Page 12 of Winners, Losers, and Champagne Kisses
Angel factions? I was dying to know. I think we all were. But none of us were stupid. This could be a trap.
“I’m going to probably do something stupid to gain your trust and let you know I’m on your side. I just hope you won’t use it against the good angels. To trap one of us and keep us from doing you harm, you need to steal one of our feathers. It needs to be whole and if the feather is ever damaged, the spell breaks.
“Use this wisely because we don’t take kindly to it. It’s extremely difficult to remove one of our feathers and it’s excruciating for us. We consider it a massive violation of free will as the archangels don’twantto hurt anyone. There was just an inciting incident and now there’s a faction of angels that do.”
“Can you find the Righteous Fig and meet us there?” Dionysus asked. “It looks like a filthy dive bar on the outside, but it’s upscale on the inside and has a cult following. There will be enough people there for it to be a public place, but it’s mostly a supernatural establishment in case you want to fuck around and find out. It’s also very private so as long as you’re discreet and don’t walk in with your wings out, no one will kick your ass and the other angels won’t find out.”
Could angels even put their wings away? Pixies and certain types of winged demons could. Angels were supernatural creatures, but no one really knew anything about them.
“I can put my wings away. And despite what my brethren chose to do at the prison, we can portal. I’ll meet you there.”
Cas hung up and turned to us.
“Do we believeanythingMichael just said?”
“We’ve got four furies with us. They’ll know if he’s lying.,” Dionysus grinned. “I invited him to a supernatural bar, and he’s right. Even if hedoesknow the sigil to banish the gods, as soon as he spills blood, the entire bar is going to be after him. He’ll have to try to paint it while avoiding all manner of supernaturals, Medusa turning him to stone,andthe furies fucking him up. He basically knows all this because he said ithimself. If he’s up to something and comes anyway, he’s either really stupid or his ego is bigger than mine.”
“Still, let’s get there first to scope the place out,” I said.
I washopingMichael was on our side and could give us answers. I didn’t want to do to angels what literally most humans had done to demons and write all of them off because of a few bad ones.
After everything, I really needed my faith in people restored. IneededMichael to be decent and have acceptable answers why three people in my coven went through what they did with the Coalition.
Dionysus and I always hit up the Righteous Fig when we stayed here. It had been owned by a nest of vampires for the longest time. They kept the outside looking as shitty as possible. Half the bad graffiti on the walls was their work. They had large planters full of sand and cigarette butts all over the outside, even though they didn’t allow smoking anywhere on the property because of all the people with enhanced senses of smell.
But the inside? It was plush and hedonistic with only the best alcohol and food. The booths were private, but they had a floor if anyone wanted to dance. I loved coming here, but today, I was nervous. Michael could very well be on our side, but could any explanation he gave for this be enough?
Benji lost his entire childhood and still had no idea what happened to his parents. Pax was scarred and blind. I nearly starved to death and still had nightmares. I could tell Jezebel was trying to be strong instead of dealing with her trauma because Calamity got the worst of it out of the three of us.
I think weallwanted to know why this happened, but would it help with anything?
I knew what angels felt like now. As soon as we portalled into the Righteous Fig, I could sense one. His power felt the same, but there was no malice in his aura like the other angels. He felt like he desperately wanted to help us because he thought we could help him, too.
When I reached out with my fury magic, he’d done terrible things in the name of war, but he didn’t want to do them again. Michael wanted an end to the violence, but that was all I could sense. I couldn’t really read his motivation as to why he only camenowand didn’t feel the need to set the record straight two hundred years ago when the other angels started all of this.
“He feels like he’s here to help, but I can’t get a read on why he’s just herenow,” I said.
“You’ll get there,” Alecto said. “I’m getting vibes that hecouldn’tcome before now. This one has seen some shit. Let’s get over there.”
Dionysus took the lead and walked over to Michael. Now that I was up close, yeah, I got it. He had a large scar on his face and I could see them on his neck disappearing down into his shirt. I could tell he was covered in them because he was trying to cover them with his clothes. He wasn’t dressed like the other angels. He was dressed like he lived here instead of in armor. He had the same haunted look in his eyes as everyone who had been taken by the Coalition.
We got a booth and ordered food and drink. We just waited for him to talk.
“Okay, first things first. I should tell you about our realm. A very long time ago, there was a certain hierarchy. Only certain angels were allowed near the Father. If he wanted to give an order, it was like a game of telephone. It passed through the various choirs of angels until it got to the correct one and a lot of times, the message got distorted, as you can imagine.
“Very early on, a large portion of the Powers choir fell in love with the mortal realm and wanted to live there, so they did. The Father wanted the other Powers to go talk to them andaskthem to come back home.
“But by the time the message got to the other Powers, the Father’s message had been twisted to the point that the other Powers thought the Father found the Nephilim children to be abominations that needed to be killed and the angels brought back by force, so that was what happened.”
I saw Kat stiffen. I knew she vividly remembered that massacre and now for her to hear it wasn’t even supposed to happen like that. The whole thing could have been avoided with more direct communication. It was unfortunate, but I didn’t see how it related to what happened when the angels started the Coalition two hundred years ago.
“This caused an entire chasm. The Powers that had their children murdered were furious and their friends that had to do the killing weren’t really pleased about being given that order. They eventually found out that wasn’t what the original order was and that the Father would have let them stay once they had that conversation.
“They demanded answers and wanted change. Clearly, the system was flawed if the Father’s message could be distorted like that. Unfortunately, while all of that was going on, the Father was mourning his son’s murder at the hands of the Romans. He took it very hard and withdrew.
“The Powers refused to give him grace to mourn because they werealsomourning the loss of their children. Grief manifests in many ways. The Powers wanted revenge on the other choirs because we all knew that message had been intentionally distorted.
“A lot of us didn’t blame them and it divided the angels. It was basically the upper levels of the hierarchy against the lower. The archangels thought we should have an investigation to look into which angels were responsible and put them on trial.
