Chapter 2 #2
“That's for calling me a bitch.” She leaned into his grip, the little masochist, before she pulled away to hop up and perch on the edge of his desk. She gave him a feral grin, smearing his blood with her combat boots as she rested one against the desk and pressed the other to his groin. “Sometimes, when you love someone, you have to kick ’em in the ass for their own good.”
Luce blinked in astonishment. “Whad da FUCK.”
“Shut up,” Remi pressed her foot down slightly, “or I will crush your tiny balls.”
Lucifer narrowed his eyes, his nose gave an awful throb, and he hissed again. With a flick of his wrist and a brief flash of white light, his nose righted itself, and he gave the imperious little terror the full force of his glower.
“Tell me, Remiel, why I shouldn’t beat the fear of the Devil into the flesh of your hide for this insolent behavior?
” Everything in him was screaming to dig his fingers in harder, to choke the life out of the little brat.
But Remiel wasn’t just one of his seven generals, or the vessel of his wrath—she was his friend, and that designation had him reigning in his fury.
“Because I have the upper hand here?” She didn’t cower from his glare, instead giving him one of her own right back and pressing the toe of her boot into his crotch harder. “Or, the upper foot, rather?”
Lucifer growled, golden light creeping into his irises as he gripped Remi’s ankle and yanked it to the side with godly strength, sending her sprawling to the floor. “I may allow you many freedoms, Remiel, but do not test me today.”
She scrambled up from the floor, expression just as fierce as his, markings spilling over her pale skin like bloody warpaint as her eyes took on a crimson glow. “Finally, we haven’t sparred in ages.”
“We will not be starting now,” he snapped, golden light wreathing his palms as he faced her down. “This is a punishment.”
“You can try,” she taunted. Crimson energy bled from her palms, coalescing into a pair of daggers matching the gleam of her eyes.
“Enough!” Luce thrust one palm towards the slender woman and a bolt of white-golden light slammed into her chest. Remi flew back several feet into the nearest wall, slamming against a shelf laden with books that rattled under the impact.
Scrolls and tomes spilled from the shelf, including one that landed directly on her head.
“Ow!” The red glow faded away, along with her manifested weapons and warpaint.
“I warned you, Remiel,” Luce admonished, stalking towards her and gripping her tightly above the elbow. “Today is not the day.”
“Between this and the storm, it’s gotta be something pretty bad happening,” she huffed, tugging uselessly against his hold as Luce hauled her to her feet. “I haven’t seen you this worked up since the day Foster was born.”
He was almost impressed by her perception.
On the other hand, he was tempted to ignore her and banish her from the study.
The fewer people who got dragged into this, the less chance there was of anyone he cared about getting hurt.
And he did care about this little brat, even if she broke his nose and ruined his priceless documents.
Remiel had been the first to follow him into exile, snubbing her nose at Jehovah and crashing through his plans like an angry whirlwind. Luce had been content to wallow in his misery for several centuries, but Remi had stomped into his home one day and yanked him out by his hair.
“I sometimes wish you’d left me alone in the desert,” he muttered absently, and Remi looked at him in disbelief.
“I don’t give a fuck about that Luci, that was millennia ago. Talk to me about what’s going on now.”
“Nothing serious,” he quipped irritably, towing her towards the entrance of the study. “Just Armageddon, if I don’t find a way to stop it.”
“Armageddon?” A single arched brow. “Is that all?”
“Oh, yeah. Just another day, you know.” Luce raked a hand through his hair, massaging the sore spot Remi had given him.
“So, that’s why you’re this upset. It is related to the vision Mags had on Foster’s birthday, isn’t it?”
He sighed deeply, coming to a halt just inside the doorway. “She had another vision this morning…”
“And what did Foster say about it?”
The silence stretched awkwardly as they lingered at the room’s threshold.
Remi narrowed her eyes. “You did talk to him, right?”
Luce blinked at her, before averting his gaze.
“Oh, for Hell’s sake, Luci!” She massaged her temples with one hand, glaring at him.
“I’ve been a bit preoccupied!” He tried not to acknowledge how weak the defense sounded, even to him. Remi’s glare sharpened.
“And,” he continued, avoiding her gaze, “we’re not exactly speaking right now.”
“And why is that?” She leaned back against the doorway, eyebrows raised in expectation of an answer that wouldn’t make her want to throttle him.
Another drawn-out pause while the Devil squirmed. “Well...we haven’t ever since...Angela.”
“What? Luci, that was fifteen years ago.”
He winced, avoiding her fierce glare by inspecting the doorframe for damage he knew wasn’t there. “Correct.”
“You haven’t spoken to your own son for fifteen years?!”
“It sounds so much worse when you say it like that,” Luce grumbled, picking at a tiny crack in the wood until it started to widen.
“You know it’s fucked up,” Remi snapped, “because you lied to us! You said you were visiting him, Luce! That he just wasn’t ready to come back to Hell!”
Luce groaned and abandoned his picking to scrub at his face with both hands—mostly to hide from Remi’s now piercing glare. “He disowned me, Remi! I was trying to give him space to calm down!”
“Maybe they were right to call you the Prince of Lies,” she snapped. “You didn’t want to deal with the emotions and the mess, so you’ve been pretending everything was just fine! Fuck, Luce, how did you think this was the right thing to do?”
“I—” He sighed. “I couldn’t bear to see him looking at me the way he did, Remiel. So much pain, so much anger...”
Remi scoffed. “So now you’re playing the martyred father who had no choice but to back away. Reminds me of someone else we knew.”
“Stop it.” Luce glared back, temper flaring at her insinuation. “I am not my brother.”
“Well, ignoring your problems until they blow up in your face sure seems to be a family trait!”
“Enough!” He shoved her backwards into the doorframe, slamming his palms down on either side of her face and leaning in close. “That is enough, Remiel! If you weren’t one of my oldest friends, you’d be severely punished for this kind of insolence.”
She didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. “Not exactly contradicting my point with that one, Luci.”
His glower was short lived, dissolving into a grimace at the comparison to his brother and the fact that it might be truer than he’d like. This was the difference, however, and it was the one he assured himself mattered most—Lucifer knew when to stop.
“I didn’t know how to face him,” he finally said, forcing out the words and dropping his arms back to his sides. “I still don’t.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t even seen him.” Remi frowned. “When you forbid us from reaching out to him we respected that, because we thought you wanted space to bond. To fix whatever had broken.”
Luce winced. “It’s what I should have been doing.”
“Instead, you left a heartbroken child to fend for himself.”
“I had Balthazar’s Eyes on him,” he protested weakly. “Cwall, more often than not.”
Remi scoffed. “That idiot is no substitute for his father, and you know it!”
“Cwall is highly capable.”
“But he’s not you. He’s not even human!”
“Neither are we,” Luce countered.
“Don’t you start with semantics.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Not when you’re hiding down here while you should be halfway through a Rift right now.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“You are,” she interrupted his indignant rebuttal in her matter-of-fact manner, and he found it difficult to argue. “It’s okay. But you can’t get stuck wallowing for too long or it’ll be another couple decades before we see you again.”
He took a breath and held it until he felt a tiny bit more composed. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right.” She uncrossed her arms to loop one around Luce’s, tugging him by the elbow into the hallway. “I can’t even remember a time I was wrong about something.”
“I can.”
“No—” her grip tightened on his arm until it twinged with the threat of violence, “—you can’t. And anyway, I’m absolutely right about this. You’re way overdue to apologize to your son after you’ve been neglecting your son for fifteen years.”
“I wasn’t neglecting him,” Luce grumbled under his breath. “He’s a grown man and he knows where I live. He chose not to come home.”
Remiel pointedly ignored him.
“What we’re gonna do is this,” she spoke loudly to drown his continued muttering.
“I’m going to personally march you down to the Rift, since you apparently cannot be trusted to do it on your own, and you’re going to go visit your fucking son.
Try begging his forgiveness and hope he’s willing to listen. ”
“The Devil doesn’t beg,” Luce scowled. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Well,” Remi snapped, “maybe if you had talked to him years ago, we wouldn’t be down to our worst options. It’s time for you to eat some fucking crow, Lucifer, and hope it’s enough.”
The truth of that statement hit him like a brick. This was a disaster in motion, and the burden of it fell squarely on his shoulders. The nagging voice in his mind taunted him, an echo from the distant past.
You hold a darkness within that taints all that you touch.
Despite the warring emotions within, he allowed Remi to lead the way with no further protest.