Page 32 of Winners, Losers, and Champagne Kisses
I could hear his teeth grinding from here and I was trying not to laugh. I got they were trying to do the right thing now and things were pretty complicated, but alotof people got hurt before they came to that decision. The least they deserved was Benji poking them.
When the screen lit up, there was a black-haired angel sitting in a wingback chair surrounded by other angels. Yeah, we looked way more impressive. Saul and Hannibal were nowhere to be found. Those two were pretty power hungry. I had a feeling even with angels involved, they’d still want to assert dominance and be involved in all of this.
“Where are your bitches?” Benji sneered.
The angel looked taken aback for a minute.
“Excuse me?”
“Hannibal and Saul,” Cas said. “You made a mess breaking them out of prison.”
“We couldn’t use them and they screech like monkeys, so we locked them in their dog kennels.”
I barked a laugh, and I got what Ariel, Jophiel, and Gabriel meant. The angels sneered at me for daring to laugh. Seriously, fuck them. I turned plenty of them to stone.
“What do you want?” Pax asked. “You’re outnumbered and out gunned.”
“We want the archangels and the Father. We know he’s with you. We can feel him.”
“You have nothing to negotiate with, Adolf Shitler,” Benji hissed.
Oh, yeah. That nickname was going to stick.
“My name is Jeqon,” he growled.
“Don’t give a crap. You’re Adolf Shitler now and trust me, you earned it.”
The archangels werefinallylaughing.
“You really did earn that nickname,” Gabriel chuckled.
“You’re going to have a hard time coming back from this,” Michael said.
“I command the entire army of Powers and their allies. I could make a big show and rally the more violent humans to my side in an instant. Show me some respect.”
Gabriel fell out laughing and honestly, I liked this side of her.
“Listen, I was created to be the Messenger of God. Everyone knows my name and who it came from when I appear with a message. You can certainly try, but a lot of these people don’t even know that the Powers are a choir of angels, much less who you are. This is a totally different era. The entire world saw my message this time with the amount of cell phones and cameras out there. I could deliver a new message that you’re the enemy, your name is Adolf Shitler, and it would stick more than yours.”
There was this giant, ugly vein pulsing in Jeqon’s forehead. We needed him off kilter to reveal any surprises that the other angels wouldn’t know. Some of us were old, but we were young compared to this realm. Just becausewedidn’t know of a way to kill a god that didn’t involve another god or fading didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Cassandra was still a backup plan. In fact, we’d probably still need her to fact check. Jeqon could lie and even if he was in possession of something hethoughtcould kill a god, there was no way to know for sure it worked until someone actually killed one with it. And since Dionysus would have felt it and looked into it, that hadn’t happened. Cassandra would know for sure.
“We can do this the easy way where you give us what we want and the rest of you can go about your business or we can make it hurt and destroy you.”
I shared a look with Dionysus. We could read between the lines. They had something theythoughtwould contain or kill a god. They hadn’t used it yet because the only gods they had metwere from polytheistic families. If they hurt or killed one, the rest of their family would want revenge.
Except it didn’t work like that anymore. We weren’t dealing with isolated pantheons who thought they created the world and they were the only gods. Everyone knew each other. We had holidays together. We vacationed in each other’s realms.
Even if they left us out of it, hurting Yahweh wouldn’t stand withanyof the other gods. They wouldn’t want that knowledge getting out. They would spill into this realm and theirs to obliterate the angels to make sure no one found out what they knew.
And in this case, I wouldn’t blame them at all.
“Sorry, but you’re going to have a hard time fingerpainting sigils with blood with your eyes closed because Medusa is on our side. You’ll also have to paint it faster than the furies can fuck up your mind. We aren’t scared of you,” Dionysus said.
“You should be,” Jeqon sneered.
Yeah, he thought he had something big. Whether it worked or not was anyone’s guess. Jeqon disconnected the video chat, and I turned to Dionysus.
