Page 61 of Fear No Hell

“Okay, well, I’ve got nowhere to be today,” Sam retorts. “In fact, I’ve got nowhere to be for a while. So, honestly, as long as Lila’s good with it, I will happily sit here for the next 10 damn days until I have to go back to work if that’s what it takes.”

The floorboards creak as Lucifer lowers himself into the loveseat next to Michelle, her wrist still wrapped in his.

“Arthur and I wanted a baby, but I was infertile.” Michelle gives us a small half-grin.

“Or at least we thought I was. That’s what the doctors told us.

Joke’s on me because apparently human medicine didn’t contemplate the fertility of the god of Pandaimonium.

Who would have thought?” A nervous laugh slips out of her.

Lucifer rumbles, the sound velvet and sex combined, rubbing lustily across my skin. It’s all too easy to discern just how proud he is of his fertility.

“Mom, I need you to start at the beginning. None of this makes sense. How did you even meet him?”

Michelle sighs deeply. “Arthur and I spent years trying to conceive. After we found out I was infertile and Arthur’s sperm lacked motility, things got bad. Arthur started drinking, and I… well, I tried to escape the best way I knew how.”

“Which was?”

“Sex.”

Sam groans.

“Sammy, you know I’ve had sex.”

I shouldn’t find it this endearing how ridiculous Sam is being about his mother having sex, especially considering what we were doing when she called. That being said, his crinkled nose and absurdity are still some of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.

“Knowing intellectually and having my mother say to my face that she used sex as escapism are two wildly different things.” He shoves a hand through his hair and grumbles.

“Well, if you’re not okay with me having sex, then you’re going to have a lot of difficulties with this particular story.”

Another irritable grumble.

“During that time, I became part of a polycule with six other people and moved in with them a few months later. They were wonderful. So different from Arthur.” Michelle’s expression takes on a dreamy quality. “God, the sex alone—”

“Seriously?” Sam rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna rhapsodize about sex while your son’s in the room?”

“My grown son who’s being an absolute prude.” At his unimpressed glare, Michelle crosses her arms and wriggles with a disgruntled frown. “Fine. Harsh my buzz, as the kids say.”

“The kids absolutely do not say that,” Sam responds at the same time as Lucifer snorts and says simply, “No one says that, imp.”

“Well, fine.” She huffs in irritation before continuing. “My partners were really into the occult. A lot of their practices centered around sexual sacrifices to the dark gods.”

“Mom!”

“What, it’s not like you haven’t had sex before!”

Sam’s cheeks flare red in embarrassment.

And me? Well, I’m growling at the thought of anyone but me touching my Sam.

He’s mine.

My fingers squeeze more tightly around his before I drape his hand over my thigh, pressing it down like I can brand his fingerprints into my flesh alongside the tattoos winding along my legs.

No one will ever touch him except me.

With each possessive thought, the symbols etched into my flesh glow intensely with pulses of radiant light.

Mine.

“Sweetness, no one’s gonna touch me like that but you. I’m all yours; you know that.” Ignoring his parents—who are likely watching on with interest, not that I’m paying them any mind—Sam speaks over my growl. “Come here.”

The fingers around my thigh dig in, their pressure directing me to where he wants me to go.

I follow them until I’m sitting in his lap, his arms wrapped around my waist as I wind mine around his neck.

The feeling of being exactly where I’m meant to be, the safe place that’s mine and mine a-fucking-lone, has me calming, my tattoos dimming until they’re radiating their typical gentle glow.

“Okay, yeah, go on, Mom.” Sam nuzzles my cheek. “Keep talking about your weird sex rituals and my conception.”

“Alright, but don’t think we’re not gonna talk about what just happened, mister.

” In the most maternal gesture I’ve ever seen, Michelle shakes her index finger at Sam as she continues her story.

“Where was I? Oh, right. The rituals. I thought they were all in good fun. Y’know, a way to spice things up a little bit, invite the essence of gods into the sacred space as part of the ritual.

Nothing real, y’know? Anyways, it didn’t seem to be causing any harm, so I joined in.

One night, we dedicated the evening’s activities to Lucifer.

Everything was normal until the candles started flickering and then blew out.

We were enjoying ourselves, so we really didn’t care about lighting them up again. “

“Did they actually summon you?” Sam turns to Lucifer in interest. The gears in his head are turning, his natural instinct to learn everything he can starting to rear its head.

“Not quite. It’s difficult to describe it, but rituals like that—the calls themselves—are basically static in the back of my mind.

It’s rare I pay attention to them.” As he explains, Lucifer settles back into the loveseat, his height dwarfing the small piece of furniture.

The plush cushions, which bear a faded, vintage floral pattern, pouf out around his thick thighs, each one of which is roughly the circumference of Sam’s mother’s waist. Somehow, those subtle details only serve to emphasize the sheer otherness of his presence here.

“You paid attention to this one.” Sam finishes the incomplete thought.

“Yes. I did.”

“Why?” The question is thoughtful. Not angry, just contemplative. “Why was it different?”

“Your mother.” Lucifer answers simply. “There was something about her prayers and moans—” He talks over Sam’s choked grunt—“That just stuck out over the rabble.”

“So you showed up and decided to… what? Fuck my mom for the fun of it?”

“Well, technically, she wasn’t your mom then.” The snarky comment is paired with a mocking smirk.

A roll of the eyes is Sam’s only response.

“They were also asking for me to fuck them. Who was I to deny them?” Lucifer shrugs. “Although none of the others interested me. Only Michelle.”

“I thought it was Glenn, one of my boyfriends, touching me until the candles came back to life a few hours later, and there was a strange man with horns splayed next to me.” Michelle tucks one of her feet behind the other ankle and settles her hands primly in her lap.

“It wasn’t out of the ordinary for us to invite other people to join during the rituals, and roleplaying was pretty typical, too, so I didn’t question it.

I spent the rest of the night with Lucifer alone.

I wasn’t interested in anyone else, and he was more than happy to engage.

When he left in the morning, I thought I would get his number from one of my partners.

See if maybe they would be interested in inviting him into our relationship. ”

For the first time, Michelle’s expression turns sad.

The bitter taste of regret haunts her next words.

“But nobody knew who he was. I searched high and low for him, legitimately never imagining he was actually the god we had been summoning that night. And then—” Her fingers twitch restlessly in her lap.

“Well, then I figured out I was pregnant, and everything changed. After everything, I knew I was going to keep you. There was never another option; I had wanted a baby so badly, and you… Sammy, you were my little miracle. My partners didn’t feel the same way.

At all. Especially after they told me they hadn't invited anyone else for the ritual, which made me wonder if we actually did summon Lucifer.” A shaky breath escapes her.

“I stopped caring about that when my partners made it clear that I could either get an abortion or leave. So I left.”

“What happened then?” Despite still holding me in his lap, Sam is perched on the couch's edge.

“I tried to do it alone. But I didn’t have a steady income or health insurance.

With my parents dead and my partners not in my life anymore, I didn’t have anybody else…

I didn’t know what to do. Then a few weeks later, I ran into Arthur at the grocery store.

I never filed the divorce paperwork, so we were still technically married.

He told me he missed me and promised he had stopped drinking.

That he had a steady income from his novels. ”

With one small sentence, the entire energy of the room shifts. The table lamps flicker ominously, dimming before brightening to an almost painful radiance. The house shudders once around us, the wood floors releasing a tortured creaking sound before everything settles.

“You want to know how he was earning that income, Mom?” Sam asks. Although the question sounds laid back, he’s baring his teeth. Without him even telling me what he’s thinking, I know what he’s about to say. “How he was able to come up with worthwhile novels?”

One eyebrow raised, Michelle cocks her head. “What do you mean?”

“Sam.” I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and squeeze gently.

“She needs to know.” It’s in a whisper, for my ears only.

“What good will it do for her to know now?” Soothingly, I stroke my thumb along the curve of his chin, slow sweeps intended to calm him, that have him melting under my touch.

Ignoring Lucifer and Michelle as I comment quietly, “Today is about you finding out who you are. Not unpacking my trauma. What do you think I’ve been doing in that basement for the last eight months, my love? ”

Lucifer and Michelle’s eyes are rapt on us from from the loveseat.

“Do you want to know something?” I lean forward. “Having the time to make Arthur pay for what he did has made this so much easier for me. I don’t need to destroy everyone else who was inadvertently a part of it just to take back my power.”

“I—" He chews at his lower lip. There’s a quiet sort of pleading in his eyes, one I don’t understand until he murmurs, “Just a knee jerk reaction. Sorry, sweetness.”

Realization dawns slowly. “You want her to know you weren’t making me up all these years, don’t you?”

A guilty look crosses his face seconds before he jerks his head up and down once.

“Okay.” Love for this man who has done everything he can for me swirls through my stomach.

I don’t need Michelle to know who I am; nothing changes for me if she does.

But for Sam? For Sam, this is an exoneration of his mental state.

A way for him to prove to his mother that he’s not crazy.

I nod slowly. “Okay, yeah. It’s okay. You can tell her. ”

Sam squeezes my waist in thanks before he turns back to where Michelle and Lucifer are sitting in silence, matching frowns on their faces.

“Did you ever ask how Arthur got financially stable?”

Almost like she can sense a trap springing, albeit one she doesn’t and can’t understand, Michelle responds hesitantly. “He said he was selling a lot of novels with more on the way.”

“Technically, that’s true. Just like always, he didn’t tell you everything.” Sam sucks in a breath. “Do you remember the woman from the attic?”

“Oh, Sammy, honey, no.” Michelle’s face drops. “I thought you had gotten past this.”

Her pitying, disappointed tone has my hackles raising and me responding before Sam can. “There was nothing to be ‘gotten past,’ Michelle.” I can feel my lips curling in a snarl at the way she’s dismissing Sam, however unintentionally. “Largely because the woman in the attic was and is very real.”

“I’m sorry, Lila, but you don’t know anything about—” My hiss cuts her off.

“Oh I know everything about it,” I snap. “Mostly because I was the woman in the attic.”