Chapter 26

26

A bby and I were both silent from the shock of Stan's words, and Stefan squeezed my hand as if to make sure I was okay. I took a deep breath and finally broke the silence. "I wish I could say I was surprised."

"Yeah," my sister agreed. Her face looked almost as bloodless as I was sure mine did. We may have had no love for our parents, but sudden death was...sudden.

"Would anyone have known this was going to happen?" I asked.

Stan shook his head, his expression still grim. "No, otherwise, Gabe would already have been there, considering he's the one in charge of their deaths. We know natural deaths in advance. But things like this? We don't know until it happens. No one was keeping anything from you."

Even if I had known, I wasn't sure I'd have bothered to stop it, and I didn't necessarily like what that said about me. No, after a little more thought, I realized I would try to stop it, purely so those two would still go to trial and there would be justice for their victims. I hated that those kids might never have some form of closure.

"Lucy is holding them in a waiting room," Stan continued. "She thought you two might want to get some things off your chest before we started their retribution." He looked at Gabe and reached out a hand, brushing it against Gabe's cheek. "That includes you."

"I'm going," our grandmother said firmly. For all her voice was stony, she looked like she might crumble at any second. Our bitch mother had still been her child, I supposed, and unlike our mother, Grandma cared about her family. At some level, it was probably heartbreaking for her that her only child had been murdered despite knowing what my mother had done.

"I'll join you," Beelzebub said, his usual crankiness replaced by a deep sadness. "I have things I'd like to say."

"Oh, I'm definitely going," Gabe said, rage in his voice. He was probably more mad for us than for himself, knowing him. "I have so many things to tell that weasel-faced twatwaffle to her fucking face."

Our grandmother stared at him for a long moment before saying, "I should probably admonish you for calling her that, but I can't bring myself to do it. That was creative."

"It was truthful," Abby spat. "I'll stay here. My stance on not going before I die stands, and they aren't worth my time anyway. But I wouldn't say no to one of you telling them I said that I hoped their restitution is as unbearable as possible."

"I'll tell them," I offered quietly. "I think I need the closure. Are you sure you want to leave it like this?"

Abby's face twisted into a deep scowl, and she clenched her fists. "If I need closure from them, I'll find their graves after they're buried and piss on them."

Her anger was justified, but I hoped she also concluded that therapy might be a good idea. The only person who'd be hurt by her carrying that around would be herself. Regardless, I simply nodded and stood. "Okay," I told her. "Just in case the knowledge will help, there's a gallon of rocky road in the freezer. And possibly a cheesecake."

Stefan looked at me, his expression asking me if I wanted him to go with me. I glanced at Abby, then looked back at him. He smiled reassuringly and said, "How about I stay here? Abby and I can binge on ice cream and watch questionable television while you're gone. And I bet you have what I need to make French toast."

Abby stared at him suspiciously before sighing. "Fine. I don't need a babysitter, though."

"No, but I do need someone to roast bad television with," Stefan told her, giving her a winning smile.

I mouthed a silent thank you to him, and he winked at me.

"Let's get you back to Hell," Gabriel said. He gave me a weak smile, then sighed. "I'm sorry the night ended up like this. We were supposed to be celebrating you."

"Well, clearly, they haven't lost the habit of trying to prevent me from having fun," I said drily. "At least they won't be able to do that anymore, not for a very long time."

"Thousands of years," Stan confirmed. "It'll take a long time for them to balance things out, as far as your world goes. In terms of their victims, though..."

"Thousands of years isn't enough," I finished. I shook my head. "Come on, let's get this over with."

Lucy met us at the summoning circle. "They're currently pinned to the forest floor," she told us as if all of us should know what she was talking about. "The trees have them."

"Well, that's ironic," Gabe said with a humorless laugh. "Or did you do that on purpose?"

"It seemed appropriate to me," she told him.

My confusion must have been apparent because my brother gave me a wry smile. "The forest she's talking about is where I landed initially. I was speeding toward concrete, and then suddenly, I was drifting slowly down a tunnel and touched down in the creepiest forest known to man. That's where I met Lucy, and when I ran for it, I was chased by an enormous wolf-dragon monster that I swore would eat me."

Tempest let out a huff and looked away.

"Yeah, I know you thought I was playing," my brother told him, patting him on the head. "You've long since made up for scaring me."

Lucy turned to me, her expression hesitant. "What is it?" I asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again, then sighed. "Look, I know you don't like them, but it could still be...disturbing."

"What, seeing my dead parents?" I asked. "Probably, but I feel like I need this."

She shook her head and grimaced. "It's not that," she said. "Your father... I think he'll be permanent."

I furrowed my brow. "What do you mean?"

"When I left, he was screaming about being the hand of God."

I closed my eyes, a wave of immense disappointment all aimed at my father washing over me. I'd held onto the knowledge that ninety-nine percent of Hell's guests existed with their regret for the rest of eternity. I wanted him to know what he'd done wrong. But even in death, he let me down. "Yeah," I said sadly. "Sounds like you've got a new permanent guest." I shook my head and sighed heavily. "What about my mother?"

"She was weeping inconsolably when I left them," Lucy told me, a smirk tugging at her lips. "It was beautiful. So, yeah, it's pretty safe to say she at least knows exactly what she did during life."

"Excellent," Gabe said, a gleam in his eyes that nearly made me step back. He must have noticed because his expression softened. "I'm not going to hurt her," he promised. "I'm just dying to tell her exactly what I think of her. Maybe now that she's gained some clarity, she'll actually listen and feel bad about it." He looked himself over and noted that he was still wearing his human guise. "As much as I'd love to go visit her all blue and with claws and shit, I think she'd be too much of a gibbering mess if a bunch of demons who look like demons descended on her." He glanced up at our grandfather and snickered. "Sorry, old man. You get to stay ugly for a while."

Beelzebub let out an exasperated sigh, but he let it drop.

"Shall we, then?" Lucy asked. "I'll take Stan, Gabe, Zeke, and the unholy terror."

"Which one?" I asked. "You have so many choices that fit that description here."

She cackled and pointed at Tempest. "The furry one," she elaborated. "So someone else will need to drive a second cart."

"I'll do it," our grandmother announced gleefully.

"No, you will not ," my brother and Gabriel bellowed as one. Given the stories I'd heard of her driving, I couldn't blame them.

"I'll drive," Gabriel continued in a softer tone. "I can stay in the cart and wait for you all to finish."

"But—"

The archangel pointed his finger at my grandmother wordlessly, and she shut up.

It was a quiet drive. None of us felt like talking, and Gabe was probably just as lost in his head as I was. I almost overlooked the scenery until a sickly, metallic smell entered my nose, and I blinked to see we were driving over a sea of red. "Is that blood?" I asked, more than a little horrified and nauseated.

"It is, and I swear to god if you puke in my golf cart you're going to see that blood up close and personal." Lucy glanced over at me and gave me an apologetic half-smile. "We'll be through it soon, but this was the best route."

I swallowed hard and nodded in acknowledgment.

Luckily for my stomach—and probably my mortality—we were out of the scene quickly, just as Lucy had promised.

Dead or dormant trees surrounded us, no leaves apparent on their branches from what I could see though there were plenty on the forest floor. I couldn't see much because the area was filled with a thick fog.

"Ah, memories," my brother said from the back seat.

"It's..." I tried to find a word, but there was no way to describe it.

"A hellish nightmare forest?" Gabe suggested. He paused and hummed under his breath in thought. "No, actually, it's not that bad now, probably because I haven't just fallen to my death and ended up in a strange place."

"It's ethereal," I murmured, finally finding something close to what I wanted to say. "It's so still and calm and..."

Something about the forest grabbed hold of my heart for some reason. I felt like I could easily lie on the ground, stare up at the branches, and stay that way for hours.

"A little too still," Gabe said, patting me on the shoulder. "See how you feel once the carts stop and there's not even the sound of a breeze in the branches. It's meant to be oppressive."

"Some people need a place like this when the world is too loud," I pointed out.

The carts came to a standstill near a twisted mass of vines that looked nearly as dead as the trees.

"Oh, the vines are new," Gabe said as we exited.

Lucy made a noise of assent. "We just got them installed a couple of weeks ago. I thought something like that would be useful if another dead despot fell from the sky. They have a longer reach than some of the trees."

"The trees move?" I asked.

"Oh yes," Gabe said with a shudder. "Like something out of a Wizard of Oz hellscape." He stopped and thought for a moment. "Huh. Tornadoes..."

"We've got one," Lucy said, shutting him down. "Aren't you supposed to be researching a slug pit or something?"

"I can have more than one project going at a time."

"Focus," Stan told them, and they stopped arguing to look at him. "Let's do what we need to do, get this over with, and go home."

"Can we stop for donuts on the way back?" Gabe asked.

Stan narrowed his eyes at my brother, and I fully expected them to argue, but after a moment of silence, Stan said, "Actually, yeah, that sounds amazing." He looked at me. "You want donuts?"

My stomach growled as if I hadn't been eating all night.

"Right," Gabe said. "Let's do this." He turned and marched over to the pile of vines where our grandparents were already waiting. I hurried to join him, and we all looked down at the jumble of vegetation. It was squirming a little, but I had a feeling that it was more my parents trying to get away than the vines themselves.

"You ready?" Lucy asked.

Gabe looked down at Tempest. "You?"

Tempest gave him a feral grin and small sparks crackled around him. I'd been told he could call storms, but I was still surprised.

Lucy leaned over and patted the vines. "Let them go, but don't let them run," she said.

The vines slowly slithered away, and as they retreated, the screaming from underneath became audible.

"I am the hand of God! How dare you restrain me? I shall smite you all!"

"Get me out of here! Somebody, help me!"

My father, as Lucy had said, was still yelling about his delusional beliefs. My mother was sobbing as she screamed for help. I wanted to feel bad for her, but seeing her like that just reminded me of being on the kitchen floor as she beat me black and blue.

The vines stayed wound around my parents' ankles but had otherwise moved away. They didn't seem to notice.

"You're such a disappointment," my grandmother roared so she could be heard over the screaming and crying. A vine wrapped around the lower half of my father's face, cutting off his bellows and leaving us with only the hysterical sobs from my mother. Grandma leaned closer so my mother couldn't miss seeing her. "I'd hoped you'd grow up someday and come back to apologize to your oldest child, but you just had more and treated them even worse."

Still crying, my mother's eyes widened. "Mama?"

My grandmother's eyes narrowed. "I wish I were happy to hear you call me that again, but you're years too late."

My mother struggled to sit up, looking at the small crowd around her. She raised a hand, pointing a shaking finger once she'd gotten upright. "But you're dead. I saw the obituary."

Grandma turned to look at Gabe. "You didn't invite her to the funeral, did you?"

Gabe snorted. "Of course not," he said. "Why the hell would I subject myself to her again?"

"Good," our grandmother nodded before turning to her daughter again. "You're right, I am dead. I hate to break it to you, sunshine, but so are you. Maybe if you hadn't chosen a completely deranged loser to spend your life with, you'd still be alive."

"Maybe it's my fault," Beelzebub said. "I had no choice but to return, but maybe her issues stem from abandonment."

"Daddy?" my mother asked, bewildered. "Are you dead, too? I never could find you, and you just left, and..."

Yeah, she still had a shaky hold on all her marbles. I had to wonder how long it took for Gabe to come to grips with the situation when he fell, considering his death was just as unexpected.

"Listen up, egg donor," Gabe said, his face a mask of disgust. "You're dead. The child-raping fuckface you married and enabled killed you. You're in Hell because you enabled and assisted a child-raping fuckface, and because you took one of the few good things you ever did and beat the living shit out of him." He gave me a pointed look before turning his attention back to her. "I'm referring to my little brother, in case that wasn't extremely obvious. I'm sure you remember beating him until he blacked out, then leaving him the fuck on the kitchen floor . God, and I thought I hated you before I found out about that. You have no idea how much rage I've been dealing with since."

"Oh my God," our mother whispered, shaking harder as she paled. "Gabriel."

"No," Gabe said, pointing toward the golf carts. " That is Gabriel. The archangel. He and I are pretty good friends." Gabe waved at him, and Gabriel waved back with a grin. "Incidentally, he agrees with me that you're a weasel-faced twatwaffle. My name is Gabe , and no matter how often I told you that, you refused to call me anything but Gabriel." He pointed at me, glaring down at the pathetic woman before us. "That would be Zeke. Not Ezekiel, Zeke . And guess what? He'll have a better life now that you're dead."

She gaped at me, then Gabe, then her parents. "I..."

"Why did you do it?" I asked her, my voice low. "Why did you do your best to hurt all of us? Why did you hurt those other kids? Us, I could kind of guess it's because we look like Grandpa. You only tried to starve the ones that didn't look like your husband, after all. But what on God's green Earth would possess you to visit evil upon the kids in those photos I found?" I shook my head. "Satan's the evil one, you always told me. Well, guess what? Satan's the hot, pale guy standing next to your oldest kid, and he's one of the nicest people I've ever met. That evil came from you ."

My mother's mouth trembled, and she started to cry again. "I'm sorry," she wailed. "I'm so sorry."

"Oh, shut up," I snapped, finally losing my grip on the anger I'd felt rising since seeing her face. "I will not forgive you. None of us here will forgive you. Yahweh may forgive you after you do your restitution, but that's His nature. Abby didn't even come to see you off because you're not worth her time. How does it feel to know your children loathe you so much they can't even be bothered to deal with you after you're dead? How does it feel to have the child you called a faggot that the world was better off without standing over you and letting you know you've ended up in the place you taught me to fear?"

Gabe made a face at me. "She seriously said that?"

I nodded. "Yeah, when they called looking for someone to collect your gooey remains." I turned my glare back to our mother. "That's another thing, incidentally. He didn't jump. He was murdered. But the best part? He's not down here because he's gay. Yahweh and Jesus couldn't care less about that." I smirked. "I've met him, by the way. Jesus. Great guy, but he thinks you're really damned weird for worshiping him when you'd happily lynch anyone like him today. But you don't need to worry about any of that now because you're going to spend lifetimes in agony while we go on with our lives." I looked at Gabe and winced. "Existences. Whatever."

Beelzebub crouched down and stared at his daughter, shaking his head. "I wanted to tell you something when I saw you again."

My mother opened her mouth, blinking rapidly, still clearly in shock. "Daddy..."

"My name is not Byron," he told her. "My name is Beelzebub." His features morphed, his skin changing color and wings sprouting from his back. His horns and tail reached out from his skin, and soon he was himself again. "I'm a demon," he told my mother, whose mouth was agape in a silent scream of horror. "Which makes you a half-demon."

Gabe sighed and went back to his usual blue self. He'd gotten a lot faster at that since we'd met. "Do you remember when you lost custody of me?" he asked her. "When I told Grandma I wanted to go to Hell because Heaven sounded boring, and you called me a child of a demon? Well, you weren't wrong, you steaming pile of dog shit. " He looked at me. "Are we done here?"

I stared at our mother, who was still quaking and trying to scream, her eyes wide. "When I was running from you, you called me a son of a bitch. You know, right after you threatened to kill me. Well, you were right about that, too. You're definitely a bitch. If you ever reach a point where you want to tell any of us why you did what you did, let the demons who will be watching over you know. Maybe I'll listen to what you have to say. Maybe I won't. It will all depend on whether I think the answers are important or not. Looking down at you like this, I'm starting to realize that maybe I don't care why you did all those horrible things. Because the fact of the matter is that you did them, and without remorse at the time. So have fun screaming yourself to sleep. Me? I'm going to go get donuts with my brother." I turned to walk away, then paused, looking over my shoulder. "By the way, I'm gay."

I headed straight to the golf carts after that, the sounds of my mother's screaming following me, and found myself wrapped in a tight, glittery hug. "You okay?" Gabriel asked me softly.

"Dunno," I admitted. "But I'm pretty sure I'll get there someday."

"Yeah," Gabriel agreed. "Of that, I have no doubt."

Lucy and Gabriel drove everyone back to the office after encasing my parents with vines again. "I'll go back and finish processing them," Lucy told us on the way. "I think you all need a nice relaxing evening after this."

"We were having a nice relaxing evening," I pointed out before rubbing at my face. "No one should have to go through this. How many kids end up dead because of people like them, with no one to help them? I was lucky because I had you all, but..." That feeling had been welling up in me for a while, but seeing my parents again brought it to my mind. "The world needs more people willing to stand up for the abused and neglected."

I'd made comments like that more than once, but this time, something within me whispered that I could be one of those people, and I felt something click into place. I could be one of those people. I had the support and resources to make that happen, and I could put my experiences growing up to good use for once, much like Rose had ultimately used hers. I couldn't save everyone, but if I could help even one kid escape their own personal Hell, it would make a difference. I felt a warmth grow inside me at the thought. This was it. This was my purpose. I had found meaning in the years of maltreatment I'd suffered, a way to take something horrific and put it toward helping others. A way to pass on all the help I'd been given ever since that first meeting with Madame Persephone.

Except I'd have to leave everyone but Abby behind. The warmth faded into a painful iciness, and I sighed. It made my choice that much harder.

I needed to talk to Stefan.