“Auston?” We all swing our heads to the grumpy Angel who seems to be weighing his options, arms crossed over his chest, chewing on his lip.
“Ugh, fine,” Auston grumbles. “But I’m not sleeping with any of you!”
“That’s a fucking deal,” Brax chuckles, a smirk playing at his lips.
“Good.” Grabbing the chair lodged under Karston’s desk, I pull it over to Karston’s bed, stifling a grunt when I bash it into my shin. “Now, let’s get down to business.”
Auston lunges for my chair before I can sit down, taking it from me. “Too slow, baby bro.”
Karston laughs. “I forgot all about that! We used to say it all the time when we were kids!”
Brax joins in. “Poor Pres. Always one step behind the rest of us.”
“Yeah, but at least I was Mom’s favorite, you assholes,” I chuckle. “She’d sneak me extra treats when you lot were being mean.”
“Us mean?” Auston feigns innocence, pressing his hand to his chest, making us all laugh harder.
My heart swells. I’ve missed my brothers, even if they are a bunch of asses.
As our laughter dies down and the friendly banter enhances the mood in the room, I grab another chair and quickly sit before Brax snatches it. He plops down on the end of Karston’s bed, his huge black wings looming over his head, and folds his hands. “So, how do we want to do this? Should we pretend we’re at Boy Scouts and only speak when you have the talking stick?” he jokes.
“You can take a talking stick and shove it right up your ass,” Auston taunts, laughing.
Brax holds up his hands. “Don’t you mean Karston? He’s the one that put shit up his booty hole.”
Now we're all laughing. Auston literally has tears running down his face. “Shit this feels good, doesn’t it, guys?” I ask cautiously.
We all share a glance, nodding and smiling.
I take a deep breath and let it out. It feels like we’ve crossed some invisible line, one I don’t think any of us knew existed. Before, we were just tolerating each other, but now? It feels like we're accepting each other again.
Finally.
It’s been too long.
Brax turns to Auston. “What happened in Heaven? Did you find anything?”
Auston and I share a look. “Yeah, we found some things,” he answers.
“Care to elaborate?” Karston questions.
I take a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start.”
“I’ll go,” Auston interjects. “Hadley… Well, she’s been reborn.”
“What?” Karston says flabbergasted, sitting up in his bed.
“Auston’s right,” I agree. “We found the records room. Her file was marked.”
“And that’s not all we found,” Auston comments. “We read a story about the Fates. Not only are they real, but they were put together in pairs at the beginning of time. Seven pairs actually. One man and one woman, paired to guide humanity from the temptations of the seven deadly sins. One of the pairings was Adam and Eve, another Lilith and Lucifer. But the one you’d be most interested in was Claire and Caius.”
Silence blankets the room like freshly fallen snow as we all revel in this new information.
“Wait a minute,” Karston pipes in. “When I entered the mind of the Darkness, I witnessed a memory of his where Hadley was called Claire.”
A lightbulb goes off in my mind. “And I saw an obelisk in the graveyard when we practiced necromancy that said Claire on it.”
“Whoa, you know how to raise the dead, baby bro?” Brax cuts in.
I nod. “We raised a corpse. And get this. His name was Lucifer. Administer seemed insistent on raising that particular grave.”
“No shit,” Auston says, pulling his hair into a bun.
“And that’s not all. He spoke to us, called for his Fated, said her name was Lilith and that he could sense her nearby. He—” I gulp, close my eyes, and lick my lips. “He also said that I have a Fated. And that Lucifer himself was dead because Cauis killed him after someone ate forbidden fruit.”
“I also had a vision where Hadley was called Claire,” Auston notes. “There’s no denying it now. The evidence is too overwhelming.” The big Angel stands and begins to pace, hands on his hips.
“So…” Brax starts, his fingers threaded through his hair in disbelief. “Let’s recap. Basically, we’ve confirmed that Hadley has been reborn, yes?”
We all nod.
“And,” he continues, “we can confirm she used to be Claire, a Fate—I still can’t fucking believe she’s a Fate—and was paired with the man we know as Caius, who has become the Darkness and is now inhabiting her body?”
“Yep,” I agree.
“Fuck.” He scrubs his hands down his face.
“We can’t forget about Lucifer,” I chime in. “He was insistent that his Fated, Lilith, is here at the Academy.”
Auston nods. “And we know Caius killed Lucifer because he was so angry that Lilith and Lucifer tricked him into feeding his Fated—Claire—the forbidden fruit, ultimately killing her. And that’s how he became the Darkness.”
“This is so fucked up,” Brax grumbles. “Caius only killed Lucifer because he was so torn up from losing her. At losing Hadley. Just like we are now. He…he has more in common with us than we realize. And in his shoes, we might have done the same.”
“That’s true,” Auston agrees, blue eyes flashing. “But that still doesn’t answer why he’s sucking the essence out of souls. Has he truly become evil personified? Not only that, but is Lilith really here? A Fate disguised? Walking around the Afterlife with the students at the Academy?”
Again, we bask in silence, each of us mulling over all this information, the dozens of revelations that have a huge effect on how we proceed from here.
“So,” Karston begins, breaking the quiet. “Any of you know any Fates?”
Just then, someone knocks on Karston’s door. “I’ll get it,” I say, since I’m sitting closest to it. “Are you expecting anyone?” I ask Karston.
“No.” he answers, shrugging.
I pull the door open and immediately want to cauterize my eyes.
It’s a topless Aggie wearing a cowgirl hat, but she’s not alone. Oh no. She’s with Professor Buttox. And, well…
She’s riding his naked ass, like a cowgirl on a horse. True to her name, Saggy Aggie’s tits are flapping disgustingly over her pot belly, assless chaps covering her legs. Her bare butt bounces on the professor, who she’s dressed like a horse, while she shouts, “Yeehaw,” in a very thick, southern accent.
Professor Buttox is wearing a headband with horse ears attached to it, and hanging off his ass is a tail, but I tear my eyes away before I learn how it’s attached to him, knowing that’s something I’ll never be able to unsee. Aggie tugs on the reins inside the professor’s mouth as he neighs, happily pawing at the ground with hooved hands.
Then, as my mouth drops open, Aggie farts, right on the Professor’s back. “Howdy, fartner,” she laughs, displaying toothless gums while swinging an invisible lasso around her head. “Get it? Fartner? Because I farted!” She laughs even harder, bouncing precariously on the old professor. “Say there, little whippersnapper, how many hotdogs can you fit in one bun? I’m thinking five is a good number. Whaddya think?”