Fic: Monstrosity Divine - Chapter 10
SucroCorp looked different in the light of day. It was a huge building, full of offices and teeming with people, and yet somehow, it looked simple, plain, unassuming. It looked like a business, not like a hive crawling with a nest of monsters, but Castiel could sense them, he could hear their voices like a humming swarm echoing in his ears. His grip tightened on Lucifer’s hand.
“He’s in there.”
“Yes.”
“I can feel him. I can hear his voice.”
“You know the plan?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re up for it?”
Castiel nodded. “I’m ready.”
The security measures proved futile, easy for an archangel to breach, especially one who had spent the past three nights investigating the location. He pulled Castiel in along with him, hiding in the shadows and using his grace to cloak their presence. They stayed huddled together, pressed closer with Lucifer’s arm around Castiel’s shoulders. All the voices said the same thing: Dick was upstairs in his private office.
They recognized him at once, from his sharp, keen eyes to the wide smile that showed too many teeth and yet hid just as many more. He glanced down at the little white ball rolling across the strip of green and smiled as it landed in the hole. Standing upright, Dick straightened his tie and set his golf club aside.
“You can come out now.”
Lucifer glanced at Castiel who nodded solemnly in turn. This was the one. Lucifer pushed Castiel behind him and stepped forward alone.
Dick smiled. “I was wondering how long it would take you to put everything together. I have to say, I’m a little impressed. You found me pretty quick. Good for you. Daddy’s little starlight has grown up quite a bit since those days, huh?” He picked up another club and turned back around. “You play?”
“No.”
“Ah, shame. You could, you know. A nice private island, a whole continent, if you like. Somewhere quiet where you and your- what did you call him? Little Thursday?- can retire in peace. You stay out of our way. We stay out of your way. Win-win.”
“And what about the rest of my family?”
“Hm? Aren’t they fluttering about in Heaven plotting your demise?”
“Perhaps… except for the ones you captured.”
The already wide grin stretched up, crinkling the Leviathan’s cold eyes. “Now, where did you hear a thing like that?”
“Word gets around.”
“I’ll bet it does. Tell you what, any angels that stay in Heaven and on your continent are off-limits. It will be like your own private sibling aviary, what do you say?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Oh, come on now. It’s a good deal.” He struck the ball again, not bothering to watch as it rolled across the fake slope. He knew it would go in the hole. “I mean, don’t tell me you actually think you’re going to win this? One little angel against all of us? Do you even know how many of us there are, how many of us are in this building?”
“I have a reasonable idea, yes.”
“A reasonable idea. And you plan to take on all of us?”
Lucifer shook his head, eyes calm but bright and resolute. “Just you.”
The smile faded from Dick’s face, falling into something of a sneer that pulled his lips back and flared his nose. His eyes moved carefully, first taking in the layout of the room, any possible advantage, and then Lucifer himself- not a scratch on him now, of course. He forced his lips to curve again, thin and tight in an obviously fake expression. “Alright, angel. I’ll play ball. I’ll give you the little angels back, full hands off on your kind. You all run along and stay out of my way.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me you’re not here to defend humans. Oh, how you have fallen, son of the dawn.” Dick shook his head, sliding the golf clubs back into their bag and barking out a low chuckle. “Be reasonable. Your hatred for humans is quite literally the stuff of legends. Let me clean them up for you.”
Lucifer answered without a word, merely tilting his head to one side and watching every movement with serene scrutiny. His shoulders were squared and pushed back, arms loose at his side, feet firmly in place. The only part of his body that had moved at all during the entire conversation was that one inclination of his head. He was already braced to fight. The Leviathan watched him, sizing him up and weighing what he saw against what he knew about angels, specifically the archangels: fierce and absolute and created with no purpose other than fighting- and decadently delicious. This one was said to be the brightest of all.
“What exactly are you planning to do, Lucifer? Let’s say I humor your idealism. Let’s say you do manage to get your hands on me- then what? Do you honestly think the others won’t come? Do you honestly think you’ll be able to handle all of us?”
“Oh, they’ll come. I want them to come. That’s part of the plan, but this… this is just between you and me.”
“So you have a plan?”
“Of course.”
“Clever little star.”
Lucifer smiled. “Yes.”
The entire building erupted with the high, ugly buzz of a fire alarm. It was awful and deafening, but Dick laughed over it, high and uneven.
“You think you’re going to scare my boys off with a little fire alarm?”
“Of course not. Your boys will run up. Everyone else will run down.”
“What happened to just me and you, huh? I mean, do you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into? We’re older than you, Lucifer. We’re older and smarter and stronger. You have no-”
His speech was interrupted by a faint series of popping sounds in the ceiling above. The sprinklers hissed to life, tripped by a tiny flux of Lucifer’s grace and Castiel’s preparations. The initial rush of water was punctuated by a series of broken, agonized screaming echoing down the halls. Dick swiveled around to look through the glass on the opposite wall, stunned to find his underlings writhing in the hallway as the flesh was melted off their bones. He spun back around, snarling and wide eyed.
Lucifer smiled. “Just me and you.”
Enraged, the Leviathan lunged, but Lucifer had been ready for that move since the moment of his arrival. He dropped his shoulders, catching Dick in the nose with one quick strike. There was a wet crunch, and black blood dribbled down the monster’s face. Still, he laughed, springing back upright from the small stumble with relative ease. His face split open into rows of teeth in a threatening, fearsome display, but it wasn’t surprising anymore, and it certainly wasn’t as terrifying when Castiel’s face wasn’t the one being twisted.
Deciding against direct contact, Dick held his arm out from his body, flicking his wrist with a surge of power that staggered Lucifer off his feet and knocked him backwards across the table. He stayed crouched there, feigning injury out of sight, counting footsteps and waiting for the monster to step around the corner. The silver blade flashed as it sank into the creature’s skull with a squelching crack. Dick screeched in pain, clawing at the back of his own head in an attempt to dislodge both Lucifer and his angelic sword, but the archangel merely bore down, putting the weight of his vessel and the power of his grace behind the strike, reaching one hand down to brace the front of Dick’s throat and crushing his windpipe with icy fingers. Dick turned his face sideways, rubbing his nose along Lucifer’s arm and inhaling the scent there before forcing his teeth into skin and sinew, tearing all the way down to the bone. He jerked back, ripping out a chunk of flesh and greedily sucking at the silky, grace laden blood. The surprising pain and shooting numbness down his vessel’s arm was enough to momentarily throw Lucifer’s concentration, and he found himself crashing through the glass a second later. The wind barely touched his neck before his wings expanded and he was back in the room, upright in spite of it all.
Dick ran his slender, pointed tongue over his red lips, lapping up little bits of white light and swallowing them down into the abyss of darkness. A few more hits like that, and Lucifer wouldn’t have enough power to put behind that special little sword. “That was cute,” he murmured. “I like that trick with the sprinklers too. I’m impressed, Morning Star, quite impressed. We could have made quite the team, you and I. After all, we’re just the same, practically brothers.”
“My brothers are the angels you’ve been trying to use for food, and you and I… We’re nothing alike.”
“Is that so?” Dick chuckled. His eyes were trailing the soft, white contour of Lucifer’s neck, watching the sheen of sweat and the pulse of blood. Now that he’d had a taste of archangel, he was greedily hungry. “Tell me, didn’t God make you before so many other things and give you a whole world to play with? And then didn’t He toss you aside the second you got boring, replace you with something new and more fun, lock you up in a near impossible to open cage?”
Lucifer tilted his chin up staring down calmly. “It wasn’t that simple. You’re glossing over key points of the story to undermine the differences and highlight base similarities. I’m not so unintelligent as to fall for that.”
“I guess I did put a certain spin on it, hm? Well, that’s interpretative reading for you.” He glanced past Lucifer, trying to evaluate the condition of the sprinklers. They couldn’t have planted enough of the chemical to provide a constant stream indefinitely. It would have to run out at some point, and then the water would flush it away.
Lucifer seemed to be making the same calculations, but his concern was something very different. A light, airy laugh lit his face up with a smile when the sprinklers came back to life with a fresh surge of borax and the few Leviathan that were still intact enough to try to crawl away were instantly stricken by the fresh wash of chemicals. It was now or never. Lucifer ran at the Leviathan, using all the weight of his body and opening his wings for extra momentum, throwing his body forward with enough force to send them both through the plate of glass that blocked through to the hallway. Dick understood his intentions almost quickly enough, flexing his jaws open wide to attempt to catch that pretty throat. He almost succeeded, instead latching on to the curve of Lucifer’s shoulder, a much less critical wound but also one that let him hook his teeth into a thick chunk of muscle and hold tight enough to toss the archangel’s body off his with a snap of his neck as they collided.
The hallway was slick with borax, and crawling through it was made even more difficult by the way the chemical kept burning the flesh off Dick’s hands. He slid, fumbling with water and blood ruining his grip, scrabbling to make his way back into the safety of the office. A harsh grip caught his ankle, dragging him back through the shallow, yet acidic layer of water. Dick spun, knocking Lucifer in his already injured shoulder and then kicking him in the face to knock him back. He stood up, wiping moisture and liquefied skin from his face as he stomp forward and grabbed the back of Lucifer’s collar, dragging him through the doorway.
“You know, I tried to be nice. I tried to play fair, gave you a chance to work with me twice, but your stupid, insolent, childish pride got in the way.” Dick pushed Lucifer onto his back, emphasizing each point of his stream of insults with a hard punch to the face before forcing him down and pinning him down with a knee on his bloody shoulder and a press of weight on his chest. He leaned down, lips stretching in a cruel smile as he lapped a trickle of blood from under Lucifer’s jaw, delighting in how his skin split and his eyes rolled back to whites. “Should have played nice, starlight, because now, I’m gonna eat you. I’m going to eat you, and then I’m going to eat your little sweetheart, and then I’m going to summon every one of your sparkly shit siblings and eat them too.”
Lucifer’s hands were around Dick’s neck like a vice. The Leviathan had been completely unprepared for the level of rage such a threat evoked from a protective older brother. His neck was burning, flesh disintegrating and falling away under hands that were coated with poison and burning with grace. Lucifer twisted and arched his body, trying to get enough leverage to push the monster down into the water again. He felt a shift of weight to one side, one millisecond of imbalance, and pivoted his hips sharply to switch their positions once more. Dick roared in pain and outrage as the water soaked through the back of his shirt and coat. His ears echoed with wet tearing and crunching, and after the initial shock of pain cleared, he realized that the archangel was pulling him apart with his bare hands, using the borax to facilitate an easier break. He arched his body up, striking their torsos together hard enough to knock the breath from Lucifer’s lungs. Dick curved his spine, folding his knees up into his chest and pushing his legs into Lucifer’s stomach as hard as he could, pouncing the moment there was enough leverage to do so.
“I like your moxie, boy, but I’m done playing.” The Leviathan unhinged his jaw completely, mouth gaping with rows of teeth and an eagerly twisting tongue. He sank his teeth in again, quickly now, a series of rapid bites intended to shred rather than consume. The glass of walls and windows vibrated with the force of the archangel’s true voice, shattering and dancing across the floor as he screamed.
Lucifer could feel himself slipping, but he could also feel the bones at the back of Dick Roman’s neck giving way under his fingers. He clutched, nails breaking the barrier of thin skin and worming their way through dissolving muscle. He pushed, thumbs forcing their way under the powerful jawline until he got through there too and had a firm grip on the whole of the monster’s skull. He twisted. The low grind of bone on gone and then a sharp, abrupt snap, and the head was dislodged, rolling across the floor. The body collapsed and sagged forward, pinning Lucifer beneath its weight and emptying a heavy rush of black slime across his neck and face. His eyes closed, and there was just the darkness and the quiet rush of water.
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