Chapter 37 #3
“Does it ever frighten you, Lucifer?" Azazel asked, his voice soft but sharp; he wasn't going to play the devil's games anymore, much like God. "Knowing you've failed spectacularly?"
Satan's jaw tightened. "Tell me why you sought me out with all your Watchers. You didn't answer me. Are you here to try to inflict revenge on me?"
"Revenge," Azazel said again, as if tasting the word. "Revenge would be nice. But I know, perhaps better than you, that you’ve already destroyed yourself. You always wanted to be like God, Lucifer, haven't you? Well, you’ve become perfectly like him — a tyrant, a selfish, jealous, vain parent. And I’m the one leading an army now, against you. You’ve become the greatest evil that you always wanted to be.
” Satan went still, but otherwise smothered any further reaction.
“I don't need to enact revenge on you. Your world is ending, and you will be tormented forever.” Then, Azazel paused, the sounds of violent eating like a choir around him. “But there is someone other than you that has to suffer. Michael. Won’t you tell me how to harm him, Lucifer?”
Satan thought of Michael's face as he'd held him captive in Heaven.
The trembling. The kiss. The desperate, aching need masked as hatred.
‘The taste of his mouth still lingers on mine, Azazel.
In Heaven, he tempted himself to touch me because he held me captive.
He needed me at his mercy. He still loves me.
But he can only bring himself to love me if we're hurling toward death. He can only love me with a sword pressed to my throat.’ Satan saw his own child in his mind, for a moment.
A round face, flushed cheeks, dark hair, a grasping hand.
The redness so dark that it was nearly black, the blood leaking into the flames, the smell of burning.
The last few wails as Satan hacked out his own cries, begging for this all to end and for forgiveness.
In Moloch’s chamber, Rosier listened to the rebel dismiss his followers, then kiss Ara noisily, hungrily, before leading Ara out as well, likely thinking that it would be too dangerous to waste time fucking.
After the door thumped shut, Rosier rose to his feet, unsteady, slow, and pulled away from Armoni.
He put one foot before the other, distantly heard Armoni's confused calls.
Stepping into the main room, Rosier noticed all the weaponry that Moloch had lying around, including a long, sharp sword resting on the arm of a couch, the same one that Moloch was presently settling over and finishing a drink on.
“Mm.” He looked up at the sound of shuffling, then he quirked a brow.
‘I did it accidentally once,’ Rosier thought numbly, then he placed Asmodeus’ arm on a counter to his left. ‘All of this was an accident.’
“Rosier,” Moloch began, cheery. “You were—”
The fruit demon lunged forward, reached the sword in time, and just as Moloch’s eyes went wide, Rosier wedged the blade into the muscles of his throat.
Hands flying to his neck, the larger demon tried to yell but managed only a wet, gurgling sound as blood splattered out onto Rosier's face. Moloch lifted a hand to Rosier’s head, prepared to shove him off, as he growled and thrashed.
But then Armoni was running over from the adjacent room, and he threw himself on top of Moloch, grappling his hair, holding him in place.
Rosier and Armoni, both on top of Moloch.
Rosier, sawing the sword until it chipped at the bone.
Moloch screamed in wrath, but when his body finally gave, his head came free. The sword clattered, and then the headless body slumped in agonized twitches while the face of Armoni’s captor fell to the leg of an overturned chair beside the couch.
Rosier stared at the severed head — Moloch's mouth open, groaning, unable to piece together a single word.
‘I rebuilt Asmodeus. I loved him for an eternity after what he did to me. I devoted myself to caring for him.’ He felt Moloch's body jerk beneath him. ‘I’ll never care for anyone again.’ He would never choose kindness again.
“Rosier—” Armoni’s raw, trembling whisper.
And Rosier crawled off Moloch, off the couch, to Asmodeus’ arm he’d left on the counter.
Then, he made his way back to Armoni to grab him and take off running.
The door slammed open as Rosier ran into it, and once they made it into the hallway, he yanked Armoni toward the endless spiral staircase at the center of the tower.
“We need to leave.” He'd planned to run away with Asmodeus, again, again.
He'd wanted to run away with him forever.
Panting, Armoni looked at Rosier’s desperate, bloodied face, and he wanted to scream that they couldn't go anywhere in this true world.
But then he remembered the last time he'd tried to run with Rosier, when they'd visited the still captive Watchers. Armoni had called his child. Had it followed? Sighing, broken, terrified, Armoni willed himself to purse his lips, whistle low. A screech — in the distance. Of course his child had followed; this tower belonged to Hell; and the Leviathan guarded everything of Hell. “Let’s get on the Leviathan away from here,” Armoni suggested softly, “and leave.” Rosier squeezed his hand.
“Michael has,” Satan whispered, “a daughter. If you want revenge, then do what he did to you. Kill her.”