So the word spread. “Stay out of it, Wolf.”
“He’s right,” Sara jumped into the convo, “you need to be one unit.”
“Darling, I—”
“Nope, you can’t preach the importance of pack life to us and conveniently not live by your own damn rules, Luce. Hypocrisy is not a good color on you.”
He scowled. Fuck, she was right. “It’s complicated.”
“All the best women are,” Wolf grinned. “Look, I’m not saying run up to her with open arms and have 80s love ballads playing in the background, but—”
Lucifer held up his hand, “Okay, stop right there. First of all, you’re hanging out with Sunshine Boy too much if you’re going to drag up 80s ballads. And secondly–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wolf cut him off. “There’s a reason for everything. You’re the God of Second Chances, Lucifer. Give her one.”
“No.”
“Ugh, Hypocritical Satan,” Sara poked his pec, “I just vomited in my mouth.”
He growled. Lucifer didn’t need this bullshit right now. He headed towards the door to get out of there.
“Timing is everything, right?” Kalen halted Lucifer for a second time. “You think it’s been easy for her too? I’m sure she has a damned good reason for not coming here.”
“Yeah, it’s Hell. It’s fucking miserable.” No wonder she changed her mind. Eve was a wild woman; she’d never want to be caged. And fuck if part of him didn’t feel bad for ever wishing she was locked down here with him.
“Hell doesn’t matter,” Sara rubbed her big belly. “Wherever you are would be Heaven to her. Deep down you know that because you’ve felt the same about her.”
How would Sara know that? Lucifer never talked about Eve anymore. Wait… it was his soul. The piece of his soul in Sara was snitching on him right now, he’d bet on it. Damnit.
“It’s obvious you still love her.”
“Doesn’t matter, Sara.” He pushed through their little body block and kept walking. “She chose to hide and play dead.” Fuck Eve. Fuck them all. “I’m going back up to kill Michael - without mercy this time - and then I’m done.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means, Darling,” he didn’t dare spare a glance in her direction. He kept his eyes locked on the door up ahead.
“Then make this right. Fix it,” Sara urged. “You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t at least try.”
“You can’t fix something as damaged as us,” Lucifer was almost at the door. So close. Soooo close.
“You fixed me!” Sara hollered.
“I did nothing,” a few more steps and he’d be out of Hell. “Wolf saved you. Your pack saved you.”
“Exactly, you idiot! With YOU!”
Lucifer ripped open the door, stepped through, and immediately heard the distinct sounds of fighting. What the—
Lucifer took off up the steps and found Eli holding an Angel in a chokehold in the backyard with Jack and Tanner as backup. Eli looked over at Lucifer and said, “He just showed up here, sire. Insisted we bring him to Hell. When we refused, he thought he could bully his way in. So I had to adjust his fucking attitude.”
Anthony.
“What the fuck is going on here?” He hadn’t seen Anthony since the Brotherhood fell.
“We’ve got a situation,” the Angel scowled as blood dripped down his temple. “The only way I knew to reach you was through one of your packs.”
And you chose my best one. Not a coincidence. Lucifer eyes narrowed, “What do you want?”
If Anthony hurt a single hair on that pack’s head, he’d fucking regret it. Immediately. Although, going by the look of things, Eli did a damned good job on him already. Anthony’s eyes flared and jaw clenched while he stared at Lucifer.
“You gonna speak or stare, Anthony?”
“You’re truly out of Hell.”
“Why are you fucking here?”
“One of our own was infected,” Anthony explained.
Holy. Shit. Lucifer’s heart slammed into his throat. “Eli, release him, but keep your blade on him.” He didn’t trust anyone but his Hounds right now.
“Sari was stabbed in the neck with an infected blade.” Anthony said. “It spread like wildfire through him.”
“Did he bite you? Scratch any of you?”
“No, but he didn’t have much of a chance to try. Lilith killed him.”
Lucifer froze. Lilith killed an Angel… one of her own? That felt drastic to Lucifer. She could have easily restrained him. And she was a Purity Angel, surely Lilith still had some of that power left and could have saved him. Or at least helped him until he found a way to help himself.
“He needed to be put down. Sari was damned and ruined,” Anthony argued. “Your malanum have done nothing but plague this realm and are spreading their ruination everywhere. Now it’s hit the Divine.”
“Listen up because I do not repeat myself,” Luce got all up close and personal in Anthony’s face. “I’m not the cause of malanum. I contain them. Big fucking difference. And it’s not malanum behind the infections, it’s Michael. Uriel spoke to Lilith about this a dozen times in the past few months. Michael is out of imprisonment and is terrorizing the human realm. He found a way to infect others and is trying to destroy everything we’ve built.”
“You mean everything you’ve built,” Anthony deadpanned.
“I only built Hell.”
“You built everything, 666. Just like you fucking destroyed everything.” Anthony dragged his gaze up and down Lucifer’s body. “You’re the most popular Angel in the universe, and just look at you. Blackened. Tainted. Ruined. How you’ve managed to get this powerful is beyond me. But you are the reason malanum are running loose. You swore to protect innocents. And Sari?” Anthony sneered, “Sari was innocent in all this. Fuck all, Lucifer, he didn’t even know his purpose yet!”
Lucifer’s heart hammered. His wrath howled for release. With a numbness that should have scared him to death, he calmly walked over to Anthony and growled, “I’m not the bad guy here. Michael is.”
Anthony stared at him with an unreadable expression. Lucifer could smell the rage roll off him. Read the judgment in his eyes. Well fuck that, Lucifer wasn’t the bad guy here and he was tired of playing that role. “Lilith slaughtered that lamb. Not me.”
“She had no choice.”
He laughed cruelly, “There is always a choice. Did she even try to purify him?”
Anthony’s jaw clenched. Even now, he saw Lucifer as the threat. That’s the only way to describe the look on that Angel’s face. He felt threatened.
“Go home, and do your job better.” Lucifer smothered the space with his aura.
“My job is to protect the living.”
“And you failed today to protect your own. Do. Better.”
The Angel’s fury caused his wings to fan out. “You brought death and destruction to our door, Lucifer. The day you put Michael in that prison, you damned us all.”
“I only damned myself. You were in charge of your own actions from that day forward.” Lucifer was done with this conversation, “We are all masters of our fate.”
“Fate is fickle. As are you,” Anthony’s eyes hardened, “You have forsaken your own kind.”
Lucifer’s laugh was cold and heartless. He tipped his head back and let it bark out of him, “You’re kidding me, right? My own kind? MY OWN KIND?” Lucifer shoved Anthony back, “You are not my kind.”
“You’re Angelic, Lucifer. Or have you forgotten your place, brother?”
Lucifer desperately wanted to pop this motherfucker’s head off like a corked bottle of champagne. “I know my place,” the Devil growled, “And I’ve kept my word. Always. It’s you and your fleet who have done this world a disservice. And to see how quick you are to give up on one of your own, I’m glad my place in this world is as far from yours as possible.”
There was a reason Hell was closed off to the rest of Divinit
y. This was a prime example of why Angels couldn’t be trusted. If you weren’t perfect, you should die. What the hell kind of bullshit was that?
“Sari. Wasn’t. Savable.”
Lucifer shoved a finger at him, “You didn’t even try.”
“Contain your malanum, Lucifer. Or this war will not be one you can conquer.” Anthony fanned his wings out and shot into the sky. The minute he was out of sight, Lucifer felt his numbness wear off. He sucked in a couple deep breaths and cracked his neck to relieve some tension.
Lucifer went back inside and headed for the fridge. Water. He needed water. Yanking open the fridge door, he basked in the blast of cool air that hit his face. Uncapping a bottle of H2O, he chugged it three swallows, crushing the plastic bottle a little more with every gulp. He did the same with six others.
“Sire, don’t take this the wrong way,” Jack hedged. “But you need to get right. Whatever it takes.”
“I am right.”
“No, you’re a mess Satan,” Eli leaned against the counter, playing with one of his blades.
“You better unfuck yourself,” Tanner said from the kitchen table. “Because there’s probably going to be a lot more of this to come. Who knows what Anthony will run back and say.”
“It doesn’t matter. The Angels all love to hate me. Always have. No amount of good or bad I do will ever change that.”
“Not all Angels,” Jack crossed his arms. “You’ve got your brothers, right?”
“Barely,” he grimaced. “Things have grown complicated between us again.” He wasn’t a sharing kind of guy so that’s all he was going to say about it. But Sunshine Boy was right. He needed to get unfucked. In the head. The heart. The soul. If he was going to fight Michael and put an end to this once and for all, he needed to get better. Going into war required a clear head – one that wasn’t fogged with hate and resentment.
Lucifer slammed the fridge door shut and leaned against it. “How’d you do it?” When they all looked confused, he clarified. “How’d you let all that anger of what happened to Sara go and embrace her as she is now?”
Yeah, it was different for them because Sara had been kidnapped. She didn’t have any memory of them at first. She had to slowly regain her memories and fall in love with each of them all over again. It was easy to do… they were already a pack. So, it should stand to reason that the same could happen for Lucifer’s pack. Right? Shit, did he even want that? Right now, he had a world to save, not a love life.
Priorities. Sometimes they got all kinds of fucked up.
“How’d you fall back in love with her so fast?”
“Easy,” Tanner shrugged, “we never fell out of love with her to begin with.”
Lucifer breathed through the pain he felt in his blackened heart. “She’s not the same anymore.”
“So?” Jack slumped into a chair. “Neither was Sara when we found her. Didn’t change how we felt.”
“Not to mention,” Eli stabbed the kitchen table with his knife. “You’re probably not the same anymore either.”
“Then we won’t work,” Lucifer growled. “It’s not going to work.”
“The fuck you talking about, Satan?” Tanner shook Lucifer’s shoulder, “You are pack. Are you bonded?”
“No,” he confessed. “Not entirely.”
“Then get on it because we’ve got a world to save and a baby to raise. I’m not having our kid grow up in some fucking dystopian world where she’ll have to steal her food and end up swinging baseball bats covered in barbed wire to protect herself from zombies.”
“Oh good lord, Tanner,” Eli buried his face in his hands and half-laughed, half-groaned.
“Yeah, you laugh so you don’t cry. Think about it, Hound. It could happen. If we don’t beat Michael this time, he could win. And I’ve got one word for you,” he leaned across the table and got super close to Eli’s mouth, “fruit-cocktail-in-a-can.”
Eli shivered at the thought.
“He’s right,” Lucifer sank into a chair himself. “This could get worse. A lot worse. We already know Michael can raise the dead. Or at least use corpses and stuff them with malanum. If he can gain enough power, he could potentially raise an army of the dead.”
And how fucking cliché was that?
“No offense, my Lord,” Jack cleared his throat, “but uhhh, so could you. We’re technically dead, too.”
“Hell yeah,” Tanner’s knee started bobbing. “And there’s a fuck-ton of us.”
I don’t want you in this war, Lucifer thought.
It wasn’t fair to put his Hounds on the front lines like that. Their place on this earth was to protect the living and the dead. Not fight Angels. Gabriel insisted they train to be prepared to go after Divinity, but Lucifer hated the idea.
This started with the Angels and it would end with the Angels. No others need to be involved.
And if Lucifer was really going whole hog, he needed to be at one-hundred percent. “I’ve got to find a way to work with Eve.” He couldn’t believe he was even considering this.
But… he needed Angels on his side.
He needed his pack.
Eve wasn’t just part of their pack; she was the center of it. The soul. They came together over her and fell apart over her. She was necessary.
And Lucifer had to admit, Eve was strong as steel now. It was damn near impossible to even choke her. That kind of strength would be useful.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do any of this,” he whispered.
“Baby steps, Satan,” Jack knocked his knuckles on the table. “Don’t jump into anything too quickly. Keep your focus. Work with your brothers and reunite because you can bloody well believe this war is going to get uglier. The stakes have raised.”
Lucifer agreed, but he wasn’t ready to open old wounds yet.
Patching shit up with Eve would have to wait. He didn’t know her anymore. He didn’t have the energy to get to know her now. Nor did he have the time. Eve made her choice to hide and play dead this whole time, so he’d have to suck it up and keep pretending she was dead too.
For now.
Only a pathetic mongrel would roll over for a bitch who lied and deceived those who gave her everything they had - like their heart and soul. No, no, no, fuck that and fuck her. Eve somehow survived all this time on her own, she could continue to do so. She didn’t need him and he’d gone long enough without her to know he didn’t need her either.
But he did need his brothers.
Baby steps… he’d start by patching the rifts between him, Constantine, Gabriel, and Uriel.
Out of nowhere, an alarm sounded and Tanner popped up to his feet and took off. His boots thumped loudly as he climbed the steps to the second floor. “Sixteen power grids out! I repeat! Sixteen power grids are out on the east coast!”
“Shit,” Eli yanked his knife out of the table, “here we go again.”
Jack went over to a cupboard and started pulling out more weapons, “Go, Lucifer. We’ve got this.”
“I’ll stay and hunt malanum with you. Call the other East Coast packs.”
“No offense, sire, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. You and malanum are mixing in a bad way right now.”
Leave it to the Voodoo Man to call a spade a spade. He was right. If Lucifer got into a fight with a horde of malanum, it would most likely damn Lucifer more because he’d lost his ability to control himself.
“Want to save us all, Satan?” Tanner rushed back into the kitchen and tossed Jack a duffel and a hefty blade, “Start by finding a way to thoroughly unfuck yourself.” Tanner tossed him a set of keys next, “My R-8 is in the garage. Code 6665. Go get your girl.”
Chapter 12
Eve was sweating like a sinner in church. Her body always kicked out some serious heat as a side effect of healing. Extensive internal injuries caused her to overheat. Blood draining caused her body temp to drop low enough to get hypothermia. So weird, but in the end, she was always back to her gloriously can’t-fucking-
die-and-stay-dead self.
Once she figured she was a decent enough distance away from Constantine and temptation, Eve finally slowed down. Her clothes were ruined. Her wings ached.
She didn’t envy much, but having the ability to tuck her wings in super tight or make them disappear from view entirely with a simple spell was definitely something Eve was jealous over. Her wings had been severed more than once, only to regrow a little darker, a little stronger every time. With the exception of four red feathers, her wings were almost charcoal now. She often wondered how many shades of grey there were, and by her estimation, the answer was hundreds if not thousands.
Finally arriving at the house, Eve figured it was time to face her truths. There was no escaping her future, so she wasn’t going to waste energy pretending otherwise. It was time to woman up. Be the best version of herself.
Shit. Eve wondered if she even remembered how to be honest, brutal, and sharp. There was no room for mercy now, not that she had any to give. And Lucifer would expect nothing less of a woman worth his love.
God, how she wanted to be that female again.
Uriel and Constantine accepted her in whatever stage of existence they’d find her in. Being honest with them came easy because she rarely saw them and when she did, they spent very little time talking. Words hurt. Truths… they gutted you. She preferred silence.
Those two males weren’t her problem. Gabriel was.
That stubborn male would be the one to ruin any chance she still might have with Lucifer and the others. That motherfucker hated her and she hated him even more. In fact, he was the reason for her red feathers – the bastard.
Eve hopped onto the porch and Lazarus swung the door open for her with a flourish. He took one look at her and grew angry, “Damnit, Flower. What the hell happened to you?”
“Like you don’t already know, fucking Know-it-All.” If he, for any reason, hadn’t known she’d just been trampled by a horse, the hoof prints on her outfit certainly would have been a dead giveaway.
“Where’s Constantine?”
“You know Laz, it’s annoying when you ask questions. You know the answers to everything,” she brushed past him and headed straight for her wolf. Dropping to her knees, she sank her fingers in his thick, coarse fur and pressed her head to his. Anam was her safe space. Her rope to reality. Her rock-steady protector.
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