash of the thunder, and that he'd light up the street while standing in the lobby. But instead he's just..." she gave her head a slow shake, as they emerged back into the ground floor. "There was something he didn't tell me about. Like he was trying to protect me from something."
Sam puffed out a breath. Did he dare? Honestly, he had little to lose and much to gain, so he tried. "Maybe Michael's trying to fill God's shoes, and that's more than he can handle," he said.
"Why would Michael need to do that? God is... well, God."
Sam offered a shrug. "What would happen if God was busy with something. Like really, consistently busy, for a long time. Would the Angels be able to keep things up in His absence?"
"They should. I mean, they're supposed to," she said.
"Angels are warriors, made of light and song," Sam said. "Your father isn't the most representative specimen of their type."
They emerged into the lobby, and on the chais-lounge was the newest reprobate that found themselves deposited here after a maiming. It was becoming something of a tradition that a massacred bastard would spend their recovery time on that little piece of upholstery.
"There is something I could use your help for. Only I'm not sure if it's polite to ask," Sam said.
"Why?"
"I kinda need a little bit of your blood," Sam admitted. She tilted her head. "Alastor mentioned a – as you supposed – powerful magic that should supercharge his Regeneration for a while. But it needs the blood of angels. As I don't have any way of phlebotomizing one of the Ars Goetia, I have to ask you."
"I'm not an Angel. Not even a Fallen one. I was born in hell!"
"You're half-angel, which is probably close enough for poetry," Sam said. "But feel free to say no, this is your blood, after all."
She blinked at him a couple times, and then sighed and reached for a letter opener. "You don't need much, I hope."
"Just a drop or two," he said, moving to the mostly rebuilt bar and picking up the platter he'd left there before getting summoned to the wild-goose-chase. He'd already scratched a set of runes to the Taureau-Trois-Graines onto its surface, and had it filled with water from the bogs of the Pride Wilds. Magic turned out to be remarkably freeform once you understood its underlying principles. The Bull With Three Testicles' power was immense, but unbounded, tending to rampage and to bring ruin. The brackish water called for Simbi, who knew the cures to all illnesses beneath Heaven. To bring them together was to conjure a great power of healing. Potentially.
And the blood of an angel? Turning a key to start the engine.
She let the blood drip into the platter, and he set it on the faintly breathing carcasses chest. Then he focused his heat into his fingertips, heating the metal until it started to discolor and sag slightly, as the water began to bubble and teem. Then, there was a blast of fire that raced up from the center of the platter that deflected off of Sam's face and blackened the wallpaper beside the chais-lounge. Sam blinked as it died down, the platter burned away as though it had been made of paper. If he hadn't been fireproof, that probably would have cost him his eyebrows.
"That... did that work?" Charlie asked.
"I'm not sure. Let just..." Sam said. He was cut short when the head began to look faintly fuzzy. That dark grey hair was beginning to push its way out of the barbecued-man's head. Empty eye sockets pulsed and filled, still closed but no longer vacant of their intended orbs. His breathing, rasping and dry, became stronger and silent. And without a word being said, he rolled onto his side, facing the wall, and seemed to fall directly into sleep. He still had only one arm and no legs, but Sam could see those starting to grow even visible to the naked eye. In an hour, he'd probably be back to his usual, apparently-many-limbed self. "Seems like it did. Let's let the guy rest. Regenerating that hard probably takes it out of you even if we're using magical bullshit to help him."
"I'll tell Vaggie to keep an eye out on him. It's probably very confusing to wake up safe after being immolated in Hell," Charlie said as she pulled a blanket from somewhere and draped it over him.
"Just about the most confusing thing I could think of, honestly," Sam said. "So those angels, they just wanted the Exorcist? There was nothing about you at all?"
"That's what they said," Charlie said, moving to her stool in front of the bar while Sam played bartender. "I talked to Michael a lot, but didn't get much time with the other one. Raguel. Do you have any idea who he is? Dad doesn't talk about many Angels other than the ones he wanted to massacre."
"Raguel," Sam said, thinking for a moment to lessons in scripture from his childhood. They were remarkably clear even after all this time. "Oh right. He's also called Rufael and Akrasiel. 'Friend of God'."
"So he was closer to God than most. That makes sense why he was so on edge, then," Charlie said.
"I wouldn't have pegged the angel I saw as Raguel, though. Raguel is supposed to be an angel of fairness and justice and harmony. He was acting like he was a twitch away from leveling the block. And he's called the Archangel of Speech, but by your account, he didn't say much of anything," Sam further recalled.
"Not to me, at least," Charlie said. "I think he said a lot to Vaggie, though. And apparently he loves My Worst Angels!"
An Archangel watching trashy TV from Hell? Now that was funny.
Honestly, Angel Dust was getting really sick of having to hide. He was used to strutting his way down the streets whenever he felt like it, picking up Johns whenever he felt like it, getting fucked until his eyes rolled back into his head, and then being able to wander off to get high as shit. Living at that hotel with those broads was turning out to be a crash-course in sobriety that he really didn't want to have to deal with. Though honestly, he thought that he'd have had the shakes, bad, after dropping cold-turkey the grocery-list of mind-benders that he was on when little miss sunshine back there rolled up to him on that fateful day. Turns out, Angel Dust was tougher than even he realized.
Maybe it was because he had liquor to sooth the worst, but he honestly didn't even yen over cocaine anymore. Was this what a clear head felt like? Because it was really, really weird.
"Nobody's following us," His Bestie whispered as she dropped in to match his gait. Bundled as they were in rags, nobody would think for a second they were anything other than two more useless bums, in a city full of them. "It's good to see you're still up and around. You gotta call me more often."
"I lost your number three hellphones ago, babe," Angel said.
"You don't go through phones that fast anymore," she said.
"I was talkin' about you," he said. She raised a finger for a moment, but then had to hang her head and concede the point. "What kinda fun you been havin' out here without me? I'm bored off my tits in that hotel! Tell me you got somethin' we can work with."
"Not much, I'm sorry," she said. "Although I did hear that your hotel got visited by angels yesterday."
"Borin' a shit, stick up their asses, no fun whatsoever. They was angels alright," he answered her.
"But as to who got out of Hell... Rumors are flying. Some people think it was the Radio Demon," she said.
"Do you think it was?" he prompted.
"Based on how you talk about him, no I don't think it is," Cherri Bomb growled under her breath and threw a grenade into a dumpster. The way it blasted the thing into shrapnel seemed to soothe her temper a little bit. "Fuck I hate this. If it was anybody but Valentino, I'd have kicked his door down weeks ago and given him a C4 enema!"
"Never easy, is it, babe?" he asked.
"Never is," she agreed. "Your arms okay? I know you've been favoring them for a while."
"Yeah, I just got the Seven and Eight back. Remind me never to let some goombah rip my arms off again, capiche?" he said.
"Do you make a habit of that?" she asked.
"Not since you knew me," he said. He let out a sigh. "You shoulda seen me back when I first landed here. Coked off my head, layin' waste to shit left and right, ending each night with no less than twelve inches a' the hottest man I could find inside me. It was like I'd managed to get into heaven."
"Then Valentino," she said.
"Then... yeah," he said, unable to resist the flinch. Just thinking about the moth killed any joy he had in him. But he encountered an unexpected something in the ashes of dead joy. Anger. A 'how dare you' to the monster who had done everything in his power to break Angel Dust down into nothing. And with the strength that spark of anger gave him, he realized something he hadn't thought of before. "If you ain't findin' much... I think I got a ringer we might be able to bring in on this action."
"Who are you thinking?" she asked, her one large eye locked on him.
"I got this buddy at the Hotel. Sam."
"New meat?" she asked with a smirk.
"He ain't like that. Honestly he ain't like anythin'," Angel Dust said. "He's more like Smiles than he is like me or yous. But that ain't the point! My point is, Sam, he's quick. He's like really fuckin' quick. Sonnuvabitch learned magic in a week, from nuthin'!"
"That's bullshit. Magic takes forever to learn. That's why I stick to bombs," Cherri said.
"I'm not even foolin'. Sam picked up that voodoo bullshit in no time flat. Man's probably got more brains than tha both of us put together. I say if we get him on this, we could have it cracked by the weekend!"
"That would be nice, if we could trust him," Cherri said with a scowl on her face as she glared at a lightly shifting pile of rags which was either a convulsing homeless guy, or two homeless people fucking. "The price Valentino's put on your ass is... it's kinda scary high."
Angel paused for a moment, considering that. It wouldn't be the first time he got sold out by somebody he once considered 'close'. But at the same time... it was Sam. The man literally threw his body into the way of an Exorcist's rampage to save him. Him, the bitch, and Niffty too. And he didn't even bring it up afterwords, no 'you owe me' talk, no nuthin'. Sam acted like doing anything less than the insane bullshit he pulled would have made him less of a man.
"I think we can trust him," Angel said.
Cherri turned an incredulous look at him. "Are you seriously saying that, with things the way they are, you're trusting this guy. This guy who I haven't even met, and can't vouch for. Angie, I love you like a brother, but sometimes, you don't think straight."
"Ain't anything straight with me, babe," he snapped a pair of finger guns at her, and she rolled her eye in incredulous annoyance. "But if it'll wet your fuse, I'll put the two of you together. You'll see. The guy's top shelf."
"Then lead the way," she said.
"Who cooked?" Sam asked, as he looked at the... dubious offerings that adorned his plate.
"Razzle. Or maybe Dazzle," Charlie said, as she gamely consumed that culinary blasphemy as though it didn't reek of motor oil and ammonia, bear uniquely inedible shades of blue and rust, and seemed to have the texture of boiled plastic.
"I think I'll pass. Maintain my svelte physique," he said flatly. If nothing else, he still had enough money to order a pizza or a kebab. He rose and left the dining room, having to lean out of the way of the propeller which still dominated the venue. One day, he'd have to fix his plasma cutter and start chunking that thing out of the door. That would take days. Damned thing was gargantuan, as appropriate to the cruise-ship that was embedded into the building.
He almost reached the elevator when he noticed the figure on the couch was shifting and dangling his legs off of the couch, groggy but conscious, wearing that towel like a stole. He didn't seem aware that he was Donald-Ducking it right now, since he'd left the blanket on the chais-lounge. And now that Sam got a good look at him, he was incredibly similar in body-type to Angel Dust, bearing six arms, although this one's legs were back-canted. He seemed still a bit out of it, but considering the state of him hours ago, it was a miracle he was in the condition he was.
"Welcome back to Hell," Sam said in passing, moving to one of Niffty's abandoned laundry carts and throwing him a towel to cover his junk.
"Where the fuck am I?" he asked, his tone very wise-guy.
"Princess Charlotte's hotel for the rehabilitation of sinners," Sam said.
"You took me to that joke? What are you high?" he asked, rubbing at several of his many eyes.
"Would you rather I left you in that alley?" Sam asked. "What happened back there?"
The arachnid sinner's grogginess finally fled at that, at being reminded of the torment he'd had inflicted upon him. He quickly ran his hands across his dark grey fluff, feeling for the various bits that he should by rights be missing right now. "The fuck? I got... how long've I been out?"
"A couple of hours. I cheated to get you healed up," he said.
The sinner gave a sigh of relief, rubbing at his head. "Well thank fuckin' gawd for that! You may have just saved Don Veloce's life, medegano. I gotta warn the Don. Valentino's gonna fuckin' get it for this insult, I swear on my mutha' what made it inta' Heaven."
"So you were trying to protect the Don, then," Sam said with a nod. That made sense. Organized crime ran a lot of Pentagram City. Disorganized crime ran the rest of it. He handed his hellphone over to the arachnid sinner.
"Yeah thanks," he said, and started dialing. "What you did, that ain't common. I'll see to it that the Don rewards ya for it, mark my words."
"Valentino," Sam said, rubbing at his chin. "What made the entertainment-industry's titan set a mafioso on fire in an alleyway?"
"Long fuckin' story, bud," the sinner said. "Come on, Pa, pick up..."
"Then give me the short version," Sam said.
The sinner glanced at him, then sighed, as though regretting a decision he'd just made. "A'right, fine. You ever hear of a coked-out faggot named Angel Dust?"
"Charlie whatever you do, do not make a deal with him!"
"Don't worry. I picked up one thing from my Dad: 'You don't take shit from other demons'!"
-Overheard in Princess Charlotte Magne's Hotel for the Rehabilitation of Sinners