There's a very simple way to describe the following days: I lost my moral self fairly quickly, and not one person, including myself, seemed to mind.
I had a lot of sex, for one, which I pretty quickly discovered was a lot better than not having sex. Most of my followers were willing to lay with me, and occasionally I'd experiment with them- but I preferred Lil.
Who, by the way, was really the only one who seemed a bit concerned in my sudden shift in behavior. She'd still sleep with me, and I hope she still enjoyed that part of our friendship, but I wasn't blind to the looks of worry she sometimes gave me.
I had taken to sleeping in her bed whether or not we had engaged in sexual relations the night before, and every morning she'd reach out to touch my wing and catch my eye. Then I'd normally laugh a bit and kiss her, but her seemingly negative outlook was starting to wear on me.
I was feeling good. Real good, actually. I didn't leave the church building much myself, but I'd wake up each day, shower, and fix my hair in the mirror. I had gotten myself hair gel, and it made my hair ridiculous looking. I liked it.
Then I'd eat breakfast- these days I just asked one of my followers to prepare me something I'd never had to eat before, and then I'd go about eating it. It was always different, and I partook in the same sort of ritual for lunch and dinner.
I'd have sex with whoever whenever the mood struck. I wasn't really that demanding about it, I thought, as I really did try to establish a sort of conversation between myself and my chosen partner. Tried to make sure we had some compatible personalities before I let myself get absorbed in anything else. Then I'd promptly forget about half the things I had learned, but at least I held onto their names. I was good with names.
I was starting to drink too. It never had done much for me, so now I had turned to the heavy alcohols. I'd spend hours drunk off my mind, puke it all up, sleep for half a day and then go at it again. I also started smoking, since it didn't really hinder my mental state. It was sort of awful, but whatever. Now was a time of indulgence.
I was getting a bit lazy, I guess, so much so that it really did take me a good two weeks to check up on the outside world. I didn't feel particularly safe going outside myself, so I usually relied on the information Lil or Jeff gave me. But Lil rarely seemed happy to approach me these days, so it was up to Jeff to relay whatever I wanted to know.
Jeff was a sort of tall and, I eventually realized, good looking man who always had a little bit of black stubble on his face, even though I had seen him shave regularly. After a few days of trial and error, I realized I didn't really enjoy sex with men. But Jeff had been one of the better ones, and I could tell he had felt our more intimate connection had bonded us to be close friends.
"It's all over the news that you're back. The streets as well. A couple of our sister sects are pretty emotional about it- one's claiming you're an impostor, while another is sure you came back to life. You know, like Jesus? There's also this one anonymous group currently trying to get our building shut down- they've been protesting all week."
"Protesting what?" We were sitting in a makeshift living room at the end of the second floor hallway, Jeff getting up from his chair to pace whenever he felt nervous and myself leaning back and eating a particularly bland sandwich.
"It's not clear. You? They also released hundred of mice into our entry hall the other day, if you heard of that, then called in a city inspector for a health code violation. We got rid of most of the mice at this point, we think."
"How have The Few been dealing with all this?" I hadn't really heard about everyone's favorite group of aristocrats for a while now.
"They haven't. I suppose it's within their business, considering everything is their business, but they haven't released any sort of official message on it. There's rumors Blair Park's a worshipper, actually, but that's probably just the tabloids."
"Blair Park?"
"New Gemini. Old one was killed a half a year ago by, uh, you I think." It was sort of an awkward subject. He dropped it promptly. "Stacy Baruth is still trying to see you. Been by every morning, but we've been turning him away on your orders."
"My orders? I quite like Stacy."
"You told us to send him away forever three days ago."
"When was that? The morning? I was high then. You could have just alerted me the next day." I frowned, causing Jeff to reel back with a sort of panic. It was odd how much power I still held over these people, even as I fell off my pedestal.
"He's here now."
"Like here? Like downstairs, waiting?" I stuffed the last of my meal into my mouth in a hurry and on impulse brushed my hair.
I suppose if I was the ruler of these demons, Stacy was the ruler of me. Ever since I had ceased my daily worship to Michael, and blocked him from my mind, I was dully stuck with no one to idolize but myself. And I had been getting good at egomania, but I still preferred a god to myself any day.
And Stacy was no god, but he was a damn good devil. The moment he saw me he made no sign of recognition, he just began to walk away. And I knew instantly I was to follow, and it was with a clear mind that I fell into a step behind him.
"You look different." He greeted. "Your hair looks stupid, and I have to say, I miss the orange."
"What's happening here?"
"Court summons. Glenn would like to try you for your crimes. It's good to get this over with now."
"Glenn Illuzi?" I still knew the names of The Few from the last time I had been in Hell. Glenn was the Pisces, a practicer of the law who was particularly renowned for not practicing the law.
"I haven't been outside in four days." I said, stretching.
"And you haven't spoken to me despite being in Hell for three weeks." Stacy said, and it took all my willpower not to feel ashamed. "You know you still owe me."
"Didn't I get a point off for killing Alexander Scott way back?"
"He's not dead."
"Oh, but he was."
"I'm well aware Alexander is, say, mortality-challenged. But I asked for you to kill him, not make an attempt. I might as well hold this as another debt for all the good you did with it."
"Who's morally challenged?" A tall woman swung out of the crowd with a sort of gleeful energy.
"Glenn, right?" I tried to act like I didn't immediately recognize her.
"You're going to court. I'm going to try you for your crimes." Glenn said. She was talking with a sort of childish, mocking tone despite her professional appearance. "I'm a lawyer."
"Hm."
"A lawyer is someone who maintains the law. In Hell, of course, we like to keep it simple, so I'm also the judge and the jury. And the opposing lawyer, of course, so I'll be defending you as well as accusing you."
"How's that going to work?"
"Oh, don't worry. I'm very fair."
The halls of the courthouse were all sort of beige and tan wood, with washed out ash tiles and a polyester ceiling. There seemed to be only one actual courtroom in the building, a small little cube that offered a narrow hallway for the case to occur in and little space for seats.
I was to stand on a little floor tile on one side of the room while Glenn had the rest of the space. The few people that had entered with us sat behind her. Stacy chose to stand right next to me.
"They're both weak, don't worry. Glenn lets murderers off all the time if they sweet-talk her enough, while Lane- the police chief- will crumble to pretty much any emotional response you give her. I can't have you in prison or any sort of custody, so play nice."
Glenn had been looking over some papers in the back, but now she came to stand just inches before me to stare me in the eye.
"You're here for fleeing a crime scene, creating a crime scene, manslaughter, and killing a member of The Few. How do you plead?"
"Huh?" I said. "'The Few' is honestly you guys' formal name?"
Stacy elbowed me. "Guilty or not guilty."
"Oh. Mostly guilty. I didn't kill Marie."
"How did she end up dead then? Besides the gunshot wound." Glenn asked.
"A soldier killed her, but then I killed the soldier."
"I object to that statement on the grounds that there's no proof."
"I don't know how to use a gun."
"No proof. And besides, you still killed a soldier. A lot of soldiers, if the crime scene is to be believed, but you just admitted guilty to at least one. Is that a crime? Killing a soldier?" She turned to look at an elderly woman behind her, the police chief Lane Brock.
"No. Killing a civilian is."
"She was a civilian any moment she wasn't in combat, so ha!
That's a good five years."
"But she was in combat when I killed her. We were fighting."
"But she was in the city, and thus, not in the combat field. Trust me, I'm a lawyer. You didn't know what the word lawyer meant when you walked through this door."
"Actually," Lane interrupted. "I'm not sure that argument's going to hold much ground overall."
"You're right." Glenn sighed. "Best to catch him with smaller charges. For example, I have a statement here from a witness who says you fell through the ceiling while she was getting a tooth filling and ran off carrying two bloody, crying children. How do you plead?"
"Yes." She leaned over me. "I mean, guilty."
She turned back to the older woman behind her. "Alright- he said guilty to that. What charge is that? Breaking and entering?"
"Yes."
"That's probably not much jail time. Can we pin him for something to do with the children? Child endangerment? Kidnapping? Infanticide?"
"Hey, I didn't kill them! They're alive and fine."
"We have no proof for that. Anyways, Lane?"
The greying woman rifled through the pages of a small blue book. "We have... 'Fathering a child', 'Giving birth to a child', 'Having a child', 'Raising a child', 'Harming a child'... None of the ones you were looking for, sorry."
"Holy shit, do you guys just let your children suffer?"
Glenn answered. "Look, those aren't even crimes. They're just not allowed. There's a fine for each. We're not endangering our kids, we just keep forgetting to write down laws regarding them. I mean, if someone breaks the law I'll probably write them down for at least one crime anyways, doesn't matter if it's not the one they did."
"Isn't that illegal?"
She smiled broadly. "No." Then she cracked her knuckles and fixed her posture. "What else can we pin him on, Lane? I'm thinking 'resisting the law,' 'showing disrespect in court,' 'reckless endangerment of government property' and 'being an angel'."
"Being an angel is a good one. That's a life sentence. There's also 'associating with an angel', which is sort of a given considering he is one.'"
Glenn smiled with excitement. "Let's see how many years we can tack onto that. What about the rest?"
"You have no proof I'm an angel." I said.
"We found your ring-sword at the crime scene, and almost every body had been killed in a way that suggested either a very diverse blade collection or an angelsword."
"There's no definite proof I ever used it though. Or that some other angel ran in and did all that for me. Or that I wasn't just using an angel's skin to trick the blade into thinking I was one- the exact technique you used five years ago."
"You came down from Heaven as a direct messenger and spoke to all of The Few about peace a couple months back. I was there. Lane was there."
"There's no proof I'm not some lunatic off the street who made all that up for attention."
"Your name is Nichael, you threw a very genuine fit when someone said the word 'Michael' wrongly, and you run a cult that worships you for, you know... being an angel."
"You can't prove that." Stacy laughed when I said it, so I repeated myself. "You can't prove that at all."
"We have many members of your little church that say they've seen your wings before."
"They were on drugs."
"You drugged them?"
"Sure."
"Okay, that's-"
"Unlawful consent breaching." Lane interrupted. "Five years."
"Are most things here five years?"
"It's a nice amount of time, I think, for someone to spend in jail. So yes." Glenn said.
"At what point do you act as my defense lawyer again?"
"I always am. See, I'm being real light on you. I'm a lot tougher than this. I could be yelling at you, getting into a fistfight, call you derogatory names, but the part of me that's legally obliged to support you is holding that part of me back."
There was a pause. The courtroom was utterly silent.
"That was a joke."
"Was it?"
"Me defending you is part of phase two. First I attack, then I defend, then I attack again and so on until I award points to each side debate-style and declare a winner. Now show me your wings."
I tried to roll my eyes as sarcastically as I could, like I wasn't about to stress myself out considerably. But I pulled a wry face and tried to look witty.
It really took all I had not to just relax and let my wing out. There was honestly no easy way to do this- it just hurt a fuckton and felt like I was ripping my shoulder in half. But I slowly managed to regain myself, and appropriated my Grace into a slighter different shape. I couldn't pull off much more than a wing, of course, and even then I didn't have enough Grace to have more than one. But I made it sharp and dark and spiky, and I figured that was enough.
"One wing?" Glenn said. Her composure skills were either excellent or I had failed to surprise her. Stacy next to me was laughing quietly. "Show me the other."
"Don't have one, I'm afraid. Angels ripped it off."
"They ripped it off but left you alive?"
"Yes. They also killed my little sister. So naturally, I killed them and made my escape back to Hell, where I assumed I would be safe. But you know, I came back here for safety and I'm honestly feeling so threatened right now." The strain of holding my wing was starting to wear on my back and my voice, and I folded it back away.
"...The Deadchild girl?" Lane asked quietly from the back.
"Yes. She's very dead now."
"I knew her when she was very young. They had her working in the library most of her life. She was smaller than Logan. A better climber with small and quick fingers." I could tell Lane was mourning Tegan more than I ever had. Not like I was heartless. It's just that I was a bit too late to start getting depressed about a death that I had both caused and watched happen ten months ago. It hurt when I let myself linger, but not when I used her as a gambit. And speaking of...
"What a sweet little girl." Lane sighed.
"Oh, keep it together!" Glenn snapped. "She was thirty years old and not actually his sister. He just knows you'd rather sell your soul for the orphans or whatever instead of seek out justice."
"I actually did sell my soul for children, you know. The old elementary I used to work at had a fire and I-"
"Yeah, heard this one a million times. Anyways, Nichael, you're lying to me."
"It's actually Michael Castellano."
"Castellano? TC's last name Schulman."
"She had about a million different names. Castellano was one of them."
"I've never heard of it."
"She was my sister, not yours."
Stacy had been on and off laughing at my attempts to convince Glenn I was actually a demon, but now and again he'd lightly tap his fingers on his chair to remind me to watch myself. I couldn't afford to trip in my own game.
"I doubt it." She gave a broad smile that only reminded me how willing she was to spend all day in this room.
"Shouldn't the wing have clinched it for you? No offense, but I'm pretty sure angels don't have wings like mine."
"No proof." She laughed, and I sort of felt like I wanted to punch her in the face. Honestly, I realized Stacy had already told me I had to appeal to her ego to win her over, but I really didn't want to do that.
"What can I do to make you feel satisfied?" I tried, hoping it'd be a compromise to my morals that would still reach the same end.
She shrugged with great humor. "Go to jail with at least three life sentences?"
"Do you still have the blade you found at that crime scene? The one you think is mine?"
"It's with evidence." She said smugly, but then she ran off to the corner of the room to a small plastic blue box, which she unlatched to retrieve the blade. She literally threw it at me, and I had to get on the floor to pick it back up again.
"Do you have some string?"
She snorted. "Why would a courtroom have string?" But then she returned to the same blue evidence case and removed the rubber bands from two bags. Again, she just sort of threw them angrily at me. I wasn't really sure why she was so upset, but I guess she could sense she was about to lose this case.
"And a knife?" It's funny how if I was with any other people, they'd be begging me to stop. But Lane was looking on with sad interest and Stacy was simply rolling his eyes as Glenn pulled a short blade off a harness under her pants leg. I dodged her throw prematurely, but to my surprise she walked over to hand the knife to me carefully.
"Observe." I said, and I almost had to laugh at how silly everything was seeming right now. I was going to cut a nice gash in my skin to prove to a bunch of demons I was one of them, and it was totally going to work. And then I'd go home to drink and fuck the rest of the day. And that was my life now.
I cut on my upper arm a nice thin strip of skin, and I meticulously wrapped it to the blade with the two rubber bands. Of course, at this point my shoulder had become sort of numb and I was bleeding on the hardwood floor, but I could still slip the ring on my finger. I did not draw a blade.
"What exactly is that supposed to prove? Anyone can not make a blade in the same way anyone can not run a marathon."
"Here then." I said, and I handed the blade to Glenn and almost prayed.
She began to toss her hand about in several wild attempts to draw a sword, but came up with nothing. I didn't quite have enough Grace left in me for it to linger in my skin, or whatever. I didn't know the hypothetical science behind all this, I just knew it wasn't a far gamble to guess it wouldn't work.
"Convinced yet?"
She frowned. "You still run a cult. Is that against the law?" Often when she consulted Lane she would simply raise a hand open-palmed to the ceiling without looking at her friend.
"No." Lane said. "But it says here religion actually is. Huh. Didn't know that."
"Yeah, but that's some bullshit." She waved it off. "Okay, whatever, we still got you down for... breaking and entering, breaching consent and scorn."
"Scorn?"
"Being rude. So anyways, that's like fifteen years."
Stacy tapped on his chair.
"Can you let me off with a warning? I can't afford fifteen years of my life at the moment."
"I'm letting you go easy already. There should be at least one life sentence on top of those fifteen years."
"So I head to jail now?"
"Sure. Or we can send you off to die in the army. You know, dress you up fancy and shove you off as a distraction to the angels. If you claim you're a demon, you might as well die as one."
I ran a hand through my hand to exaggerate stress. "Wow. You hit hard, Illuzi. But I'll take it." I failed not to laugh. "I'll be glad to join your army. It beats jail."
"You're not getting a gun. You just get thrown out there until you die."
"I know what to expect." I said. Stacy tapped again. "When do I head out?"
Glenn sneered. "Today, if I can find the time."
I laughed again, which was suspicious I'm sure, but I honestly couldn't help it. "Awesome."
I really didn't care anymore.