Chapter 29 #2
My demons were nodding, but Kujo looked seriously into this.
I got it. I could see Nero and Celix being good with Cambion kids, but not Kujo.
He wasn’t meant for that at all. I could see where he’d be miserable about it.
He still didn’t have to be a dick to me, but I could see where he’d be unhappy.
“You got names, big guy?” I asked.
Satan handed me a cell phone that had a black case with red devil horns wearing a crown. Yeah, I guess he’d either gotten to know me in this short time or Wrathhog told him that was the case to get.
“Your old phone won’t work in Hell, but this one works in every realm. I’ve sent you a list. Twenty souls got out before the warden caught on and sealed the breach. I’ve taken four and given you each four.”
“What’d mine do?”
Because I was nosy and wanted to know.
“The breach was in the Greed and Dishonesty wing. There are a lot of souls from the feudal system there who raised taxes more than they needed to for profit while people starved. We have several grotesquely rich people who had the profits to pay their employees enough to survive but didn’t and the only charities they ever donated to were their own as a tax write off.
My daughter says they aren’t as fun to torture as the rapists, but there are several violent and non-violent ways to fuck with them. ”
Ooh, yeah, I could see several scenarios where that could be interesting and fun. One of them figured out how to work the vocal cords in the body they’d jumped in and I heard them groan out a plea for help.
“Oh, fuck you. If that’s Tobias de Monthermer, I’m going to need you to get the fuck out of that body and go back to Hell like a good little Earl.”
Yeah, the one who figured out how to work a mouth wasn’t Tobias, but I was guessing the thrashing that picked up to my left was the wayward Earl on my list.
“Do your thing,” Satan said with a wink. “I took the few from feudal Japan since you won’t be able to speak Japanese until you get your magic.”
“What the what now?”
“Angels speak all languages. It’s built into our magic. It would take ages to list all the powers we have and we really don’t need anyone in here asking questions.”
Good point. I hadn’t adopted another one because I wasn’t ready, but my very ancient cat had crossed the rainbow bridge a few months before all this shit went down. I loved her to death, but she was stubborn and didn’t listen to a damned thing I said.
Convincing these souls to get back to Hell was like telling my cat to get off the counter or stop licking the fucking butter. They didn’t want to. My cat couldn’t talk back. She mostly just looked me dead in the eye while chowing down on my butter.
The corpses were trying to talk, but it came out in these terrible noises because I guess rigor mortis. The one who’d managed to eak out of plea for help was trying to beg for his freedom among all of us calling names and trying to force all these fancy dead people back to Hell.
And our morgue friend must have made calls because she seemed like she was expecting us, but she must have called other people, too, because someone was trying to get into the morgue and they were being pretty forceful about it.
“CDC! We’ve got the DEA with us. Open up!”
“Bureaucracy and red tape usually mean we are gone before they get here,” Satan groaned.
“I’d imagine they have some kind of red alert if a morgue calls and someone who is supposed to be dead starts twitching, groaning, and chanting what they think is a dangerous street drug.
This is going to keep happening and if a street drug could do any of this, it would be the CDC and DEA’s wheelhouse.
You’re going to need a different badge next time. ”
“Noted. Can anyone stall them while I used my devil voice?”
“Sic Sydney on them. I want to leave every time she opens her mouth,” Kujo said.
“You’re such a nard. I only punched you in the dick once and you had it coming way more than that,” I said, stomping over to the door.
I opened the door a tiny crack, just big enough for me to slip through. Yeah, I wanted send the bad fancy people back to some eternal torment and maybe I should see a therapist about that, but I had a better understanding of modern humans than any of these guys.
“We’re investigating the bus crash. We think it’s related to Wrathhog. You’ll get your turn when we’re done.”
“Shouldn’t you be at the scene or looking at the bus?”
“We’re doing that. We also need to be in there.”
“So do we. We should be working on this together. We need Wrathhog off the streets.”
“And we’ll share information when we have something solid. We want this over just as much as you do.”
“You’d have something solid if you shared information.”
“Don’t ride my ass, dude. I’m not the one who decided that. Have your boss call mine. Can I go back to work now? The quicker we’re done, the sooner you can get in there.”
They looked at me like they wanted to hit me, but definitely didn’t want to lose their jobs over it. Bitches. If they tried, I’d hit them back.
“We done?” I asked.
“Let’s get shitty hospital coffee,” one of them said, pulling their friend away.
“Yeah, do that.”
Because one of my flaws was that I always had to have the last word, even when I clearly got what I wanted.
“Thanks,” Satan said. “They are back where they belong. We really need to get back and figure out how to stop it from happening again. I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than just replacing Lucifer with his kid.”
Yup. I was definitely going to have to read those diaries.