Page 27 of Winners, Losers, and Champagne Kisses
“It’s different in our realm than it is back home. Back home, it’s all angels and souls. It’s different here. Back in our realm, it would be easy to just kill angels and leave the souls if he wanted to start over from scratch. On this realm, it would involve killing a lot of innocents. They are counting on him not wanting to do that.”
Yahweh waved his hand and their wings reappeared. Maybe it was a bit soon to do that. We hadn’t really made any type of agreement, but I suppose if they broke it, Pax could just take them away again.
“I suppose we have a lot to talk about.”
Yeah, we did. Like why we were giving wings back before we could trust these angels. Still, this was his circus and monkeys, so I guess we should let him take the lead.
Iwas learning way more about supernatural weaknesses than I ever wanted to. I’d long known silver weakened us, but until the Coalition, I hadn’t known of anything that couldcompletelytake away our magic like that. Angel tears didn’t work on angels, but Pax figured out how to turn the tables in a fit of rage.
He could have turned their entire bodies to sand or just vital organs and killed them. He was mad enough to. Pax wanted them to suffer like we had suffered. They’d taken something important from all of us, so he took their wings.
And I couldn’t speak for everyone else, but I didn’t know how I felt about them getting their wings and magic back five minutes later. They’d hadn’t exactly promised to join or help usin exchange for that. Michael had been truthful about everything he’d said so far and Gabriel did way more than we expected with their message.
But these angels? I could get that they were scared and had an impossible decision, but I was pretty sure there were angels that disagreed with what was happening onbothsides of their war. If enough from one side had joined or helped the archangels, I’d bet some from the other side would, too. And if enough of them took a stand, they might have ended things long before it spilled over to my home.
I wasn’t there, so it was easy for me to think all of this, but I was looking atmultiplevictims of their inaction and I was also one of those people that got hurt. Unlike these angels who hadn’t met a single god, I’d actually met several. I really hoped he knew what he was doing just giving these angels their magic back.
Dionysus just sighed because this fight damaged parts of his front yard and there were scorch marks on his house. He could just wave his hand and put it right, but I knew it was the principle of the thing with him. Also, even though I knew how much he loved meeting other gods, his family had given him a healthy mistrust of them. I’d known Dionysus long enough to be able to read him like the back of my hand. He was wondering and hoping this was a good idea.
“You might as well come inside since you were planning on breaking in anyway.”
Dionysus had hung back and let everyone who was directly hurt by the angels get their pound of flesh, but if they’d actually broken into his home, Pax wouldn’t have even gotten the chance to take their wings. Dionysus would have drowned them with wine or snapped their necks with vines.
“You fuckers got names?” Benji asked. “Because I promise you won’t like the ones I give you.”
“I’m Ramuel and this is Danel, Azkeel, Asael, and Turel.”
“Yeah, I’m calling you Butt Nugget, Fart Wings, Grump Master T, Spanky Feathers, and Peaches because I’m not even going to bother remembering that,” Benji huffed.
“You’re right. We don’t like that,” Turel growled.
“Tough shit, Grump Master T. You could have grown a pair and joined the resistance.”
I mean, we were all thinking that and Benji’s nicknames had a way of sticking, so they were going to have to get over it. I was pretty sure Athena would have been Sugar Tits forever, but she came through in more ways than one. They were going to have to do something big to earn their names back.
Cas put his hand against Ramuel’s chest before he could come into the living room.
“Are you intending on helping us?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, some of us just wanted justice for our friends and to change the system. It just escalated from there. You have no idea how brutal things got back home.”
“I think we have an idea,” Pax snarled.
Michael looked right at Pax. Pax couldn’t see him, but he could sense him, so he turned his head.
“I’m not discounting what any of you went through, but angels are just as cruel as humans when they go bad. Both sides took prisoners of war. I know you blame them, but they saw what the other angels did to us and their people. They were scared. There was a group of them who was kinder to those of us who were captive, at least in my case, and they are all in this room.”
What in the fucking Stockholm? I wouldn’t be so easy to forgive. If someone had been semi kind to me when the Coalition had me, I wouldn’t have asked anyone to spare them. They were still my jailer. If they wanted to truly be kind to us, they could have broken us all out or filmed what was going on there and exposed them.
“One of the fake priests who thought he wascuringme was kind to me sometimes,” Benji said. “I used that to escape and then waited until he was away from that awful place and ate him.”
Cas wrapped a protective arm around Benji.
“We all helped. When we infiltrated the Coalition to break Medusa out, we weren’t particularly interested in who was a little bit kinder to the people they were keeping prisoner to torture.”
“Listen, everyone has been through some shit and dealing with it differently. Let’s hear them out. Is Anane still alive and which side is she on?” Kat asked.
“You know Anane?”
