Page 66 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
She led us into the chamber and told us where to sit until we were needed. I was nervous as fuck. Nothing any of these people could say to me was worse than anything I’d heard before, so that wasn’t what I was worried about.
If they tried to call anyone to capture us with those tranquilizers they used on me before, everyone here could portal and I wasn’t sure if they’d even work on a god. I didn’t even know if they’d be bold enough to try. Hades had literallynothingin common with Satan and was one of the good ones, but in a lot of adaptations that weren’t even remotely based in fact, Hades had a lot of Satan’s traits sprinkled on him or was cast as the villain.
Hadeswasthe Lord of the Underworld. He could temporarily summon the shades of any Greek warrior he wanted. Persephone was pretty scary as a god of rebirth. If they heard fury and wanted to fuck with that, that was between them and whatever god they worshipped.
No, I was nervous because this was our big chance to get rid of the Coalition. It was step one of making things safe for people like me. Pepper dropped a huge bomb before she left us.
“The Coalition never caught on in some countries because they don’t believe in angels and are a little more open to magic. There are three countries left where the Coalition is still active and I’m in contact with people there. We’ve all been sitting on our bills to outlaw it until we were sure it would pass.
“I’ve got a press conference scheduled afterwards with national and international reporters there. It’s going to be amajorthing that five gods showed up to denounce the Coalition. It’s going to shake up everything. I’m talking, major crisis of faith. People will want and expect the big guy or at least his angels to appear to give a rebuttal. I hope you’re prepared for that because I’m not.”
“None of us have met your big guy,” Hades said. “We all thought we were the only gods at first, but we eventually realized there were entire other pantheons. Most of us are curious creatures and want to meet each other. There are some exceptions. He’s one of them.”
Pepper just looked at us strangely.
“You’re all coming to my house for dinner tonight because I think the conversation is going to befascinating.I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ll drop you a pin.”
I felt something caress my foot. I looked down and saw a shadow. Yeah, Benji and I were kind of losing our shit about that invitation. We just needed to get through this first.
My blood ran cold when Hannibal entered and took a seat across from us. This man kept me prisoner and starved me. It was a fluke he hadn’t hurt Jezebel. He’d had Calamity tortured, and she was just so young for a supernatural.
I knew deep down he wasn’t alive when Pax was blinded or they tortured Benji when he was barely out of kindergarten, but someone like him was, so I was holding him accountable. If he was running things, he could havechangedthings. He could have listened to what countless supernaturals testified to and looked to the evidence that they’d been doing this for centuries and never once gotten a demon out of someone.
Alecto squeezed my hand.
“I can feel you leaking fury. This is going to go ass up if he gets some on him. You’ll get your moment later. Some of these people are friends and we need them. We can’t predict how people are going to react when we trap them in their worst nightmare. Some of them shut down, but some get violent. Not here.”
Dionysus wrapped an arm around me.
“You can do this.”
I squared my shoulders. Yeah, I could. I was several millennia old. Poseidon didn’t break me to the point where I faded away and ended it. A simple human wasn’t going to make me lose it. Hannibal’s eyes passed over me. I could tell he liked how I looked, but he didn’t recognize me.
His eyes widened when he took in my god friends. Yeah, they had that effect on people. No one ever knew what they were in this century, but they knew they were in the presence of something with great power.
I sat back in Dionysus’s arms. We had to get through the agenda for today and then Pepper was going to drop her bomb.
I couldn’t wait.
Iwas holding Medusa and trying to comfort her, but I was about to lose it myself. Now that I was in the room with the man who hurt her, I was practically vibrating with rage. She was taken because he inherited an institution and kept it going. She was starved because he was an asshole.
I knew my mate. Shealwaysavoided turning people to stone. When Perseus showed up to kill her, she tried to fight him off without looking him in the eye and nearly died. If Medusa had intentionally lured someone to her cell to turn them to stone, then they had it coming.
Pax said he ranted about how pious and pure that fake nun was, but she’d still be alive if she wasn’t hurting people. It wasself-defense. Medusa thought she was protecting herself and everyone in that basement by turning that woman to stone.
She told me they’d been focusing pretty hard on Calamity because she was a demon. Calamity was legally an adult and was in college, but in supernatural terms and compared to Medusa, she was just a baby. Hurting kids was a big no for all of us.
So, we just sat there while they got through their agenda. Some of it was a hot load of bullshit posturing about pet projects that weren’t going to help anyone. Frankly, it pissed me off, but I wasn’t here to comment on that.Finally,it was our turn.
Pepper and Saul introduced competing bills. Pepper wanted the Coalition disbanded and made illegal and Saul was actually insane. He wanted to create a registry where supernaturals were forced to list their names and he wanted them to wear something that identified them in public. If they didn’t agree, they would be deported.
Saul also wanted to deputize the common folks and make it law that any violence against supernaturals was automatically self-defense and no charges would be pressed. If a supernatural hurt a human, he wanted to completely bypass the justice system. Instead of a jury of their peers, the human or their family got to decide if they went to a Coalition facility or were just executed.
This was something the Gold Party had wanted for a long time, but they’d always been a minority fringe group, even when the Coalition was first formed. People were a lot more afraid of theotherback then and had this long-ass history of turning on their neighbors. They showed up for executions and witch burnings like it was a highly anticipated opening day of a movie or play, but the Gold Party had been a little nutty for the people who thought witches floated and slavery was a good thing.
In this decade, they were dying out. They ran in every election and there was always one on the ticket for President,but there were fewer of them getting elected. They were trying to reinvent themselves as the protectors ofrealAmericans and trying not to do anything stupid to get labeled extremists.
This? Saul wouldn’t have pulled something outthisinsane unless he had something big. The Gold Party hadn’t made a big move in a long time. They’d been trying to slip their agenda into other people’s bills and then protest voting when it wasn’t included. I couldn’t remember the last time they’d authored a bill because they always failed.
