59
A Murder of Crows
This time when I saw the Devil, I didn’t expect to be seeing him looking dashing in an all-black suit, all but his tie of course which was blood red with a skull tie pin. Even his hair looked styled as if he were ready for a date or something. He looked, well he looked handsome as Hell.
But then he looked to each of us and whereas before he had a smirk playing around the edge of his mouth, now he looked dark and angry. It was almost as if he’d been expecting someone else to be here, not us.
“Uh-oh, he looks pissed,” Pip said making Sophia swallow hard which I definitely took for a bad sign, as she wasn’t ever scared of anything. I could see he was getting angrier by the second, so I decided to do something and hope for the best, as he hadn’t exactly been horrible to me last time we met. Although that vision on the witness circle hadn’t exactly been what I would call friendly, but then again, that hadn’t been real…right?
So, I stepped forward making the girls gasp and Sophia try to hold me back. I looked down at her hand and told her,
“It’s okay, trust me.” She gave me a fearful look but let go anyway.
“Um, hello Sir,” I said taking a step forward and I looked behind me to see Pip smacking her forehead and muttering,
“That’s it, she’s dead, it was great knowing her though.” I ignored her and carried on with my insane plan, even though his impossibly tall frame was making me arch my neck back as he stared down at me expectantly.
“You may…um…well remember me a little differently, but you helped me…um, back when, well…” He raised a hand and said,
“I will stop you there before you give yourself a nose bleed. I remember you, although I must say you were certainly better dressed.” This made blush as he looked down at me regarding my plain outfit of jeans, t-shirt and hoodie with distaste.
“You are here for the King I assume?” he asked making my heart soar with hope,
“Yes, we are, do you know where we can find him, only we…?” He held up his hand again and stopped me,
“A simple yes would suffice.” I nodded making him grin in satisfaction.
“Then consider this a favour for if you are to succeed in fucking him, you will need to wear something better than that,” he said making my mouth drop open in shock.
“I am not here to fu…” Suddenly, I found a hand around my mouth and Sophia coming up behind me correcting,
“She would be very grateful, wouldn’t you Keira?” Sophia’s voice told me that I would be most grateful, as he would let me live if I kept my big mouth shut and she proved this by nodding my head for me before letting me go.
“Yes, thank you.” I said in a tense tone. Well, at least Lucifer looked more amused than ‘killer pissed off’, a look that was likely to end with my head on a spike.
“Of course, I had been expecting more of you,” he said making me frown and look back to the girls in question.
“More of us?” I asked knowing that I probably shouldn’t.
“There was another girl among you, yes,” he stated making me wonder how he knew that but not seeing any harm in it I said,
“Oh Pythia, yes she stayed behind.” Hearing this he took a deep breath and with his reaction it suddenly struck me that she had been the one he had wanted to see here. I was so close to asking, but the second I saw his eyes turn hard in annoyance, I decided it wasn’t wise.
“And why was that?” he asked, his voice now taking on that hard edge that told me to be very careful here. But then I thought what was best to hear if you had a thing for a girl, the fact that she was terrified and didn’t want to be here or that someone else made her stay behind? So, I decided to take a chance and tell him what was a half-truth.
“It was my fault, I asked her to stay behind,” I told him and the second his eyes turned into those that could only belong to the Devil, I nearly wet myself, unable this time to blame it on having a baby bladder. I heard the girls panic behind me as Sophia stepped up and was about to speak when Lucifer stopped her, and he did this by closing his fist and taking away her voice. It reminded me of when Draven had done the same thing to me that night by my truck when I was trying to scream for help and run from him.
“And why would you do that, I wonder?” he growled getting lower in my face, making Pip squeak in fear for me. So, I decided to keep going and hope that my reasons were good enough for him.
“Because I wanted her to be safe. She has never been down here and from what I can tell, doesn’t have the same means to protect herself as we do. I thought she would be vulnerable and didn’t want her getting hurt…or worse.” Now I watched as this realisation took root and instead of being annoyed at my reason, he now seemed pleased by it.
“You care for her?” he asked. I nodded trying not to show fear when I said,
“She is my friend and I helped her once when she had nowhere else to go.” As soon as I had said this his eyes turned back to looking more human and I took a deep breath, along with Pip and Sophia who I hadn’t realised until now, were not allowed to speak but weren’t even allowed to breathe.
“Then it seems I am in your debt, as you will soon be in mine,” he told me, having me quickly wondering why I would be in his debt, not exactly sure that would be the wisest of places to be. Then I looked down after feeling my legs go suddenly colder, and saw that my jeans had been replaced by a pair of black stockings.
This was also when I noticed what I was dressed in and I gasped as I now looked like a sexy virgin. I was in a tight corseted dress made out of shimmering white brocade that tied at the back with what felt like an endless amount of thick cord. It was low on my chest, showing an obscene amount of cleavage, making me instantly blush, one that also bloomed across the skin there.
But that wasn’t the worst part, as the layers and layers of skirt were cut a lot shorter at the front, showing off the thick lace tops of the stockings and the hints of the four thick satin straps that went around each leg. These of course I could feel were attached to the suspender belt and lace thong I was wearing underneath, a set that was barely concealed if you asked me.
Even my hair had been styled half up with a cascade of innocent curls flowing around my face and down my back. I could see all this through the elevator doors and that I even had on makeup. But that too had been done to make me look more like an angel than the demon I felt down here.
Pip wolf whistled, and this time Lucifer did grin at her antics.
“There now, that is better and more fitting for one of my Kings,” he said, standing back and crossing his arms over his chest to admire his handy work.
“Now, if you can just make it there in one piece, you might have a chance at accomplishing your task, now go and try to tame your beast, for my own will have to wait,” he said cryptically but I didn’t ask, I was just grateful we had survived. The makeover however, I hadn’t been expecting.
“So, does this mean you will grant us safe passage?” Sophia braved to ask, as Lucifer was about to turn his back to us. He paused and said,
“Now why would I do that, when the other option is far more entertaining.” Then he clicked his fingers and the room around us disappeared and what now remained was the vision of Hell I had imagined. Everything but the demonic looking elevator doors which had turned into shattered pieces of a mirror. A broken glass that held desperate screaming souls in each damaged section. He walked to them and they opened, making me wonder where he was going to go now there was no building or floors for him to go up to.
“Enjoy my kingdom, won’t you?” he said continuing into the elevator with his back to us. Once inside, he turned around and added,
“Be seeing you soon Keira, and next time…” The doors started to close just as he said,
“Without your white rabbit.” Then they slammed shut and the elevator disappeared into the ground answering my earlier question of where he would go. The doors let off a creepy echoing sound, as all the souls screamed out in horror until out of sight.
“Well, I would class that as a win any day of the week,” Pip commented making Sophia scoff and say,
“Surviving the Devil when pissed off, uh yeah, I would say so.” I tried to think about the reasons he had been pissed off, but in the end, all I could focus on was the last thing he had said to me about being without my white rabbit. How had he known that, if it had only been a vision and wasn’t real?
“Come on, it shouldn’t be that far from here, at the very least he transported us somewhere close,” Sophia said, and it was the first bit of good news I had heard all day.
“That’s good because now it looks like I have no choice but to walk it in heels,” I reminded them as I looked down to see ivory satin shoes that were decorated with open lace along one side. They also had a strap in the same design that was as thick as my palm and covered my whole ankle and tied at the back with a satin ribbon.
“Oooh, pretty,” Pip said with a clap.
“Yeah, but not for the pregnant lady who swore off heels for the next eight months,” I commented dryly. After this we swapped shoe sizes and quickly realised it would be no good, as they both either had abnormally small feet or mine were abnormally big, which I had to say I was hoping for the first.
So, I soldiered on thinking that it could definitely be worse. Okay so yes, we were currently trying to find my husband in some palace he owned in Hell and having no idea what to expect to find when we got there. And I did so in heels. But we were all in one piece and had survived the Devil, so like Pip had said, win, win, on that front.
Then why was it I was nervous that I was about to walk into something I wasn’t sure I could handle? Lucifer had mentioned something about ‘taming the beast’ and I was really hoping that was meant as a metaphor for something at this point.
I decided to shake these thoughts from my mind, before I sent myself insane and instead thought back to what Lucifer had wanted with Pythia. We were all just coming up to what looked like a mountain pathway that I had to say, wasn’t going to do much for my nerves with heights. But thankfully, Sophia didn’t take this way, but instead nodded to a cave entrance that was carved with an archway around the rough jagged rock. It looked like some demonic writing that was all harsh pointed lines that slashed through one another, making symbols of straight lined shapes.
“We are going in there?” I asked on a gulp.
“Well, I didn’t think you would appreciate the mountainside route, as trust me, it only gets higher,” Sophia said in a way that definitely made the cave seem a lot more appealing. So, inside we went and thankfully, Pip unhooked a torch from the fixture embedded in the wall and with a snap of her fingers lit it.
“Besides, this way we will draw less attention to ourselves.” I thought this another good reason to add to what was starting to sound like one of many. So yes, it was creepy down here, but I thought what I needed was a distraction, so I found myself asking what I really wanted to know,
“Why did he want to know why Pythia was missing?” I asked, not understanding the chasm sized point I was obviously missing here.
“Don’t worry about it, we’d better go before he releases the Gorgons just for kicks,” Sophia said making Pip snort in agreement.
“Yeah, those mean bitches really like to…” I cut her off and said again,
“Sophia, tell me, why does he want to know about Pythia?”
“Uh, not like I was talking here or anything…” Pip muttered in the background.
“It’s fine okay, just don’t worry about it… now can we please…?” She started to say but it only managed to make me worry more, so I didn’t let it go. I did the opposite.
“Sophia!” I shouted her name to get her to stop walking ahead and I knew I finally had her when her shoulders slumped in obvious defeat.
“Look, let’s just say that even Devils have their obsessions and she is his,” she finally admitted, making my mouth drop open in shock.
“What?!” I shouted on a screech, one that echoed down the large tunnel.
“Jeezy Peezy, should have just brought my demon fog horn, or sent out an invite for those bony suckers to come try some fast food,” Pip said in response to me doing a crap job at keeping it down. I shot her a look and said,
“My bad.” Then I carried on, pressing for more information, as again I felt like this was important.
“Right, now go back to the part where Lucifer, as in the King of Hell, is obsessed with the Oracle, because I take it you mean as in, wants her in a healthier, ‘close to him so he could possibly use her to see the future type thing’ but treat her right?”
“That would be a firm no.”
“Or a Hell no…but firm, okay we can go with firm,” Pip said, backtracking after receiving one of Sophia’s scowls.
“Okay, so someone explain this to me,” I said watching for the fallen rocks and boulders that had broken away from the rest of the cave’s rock face. The cave had started opening up and I was starting to feel less claustrophobic. There were even walkways above us that made it look like an underground travel system, although granted, a pretty basic one.
“What’s to explain, she is the ultimate forbidden fruit, never to have been touched by a man.”
“At least not in a good way or the best way, or even better way…okay, shutting up now,” Pip said adding to it and skipping over some rubble in her way.
“And Lucifer wants to bed her?!” I screeched in horror as no matter how hot he was to look at, it was giving new meaning to the whole ‘beauty and the beast’ scenario.
“To be honest no one really knows,” Sophia said shrugging her shoulders before continuing,
“All we do know is that since the daughter of the God Janus was brought into the world, Lucifer has wanted her and the deal that was made for her, was that no one could touch her until after the Prophesy was completed. After that, well she was granted her one wish, which was to be released by the Fates to become human and to spend the rest of her days out in the world she first became a prisoner to,” Sophia finished Pythia’s tale of woe and from the look of Lucifer’s anger at not seeing her, then I would say it wasn’t over.
“Does she know?!”
“Oh yeah, she knows, which is why she changed her appearance so many times and all in hopes she wouldn’t be appealing to the King of Hell,” Sophia said with a hopeless expression as she too looked as though she felt sorry for the girl.
“Jesus, she was a bloody child when I met her!” I cried in horror, which again kept echoing making Pip wince.
“Sorry.” I muttered, as I kept forgetting myself.
“Yes, and she has even been a man before now, but none of that matters to him, for he knows her true form and more importantly, what she is to him…or at least what he is convinced she is to him,” she added as what looked like an afterthought.
“Which is?” I asked not preparing myself at all for the answer she gave.
“Well, as unbelievable as it sounds…she’s his Chosen One,” Sophia told me with a tense smile.
“You’re telling me she is destined to be with…with the Devil!?” This time when I went high pitched, I at least had the foresight to do it somewhat quietly. Pip mouthed the words ‘Good Toots’ at me but my mind was elsewhere. As in it started to race and suddenly my memories flashed back to that day in the library when she had seen Lucius. She had been beyond terrified.
“Is that why she is afraid of Lucius, because it has something to do with Lucifer?” I asked and Sophia and Pip both gave each other a look. I took it as my answer to be a resounding yes but still, I wasn’t satisfied.
“What is it?” I asked, happy to at least have my mind focused on something other than what we were currently doing.
“Lucius is the son of Lucifer as you know, therefore he is charged with both the safety and capture of Pythia once the Fates no longer have need of her,” Sophia said with a shrug of her shoulders and my mouth dropped open with this new bombshell.
“What! When they no longer have need of her!? Jesus, but it sounds like she just got kicked out of Heaven’s VIP lounge and thrown to the bloody gutter and in the centre of a pack of circling Hellbeasts!” I said, now feeling about 400% more sorry for her.
“Technically, you don’t get a pack of Hellbeasts, you just have Jared and everyone else…that he owns…but wolves, now wolves have a pack, and did you know what a group of monkeys are called…?” Pip asked, making me respond wryly,
“Pip, Sophia and Keira?” My sarcastic tone made Sophia laugh and Pip, being Pip didn’t get the joke but instead thought I was being serious because she replied,
“No, that’s silly, they are called a troop or barrel…oh I get it, the game, a barrel of monkeys…you know I always wondered why a barrel…why not a crate or a box or better still a cage, although not better for the monkeys, as who likes living in a cage…well, other than our bed back at the lake house in Königssee, Adam loves it, oh and…”
“Pip, this stopped being helpful about five minutes ago, can we focus on the Hell part of this trip now?” Sophia said making Pip pout.
“Fine, but I was going to tell you that a group of crows is called a…”
“Murder, yes I know and if we don’t all try and be a little quieter…” Sophia paused to shoot me a ray gun death look, one I was surprised didn’t come with little ‘pew, pew’ sound effects, before she carried on,
“…That’s precisely what we will be.” I looked at Pip seeing her scrunch up her face in confusion, looking cute and at the same time a little crazy as she scratched at her plaited green and blue mohawk.
“But that’s not right, I mean you can murder someone and be murdered but you can’t be a murder…I think you fucked up there,” Pip said to Sophia’s back as she walked through the demonic rubble. However, Sophia’s only response to this was a low growl as she continued to climb, turning back to me to help me across.
I don’t know how long we had been walking for, but I nearly wept with joy when Sophia told me we weren’t that far from reaching the other side of the mountain. To be honest I had been surprised that my appearance had held up to the task of trekking through Hell’s underground.
“Okay, so listen to this one, did you know a collective of elk is called ‘a gang’.”
“Nope, didn’t know that one Pip,” I said moving to the side and dodging what looked like a shard of black ice the size of a car that had erupted from the ground at some point.
“Okay and a group of gorillas is called ‘a band’, right so if you then add a group of ferrets, which is called ‘a business’ and then you add them all together in the same room, you could say, ‘oh look at that ‘Gang, Band Business go’ and you know what that sounds like right…?” Pip said waiting for our laugh and to be honest I would have, had we not heard another noise instead and this one sounded like a very distinct roaring of a beast.
“Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like that!” Pip said looking behind her and then screaming,
“RUN FOR IT!” I looked behind us and saw what she had, now racing towards us. And my first and second thought after being scared shitless was to curse the day heels were invented and I also hoped my bladder held out until we were safe. But one look at the giant monster now charging at us and I didn’t think it was up for the task. The only good thing about this was that all I could see was the red of his many eyes and the shadow of a body that was about the size of a bus.
“Come on, I can see the exit and it looks smaller than that thing so it can’t follow us!” Sophia shouted back at us making our asses run like, well like a Hellbeast was on our tail and not the nice, handsome biker kind. I looked back and wished that I hadn’t as it was gaining on us but thankfully so were we, on the glowing exit ahead. The second we could see where we were going, Pip threw the torch at it, giving us the extra time we needed to make it, as it landed straight on its head, making it stop for a few seconds.
Then we heard it bellow in rage behind us, and this time we heard it’s many hooves stampeding its way towards us. Sophia managed to grab me at the last second before the creature launched itself through the gap, getting stuck the second it did.
“Holy shit, what is that thing, something from Hell or outer space?!” I shouted back, away from its snarling, hissing head that looked as if someone had taken the face of an alien and cut it down the centre to peel back the sides. Then someone stuffed a couple of eyes on there and a snake’s tongue for good ugly measure.
“Come on, I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” Sophia said but Pip being the first to turn her back on the thing said,
“Uhh, guys, sorry to tell you this, but I don’t think we are either.” Me and Sophia both turned around and were now faced with what Pip had seen…
A demonic army.