Chapter 16 #3
The entire place was a shrine to him—or at least to the face mortals expected to see.
The cheeky, grinning devil with a pitchfork and a bottle of beer painted on the menu board that hung behind the bar.
A tiny flashing sign with a devil juggling shot glasses.
A weird devil statue carved from wood, draped in a string of red fairy lights.
It was like a funhouse mirror that had his head spinning, even before the song switched over to a new track; some synth and pop monstrosity that grated horribly. He needed another drink, and fast.
Pushing through the swarm of bodies on the dancefloor, Luce crossed to the crowded bar at the center of the throng. “Drink,” he practically begged, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and slapping a platinum card on the counter.
“Yeah?” the bartender shouted back, looking annoyed. “Kinda need to know what kind, man.”
“Surprise me.”
With a shrug, the young man snapped up the card and swiped it through the till before handing it back. “That’s one shot of Fireball coming up, and a Devil’s Advocate to chase it.”
Luce fought the urge to roll his eyes, casting them around the room instead. A neon standee of a twerking cartoon devil caught his attention and he rested his head on the bar. This was a nightmare. How the hell was he supposed to find his son when he was too busy dying of embarrassment?
His son. Luce sat bolt upright, startling the bartender delivering his drink, and snatched up the shot glass before him.
He downed it in one toss and accepted the neon pink cocktail gratefully, spinning around and pushing back through the crowd towards the edge of the room.
He was here for a reason, not to get trashed.
This was his last chance to get through to Foster, he could feel it.
Every day the sense of creeping dread was stronger and more persistent.
He took several calming breaths, prying his attention from the flashing dancefloor to scan the perimeter of the room.
His son was ultimately a solitary creature.
If he was in a place like this, it wouldn’t be at the center of the crowd.
After a moment, he spotted him. Halfway down the left wall, between two girls snapping selfies over their enormous margaritas and a couple making out rather aggressively, slouching in his seat like he wanted to become invisible. Foster. Luce smiled.
“You really need to come out with me more.” Gabe grinned at Foster, leaning over the table and resting his chin on the back of his laced fingers. “Isn’t this place so fun?”
“I thought we were going to McHenry’s,” Foster grumbled, sliding down in his seat and glowering at his beer.
It was some fancy craft bullshit called Brimstone Brew, and he only ordered it because everything else was either fruity, loaded with vodka, or absurdly complicated.
Or it had a stupid pun for a name. He raked his scathing glare across the room.
“This place is a fucking joke, and it’s not a funny one. ”
“Don’t be such a grump.” Gabe frowned. “I thought it would cheer you up to see them making a mockery of your father. That’s why I like to come here.”
“I’d rather just pretend he doesn’t exist, thanks.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Gabe said sympathetically, leaning back and unfolding his hands to pat Foster gently on the arm. “He hasn’t—”
He broke off abruptly and Foster glanced over, only to see Gabe gaping at the doorway like a fool. He followed the stare and felt his blood pressure increase. His father shoved his way through the dance floor to the bar. Foster twisted sharply toward Gabe.
“Is this why you insisted on coming here? Is this, what, an intervention?”
“No,” Gabe croaked, fixated on Lucifer with a look of intense longing mingled with grief. Foster pulled back, momentarily thrown for a loop, but quickly recovered.
“Then why is he here?”
The angel licked his lips and glanced at Foster with a grin, though it didn’t reach his still-wide eyes. “I guess the Devil does go down to Georgia’s?”
“Gabe,” Foster hissed, too irritated for jokes, and the other man just smiled.
“I guess that’s my cue, good luck!”
“What?!”
“Don’t kill anyone!” And then he was gone, slipping into a gap between space and vanishing before Foster’s enraged eyes.
“Un-fucking-believable.”
Foster sank into his seat, praying for invisibility and cursing that it wasn’t one of his natural born talents. Please just let him fucking drink and leave.
As always, the Universe decided nothing could go his way. He risked a glance back in the direction he’d seen his father, only to start in alarm when he made direct eye contact with the man as he stood mere feet from the table. “Fuck!”
“No,” Luce chuckled, “the word is ‘father’, actually.”
“We’re not going down that road again,” Foster groaned. “Not today, please.”
Luce sobered slightly at the weary undertone in his son’s words. “Is something wrong?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, I got some bad news today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” He glared at his father, every muscle in his face twinging with the force of clenching his jaw. “I’m so sure.”
“I am,” Luce insisted, inviting himself to settle across from his son in the booth when no invitation seemed forthcoming. “I’m here to try and make amends, Foster.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Because of some stupid vision that I’m going to cause Armageddon?”
He missed the older man’s flinch at the casual statement, too busy rolling his eyes.
“Well…yes,” Luce admitted, swallowing against the tightness in his throat. “Mags’s vision was the catalyst, but it shouldn’t have been. I want to make an effort, Foster. I want to start atoning for my failures.”
“I’m going to level with you,” Foster sighed, straightening up and folding his hands on the worn shellac tabletop between them.
“I do not care how bad you feel. I have been alone apart from one sympathetic angel and an infuriating demon for almost two decades. You denied me the one thing I ever asked you for, and then you abandoned me.”
“Foster, please—”
“I’m not finished,” he cut across the interruption, tone like ice.
“You don’t get to speak right now. You’re going to sit there and shut the hell up, and I’m going to explain exactly how badly you fucked up my life until you get it through your thick skull that I am not going to forgive you any time soon, if ever. ”
Luce frowned harshly but kept his silence. He could at least start with listening, since that seemed to be step one in Foster’s healing.
“Good, you’re learning,” the young man sneered, then shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how clueless the fully Divine can be. Between Gabe and now you, I’m getting emotional whiplash from how callous you are. Mortals have feelings, not just those shallow imitations you have.”
“I have—”
“Maybe, but you’ll never understand the intensity of mortality. Everything means more when you could lose it in an instant. However much you ‘hurt’ or how ‘bad’ you feel, it doesn’t compare; it just can’t.
And half of me is like them. The part of me that came from my mother still remembers her smell, her laugh, the way her hair was like a waterfall of honey… That part of me is still grieving like it was yesterday.”
Silence descended between them, and Luce’s fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. Pain coated his son’s words, so visceral it was almost tangible in the air between them.
Foster had a point that Luce tended to dilute his emotions. All Divine beings did, because it was one of the few things that maintained their sanity across the millennia. Even then, not everyone had the same level of success.
It was always harder for the Risen Divine, who had to first teach themselves distance from their human past and the sensations that came with it. It was all too easy to lose yourself in pain, in anger, even in love or joy, when you had an eternity to sink into those spirals.
“Because of you, I have to live without her. The part of me that learned distance and moderation broke when she died. I can’t turn off the anger.
I know I can’t, because I’ve tried! I tried for years to separate from the pain and all it did was make me bitter.
And it all comes back to one day, and one choice. ”
“Foster—”
“You could’ve saved her!” Foster shouted, pounding a fist into the table so hard, a spiderweb of cracks spiraled out beneath it. “You knew she was dying, and you knew what she meant to me! She was my mother! You loved her once, but you let her die!”
There was so much Foster didn’t know about that day, or the circumstances that led to it. There were still things even Luce wasn’t sure of. How could he even begin to explain to his son that it wasn’t for lack of wanting to save Angela, but rather that he simply couldn’t?
“It’s not that simple,” Luce pleaded. “The ritual wouldn’t have worked.”
“That’s why I’m so furious with you,” Foster seethed. “You just make that claim; you didn’t care enough to try.”
“Foster, please—”
“No.” He slid abruptly from the booth, turning his back on his father.
“No, I said my piece. I don’t care whatever stupid defense you have.
We both know what happened. The difference here is that you think you’re blameless and I can’t accept that.
So I’m doing something about it, like you should have. ”
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Foster didn’t respond, because at that moment a man came rushing at them. He braced for the impact, but it never came. Gabe skidded to a halt mere inches from him, eyes wild and hair disheveled, foreboding wafting off him like a bad smell.
Foster’s pulse quickened as he demanded, “What?”
“Your apartment is on fire.”