7. Medusa

W e weren’t left waiting long. None of us could figure out where the angels could have gone, but Lucky called us for help shortly after we figured out they weren’t at headquarters. They didn’t go anywhere we thought they were going to go. Lucky got a call, and he didn’t want to leave Pepper unprotected, so he called us.

“The angels are trying to break Hannibal and Saul out of federal prison. You need to get over there. They don’t care who they kill or what kind of monster they let out onto the streets!” Lucky yelled.

“Fuck!” Dionysus yelled. “If you can’t portal, grab someone who can.”

I hadn’t figured out much about my fury magic or how to rein it in, but I’d thankfully figured out the portalling part. Enough that Pax and Cas trusted me to get them to the prison and grabbed me instead of someone who had been doing this for much longer.

It was utter chaos when we got to the prison. The angels clearly had problems with doors. They’d just blasted a hole in the side of the building. There were dead humans who had been near the wall and some of them had come out fighting and died where they stood.

The angels were nowhere to be found. There were men in orange jump suits peeking around the rubble and dead bodies to see if the coast was clear to make a break for it. At least a few of them had Nazi tattoos.

“Oh, fuck no,” Jezebel said. “I got this, bitches. Cover your ears.”

Yeah, having a succubus-siren hybrid as a new bestie was always going to be a good thing, but when she told you to cover your ears, you’d better listen. Jezebel squared her shoulders, unbuttoned the top three buttons on her shirt, and tossed her hair over her shoulders.

“Hello, boys. Boy, is it my lucky day. Come a little closer and it can be your lucky day, too.”

Yeah, Jezebel was about to do mean things to stupid boys, just at a prison instead of a bar. Fuck, I loved her. They took one look at her and made a beeline towards her. Jezebel waited until they were all either outside the hole or at it when she unleashed her siren side on them.

A shadow demon-and-werewolf hybrid was pretty deadly, but so was a siren-succubus combo. Everyone dropped. Jezebel didn’t kill them, she just knocked them out until they could be collected and brought back to their cells.

Several of us here got rounded up and the justice system completely bypassed us simply because we were supernatural. These men were serving their time. Jezebel was only going to kill them if she needed to. She just cracked her neck like a badass.

“I have a killing song, but I figure we should just use that on the angels.”

“Oh, fuck, are you here to help?” a man screamed, falling out of the hole in the wall.

He was in an officer uniform and he looked terrified. Jezebel started humming to calm him down.

“Yes,” Cas said, stepping forward. “We know the angels came. Are they still here?”

“I think so. When they landed, we thought they were here to redeem to the prisoners, so a few people went out to greet them. They just blasted a hole in the wall and started killing anyone who wouldn’t tell them where two new prisoners were being kept.

“We couldn’t fight them. We can’t carry guns in the prison because it’s a danger if a prisoner gets ahold of one. The ones we do have for riots have rubber bullets. Everything we have to subdue prisoners just seemed to piss them off.

“We don’t want to help them, but we also don’t want to die. We’ve been trying to manage the humans trying to escape, but the angels are checking each wing of the prison and if the prisoners they are looking for aren’t there, they just let everyone out. We need help.”

“We divide up,” Dionysus said. “Jezebel, Kat, and Calamity can help the guards with the prisoners. The rest of us will deal with the angels. Any idea what direction they went in?”

“Some of the guys set up in surveillance. They were trying to keep the cells locked from there, but the angels started breaking the electronics after they opened the doors so they couldn’t.

“The prisoners they want are in solitary. Basically, people in here either lost someone to them or they just don’t like what they stand for. Rapists and sex traffickers never do well in prison. The people who believed in their mission feel like they betrayed them on account of the raping. The only people who are still on their side are the master race folks who think that’s all supernaturals are good for. There was no way in hell we could have put them in gen pop.”

I was pretty sure whatever the various prison factions were intending to do to Hannibal and Saul was probably much less gory and violent than what Benji was planning to do to them, but it would be rather poetic if their own kind turned on them.

But we didn’t have time for that. We had a bunch of scared correctional officers. Their weapons wouldn’t do much against us either, but we needed to let them know we were here to help. We portalled outside the surveillance room door and knocked.

“Listen, you can wait for your people to send SWAT, or you can break protocol and let people who can actually deal with angels help you. For the record, you’ve got several gods, four furies, a polar bear shifter, a smith, and a very dangerous and unhinged hybrid. We’ve got friends taking care of your escaped prisoners. We just need to look at those cameras so we know where to go,” Cas said, taking the lead.

“How do we know you aren’t angels changing tactics?”

“Okay, that’s just offensive,” Dionysus said. “None of us are dicks. We also don’t get feathers everywhere. Look at the cameras. Are we wearing stupid armor like it’s the dark ages? No. This shirt is Armani. Use your brain.”

“Think about what happened before we knocked. If we were angels, wouldn’t we just kick the door in, kill all of you, and take what we need from the cameras?” Pax asked.

Yeah, Pax was generally the voice of reason unless he was naked. They opened the door and let us in, finally. They looked like they’d been in a serious brawl and their clothes were singed. I was guessing the bruises and cuts were from the inmates and the burns were from the angels.

We didn’t dally. We got what we needed from the cameras. There were about sixty angels split between two wings of the prison.

“How soon before they make it to solitary?” I asked.

“It’s literally the hole. It’s underground and you have to go through three thick metal doors to get to the stairs. That’s to keep them in and to keep the rest of the prisoners out. People go down there for acting out, but they stay there long enough for the people they acted out against to hopefully forget about it. Sometimes, it’s still not enough. Do we need to unlock the doors?”

They hadn’t made it there, but they were getting close.

“I’ll guard the door to solitary with Hephaestus and Athena. The rest of you should split up and take the angels. You’ll need a god and a fury with each team. Go play, my love,” Hades said, giving Persephone a little love spank.

“Uh, problem. The angels don’t have phones, but they seem to be able to communicate. They just murdered a prisoner, zoomed off with his body, and now they are fingerpainting on the wall with his blood.”

Shit. They were painting that god-banishing symbol on the walls. Before anyone could do anything, all of our gods were zapped out of the prison.