Chapter 8 Astrid #2
“Oh my God! Crap,” I shouted, realizing we’d left a burning building behind and we’d been the cause of it.
Technically, Uncle Fucker had caused it, but that was irrelevant.
I’d been ready to fistfight the dummies in public and would have done it if Satan hadn’t detonated the place.
We were all to blame. Our behavior was beyond unacceptable.
People could die. “The fire!” I began to sprint back to the scene of the disaster.
Of course, on the up side, I’d grab a few more sweet treats if any were left.
“Not to worry,” Lizard said, stopping me in my tracks. “Satan put it out as we left.”
“What?” I asked, turning around and making sure I’d heard him correctly. “Repeat.”
Uncle Fucker rolled his eyes, or rather mine, so hard they should have gotten stuck in the back of his head.
“The fire was extinguished and the building was restored to pre-fire condition,” he snapped, wildly annoyed to have to share the information.
“And if any of you imbeciles repeat what I said or talk about it in or out of my presence, I shall be forced disembowel you with flaming pliers.”
I grinned. If the jackass disemboweled me, he’d be disemboweling himself. He was too vain to go there. “That was nice of you to put out the fire and restore the building.”
“It was not nice. I don’t do nice,” he snarled. His eyes narrowed and glowed dangerously.
“It was nice.” My fingers began to spark and I was ready to rumble. If he wanted some, he could have it.
“WAS NOT,” he insisted as his eyes began to shoot flames.
“What is so bad about admitting that you cared enough not to fry a bunch of innocent humans and that you have respect for architecture from the 1700s?” I demanded.
“It was a pussy move,” he grunted. “Something a Vampyre would have done.”
“It’s not pussy to care about the sanctity of human life,” I shot back. “I’d say it’s brave.”
“You would,” he replied tartly. “Because you’re a pussy.”
“And you’re a dick,” I countered.
He eyed me with disdain. “I’d rather be a cock than a vagina.”
“Considering, I’m the one with the cock and you’re the one with the vagina at the moment, that’s rich.”
He was pissed. “Don’t start none and there won’t be none, Astrid,” he threatened.
I shrugged. He was playing jump rope with my last nerve. “I’m gonna kick your rusty dusty up into your esophagus, Uncle Fucker.”
At the rate we were going, we were getting no closer to solving the problem and getting our own genitals back.
Gigi was seriously on my shit list. We stood face to face in what amounted to a standoff.
It could end many ways. Violence being the most obvious.
The Demon was furious to be called nice.
I was furious that he wouldn’t accept that it was fine to do the right thing occasionally.
“You know…” Lizard commented, casually stepping in between us while rolling his bat nonchalantly in his hands. “This reminds me of the time I kicked Wipe’s ass at Costco five years ago.”
The Demon clearly had a death wish. My uncle and I were two of the most powerful and deadly Immortals in the Universe.
Getting in the middle of a smackdown was a risk.
Lizard was like a honey badger. He didn’t give a shit.
If the goal was to lighten the tension, he’d succeeded.
The Demon had definitely gotten our attention.
“Costco?” I asked, relaxing just a bit. “Like the discount store, Costco?”
“Yep. The one and only. I go about once a month. Great deals on mayo and bagels,” Lizard continued. “Wipe told me I had champagne taste and an ass face just because I wanted to borrow a buck fifty for a hotdog and a drink.”
“Rude,” Satan snapped, invested in the story. “So, what happened?”
I was still baffled that Lizard shopped at Costco.
“I told the shit stain that he was a greedy puritanical goblin bunghole and all heck broke loose in the frozen food aisle. We went at it. I informed him that freedom of speech don’t mean freedom of consequences with a solid right hook to his ugly mug.”
While Lizard’s words about consequences were profound, I was still stuck on imagining Lizard buying monster-sized jars of peanut butter.
“Oh my!” Martha said, swooning.
She and Jane thought fistfights were sexy. They participated often.
“Now, Wipe came back with a scissor kick to my head that made me see stars,” Lizard imparted with a grin.
“Dang near knocked my brain right out of my ears. But I hopped back up, grabbed a bag of frozen prunes from the shelf and shoved one into each ear hole and put the rest of the bag under my beret on account that my head had swollen up like a bowling ball for a giant!”
I wasn’t sure he had any gray matter in his brain at this point.
Lizard leaned in. We all did too. No matter how strangely this tale ended, I wasn’t about to miss a word.
“Then… I ripped him a new asshole.”
“Literally?” Satan questioned.
“Yeppers. Three times. That motherfucker is the proud owner of four assholes.”
I held up my hand. It was impossible not to. It was a given that I’d regret it. “You said you ripped him a new asshole three times. How did Wipe have four assholes if you only ripped three?” I was super pissed at myself for even asking the question. Whatever.
“Fine point. Well made,” Satan agreed. “I too do not comprehend how Wipe had four assholes.”
Lizard nodded. “I can see how that could be confusing. Really, it’s simple math. He started with one asshole, then I ripped him three more. Hence, four fuckin’ assholes.”
“I get it,” Jane said.
“Me too,” Martha agreed.
“Unfortunately, I do as well,” Satan said, shaking his head.
I just nodded. Not only was I hung up on the fact that Lizard shopped at Costco, I was also alarmed that he ate mayo on bagels.
But the kicker… I was now picturing Wipe, a Vampyre I’d never met, with a baseball embedded in his armpit and four buttholes.
It was entirely too much after all the food I’d eaten.
Lizard took a bow. I clapped for him. So did Satan.
Martha and Jane hooted and hollered for their man.
As insane as Lizard was, he was also brilliant.
He’d stopped Uncle Fucker and me from going to the point of no return.
There was a method to the Demon’s madness.
I wasn’t sure I had enough gray matter to dissect it. I’d just have to trust the crazy.
We all stood in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t loaded or uncomfortable. It just was.
And then the next bit of weird hit.
“Sir? Good sir?” an old woman called out from the end of the alley. “Is that you?”
The voice of a human knocked us back into reality. The Devil’s eyes returned to normal and my hands stopped sparking. I shoved them into the pockets of my Armani suit to be safe. I was pretty sure I heard Satan mutter, ‘oh fuck’.
A homeless woman and a goat waddled down the alley. She smiled broadly at Satan aka me. She took in our motley crew, but her focus was on the Devil who was in disguise.
“I thought that was you!” she said, hugging my uncle.
He looked like he was about to implode. Physical affection wasn’t his thing unless it was from Elle or Luke.
“Now, now,” Satan ground out, gingerly disengaging from the woman. “None of that is necessary. At all. Ever.”
She giggled. “Oh, kind sir, but it is! With the generous amount of pound notes you gave me, I had a lovely roast chicken dinner with a tasty jacket potato, bought a goat off a mime in front of Buckingham Palace and then tripled the money playing poker at the Empire Casino!”
I squinted at her. Had she just called Satan, sir? He was me. I looked nothing like a sir. There was a chance she wasn’t right in the head, or possibly vision impaired.
“Wonderful,” Satan said through gritted teeth. “Off with you, then. Tut tut.”
“As you wish, sir,” she said, curtseying to him. “I’m off to play snooker with my friends Rick and Steve! Have a good evening.”
Everyone exchanged surprised glances. What were the odds?
“Not so fast,” Satan said gleefully, stepping in front of the old woman. “Your friends… Rick and Steve… do they happen to have prefixes to their names?”
My stomach tightened. Stuff was never this easy, and I didn’t believe in coincidence. Were we being set up somehow?
She appeared confused. “Not that I know of.”
It was my turn to step in. “Hello,” I said. “My name is umm…” Crap. I couldn’t say Satan or Lucifer or Lord of the Underworld. If this was a trap, I wasn’t going to play right into it. “My name is…”
“Blade Inferno,” Satan supplied smoothly, using his ridiculous penname before I could come up with something that might make him lose his debatably sane mind.
“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes. Being called Blade Inferno was going to make me yack and I had a lot of semi-digested ammunition to yack up. “Yes. Blade, but you can call me Pussycat. All my friends do.”
The glare I got from my uncle should have struck me dead where I stood. I smiled and winked at him. He then smiled back at me. It was terrifying.
“And my name is Cockina,” he told the old gal. “But my friends call me Dickie.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Dickie and Pussycat,” she said with a warm smile. “My name is Lady Cred. My friends call me Cred.”
“Cred?” I asked. It was an odd name, but then again, so was she.
“Yes,” she replied with a giggle. “Cred.”
“Mmkay,” I said, staying polite. Until Cred did something seriously fucked up, there was no reason to be rude.
Her buddies weren’t necessarily the Steve and Rick that Satan had his sights set on.
I didn’t believe that, but I wouldn’t pounce until provoked.
“These are our friends, Martha, Jane and Lizard.”
“I’d hardly call Martha and Jane friends,” Satan muttered.
If there wasn’t a human woman standing in front of us, I’d have punched him in the head.
“Pshaw!” Cred admonished the Devil. “Martha and Jane appear to be perfectly sweet, well-endowed ladies.”