“Yes, well, what is a couple of centuries for creatures such as us?” Lucifer quipped.
“I look forward to our next meeting, then.”
“See you when Father wakes.”
The angel walked toward what looked like a black hole hovering in perfect stillness and turned to wave goodbye. Lucifer waved back and walked off, out of sight. When he was sure Lucifer was gone, the angel quickly turned away from the strange opening in space and instead headed down a darkened corridor. Valerie followed him through a maze of rooms, each containing black shadowy figures that cried out in anguish as they passed. One contained a twisted, misshapen tree that looked as though it had been carved from lava rock. Another contained a tall, dull gray obelisk that several of the shadows looked to be attempting to climb. Finally, at the end of the long hallway, the angel came to a locked cell. He looked around anxiously as he ventured to open it. As he struggled, the figure of a woman rushed to the bars. She looked like she was covered in tar, no real face could be made out.
“I’m here, sister,” the angel told her. “You’ll soon be free once more and while I’m trapped in Heaven, you’ll create for us a world in which we may rule, as it should be.”
After a few moments and a lot of effort, the shackles gave way and the cell door swung open. The woman timidly stepped out, as if in disbelief.
“It’s all right,” the angel said. “When back on Earth, you can make preparations to keep yourself there as well as Lucifer, should he follow. Come, now.”
The two hurriedly sleuthed down the hall, gathering demons as they went, eventually getting back to the black hole, stepping into it and disappearing, several demons going behind them.
Valerie gasped as she came out of the vision, slowly regaining her faculties. As she calmed her breathing and began to feel normal, she noticed her soda had spilled all over her clothes, the sofa and the floor.
“Shit,” she said.
Valerie pounded on the door, her rage growing as she waited. Wyatt answered, stepping aside to let her in and she passed by without acknowledging him. She stormed through the apartment, making a beeline for Lucifer who sat on the couch reading a newspaper.
“Oh, shit,” Gabriel said as she took a chip out of the bag she was holding. She popped it in her mouth and stood next to Wyatt who closed the door and watched as Valerie all but attacked Lucifer. Within seconds, she was on top of him, grabbing the sides of his head with a little more force than was necessary. Lucifer took a shaky breath as he was shown his sister’s latest vision. When he had seen it in its entirety, Valerie let him go and stood in front of him, so livid she was nearly shaking.
“You let him in, stupid!” she barked at him.
“That perfidious miscreant!” Lucifer shouted, jumping up, the paper falling to the floor. “I will kill him with my bare hands!”
“You want to fill me in?” Wyatt asked Gabriel.
“Turns out it was Samael that let Lilith out,” she told him. “I’m not really surprised.”
“Who’s Samael?”
“Angel of Death.”
“Of course.”
“Yo, Satan,” Gabriel called from across the room. “Angels are taking sabbaticals in Hell now? You get a kick ass DJ or something? Put out a spread?”
Lucifer was unamused.
“As you may have guessed, Hell can be quite grim,” Lucifer retorted. “Our brother will, on occasion, pay me a visit. It helps me stay sane.”
“Ish,” Gabriel joked.
“Yes,” Lucifer agreed.
“The fuck were you thinking?!” Valerie demanded. “How could it not occur to you that letting someone like that into Hell might be a bad idea?”
“For context,” Gabriel leaned in to tell Wyatt. “Samael can be a little unpredictable.”
“Sure,” Wyatt acknowledged.
“Do not lecture me, Uriel,” Lucifer snapped, moving closer to Valerie and taking an offensive stance, as if he were preparing for a fight. “You’ve seen the torment, felt the agony, the suffering. You’ve heard the screams of the damned. Imagine constantly existing in that for millennia, save the rare trips to Earth once or twice a century where you’re tasked with dragging some poor soul right back to it. How would you maintain your identity? Stay vigilant? Remember who you are and whom you serve? You couldn’t handle being me for a day, so don’t you dare berate me for doing what I have to.”
“All right, children,” Gabriel said, pulling them away from each other with her mind. “Let’s not get rowdy. Lucifer, why don’t you come with me to get us all some dinner?”
He reluctantly stepped away from Valerie and followed Gabriel out the door.
“I’m really sorry,” Gabriel told him as they walked toward the elevator. “I can’t even imagine how miserable it must be for you there.”
“I appreciate that, sister,” he said, regaining his composure.
“And Uriel’s just--”
“Self-righteous and sanctimonious?” Lucifer interrupted.
“Kind of,” Gabriel laughed.
“You okay?” Wyatt asked as he and Valerie sat at the island.
“Fine,” she replied, struggling to calm herself.
“So, Hell is--”
“Bad,” she confirmed. “Really, really bad.”
“Right,” Wyatt said. “Hey, you mind if I ask why you pulled a knife on Gabriel? Did she get in your head, too?”
“No,” Valerie told him. “She broke into my house.”
“Oh,” Wyatt chuckled.
“See, when I was fifteen, I was staying with this family. Not the worst place I’d ever lived, but still, pretty rough. I was in foster care cuz my dad killed my mom when I was seven and then he went to jail, right? So, anyway, my foster mom was a junkie and she’d be passing out from too much heroin or whatever at like, nine o’clock every night and it was kind of a bad neighborhood, so I’d be afraid to go to bed, so I’d be up real late just being paranoid. Then, she got this boyfriend who was real sketchy, but it was kind of comforting that there was a big dude in the house to scare off burglars and shit. So, one night, this little white girl comes banging on my bedroom window, telling me to let her in right now. I was like, ‘Uh uh, I don’t know you’, so she broke the fucking window with her elbow and I was like, ‘this bitch crazy’, so I took my knife out my pocket and told her she needed to get the fuck out my house. About that same time, Russel, the boyfriend, drunk as shit, breaks my door down, yelling about how I should be in bed. So, this itty bitty teenage girl gets between us and tells this giant man to get away from me and says she knows what he’s planning. He gets pissed and just starts punching her in the face. I run to the living room to get the phone, but Foster Bitch had left it off the charger all day, so it was dead. So, I run back to my room and he’s still hitting her, except now he has her pinned up against the wall. I had my knife ready. I was about to stick this motherfucker, but Gabriel puts her hand up to stop me. Then, this crazy bitch starts laughing. Blood’s gushing out of her face, her nose is broken, eyes swollen shut and she’s laughing. So the dude loses it. He throws her down on the bed and tells me not to move. Said he was gonna do her, then me, and I better not tell anybody. Then he starts taking his belt off.”
“Holy shit,” Wyatt muttered, horrified by what he was hearing.
“Next thing I know,” she continued. “This asshole goes flying across the room and hits the wall so hard he puts a hole through it. Gabriel looks back at me and tells me to run, but of course I don’t because I’m looking at some science fiction shit right here and I want to see what happens. So, the guy gets up and starts running at her, but, before he can do anything, she makes this little flip motion with her hand and the dudes head spins around completely backwards. This bitch just broke this piece of shit’s neck with a fucking parlor trick. So, then she goes to the bathroom and washes the blood off her face and she’s like, magically healed. Eyes back to normal, nose fixed, like nothing happened. Then she tells me she found my grandma and she’s
there to take me to her. I didn’t even know I had a living relative. So, at this point, I know this girl is some kind of supernatural something, and I’m a little freaked out, but she did save my ass, so I figured going with her was better than trying to explain to the cops what just happened. So, I pack my little bit of stuff in my backpack and we take off. I get the keys to foster bitch’s car and Gabriel drives us from Camden to Harlem. She tells me who she is, who I am, the whole thing. Says I’ll start getting visions when I turn eighteen and that we’re gonna be best friends. I’m thinking she’s nuts, but maybe she’s not wrong. Now, I had never been outside of Jersey, so I wasn’t fully believing that we were about to see my long lost grandma, right? But, we get to this building and before I can stop her, Gabriel knocks on the door. It’s past midnight. I was sure somebody was gonna call the cops. But, this old woman answers the door, just as calm as she can be. I tell her what my name is and that I was told she was my grandmother and she breaks down. Turns out, she was my mom’s mom and when my mother was in high school, she dropped out to run away with my dad and never spoke to her again. She never even knew I existed. So, we get to talking and she invites me to stay with her, so I moved in. Gabriel stayed with us here and there, but for the most part, it was just me and my grandma til she died.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” Wyatt admitted.
“Yeah, it’s kind of fucked up, but it all worked out. Gabriel saved me and gave me my family. She is my family. I mean, listen, she’s annoying as shit, but I love that bitch.”
Chapter 12
While her demons remained nesting in the theater, Lilith had moved on to a suite at a luxury hotel on Fifth Avenue. The towering building with fifty-eight floors and gold embellishments was a much better fit for her current needs. Besides, the kinds of people she needed to aide in her efforts seemed to be quite comfortable there. Room service had prepared a lovely variety of pastries and fruits for her guests that would go untouched until their arrival. She had two meetings scheduled. One with Mitchell Spade, the CEO of Cardinal Rain, a well known government securities company and the other with Adam Smith, a cable news and talk radio host with a following greater than she’d had when she ruled Uruk. She had been feeding Adam talking points for weeks, skyrocketing his ratings and propelling him into seemingly overnight super stardom. This would be her first face-to-face with Mitchell, however, and she hoped it would go well. After all, he controlled the largest private military in the world and she’d need those numbers for her plan to run smoothly. Mitchell was the first to arrive.
“Is your mother here?” he asked as Lilith welcomed him inside.
“Well, that’s condescending,” she replied. “I’m Lilith. We spoke on the phone. Danish?” she offered.
“No, thank you,” he declined, skepticism covering his chiseled middle-aged face. “I’m sorry, is this some kind of school prank?”
“You continue to insult me as if I won’t tear your entrails from your body and use them to hang you with.”
“All right,” he huffed. “That’s enough. My time is very valuable.”
“As is mine, Mr. Spade,” she assured him, gesturing to a laptop on the coffee table next to her. He looked at the screen, dismissively at first, then more carefully.
“Is that,” he started.
“One hundred million dollars,” she told him. “Ready to be deposited into your private account in the Caymans. All I have to do is press ‘enter’.”
He studied the page, looking for signs of forgery. There were none.
“What is it exactly that you want?” he asked.
“I need an army, Mr. Spade. As many men as you can gather. I’m specifically interested in your presence in Iraq.”
“I have about eight thousand contractors in Iraq currently, but, they’re--”
“I need ten times that amount,” she explained. “To start. The best of the best, heavily armed and ruthless.”
“What’s the mission?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To begin with, I require full submission. Your men take orders from you and you will take orders from me.”
He chortled. “That’s not-”
“You’re a mercenary, yes?”
“That’s an oversimplification.”
“That’s accurate,” she scoffed. “You provide soldiers and I provide money. There’s a lot more where this came from.”
“How did someone like you acquire that kind of money?”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Spade, at what people are willing to do for me.”
“I can get your men, but I can’t agree to anything until I know what the mission is.”
She slammed the computer closed in annoyance before taking a deep breath to calm herself. “Won’t you sit?” she suggested, gesturing toward the sofa behind her. He nodded and they both sat. “There’s something I need. Something I need to destroy, actually, in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. I can’t get to it, however, because, as you know, Iraq has become infested with American military, Iraqi military, terrorist groups. It’s one big dust covered pain in my ass. To do what I need to do, I have to take out everyone in the way. That’s a lot of dead warriors. The country’s President, I imagine, will be displeased so, while I’m there, I may as well take it over.”
“Take what over?” he asked suspiciously.
“Iraq, obviously,” she told him. “First. Once we’ve recruited there, we can expand to nearby countries. Saudi Arabia, of course. Jordan, Syria,” a sneaky smile stretched across her lips. “Israel.”
“You want to invade Iraq, then seize power, for yourself, of the entire Middle East?” he guffawed. “You’re a child!” he exclaimed, his laughter now uncontrolled.
Angered, Lilith closed her fist slowly in front of her and as she did, Mitchell’s chortles turned to gasps as he lost the ability to breathe.
“I’m older than I look,” she said through her teeth. The man’s skin took on a purplish tint as he suffocated and Lilith debated whether or not she really needed this arrogant blowhard. As his eyes bulged and glossed over, she decided he was too useful to kill just yet. She relaxed her hand and he began taking deep, labored breaths. “You’re getting off light,” she said. “I will not tolerate this insolence in the future.”
As he got his bearings, the terror on his face was replaced by awe. “How did you do that?” he asked, his voice scratchy.
“I’m…” she searched for the right word as she stood. “Special.”
“I can see.”
“Are you in or not?” she pushed.
“What you’re proposing is unheard of.”
“Only in modern times,” she said. “I’ve done this before. I can do it again.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. Can you get the men?”
“I would need some time.”
“Not too much, I hope,” she threatened.
“I, um-”
“I have a friend, he’ll be by later today. I plan, eventually, to ask him for help in sending you recruits. They’ll need training and discipline. They will be in addition to the one hundred thousand men you hire.”
“A hundred thousand?!” he choked, standing in front of her. “I thought you said eighty?”
“Better safe than outnumbered.”
“This is impossible, not to mention highly illegal,” he told her. “This could trigger World War Three. It would definitely piss off the big guy upstairs.”
“You let me worry about God.”
“Who’s talking about God? I meant the Pres-”
“Oh!” she chuckled. “ ‘Big Guy’. Oh, man. That’s funny. But, yeah, fuck him, too.” She opened the laptop and slowly typed. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m just learning how to use one of these things.” She hit ‘enter’ and turned the computer to face her new General. “Show yourself out. I need to get ready for my next meeting.”
As she sauntered off into the bathroom, Mitchell studied the screen, s
hocked at what he saw. The girl had deposited ten billion dollars into his account. He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and called his bank, unable to believe any of what had just happened. After providing passwords and other assurances of his identity, the bank confirmed that ten billion dollars had just been deposited.
“Thank you,” he said, nearly dropping the phone before he hung up. He let out a long sigh as he regained his composure and headed toward the door. “Time to get to work.”
Chapter 13
It had been nearly two months since Michelle’s mother had been killed and she still hadn’t returned to school. She had somehow managed to keep up with her assignments, but she could barely get out of bed every day. She was sleeping until at least one in the afternoon and staying up at night until she physically couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. Her uncle was letting her get away with it, but she knew she needed to get it together soon. The school had called and emailed multiple times and she had received a letter in the mail stating that if she didn’t come in for classes in two weeks time, she’d be expelled. Her uncle hadn’t mentioned it. He was allowing her to grieve as she needed to and she appreciated it. He had been so great, giving her space when she needed it and comfort when she didn’t want to be alone. She owed him everything.
As she looked over the letter again, mentally preparing herself to go back, she heard a crash. She opened her bedroom door and slowly walked down the hall. Before she reached the living room, a book went flying past, coming very close to hitting her in the face. She stopped where she was and stayed quiet.
“I thought we could discuss this like civilized adults,” she heard Tae say. “But, I guess this is what happens when you date an infant.”
“You’re calling me childish now?!” a second voice yelled. It was Mr. Marlowe. When he started seeing her uncle, he had told Michelle to call him Harrison outside of school. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
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