Page 81 of Plaidypus
“Why are you out for my blood today, Dad? I haven’t done anything!”
“You were kidnapped.”
“Technically, I went along with the Devil after he nicely asked me to cooperate with his nefarious plans. He didn’t like what the kidnappers were up to. I mean, I hadn’t scheduled to come to Australia, and it was technically a kidnapping, but I got to go fishing and enjoy a nice ride with Icy. And Icy is the best moose. She’s also my moose, and she goes with me wherever I go, so if you want me to visit, there best be a place for Icy at your residence.”
My father grunted. “Am I supposed to curse the Devil or thank him?”
“Thank,” Darlene prompted. “While my Lucy can absolutely be a dick, he’s the good guy this time. And he’s putting together a great hiring proposal for Nadine. You can satisfy yourself making sure she gives an excellent counteroffer. Ask for Leonard’s help, too. He’s most excellent at these sorts of negotiations.”
The glare my father leveled my way promised trouble in the future. “You’re going to work for the Devil?”
“It’s your fault for always calling me a little demoness growing up!”
“Well, if you hadn’t let your platypus get you into so much trouble, I wouldn’t have called you out.”
My platypus did have a habit of getting me into trouble, and she’d get me into a lot of trouble with Leonard if he put on another plaid shirt for my enjoyment. “You should see Leonard in a plaid shirt, Dad. You absolutely can’t blame me for my life choices after you see him in a plaid shirt. He’s so Canadian it’s sexy.”
“Most people say painful,” my father replied.
While true, I shrugged. “Him in plaid is sexy, and him in plaid is definitely Canadian.”
“I wore a flannel shirt because it was supposed to snow,” Leonard said. “I didn’t feel like a heavy jacket.”
“You’re supposed to wait to say that sort of thing to me when we’re somewhere private,” I complained, sulking in my spot beside Icy.
“I see. You’re one of those. No matter how many times I tried to tell Nadine platypuses come from a warm climate, she would do her best to go out barefoot in the snow. Usually in shorts and a t-shirt. She’d only become sensible when the temperature dropped to below twenty and the cold knocked some sense back into her head.”
“I see I’m going to have my work cut out for me if I want to protect her, generally from herself.” Leonard raised a brow at me. “I’ll only wear plaid if you’re appropriately dressed for the weather.”
I sucked in a breath. “And Lucifer calledmemalicious.”
The Devil popped into being, a carry tray of hot drinks in each hand. Darlene popped off her seat and hurried over to help him deliver drinks to their intended recipients. She woke the cindercorns with nudges to their flanks, whistled until her daughter spewed curses, and cuddled with her kelpie of a son-in-law to wake him up.
Lucifer handed me my drink and chuckled, smiling at his wife’s antics. “That was pretty malicious, although not quite as malicious as trying to make those two fight over you when they’re ready to share territory. The pony appreciates a big predator keeping an eye out for his daughter, and the wolf likes that the pony is willing to eat danger noodles as a lunchtime snack.”
Judging from the reddening of Leonard’s face, he’d thought of the venomous snakes as danger noodles. “Danger noodles, Leonard?”
“They’re deadly, and he was snacking on them like they were noodles. I couldn’t help it. I saw him whipping around a danger noodle he was eating as a weapon, and now I can’t unsee it. He was eating a snake like it was a noodle.”
“It tasted surprisingly good,” my father admitted. “Getting a needle to the ass courtesy of some devil wasn’t my idea of a good time, but the snake? I’d eat another one.”
“If you hadn’t eaten it, venom and all, you wouldn’t have been stabbed with the antidote,” Lucifer replied. “But I was amused to witness such a disturbance in the food chain. Next time, eat everything but the head.”
“But the head was extra spicy,” my father complained.
“You’re going to end up fighting with Lucifer and not Leonard,” I complained. “Then Leonard will just take the stone and do what he wants with it.”
“Honestly, I’d like to throw it right in the asshole’s face and break his teeth while unleashing the Geese of the Apocalypse, but I also recognize when mercy is more important than the fleeting sense of fake justice, which is what breaking his teeth with the stone would be,” he admitted. “And truly, the most important thing is to make sure there are no other victims. If that means letting go of petty revenge for the greater good, then I don’t even need to throw the stone at all, as long as the job gets done.”
Lucifer smiled, patted my shoulder, and went to where I’d placed the stone he’d given me. He plucked it off the ground and held it up. “Such a dark rock filled with malice. You would think that it would create greed and more maliciousness in its wake in the form of temptation. You could throw this at anyone. It has passed from hand to hand, and while I almost took a flock of angry geese to the face, it would have been an earned punishment. But rather than seek out revenge, your only wish is to make certain no one else is victimized.” The Devil bounced the rock in his hand before flinging it upward. “Your wish is granted. There will be consequences, but the innocents who would have otherwise been victimized will find this is a night of peace and salvation.”
The stone exploded into a dark cloud of wings, and the honking and hissing of angry geese disturbed the quiet of the Australian evening. Hundreds upon hundreds of the birds scattered in all directions, more appearing as the first wave disappeared into the distance.
“Damn,” I whispered. “How many geese have found their way into your many hells?”
“All of them,” Lucifer replied in an exasperated tone. “And the feathered fucks try to take over the place each and every time.”
“Did we just do an act of good or evil?” I asked, my brows rising at the endless avian stream of doom and destruction about to take over Australia and bring chaos to the rest of the world on their way back to Canada.
