I don't listen to music for inspiration or tone, but I've realized some credit is due in another direction: I would like to thank Mothlight Media, especially the heart. Special thanks to Kat and Crow for help with the scenario.
..
.
"I need to talk to you," came a voice like the echoes of time.
"I'm kind of in the middle of something here," snapped Lucifer. The patient, sobbing tears made of barbecue sauce, was attempting to knock on the door of a gingerbread house where a kangaroo in boxing gloves was visible through the spun-sugar window and John Cena was waiting in a referee outfit and a whistle. Birds in witch's hats kept pecking at his head.
"I'm just not exactly sure what," Lucifer waved a hand. "Could you come back in a few millennia, Brother? This one is going a little deep in the metaphors."
"It's important."
Lucifer threw down the barbecue fork. "Fine."
One of the birds landed on the patient's tomato-smeared neck and chirped an inquiry.
"Yes, you can keep flying while we're gone. Just no building nests in the volcano this time!"
.
.
Back in his office, Lucifer poured a glass of what he vehemently pretended was Scotch while Amenadiel paced divinity-sized holes in the rug. Lucifer tried not to blink. Amenadiel still claimed he did not yet have the full power of God, but every footfall on the surface of Hell was like a hammer on the skin of a drum.
"Brother, if there were something that perhaps you'd be happier if you didn't know, would you want to know?"
"Being cryptic again, I see," said Lucifer. "But fine. Forbidden knowledge is supposed to be my thing. Shoot."
"Our siblings obey me."
He raised a soot-stained eyebrow. "If that means they're not granting prayers for death row lions and hails of frogs again, then I don't see a problem."
"It's a bit more troubling than that, Brother." Amenadiel breathed out. "I find our fellow angels ...inherently do as I say, as soon as I speak the words."
Lucifer turned, forehead creasing. "That doesn't sound right."
"I was on Earth talking to Jophiel, and Zoraphon was nearby, working on her prototypes. You know how after Dad put her in charge of bees and pollinators—"
"—she couldn't stop tinkering, always inventing new dance moves, thought adding teeth would help for some reason, yes, yes, I remember."
"—and I almost lost my temper."
.
The breeze ruffled Jophiel's dirty blond hair as they walked through the almond orchard. The trees were in full flower, alive with yellow-striped sisters in search of nectar. "So my new mortal bros and I were going surfing, and it turns out riding a wave isn't that different from flying."
"Well, that didn't work," said a faint voice through the branches. "Maybe the ones with just premolars..." Zorphie always had talked to herself.
Amenadiel smiled, folding his arms. "Surfing. Skydiving." A bee landed on Amenadiel's elbow, and he shook it off.
"Hm... Okay, this one flies twice as fast, but I think there's a bug in the navigation system." A pause. "Ha! BUG."
"Jophiel, I'm concerned that you only relate to humans through leisure activity. Have you tried observing them through art? Or work?"
"Sure! I saw this movie about a surfer who becomes a substitute teacher, and I think I could really—" Jophiel paused mid-inhale. His eyes crossed, he bent double, and throat-hacked an ill-fated pollinator out onto the dust at Amenadiel's left foot. The six legs beat a panic into the air.
"Zorphie, could you stop buzzing for two minutes?" Amenadiel snapped.
.
.
"So someone finally got her to sit still?" chuckled Lucifer.
Amenadiel took another breath.
.
.
Every insect dropped out of the air, straight down. Jophiel straightened and stared, afraid to move his feet. He looked up at Amenaidel.
"Bro?" he asked helplessly.
.
.
"You used the Word capital W," Lucifer said carefully.
"And I've since realized that may not have been the first time," said Amenadiel. "How often since succeeding Father did I think I was making a suggestion or leading a brainstorming session when I was in truth issuing an order?" He exhaled heavily. "The whole point of my reign is that all angels must share in the management of the universe."
Lucifer shook his head. "It may not be necessary to jump the gun here. Perhaps Zorphie just realized how annoying she's been all these—"
"Fix your tie."
Lucifer's hands went to his collar and he gave the knot half a tug before his eyes went big. "Don't do that!"
"See what I mean?" he said. He exhaled. "I'd hoped it wouldn't work on you."
"For all you know, I prefer being put together," Lucifer said.
"When I suggested you get an assistant, did you do it?" Amenadiel said.
"Well yes, not that it helped."
"Did you do it because you thought it was a good idea?"
"No, I thought you were being an idiot," said Lucifer.
"And you did it anyway," Amenadiel rubbed his face against his hands.
Lucifer stood up. "Brother, are you actually upset about this?"
"Of course!" said Amenadiel. "I didn't want the responsibility of the throne at all. When I took it, we all agreed that all angels would do their part. What kind of God would I be if I can't keep my first promise to my angels—my fellow angels," he corrected quickly.
Lucifer poured another glass of Hell-scotch and set it on the desk. Amenadiel picked it up. Lucifer wondered if his brother would choke or if it would turn real in his throat just because he expected it to. No more surprise pranks for big brother from Ray-Ray and Samael.
Amenadiel swallowed without incident. "You do realize," he said, opening his eyes, "this explains everything."
"Which everything do you mean this week?" Lucifer asked dully.
"If angels have some built-in catch or factor that causes them to obey the will of the Almighty—"
"Then Dad was an even bigger disaster than we thought."
"—it would explain why he became so distant," Amenadiel said pointedly. Lucifer stopped. "Why he started always answering a question with a question. Why he left us to our own devices—even why he made humans."
Lucifer picked up the empty whiskey glass from his desk, twisting it between his fingers. "It sounds like you're saying that humankind really is Existence 2.0 and we're only the rough draft."
"Perhaps. Or Adam was Father's way of admitting, if only to himself, that he'd made a mistake. Or perhaps Father delighted in having two different kinds of children. We can't ask him."
"So what are you going to do? Build yourself a tower and wall yourself off like Dad did? Much as I hate to admit it, our brothers and sisters do need some ...focus."
"I'll own that I thought about it."
Lucifer put his glass down. "Can't you just ...omniscience your way out of this?" he asked. "Dad's celestial ball of string must have finished unwinding by now. It's been thousands of years since you took the throne."
"Fourteen years," Amenadiel corrected.
The arithmetic did itself. Chloe would be fifty-three. Trixie would be nearly thirty. Rory would be—
"Do you still spend much time with Charlie?" he asked.
"Of course," Amenadiel said, too quickly, seeing the shadow flash over his brother's face. He recovered, "I did what any father without a possible universe-imperiling time paradox hanging over his head would do, and I've become quite adept at being omnipresent."
"Any tantrums?" he asked. So many Hell loops set in an Ikea full of screaming toddlers, not to mention flashbacks to teenaged years...
"My son is nearly grown now, Lucifer."
"It's only that I seem to recall your go-to response being 'stop crying.'"
"What does that have to do with—" Amenadiel pulled in a breath. "Yes..." he said. "I have told Charlie to stop crying or cease a fit since ascending the throne." He looked Lucifer in the eye. "And once he became a teenager, I would often exhort him to attend to his studies when he would rather contemplate the graces of female classmates. My son must have inherited humanity's absolute form of free will from Linda." He broke into a smile. "Which means his wings are definitely his own doing." He exhaled and sank down onto Lucifer's office couch. "Is this what it felt like when you learned Chloe Decker loved you irrespective of Father's plans?"
As if there were another Chloe. "Right now, I'm more interested in the fact that if Charlie has human-flavored free will, then Aurora probably does too."
Amenadiel nodded. "That would make two angels in all creation capable of directly defying the Lord."
Lucifer raised an eyebrow.
"Without having to fight for it the way you did."
"Nice to be appreciated," said Lucifer. "All right then. What are we going to do about it?"
Amenadiel opened his mouth, then shut it again, giving his brother a pointed look.
"Right, right," said Lucifer. "Don't answer that."
"It gives me great pause," said Amenadiel. "All these trips down here, all these talks we've had. I always thought we were conferring as brothers. But as long as I can command you, Hell is at risk. Which means Heaven is at risk."
Lucifer shrugged. "So we stop having these meetings," he said. "When you want to tell me something, send Jophiel. There's no way I'll subconsciously bend to his will."
Amenadiel shook his head. "You've become too isolated down here, Lucy. You don't visit the Silver City, you don't visit Earth—"
"If I visit Earth I'm going straight to Chloe," he said. Or would that give her a heart attack? She might be old enough for those now. "But we both know I'm never going to see her again." He fidgeted with the glass and looked back at Amenadiel. "You'll tell me, though," he said.
Amenadiel opened his mouth and then closed it. "I'll make sure you find out immediately," he said.
Lucifer recovered, changing the subject, "And a minute in the Silver City is not-even-You-know-how-long down here," he said. "I don't like leaving my patients unattended, not to mention what Michael could get up to if I..."
They both looked up.
"This divine commandment thing—"
"Do you think it would work on—"
"Does Michael have as much poison in his heart as you did when you defied Father?" asked Amenadiel.
"Maybe, but he's only got the one ventricle now," said Lucifer.
"It's worth a try."
.
.
It met them near the top of the rise.
"Shirime, who's on pit duty?" Lucifer asked without preamble.
"Uh..." the squat demon began patting down his various orifices. "I know it was Kpfrit last time..."
Lucifer pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shirime, if you put my clipboard where I think you did, then I will personally thrash you if you attempt to give it back."
"I'm sorry, Your Infernalness. I wanted to read it while we were walking, and I just unsloughed a new eye right up my—"
"Do you happen to remember what it said?"
"Maybe Cedon?" said Shirime.
Lucifer frowned at Amenadiel. "You're squinting awfully hard, Brother. Just pick any eye that's already got most of the skin picked off. I assure you, Shirime isn't particular."
"No, I..." Amenadiel took a breath. "Never mind." For some reason, Lucifer thought Amenadiel looked disappointed.
Shirime scratched at the nictating membrane covering an apple-sized whopper growing between two stomach folds. "Um, not usually, King. Old King. But if you'll give me a second..." Shirime scrambled to the top of the ridge and pulled the membrane to one side, wincing. "The rectractor bulbi muscles haven't grown in yet," he said, shuffling his feet to point himself at the rim of the pit. "Yeah, that's supposed to be Cedon down there, and that's—oh."
"Oh what?" asked Lucifer. He drew on his connection to Hell. But with Amenadiel standing right next to him, "Michael-nearby, demons-running-around" was about as clear as he could get.
"It's not just Cedon."
Lucifer motioned to Amenadiel to be quiet and for Shirime to hide.
"A scheme?" Shirime whispered excitedly. "I thought you didn't do that any more, Lord Morningstar!"
"It wouldn't be much of a scheme if you knew about it, would it? Now be quiet."
Shirime covered his mouth with three fingers and then crouched down behind a rock, releasing a flatulent pocket air from between the folds on his left side but otherwise reasonably low-ruckus.
Lucifer focused his attention on the pit and immediately felt like he was trying to find a deer on a dark road with a pair of blinding fog lights on behind him. At his side, he could feel his brother, intense, like a single drop of batter so heavy it could tilt the frying pan off the stove and into the fire. Hell only functioned out of God's sight. Almostly his perfectly sculpted arse.
"Do you mind?" Lucifer hissed in a loud whisper.
Amenadiel had the grace to look confused, like a man mentally patting down his pockets for his keys, and the aura sharpened and focused, like a shade around a flashlight.
Lucifer blinked hard and managed to concentrate, feeling Hell's combustive, consuming fire through the replenishing fusion of creation. Feet shifting on the gravely soil at the edge of the pit. A demon, not Cedon, walking to the boundary of Michael's enclosure.
Somehow, the slag pit had half-filled with slime. There was no water in Hell. Water was life and purification, and this place had never had the first and was still on the free trial of the second. Lucifer wondered if he'd caused it himself or if it was just another of his realm's vicissitudes.
An eye opened, gleaming neither blue nor red. Lucifer felt Amenadiel draw breath beside him. The thing in the pit was the size of a cargo truck, predatory as the beings of the Cretaceous, and still somehow unmistakably Michael.
Two clawed limbs thick as tree trunks dragged the rest of his body halfway onto the bank. Scales covered his back like armor, straggling fibers down from his neck, thick oar of a tail switching back and forth as if he were the dragon of Burke's darkest.
Thousands of Earth years earlier, an Egyptian dreamer—rather, a person who lived in what would one day be called Egypt—had been blessed in the loosest possible sense of the word with a vision of destruction. She'd seen the fall of the Second Kingdom, the pillaging of the Hyksos, not that knowing had helped. But some wall-carver must have been listening. Technically, Sobek was the chief deity rendered with those reaching jaws. But Sobek was only a crocodile, an animal that never sought any pleasure or pain outside its nature and whose threat, while dire, was therefore innocent.
The dream of Michael that the waking prophet had tried to translate had taken shape with a lion's body and a bottomless, empty hunger. Ammit the Devourer, who choked down the dregs of damned spirits and stole their siphoned strength in her belly. She was made of the three beasts that stalked Egyptian nightmares: the crocodile that waited in the water, the lion that prowled the grassland, the hippopotamus that overthrew boats and crushed the rowers.
Old fear.
The demon—not Behe but for certain one of his brothers—opened his mouth and spoke. A demand, a request.
From Michael, a growl. A word.
Offering.
Not-Behe held up his hand, something small, something that could be pinched between two fingers.
Michael turned his head so he could fix one eye at the offering.
His jaws opened and closed in a snap. The demon barely had time to struggle. His forelimbs flexed as he shook the demon from side to side, twisting like no earthly beast to smash his head open against the stones.
"I guess he didn't like it?" said Shirime.
Michael had already turned his head up into the falling ash, throat bulging as he let gravity pull the demon's body downward.
Beside him, Lucifer felt Amenadiel turn.
He looked up, but Amenadiel was staring past him at Shirime, who was hiding his round form inexpertly behind a narrow crag.
"Don't you have anything to say?" asked Amenadiel.
The demon looked to Lucifer and Amenadiel and back. "Crunch?"
"Brother, we have more pressing matters at hand than my subjects' limited vocabulary." Lucifer nodded toward the pit.
Amenadiel and Lucifer stood up, Lucifer noting with annoyance that they'd done so at the same time. As they started down the ridge, Shirime gave a high-pitched squeaking sound that could have come from his throat or any number of less pleasant places.
"Well, uh, Kings, if you don't need me, I could just—"
"You will come with us, Shirime," said Lucifer.
"But what if the scalebeast eats me, my Lord?"
"That scalebeast is my brother Michael," Amenadiel said coldly.
"Yes, Old King. What if your brother Michael eats me?"
"Then we won't be listening to you much longer, will we? Now come," said Lucifer.
Michael was lumbering back into the pit, thick legs moving slowly. The liquid was too thick to ripple. He got back in and turned around like a toad burying itself in the mud.
From the corner of his eye, Lucifer saw Amenadiel watching him.
"What?" he said.
Amenadiel breathed in and out. "I think you should—" he stopped talking.
"What?" demanded Lucifer.
"If I say it, what happens next?" asked Amenadiel. "And are you sure we should discuss that particular oblem-pray in front of the emon-day?"
"Since when does the Almighty use Pig Latin?"
"Since Charlie picked it up in second grade."
Lucifer shot him a look but said nothing. Trixie had been in second grade when he'd met her. By now, Aurora's years of American Princess dolls and colored pencils were long gone, if she'd ever had them. He'd decided not to break his promise and fly upstairs to know her childhood, but know that he couldn't...
He fixed his eyes on the two dull, blinking spots that were all he could see of Michael. He couldn't show indecision in front of any demon, let alone a confirmed blabbermouth like the eye-regenerating beast behind him, not if he didn't want tales of Lord Morningstar's weakness sinking through every crack of the underworld by the time the next soul came through.
"What do you make of what happened here, Shirime?" he asked.
The squat demon took a few steps closer. "Uh, getting eaten is bad, Lord Morningstar?" he asked. Demons generally weren't big on imagination. Even Maze had barely managed an original thought before he'd brought her upstairs.
"What do you suppose your brother wanted?" Amenadiel asked. "If Michael has been eating the Lilim, why risk coming here unless your lord expressly orders it?"
Lucifer heard Shirime gulp. An unpleasant sound considering there was probably an eye inside his throat. "I, uh, I don't... I mean..."
Lucifer pivoted on one foot, taking hold of Shirime by one fat shoulder and lifting him up to eye level. "You don't what?" he asked, allowing his eyes to flare.
"My lord! I, uh—" his six-clawed feet kicked.
"If you don't want to be fed to that beast like a live chicken at an Australian water park—" not a lie, just an implication "—then you will answer."
Shirime gulped. "He ...I hear he answers questions. If he likes what you bring him?"
So the offerings mattered. What could Michael be collecting?
"What kinds of questions?" Lucifer asked.
"I heard... I heard Kpfritt asked him how to break a tenant. And! And he told her! And it worked!" Lucifer dropped Shirime on the ground. He whined and rolled to his feet, digging a piece of gravel out of the corner of one eye. "You put her on that Louis assignment right after that! You must have thought she'd done well."
"If demons want to know how to perform their duties more effectively, they are to come to me, Shirime," said Lucifer. Again, Amenadiel looked like he wanted to say something.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Don't think for a moment I believe that that is all there is to this, Shirime. You will tell all."
"Yes, my Lord."
Lucifer turned toward the pit, where Michael was watching. "At a later time."
They walked down to the edge of the pit. Lucifer noted with irritation that Hell seemed to react to each of Amenadiel's footfalls, as if a hammer accustomed to silver and steel was trying to make the dead clay of the Underworld ring true. He could almost feel the doors of a thousand loops creak on their hinges, like an itch. That hadn't happened the last time Amenadiel had visited. He had the funniest feeling that flowers or vines or at least near-living bacteria might spring up from his footprints.
Hell couldn't be Hell if God was near. Hell was alienation, isolation, rejection by everything he represented. But that wasn't today's problem.
Or maybe, Lucifer thought, reaching the edge of the pit, it was.
"I shouldn't speak until necessary," murmured Amenadiel. Lucifer's first impulse was to agree. Then he wondered if it was really his impulse.
They'd come out here without much of a plan. Lucifer had expected to find Michael slumped, perhaps scheming, but not in the middle of some established relationship with demonkind that had somehow gone completely under his radar.
At the edge of the ocean, sometimes the water seemed higher than the sand upon which the viewer stood. It was an illusion. On Earth. Here, the dark semiliquid of the pit loomed, and Lucifer could just make out thick limbs treading not-water as two eyes watched from above the surface.
He put his hands on his hips. "I put you on a strict no-demon diet, Michael, and you don't get a cheat day!"
There was a snuffling sound, and a bubble of stinking digestive gas rose to the surface and burst. The meaning of the belch was clear: "Want him back?"
Chaining Michael had been a mistake. Or perhaps every other choice would have been worse. Giving him the run of hell had left him with dead demons and a probably traumatized Rory. Back then, Lucifer had expected Michael would recover just enough self-respect to regrow a few primaries and one day he'd just be gone, off to cause misery and mischief under some other angel's nose. He wouldn't have been surprised to see Michael at Amenadiel's right hand, pushing backwards into his old role. Instead, Michael had thrashed like a fly struggling in a web and Hell had stuck to him.
Lock him in Mom's old cell, but not forever because it can't hold him. Chain him in the pit and he transforms. Forbid the demons to speak to him and he becomes their whisper in the dark.
Michael's eye tracked from Lucifer to Amenadiel and there was no denying the seething hatred. What must it have been like, thinking you were about to assume the throne and then watch the prize go to someone who didn't want it and still didn't know how to use it?
"Well?" said Lucifer.
"Well what?" said Amenadiel.
"Do the thing we talked about," he said. "Tell him to pull himself together, straighten up and fly right, get some topical cream for those combination scales!"
Amenadiel nodded blankly, eyes still locked on Michael. "Now that I'm here, I'm not sure I should. If our brother has self-actualized into this form, perhaps it's wrong for me to interfere."
"Did Zoraphon start buzzing again?"
"Almost immediately," said Amenadiel.
"Then pick something simple and give it a go. Let's get proof of concept. Then we can decide what to do with him."
Amenadiel raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, 'we,' Brother. This is still my domain."
Amenadiel shook his head. "I mean I'm surprised that you of all people want me to go through with this. I thought you were a fan of free will."
Lucifer glowered, "Finding out that I had to stay away from the love of my life and our only child or else risk a time paradox—a time paradox that my supposedly omniscient brother still hasn't confirmed or denied—"
A huffing noise came from Michael's reptilian throat.
"—has given me a certain appreciation for striking a balance!" Lucifer huffed. "Besides, he's eating my demons!" Lucifer looked up at Michael with narrowed eyes. "And since dear Lilith isn't making any more these days, they ought to be classified as an endangered specie!"
Amenadiel got quiet.
"You care what happens to demonkind?" he asked.
"Yes! I don't know if you've noticed, but humans in their loops tend to be a little self-obsessed. Understandable, but it makes for poor company."
Amenadiel looked into the pit, where Michael was still watching them.
Lucifer sighed. "Just tell him to put his own skin back on long enough for the three of us to have a word. You don't even have to order him to let me help him."
Amenadiel folded his arms. "Self-actualization put you on the right path."
Lucifer felt his eye twitch.
"You became a monster because you felt guilty about the debauched ruin you'd allowed your life to become," Amenadiel pratted on. "Perhaps Michael now resembles a beast of the pit because he's taking responsibility for murdering our sister Remiel and pitting angel against angel in a pointless conflict."
There was a hissing sound from the lake of slime.
"Yes, pointless, Michael!" Amenadiel focused. "Hold your head up."
Michael's massive jawline rose up through the slime like a giant bubble. Lucifer cracked a smile, as if some heavy weight was shifting.
Amenadiel breathed deep into his chest. "As your God, I command you to resume your true form."
"And stop being a prat," added Lucifer
"And cease this foolishness!" translated Amenadiel.
For a moment, Michael's body seemed to tremble, and the fluid around him shook. Then there was a snorting sound from near Michael's nostrils, and globules of slime flew into the air. Thar she tells you to blow yourself, though Lucifer.
"It didn't work, Old King," said Shirime.
"I can see that," snapped Amenadiel.
Ripples formed in the slime as air left deep lungs in a series of rhythmic huffs.
"Now he's laughing at you, Old King."
Amenadiel turned to Lucifer. "Michael was at Father's right hand for centuries. Maybe he's learned to protect his own will." He looked at Michael. "You'd literally rather wallow in your own degradation than accept my help?"
Another rumbling hiss.
Lucifer held up a finger. It might work, but... "Abel had an idea," he said. He breathed in and out, taking in Michael's distended body, the filth around him, the complete and utter lack of hope. He deserved this, Lucifer thought. He deserved to sink into the pit, body falling into ever more monstrous shapes, forever. Lucifer opened his mouth anyway.
"Tell him you forgive him," he said.
"Forgive him?" asked Amenadiel.
"For Remi and the others," Lucifer finished. "Tell him you say he can come home."
Lucifer had been about to say "and no need to mention that you'll be keeping so many eyes on him that he'll think he's turned into our flatulent friend here," but there was suddenly a red-white fusion-glow behind Amenadiel's eyes, face blank as a stone.
"You don't think it should happen either," said Lucifer, holding in a smile.
"Uh, Kings?" said a squeaky voice from behind a rock.
"Yes, Shirime?" Lucifer asked.
"Where's, ah— You know how you said— But then you told me to—"
"Out with it!" snapped Lucifer.
Shirime gulped. "It's only that I don't... I don't see Cedon!"
"Which demon is Cedon?" asked Amenadiel.
"Red eyes, three heads, two teeth, left arm like a nautilus shell," Lucifer rattled off.
"No, I mean is he one of the ones you've been—" Amenadiel stopped talking. He stopped and then looked up at Michael. "Oh no," Amenadiel murmured. "How did I not see this?"
"Shirime."
"Yes, Old King?"
"Find the demon Crevos."
"Who?"
"Crevos!" Amenadiel sighed. "Three arms, one head, three eyes, three tongues—"
"Oh him!" said Shirime.
"Brother," Lucifer shot in. "Whatever may be going haywire in that not-quite-Almighty head of yours, remember that I give orders in Hell."
Amenadiel looked at Shirime. Shirime looked at Lucifer.
"Go find Crevos," Lucifer said sullenly. "Last I heard he was shoving a cheese grater into Nixon's water gate." Lucifer glared up at Michael. "Bring him to my office." Shirime scuttled off at top waddle.
If Lucifer had doubted that Amenadiel had not fully accessed omniscience, he didn't any more. His brother had never been that good of an actor. "How did I not see it?" he said again as they walked back up the ridge.
"Are you planning to share with the rest of the class?" asked Lucifer.
Amenadiel stared back at Michael. Only the eyes showed up over the slime, but it was enough to show a grin with every one of those teeth.
"Not here," said Amenadiel.
.
.
They made it back to the top of the ridge with Michael still watching them. Amenadiel answered Lucifer's question as they walked. "It has to do with what he's doing. He showed no interest in Shirime. Acted like he wasn't even there."
Yes, and other demons got wishes granted in exchange for a pinch of rock dust. Others got eaten.
Lucifer had a sudden, vivid memory of Ella rattling off one day about how all predators affect their prey. The Lilim couldn't reproduce, so they couldn't evolve as a population, but that didn't mean Michael wasn't making changes.
"It's not the offerings," said Lucifer. "Those seem like misdirection."
"He's winnowing the demon horde," said Amenadiel.
"For what? A revolt? I've put those down before."
Amenadiel looked at him a long moment. "Possibly."
"I know that look," said Lucifer. "Out with it."
"I'm not sure I can say more, Lucy!" Amenadiel protested. "Not without influencing what you'll do!"
"Well maybe I wouldn't mind if you..." Lucifer trailed off then shook his head as if he'd swallowed a vibrator.
"Nice to see you've kept your vow against lying," Amenadiel exhaled as Lucifer narrowed his eyes.
"Let me see if I understand this. You've concluded that Michael is up to something, and it's important, and you think you know what it is, but you won't tell me because..."
"Because if I tell you to do it, you'll find you can't do it," said Amenadiel.
The canyons shifted and turned as they walked. Lucifer pulled the office toward them and pushed the pit away. His control over Hell was better than ever, at least. Still, they moved in silence for a time.
As they neared the replica of the back office at Lux, Amenadiel breathed out as if to say something. Then there was a scurrying sound and the thunk of mismatched legs. Shirime hurried back into view, pulling a taller demon by one of his two longer arms. "Here he is, Kings!"
Crevos shuffled nervously on his feet. "Er, yes my lords? If I may ask. Why did—"
"It's like I said," snapped Shirime, "They want to feed you to the pit beast," he shook a finger, "and you're not going to be a whiner about it!" he folded his arms over his port barrel of a chest, spoiling the effect by accidentally elbowing himself in one of his larger eyes.
Crevos blinked hard and Lucifer could practically see the obsolescent adding machine that he had instead of a brain: Two kings plus me plus pit beast minus me...
"What? No!" Amenadiel was already saying. "We don't want to feed him to the pit beast—our brother Michael."
Lucifer made eye contact with Crevos. "Shirime told you we wanted to feed you to the pit beast, and you came anyway?"
"Shirime's the biggest liar in Perdition, my lords," said Crevos. Shirime cracked a grin and puffed up with pride.
"You didn't have to say that!" he preened.
"It's true," added Crevos. Amenadiel stared at him for a long moment. Lucifer watched as something a little like relief found its way onto his face.
At last, he turned to Lucifer and said, "How much do you want me to tell you?" He looked back at Crevos. "Knowing what we know?"
Lucifer spread the fingers of one hand in a shrug. "Mysterious ways, Brother?"
He nodded toward Crevos. "With your permission, then, Lord of Hell?"
"Fine."
Amenadiel turned to Crevos. "You are not to allow the beast of the pit to destroy you," he said.
"What?" said Crevos.
"Yes, what?" said Lucifer.
"He may try to lure you within reach of his chain. Do not go. You may think he's offering you a deal or an exchange. Any pretext is a lie. He wants to kill you." He looked at Lucifer. "And others like you."
Crevos' eyebrows met in the middle. Lucifer made a note to try to explain the concept of Hell to Amenadiel again. "He wants to kill you and is thinking about how to do it, Crevos. It's not like the way we all feel about Squee."
"Everyone does hate Squee," Shirime noted, rubbing a tiny new eye that had erupted on his chin.
"So, the Old King means stay away from the angel of the pit?" Crevos held up all three hands and started to count on his thin, spinelike fingers. He looked at Lucifer.
"You may obey my brother or disobey him as you see fit, Crevos," he said. "That being said, he's probably right."
Amenadiel took half a breath. "And the one in the loop with you earlier," he said. "The one who asked about flying."
Crevos and Shirime both looked confused, but that was more or less par for the course. "Well that's it then. Back to your duties, both of you."
Both disappeared in twin clouds of ash dust.
"That answers one question," said Lucifer.
"It does?" Amenadiel repeated carefully.
"The one I asked you in the early days," he said. "My presence here, my abandonment of my family—"
"You have not abandoned your family."
"—is necessary," Lucifer finished. "If I leave Hell unguarded, Michael finds a way to take the throne."
Amenadiel straightened. "Are you asking me if I know for sure?"
Lucifer snorted in disgust and moved to open the door to his office.
"I'm not sure if I ever said thank you," Amenadiel said, "for convincing me to take Father's throne." He looked back in the direction of the pit. "I don't want to think what our brother would have done to angelkind if he'd been the one with this power."
Lucifer seemed to think for a moment. "You know what this means."
"I don't."
"Father could have said thank you any time."
Amenadiel opened his mouth but didn't say anything. After a moment, he put a hand on his brother's shoulder.