She had no doubt she would find out what this ridiculously annoying cult was up to and what they had to do with Demas and the virus. Once she got all the information she could, then she'd go see Lucy and get back to finding out what had happened to the missing souls.
She thought about what J. D. said. If she took more pleasure in her role as a demon, perhaps she would be happier. Though she was having a hard time seeing how having to spend eternity torturing and extracting information from souls could make anyone happy. For a while, when she was younger, she felt justified in doing her job. These days, she mostly felt nothing when torturing a soul.
It wasn't that she felt her job was pointless, or even that she felt she was too good to somehow accomplish the tasks set before her. It was more that centuries of cutting and gutting had hardened her somehow and she didn't see the torture as the fun she once did. As she grew in age, she also grew in wisdom, and wisdom dictated that slicing beings up was a tedious job.
She knew it was necessary, especially with all the evil humans could get up to on their own without anyone watching over them. She liked being in charge of keeping the worst of humankind away from the best of them. It made her feel like she was really somehow helping the world.
Chapter 20
Polly strapped the djinn into a special stone chair that would move and turn as she required in order to torture its occupant effectively. Once she was certain the lesser being wasn't going anywhere, she set to work. She began to arrange the tools she wanted to use, conjuring each one and displaying them in what she thought would be the most terrifying way possible for the djinn she was torturing. She couldn't wait for him to come to; she wanted to get the information quickly and be done with this mess. She itched to hunt down the cause of the missing souls and gut them.
As she worked, she wondered: What the hell is this church up to, and is Lenny safe there? It's weird there are so many djinn attached to the place. Could the church and the djinn have something to do with the loss of souls, or was that done by something entirely different?
She really didn't like all the djinn working as a unit. That was something she had never seen before. Djinn didn't normally band together like that, and certainly not for a simple little church. What was so important about this Hershel character that the lesser demons were swarming around him like this? She struggled with the lack of sense.
Djinn were not churchgoers, and they disliked Heaven as much as any of the demons. They didn't like that they were also tossed when the Fallen rose up and were pushed out. They had agreed with the demons that God was spending too much time and energy on the humans, but they held no more sway over God than a single fish would hold over the ocean. In His anger at being questioned, God sent everyone who disagreed with Him to Hell.
A lot of current lesser demons had been simple earth magic creatures when the Fall happened. They were pissed about becoming demons—everybody was—but they felt it wasn't fair that they weren't considered angels in Heaven yet they'd still be labeled demons in Hell.
Lucifer had been understanding of this, and so had made sure to refer to these factions by their species name, only referring to her fellow fallen angels as demons. It didn't seem to matter how politically correct she was, the lesser demons still felt as if they'd had an unfair shake of things, and that pissed Polly off.
"What…. Where am I?"
"Oh, good, you're awake. I can torture you for information now and, I'm not going to lie, I am quite excited about that." The smile dropped from Polly's face as she grabbed a Taser and decided to start slowly. She thought to give the demon a chance to own up to his crimes and give her some information first. "Tell me about Hershel. Why are you working for him?"
"Because he is the Messiah," the djinn said with a false sense of piousness.
"And I'm Betty Crocker." Polly fired the Taser at the lesser demon's chest and chuckled as he twitched and convulsed.
"Hershel is far greater than you know. You'll see."
"Right, I'm supposed to believe that this human is really that important?"
"He is. He's the Messiah."
"So you say." Polly grabbed a scourge and began to lash him with it. The ends ripped open his flesh as she pulled it away from his skin. After ten lashes, he still wasn't spilling, but she would have been disappointed if he had.
"You have to understand, Apollyon, Hershel truly is the Messiah. He will lead the lost lambs back to God." At his words, Polly rolled her eyes, grabbed the bat, and then hit him in the right knee as hard as she could. There was a loud crunch of bone as his patella shattered, and a horrible wail rose from the djinn. She continued her ministrations with the bat on his left knee, ankle, and his right wrist, when he finally gave up some info.
"The seals, we have to break all the seals," he hissed.
"The seven seals?" Polly asked, curious as to why Hershel and his cult would want to start the apocalypse.
"Yes, no, I don't know. Please stop."
"I'll gladly stop if you tell me what I want to know. Is Hershel trying to start the end days?"
"No, he has other plans in mind." The djinn looked her in the eyes while he spoke. She could see he was speaking the truth in that statement, but she still had no idea what the truth was. She had a hard time believing a human like Hershel could have the power to pull together so many djinn and start the apocalypse. It didn't behoove him to end the world; it could only make things worse for him because his soul would belong to Hell and he'd be tortured for eternity.
"I don't buy this seven seals crap. You're making shit up to make the pain stop. I can guarantee you that it won't stop until you stop it. Tell me the truth." Polly tried to put on her best concerned face, but the djinn wasn't buying it.
"It's true. The Messiah wants to end it all."
"You are telling me Hershel wants to bring about the end times?"
"I am telling you the Messiah is after the seven seals, and you will never stop him. Not in a million years." The tortured, pained, scared look the djinn had been wearing was replaced with a sly grin.
"Djinn never tell the full truth. Everyone knows you can't be trusted."
"So why am I here, Apollyon? Why waste time torturing me if I won't tell you the truth, anyway?"
"Because you djinn may lie, usually do, but there is always a grain of truth to your lies." She held up the bat and decided to go for his other ankle. Before she swung she said, "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me."
The sound of his ankle bone being smashed into a dozen tiny pieces echoed in the cell, and his scream came following close behind.
"Who are you working for?" Polly asked, refocusing the bat on his chest.
"Hershel and the Children of Light," he said with a weak smile.
"What is their goal?"
"Utter dominion of all realms."
At his lie, Polly swung the bat and grinned at him as she heard the crunch of his sternum.
"They really believe that by starting the end times, they'll rule the world?" she asked him.
"Something like that." The djinn was looking rough. The smile had gone completely and was replaced with a grimace.
Polly thought that maybe the torture had worn down its need to play games.
"When will they start actively breaking seals?"
"As soon as Greenpeace allows it." The Djinn smiled again and Polly realized the games were still afoot.
"Bad idea to be sarcastic with me, lesser being." Polly stalked to the wall and conjured up a speaker. She called up some Europop music and left the djinn to stew a bit in the awful din.
When she stepped outside in the hallway, she ran into Lucy.
"What are you doing?" Lucy looked a bit frazzled, but with everything going on Polly couldn't blame her.
"Interrogating a djinn that is working with that cult."
"Oh, weird. Okay, torture on, don't let me stop you. Come and see me when you get the information you want from it. I want a quick update on what is going on." Luc
y turned sharply and walked away from her without another word.
That's odd, thought Polly as she took a deep breath and walked down to see Bismuth.
She'd put him in charge of the djinn, and she wanted to know why the hell so many had escaped and how they'd gotten out.
She entered his office and caught him with a djinn on the rack. He saw her, smiled, and motioned for her to step outside in the hall. His short, silver hair was damp with sweat, and Polly could see this torture session had lasted some time.
"Bis. Any info on how the djinn are getting out yet?"
"No. I've been torturing the remaining ones for days with no straight answers. I'm starting to feel like I'm being tortured, too."
"Take a break. I'm working on someone who might give us some answers."
"You sure? I really hate that they got out on my watch."
"I really hate that they got out on your watch, too." Polly wasn't the type to cater to societal niceties.
"It'll never happen again, I swear."
"I sure hope not. In the meantime, take a break and we will see what we can gain from our newest guest. I'll see you later. And Bis, don't leave town."
"Wow, that bad, huh?"
"You allowed—what at last count was—thousands of djinn to escape from Hell. It's pretty fucking bad."
"I didn't help them escape. I didn't even know they were escaping. They covered for each other in a way they never have before. You know how tricky they are."
"Do you not see the issue there, Bis? You didn't even know they were escaping. What the hell is that about? I put you on this job because I thought you could hack it. Obviously, I screwed up in trusting you. When I say take a break, I mean it. You're off djinn duty. I'm putting you on gremlins."
"Aw, come on, Polly. I promise I'll find out how they got out and why."
"Bis, this isn't up to you any longer. You're now on pest duty. That's the rule around here. Has been for millennia."
"Damn."
"You can earn you way back, but you are really going to have to work hard in order to earn it. I'm so disappointed in you."
"I'm sorry, Polly."
"Oh, you will be. Go ahead and get some rest before your shift with the gremlins starts. Remember, the big yellow one likes alarm clocks. Give him one, and he'll help you keep the others in line."
If djinn were the cockroaches of paranormal beings, gremlins were the termites. They were hard to kill, annoying, and they were everywhere. They were fairly harmless, but creepy as hell, and they were a complete and utter pain in the ass because they weren't evil, they weren't good, but just mischievous simply for the sake of it.
They were puckish, for sure, but their intent was not malice. They weren't on good terms with technology, and they loved to shred and eat machinery. Occasionally, they'd hitch a ride with a demon on their way up to earth. When they got there, the gremlins would wreak havoc on anything mechanical nearby.
One time, in 2003, two gremlins got out and into the world through a portal in Ohio. They went nuts at an energy company. Fifty-five million people were left without power. It was lucky for humanity that, for the most part, Hell kept a tight rein on the little fiends.
"I'm going to make this up to you, I promise."
"Show, don't tell." Polly smiled. She might have been pissed at Bis, but he wasn't a bad guy.
Having only one upper demon responsible for coordinating the watching of thousands of djinn made things difficult, but it wasn't impossible. Polly had held the djinn post herself before, and she found (if she made sure they stayed in their cage) they were fairly easy to deal with. Occasionally, they would cause problems, but nothing a little talking to and some torture couldn't fix.
Bismuth nodded and walked toward his bedchamber, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Yet again, Polly felt a twinge of guilt. She'd known she would have to remove Bis from his post on the off chance he was involved, but she wanted to tell him she still believed in him. Her position as the First Knight meant she had to keep those thoughts to herself. If he did have anything to do with the jailbreak in any way, she had to find out. Sending him to gremlin duty was a way to test him and see if he was the weak link. It also showed the other demons that she was still in charge around here, with Lucy's blessing. As Polly watched Bis walk away, she called for another demon to finish what Bis had started with the djinn on his table.
Once she had Bis' replacement filled, she went back to her office to work on her own djinn. She was pissed that she couldn't trust her own people. These were folks she had hand-selected for their jobs, and if they couldn't do it properly, then Polly felt like she was the one who had failed. As she walked, she wondered about how the djinn were escaping.
She knew Bis hadn't been involved; that kid couldn't hide anything from her. He was a third generation hell-borne demon, and she had even changed his diaper once. She worried for a moment if sentimentality was clouding her judgment, but she brought to mind his eyes as they spoke. He was sincerely sorry for the incident, and he seemed disheartened that she'd bumped him down to what was Hell's version of daycare. She stopped in front of the door to her torture room and centered herself, locking away all emotion and bringing forth the true evil in her nature.
Is evil for the sake of good actually evil? Polly wondered as she put a smile on her face and opened the cell door to go back to work.
"Oh, don't worry, I didn't forget about you. Hey, how would you like to hear some ABBA? I could put on a little Dancing Queen, you could groove in your chair, I could do some carving, and it could be really nifty."
When she opened the door, all she saw was one dead djinn. He had foam around his mouth and small, milky blue flecks could be seen scattered in amidst the froth.
The bastard swallowed an angelite pill. How the fuck did he get that shit in here? Lucy is going to be pissed, Polly thought as she looked around the torture cell.
Polly stared at the dead djinn, and anger welled up in her. Someone had betrayed her. Someone who knew her, someone she thought of as a friend. There was no way around it; the person who provided the angelite pill had to be an upper demon, as nobody else would have access to her offices. She scanned the room looking for some sign, any kind of sign at all, when she saw it.
A small scrap of cloth was on the floor by the shelf filled with torture equipment. It looked to Polly like someone had gotten their pants caught on the rusty remains of an eyebolt. She gingerly removed the scrap with a pair of pliers from the tray of tools she had been using. She'd take it to the hellhounds and let them track the bastard down. They didn't worry about innocence; they just did the task at hand.
They did the job well, too. Usually when a hellhound was deployed, not much more than meat and bones remained. Polly often gave the animals the scraps for a job well done. They didn't eat indiscriminately, however, she could ask them to bring the guilty one back whole if she needed to get a positive identification on them.
Sometimes demons framed others for their own crimes. It didn't happen as often as people would think. Looking at the dead djinn one more time, Polly felt the anger in her swell.
Fuck, thought Polly, how the hell could this happen? She called forth a cleaner and asked her to record all details of the room and body before she cleaned. When Polly was sure the pudgy little demon would do a good job at her task, she went to visit Lucy.
Chapter 21
As she walked into Lucifer’s office, Polly wondered why she'd been so lax as to let the djinn sit in the cell alone while she went to deal with Bis. She made sure he had been securely strapped to a chair when she left, and nobody but high level demons were able to enter the torture cells, but she was still angry with herself. There was no getting around the fact that someone on the inside had to have helped him.
Polly wished she had time to figure out who had done this. Lucy was going to have questions she couldn't answer, and that made her uneasy. She didn't like not knowing what was going on. She really didn't like that someone was able to get in and
kill the djinn on her watch. It made her feel incompetent, and that was not a feeling Polly dealt with very well. With rage burning through her, she stepped into the hall that led to Lucy's office.
She knocked on the door and heard a gruff, "Enter."
"Lucy, I got some information from a djinn prisoner that I found rather interesting."
"No ‘How are you doing' or ‘Nice to see you'? You just jump right into business without greeting me properly? Maybe you'd better go out and try this again." The tone in Lucifer's voice let Polly know she wasn't messing around.
"Um, okay." Polly stepped back out into the hall and knocked again, a bit taken aback at Lucy's reaction. She'd had never been one for small talk and neither had Lucifer.
"Enter."
Polly stepped into the office and said, "How are you doing, Lucy?"
"Oh, I'm peachy. How are you?"
"I'm having a bad day," Polly said, confused at Lucifer's behavior. The Lucy she knew was cool as a cucumber.
"I'm so sorry to hear that. Is there something I can do to help? No, of course there isn't, because you don't need my help. You don't need anyone's help."
"Lucy, are you okay?" Her words seemed to snap Lucifer out of the mood she'd been in, and it was as if an entirely different being stood before her than had a moment before.
"Yeah, I'm fine. What do you have for me?"
"Well, I still have no clue how the djinn escaped, but I do know that they're helping a charlatan run some religious sect called the Children of Light. I also heard from the prisoner I just extracted information from that the djinn are referring to this charlatan as the Messiah. There's something else troubling me."
"Really? Something more than allowing prisoners to escape by the hundreds and some crazy motherfucker thinking he's the new Jesus? Please, tell me, what else is troubling you?" The sarcasm in Lucifer's voice cut Polly to the quick. Not that she was undeserving of the tone, given she had allowed mass escapees and had no clue how to stop more from happening.
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