13. Medusa

D ionysus and I always hit up the Righteous Fig when we stayed here. It had been owned by a nest of vampires for the longest time. They kept the outside looking as shitty as possible. Half the bad graffiti on the walls was their work. They had large planters full of sand and cigarette butts all over the outside, even though they didn’t allow smoking anywhere on the property because of all the people with enhanced senses of smell.

But the inside? It was plush and hedonistic with only the best alcohol and food. The booths were private, but they had a floor if anyone wanted to dance. I loved coming here, but today, I was nervous. Michael could very well be on our side, but could any explanation he gave for this be enough?

Benji lost his entire childhood and still had no idea what happened to his parents. Pax was scarred and blind. I nearly starved to death and still had nightmares. I could tell Jezebel was trying to be strong instead of dealing with her trauma because Calamity got the worst of it out of the three of us.

I think we all wanted to know why this happened, but would it help with anything?

I knew what angels felt like now. As soon as we portalled into the Righteous Fig, I could sense one. His power felt the same, but there was no malice in his aura like the other angels. He felt like he desperately wanted to help us because he thought we could help him, too.

When I reached out with my fury magic, he’d done terrible things in the name of war, but he didn’t want to do them again. Michael wanted an end to the violence, but that was all I could sense. I couldn’t really read his motivation as to why he only came now and didn’t feel the need to set the record straight two hundred years ago when the other angels started all of this.

“He feels like he’s here to help, but I can’t get a read on why he’s just here now, ” I said.

“You’ll get there,” Alecto said. “I’m getting vibes that he couldn’t come before now. This one has seen some shit. Let’s get over there.”

Dionysus took the lead and walked over to Michael. Now that I was up close, yeah, I got it. He had a large scar on his face and I could see them on his neck disappearing down into his shirt. I could tell he was covered in them because he was trying to cover them with his clothes. He wasn’t dressed like the other angels. He was dressed like he lived here instead of in armor. He had the same haunted look in his eyes as everyone who had been taken by the Coalition.

We got a booth and ordered food and drink. We just waited for him to talk.

“Okay, first things first. I should tell you about our realm. A very long time ago, there was a certain hierarchy. Only certain angels were allowed near the Father. If he wanted to give an order, it was like a game of telephone. It passed through the various choirs of angels until it got to the correct one and a lot of times, the message got distorted, as you can imagine.

“Very early on, a large portion of the Powers choir fell in love with the mortal realm and wanted to live there, so they did. The Father wanted the other Powers to go talk to them and ask them to come back home.

“But by the time the message got to the other Powers, the Father’s message had been twisted to the point that the other Powers thought the Father found the Nephilim children to be abominations that needed to be killed and the angels brought back by force, so that was what happened.”

I saw Kat stiffen. I knew she vividly remembered that massacre and now for her to hear it wasn’t even supposed to happen like that. The whole thing could have been avoided with more direct communication. It was unfortunate, but I didn’t see how it related to what happened when the angels started the Coalition two hundred years ago.

“This caused an entire chasm. The Powers that had their children murdered were furious and their friends that had to do the killing weren’t really pleased about being given that order. They eventually found out that wasn’t what the original order was and that the Father would have let them stay once they had that conversation.

“They demanded answers and wanted change. Clearly, the system was flawed if the Father’s message could be distorted like that. Unfortunately, while all of that was going on, the Father was mourning his son’s murder at the hands of the Romans. He took it very hard and withdrew.

“The Powers refused to give him grace to mourn because they were also mourning the loss of their children. Grief manifests in many ways. The Powers wanted revenge on the other choirs because we all knew that message had been intentionally distorted.

“A lot of us didn’t blame them and it divided the angels. It was basically the upper levels of the hierarchy against the lower. The archangels thought we should have an investigation to look into which angels were responsible and put them on trial.

“You have to realize, archangels are the strongest of the angels magically and we have better weapons. Mortals are more familiar with us because we’re the ones who usually come here and appear to them. We’re pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to the hierarchy and they loathe the fact that they know us and build statues of us.

“There’s only twelve of us and we’re all known to humans. None of us have ever met the Father. We get our messages from him as they get passed down to angels closest to our rank. We definitely questioned a few of them after that. Our idea was a good one. The Powers and their allies would have gotten retribution and the upper angels would have rooted out corruption in their ranks.

“No one would go for it. The lower angels didn’t want a trial without also getting rid of the hierarchy. The upper angels refused to even admit they’d done anything wrong and insisted the other Powers just misinterpreted the message because they aren’t as smart. It finally exploded into civil war.”

“No offense, but how does angel drama translate to them coming here and starting the Coalition?” Benji asked.

I think we all had that question, but I had a feeling we’d be even more confused if Michael just skipped to that.

“I’m getting there. This was thousands of years ago and we are still fighting that war. The Powers knew that at any moment, the Father could come out of his grief and settle this. They lost their faith in him. They thought this whole mess could have been avoided in the first place if he talked to all his angels instead of a select few and honestly, they weren’t wrong about that.

“The Powers thought if he stepped in, he’d punish them like he did Lucifer instead of making it right, so they kept leaving our realm for research. They found the god-banishing sigil they gave the Coalition and have used against you and graffitied our realm with it.

“The Father was banished from his own realm. No one knows where he ended up and he won’t be able to find his way back until we destroy all the sigils. Not only were they everywhere, but they are hidden and our realm is vast. We’ve torn places apart and found another sigil on the third search. That sigil wasn’t meant for you. It was meant to keep the Father from intervening if he ended up here.”

“I’ve experienced that sigil,” Dionysus said. “You know something is there, but it’s invisible to you. I knew exactly where they were holding my mate because the address was available, but when I drove there, I couldn’t see it and I walked on the grounds where it was supposed to be and it was like it wasn’t there.

“I’ve only been banished with it once, but I ended up in Valhalla. I nearly got assaulted by a Viking for spilling his mead when I popped over there, but I’ve realm traveled before and was able to get back to the jail until my friends could break up the sigil.

“None of us have met your Father before because he’s never been really friendly with us. If he’s been banished from his home, he could be anywhere, but I don’t think he’s here. If he is, he’s isolating himself so the rest of us haven’t sensed him and tried to reach out.”

Dionysus ended up all the way in Valhalla? He brought me there a few times. We both loved it there. That was probably his shortest visit ever.

“I ended up in Duat and had to deal with a sulking Anubis because I didn’t want to play chess,” Hades said.

“I got sent to Mag Mell. It’s one of my favorite places, but I couldn’t stay,” Persephone said.

“My ass got dropped straight into Olympus and I got out of there as soon as I could. How’d the rest of you avoid having to see Zeus again?” Hephaestus said.

“Uh, no one knows how the god-banishing symbol works or the angels would have fetched their god to put an end to this because it spilled over to our realm,” Kat said.

“I’d say the evil angels should have read the user manual before they used that shit, but I’ve basically had to get on YouTube and watch videos of other people figuring shit out because most user manuals are useless,” Benji said.

Michael cleared his throat.

“Yes, anyway. It’s been long enough that we know the truth about other gods. Most of us have figured out how we were created, though several factions consider it lies and heresy. I know about fading. He was banished from his realm while grieving his son. If he hasn’t faded, he could just be done with us.

“The fading part is important because it’s where your Coalition comes in. The angels who banished the Father expected him to fight to come home. They didn’t want him, but they wanted him to want them. They expected an influx of miracles to alert everyone where he ended up.

“I’m pretty sure they were hoping since he couldn’t go home, the civil war would end because the upper choirs would leave to go be with him and they could have the realm to themselves to build a system they thought was fair. Which is completely unhinged because the Powers wanted to live in this realm and most of the upper angels would terrify mortals. It’s why the Father usually sends the archangels to deal with them.”

“Sorry, but I’m still not understanding how three members of my pack became collateral damage for all of this. They dragged nearly every supernatural on the planet into this and they did nothing to the angels. Or why you’re waiting until now to do anything about it,” Cas said.

“Because I couldn’t. Like I said, the archangels are the strongest of the angels. We never picked a side of the civil war. We divided up. Some of us stayed and tried to mediate and the others have been searching for our Father. The ones that stayed were taken prisoner and had a feather stolen. We were tortured, and they tried to force us to fight for them.

“A lot of angels are dead. Our choirs are in much lower numbers than they used to be. Those of us who were being held prisoner by the Powers were able to get our feathers back and escape when they just abandoned our realm. We came here because we don’t want your realm to end up like ours.”

Well, fuck. That explained why I saw a lot of us in Michael and the scars. It explained why he didn’t come before now. I still had no idea why a good bit of people in this room had to go through what they did because the angels were having a civil war in an entirely different realm.

“Anyway, to your main question. Why they started the Coalition and what they are up to now. They are essentially children who are angry with their father and are breaking things. They were trying to get his attention so he would show himself, but they needed to create an enemy for the masses. They capitalized on mass hysteria that was starting to die down and basically threw gasoline on it.

“You were cannon fodder, and it didn’t draw the attention of our Father. They ended up pissing off entirely different gods who swooped in to fix it. There is no plan. I could hear everything while I was their prisoner. They were pissed when the wrong gods showed up and put an end to this, and they just reacted.

“They are making it up as they go along. They were the ones who banished the Father, and they hadn’t destroyed any of the sigils that would allow him to come home. They constantly talk about how much they hate him, but they are hurt they did all this, and he never showed up.

“Now that I know the other gods were banished to entirely different realms, he might not even know what’s going on here. The various realms are all connected to this one by belief. We can watch this one from certain rooms, but we can’t watch any other realms.

“If he ended up on a different realm and chose to make it his home, he might not have access to the room to view what’s going on here on Earth and he definitely wouldn’t know about the civil war.

“The whole story about him intending for his son to die was false. He loved that boy and had plans for him. From what I’ve been told, it shattered him when he was murdered and he was angry with humans. If he ended up in a different realm, he may have chosen to stay there. I’ve never met him, but back when things were functional, he would have sent the archangels to deal with it if someone was killing in his name. I have to think he doesn’t know.”

So, all of this was because a few angels had some daddy issues? That didn’t make any of this better. What happened to them was terrible. Kat was there, and she told us how awful it was. It was even worse now that we knew it wasn’t even supposed to happen like that. The shitty system they had allowed it to go down and I could even see wanting to change it.

I got not trusting a god you’d never met would have your back in a dispute like that. I’d actually met a ton of gods and there were only a select few I’d trust with my plants, much less anything major.

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard. I got kidnapped when I was seven and I still don’t know if my parents are alive or dead. They blinded Pax, starved Medusa, and tortured Calamity. Do you know what a shit hole those places are? They don’t just cut us off from our magic. They don’t even feed us appropriately for our race and we all have certain needs we didn’t get! This is stupid. It’s all so fucking stupid!” Benji yelled.

I felt the exact same way and I’m pretty sure all of us did, but we didn’t need a hybrid to lose control. Michael wasn’t our enemy. He was also a victim of the other angels. We didn’t need Benji tearing him apart. I wrapped my arms around him.

“I know. But now that we know why and we have Michael, maybe we can fix this for good. Athena and Hera are looking into their victims. They will find out what happened to your parents.”

Because making the Coalition illegal and changing the humans’ minds would make things better for a lot of people, but Benji wasn’t going to fully heal until he found out for certain what happened to his parents.

Now that we’d made peace, I knew what Athena was like when she got her teeth into something. I could tell she liked Benji because he wasn’t afraid of her.

We needed to come up with a plan because we could fix this for everyone, but as soon as we did, we were focusing on Benji.