by Abbie Payne
Punches and kicks were being flown left and right, but my weak state was giving me a major disadvantage. Still, I fought until Brayden grabbed me from behind, putting his arm around my neck tightly. I could feel him smirking behind me as his sickeningly calm voice bellowed from behind me, sending a chill straight down my spine.
“You’re no match for me, Satan. You know you never were and never will be.”
I started to respond when Gavin calmly walked in, His seven archangel brothers trailing behind me as if they had nothing better to do than serve their younger brother day in and day out.
It was honestly disgusting just how much of a grip Gavin had over His family. It made me feel even more sick when I realized that the way the archangels were acting with Him now was the same way that Lucifer and His seven brothers acted when they were angels. Before they were exiled from Heaven, they, too, saw Gavin and their father as the good guys. I wondered, if Lucifer hadn’t fallen when he did, if they ever would have come to the realization that they did.
I wondered, if Lucifer hadn’t fallen at all, if I would still have the life I did now. Would Eddie be suffering from the same thing that I was now? What would Brayden have done to her? I’d already seen the things he dared to do to her when she was young, but I always thought that it would’ve gotten worse when she got older if I wasn’t there to help her.
After all, the Parker family got their numbers from somewhere and it wasn’t just from “willing breeding partners” (if it ever was).
“Don’t bother taking him anywhere,” Gavin mused, “He’s coming to the Celestial Palace with me.”
Brayden looked up at Him, “But... King Gavin-”
Gavin shook His head, “No. I changed my mind - after all, Brayden, you have to admit that Satan’s a little too valuable to let go that easily.”
Brayden raised an eyebrow, “What are you going to do with him, then?”
Gavin chuckled darkly, “Don’t you worry about that, Brayden. For now, you and Gabriel go down to Los Angeles and check on the headquarters down there... a little birdie told me that we might have some visitors tonight and they will be very useful for our cause.”
Twenty-Six
Athena Forte
Angel Hunter
Palace of Sins
“IS EVERYONE READY TO GO?”
Nine, Koa, Finn, and I were all gathered in Uncle Newt’s room with our backpacks filled with whatever it was that we thought we needed. We all had the tracking bands on our ankles (King Victor’s invention - meant to be used so if anything happened to us, King Victor would know where to look for us) and we were all as ready as we would ever be for this. The only thing that was left now was to actually leave.
“Where are we going first, Uncle Newt?” I questioned.
Prince Lucifer told us to patrol all of the angel territories (meaning cities and towns that were mostly dominated by angels and other species that supported Gavin and therefore were controlled by them) since we had no idea which Corps of White Nightmares location King Victor was now at, but there were so many angel territories. I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to check them thoroughly and be back in two weeks.
“I didn’t want to do this, but it may be best if we split up for this mission,” Uncle Newt decided, then handed each of us a map.
“So... Athena, you’re going to be going to Europe with Finn. Koa, you’re going with Nine to Asia. I will stay here in North America. Once we’re done with our individual territories, we’ll-”
“Shouldn’t we check Los Angeles first, though?” Nine asked, “I mean, it would at least be a good way for us to warm up before we all split up.”
Uncle Newt thought for a moment, “Well, I was going to say that we would finish with Los Angeles, but I suppose that wouldn’t be a terrible idea.”
“Then let’s get going to Los Angeles,” Finn said impatiently, “Before someone - meaning the princess or Roscoe - overhear us and get suspicious.”
There were obvious reasons why Eddie couldn’t know where we were going, but Roscoe didn’t make too much sense to me. I supposed it was just because Roscoe was so close to Eddie and it was going to be too hard for him to lie to her.
Newt nodded and reached out to us. “Come here, then,” he ordered, “You all know that it’s best that we teleport together. This isn’t our first rodeo... though I have a feeling it may be our last.”
❀
Los Angeles, California
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA was easily one of my least favorite places.
Although it was only one of the dozens of angel territories in the world, Los Angeles was directly under the White City and therefore was the most disgustingly obvious about the fact that it was an angel territory. It only got worse after the humans went extinct, though, because Los Angeles completely morphed from the way that humans made it to the way that the angels always wanted it: a God worshipping, statue erecting, mural painting garbage heap of a city.
Sure, the demons claimed Las Vegas as one of our territories, but we didn’t make it as obvious as the angels did. We didn’t have a single statue of Victor or his father, Satan - not even in Hell - and the angels had them everywhere. It was just a wee bit excessive.
Still, I did my best to focus on the prize and followed Uncle Newt and the boys through the streets of Los Angeles, doing my best to keep any eye out for anything unusual while we also searched for the Corps of White Nightmares headquarters - well, the Middleworld headquarters. The CWN’s real headquarters in the White City was far easier to spot, but that was because they didn’t feel the need to hide it as much as they did in the Middleworld.
Somehow, the horrors that took place at the Middleworld locations were worse than the ones that took place Upstairs. Part of me hoped that we didn’t find King Victor at any of the places in the Middleworld even though it was going to be nearly impossible for us to get to the one in Heaven without getting help from the brothers, and probably some help from Eddie, too.
My only question was were we looking in the wrong places all along? Were we wasting our time being here and not trying to get into the White City already? I looked up as Nine’s sights locked onto something in the distance.
It was an angel running down a dark alley before entering what looked like a door originally hidden by a stack of wooden crates and other virtually useless objects. The five of us exchanged glances, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we dared to go in there. I started to ask the question aloud when Newt grabbed us and pulled us into an empty warehouse, narrowly avoiding the sights of three men - three more angels. These angels, though, were ones that I knew very well.
Two of them were Gabriel and Michael and the third looked far too much like my best friend for it to be just a coincidence.
Twenty-Seven
Gabriel King
Lucifer’s Replacement (Archangel)
Los Angeles CWN Headquarters
THE STENCH OF THE LOS ANGELES headquarters was nothing compared to the sights and sounds that flooded my senses as I followed Brayden through the alley and through the makeshift door that led directly to a stairway. Down we went and as we did so, the screams of people - mostly women and children - pounded against my eardrums and the sights of people clinging to the bars of their cells, begging Brayden to let them go were enough to send my gaze to the ground.
This was not my first time seeing or hearing the products of the Corps’ cruelty and I wasn’t willing to try to put a stop to it (after all, the CWN was essentially one of our only line of defense before the military itself), but that didn’t mean that I ever got used to it. Most of the time, I found it to be easier to just turn a blind eye to everything than to know the horrors that occurred below the ground of Los Angeles. I looked at Brayden as he led the way through the building.
“What are we doing here, exactly?” I asked him.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Brayden mused.
I shook my head. I couldn’t figure out why I would have been asking if it was alread
y obvious.
Brayden rolled his eyes at me, “We’re here because those Angel Hunters are here. If they don’t come down here tonight, they’ll come down here tomorrow morning. We need to be prepared, so we’ll be hiding in the back parts of this place and wait. I’ll be sure to get some cells ready for them - we’re going to need them.”
Twenty-Eight
Lucifer Palmer
Prince of Death
Palace of Sins
THE NEXT MORNING WAS QUITE peculiar. With the Hunters no longer there and everything else in the world already going wrong, I originally wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the day because I expected something else to go wrong. However, when I woke up that morning, I woke to the sound of all six of my brothers still in my bedroom, sound asleep and most of them snoring.
Elton had apparently had a nightmare in the middle of the night and woke me up, but that was fairly typical of him. Even when he was little, he would wake up at some point in the night and seek out one of us for help.
Usually, it was Gus because he was the closest to him in distance (since they shared a room) or Lachlan because he was always up for cuddling (even if the other person wasn’t really up for it).
I also noticed that all of the boys were still in the room - even Wyatt was still there, sitting on the floor next to where his twin brother sat on the couch in the same place he had been before. They all seemed so peaceful and I was half-tempted to continue to enjoy the brief moment of peace before chaos inevitably ensued again, but I had things to do today and I couldn’t focus on them as much as I wanted to.
The first item on the list was making breakfast - yes, that was the most important thing right now. Then, after breakfast, I could go and be on my own and get some much-needed work done. I stepped over the maze that was four of six of the boys sprawled out all over the floor and went downstairs to the kitchen where I set to work making breakfast.
I was by no means a chef, but I could cook things relatively easily and without burning them (unlike Sylas who burned everything that he touched when it came to the kitchen) and since Griffin wasn’t there, we were missing our usual in-house chef.
So, breakfast was going to be relatively simple that morning anyway - just some fried eggs, Hellhog bacon, and a few fried crickets (for extra protein or something... I couldn’t quite remember what Griffin told me once when he was teaching me a recipe). I did make some tea for myself, though I didn’t bother making it for the others. Other than Eddie, there was no one else in this palace that liked tea and, if she wanted it, she could just as easily make it herself. She had free rein over the kitchen just like my brothers anyway.
I looked up at the sound of someone padding into the kitchen and smiled a little as I realized that it was Roscoe.
I didn’t know very much about Roscoe. I merely knew that he was the princess’s guard and that he swore his life to protect her upon seeing her for the first time thirteen years ago. That was just about all I knew about him, but I supposed that was because of a silent decision we both made to keep one another at arms’ length. It didn’t seem like we would have too much in common anyway.
“The princess was talking to me last night,” Roscoe mused as he walked over to the fridge and started trying to track down something to drink.
“Is that unlike any other night?” I asked, not quite understanding what he was getting at. As far as I knew, Roscoe spoke to Eddie frequently and not just at night. If that was the case, there was no real reason for him to be telling me, was there?
“Yes and no,” Roscoe hummed, “I guess it was more the discussion itself that was different.”
He then walked over, carrying a jug of blood orange juice with him over to one of the cabinets where he got himself a glass to drink out of.
“She said that she wanted to go see King Victor,” Roscoe mused, “I told her that I could go with her if she wanted, but I wanted to know if you would be willing to go with her instead?”
My heart sank into my stomach as I listened to the guard’s words. I shook my head.
“She can’t go,” I stated.
Roscoe stopped pouring his juice and turned to face me. “Why not? There’s no reason she can’t go and talk to him for a few hours, is there?”
Without stopping to think about the consequences of it, my next statement was, “Yes, Roscoe, there is, actually.”
“What is it, then?”
I hesitated. I couldn’t tell Roscoe that the king was missing!
The whole point of sending the Hunters away in secret was so that Eddie wouldn’t find out. If I told Roscoe, there was far too much a chance that she would still find out somehow. I could explain away why the Hunters weren’t there since they frequently went on patrols anyway, but there was no way to explain why someone like Roscoe would suddenly let it slip that her father was missing. Still, I wasn’t sure that I could get away with lying to Roscoe either...
“Prince Lucifer? Is there something I should know about? I get the feeling that there’s something that you aren’t telling me,” Roscoe asked again.
I started to reply when I was reminded that I had eggs cooking on the stove behind me by the smell of them slowly starting to burn. I swore under my breath and turned back away from Roscoe.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I insisted, “My brothers, the Hunters, and I have everything under control.”
Roscoe sighed softly, but left it at that when all of my brothers and Eddie filed into the dining room that we had full view of from the kitchen. He then helped me carry the serving plates out to the dining room and I sat down in my usual place between Sylas and Pierce, hoping that the conversation that Roscoe was trying to have with me was done.
It had to be done at least for that point in time, though I wouldn’t have minded if it disappeared into oblivion. I looked up at the flat-screen TV that was mounted in the corner of the room and thought for a moment. It was Saturday. That meant the weekly report on the Empyrean War was supposed to go up this morning.
“Elton, turn on the TV,” I told him. He was sitting closest to the console that was by the wall, so he was also closest to the remote. I thanked him as the TV clicked on and the news report came up.
Unfortunately, the Empyrean War report this week was being given by the angels. The demons and the angels all had the exact same channels and the exact same news station, so we all had to “share” the screen time when it came to the news. Then again, it wasn’t like the angels ever claimed only what was rightfully theirs and nothing more.
As the news anchor rambled on and on about how the war was beginning to spiral out of control, the energy in the room grew sticky and heavy. Well, this was just a splendid way to start the morning off.
Not only did Roscoe come inches away from forcing me into revealing what was going on with King Victor, but now the war was doing just as we feared it would.
Hopefully, I would still be able to keep up with my statement that I had everything handled.
❀
Palace of Darkness
LET IT BE KNOWN: I most certainly did not have everything handled. That fact only became more painfully obvious, though, when I went to the Palace of Darkness after breakfast to figure out what could be done to help the war. I soon realized that there wasn’t very much that could be done about the war.
I couldn’t really send more troops because we didn’t have that many more troops to send - plus, I wasn’t sure that anyone had that ability except for the king. Well, since the king was “missing”, his daughter now had that ability, but - again - no one but my brothers, the Hunters, and me knew about that. Not even the Head Council... oh. My. Satan.
I swore under my breath as I came to the realization that the Head Council didn’t even know about King Victor’s disappearance. I didn’t particularly want to tell them since Phoenix Bauer was going to be another person that was a little too close to Eddie for my liking, but they needed to know.
However, if I didn’t tell them, then I wouldn’t b
e able to do anything about the war. I had to tell them. I had to tell them. There was no other option.
I groaned and sank down in the desk chair as I thought to myself. How exactly did I get myself into these messes? Why couldn’t my life be normal? At this rate, I would even take being back up in Heaven at this point if it meant that I wouldn’t have to go through this.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t hear the knocking on the door until it became more urgent and a voice started to accompany it. Wait... I knew that knock. It was one the war advisor... what was his name? Why couldn’t I remember his name?
“Your Majesty, I need to speak with you about the war. Do you know how you want to proceed yet? Are you in there? Can I come in?”
He started to push the door open and I immediately teleported over, pushing back and closing the door back. From the sound on the outside, I was fairly certain that I managed to send the advisor flying, too, but I talked myself into thinking that was okay for the sake of my sanity. I began to break out into a sweat as my mind swarmed with what to do.
“Your... Majesty?” The advisor called, his tone much more lifted now that he was - understandably confused.
When he was little, Wyatt used to think that there were a bunch of “Little Wyatts” in his brain, controlling all of his bodily functions, all of his thoughts, and all of his actions. Now, I couldn’t help imagining all the “Little Lucifers” in my own brain scrambling around and screaming as my brain burst into flames. That vision was just about the only thing keeping me from having a complete mental breakdown, but it wasn’t helping much other than that.
“King Victor, what in your father’s name is wrong?” The advisor asked again. I heard him put his hand on the door knob and begin to push the door open again.