by Andrea Speed
Lyn sat forward, cradling the warm mug in her hands. “So there’s no improvising?”
She grimaced. She looked cute when she did that, but when Lyn said it, Esme never believed her. “Not really. And I’m not sure I could do it on an angel at all. I mean, what are their brains like? Are they at all compatible with ours?”
“Well, Logan has said his sister’s walked into his dreams, so I’m thinking they must be.”
Esme put the finishing touch on the latest sigil, and then wiped the blood off on a tea towel that would most likely be thrown away. There was no getting blood out of most of them, unless Esme felt like casting a spell on them. “I’m still a little nervous about trying to cast into an angel’s head. Even if I could, what could I do in there? There’s no reason to believe that I could do anything if I even got in there.”
“Come on, you’re the most kickass witch alive. You’d think of something.”
“Yeah, but angels are energy beings of incredible power, no matter how ineffective they’ve been to date. The moment they get their shit figured out, we’re doomed.”
“We could be lucky and they’ll never get it together. Besides, we have Cthulhu on our side now. That has to mean something.”
“You mean besides ‘we’ve gotten into bed with some scaryass people’?” Esme came over and collapsed on the sofa beside her.
Lyn put her mug down and put her arm around Esme’s shoulders, leaning into her. She always smelled good. Esme claimed it wasn’t a spell she’d cast on herself, but Lyn was willing to bet it was. Everybody smelled terrible at some time under some circumstance. “Yeah, besides that. I think we’re in the beggars-can’t-be-choosers position.”
“It does make me wonder what’s in it for them. Sure, their own apocalypse, but I can’t believe that’s enough to get an elder god mixed up in this bitch.”
Lyn nodded. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. There must be an angle we’re not seeing here.”
Esme sighed heavily. “I know. I wish all the info on the elder gods wasn’t fictional.” She leaned her head against Lyn’s.
Lyn was lucky to have such a sexy, beautiful, smart girlfriend. Esme might even have a solution to her memory issues, although Lyn had never asked, because she wasn’t sure it wasn’t simply a natural harpy thing. Well, she might have forgotten exactly how old she was, but Lyn hadn’t completely lost her head. “What about the library? Would they have anything in there about elder gods?”
Esme had a secret basement—because what house with a witch didn’t have a secret basement—that held her library of witchcraft tomes and other assorted sundry occult books. When Esme first told Lyn she had a library, Lyn thought she was exaggerating for effect. It turned out she wasn’t.
Her library held about twenty towering bookcases worth of books, many handed down through her family, as Esme was from a long family line of witches. Also, one of her grandmothers was apparently a collector of occult books and might have once run a semi-illicit underground sales ring for said books, but that was a long story. Anyhow, they had a secret basement with a fuckton of old and potentially deadly books. Esme said she had at least glanced at most, but Lyn figured that was hyperbole, because there was no way she could have had that much time on earth, not at her age.
Esme considered it, tilting her head and putting a casual hand on Lyn’s leg. “I don’t recall any mention of elder gods… but then again, I never looked either.”
“I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but… should we look?” Lyn preferred punching things in the head rather than doing research, because she was good at punching things. But as much as she hated to admit it, sometimes fighting wasn’t the answer.
“Maybe we should. It’s either that or I have to go out and get more lamb’s blood.”
“I’m still surprised you can’t conjure that.”
“I’ve tried. Conjured blood doesn’t have the same effect as the real thing.” Esme leaned over and gave her a quick but meaningful kiss.
“What was that for?”
“For being the best girlfriend in the world and doing tedious shit with me, when I know you’d rather be fighting.”
Lyn grinned at her. She was the one with the best girlfriend, simply because she knew that about Lyn. “Yeah, but come on. Let’s go find something we can kick Cthulhu’s ass with.”
If they did this tedious bit well enough, she’d get to fight later. If she hadn’t learned to be a little patient after all this time, there would be no hope for her at all.
CERI WONDERED why he bothered.
The instant the dream started and he found himself sitting on a park bench, looking at the asphalt slab of a tiny basketball court under the raging afternoon sun, he knew it was all a lie. “Why are you doing this? This isn’t going to end any better for you.”
A basketball seemed to dribble on its own before being tossed into the air. It hit the backboard and slipped through the hoop, and suddenly a man appeared at center court. “I try to be nice to you, and all I get is static,” Satan complained.
His father, Lucifer, could change appearance at will, but still, like most shape-shifters, he had a favorite form. His favorite form was a blond-haired, blue-eyed, blandly handsome man who could have been a teen idol in the late ’50s/early ’60s with an unlikely name, like Trey or Cam.
What Ceri hadn’t told Logan was that the one demon that could walk into your dreams without a previous foot in the door was Lucifer, but only if you were related to him in some fashion. Lucifer had contacted him this way before. The last time, Ceri had forcibly thrown him out. Yes, he could get in at any time, but Ceri could also slam the door on him. If his head got caught in the door, it was extra fun for him. “Go fuck yourself,” Ceri said.
Lucifer put on his sad face, barely smothering the smirk, as he grasped his chest like Ceri’s words physically hurt him. “I do and do for you, kid, and this is the thanks I get.”
“Do you really want me to dismember you this time? Because you know I will.”
He smiled, flashing perfect blindingly white teeth. The one thing that always gave Satan away, and something that apparently no one else knew, was perfection. Satan was always perfect. He didn’t have a blemish or a scar or a single hair ever out of place. He was factory faultless, and that gave him such a creepy vibe. Ceri had learned from Logan that imperfections were not only kind of wonderful, but ideal. Look at Logan—it was agreed, pretty much across the board, that he was a beautiful man. And yet he had an acne scar on his face, broken blood vessels beneath his eyes from all the punches he’d suffered over the years, and a ghostly pale scar on his lower lip, also from all those beatings. These “flaws” didn’t make him ugly; on the contrary, they seemed, incongruously, to make him more beautiful. And Logan had complained about his soft stomach, not having six-pack abs, but that was crazy. Ceri loved his soft stomach, and honestly, it wasn’t all that soft. Kissing it, he could feel the firm muscles underneath. It was these little flaws that made Logan so lovely and convinced Ceri maybe he didn’t have to be so concerned about his own bifurcated looks. The universe didn’t bend toward perfection. It couldn’t. Entropy was a driving force of the universe, and entropy was nothing but a fancy word for chaos. Lucifer was perfect because he was everything wrong with the universe. It made a perverse sort of sense.
“I’d expect nothing less from my boy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Lucifer was now dribbling the basketball and grinning at him in that unsettling way. “But you are my boy, and nothing is ever going to change that.”
“Dismemberment it is,” Ceri said, standing up.
“Cthulhu? Really?” Lucifer asked, making a frowny face at him. “You’re throwing in with that squiddy motherfucker? And you think I’m bad?”
Ceri sighed. He didn’t want to talk anything over with his fucking piece-of-shit dad, and that went double for talking about Cthulhu. “If you want to get technical, it’s his daughter, Cthylor.”
Lucifer bugged his eyes out in comical shock. “Who the fuck could breed with Cthulhu? A whale? Does he even have a dick? Is he even a he in the first place?”
“Do you really want to go down this gender road, Dad? Or are you Mom?”
“I’m Dad, smartass, because you didn’t erupt from me. The fact that you came out of a human male doesn’t change that.”
Of all the things Lucifer had given him, the knowledge that he was implanted in a man’s body and exploded out of him like a chest-burster, killing a man who never had any idea Satan had planted an embryo in him, was among the fucking worst. Maybe the guy was a black magician, and maybe he deserved worse, but that still didn’t make Ceri feel any better. “Well, if you can figure out a way to breed, so could Cthulhu, huh?”
“But he’s so… ugly.”
“And how would you know? Looking at him is lethal, isn’t it?”
“Not for me. I mean, maybe it’d make me crazy, but with a god, can you even tell the difference?”
Ceri wasn’t ever going to admit Lucifer had a point, but he did, damn him. “Do you think if I promise Cthylor rule over Hell, she’ll kill you?”
Lucifer’s smirk finally fell away, and he stared at Ceri stonily, his blue eyes briefly tinting red. “Don’t even joke, boy.”
“It’s not a joke. I’m genuinely curious. You think she’d even be interested in ruling it?”
“You don’t fuck with the Old Ones, you idiot child,” he snapped. “You can’t win with them. They take what they want.”
“Unlike you, huh?”
“Don’t sass me, boy.”
That made Ceri genuinely chuckle. “Or what? If you could actually kick my ass, you would have by now. I’m stronger than you.”
“But I’m the more experienced fighter. So I think we’re even. Speaking of which, I heard you activated the Scourge? Well done. It eats angels like candy.”
“It also eats demons like candy.”
Lucifer scowled at him. If he had horns and a tail, maybe he’d look more menacing, but as it stood now, he seemed barely dyspeptic. “Turning against your own kind is a cowardly move, Cerberus.”
“But they’re not my kind, are they? Someone once told me I was a breed apart.”
Lucifer smirked at hearing his own words parroted back at him. “You are of two worlds. But that means you have a foot in each. You’re still demon.”
“And still human. So who wins?”
“Well, demon, obviously. Humans are as fragile as eggshells. You’re not.”
“And I’m not wiping out a species I’m a part of.”
Lucifer cocked his head to the side and tossed away the basketball, which disappeared into the nothing it had come from. “But if you work with Cthulhu, that’s what you’re doing. You’re basically siding with a being that will destroy both species you’re a part of. He guzzles misery like your boyfriend gulps shots on two-for-one Fridays. I mean, sure, the apocalypse is gonna make Earth a little vacant, but you can keep your human toy if he really means that much to you. Hell, keep a couple. See if we care.”
Ceri clenched his fists so hard his own fingernails dug into his palms. Well technically, one hand, since one was human, with fingernails, and the other was demon, with leathery flesh and nails that were honestly claws. They were retractable, like a cat’s.
“Logan is not my toy or my pet. And you are only interested in saving your miserable hide, because you’re afraid of Cthulhu.”
Ceri knew that would get to him, and it did. His father’s massive ego would tolerate no hits. His eyes flared red. “I am not afraid of that overgrown squid.”
“Then why not kill him? Or banish him from the Earth? Are you saying you’re not strong enough?”
“No one gives a fuck about Cthulhu!” he roared. “He is a nothing! He’s a primordial discharge that doesn’t belong in this universe, but the other Old Ones didn’t want him! As long as he stayed at the bottom of his aquarium, sleeping like a good bottom-feeder, we all forgot about him. Which is as it should be. He’s a relic.”
“If he’s such a relic, why are you trying to talk me out of working with him?”
Lucifer made a noise of frustration and threw his hands up as if appealing for help from the universe. The basketball court had now transformed into an arena, with a full crowd holding signs like Lucifer #1! and Satan/Trump 2020. “Because that old fucker will screw you. No one gets anything out of a relationship with Cthulhu except bad news and probably a killer case of fish herpes. I’m trying to save you from yourself, because while you’re being an unbelievable snot-nosed brat right now, I still don’t want you to get your dumb ass killed. Do you know how humiliating that would be for me?”
At least that was true. If Lucifer didn’t kill him himself, he would consider it an embarrassment. “You know you can’t lie to me, don’t you? You’re humiliating yourself. If you don’t want me working with Cthulhu, call off this fucking apocalypse.”
Ceri hadn’t even finished his sentence before Lucifer was shaking his head and grimacing in a way that suggested his lunch wasn’t sitting well. What, had the baby been past its freshness date? “Everything has an end, sunshine. The sun, your boy toy, and humanity. The fact that they haven’t nuked themselves into oblivion already is a mild shock. I lost a thousand bucks on that one. But they’ve got to go. You realize they’re killing the planet, yeah?”
“You don’t give a fuck about the planet.”
“True, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are.”
Ceri had nothing to say to that, because he was right. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed cheerleaders coming out onto the floor. They were dressed in either one-piece or two-piece red foil devil costumes that consisted of briefs, bras, a tail, and some horns. The pom-poms were made of either silver Mylar or tiny rubber dildos. It was an equal split between pretty women and handsome men.
“This isn’t even about humanity,” Ceri pointed out. “This is about your stupid war with Heaven. You want to prove to them, once and for all, that you’re superior, and they want to put you down like a rabid dog. Humans are only getting it in the neck because you picked Earth for your battlefield.”
“They brought it on themselves. Some of these fuckers actually think we’re letting them into Heaven or Hell after they die. How stupid is that?”
“So you’re punishing them for lies you push? Seems like you’re setting them up to fail.”
Lucifer got a look in his eye that Ceri reflexively didn’t like. It was sort of like a twinkle, but a malevolent one, very excited to cut you open and gut you like a fish. “If you’re so crazy about humans, why wear your glamour? Why not let them see the real you? How do you think they’d react?”
“Like demons, who didn’t like it either.” Ceri almost said that Logan loved him like that and didn’t care, but that might be giving his father ammunition to use against him, so he didn’t.
At least he was able to confirm what he’d expected—Hell was terrified of Cthulhu. But what were they going to do about it? Could they do anything?
It was a shame he couldn’t ask. But at least Ceri could feel smug in the knowledge that his father had given away far more than he intended.
ALEX DIDN’T know how normal people lived in this society.
Normal was so reductive and subjective, though, wasn’t it? Accepted norms, perhaps. Either way, it seemed perfectly impossible.
If Alex was quote, unquote normal, they’d be dead. That wasn’t hyperbole. After all, Cthylor saved them from being sacrificed.
The trajectory of that was so strange. Alex was abandoned as a baby and eventually came to be adopted by an ultra-religious couple called, ironically, the Wrights. They felt they were doing their civic duty by adopting a disabled baby of dubious provenance, as their deafness had already been confirmed. They were sure to let everyone, including Alex, know how saintly they were for doing this. They started as hard-core evangelical born-agains, believing in a fiery Old Testament style God who would punis
h them for thinking about nudity. Somehow, this eventually morphed into following a preacher named Reverend Green, who slowly but surely turned them on to worshipping darker, crueler gods. It wasn’t an overnight change, but relatively dramatic all the same. Somehow, born-again led to survivalist nutjobs who wanted to overthrow the godless government, which led to worshipping a consumptive deity that demanded blood and rewarded followers with all their darkest desires. Or so they hoped. Alex was six at the time and didn’t comprehend what was going on. Even as they were chained down to the rusty altar—which was not rusty but bloody, although that they only realized in hindsight—they didn’t understand. It was alarming, but Alex didn’t understand their life was in danger.
Until they heard the first voice they had ever heard.
They heard it in their head, and it was very startling. It was a smooth but alien sort of voice, without any gender the inexperienced Alex could discern. “Do you want to die?” it said.
What a scary question. Still, they knew the answer. “No.”
“You are not here of your own free will?”
That was also a nebulous concept to Alex, as free will was not something the Wrights wanted their child to have. “No,” Alex thought in reply.
There was a sound behind the voice. It took years for Alex to figure out it was the wind, or some approximation of the wind. A voice out of space or, more correctly, out of a pocket dimension. “Do you understand they want to kill you?”
This was news to Alex. Looking around at the dark room ringed with lit candles and the dark figures of the worshippers, what seemed like some silly adult thing crystallized into a perfect tableau for death. Reverend Green even had a weird-looking knife that, once again in retrospect, was probably a ceremonial dagger. They had already been chilled, as the chains were cold, but now they started shaking. Alex had never been that scared, and they had been scared a lot.
“No. Why do they want to kill me?”
“They think it will please a god they meant to contact, but they screwed up and contacted me instead. Shall I kill them?”