4. Celix
Iwas taking Satan at his word, but I knew Kujo well enough to know that look on his face. He was going to keep digging, and I was going to help in whatever way didn’t piss Satan off and get me smote.
Right now, we needed to take care of Sydney. I didn’t have wings, but when they first came in, they were fragile. If I could prevent hers from being damaged so she never got to experience flying, I was doing that.
“How long am I stuck in bed?” she asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know. You’re the child of a fallen archangel and the grandchild of a Nephilim.
The angels usually kill Nephilim, and down here, there’s not that many of us.
We were all created and not born, so we shouldn’t share DNA, and it’s been a disaster any time we’ve tried to test that.
There were typical inbreeding problems any time we’ve come close to creating a mix like you.
“The children ended up wrong and none of them ended up surviving. Everyone agreed to stop doing that. Some people have a little more angel in them than others, but it’s distant. You weren’t actually possible in Hell.
“Your magic should have come in slowly, and then your wings. Your wings came much earlier than expected, and I’m fairly certain it was the adrenaline from the Fury attack that triggered something. Stress can affect our magic.”
“Ya think, big guy? I blew the roof off my bathroom, three demons showed up, I got kidnapped naked and found out Lucifer is my dad, and everyone expects me to fix all this shit. I’ve been stressed.
It’s like Marty McFly really fucked his mom and screwed the whole timeline up.
You see how this would be fucked up for me, right? ”
I reached out and started playing with her hair.
She was starting to glow a bit, and while she didn’t kill us like she had the Furies, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus after the first time I got hit by her magic.
I wasn’t going to tell her to calm down because I had a ton of sisters and I wasn’t stupid.
“This is why I asked my brothers to leave. Smiting usually involves flaming swords, pillars of salt, or just way less messy than what you did to my front lawn. We weren’t even doing that during the war.
I don’t know how to do that. Your magic is mature enough to protect the people you care about.
We just need to make sure you can do that again before we unleash my family on you. ”
“I dunno, dude, they seem way more emotional around me than I am around them. Mammon had a bigger cow over my shirt than I did when they called my wings ugly.”
I personally thought her wings were gorgeous. They weren’t just bronze. They shimmered like polished metal. No one else had wings like hers, as far as I knew.
“Your wings aren’t ugly, but the color means something. They are white when we are created and black when we fall. It’s a sins of the father thing. Our kids didn’t do anything wrong, but their wings are always black. Most Nephilim are murdered before their wings come in.
“It’s like with you. Your magic didn’t start coming in until you were in your forties in human years. It’s a beacon. We got you and brought you here, but the angels could have found you and murdered you. I couldn’t tell you if a Nephilim ever lived long enough to get theirs. They could be bronze.”
Sydney just shrugged, but at least she wasn’t glowing anymore. I kept playing with her hair just in case she needed it.
“I like my wings, even if they are heavy and preventing me from pooping at the moment. Better question. How’d someone manage to get the jump on you, and do you have any suspects?”
“Someone with knowledge of angel physiology. It’s very hard to get us drunk.
Lucifer’s whiskey will do it, and a few of us distill our own.
It’s the same with the drugs in Hell. Some of us had sticks up our arses thousands of years ago, but the rest of us experimented.
You have to mix them up in just the right cocktail for it to affect us. ”
“Who experimented and who didn’t?” Nero asked.
“Well, it was a different time, but when we had parties specifically for that, it was Lucifer, Asmodeus, Abaddon, and myself. Beelzebub is the only one still doing them recreationally, but he doesn’t have the attention span to pull this off.
Mammon and Belphegor were always more interested in knowledge than fighting.
They rebelled with us to be able to study what they wanted.
We’ve been alive a long time. It could have been a science project for one of us. ”
“Asmodeus is a nard. If you aren’t going to say it, I am. He’s kind of obvious for this, especially if he was attending your ancient drug parties and knows how to get an angel high.”
I could tell Kujo still had his doubts, but I liked Asmodeus for this more than Satan. As the Prince of Lust, you’d think he’d be the one speaking up for demons like Nero, but that had always been Abaddon and Satan.
“Asmodeus does seem obvious, but that’s mostly because of his personality.
We’ve made that mistake before. We were sure he was behind something, and when we started digging, it wasn’t him.
He’s a blowhard with an ego and some of my brothers who fell with us, but still desperately want someone to obey, do whatever he says.
He’s just not smart enough to do all this. ”
“So, who is?” Kujo said.
“Well, Abaddon, Lucifer, and I were running the rebellion. We could technically do it, but we all get along and want Hell to be a democracy. Mammon and Belphegor are smart enough to plot something like this, but lately, they tell Beelzebub everything, and he can’t keep a secret to save his life.
“I also don’t think it’s Asmodeus because he’s a braggart. If he managed to get the jump on both Lucifer and me, he’d let something slip about getting the jump on us. He needs to take credit for everything.”
Well, it was someone. It could be Satan, or he could just be too close to the other angels to tell us which one was responsible for all of this.