Blitz woke up with a very unexpected sensation. Something warm and soft under his head, and gentle fingers running along his horns. When he blearily blinked, he saw that Tilla was still there, staring behind the couch to the kitchen of his shitty little apartment. She was still here.
Miracles could happen after all.
Of course, the first sound that Blitz heard was the very tell-tale cracking of fresh bone being manhandled apart. He didn't know what to make of that. And frankly, he wasn't sure what to do. Keep pretending to be asleep so that this shockingly nice behavior from Tilla could continue? Or get his ass in gear to kill something?
He took as much of the former as he could manage. Then he heard a knife parting through imp-flesh, and his curiosity beat his comfort. He gave a snort, which made Tilla jump slightly, and slowly picked himself up to a sit.
"Are you feeling any better, Blitz?" Tilla asked.
"I... ah... don't know," He admitted. Honestly, he was confused, and hurt, and angry, and sad, and so many other things that he couldn't even classify them all. But honestly, he'd never had time or tolerance to think about those kinds of things. He turned and faced the kitchen table, to find the most unlikely fucking thing that he'd ever seen his life.
Millie was standing at Moxxie's head while he was supine on the table. He was stripped to the waist, and his torso cavity was split open, the ribs being held apart by Millie, while Moxxie held a mirror with his hooves and tried to perform thorasic surgery on himself. And considering that there was almost no blood on his table cloth, he seemed to be doing a decent job of it.
"...uh, the fuck is going on?" Blitz asked.
"He's awake?" Moxxie asked, as he cut apart more of the squamous, undifferentiated tissue that made up most of an imp's visceral weight. "Good. Considering were on a bit of a time-crunch, I was worried I was going to have to invent a spell to wake him up."
"You've got enough on your plate with... this," Millie said, continuing to splay his ribs open for him.
"This is fascinating," Krieg said, where she was seated atop the deep freeze watching the whole thing take place. "I've heard of what the Bathuul clan does, but this? This is wholly new to me."
"I don't think there's too many imps who could do what I'm doing," Moxxie noted with a bit of pride in his voice, then opened up a cooler near his head without a glance and pulled out a gleaming, faintly glowing blue organ of some description, and pushed it through his sloppy guts until it pressed against the bottom of his stomach. Then, he started to stitch. "Most of them wouldn't survive the surgery to get this put in. And most of the rest would die as their body rejected it."
"A purifying organ," Krieg shook her head. "Grown from Sweet Tar, blood, and pork liver. How did you even come up with such a thing?"
"I... can't really explain," Moxxie paused for a moment, frustration on his face for that moment until he gave his head a minute shake and went back to whatever weird bullshit he was doing. "I know it'll work. I know that there's theory behind it. And if I had more than ten hours, I might even be able to explain it, but right now I don't."
"Ain't you in pain right now?" Blitz asked.
"Tremendously! But I'm also on morphine!" Moxxie said.
"Is this about that weird bullshit you did in Purgatory?" Blitz asked, getting up and looking into Moxxie's chest cavity. It was weird looking in on an imp's guts while they weren't dying because of their exposure to air. And doubly so because usually any imp in the position Moxxie in was too busy screaming in pain and horror to carry on a conversation.
"The Radio Demon doesn't even know everything that he's capable of," Moxxie said, putting aside his suturer for a brand, and cauterizing a strip of tissue. "You can let it go now, sweetie," he then said.
"Okay, Mox," she said, releasing his ribs and letting them snap down almost fully closed again. Moxxie then closed his eyes, as though concentrating. There was a fresh cracking and popping as the ribs moved themselves into the proper position, and the skin regrew across the whole of it without leaving the slightest white-line of a scar. "Oh wow. You weren't kiddin' about how well that works."
"Alright, this is weird and gross and confusing as fuck. What are y'all doing in my kitchen? Don't you have some planning to do?"
"Not anymore, sir," Moxxie said, as he began to pull on his shirt. He then gave a shudder. "Okay, so much for the morphine. It all goes."
"Handy," Millie said.
"And why not?" Blitz barged.
The door to the apartment opened, and Loona came in, carrying two massive bags of takeout food, a third carton in her teeth. She plunked them onto the floor and pulled the one that was in her gob out, even as Blitz felt his lips pull into a scowl and he started to turn from her.
"Fucking finally. I was starting to worry you were dead or something," Loona said.
"Oh? I thought you didn't care about me," he asked, bitterly. Then he had his head yanked to one side by Tilla pulling his horn.
"Don't talk that way to your child," she demanded.
"I did worry," Loona said, handing the larger of the bags to Millie, who accepted it without hesitation. "You weren't acting like yourself. Actually, no that's not right. You were acting like yourself around people who aren't me," she gestured at herself.
"Should we all be having this conversation now?" Tilla asked.
"No, no no no, she's right. After all, it's not like she's actually my daughter, so why should she give a flying FUCK about..."
"I am your daughter," Loona said, which made the furious diatribe that Blitz was about to launch into immediately crash into the rocks and sink to the bottom of the sea. He just stared at her. She actually said it. When she didn't think he was about to die, she said it. And he didn't know how to answer it. "We're running out of time. And the fuck am I going to die without admitting that."
"Y'all keep talking like there's a big fucking clock ticking over our heads," Blitz said. "We've got all the time in the world."
Everybody shared another concerned look. Then, Krieg opened the blinds to the outside.
And right there, hovering in the sky, was a big fuck-off clock ticking over their heads, counting down from what looked like about ten hours and change until zero.
"Okay, what the fuck happened when I bitched myself to sleep?" Blitz asked.
He was answered by a loud, metal snap, and there was suddenly a Sinner in the apartment. He was holding an old looking book that was writ in a half-forgotten Clan Cypher that Blitz didn't want to put the mental effort into translating, so didn't bother. When the Sinner looked up, Sam took in Blitz on his feet, everybody involved in one place, and snapped the book closed. "Alright. Don't need to wake the imp, so that's one less problem to deal with," Sam said.
"Who invited you?" Blitz thrust a finger at him.
"We did, sir," Moxxie said.
"And would somebody please explain to me what the FUCK is going on out there?" Blitz demanded.
"If you're going to kill Nathan Birch, it will have to be today," Sam said. He swept his hand along a circle in the air, reached into it, and pulled out that fancy fucking rifle he stole from Striker all those months ago.
"What's the big rush?" Blitz asked.
"Did you see the massive count-down in the sky?" Sam asked, putting the book down, the rifle atop it, and then pulling out the bullets that the thing needed to do its job, handing them off to Moxxie.
"Uh huh," Blitz said, crossing his arms before him.
"That's how long Lucifer is giving until he starts to destroy Hell looking for me," Sam said.
"Wait, he wants you? What for? Did ya sleep with Lilith? 'Cause he's really fuckin' territorial around her," Blitz offered.
"No. Lucifer wants me because I inadvertently smuggled an Angelic Gift into Hell," Sam said. "Likely, he wants to rip it out of me, which will prove quite fatal. So I'm not going to give him a chance to. But that also offers a perfect opportunity for you to do your thing, while I do mine."
"Explain," Blitz said.
"Simply," Sam said, handing one of Stella Goetia's Seraphic Steel stilettos to Millie – in her hands that thing was damned near a sword. He turned to Blitz, blazing electric blue eyes locked on Blitz's own jaundiced red. "I am going to go and take this," he held up the photograph of he and Loonie standing over the would-be Radio Demon's carcass, "to Lucifer's Palace and get him to pull Birch's Remit."
"That's suicide. There's no way he'd let you out of his grasp once he has you," Moxxie pointed out.
"Only suicide if I actually die," Sam said. "Does anybody else here have any conceivable way to get an audience with Pride Incarnate at any time you need it, to tell him to fire his chosen Proxy?" silence. "I thought not. It's a godawful plan, but it'll work. And you'll need to be ready to strike Birch the moment I do. I've looked it up. The best I can do is invoke a Status Jihad. You'll have to actually kill him yourselves for the Remit-pull to stick."
"And he will know you're behind this, somehow, which means he will come for us all," Loona added. She had a fire in her eyes that he'd never seen before. It was beautiful.
"You've grown up so much," he said, taking Loonie's hand and giving it a squeeze. "I almost don't recognize you."
"Yeah, well," she dismissed.
"Y'know what? Fuck it. I've been walkin' around without a surname for the last twenty years, and that's a pain in the dick when it comes to paperwork," Blitz declared. "You say you're name's Loona Miller, right?" she gave a confused nod. "Well, as your dad, that makes me Blitzø Miller!" he said, proud of himself for the brilliant notion. Loona just blinked at him, and Blitz turned to his… yeah, mother. He had decided on mother. "And since you're my mother, that makes you Tilla Miller. Fuck Ruut Nuckelavee and all of the fucking bullshit that she put us all through. I'm done with that shit. And I say you are too."
"That isn't yours to decide," Tilla said. Blitz just looked at her, a bit crestfallen. "But in this case, absolutely correct. Fuck Ruut Nuckelavee; may she die again painfully, and may whoever tries to bring her back fuck up and consign her to oblivion forever. Does that name work for you, Krieg?"
"I can't say I much like the sound of Miller," Krieg said. "But it is less a mouthful than Nuckelavee, and prompts fewer unpleasant questions. So be it. I can simply marry into another name in a decade when I decide I am prepared for such."
"Well that's sorted then. The Miller family's gonna go fuck up the Proxy of Pride!" Blitz said.
"To endings," Sam picked up a glass of water, holding it up in a toast. "And to heroes from the gutters, both of earth and Hell alike."
There was a cheer that went up in the room.
And then, from the next room, came a scream. "WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
"Let's go lick some ass!" Blitz said.
"It's kick… never mind," Moxxie gave up.
Chapter 33
If You Sow Cruelty, You Shall Reap Ruin
Part 1
"You can't ignore me forever, Sam," Apoc told him, as Sam moved through the promenade of High Central.
"I can try," Sam said.
"And you finally failed," Apoc appeared ahead of him, shaking his head slowly. "I'd say you were giving in to despair and to knock it off, but you aren't. You just lied through your teeth from word one to the Swindler. Why?"
"So he wouldn't get involved," Sam said. Yes, he'd not said a single emotionally honest word to Husk the last time that he saw him. He was just busy. He was busy, and didn't have time to deal with friends, no matter the good of their intentions, interfering here at the end.
"This again seems like the kind of situation that honesty would have been a bit more effective," Apoc said.
"Coming from you, that's rich," Sam said. "You did exactly the same thing to me that I did to Husk. And as much as I'm annoyed that you did, newsflash; it worked."
Apoc rolled his eyes as Sam walked past where his apparition was standing, only to have him appear ahead, near where the gates of the palace stood open, and people milled about. "I still reserve my concern. You dug into that fatalism entirely too easily."
"Husk understands fatalism," Sam said.
"And did you believe it?"
"Fuck no. Destiny is an internally paradoxical concept and I have no faith in it," Sam said. "It's what he needed to hear to leave me alone. Otherwise he'd be stalking me right now. And considering the razor's edge I'm working with all of this, I can't deal with that kind of distraction."
Apoc nodded. "Be sure you don't take this too far. Lies catch up to you."
"What goes around, comes around. I just need him, and Charlie, and all the rest, to be circling way the hell away from here while I figure out how to survive this. I haven't given up yet. I still have tricks up my sleeves," Sam said. There was probably a way. He just hadn't found it yet.
Sam felt light as he approached the palace of the King of All Hell. He'd already bypassed the Palace of Pride Incarnate, which was given over to Baphomet purely for aesthetics by a petty and vain master. He knew that he should be shuffling his feet, the weight of them dragging as he approached his all but certain death. There was no good way out of this. He knew that. And despite that, he still had to come here. Death was bad, but he'd died before. And if – if – he died this time taking Nathan Birch down with him, then so be it, it was good enough. And he had finally done what Wendy and Husk and probably no shortage of others had demanded before them; he had gotten the fuck over himself. He needed Nathan Birch to be dead. But killing him wasn't his fight. That fight belonged to Blitz and his people. They needed to kill Birch the same way that Sam needed Birch to be dead.
Let them have their fight, while he fought his.
As lopsided a fight as his was likely to be, anyway.
As he walked, he could now feel Apoc's gradually dissolving sorcery try to hide him from prying eyes. It'd probably vanish within a week or two, with the scrutiny he was under. But he didn't have a week or two. Strictly, he had a few hours. He wasn't going to let that clock get so low, though. No reason to put people with heart problems over the metaphorical edge in a place which had a health-care system almost as bad as the United States.
The guards at the door wore armor of reclaimed Seraphic Steel plates. He didn't know off hand exactly what they were, because when he Looked Within on them, they were distorted and strange like the imps, but had something like metaphysical connective tissue that vaulted away and into the cosmos. Beings from Outside, likely. So heavily armored were they that Sam couldn't actually see their visages. It was probably better for his sanity that he couldn't. They lowered their halbards across the door, blocking Sam's path, glaring at him and not saying a word.
"I am delivering information as to the whereabouts of Samuel Scailes," Sam said. The guards shared a look, then one of them shifted his halbard aside, allowing that door to swing open. Sam had expected that there'd be more to this than that, but there were probably a lot of people trying to profit on Sam's death right now. Which meant, yup, there was his welcoming committee.
"Alright, before you take more than five steps in, wipe your GODDAMNED FEET!" the tiny figure demanded, hovering as he was on mechanical wings. A Fallen cherub? So even Apoc wasn't a unique beast down here. Sam did exactly as prompted, though to little effect. His purging flames frequently cleansed his boots of any filth. The deeply disturbing visage of the viper-eyed flying mechanobaby watched as he did it, though, then pulled a scroll from wherever it had been storing it. "Now; you're about the six thousandth to come here and say you know something about the Wyld Hunt's Target. So talk fast or I'll have X!Ghd!k and Bob throw you out on your ear."
"Like I told them, I have the current whereabouts of Samuel Scailes," Sam said, steepling his fingers in front of him.
"Well, tell them to me, and if we verify that he was actually there you'll be rewarded," the dark cherub demanded.
"I'm delivering them directly to Lucifer," Sam said. "I'm not missing my chance to do this properly."
"I will be the judge of that," the fallen cherub said. Fine. If he was going to try to stand in the way, then Sam would try plan B.
He felt his veins start to sting, then ache and burn, as the blood compacted in them, thickening into sludge. His vision narrowed and his veins screamed with agony, and the once-cherub recoiled in alarm as the schlerae of Sam's eyes went from white to red, and then from red to black, the electric blue of his irises almost crushed under the weight of his soul attempting to 'fake' having the black blood of imps.
"Dǚkh," Sam uttered, and watched as a cone of barely visible sound and incantation raced out, slamming into then through the once-cherub. Instantly, his eyes rolled back in his head and his entire body went limp, dangling from the wings which kept him aloft even in sleep. The scroll fell from his hand, and with a twist of Sam's wrist, he put a portal under them and had them pop back up to his grasp. He quickly scribed his name down onto the vellum, then draped it over the cherub's floating, unconscious form.
He was pretty sure there was an alarm going off. So he twisted his magic around him again. It was strange to think that this time last year, he'd been alive, and had known beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no such thing as magic. And only a few months later, not only was Hell real, but he was gaining incredible faculty in its unreal forces. Such that he was starting to instinctively grasp those edge-cases and magical miscellany that he once thought more or less permanently out of his grasp. So the spell he used wasn't even an invisibility spell. It was a spell of confusion and fatigue.
Confusion to make them not know he was what they were looking for.
Fatigue so that they wouldn't feel any desire to look deeper and rightly second-guess themselves.
He continued to march through the halls, as armed and armored fiends of the High Aristocratic Houses began to move through, looking for him and failing even as he walked up through the center of their formations. He'd done his research into the place, but that research was necessarily incomplete. Lucifer could restructure his Royal Palace at his whim. But he liked to keep the 'public-facing' sections more or less reliable, if only so he could get his actual work done in a timely enough fashion to indulge his 'need' for luxury and debauchery. So he walked the path he'd researched, and thought of ways to get out of having to die today.
Even if he had read nothing, and come in here blind, he would have still known where to go. He simply had to follow the almost-smell that reeked of Angelic promise, laid to foetor by vice and ambition, that made what should be glorious now more foul than a hermetically sealed cadaver being cracked open after a week to rot. He could have been blinded and deafened and still been able to find Lucifer, now that the Morningstar was this close at hand.
Sam did take a step out of the man halls as he spotted several of the Ars Goetia storming toward the entrance. The fact was, he was still fairly certain that for all his nascent angelic bullshit, he was a rank amateur compared to an old hand at that same. He only had so many tricks to him, and each of those tricks would only work once in the Morningstar's presence. So he simply stood aside and let mighty Sallos and three-headed Aym pass him by. They'd probably be at a sprint to get back to him once his presence was revealed. Let them get as far away as Sam could manage.
Sam puffed out a breath, then rolled his eyes. This was very much a 'smoke 'em if you've got 'em' situation. He lit one up and continued through the hallways, past increasingly alert and concerned looking fiends, aristrocrat-soldiers, and inchoate horrors packed into armor. And one and all, their eyes slid off of him like water off of wax.
The traffic through the halls was enough that Sam was able to slip through their guarded doors on the heels or hooves of the denizens of this palace. But as he was heading down a hall that glistened with opulence and jewellery, he tried to walk past an eldritch horror, only to have it snap a limb around his arm, barring his passage. Its many, many, many eyes turned to him, dilating and constricting, and Sam could feel this thing peering straight through his sorceries with contemptuous ease.
"I̷͍̊n̸̫͐t̵̺͓̔͝e̷̥͌͛r̴̊͜l̸̤̳̈́̔o̵͎͌̈́p̵̮̪̋e̴̱͓͐̈́r̶̛̺͘," the thing fluctuated, words not coming from its incomprehensible body but instead from the creaking of nearby wood panels. Fuck! Sam quickly grabbed the thing's limb, and narrowed his attentions to it, and called upon a magic that was as much a part of him as his bones. He called it screaming up out of his guts, racing through his arms. But this time, he altered it at its last moment, according to a wyrd that Apoc's last parting gift had given him. And Sam spoke.
"B̷̻̍ẽ̵͜-̷̹͍͆n̵̨̂o̴̩̞͂͂t̴̗̤͗," Sam demanded. There was a ripping sound, like wet wood being torn apart, and the thing folded up on itself to the point that it outright vanished. A moment later, its now empty armor crashed to the floor. "Fuck me," Sam muttered, as he tried to pull his magic back around him. That could only have been worse if that guard were Hellborn. Then, his banishment wouldn't have worked, and instead would have sent the sod rocketing through walls, which would have been even worse for Sam's prospects at stealth.
The next door that Sam opened was to a reception area, one that was currently unpeopled. The sense of great-made-foul was especially potent here. He made it two steps across the room, when the doors to the office beyond it were thrown open.
"I don't care," shining, glorious Lucifer said to the towering blue-black man at his side. "Your job is to know secrets. This is a really big fucking secret. So do your goddamned job!"
"Knowing of secrets is not a thing of my nature, but of my ambitions," the Ars Goetia said. That would have to be Purson. And before he began his second sentence, he stopped, tensing, as he, too, pierced Sam's illusion as readily as most men walked through cobwebs. "We are not alone."
"Obviously not," Lucifer said, turning a glare at Sam as though his patience had just been tested almost to a point of breaking. "Who are you, filth? Do you work for one of my underlings, or are you here to collect that reward, before I turn it into a big fucking penalty?"
"I am here on behalf of Naked Law," Sam said. Lucifer leaned back at that.
"Reaaaally?" he asked, brows raising up. "You're here acting on behalf of my word? Well doesn't that just make you so very special?" his smile died quickly. "I am the master of Naked Law. And since I didn't summon you, you're just another former-mortal idiot who's wasting my time. Purson, destroy this fool."
"I am presenting evidence that your Proxy has broken your High Laws and made mockery of you, King Lucifer," Sam said. Lucifer, who had been in the midst of motioning Purson to attack him, paused. He turned to him.
"You say that Birch has outright been being a shit-arse?" Lucifer asked. "That's not news to me. You have ten seconds."
"I need seven," Sam said. He pulled out the photograph and held it toward Purson, who then passed it to Lucifer. "This is proof, with signature, that Proxy Nathan Birch violated your stricture against Breaking the Arrow by use of minions for petty, personal benefit."
"Really," Lucifer said. He then scowled at the picture, and Sam felt something heavy pressing at the fabric of Hell around him. His expression grew ever sourer as he looked at it. "Of course you indolent little fuck. I told you to do your job, and this is what you're doing with my precious time? No goddamned wonder you couldn't find that Sinner. You had your head so far up your own ass you were staring out past your own teeth."
"He is being challenged for the position of Proxy according to the Old Rules," Sam said as soon as he was sure Lucifer wasn't going to be furious at being interrupted. He still looked furious, but Sam wasn't going to get around that. "The challenger is the imp depicted in that photograph."
"Really? An imp wants to fight for a spot as my Proxy? An imp?" Lucifer asked. He then scoffed. "Fine. Fine! Maybe it'll be an object lesson to whatever hungry fool comes next that when I ask you to do a job, YOU DO THE FUCKING JOB!"
Lucifer held the picture up with one hand, and with the other, he snapped his fingers to a spark like magnesium fire. "A challenge for the position of Lucifer's Proxy has been issued. Let no outside party take part in the struggle which is to come. May the better be made my chosen vessel."
"Is this wise, my liege?" Purson asked, still glaring at Sam.
"It's brilliant. And it either gets rid of Birch outright, or reminds that time-wasting pillock that I am in charge, and what I say is goes, and goes immediately."
He then turned to Sam. "Now. As for you."
"I suppose..."
"K̴̖͐N̷̯̠̋̈́E̶̡̾͝E̴̛͙͘L̸͓̎," Lucifer demanded, pointing at the floor. And Sam just stared at him, flicking a glance toward Purson. Should he? Lucifer took a step forward, thrusting his finger downward again. "K̴̖͐N̷̯̠̋̈́E̶̡̾͝E̴̛͙͘L̸͓̎!"
"Could it be?" Purson asked, taking a step back, trepidation on his face.
Lucifer glared at him, then to Purson with disdain, then back to Sam. "Why isn't he kneeling?" he muttered, eyes flitting around as he tried to figure it out. But as much as Sam wished he wasn't, he had a festering brain in that glorious head. And he started to smile. "Oh, this could be interesting. Tell me your name, Sinner. And do not lie. I will know."
Sam flinched as he felt the angelic sorcery descend on him, felt the pound of it branding into his brain. Lucifer was right. Sam couldn't lie right now. Not without using a blatant sorcery of his own. So after rubbing the ache from his temple, he turned his gaze back to Lucifer. And he did the most baldly audacious thing he'd ever done in his life.
"My name," he said, "is Samuel Scailes. I believe you're looking for me."
Blitz felt like he could punch Lucifer in the face and have him say 'Thank You'. No more planning, no more fucking around, no more doing all that intellectual shit that honestly he had no patience for. He was going to kill the motherfucker who threatened his daughter's literal skin, and it was going to happen today.
The Proxy's house was big, fancy, and loomed over the other manors nearby in such a way that made them feel ineffectual and weak. The array of them turned a few heads. Three well-dressed and heavily armed imps, and one hellhound wearing a heavy leather coat playing with her phone was quite out of place here in this place of Hellish aristocracy. Honestly, if Blitz had any say in things, he'd rob every one of these houses then burn 'em down. Such cocksuckers as these hadn't done a fuckin' thing to earn what they had. Let them start from the bottom like he did. See how far they got.
"So what exactly are we waiting around for?" Blitz asked. "Shouldn't we just kick his door down and ice the fucker?"
"There's a way to do this," Moxxie said, shifting the Holy Rifle to his back. "Until and unless the Remit is personally suspended, nothing we do will matter. So we have to wait."
"You're drawing a lot of attention," Krieg said from the van. She was staying as clear of it as she could while still being within eyeshot. Brave kid. Nosy kid, too.
"So again I ask, what are we waiting for?" Blitz asked.
The answer came when filth began to seep up from the sewer, something black and foul and reeking that mounted up until it emitted a blast of golden light, and alabaster flesh began to bloom from the foetor, a pristine white suit lined with scarlet appearing on that flesh, and a face with a savage, cruel grin appearing last. Any quip that Blitz was going to offer died in his throat. While Blitz might be an audacious motherfucker, even he knew that you did not just piss on Lucifer's leg.
"So this is the challenger?" the King of All Hell said. He scowled, then looked at M & M, then to Loona. "...Are you sure you three aren't in charge?"
"Pretty sure," Loona said for him, the only one of the lot that didn't seem justifiably petrified to have the ruler of this entire plane of being in their presence.
The King just stared at her. He took a step toward her, leaning and weaving to look at her from several angles. Then he turned to the other imps at Blitz's side, and scrutinized them as well. But after those long, tense moments, he gave a shrug and a 'huh', and stepped away from them. He moved to the gate of the house, straightening his tie. Then, he spun, and pointed at them.
"K̶̖͛N̸̪͙̱͒͂͛̈́̚͜Ė̴̫̰̪̽̊͝Ề̸͙͓̉L̵̙̯̀̅͌̂͝ ̴̯͆B̶̨̘̜͑Ḙ̶͌̆̽̐͠F̶̡͕̝͚́́́͊͝Õ̶̮̻R̷̩̮̹̤̎̆̐̓Ȩ̶̛͉̠́͠ ̸̙̦̂̊̎͑͜Y̸͖̖̓O̴̱̥̳̿̍̔͂Ṵ̴̌̔̚͜R̸̺̫͈͐ͅ ̵̹̆́K̵̰͈͕͂̎̇͠͠Ȋ̷̞̤̹̈̔͛͝N̷̝̺̬͐̾̎G̶͍̲̩̘̱̽,̸̨̀" he demanded. Blitz's body hurled itself to the tarmac before he could even fail to think. And next to him, the I.M.P. squad had done likewise. Blitz didn't notice that Moxxie, Millie, and Loona all gave a surreptitious nod. He wouldn't have been able to figure out what it meant anyway. "See? That's how this works."
Blitz glanced back to the van. Krieg was now hiding. Smart girl.
Lucifer reached out and rapped on the gates, then hit the button to the intercom.
"Who goes there?" a woman's trembling voice asked.
"Send your master out front, dragon," Lucifer said. Then, he took a step forward, into the gate. As he walked, he sheered through the iron as if he were made of angle-grinders, leaving a vaguely Lucifer shaped hole in the fence that he passed. As he moved, the grass and flowers that were planted along the path to the front door withered and died. And above Lucifer's head, a shard of his shattered halo burnt into being, emitting oily black smoke as it did.
The door to the manor opened swiftly, that gargoyle emerging first with a grenade launcher in his hands. Upon seeing Lucifer, he even did the tremendously stupid thing and pointed it at him. Lucifer then snapped his fingers, and Wretch burst into a spray of gore, the weapon tumbling to the ground. Next out were the dragon and the hound, both of whom saw the ruin of Wretch and recoiled, and made no aggressive overtures toward the King of All Hell. Last out was Birch himself.
Birch didn't look the same as he used to. Now, there was a bandage wrapped around his head as though somebody had tried to pop the top of his head off and it was only just barely being held on by sutures, superglue, and gauze.
"Control your minions, Birch," Lucifer said. "I'm not paying to have this jacket dry cleaned."
"What is the meaning of this?" Birch asked, looking first at Lucifer gradually exterminating his garden by his mere presence, then to the group of scrappy nobodies outside his estate. Lucifer's smile grew even more cruel. With a wave of his hand, the gore and mess that Wretch had been reduced to slowly reconstituted itself, bit by bit, until the naked, shaking, bloody stone of the gargoyle was left on both knees on Birch's patio.
"You do know I prefer when you do your job properly, right?" Lucifer asked. "I asked you to do a very specific task. And instead of actually doing it, you fucked around. Well, this is the part of the day when fucking around meets finding out. You have been challenged."
"This is nonsense. I have always been loyal to you, my liege," Birch said, falling to one knee. The bandage slipped as he did. There was something hard and brown under the skin of his head, it seemed like.
"And I especially don't like it when the people I'm supposed to be keeping as my foremost agents F̵̣̌̈́Ǘ̶̢̡̙͈̍͂C̸̗̤͚͗̏̆̄̚K̶̰̖̏̇̃I̷̢͛Ñ̸͇̲̟̦G̷̺̈́̀͠ ̴͖̼͖̫̿ͅL̶̙̃̀I̴̹͉͊͗͝ͅͅĖ̷̻̺͖̃̽͘ ̵̛̘͗͊̒̕T̸͕͛͋͗̀O̷̥̳͋̀̽ ̸̳͑͐M̴̛̝̔͒́̚E̴͕͖͘!̸̑ͅ" his last words erupting in an antediluvian roar. He flicked his fingers, and the photograph appeared between them. From Birch, to Loona, to Alastor, to Sam, to Lucifer, and now back to Birch. What goes around comes around, indeed. "A lot of the rules that I'm forced to keep enforcing are bullshit from the old days. I could scarcely give less of a shit about them if I tried. But no, you have to go and fuck around with one of the ones I MADE MYSELF!" he shouted as he flicked the picture with such precision and velocity that it cut into Birch's nose and stuck there. He recoiled, pulling the photograph out of his now bleeding face, and looked at it, at his own writing on the back, then back to Lucifer. And idiot that he was, he finally grasped exactly how stupid he'd been.
"Hah!" Blitz offered.
"So you two," he pointed a finger at each of Birch and Blitz, "are going to fight to the death like good little peons. Whichever one of you is still alive at the end will be my Proxy," Birch made to say something, but the finger Lucifer had directed at him raised up. "And for the duration of this little bout, you are no longer considered my employee. I hope you've been keeping up on your boxing lessons, Birch," Lucifer said.
He then took a step back, as the stone began to degrade into crumbling grey sand, not just on the footpath beneath him but in the wall that Blitz was on the other side of. Blitz reached into his pockets, and filled his hands. "Now, as much entertainment as it would ordinarily be to stand by and watch you gaggle of chucklefucks kill each other, I've got something that requires actual attention needing seeing to. I'll come back when I'm done. Make sure one of you is dead by the time I do."
There was a twisting of light, as though some of Birch's color was being stripped out of him, and when it finished, the Sinner recoiled as though just punched in the gut. His watery eyes bugged, staring at his hands, then to Lucifer. The King of All Hell didn't have anything else to say, though. He simply caught fire, burning away until all that remained of his presence was a black, oily stain on the walk to the Proxy's Manor.
"How dare you?" Birch said, glaring at that stain. Blitz pulled his hands from his pockets.
"Y'all know what to do," Blitz said, and the others gave nods, as he bit into the pins and pulled hard. Most people said you couldn't strip out a grenade pin with your teeth. Most people didn't have a mouth like Blitz. So the next, and penultimate thing that he would hear, was the latches flying off of the pair of flashbangs. With a glare, he stared down Nathan birch.
And held a flashbang grenade to each of his own ears.
"Kick his ass, Dad," Loona said. As far as 'last things to ever hear' go, that was pretty nice.
It was less of a sound, and more of a tactile thud followed by immediate and briefly blinding pain, and then utter silence. A lesser imp would have been knocked unconscious by it. Even Blitz himself, before his little involuntary vacation on the Eastern Front, would have succumbed. But he was sterner stuff, now. He could still 'sense' some bodily sounds, the beat of his own heart, the scraping sensation of his boots pushing him off of the street. And he could feel his viscous black blood seeping down the sides of his neck.
"What the fuck did he just do?" Wretch said. Blitz couldn't hear him, of course. But Blitz had learned quite a few things from his mother when he was a kid. She had been forbidden to spare any effort to educating him. So she had to do it in secret. And the first thing she taught him was how to communicate without sound. Sign-language, for one. And for the other, well, Blitz could read lips.
Whatever answer Birch offered, Blitz didn't look at. He didn't know how Birch's bullshit voice magic worked, and he wasn't about to press his luck. So staring at around belly-level on the former Proxy, Blitz pulled out his Luger and started sending rounds. Wretch instantly put himself into their path, and they crashed against his stony skin.
"Scream like a bitch, Birch! I'mma comin' for ya!" Blitz roared as he launched himself through the hole in the gate, and into the fray.
Blitz was the first through the gate. Millie was the second. And in her passage, there was no gate. By grabbing it near its hinge, she ripped and tore the thing from its moorings, before hurling it, discus like, above Blitz's head at the people arrayed on the deck.
"Protect me!" Birch demanded. And the dragon answered. She jumped forward, hands out-stretched, and the gate that should have flattened them all to the floor instead twisted and buckled to a halt, whereupon she threw it away. Then, she hurled herself at Moxxie and Millie, her tattered wings unable to give her flight. When Moxxie tried to send a cluster of Stygium Lead buckshot through her, she managed to pivot, mid-jump, ducking under it, and kicking off the ground to hurl herself clawed-feet first at Moxxie.
The impact blasted Moxxie from his footing, sending him rolling down the street with the shotgun clattering against the pavement on its strap. At least he hadn't lost it. Millie's reaction was stark and immediate. The instant she beheld somebody causing harm to her man, she seemed to bulk and teem, her compact frame swelling with force as she pulled her battle-axe from her pack and in one smooth motion, swung it at the dragon's face. The dragon jerked out of the way, and threw a hysterical haymaker at Millie, only to have the she-imp deflect it down and into the pavement, and then have her artfully twist that battleaxe into an unorthodox upward strike, one that the dragon was now wide open for.
O'Daire reached out her hand, and caught the blade. It landed with the sound of an axe biting into very, very hard wood, but what should have cut O'Daire in half instead halted less than half a centimeter into her palm. With an expression not of rage or defiance but instead of unmitigated terror, she then used her buried hand in its own unorthodox strike, driving an uppercut that impacted the side of Millie's neck. It should have sent her flying. She was sent off of her balance by exactly one step.
With that extremely dense second and a quarter now gone, Moxxie was back on his feet. He twisted his hands before him, and he made a vaguely beckoning motion, speaking words of power as the could feel his rapidly purifying black blood fill into the yellows of his eyes. Give me your pain, those words of power demanded. And when he did, that pain came, shrieking and black beyond black, hovering like spectres between Moxxie's hands. Another word of power, Condense, and the shrieking spectres grew more solid, more substantive. Then, without any more words needed, he flicked his hand toward the dragon O'Daire and the Pain Elemental he'd created raced out, striking Birch's minion while she was rallying to drive a savage axe-kick down on Millie who was trying to get her footing back.
The black spirit burst over O'Daire and dug into her; she staggered, letting out a grunt of pain. Moxxie's elation that he'd managed to get that right on the first try immediately died. Pain Elementals were supposed to be debilitating, not just distracting. He must have done something wrong. So he spoke a different word of power. Ŭsh; revelation.
Oh, crumbs.
Revealed to him, in a blizzard of information he could only parse through because he could slow time to a near-stop around him, was the worst thing he could have thought to find. Fiona O'Daire was so inured to the most savage of pain that what was an 11 out of 10 for most was a 2 for her. And worse still... her skin was hardening again. With his accelerated senses, he could literally watch as skin lesions hardened into scales, as tender, vulnerable flesh became overshrouded by bulletproof armor. And as he watched, muscles lost to cruel atrophy rebuilt themselves, released by what Blitz would in this case rightly call 'magical bullshit'.
The world started to move again, as Millie tried to drive her axe through O'Daire's head, only to have the dragon lean back, and catch the haft before it could finish its follow-through. O'Daire tried to strip it from Millie's grasp, first kicking Millie in the face to try to make her release her grasp and when that failed just using sheer leverage of her larger body, with a foot braced against Millie's cheek against Millie's own unnatural, impossible might. Neither side won. The axe half broke in half just past where O'Daire held it. And now she had the business end of it.
It was Moxxie's body that failed him, pulling the Holy Rifle from its place at his back and tucking it to his shoulder in a movement that, while smooth as melting butter, was just a hair too slow. When he fired the shot and sent the Seraphic Steel bullet out, the dragon was able to get that axe-head into its path, knocking her a step out of path and deflecting the ruinous metal away. Even as Moxxie worked the bolt, O'Daire spun and hurled the axe at Moxxie.
The weapon slammed into Moxxie's elbow, severing his hand and leaving it hooked into the trigger as he fell to the ground. Black blood splashed under him. But even though the pain was great, he didn't so much as shout. Instead, he grabbed the ragged limb and pressed it into the stump, closed his eyes, then concentrated. It was a flow of energy like electricity through a wire, only the wire was all of Hell, and it flowed up from the lowest depths through to the rest of reality. He only needed to tap it slightly, that great deluge, and use its power to Unchange what was changed. It took a few seconds, but with an act of will, he forced his hand out of the trigger-guard, and felt sensation blossom into it. Though there was a tear in his sleeve which left most of it bunched up around his wrist, there was not so much as a whisper of scarring.
And he felt inexplicably 'emptier', to a degree that he didn't quite understand. Like he'd used something up. But that something was already refilling, and he had already spent twelve seconds on the ground which was twelve seconds too long in a fight such as this.
Moxxie switched hands and tried to put a second bullet into O'Daire, but found that he'd only gotten the scope in her vague location when the dragon launched herself, and Millie in her grasp through the walls of an estate on the far side of the street. Moxxie wasted no time, springing to his feet and launching himself after them, still feeding the power of his birthright as an imp to finishing restoring his damaged body.
He reached the scene of the fight just in time for the house-guard of the manor they'd busted into to try to brain O'Daire with a mace, only to have the dragon tank the hit without injury, grab the mace, then strip it from its owner, proceeding thereafter to bash his skull concave with a single strike in its wake. With hysterical force, she swung that stolen mace at Millie, who was able to deflect it away with a shovel she'd picked up. At this point, Moxxie's aim was confounded; Millie got into his line of fire too often and too randomly for his reflexes to be sure he wouldn't hit her instead of the dragon. So he had to let her hold her own for a moment.
"End this madness in the name of Von Eldritch!" A voice thundered across the property, utterly unheeded by the three people most engrossed in that selfsame madness. Frederick Von Eldritch cut a terrifying figure, a man near the very highest echelons of Hell's society with all of the power and might that such stature provided him. And at the moment, Moxxie didn't even give the towering figure a second glance. Because one of Von Eldritch's guards tried to bludgeon Moxxie with an electrified prod. While his reflexes weren't good enough to hit a dragon while missing his blazingly quick wife, they were certainly good enough for him to weave out of the way of the three swings that the guard managed, before pulling his Brimstone Arms Model 50 from its holster, and with almost contemptuous dismissal send high powered armor penetrating pistol rounds pounding straight through the plating of the guard, shredding his legs, and leaving to him to scream and leak scarlet and gray onto the dirt.
Von Eldritch was not having any of this. He stormed toward the two melee combatants, catching Millie's shovel during a backswing and arresting it from delivering what could have, in a less unkind Hell, been a debilitating blow, and leaving Millie open for a mauling blow by the dragon's regrowing claws, that traced four black-bleeding furrows across her face. She let out a shout of alarm, and with a flex of her limbs, broke the shovel to get it out of Von Eldritch's grasp. She then jammed that shattered section down into Frederick's unarmored foot, causing the Hellish aristocrat to fall back, clutching his bleeding foot, then launching the handle into O'Daire's chest with such force that it sent the dragon crashing through a door and out of line-of-fire.
"Millie!" Moxxie shouted.
"I'm okay, Mox!" she shouted back, taking a moment to kneel, and her ragged face began to shift and warp, as it was pulled back into proper place, her ripped-out-eye replacing itself with one that still had the black 'skin' over its iris. "See? Good as new!"
"I will have you all killed for this insolence, you muck-dragging scum!" Von Eldritch tried to interrupt their conversation.
Whatever Millie was about to say was interrupted by the wall of the building with the broken door exploding into flinders, and O'Daire emerging, now completely naked, but rapidly having that not be a meaningful issue. The Dragon Fettered was more or less back to her old strength, but just as the card had said, the fetters remained: an iron ring around her neck, manacles at her wrists, and one fetter at her ankle. Her wings were tattered to the point they could offer no flight. Her armored scales, thick, but cracked and worn, and so very fleshily dull. And her face was not one of wrath or ruin or rage, but absolute self-preserving terror. Moxxie snapped his heavy-caliber pistol between his teeth and tried to get the rifle around, but it snagged on the low fence he was stood beside. DAMN IT!
O'Daire took advantage of Moxxie's failing of spacing to close a ham-hock sized fist around Millie's left arm and neck, then slam her with all the power that the dragon had to offer first into the nearest wall, then into the flagstones. When Von Eldritch thrust himself to a limping stand, and shouted more demands at her, O'Daire then bludgeoned Millie against Frederick, which launched Frederick to the ground once more, this time with a pair of holes in his jacket where Millie's horns had cut him. With a crack of wood giving way to desperate effort, Moxxie got the rifle up again. But by the time he did, O'Daire had caught his eye, and saw what he was about to do. With her clawed foot, she tore up a great flagstone, and flicked up to to her other hand. Moxxie snarled with a deeper anger than he thought he had to himself, as she held that three inch thick chunk of rock with all of the ease of a buckler, almost effortlessly tracking every probing twitch of his rifle with a shift of its location to perfectly counter it. How in the fuck was she doing this? Then he remembered. She was a Medieval Damned. Proper shield-use was very much in her skill-set.
A blast of electrical pain raced through Moxxie, as the guard that he'd put onto the ground had done an uncommon thing and still tried to do his job, jamming his electrified truncheon into the middle of Moxxie's spine. It was strange. While it hurt like Satan's Displeasure as it always had in the past when he was electrocuted, he didn't feel his muscles lock up even in the slightest. So after a fraction of a second in a prison of electric pain, he swiped with his tail, knocking the bludgeon away, spinning and butt-striking the guard with the holy rifle. He immediately took another swing, so Moxxie stripped the pistol out of his mouth, pointed it down at the remarkably tenacious armsman, and put deflected two bullets off of his face-plate before the third was sent into his hand, blasting off a finger and spilling the prod to the ground.
Moxxie knew what was coming even without looking, so hurled himself straight backward in a desperate bound, the stone flag that O'Daire had been using as a shield now hurled as a discus at him. It clipped his hooves, but didn't bust his ankles, so he rolled to his feet easily enough, but even as he did, he instantly wished he didn't have the ability to slow his personal time.
Because in that instant, he watched as O'Daire turned her attention to the imp in her grasp, grabbed her head in her other hand, and twisted to a sickening crunch of bone that left Millie's head facing the wrong direction.
"MILLIE!" Moxxie howled.
O'Daire didn't even have the cruelty in her to look satisfied. She simply kicked Frederick Von Eldritch in the face for trying to get in her way, then hurled Millie's mangled body ahead of her, at Moxxie.
He caught her, holding the backs of her shoulders and staring her in the face. No. No!
And her eyes snapped open, not even looking afraid. She tried to say something, but spat out black blood, to no noise. But Moxxie saw that stubborn look in her eye. It was like she was telling him to keep going. To keep fighting.
He could have left. Just taken her and fled. He had that power, now.
But honestly, right now, the power of the Plane of Wrath pounded through Moxxie to such an intensity that he could finally, for the first time in his life, understand his bride, point for point and one-to-one. This was his fight. He stumbled a step back with her still in one arm, and twisted his other arm in a great circle behind him. He felt a tearing in the air, as he cut a hole between here and anywhere else, so when Fiona O'Daire tried to tackle him to the ground and maul him, the impact drove the three of them into a plunge away from the high manors of society.
Even as Moxxie fell, he fired every bullet the pistol had into O'Daire's face. One of them pulped her eye, and another bloodied her nose. He got exactly that much satisfaction before their shared plunge dumped them into a pond surrounded by a burnt garden.
Lucifer stared at Sam, then chuckled.
"Well, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be," he said. He turned to the demon King next to him. "That will be all, Purson. Go home and play with your woman."
"Is this wise, my liege?" Purson asked.
"Are you questioning my wisdom?" Lucifer demanded. Purson was silent at that. He gave a bow, then quickly left, leaving the doomed bastard standing in front of the king of the bastards. Sam didn't have the first goddamned clue what to do now. Only that Lucifer was not going to be polite when he started demanding, and Sam would have to fight with every fucking trick that he'd ever come up with. And it was going to fail, because Lucifer was still Lucifer.
"I suppose you've been looking for me for a while," Sam said. Buying time didn't hurt anybody out there, and might give him desperately needed time to think. After all, he'd already managed one impossible deed today; he'd managed to lie flat out to Husk and not get called on it. Perhaps the same could be done here...
"Oh, for so very long," he said. He advanced, and Sam retreated by a step. "You've been very, very sneaky, friend. So subtle in your movements that you could have stayed down here for another ten millennia without me finding you if you had just... picked... better friends."
Ten millennia? The fuck was he on about?
"No friend is beyond price," Sam quoted the Credo Bohta. Lucifer chuckled at that, nodding as though it were sage wisdom instead of cynical people trying to justify cynicism.
"And in your case, a bad friend is a cash-sink beyond all comprehension," Lucifer said. He reached out, and Sam found his ability to retreat cut off, as though Lucifer had seized a chain attached to Sam and rooted him in place. "Now as for that little spell of yours? Clever work. I haven't seen its like in a very, very long time. Not commonly done by your ilk, but then again, there isn't such a thing as your ilk, these days."
"I didn't last this long by being an idiot," Sam deflected. Then, Lucifer nodded, and ripped. He felt himself stagger to one side, magic breaking down and collapsing around him as every surviving spell that had ever been placed on him, by any hand, was torn to shreds. Sam blinked at the discomfort that caused him. It was like ripping out an ingrown hair in a massive pull, abrupt and painful. And like removing an ingrown hair... strangely relieving. Sam retook his feet, now slicing the pie around a coffee table so that he didn't retreat straight out the door and into whatever mob of cronies were assembling to vivisect him.
"I suppose you didn't. And if you hadn't put your trust in the Radio Demon, you'd still be out there, and I'd have to rip apart my realm to find you," Lucifer said.
"If Alastor hadn't revealed me," Sam said, because of course Alastor would sell him out the moment that he had no better option, "you wouldn't have known who I was to make that little announcement. You still wouldn't be tearing apart your realm, because you wouldn't know where to look."
"And in the end, you come to me. And I have to ask why?" Lucifer said. He leaned in, a conspiratorial look on his face. "Why would something like you finally reveal yourself? After all, that," he motioned vaguely outside, to the realm beyond this palace, "was not a meaningful threat to somebody like you. So what stakes do you have in this, Samuel? What plots are you spinning? What wheels turn within the wheels of your mind? What are you goals? Are you planning... what? To empty my throne? To take my place as the King of All Hell?"
"No," Sam said, honestly. "I will never sit the throne. That is not my place."
"That is not your nature, perhaps," Lucifer taunted. Sam canted a look at him. What did he mean by that? Sadly, Lucifer might be a bully and a thug with way too much power, but he did not sit the throne of Hell without some degree of canny. Canny which took Sam's moment of confusion, and ran with it. "Oh, there it is, isn't it? You don't know what your nature is. You've never known. That's why you are what you are."
"I'm just another doomed asshole in Hell," Sam said.
"Enough," Lucifer's humor dissolved. "Enough with the lies. You can lie to the rest of the idiots who live in this plane of existence, but trust me: I know a liar when I see one. Give me what I want, Samuel. Give me your power."
"No," Sam said.
Lucifer chuckled at that. "I'm sorry, I don't think you quite understand what is going to happen here," he said. "You can either use your power at my behest and in my service, or," his smile fell away, and the great cruelty of the Great Enemy etched itself deep onto his beautiful face, "I can rip it out of you one nerve ending at a time."
"You'll fail," Sam said. Now he was just talking straight out of his ass, but anything to keep Lucifer off of balance even to the slightest degree. He'd finally decided on a plan. Or at least a fraction of a plan. And it wasn't a great one, simplistic to the point of absurdity. He'd just need a chance to use his Purging magic on Lucifer. That would have to do something.
"You'll find I don't court failure easily," Lucifer said. And then, with a movement that even Sam's now piano-wire tight reflexes couldn't match, he swept through Sam's suckerpunch, then drove his hand through Sam's ribs and lifted him from his feet, slamming him hard against the wall. "I can feel something in there. Something I want. And... I... will... have it..."
Sam gasped and tried to summon the flames, but the pain was unbelievable. He could feel every twitch of the King of All Hell's hand as it quested through pulped ribs and tore one of his lungs to shreds. His vision grew darker as he had a harder and harder time keeping blood flowing properly. And then he felt that fist slam shut around his heart, felt the lurch of it try to beat, and fail inside avaricious grasp.
Another stunning pain, as Sam was hurled to the floor, sliding across it on a streak of red. He tried to breath in, but a glance down at his shirt showed that his entire chest cavity was open to the air, gore leaking out of it.
In Lucifer's hand was Sam's heart. Lucifer stared the blood soaked organ lustfully, a wide smile on his face, putting Sam entirely out of his mind as his other hand reached toward it, the nails on his fingers growing longer and sharper into claws. "The power to unseat God, in the palm of my hand," Lucifer said, as Sam, even with no breath to him, even with his vision narrowing to a tunnel, pushed himself off of the floor.
Lucifer dug those fingernails into Sam's heart, and he peeled it apart.
To reveal nothing.
Lucifer stared at that ruined organ of meat and synaptic tissue, confusion replacing avarice on his face. "Wait. Wait, how... How can there be nothing?" he asked.
And Sam, who had already started to lurch toward him launched himself that last two steps and pressed his hands around Lucifer's neck, and from the very depths of his being, from his toenails, from the darkest of his ambitions and in defiance of the greatest of his doubts, he demanded the flames arise, that they swell, that they billow... and that they consume.
The blast sounded less like a flamethrower and more like an ongoing explosion, as the purifying power of angelic justice blasted throughout the Great Enemy's body, evaporating his clothing, sublimating his hair, blasting away flesh into dust, and blasting the dust away into nothing.
Sam fell, then, onto his chest, a tremendously painful experience considering its state. When he pushed himself off the floor, he was pretty sure a chunk of his lung remained on the carpet. He clenched his fist, and he willed his body back together, demanding for once that all his angelic bullshit work for him and not despite him. It was five long seconds, but he felt a heart start beating in his chest again, and could see the ribs start to regrow in his ruined chest.
Had he done it?
"I should have seen that coming, actually," Lucifer's voice came from some nebulous elsewhere around Sam. "After all, you're not just an angel. Why would you keep your gift where a mere angel would hide theirs? No. You're something altogether more dangerous. Something more uncommonly canny."
"...that was an avatar, wasn't it?" Sam asked.
The darkness of the room boiled and teemed, leaking foul-smelling foetor into the real world of Hell, foetor which pulsed and grew until it began to shine, emitting brilliant white skin, golden hair, a pristine white suit trimmed in scarlet, and a grin of unmatched superiority. Lucifer, utterly unharmed.
"Of course it was. Did you really think that you could do anything to me at this point?" Lucifer mocked. He took off his jacket, casually, as Sam continued to force his body to reconstitute itself. He even started to roll off his sleeves. "So your power isn't in your heart like my brothers' are. Count me surprised. I still know it's in there somewhere. I will find it. I will find it if I have to break every single bone and lick the marrow from each of them, if I have to flense your skin from you by milimeters, if I have to uncord your nerves, one. By. One," He clapped his hands together before him. "You're just a great big pinata for me, Samuel. And I'm gonna beat you until I get my candy."
Well, Samuel thought.
Fuck me.
"Protect me!" Birch shouted, before Blitz launched himself at them, firing his luger with one hand and a shotgun with the other. The withering assault of it struck and deflected off of the gargoyle's skin, causing weird sparks to jump across it. Even as Blitz did that, Birch pointed at Loona, who was standing in the same spot that they'd started, because M & M were busy tussling in the middle of the street with messed up dragon. She continued to fiddle with her phone, idly glancing up at him. "And you will now kill yourself!"
Loona very idly raised her middle finger at him, as she put her Hellphone into sleep mode. It was probably going to get broken, but if it didn't, she wasn't about to run down its battery over however the hell long this took.
"Did you say somethin', fucko? I can't hear ya!" Blitz roared, then head-rammed the gargoyle so hard that even though the Sinner was literally made of stone, he was sent crashing back and onto his ass through the doors of the house.
Birch recoiled and ducked away from Blitz's snap-shot, ducking around a corner of the geometry of the entryway, long enough for Wretch to pick himself up and barrel into Blitz, tangling his rock limbs around Blitz's own old-scarred scarlet hide. Wretch then heaved with all of his might, outright throwing Blitz through one of the windows nearby one of the studies that formed an L with the entryway. He turned to Birch. "You need to retreat. I'll..."
He was cut off when a bloop-sound came, and the same grenade launcher that Wretch had almost used against Lucifer now released its deadly payload into Wretch's back, the blast blowing Loona's fur slightly, and sending the gargoyle the ground once more. Birch grabbed a cracked wing and hauled him up.
"Don't just stand there you idiot, protect me! And you," he pointed at Maelstrom, who had been standing to one side, keeping himself small and beneath notice until this point, "go... deal with that!" he pointed at Loona.
It took everything Loona had not to break into a grin.
He couldn't have worded that better for her if he'd tried.
Maelstrom gave a fearful nod, then ran at her, as Blitz emerged from the window while reloading his stolen grenade launcher. Loona wished she could have watched how the fight developed from that point, but from now on, her attention was on he black-and-tan hound that was advancing on her. She took a few steps back, away from the van and away from the direction that M&M's fight seemed to be heading. He slowed to a more cautious advance when he was in the street. Traffic had stopped already, because these roads were used to more serene afternoons. This was not the downtown of Pentagram City. You were not expected to just drive through a gunfight here.
As soon as he was completely out of Birch's line of sight, line of effect, and easy bubble of hearing, she tucked her sleeping phone away, and crossed her arms before her chest, looking the hound up and down.
And with a perfectly measured tone of incredulity, she asked:
"Does he not feed you?" she asked. His advance faltered, confusion stealing his stride.
"What?" Maelstrom asked.
"I can count your ribs, dude," she said. Maelstrom stopped advancing, flummoxed for a moment by her words. "Seriously, you look like you're gonna starve to death before you even reach me. Come on. Imma get you some food."
"What?" Maelstrom asked again.
"Is that the only word you know? What?" she asked. "Is that your language? Where you're from? Do they speak Satan's English in 'What'?"
"Wh... what?" he asked, now paralyzed with confusion at the direction things had suddenly veered.
"English, dude! Do you speak it?" she asked.
"Yes!" he said.
"And I asked you if he feeds you or not. Does he, or does he not?" Loona pressed.
"He... feeds me... sometimes," Maelstrom said, no longer sure what to do with his hands, so he just kinda tucked them into his armpits.
"Right. Imma get you some food. Come on," she said, beckoning after herself.
"Master told me to kill you," Maelstrom said.
"No, that dickhead said, and I quote, 'deal with that'. And you can 'deal with' it on a full stomach better than you can on an empty one," she said. "Now come on. I know a place that does great bacon."
His aggressive stance had utterly decayed into abject confusion. "I'm... not allowed bacon," he said.
"Are you specifically not allowed it, or does he just never give it to you?" she asked.
"The... um... the second... one," Maelstrom said.
"Then that makes today your lucky day. Come on, dude. First, bacon, then overwhelming violence. We'll make a day of it," Loona said. And Maelstrom, so completely baffled by the path she was laying for him, could only follow it like a confused puppy.
To Be Continued