Post by Bene Elohim on Feb 8, 2024 13:43:07 GMT -8
~[Reader discretion]~
~[The Civil War: series contains mature content and situations which may make some feel uncomfortable, even triggering.]~
~[Please read at your own discretion.]~
~[The Civil War: series contains mature content and situations which may make some feel uncomfortable, even triggering.]~
~[Please read at your own discretion.]~
Although it had been more than a week, tempers did not improve in the time past. Maiko Adachi did her best to keep Ashley Kenyon calm and contained, but the explosive young woman wasn’t happy about her first assignment and made no gripe about showing it. Aerynn kept to herself with her husband and children outside of the house where most of the others were staying.
All of that changed, however, when the bomb dropped. Lord Lucifer analyzed the description of the man who had attacked his team and then it hit him. After showing them a picture of the person he thought it could have been and received confirmation, he had gone into seclusion.
Not even Xaria Linette saw him during this period.
After nearly a week and a half, he called for the Children of Nephilim to assemble in the Malibu property owned by Xaria. When Xaria walked into the spacious study on the upper floor, Lucifer was seated at the head of the table with his inverted cross glasses lying on the top of a thick folder. Having missed him, she made her way around the table to his chair and leaned down, pressing her lips his temple.
Xaria: “Are you alright, mon Seigneur?” She whispered.
Lucifer: “Sit.” Was his only reply, motioning to his left hand seat.
The Harbinger sighed but did as her Lord commanded and slid into the chair beside him on his left. The Twins each entered next with Sariel and Aniel behind them. Bene Elohim walked around the table and dropped to a knee, side by side, by side by side.
Lucifer: “Seats.”
One word was all it took. The four inclined their heads and rose. Sariel was given the position of authority at Lucifer’s right hand with Ramiel beside her. Nani and Aniel sat beside his brother.
Aerynn Maguire and Zachary Sears walked into the room next, talking quietly to one another, but the conversation ended abruptly at the door. Each inclined their heads in respect and sat beside Xaria.
The eyes of the room turned then to the doorway as Maiko and Ashley walked through the door hand in hand. Ashley lifted the blue-haired woman’s hand and kissed the back of it before the two separated.
Ashley didn’t even so much as incline her head as she sank into a chair. Maiko, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of her lover. She walked around the table and dropped to her knees beside Lucifer’s chair, lowering her head to touch her forehead to his hand.
Maiko: “Lord.”
Lucifer turned his gaze down on the woman but bit his lip. He was worried and it showed.
Lucifer: “Seat.”
Maiko rose and moved around the table into the final chair beside Ashley. Lucifer leaned back in his chair with his hand over his mouth, staring down at the folder. How was he going to do this?
Like a bandaid.
Pushing his glasses off the folder, he withdrew a twenty by twenty picture and tossed it to the center of the table. It was the same picture he had shown them a few days prior to ask if that was the man who had interfered with their operation.
Lucifer: “His name is Anthony Jason Crawford.”
Ashley: “Where did you find it?”
Lucifer: “I took it.”
The words hung in the air as they all looked at one another.
Ramiel: “I do not…”
Ananiel: “Understand, m’Lord…?”
Both: “You knew him?”
Lucifer: “...Yeah.”
Sariel: “I don’t know him, Sire. Was he someone Mother and Father brought in and served his time?”
Maiko pulled the picture closer to her. The mere fact that she could look at it without the Demon coming out told them he was not one of the men who attacked her.
Maiko: “I don’t know him either.”
Lucifer: “He predated you…”
Lucifer blew out another deep breath and opened the folder, slowly folding the edge back. Inside were pictures, files, and reports.
Lucifer: “Anthony Crawford was...”
Lucifer pulled out a small picture of a younger version of himself and Danika Bayne, who had short blonde hair then, and a teenager. Xaria’s emerald green eyes softened at the visual.
Lucifer: “He was in the system. His mom and dad were both in and out of prison for various petty drug offenses, and when they weren’t, they’d beat on the kid. He was an angry… and confused teen. He wanted the people who sold to his mom and dad the junk to pay.”
The Demon Knight narrowed his eyes slightly, a look of focus in his sapphire blue eyes.
Zachary: “Und just ze type to fall in.”
Lucifer: “Something like that. He was already fed up with his home life and life in the system, so he decided to run. He wanted to help Danika and I build a better world where kids like him wouldn’t grow up as he did.”
Maiko: “So…if Dani was the Harbinger...was he the first, Sire?”
Ramiel: “Abaddon was…”
Ananiel: “ The first…”
Both: “...It’s known.”
Lucifer: “Sathanas was first.”
Maiko: “DEAN?!”
The name of his brother-in-law captured Zachary’s attention. However, Lucifer gently shook his head and let out a deep sigh.
Lucifer: “Dean was the second Sathanas, Anthony was the first.”
Sariel: “He was...the original Right Hand…?”
Sariel’s defeat at the man’s hands in that house haunted her. She didn’t feel like she deserved to be here anymore. She had not only failed the only man she’d ever loved, but she failed her God. To know that this player was not only one of them, and thus dangerous, but he was the first. The original.
Aerynn: “What happened?”
Lucifer: “He...uh…”
Once again Lucifer let out a deep, unhappy sigh and pushed the entire file out to the center of the table. Pictures of Anthony and Danika or himself, reports of the construction of the original Hell, and the beginning of the Master File.
Lucifer: “He joined us and helped us build Hell. It was just the three of us trying to find the proper targets. People who truly deserved to be removed from the population…and then the first assignment came…”
Lucifer reached out and plucked one of the papers from the table, then he slid it back down the table to himself.
Lucifer: “Donald James Masters. A man whose daughter accused him of improprieties. Danika and I dispatched Anthony to watch him, find proof, and if proof was found? Bag him and bring him to us. Neither Danika nor I knew Donald was one of the men who dealt drugs to his father.”
Ashley: “You sent an untested rookie out on his first assignment to the very person he wanted to punish?!”
Lucifer: "None of us knew!”
Lucifer snapped, staring across the table at Ashley who didn’t so much as look away. In an attempt to ease him, Xaria reached out and placed her right hand on his left shoulder.
Xaria: “Mon Seigneur…”
It offered temporary relief, but the situation was still intense. Her Lord continued on.
Lucifer: “We didn’t find out until he came back.”
Maiko: “What happened on the takedown?”
Lucifer: “...Both parents died and it was revealed all the charges were false. He claimed he had no choice but the facts at the scene and the report from locals didn’t support it.”
Ramiel: “What did…”
Ananiel: “...The reports say…”
Both: “...About what happened?”
Lucifer: “There was no delay between him arriving and him infiltrating the house. He went straight for Donald with no hesitation. Donald’s wife tried to drop him and he kicked her off the second-floor balcony.”
Maiko: “She was innocent!”
Maiko’s tone was angry at the mere thought that this innocent mother had been killed by one of the very people formed to protect people like her.
Lucifer: “When I found out, I knew he needed to be locked in a cell. He’d taken an innocent life…”
Shaking his head, Zachary’s eyes shot up to Lucifer.
Zachary: “Then vhy is he free now?!”
Lucifer: “...He was sixteen, Zachary. I couldn’t put some kid into the newly built Killing Fields. To be tortured by me and Danika? The only people he trusted? No…”
Aerynn: “...Ye cared fer him…”
Lucifer slowly nodded and leaned back in his chair, staring at one of the small pictures of the boy standing beside the wooden wall of Hell in a Yankees baseball hat.
Lucifer: “He was like a little brother. When he made a bad move? It was my responsibility to make sure he knew the rules and how the world works. I never once sugar coated it or lied to him, but he didn’t seem to wanna listen. Making a mistake is understandable, but this? What he did? I couldn’t just let it go. I was trapped between the love I had for what amounted to a little brother...and knowing what’s expected of me as Lucifer. I didn’t want him to end up in a cell, so I did the only thing I could do….I turned my back on him.”
Sariel: “...Exile…”
Ashley: “You exiled a homeless, family-less, friendless teenager?!”
Lucifer: “I knew what Danika would expect. Once I found them, I knew what the other Fallen Angels would expect. They’d want him in a cell. So I walked him to the Gates of Hell and handed him a thousand dollars to get him wherever he wanted to go. I told him to be whatever he wanted to be. That as long as he paid attention to the lessons I taught him, he’d be just fine, but that I couldn’t forget what he did.
I warned him that if I saw him ever again, I wouldn’t have a choice. Every instinct in my body told me that I was making a mistake, but I knew I needed to show mercy or I’d be as bad as the people I was trying to stop. More than that, I knew it went against the rules of Hell…”
Sariel: “I don‘t understand…”
Ashley: “What’s not to understand?! God forsook his First Son out into the cold alone.”
Sariel: “One assignment was all he went on… How could he defeat me?”
Ashley was the only one who saw it. The hidden shame deep within the man who served as the Children’s God. She leaned forward in her chair and slammed her fist into the table top.
Ashley: “You fucking trained him before sending him out, didn’t you?!”
Lucifer bit his lip as Ashley tossed the picture back to the table where it floated to the center. Even Aerynn expressed grief.
Aerynn: “I knew he dinna fight like a stranger. He fought like you!”
Ashley: “Fuck that, Rynn. He fought like Lucifer taught him how to move and then he learned how to fight!”
Ashley suddenly rose from her chair and held out her hands.
Ashley: “Fuck this shit, I’m out. Twoey, Rynn? We need to walk away. This…”
She motioned to the pictures, files, and the others at the table.
Ashley: “...has got nothing to do with any of us.This is Lucifer’s fuck up coming back to bite him in the ass. Frankenstein's monster returning to burn down the village with him in it. This has nothing to do with us!”
Maiko: “NO!”
For the first time in months, Maiko raised her voice and didn't devolve into a shrieking mess in the grip of the Demon persona in her mind. She looked up at Ashley and over at Rynn.
Maiko: “Haven’t you two got it by now?! What those men did to me?! We are here to stop it! To bring justice and protection to every person out there like me. Valdemar is taking everything the Children of Nephilim stood for and twisting it. The same way Lucifer did in the end.”
Ananiel: “If a single…”
Ramiel: “...Innocent suffers and…”
Ananiel: “We could have prevented it…”
Both: “... then we fail.”
Zachary: “...is bigger than us, ja?”
Zach’s voice was soft as he looked from the table up to Lucifer as if he was seeing him for the first time.
Zachary: “You promised me my family vould be safe. Meine Mutter, meine Schwestern, meine Brüder, mein Verlobter… I don’t vant these people going near zhem. I vill see to it zhat they fall.”
With a deep breath, Xaria regarded Lucifer with a sad smile, yet her eyes were full of hope.
Xaria: “Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will always be with you… Mon amour.”
Sariel leaned forward and whispered.
Sariel: “This?”
Sariel leaned over and tapped her finger onto Anthony’s face.
Sariel: “What they are building? It’s a blasphemy of what we are. It’s the wrong way. This is the one fight we have ever faced that we have to win. That we have no choice but to win.”
Aerynn looked from the table up at her best friend and her mind went back to her children. Who would be the sword between them and the people of the world who would prey on them?
She would.
Aerynn: “I’m…I’m stayin’, lass…”
Ashley looked from her girlfriend to her best friend and let out a deep sigh, leaning down on the foot of the table. She glanced up at Lucifer and whispered.
Ashley: “...I guess belief in this is all that we have now.”
Lucifer: “Belief is all that we need.”
~[ ]~
The topic of their frustration and fascination stood just outside a building in Paris, France, the wind gently blowing his hair back and forth in the inch or so it could move. His eyebrow and the left side of his lip bore the marks of a fight but he wore them with pride.
He’d won.
Anthony Crawford stared down at the picture. Her hair was blonde and her hips were thick. Thick-thighed, large-busted, and her eyes were the most beautiful soft blue. She was lying on her side with her eyes lulled closed. The last time he had ever seen her.
Seven years. She had been the only one to accept him after Lucifer abandoned him only to disappear as well. She was his. She belonged to him and now she was back.
Before his mind could go too far into the image, the phone began to go off and the image of Lord Apollyon appeared. Anthony hit the answer button and the man appeared in the flesh. A video call. He was seated behind the desk with his hands folded over the wood before him.
Lord Apollyon: “Report.”
Anthony: “Mission complete. Ten bagged and on a cargo plane back home. I gave the information to the desk for recovery.”
Lord Apollyon: “Good. Good...Ten?”
Anthony: “Yes, Sire. The other five didn’t survive the fight.”
Lord Apollyon: “Ah… messy.”
The Danish gentlemen shook his head in disappointment.
Lord Apollyon: “Were you seen? Can it be connected to you?”
Anthony: “No. I scouted the cameras and other units first. We’re clean.”
Lord Apollyon: “Any ideas on that other problem?”
Anthony: “Actually…yes.”
His mind went to her. Melissa Reed. She was friends with that Mathews woman and her tiny Kingdom. That had to be neutralized.
Anthony: “There is a woman named Sativa. Sativa Nevaeh. She has a cousin traveling into the country soon. We take him and point the blame at the Children?”
Lord Apollyon: “Sativa…Sativa… She’s in that Kingdom wrestling group, right?”
Anthony: “Yeah, led by someone extremely unstable. They won’t accept the family of one of their own being taken lying down. They will demand he be returned, and when Lucifer and his disciples deny knowledge? They’ll attack.”
Lord Apollyon: “And while they’re distracted, you and the demons will sneak in the back and recover Mr. Scott.”
Anthony: “Yes. We’ll neutralize their safehouse permanently.”
Lord Apollyon: “I like it.”
Anthony: “I’d advise you send the Demons after him, Sire. He’s a non-combatant and wouldn’t require my direct involvement. All they will see are the Demons. If they see me Lucifer may be able to convince them they weren’t involved.”
Lord Apollyon: “Agreed.”
Apollyon nodded one final time and the transmission suddenly died. This returned the beautiful and curvy woman to his screen. He stared down at it, the fire burning inside him, and whispered to no one but himself.
Anthony: “...Soon you’ll have nowhere to run but home. Where you belong, Melissa.”
