We were unkillable except by personal consent and with The Sword of Death.

We were feared and worshipped.

We were strongest when blended together, yet we were still invincible apart.

We were an errant Immortal’s worst nightmare come to spine tingling fruition.

We were True Immortals—the judges, the jury and sentencing committee. Our decisions were final and irrevocable.

It was fact—reality—gospel, if you will.

And Fate knew it. Her days were now numbered.

Glancing quickly at my Siren, I tried to reassure her with a look that all would be fine. Creating the portal had drained her and her gaze was somewhat vacant, but Elle gave me a small smile. My gut clenched in fury and fear and my instinct was to go to her, but without the Tribunal all was lost. This situation was not working for me. At all. Turning away I tore my gaze from Elle so I didn’t act on my compulsion and ruin everything. I tamped back my rage with effort. She had my soul inside her, I’d have to trust that it would be enough for now.

I would win. I had to win. There was no other choice. I just needed everyone to hurry the fuck up or I was going to do something disastrously unwise.

As if she’d heard my thoughts—which she probably had—the first of the gathering arrived.

Mother Nature appeared in the violet orb and slipped through the glittering mass with regal bearing. She was Emotion. Her entrance was as frightening as it was glorious. She wore a robe of the palest purple shimmering silk and she took in the playing field without reaction or words. The choice of purple was no mistake as it represented dignity, creativity, mystery and magic.

The only crack in my mother’s veneer was the small shocked smirk on her lips as she took in my attire—or rather lack thereof. I’d completely forgotten about my skin tight lavender suede pants, purple sequined Ugg boots and shirtless state. It was tremendously bad timing to look like a cross dresser with the particular company about to arrive. The desire to electrocute myself when I realized I was concerned if I had any lipstick left on was strong. Living this ensemble down was going to take centuries…

Fuck.

My father Bill came next—Wisdom. The Sprite was clad in a robe of blue brocade—the color of the sky and the sea. The hue of his carefully chosen garment embodied trust, loyalty, confidence and intelligence. His expression was grim as he glanced around at the frozen travesty. With a barely noticeable shake of his head, he took his rightful place next to my mother. He graciously ignored my new look. My father was now my favorite person in the Universe besides Elle.

Lucy soon followed—Temptation. Her robe was a bright sparkling red. The color of fire and blood symbolized strength and power as well as desire, passion and love. She stared dispassionately at a fearful but still dangerous Fate as she nodded to me and moved to her spot in the growing circle. However, her stifled giggle as she took in my apparel was tremendously difficult to miss. On the plus side—for me—I restrained my kneejerk reaction to blast her ass and send her to the Basement of Hell.

My maturity appalled me, but I’d get back at Mother Nature and Lucy eventually. Eternity was indeed very long and I had a reputation to maintain. Not to mention, I was smart. We needed to get through the next hour to ensure that eternity would still exist so I could exact my payback. I needed the disrespectful True Immortals to accomplish this. My bruised ego would simply have to survive being battered.

The Angel of Light and the Angel of Death arrived together—surprising yet not. The brothers, Elijah and Hayden, had a contentious relationship not unlike God’s and mine, but in times of great crisis they banded together. Elijah—Life, wore a robe of emerald green depicting harmony, fertility and life. Hayden—Death, wore a robe of deep red adorned with midnight black embellishments illustrating willpower, rage, wrath and death.

Both gaped at me with barely disguised mirth. Slowing lifting my middle finger to them, they swallowed their glee enough so that I didn’t have to set them ablaze. I was well aware that incinerating them would be bad form, but I was very close to losing my shit. Being vain clearly had a few downsides.

My favorite daughter, Dixie—Balance—floated in. She was clad in a velvet robe combining the colors of both Life and Death. My child was the stability that was necessary to keep humanity from falling into chaos. She wore her burden well and took her place between the two Angels, but not before she gasped and grinned at my get up.

If I had the balls, I’d make an attempt at re-dressing myself. However, I was terrified of what I’d choose considering the only piece of clothing that kept appearing at the forefront of my mind was a deep fucking purple miniskirt. At least the pants, as hideous as they were, were still somewhat manly—or at least that was the story I was sticking with at the moment.

And then another two arrived together. This pairing was completely expected. A mother and child of untold power… Astrid—Compassion, held her toddler Samuel in her arms. Both wearing unusually somber expressions, they drifted in silently. Astrid wore an exquisite raw silk orange robe. It was fitting. As Compassion she stood for energy, happiness, fascination, success and encouragement. The child Samuel—Utopia, the one who was a combination of all True Immortals—wore a robe in a rainbow of stripes with swirls of black and white amidst the riotous color. His job was unfathomable and only time would tell what massive responsibility he would carry on his small shoulders. As much as I needed them to be here, I dreaded it as well.

And clearly with good reason.

Astrid, never one to hold back… didn’t. Breaking the serious and forbidding mood, she threw back her idiot head and laughed. Hard.

“What in the ever loving Hell are you wearing?” she grunted through her hysterics. “I mean, I know some heavy freakin’ shit is about to go down, but you look… umm…”

“Like your favorite uncle who shall joyously and profanely redecorate your compound? The same one who will try on every piece of your wardrobe, stretching it beyond recognition while eating all of your favorite food in front of you for the rest of your long and disrespectful life?” I asked with a raised brow and an expression that indicated I’d meant every word I’d just uttered.

“Umm… sure. If you say so, Uncle Asshat,” she shot back with another laugh and then took her place in the circle.

“Uncle Athhat,” Samuel yelled as he waved to me and blew a kiss.

I needed to trade souls with Elle now, but that wasn’t an option. However, I had no choice but to don my own robe. Holding my breath and briefly closing my eyes, I prayed to everything diabolical and evil that I wouldn’t end up in a satin, shorty negligee with matching kitten heels.

Waving my hand, I sighed with dramatic relief when I felt the swish of fabric covering my body from my neck all the way to my toes. At least I was no longer partially nude. Although, from the horrified stares of the assembled True Immortals, it was clear I hadn’t gotten it quite right. Deciding the most prudent course of action was to not look down, I eyed my comrades with a glare that made each of them look away. I was certain it was to hide laughter, but a beggar couldn’t be chooser when he looked like a drag queen.

And then He came. Of course, He came. There was no way He would miss the opportunity to see me clad as a woman. Not that He would have been privy to the scandalous news, but…

“Damn it,” I muttered as He floated in with a flock of white doves fluttering around him causing all to be wildly impressed. No one else had brought pets. I had half a mind to conjure up a nest of snakes to eat his birds, but decided against it. The price I was going to have to pay him would only be compounded if I had his zoo ingested.

Part of me was furious that He dared show his face even though I was the one who had summoned him. I warred within at my feeling of rage, jealousy and hatred… yet I was oddly humbled at the same time. An emotion I would never admit. My brother and I both bore the scars of the paths we had been given. There would never be absolution for us, but there would be unity. There was no other way. We’d do what had to be done and then part ways.

It was truly fated.

To add insult to injury though, I was wildly embarrassed at the attire I still refused to look at. Whatever, I’d play it off somehow. How? No fucking clue.

The newest arrival changed the atmosphere dramatically. Fate hissed and snarled in a manic fury like I’d never witnessed. I felt nothing for her—no pity, no sympathy. Nothing. She had earned this Tribunal fair and square. The old witch was now going to reap what she’d sown.

For embodying all that was just, the last visitor’s wrath could match my own. It may not be nice to fool Mother Nature, but it was catastrophic to enrage God. Of course I was no slouch, but my pious brother showed his face so seldom he had more of an effect—a truth that annoyed me to distraction, but this was no time to quibble over things that meant next to nothing.

The saving grace that made his obnoxious entrance and my appalling attire bearable was that my book was outselling his. If He gave me any shit, I was going to rub his face in the fabulous news that I was starring in my own movie and remind him that both George Burns and Whoopie Goldberg had portrayed him. I knew that dichotomy bugged the Hell out of him.

Glancing my way, God didn’t even flinch at whatever the Hell I was wearing. No, he simply smiled and nodded. Pressing the bridge of my nose, I wanted to smite his ass. He could have at least had the fucking decency to laugh. I would have been in hysterics if the tables had been turned.

“Shall we proceed?” God inquired kindly, appropriately dressed in a glorious white robe.

“We shall,” I replied, quickly glancing down to make sure that at the very least I’d dressed myself in black.

I had, but my fucking robe had feathers and sequins. Quickly jerking my head back up, I bit down on my bottom lip to suppress my scream of terror and clenched my sparking hands at my sides. The desire to try again on the ensemble front was overwhelming, but fear of the disastrous fashion unknown stopped me.

“Proceed,” I growled, hoping my vicious tone outweighed the atrociousness of my girly robe.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Mother Nature demanded of a suddenly quiet Fate. “How can you explain destroying your own kind in a curse so vile it sickens me? How can you justify usurping the natural order of the triad before the beginning of time for your own disgustingly immoral benefit? How can you put words to something so wrong?” she roared, creating a split in the frozen floor beneath us.

“I can’t,” Fate whispered, barely audible with her head bowed and her trembling body facing God. “I’m sorry. I have sinned and I want forgiveness.”

This was utter bullshit and it took everything I had not to go at Fate and rip her deceitful and self-serving head from her shoulders. The feeling of Samuel’s small hand on my arm was the only thing that stopped me from ending the world as we knew it. The child’s huge and wise eyes met mine and he shook his head.

“No,” he whispered, sounding bizarrely ancient.

My mother’s eyes narrowed to slits as she glared at a falsely repentant Fate. Her hiss made thick shards of ice drop from the ceiling and crash to the ground with explosive force. “Repeat that,” my mother said in a tone so quiet that Fate blanched along with every other True Immortal in the room including God.

We’d all witnessed my mother in a rage and it was abundantly clear that a doozy was about to erupt.

What Fate had just done was not expected and I snarled my displeasure at the loophole the bitch might have found. If God forgave her, all was lost. My brother couldn’t be that shortsighted.

“Are you truly repentant for your sins?” God asked, in a tone so neutral I wanted to blow the entire Ice Palace to Hell and back.

Or maybe He could be that shortsighted.

“I am. I have made a mistake and I want another chance,” Fate said in a meek voice as she dropped to her knees before my brother and clutched his robe. “Please, forgive me.”

God placed his hand on her head and my fury grew. The whispers of confusion and anger from the others gave me hope that all was not lost, but my brother was a wild card. If he hated me as much as I despised him, he finally had a way to get back at me while following his pious beliefs.

“It’s not that simple,” God told Fate with nothing in his tone to give a hint as to how he was leaning in the matter. “Clearly you haven’t read my book,” he went on giving me the stink eye. “If you had, you might recall the eye for an eye section.”

Fate glanced up in shock and fear. The monkey wrench she had thrown seemed to have a few parts missing.

“True repentance deserves forgiveness,” she insisted harshly and then pulled her demeanor back to compliant and docile. “I have committed transgressions that I can now see are wrong and I beg for mercy. What I did, I did for all of us. Nothing happens without a reason.”

“With what you have done and what you have wrought, you have created a beast inside yourself,” my brother said, his voice booming throughout the ice chamber. “You have no place left to hide, child of destiny.”

“You have no choice but to forgive,” Fate maintained in a voice less certain than it had been—although it bordered on shrill and bubbled with barely restrained rage. “It is how you were made. You can’t help but be the Angel of Mercy. Going against nature is not in your makeup.”

“I don’t wear makeup,” God replied easily with an almost undetectable smirk at me. “That’s my brother’s thing. And again, I’m going to go out on a limb and point out that you clearly haven’t read my book. You should. It’s excellent.”

“Mine’s selling better,” I said before I could stop myself.

The searing electrical zap to my ass from my mother would normally have made me pitch an epic fit, but it was deserved. I took it like a man—albeit a man dressed in woman’s clothing. I just hoped it hadn’t burned a hole in my luxurious silk robe. If she’d singed the feathers I was going to die.

Son. Of. A. Bitch. I needed my soul back. Now.

“You can’t win,” Fate hissed, standing up and letting her eyes roam the occupants standing before her. “I knew this day would come and I have planned for it.”

“You don’t create destiny,” my father said, stepping forward. “You see it. You don’t wield it. That is why there are three meant to preside—not one.”

“Three Goddesses who preside over the birth and life of human and Immortal existence,” Dixie said in a sharp tone. “There are ten True Immortals who divide and compliment. Without that balance there is nothing. Nothing,” she repeated.

“The threads of Destiny are cut by three,” Lucy said, producing a jewel encrusted knife so sharp, Fate gasped and stepped back.

“True fate is a predetermined course of events,” Hayden added, taking Dixie’s hand in his. “Some say it’s a predetermined future, but…”

“But one must not forget the gift that God has given both humans and Immortals alike,” Elijah stated and circled the now furious Fate. “The gift of free will which negates a set future.”

“I said I was sorry,” Fate snarled, backing further away like a caged animal. “Do any of you speak English? Forgiveness is divine. I have asked forgiveness and I shall receive it. It’s the way it works, you stupid, stupid people.”

“Sticks and stones,” Astrid snapped as she approached slowly. “With forgiveness comes penance, old woman. The price for repenting your sins will be high.”

“You can’t kill me,” she said with a deranged and ugly laugh. “Unless you are ready for Armageddon.”

“May I?” God asked, stepping up to the plate.

“Go ahead, son,” Mother Nature said with a wink.

Great… she winks at him and electrocutes me. Figures.

“Armageddon is the final battle between good and evil,” my brother said. “Again, I’d recommend reading my book. It’s excellent. This Tribunal is not about a grievance between my brother and me—at all. There will be no last and destructive battle today. I love my brother. As fascinated as I am with his curious fashion choices at the moment, I love him with everything I am. Today is about an injustice older than time itself. It’s about you and your fate which you have created with your own free will.”

“As eloquent as you may be,” Fate said, relaxing and smiling with a carefree shrug of insanity. “I have begged forgiveness. You have no choice.”

“With repentance comes true remorse,” I replied, tersely. “There is no penitence for your crimes. None.”

“My word against yours,” Fate purred with a triumphant smile. “Your words are lies, Fallen Angel. Everyone knows this. None of you have anything to stand on. Forgive me. NOW,” she demanded of God.

He watched her as one watches a catastrophic event unfold before their eyes with very little to be done about it. I was unsure how He would proceed, but I was ready to end it all if He made the wrong choice.

“You say you are sorry,” God said, folding his hands in front of him in prayer as He went to his knees.

“I do,” Fate said, with a glare of victory to me and the rest.

“And you mean it?”

“I do,” she replied.

“Then you will have no issue with a test,” he said.

“A test?” Fate repeated, alarmed.

“Yes. A test.”

Fate began to pace. She had no clue what God had planned. I had no clue what God had planned. No one did. Or at least I thought no one did.

However, I was incorrect. Wildly incorrect.

“If you are truly repentant, you have nothing to fear,” God said staring at Fate with no expression on his face. “If you have nothing to hide, then you will assent. Two choices here. I’d suggest you make one as you are treading on very thin ice at the moment.”

“Pun intended,” I growled at Fate.

“Thank you, Lucifer,” God said with a grin. “I might have missed that stellar opportunity.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied with my own wide smile. “My book is full of clever witticisms. You should read it.”

“And you should read mine,” he shot back with a chuckle.

“Touché,” I said.

“I just love it when my boys get along,” Mother Nature announced. “Makes me want to dance.”

“Please don’t,” I said with a wince.

“Are you done?” Fate snapped, rudely. “I will take your test and you will forgive me.”

“So be it,” God replied, getting to his feet and directing his gaze to the one who was more powerful than all the rest.

The one who was barely a mere blip of time spent in this world. The one True Immortal who I would actually admit to loving. The very one that was far too young and inexperienced to even have to take part in this Tribunal.

Samuel.

Astrid’s body stiffened with maternal fury and my hands sparked so violently I could smell the silk of my robe burn beneath my touch.

“No,” I said, stepping in front of Samuel and letting my body go to pure black flame. “I will take on his responsibility. No harm shall come to him. Ever. I will perform his task.”

God gazed at me with such love and surprise, I felt his warmth wash over my entire being. This of course pissed me off to no end. I really didn’t want to like the bastard, but He was making it very difficult.

“Your good is showing, my brother,” He said with a smile that made me roll my eyes. “However, there is nothing to fear. I would never put any child in harm’s way. Please believe me.”

“Me believe,” Samuel announced at the top of his lungs, clapping his small hands with delight. “Me do it.”

Without a beat to reconsider, the beautiful child turned to rainbow colored mist and cocooned Fate in the stunning colors. Only his small chunky hands were still corporeal. It was surreal and breathtaking.

“What is this?” Fate demanded, outraged as she became immobile in Samuel’s magical enchantment.

“Are you sorry for your sins?” God asked again. His voice was large and appropriately frightening.

This was the brother I actually kind of liked. His thick wavy hair blew around his head and his body glowed an angelic gold. White hot fire surrounded him and spit menacing sparkles of silver and amber. It was an outstanding look for him. I far preferred it to the dove and halo look He usually worked. This was intimidating. Of course I was far more frightening than He could ever dream of being, but my brother was a close second. He was just on the verge of anger and even I had to admit I was impressed.

“Answer my question,” God commanded.

“Yes,” Fate hissed, struggling against the magic. “I said I was sorry and I meant it.”

Samuel’s disembodied hands touched Fate’s face and she screamed in agony. As quickly as the mist had appeared, it evaporated and Samuel floated several feet away from the still bellowing Fate.

“She lie,” Samuel said taking his human form back. “But she no lie about being sorry.”

“What?” I snarled as my cold, black heart beat like a machine gun in my chest.

This was not happening. Fate’s grating and unhinged laugh rang in my ears and my fury almost blinded me. It was only Samuel’s touch again that brought me back from purposely bringing on Armageddon.

“You see,” Fate shouted. “You have to forgive me.”

“More,” Samuel said in a voice that was no longer one I recognized. “More.”

“Speak, child,” God said.

“Fate is sorry,” Samuel stated, no longer a baby.

The burden of his lot was beginning to show. A flash of golden magic laced with midnight black stuck like lightning and Samuel changed before our eyes. The childlike lisp was gone and years were instantly added to his life. He became a beautiful young man who appeared to be eighteen years of age. Astrid gasped and cried out, but Samuel simply smiled at his beloved mother.

“This is meant to be,” he quietly told her.

Astrid nodded jerkily and swiped at her tears, giving him a smile so loving I had to glance away. Not that I didn’t feel the same, I was just wildly uncomfortable showing such weak affections… or possibly, I was jealous.

Samuel stood tall and regal. His power vibrated off of him and it was glorious to behold. Never in my many centuries had I seen a blend of all—Good, Evil, Emotion, Compassion, Balance, Wisdom, Temptation, Life and Death. The child was Utopia and it was awe-inspiring.

“Fate is sorry she got caught. There is a difference. Fate has no remorse for her sins against her kind and the Universe. All that she has done, she did knowingly. From the beginning of time as we know it, Fate was aware of the triad and that she was the weakest of the three. She has drawn on the power of the others because of greed. We are all made of greed,” Samuel said, looking at Fate with pity. “But some have chosen to let the greed rule. That is the case here. There is no regret.”

Fate’s crazed wail of ire brought ice crashing down everywhere.

And then she made a fatal mistake. Even though she was weaker than Elle and Sadie, she was still one of the most powerful forces of nature alive. Conjuring up a spell of fire so hot I could feel it tear through my skin, she threw it.

She threw it at Samuel and his newly formed body exploded in flame.

And then shit got ugly.

Fast.