12. Pax

T he gods portalled the angel statues back to Dionysus’s place. Benji could have just touched them and did it, but any time we asked him to poof anything heavy, he’d complain about an old rugby injury and say he couldn’t. Benji hated team sports and had never played rugby a day in his life. The most tolerance Benji had for sports was if a team happened to have attractive players unless it was women’s basketball. That was the exception. Benji loved women’s basketball.

I couldn’t transform them back for us to question them until we figured out how to contain them. There wasn’t anything written because the angels just weren’t here this much. When they attacked Kat’s village, it was brutal and quick. The most they were able to learn was that their wings were their weakness.

“You could just turn his wings back and then we can pluck his feathers like we’re cooking chicken,” Benji said.

“You love fried chicken, but you’ve gone on several rants about how the process of slaughtering chickens is morally reprehensible. How are you going to pluck his feathers when you have to leave the house if we’re slaughtering a chicken?” Cas asked.

Yeah, Benji left the house and then ate thirds if we were having fried chicken.

“That’s different. Chickens are dicks, but they have every right to be. They don’t have the ‘rawr, rawr dinosaur’ thing going on anymore to do much damage. They are pissed that they used to be apex predators and now we have to build them a coop to protect them from my degenerate cats.

“I feel bad that all their soft feathers get plucked. I don’t give a fuck about angel feathers. These guys are responsible for me losing my parents, Pax losing his eyesight, Jezebel getting taken, Calamity getting tortured, and they starved Medusa. You should also shift just the top of his head and his forehead so I can give him a shitty haircut, steal some tattoo equipment, and tattoo a cock and balls on his stupid forehead.”

Yeah, Benji was spiraling. He already killed the priest who hurt him when he was a kid. It didn’t really make him feel better. Killing Hannibal wouldn’t either. If we let him anywhere near these angels before we could question them, Benji would annihilate them. We found our center and Medusa had been amazing for all of us, but Benji really wasn’t going to feel better until he found out what happened to his parents, no matter how many people related to the Coalition he killed.

“We can’t do anything until we know for sure,” Cas said.

“What about holy oil? Isn’t that a thing on that TV show? Can’t we self actualize that into a thing?” Benji asked.

“Doesn’t work like that,” Dionysus said. “I suppose it could become a thing with the angels here, but that kind of thing is difficult now with everyone putting everything on social media.”

Cas’s phone went off. It was that phone. Cas had a personal phone and a Coalition stuff phone. He only gave the personal phone number to friends and family and he’d sometimes let that one go to voicemail if he was busy. He always answered the Coalition phone. He put it on speaker this time because he hated repeating himself and we probably needed someone who could portal.

“Hello?”

“This is Michael.”

That was all he said, and he sounded very calm for someone who called that particular number. He also seemed pretty certain we should know who he was. Cas was getting angry because we were in the middle of shit and we didn’t have time for some asshole to find this number a prank call.

“You aren’t Cher or Britney, bitch,” Benji said.

The man on the other end of the line just chuckled.

“I kind of am. We were never given last names. This is the archangel, Michael. We have a mutual problem and I can give you answers.”

“How do we know this isn’t a trick?” Dionysus asked.

“Well, I’m alone and vastly outmatched with your gods and furies. The faction that has the god-banishing sigil has kept the incantation close to their chests. Even if I had it, by the time I found blood and a place to paint it while avoiding being turned to stone by Medusa, your furies would have melted my brain, I’ll even meet you in a public place, but it can’t be too public because the angels who have been causing all your issues also want me dead. They’d attack.”

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’t want to 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 believe anything Michael 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 he does know 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, and the furies fucking him up. He basically knows all this because he said it himself. 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 was hoping Michael 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. I needed Michael to be decent and have acceptable answers why three people in my coven went through what they did with the Coalition.