Chapter Forty-Eight Lucifer
Chapter Forty-Eight
Lucifer
It takes only a moment of searching through the ether, the massive, spiraled scrawl of time and stars and space, before I find the Kansas-based church where Charlotte’s father is located. A tiny pinprick of a building amid the vastness of the universe with an ethnically incorrect statue of Christ nailed to the cross hanging from the ceiling, his head adorned with a crown of thorns.
I step out of the fold, standing in the middle of the aisle as I stare up at it.
Even I can admit he always was the best among us.
Even if he was Father’s favorite.
“I’m sorry you have to see this,” I say to the effigy of my youngest, and only human, brother. As if the man himself can hear me.
It doesn’t take long for the human knelt in the first-row pew to notice me. I could have tortured the information out of Astaroth, I suppose, before I sent him back to Hell, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as diverting. Or satisfying.
Besides, I’ve been waiting for an excuse to do this from the very beginning.
From the moment I first realized I was in love with her.
The man’s eyes grow wide at the sight of me, and it strikes me then that he looks more than a little like Charlotte. How she looks whenever she’s angry with me.
The muscles in my right hand clench as I lick my lips eagerly.
Somehow, that only makes me want to punish him all the more.
“You—” He sputters, glancing between me and the statue of Christ mounted on the wall like a fucking trophy of his salvation.
My Father was never much a fan of idolatry.
“I thought ... But you can’t—”
“Be in here?” I finish.
He glances around the church helplessly.
“Urban myth, you see.” I set my trunk on the floor with an audible thud.
His eyes fall to it.
Something about the sight of it must alert him to exactly how much danger he’s in.
Not that he’d ever have the balls to actually face me.
No. Instead, he sent his little hate group to do it for him.
My lip curls. Cowards, the whole lot of them.
My Father’s always attracted his kind easily. Lured them in with His false promises. Well, false for men like them, at least. My Father is an unforgiving god.
And He leaves their punishment to me.
I step toward him, and immediately, he starts to pray.
“Our Father who art in Heaven,” he starts, beginning the Lord’s Prayer.
But it’s already too late.
My Father’s no longer listening.
“. . . hallowed be Thy name . . .”
I join him. “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
His clasped hands start to shake, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.”
Our words echo throughout the sanctuary together. But to his credit, his voice doesn’t waver. Even as he trembles.
“Amen,” I finish. “Who do you think helped translate the original to Greek and Latin?” I lift a telling brow. “That was back when I was still trying to earn His love again.” Fire sparks in my eyes. “Now I know better.”
“I always knew that girl was wicked to the core,” he mutters, still so quick to damn his own daughter for his transgressions.
“Once a misogynist, always a misogynist, I see.” I sigh. “Too bad that where I’m sending you, it’s women who inflict the torture.”
He pales. “What?”
“You’ll make a nice offering. Keep my Mother appeased.” I shrug. “For now, at least.”
I bend and open the trunk at my feet, reveling in the wet stain that forms on the front of his pants as he watches the white light of my Father’s plague emerge. “Consider it a gift from my Father. Only a biblical death would do for you.”
“Father?” he says, glancing up toward the heavens.
As if that somehow might save him.
“I think you’ll find He won’t answer these days.” I step toward him. “Now, the world answers to me.” I lift a hand, some of my Father’s power twisting between my fingers. I flex as if to grip the writhing light inside my waiting palm.
Charlotte’s father convulses, his body jerking as he drops to his knees, eyes bulging as he begins to choke on his own blood.
“Where is she?” I growl.
He shakes his head.
“Too bad you didn’t listen to the part of your little book where it tells you to paint lamb’s blood over the door.” I wrinkle my nose. “The smell always did nauseate me.”
I tighten my grip more, and it sends him careening forward, vomiting blood onto the altar.
“I said, where is she?”
“Mark,” he barely manages to rasp.
I tilt my head to the side. “Her ex-husband? He has her?”
He nods weakly.
I flash a cold smile. “Shame that he didn’t cherish her from the start. Before she became mine.”
I clutch the light inside my closed fist, and Charlotte’s father convulses violently. His still-pumping heart bursts forth from his chest a moment later, flying into my now-outstretched hand.
His blood slips down my fingers and wrist to stain the white cuff of my shirt, his heart giving one or two beating pulses where it sits in my palm.
I lick some it away from where it drips, reveling in the metallic taste, before I drop the stray organ onto the sanctuary floor. “Now to retrieve my queen.”