Darlings of New Midnight

by Andrea Speed

  Lucifer staggered, genuinely hurt by the barrage, but he recovered a lot faster than he should have. He straightened up and was actually trying to chuckle, although he was a little too winded to do so. The Scourge stalked around Lucifer, walking over flowing lava like it was nothing, which was certainly true for it. It probably wasn’t wise to paste one animal’s reactions on another, but if Logan had picked up that body language on a cat, he would have thought it was frustrated. Talon must have known the void hadn’t hurt Lucifer because he was still here. That must have been really puzzling to a creature who used that as its kill move.

  “What the hell are you bastards doing?” Lucifer asked, shaking his head. “You’ve lost, and you can’t kill me. You’re wasting your last moments on Earth.”

  “Trying to kill you is never a waste,” Esme said, her raised fists glowing with white energy like she was about to throw a fireball. It was pretty cool.

  Lucifer grinned, and there was a barely visible glint of gold on his teeth. So they’d messed up his suit and made him bleed a little… not bad, considering he was as close to indestructible as you could get. “I admire the spirit, little witch, if not the sentiment.”

  “Fuck you,” she snapped and then shouted a spell that caused the lava around him to rise up and engulf him like a tidal wave. It was fucking cool, and would have been a finishing move in any other fight, but it fell away, leaving Lucifer perfectly intact, even his suit. You couldn’t burn the devil, apparently.

  He scowled, obviously not liking this one bit, and then crouched down fast and hit a piece of rocky ground. It caused a shock wave that sent them all flying off their feet, save for the Scourge, who was unimpressed; Ahmed, who had turned back to his sand form, the amulet falling in the pile of him; and Lyn, who was still circling above them all on her silver wings.

  Logan landed hard on his back, which fucking hurt since the stone that had so far survived the lava was craggy as all get out. He missed the lava, but protection spell or not, one one-hundredth of its heat still reached him, and it was a nightmare. He hadn’t been here that long, but he was sweating buckets.

  Lucifer spat out more dark-magic words that grated against Logan’s ears, and a tongue of lava stood up before him and came crashing down. Logan could do nothing—he was going to be fried. He did have time to wonder what it was like to be burned to death by lava, as well as to get his arms over his head, for all the good it would do.

  But the lava didn’t hit him, and he glanced up to see two things. First, Talon had moved in front of him, blocking the lava with its body. The second thing he noticed was a pale green dome over his head, and he glanced back at Esme, who was holding a hand out in his direction. He gave her a thumbs-up for the protection spell.

  Before he knew it, Ceri was beside him, Godslayer out and pointed toward his father. “You didn’t really try to kill my boyfriend, did you?”

  Lucifer chuckled, like this was a bit of a lark. “I am trying to kill everyone on this miserable fucking planet, boy. Who cares in what order I do it?”

  “I do.”

  He smirked at Ceri, and Logan thought there should be a smug alert with that expression. “So why don’t you do something about it?”

  Lyn picked that moment to swoop down at him, now wielding the dirk of Saint Agatha, which could supposedly cut “any demon or devil.” She sliced him between the neck and the shoulder, a deep cut that spurted gold ichor as she soared off.

  Lucifer grimaced and slapped a hand over the gash. “Goddamn it, birdy! Your people aren’t even threatened here!” Maybe he couldn’t see it, but as Lyn circled around, she gave him the finger with one of her talons. “Seriously, you’re starting to piss me off,” Lucifer said, as if they were simply name-calling him and not trying to kill him. “Is that what you really want?”

  Ceri shook his head, Godslayer still out and aimed at his father, and said, “I want my legacy.”

  Lucifer cocked his head to the side. He hadn’t expected that. “And what is your legacy, exactly?”

  “Hell. I want it.”

  After a moment’s shock, Lucifer laughed uproariously. The fact that Logan asked Ceri, “What?” made him laugh even harder.

  Lucifer wiped tears from his eyes as he straightened up, still chuckling a little. “Are you kidding? I can never tell if you’re joking or not.”

  “I was made to rule Hell, not simply dwell in it,” Ceri insisted. “I want my birthright.”

  Lucifer smiled in a lopsided way. If Logan read his expression correctly—and maybe he couldn’t—he was half buying it and half not. Could have gone either way. “So, what? You expect me to step down?”

  “Why not? Why else did you create me?”

  He continued to chuckle, like this was some great joke. He didn’t seem to notice none of them were attacking him, even though it was their ostensible reason for being here. But what man overlooked an excuse to talk about himself? “Boy, you were made to usher in the end times. Ruling Hell doesn’t come into it.”

  “Why not? Do you expect me to live in the rubble?”

  That seemed to stump him. If Ceri was right about Satan’s ultimate plan—and he had to be, considering this reaction—he couldn’t tell him the truth. He scratched his head, mussing his otherwise perfect hair halo. “Huh. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I thought you’d be content to be my right hand.”

  “Would you be content as your father’s right hand?”

  “Huh. That’s a good point. Wow. You’d think I’d have considered that.”

  The Scourge was pacing restlessly behind him, but Logan was quietly willing it to wait, and that seemed to be working for now. The lava continued flowing like blood, and he tried not to think about how many people were dead from the eruptions alone. Sometimes evil on a global scale was too hard to comprehend, and it was better not to, because the futility of it all could be devastating. And the fact that they were going to add thousands to the total of the dead would be even worse. But sometimes it was necessary to cut the leg off to save the patient, and that was what was constantly going around in Logan’s head.

  “So what do you propose to do about it?” Ceri continued.

  “Are you really doing this?” Esme asked, exasperated. She was a good actress.

  Ceri barely glanced back at her. “It is over, Esme. What else can we do?”

  “Not give up like a punkass bitch,” Lyn shouted from above.

  Lucifer chuckled. “You’re losing your friends, Cerberus.”

  “They’re part of this. They survive if I return to Hell.”

  “Who says I want to move to Hell?” Ahmed said, back in his humanoid form. “I mean, Earth sucks, but Hell can’t be much better.”

  “Well… okay. But not the Cthulhu-talker, if she ever comes back.”

  “Not a she.”

  “Fine—he, them, whatever, can’t come. They’ll be fine anyway. Cthulhu likes hellscapes. Oh, and you, harpy. You’re god blessed. Your kind will survive anything.”

  Lyn, still circling above in a holding pattern, gave Lucifer another obscene gesture. He didn’t look up to notice.

  Logan stared at Ceri, pained. The best acting was drawn from memory, and that’s what he was doing now. “I don’t wanna go back to Hell.”

  Lucifer gave him his usual smug grin, a gleeful glint in his reddish-gold eyes, probably shifted to match the environment. Why only have rivers of lava when you could color-coordinate with them? Logan had hoped Satan wouldn’t be the flamboyant asshole he was sometimes depicted as, but sadly, he was. He might even have been slightly worse, if that was possible. “Oh, but you have to, unless you wanna die up here with the rest of the hoi polloi.”

  Logan couldn’t resist sneering. “Are you ever not up your own ass?”

  Lucifer’s smile somehow became bigger. “Aren’t you the one into butt stuff?”

  “Can I please kill him?” Lyn shouted.

  Lucifer finally looked up at her. “You wish, har—”


  He suddenly stopped, and Logan instantly knew why. It came over him like a wave of cold and dread, like back at the office building where they found the Scourge but somehow a million times worse. He collapsed to his knees, shuddering so violently he could only hear the click of his own teeth against one another.

  Ceri crouched beside him and holstered Godslayer so he could wrap his arms around him. Logan felt warmer and a little better, although the feeling of dread didn’t stop and neither did the shuddering. It simply got a little less violent. “It’s okay,” Ceri whispered. “I’m here.”

  Lucifer looked genuinely stunned, like they’d smacked him with a whale. “What the fuck…? Cthulhu’s rising!”

  “It was you or it,” Ceri said. “And I’ve had enough of you.”

  Lucifer looked both betrayed and impressed. It was weird. “Wow. I didn’t think you had it in you. Maybe you are ready to take over Hell.”

  Logan hadn’t realized it immediately, but Talon was now standing beside him, tail flicking back and forth. It knew he was distressed and didn’t know how to fix it, like a real pet. He would have found it touching if he didn’t think he was about to die.

  There was a crackling noise, and the rivers of lava around them instantly transformed into black stone, matching the rest of the landscape. Lucifer scowled at the ground, as if that would do anything, but Cthulhu had taken it all back. He could do nothing but watch his apocalypse dreams evaporate.

  Alex returned in a bubble of shadow, and Lucifer turned toward them, already throwing some black magic, but he seemed not to notice the shadow opening up behind him. Before he could spit out his third word, a shadow tentacle wrapped around his mouth, and before he could pull away, he was completely wrapped in tentacles. They appeared as insubstantial as the Scourge, but he couldn’t break free. Lucifer’s eyes glowed red as Alex walked over and waved. “Hey, asshole, remember me? I bet you thought you got me good, didn’t you? Well, if you haven’t guessed, Cthulhu is not happy with you. Did your elder god friends tell you what happens when Cthulhu is pissed off? Well, consider yourself lucky, because he decided their plan for you is best. At least for now.”

  Lucifer’s eyes scudded toward Ceri as he tossed Godslayer, which landed tip first about ten feet away from him. Esme started casting a spell in old Spanish and old Latin, and only when the sword began to glow did Lucifer start squirming. He’d figured out the play. But the shadow tentacles of Cthylor held him even more firmly.

  The sword seemed to become almost elastic, still metal but pulling and stretching, all at the mercy of the movements of Esme’s hands. Lucifer’s eyes widened when she started to tease the sword into separate, bar-like strands, perhaps guessing what they had in store for him.

  Ceri gave Logan a kiss on the forehead and a comforting squeeze before standing and speaking some words that sounded like metal being shredded in a blender. Old-school black magic, a real nasty kind, a kind that Lucifer would have broken out if given half the chance. Judging from the amount of fruitless struggling he was doing, Lucifer had finally figured out he was fucked.

  Logan stood as Esme used her magic to weave Godslayer into what looked at first like a net with intertwining metal slats, but hovering in the air, it started to form into a rectangle. Godslayer couldn’t kill Lucifer, but he couldn’t break it either. Which was where Ceri got his truly bananas—and genius—idea.

  Breaking Godslayer down into a cage wasn’t a hard thing for Esme to do. Since she was the witch sheriff—in a manner of speaking—little was beyond her. But fitting Lucifer in a small cage? That was a challenge. Until Ceri pointed out that Lucifer, along with being able to switch gender and appearance at will, could also change his size. And Ceri happened to know a spell that would make his form shift.

  Lucifer was desperately trying to curse them out as he began to change, slowly at first, and then it seemed to happen all at once. In the time it took for Logan to stand up, Lucifer had gone from a humanoid figure enmeshed in tentacles to a small furry creature enmeshed in tentacles. Or, to be more specific, a weasel. Ceri had to make a comment, even with a spell.

  Esme had finished weaving together the cage made of Godslayer, and a shadow tentacle picked it up and pulled it over to the Lucifer weasel. Cthylor gently put the creature in the cage, and Esme sealed it shut. Cthylor put the cage on the ground and seemed to retract slightly. The path was clear so Esme could use her evil eye.

  Esme could curse inanimate objects, of course, and the decision was she would curse the cage to be indestructible and unable to be opened from the inside or the outside. She really wanted to curse Lucifer, but he was uncursable, because of course he was. Their lives would have been easier if he weren’t. As soon as it was done, one of the ghostly tentacles of Cthylor picked up the cage. Lucifer, who had been going crazy inside it, stilled.

  “What do you plan to do with it?” Ceri asked.

  “Well, we’re kind of torn,” Alex admitted. “Cthulhu could use a pillow, but considering what he did to me, I’m a little partial to launching his fuzzy ass into orbit.”

  “Why not both?” Lyn suggested. She had now landed beside Esme.

  Alex snapped their fingers and pointed at Lyn. “That’s a great idea. A thousand years or so with Cthulhu, the next thousand orbiting a distant star. I love it.” Cthylor and the cage disappeared, blowing away like a puff of smoke, leaving all of them standing on this inclined plane of black rock. It was night, but you could see the air was clearing up.

  “Is this it?” Ahmed asked. “Did we win?”

  Lyn let out a war whoop, and Esme started laughing. “The apocalypse is canceled!” Esme shouted, raising her fist to the sky. Lyn embraced her, and they were shouting and laughing in triumph.

  Weirdly enough, Logan was both relieved and overwhelmingly, suddenly sad. He tried to hold it back, but it came out anyway, ignoring his desires.

  “Oh hon,” Ceri said, taking him in his arms. He rubbed his back as Logan put his head on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You can stop fighting now.”

  That was it. He’d fought his whole life, and now he was finished with it. He didn’t have to fight anymore. What was he without that? Logan couldn’t stop crying. It kept bubbling out of him, but Ceri held him and rubbed his back, comforting him.

  His mother was dead, his sister was dead—or as good as—and he’d been tortured in Hell. But it was finally over. He didn’t have to fight to survive anymore.

  What was the world going to be like now? Logan was terrified to find out.

  After The End

  ONE WEEK later, the death toll stood officially at 29,371. It was expected to grow, but not by the thousands anymore.

  The tragedy was blamed on a toxic chemical release by a large oil and fracking concern that Esme had cursed because they were assholes and had pretty much destroyed the Earth for generations to come. They deserved more shit than they got.

  As it turned out, the White House and half the Senate were taken out by the Cthulhu death wave, which felt like a win. It was still terrible innocent people died… but Logan found it hard to care about a bunch of cruel millionaires who probably deserved so much worse.

  Logan did feel terrible about the others, though. Ceri told him to quit looking up the numbers, but it was the least he could do, since this was the bargain they made to save the rest of the world. It behooved them to remember all the dead.

  Also, during a good post-victory wallow, Logan thought of something that hadn’t occurred to him before. He talked it over with Esme, and she thought it might be possible, so he waited until Gill contacted him to approach her with the idea. She liked it, so they set it up to happen.

  Gill showed up at the door of his house, looking very much like the last time Logan saw her alive. She had shaggy brown hair and blue eyes and was wearing jeans, a plain green T-shirt, and her favorite worn brown leather jacket. Logan hugged her and did his best to hold back the tears. Gill hugged him back, and maybe she was trying to hold back some tears too. Hard to tell.
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  Logan made awkward and completely unnecessary introductions between Gill and Ceri, and Gill and Esme, but he skipped the intro for Lyn, because she and Gill had already met when Logan and Lyn were a thing. Gill had always been suspicious of Lyn and once said, “She’s like a female you,” which Logan wasn’t sure how to take. But he’d figured out it was simply a reference to the fact that Lyn knew how to fight. Of course, she had superhuman strength and durability, which he could never claim, not even with the Scourge.

  After that was out of the way, they got down to business. Which was Esme cursing Gill to remember her life as a human. Honestly, Logan was embarrassed he hadn’t thought of it before. But to be fair, they were all kind of focused on the whole preventing-the-apocalypse thing, and nobody was sure Gill wouldn’t turn into an enemy. Lucky for them, she didn’t, or at least not for long.

  Esme couldn’t be sure it would keep, as she’d never cast a long-term curse on an angel, and it might “heal up,” for lack of a better term. But Gill told him, with a big smile, that she remembered everything, and sometimes he was a complete asshole, which made Logan chuckle. Yeah, he was, but so was Gill, so they were even.

  If it did stick, there was little downside to being an angel. She’d be immortal, able to teleport, move through dimensions, and appear as anything she wanted. Nothing would be off-limits for her. It was tempting now, although Logan didn’t seriously consider it. He wasn’t ready to give up his humanity yet. Maybe never.

  Gill stayed for a while, informing them that the angels were rebuilding Heaven, but beyond that they had no plans. There was an ongoing debate about whether they needed a leader or a mission or not, because what the hell? It didn’t work the first time. Gill said it reminded her of Logan’s tattoo—no gods, no masters—and some angels were going native on Earth, so they should keep an eye out, although it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some were demon hunting, which could be seen as useful.