Mercury Shrugs Read Free Page B

faithful servant Azrael languished in a dank cave, counting the days of a ten-thousand-year sentence.
    That fate was unpleasant enough, but to make matters worse, Lucifer and Azrael shared the cage with six other demons, who spent most of their time bickering, whining, and trying to kill each other. [3] One of these, a demon named Drekavac, was a newcomer, but the others were all long-time minions of Lucifer who had been there since Lucifer’s sentencing. Well, would-be minions. There wasn’t much in the way of diabolical scheming to be done in a cage inside a cave far underground, and lately Lucifer’s grip over his fellow inmates was starting to seem tenuous. Azrael’s insubordination was only the latest example.
    “That’s not how this works,” said Lucifer to Azrael, glancing at the group of demons sitting in a circle behind him. “I’m the Prince of Darkness. You do what I say, not vice versa.” Lucifer was acutely aware that if he lost control of Azrael, it was only a matter of time before the others turned on him. Fortunately, the rest of the demons were preoccupied at present: they sat in a circle near the back wall, playing some sort of game involving a variety of oddly-shaped dice and an ungodly number of very thick rulebooks.
    “I backstab Gurien,” announced one of the demons, who was named Pazusu.
    “What?” gasped the one called Gurien, who sat across from Pazusu. He turned toward a demon named Drekavac, who was poring over one of the rulebooks. “Can he do that?”
    Drekavac shrugged, his eyes still on the book. “You guys can do whatever you want, but Gurien comes first in the initiative order.”
    “Then I backstab Pazusu,” said Gurien, with a grin.
    “You can’t backstab Pazusu,” said Drekavac tiredly. “He’s behind you.”
    “Then I regular stab him.”
    “Wait!” cried Pazusu to Gurien. “Why are you stabbing me ?”
    “Because you tried to stab me!” Gurien yelled back.
    “Yeah, but you don’t know that,” said Pazusu.
    “You just told us, dummy,” said Gurien.
    “No I didn’t,” Pazusu protested. He turned to Drekavac. “He’s only stabbing me because I was going to stab him, but he can’t know I was going to stab him because I haven’t had a chance to do anything yet, because it wasn’t my turn.”
    “It’s your own fault for not waiting your turn!” shouted Gurien.
    “Oh, so now I can do stuff out of initiative order whenever I feel like it?” said Pazusu. “Fine, then I backstab Gurien again.”
    “You can’t backstab him again ,” grumbled Drekavac. “You haven’t done anything yet. It isn’t your turn.”
    “Exactly,” said Pazusu, with a smug smile on his face.
    Lucifer sighed. On some level he knew it was his own fault he had been thrown in with this gang of idiots; his own paranoia prevented him from hiring any underlings with the intellect to mount a conspiracy against him. Azrael was the closest thing to a strategic thinker of the group.
    “Looks to me like you’re Prince of Jack and Shit,” said Azrael, “and Shit left town.” He spoke quietly enough that the others didn’t overhear, but the threat was implicit in his words. Lucifer knew it was time to act.
    “Watch it,” said Lucifer. “You can be replaced, you know.”
    “Promise?” said Azrael.
    “I meant when I get out,” said Lucifer through gritted teeth. “I’m going to need a second in command, and I won’t brook this sort of insubordination.”
    “ If you get out.”
    “Oh, I’ll get out,” sniffed Lucifer. “I’ve got a plan. You think it’s just a coincidence the new guard showed up? It’s all part of my plan.”
    Lucifer spoke of the angel who was slowly pacing the perimeter of the area outside the cage, swinging a fiery sword in lazy arcs in front of him. The guard, who went by the name Malcazar, was garbed in the uniform of the Heavenly Incarceration Corps. He had appeared that morning in place of another guard, an angel named Fornaeus. The