Damned if I do | Damned trilogy #1

Chapter Nineteen: Drake

It had been months by my reckoning. Maybe a week by hers.

In all the eons I'd survived in Hell, no time had felt slower. Millenia of torture, of collection, the endless monotony of the heat and the screams and the fucking souls, and this is what got to me. This absence.

I hadn't felt such a loss when my mother had died. But back then, my father had thrown every bauble and shiny toy and voluptuous woman at me a guy could handle. He'd made it his duty to keep me distracted and entertained. Most of it was for his own amusement. I'd been a new audience for his latest performances. But a small part of me had believed it was because he didn't know how else to be fatherly.

I'd long since grown out of even pretending to mollify his exploits, but that didn't stop him falling back into old habits.

I walked into his throne room to find it darker than usual. I was so lost in my own world that I didn't see what was coming next. Even though it wasn't the first time in the last few months.

Opening bars rumbled out and a spotlight swung up to illuminate him standing on his throne. He wore a top hat, pushed low over his eyes. He wore one of his sparkliest suits, the sequins creating a blinding glare as the spotlight moved slowly over them.

"What are you–?" My voice cut out with a hand from him.

The song started out slow and low. It was mournful and capable of tugging a heart as cold as mine. There was true emotion in my father's voice as the vocals rose in volume. It wasn't a song that existed on earth. This was a Lucifer original, a song about loss and love and the inescapable marching of time. It was gut-wrenching. I felt my heart constrict in my chest, my throat got tight and hot.

Just as I was going to go over there and physically rip him a new one, it all changed.

The tempo switched. The lights went from the single spotlight to bright and garish and, as he rolled his top hat along his arms and shoulders from one hand to the other, his suit changed into something you saw in a kitsch Hawaiian hotel; white pants, a tropical shirt, a couple of leis, and even a ukulele. There were even violently bursting tiki torches and a tiny volcano that was dancing along with the tune as it shot spurts of lava into the air.

"So, you're all alone and now she's gone," was a line that sent me over the edge of mild annoyance and into heavy-duty anger.

My wings sprouted and I charged him, pinning him to the floor with my hand over his throat. The show stopped abruptly and he looked up at me mock-innocently.

"Was it something I said?" he squeaked, batting his eyes.

"You think?" I snapped, pushing myself to standing.

"If I could make a small observation...?"

I rolled my neck. "Can I stop you?"

"In the eons you've lived here, I've only ever seen your wings on Tussle Tuesdays. Easier to keep up with Cadriel that way, but..."

"What's your point?"

"Well, only that it seems, whenever Serenity is involved, your first instinct is wings."

I frowned at him. "I don't..." I shifted uncomfortably. "It is not."

"I just..." he cleared his throat loudly. "Well, the promise has been fulfilled. The bargain struck and kept. She went home. No one said how long she had to stay there." He shrugged suggestively.

"She's better off on Earth."

"Is she?"

My gaze narrowed. "What do you know?"