"Yâit, it's Lilith? Not Astaroth?" Belial asked from the other line.
"Yeah, bro. It's Lilith. Hades thought Astaroth was the one who could unite and lead us. But the 'he' we found is actually a she, and of course it had to be Lilith out of all the possibilities," Colby sighed.
"What, you're upset about it being her and not a different one? Haven't you been looking forward to meeting Lilith for centuries?"
"Well of course I have! I just didn't expect to find her on earth, that's all. Not as a human," Colby said.
"Well is she at least hot?" Belial asked. Colby laughed.
"Yeah, dude. Hella. Plus she's got all of these cool tattoos. And she's sick as fuck. She's the leader of the whole ass LA crime ring. I wanted to meet her in general because she seemed so damn incredible and now it turns out she's Lilith," replied Colby.
"Well there you go, man. Stars aligned for you. You're sure it's her? You got the mark?" asked Belial. What mark? And why did it matter if I was hot? How did Colby meeting me mean the stars had aligned for him?
Colby stared down at his hand. "Yeah, got it last night. I had no fucking clue she was Lilith, though. My dumb ass just touched her back and the mark fucking did its thing in the middle of my kitchen at a party. She doesn't even know what it is or what it means. She thought it was just some weird shock."
"What, she hasn't noticed the shape on her back?"
"I don't think so. Mine's supposed to be a semi-circle, right?" Colby asked, staring down at his hand again.
"Yeah, the outside of the pentagram. Half for you, half for your Promised," Belial answered.
"Jesus, I can't believe you're saying that. About me. About Lilith. I mean, really? My Promised one? Don't get me wrong, I didn't love living with everyone else who was already matched up with their soulmate, but I'm not cut out for this love type stuff, dude. You know that. I'm Wrath. I feel too much and never of good things," Colby said.
Hold up. Promised one? Soulmate? Marking? The fuck?
"What's her name?"
"Jupiter."
"Oh, that's pretty dope," Belial said.
"I know. I'm not calling her Lilith. Not ever. There's no way she's evil like the rest of us, man. She's a crime lord but she's not a bad person. Wouldn't cross someone without a real reason, you know?" said Colby. "I don't want to flip my shit on her again and fuck her up. I don't want to make her something she's not."
"Satan, man, relax. She's the powerful one, remember? After that ritual, she can control it all. And her first task is to teach you all how to do that, too. How to harness that energy, how to unleash the rest of your abilities. Jupiter is going to teach everyone how to manage their sin's power and the abilities they've been assigned as demons. But she's going to do a hell of a lot more than that for you. Wrath is the one who needs love the most. You know that. You need someone to cool you down and balance you out, and she is literally the only one who will be able to do that. Better than Mammon, even," Belial said. Mammon was Sam, right? Yeah, it was Sam. Everyone having three names was a little difficult to keep track of. "Wait, what did you mean by 'flip your shit on her again'?"
"She got drunk last night so I let her sleep in my room. I woke her up and she pulled a knife on me. And then she asked about the shock from the mark and I panicked because I didn't want to just be like 'hey, good morning, I'm Satan and you're my soulmate for all of eternity'. I pretended I didn't know what she was talking about and she knew I was lying," Colby said.
This was not happening. I was not Satan's fucking soulmate. This was all some weird ass fucking dream. Except I knew it wasn't. This was real life. I slowly reached my hand around to my back and my finger traced the etching in my back. A semi-circle. The other half of Colby's.
"You're kidding. She knew that you of all people was lying?" asked Belial.
"Yeah. I know. No one in the literal history of forever has done that. And she didn't even know we were demons yet. She just had her suspicions," explained Colby.
"Wow, that's remarkable! Hades can't even tell when you're lying. If that's the case, she's way more powerful than we thought," Belial said.
"Yeah, which leads me to the big issue here. She told me she'd figured out we were The Seven and I'm pretty sure she even knows which one of us is which. But she told me all of that when she was yelling at me and trying to leave the house since I snapped at her when she called me out for lying. I didn't know how to react. No one has done that before. I can point at a green wall and convince anyone that it's red without so much as lifting a finger. But she knew instantly that I wasn't telling the truth. So she stormed out and I obviously couldn't let her leave, so I had Sam, er, Mammon lock the doors and Leviathan weld them shut. And then Beelzebub and Asmodeus used their abilities to make her speak and walk to us, but she just randomly turned invisible and we couldn't use our abilities on her anymore.
"The problem here is that she is still invisible and neither us or her know how to make that change. Plus we don't have a damn clue where the fuck she is. We've got the nine of us inside and the twelve of you outside, but Jupiter's damn smart and fully invisible. Our only advantage here is that we can still hear her and we know she's got to be scared shitless right now. What human wouldn't be?" Colby ranted.
"Oh, yikes. What you've got to do is make her not scared. Since you've already got the marks, your souls are partially bonded so she can relate and empathize with you the most. You need to find her and just talk to her. Just sit down and chill and talk about whatever to calm her down. When her heart rate drops and her blood pressure lowers and her brain cells stop going batshit, she'll fade back into view. You'll know it's working because it's gradual. Right now she's fully transparent, but she'll slowly return to normal visibility the calmer she gets. And after the ritual, she'll know exactly how to control all of this. And control all of you, for that matter. But only when she wants to," Belial said.
"So go find her and just... talk?" Colby asked. "The fuck am I supposed to talk to her about? I'm all nervous now that I know she's Lilith, plus I was nervous in the first place. And I don't get nervous!"
"I know, I know. But it's not like you're just suddenly in love and that's that. You still have to go through the process of actually getting to know her and falling in love like a human does. You just get to know in the back of your mind that it'll last forever because you two were literally made for each other. You know that's why it took so damn long to find her, right? Because you had to wait until Lilith chose to become Jupiter. Lilith knew what she was doing. She knew Jupiter was your Promised and that's why you found her now. Because now is when she exists. Except you're going to need to break it to her that after the ritual she's going to be essentially immortal. Only Hades will be able to kill her," explain Belial. Hades was like, the God of hell, right? I knew I should have read into this more.
"Okay, well it makes me feel a lot better to know that I'm destined to be with Jupiter because of who she is and not some entity that's assigned itself to her," Colby said. "Alright, Belial. Thank you, man. I need to go find her. I'll talk to you later."
"Good luck, brother. I'm here to help in any way I can," he replied. Colby hung up the phone and belly flopped down onto his bed, then yelled into his pillow.
I wasn't going to be calming down anytime soon. Not after hearing all of that. Talk about overwhelming. I couldn't think about all of it at once, so I decided to focus on the love part. I'd always wanted to believe that true love and soulmates and everything were real. But my faith in the concept was thrown out the window at the ripe old age of 9 when my parents got divorced. Now, though. Now I sort of had to believe that it was real. And that I was lucky (or unlucky?) enough to be guaranteed that true love.
Except for the fact that my soulmate, my Promised, was literally Satan. But Colby didn't seem like a bad guy. Certainly no worse than I was. He just needed to work on his temper, and apparently I was the one who would help him do that.
I could do this. This was my destiny or whatever. I was the leader of The Octet, apparently. I'd run one of the most elaborate crime rings in the country for almost a full year. Most people didn't live long enough to even finish their 3rd month. But I understood why I had been able to, now. I had extra power inside of me. Extra abilities. And now I had love, too.