After Alexander threw this well-defined grenade into the henhouse, he jumped to his feet. He would let those present process this news at their own pace before returning to it. Full of enthusiasm, he said:
"I think it's time for me to face the rest of my family for a while before they start wondering if I haven't already disappeared back into the other universe."
He looked at Lucifer, who made no attempt to get up and pressed the bottle of whiskey to his chest. With pleasure in his voice, he said:
"That means you too, Lucifer. It's time to say hello to your brothers and sisters. Like I said, they will probably take it easy. Would you like me to replace the bottle with a teddy bear?"
He snapped his fingers, and the bottle changed into a pink teddy bear with a blue bow around the neck.
The devil looked at the boy and said:
"I am not the bloody Urchin!"
Still, he seemed to struggle to let go of the teddy bear before setting it down on the coffee table. The rest of those present were not quite in the moment for other reasons. The news that the human race was about to bring upon itself a self-created apocalypse had apparently taken hold.
For the next two hours, Alexander went from angel to angel in the garden, getting to know each other and exchanging a few words. Trixie, on the other hand, was never far from him, as this was the best opportunity for her to make individual contact with each Angel. When the very first angel Alexander spoke to addressed him as My Prince, he immediately wanted to object, but an almost imperceptible nudge from Gabriel's elbow made him quickly drop his objection. He hated protocol, but since the little ball scrub he had received from the Messenger of God, who had seemingly taken it upon himself to become his mentor, he had decided to follow his instructions. At least for the rest of the day. He needed time to think, and he couldn't do that while being dragged from Angel to Angel. There had to be a way to get rid of the protocol he hated and still maintain some form of respect. He just needed to figure out how. Alex and Trixie were engaged in a lively conversation with Archangel Haniel about a subject that interested him greatly. Not to mention Beatrice, who bombarded the poor angel with one question after another. After all, Haniel was the Archangel of Technology, and given Trixie's dream of going to Mars one day, he was her chosen victim to bombard with questions. Now that she was a little older, she had put aside her desire to be President of Mars but not her desire to go into space. In the middle of answering another question from the girl, Gabriel nudged Alexander, and a movement of his head pointed in the direction of Ella, who was standing next to Lucifer. The little Latina caught sight of the Antichrist watching her and made an almost imperceptible head movement toward the devil. Alex immediately saw that he was at the end of his rope. Every fiber in Lucifer's body was tense, and his nervous playing with his cufflinks was obvious. He thought it was time for a little rescue mission.
"Haniel, I would like to have a conversation with you about a vision of the future I have for Heaven, Hell, and Earth. If you don't mind, I'd like Gabriel to set up a time with you where we can have this conversation at length. What do you think?"
"It would be an honor to help you, My Prince. I am available at your convenience."
Alexander held out his hand to the angel, who shook it.
"Perfect, Hani, I will have Gabriel set the time, and then we can get to work."
With that, he left the angel behind and slowly made his way to Lucifer and Ella. He did not want to make a hasty impression that might give the angels the idea that something was up. He placed a hand on Ella's back and gently grabbed the devil's wrist, preventing him from playing with his cufflink. He deliberately used a word he had not wanted to use for a long time to come but felt that necessity broke the law:
"Dear Ella, Dad, in all the excitement with Doc Linda and the arrival of our new little Nephilim, I forgot to discuss something very urgent with you. Can we go to my quarters for a moment?"
The Devil looked at him like a deer staring into the bright lights of an oncoming truck when Alex addressed him as Dad, and that had been the little Antichrist's intention. He turned to the Angel Ella and Lucifer had been talking to. His question was not so much a question as a politely spoken sentence that did not tolerate contradiction.
"Ariel, I hope you don't mind if I borrow your brother, whom you haven't spoken to in so long?"
Understanding exactly what was happening, the angel bowed her head slightly and replied:
"Of course not, My Prince."
Alexander nodded to the angel. He tugged gently on the devil's wrist to get him to move and, with his hand on Ella's back, led the way back to the house. Trixie, for some reason, had decided not to let Alexander out of her sight for a while and followed closely behind the trio and Gabriel. Just before Alex entered the house, he glanced over his shoulder for a moment. He saw that Daniel seemed to be having fun with the surfer angel who had taken apart his Italian coffee maker, and that Chloe was surrounded by a couple of female angels who were probably asking her about her relationship with Lucifer. Or what was left of it, he thought grimly.
Arriving at his suite, the Devil flew to the sitting area, dropped onto the couch, and grabbed the bottle of whiskey while the others quietly took their seats and let Lucifer recover for a moment. After his second glass, he said:
"Bloody hell!"
All the while, the devil had been looking at Alexander, startled, still not recovered from that one little word that had been addressed to him. Smirking, Alexander said:
"Don't get used to it, Diablo Mio. It was not my intention to address you as such, and to be honest, I am far from addressing you as such. However, I was afraid that you were about to pull out your devil face to scare the living daylights out of those poor angels, so I had to take drastic measures."
The Devil took another sip from his glass and muttered:
"Bloody hell... I completely forgot how..."
With a broad smile, Alexander finished the sentence that Lucifer seemed unable to finish:
"Excited they can be?"
Lucifer looked him sternly in the eye and said:
"That's not quite the word I was looking for, but let's leave it at that, yes."
"Good, because now that contact has been re-established, you can expect many more visits in the near future."
The Devil narrowed his eyes, took a big gulp from the bottle this time, and muttered:
"Bloody hell..."
Gabriel, Ella, and Trixie could see from Alexander's face that he was more than amused when he could poke the Devil a little.
"Yeah, because you guys obviously have a few thousand years of no contact to make up for. Can you imagine how many questions all your little sisters and brothers will have for you? Soon they will go back to heaven, and then of course they will tell all the other siblings about you, and then of course they will all want to come and talk to their big brother. Thank goodness you have a top-of-the-line cell phone with a calendar, because you may need it to keep up with all of this..."
The Devil almost choked on his last gulp at these words from Alexander and drew away pale. But he also saw the diabolical glee in his Antichrist's eyes and knew immediately that he had to be on his guard. The Urchin, sitting suspiciously close to Alexander, had an equally sly smile on her face and was studying him in the same way. The detective's offspring had perfected her own way of manipulating him in recent years. Lucifer realized he was being manipulated by Trixie, or at least he realized it most of the time and just let it happen because there was no way he could say no to the girl. However, there were times when he blindly stepped into one of her little traps with both feet at the same time. Not to mention those times when she seemed to bring out her puppy dog eyes in full force. Now there were two of them on the couch across from him, sitting side by side, and he could feel in every fiber of his body that none other than himself was the chosen victim of the two. A small shiver ran through his body at the thought of his near future. What he didn't see was the look in the eyes of Ella, who had come to sit next to him. The little Latina had obviously noticed what was going on on the other couch. Without so much as a word, Trixie and Alexander had conspired and set their sights on the big bad devil, trying to squeeze as much fun out of him as possible. Ella decided to let them do as much as they liked, as long as it didn't go too far. In fact, she decided to participate herself. In her opinion, it was high time that Lucifer was exposed to something other than his eternal life of doing whatever he wanted, wild parties, and drugs of all kinds. Not that she wanted to end that for him, far from it. This lifestyle was part of who Lucifer was, why he was what he was: an all-around good guy, always ready to help his friends or even strangers. No, Ella had absolutely no intention of going the same way as Chloe. She didn't want to change the devil; she liked Lucifer just the way he was. But he clearly could use a little more exposure to a real family life. Now that his son had come into his life, it was the perfect time to start. She knew that Lucifer had been cut off from his family and family life for thousands of years and that he was completely unaccustomed to children. Trixie seemed to be the pleasant exception to the rule. She decided to help Lucifer bond with his son. However, Ella also knew that this would have to be done slowly, lest the devil panic or, on the contrary, overdo it by suddenly wanting to fulfill the role of father in all the wrong ways.
The four of them were sitting comfortably in Alexander's living quarters for a while when Alexander suddenly jumped up and yelled:
"I have to go; Maze is going to kill Raffa..."
Instead of running, he simply disappeared from the room, only to reappear in the bedroom immediately afterwards, where Doc Linda had just given birth to a healthy boy. He saw Maze, face contorted and teeth gnashing, about to attack Raphael with one of her daggers. He raised his voice, which had a divinity hidden in it:
"Maze STOP!"
She turned to Alexander and snarled:
"He immediately hit the baby!"
Alexander smiled and had to do his best not to burst out laughing. He asked:
"Did he happen to give the baby a light tap on the butt while holding it upside down?"
The demon looked at him strangely and nodded. Alex said:
"He didn't hurt the baby, Mazi. On the contrary, it helped the baby."
She squeezed her eyes shut and asked snidely:
"Then why did it start crying right away?"
Alex shook his head, finding it increasingly difficult not to burst out laughing. Behind him, he heard a clearly tired Doc Linda giggle as well. He said:
"Mazi, the baby is half human. A human baby sometimes needs a little help to take its first breath. Its lungs may still contain amniotic fluid because it has been living in water for nine months. A little slap on the butt while a doctor holds the baby upside down causes the remaining water to drain from the lungs, and the baby can breathe. That is why almost all of them cry immediately, because it is their first breath, and it is something completely foreign to them. They're not crying out of pain. So do me a favor and leave poor Raphael in one piece because he didn't do anything wrong; he helped the baby perfectly!"
Maze was clearly thinking about what Alexander had told her and found the whole human birth thing just weird. Raffa took the opportunity to move away from the considerably mellowed demon. Alexander turned to the bed where Linda lay with the baby on her chest and immediately wished he hadn't. Not only had the baby not been cleaned yet, but part of the bed still bore the marks of childbirth. Something he would rather not have witnessed. The Antichrist was used to hell. In various cells he had visited in the last few years, he had witnessed the barbarity of which man was capable. Even when things threatened to get out of hand with revolting demons in the lowest circles of Hell, he had not remained at the sidelines and dealt out his share of the blows to restore peace. But this, this was something else. Now it was the Antichrist who was getting a little whiter around the nose. Jophiel watched and giggled:
"I didn't know the Antichrist was so sensitive. Sit down, boy, before you fall flat on your face."
Something Alex didn't allow himself to be told twice. At the same time, Mazikeen wished she could watch like a chameleon so she could keep an eye on her two most important people in the room at the same time. Alexander on a chair with his head between his legs at Raphael's suggestion, and the baby being cleaned by Jophiel while Raffa did his healing thing with Doc Linda.
Once everything was neatly cleaned up and there was no trace of the birth, Mazikeen and Alexander were more or less back to normal. Linda had just fed the baby for the first time and was starting to get sleepy. Alex carefully took the newborn from her after Maze had made a big jump backward when Linda had offered her to take the baby. She stood there, eyes wide open, watching the scene. Alex smiled at the baby and asked Linda:
"What's his name?"
Linda looked at him and said:
"Thanks to your intervention earlier, you opened my eyes, and I had some inspiration. I think this name will suit him much better than the one I discussed with Amenadiel: Lucas Mave Martin."
Alexander's eyes began to light up. It was obvious where the little boy got his two first names. He looked at Mazikeen and said to the baby:
"Hello, Lucas, little joybringer. I see your Aunt Mazikeen is a little shocked that you are named after her as well. Mave, yes, it totally suits you, because I am sure you will bring a lot of joy to a lot of people, Angels and Demons."
He looked at Linda and asked:
"Is it okay if I go introduce Lucas to the rest of his anxiously waiting family and especially Bee? Maybe you can get some rest in the meantime; I'll bring him right back."
Doc Martin's eyes fluttered, and she nodded tiredly as she drifted off to sleep. With the wrapped baby in his arms and Maze at his heels like a watchdog, Alexander walked to the garden where the others had gathered. He walked to the center of the group and said with a broad smile:
"Bee, are you coming? You've waited long enough for this moment."
Beatrice did not know how quickly to appear next to the Antichrist. Extremely cautious and a little nervous, she took the baby from Alex. And he announced with pride:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to inform you that the delivery went perfectly and both mother and son are doing extremely well. The mother is taking a little rest, so I have the honor to inform you that I am no longer the only Nephilim in this universe. This little guy doesn't know it yet, but he's going to play a big role in the future. Not by doing anything, but by simply existing."
Suddenly his eyes glowed gold again, and he said:
"Mr. Morningstar, your new nephew needs something from you; please come closer."
The Devil did not understand what was going on, but Ella took his hand and brought him right in front of Alexander and Beatrice, who could not take her eyes off the sleeping baby. The Antichrist said:
"Now that you are no longer the King of Hell, Lucifer, it is time for you to return to the powers you once had as the Archangel you were, one half of the Demiurge, the Creator of Light, the Will of God! Look within yourself, find your light, and bless this boy, Lucas Mave Martin, with that light."
The Devil's eyes grew wide and then moist as he realized that this baby was named after him and Maze. He doubted Alex's words that he would be able to find his light again, let alone reconnect with his light, the Demiurge. It has been thousands of years since he was kicked out of Heaven, separated from his twin, from the Demiurge. But for this child, he was willing to try and do anything. He searched the depths of his soul, and much to his shock, he found a glimmer of light there. As he concentrated on it, the glimmer grew larger and larger, brighter and brighter. Suddenly his eyes changed. Not the fire of hell, but a bright golden light. He gently placed his hand on the baby's head and saw some of his light penetrate the tiny body. It seemed to have the purest brilliance, like the prism of a perfectly cut diamond. Lucifer spoke softly:
"Hello Lucas Mave Martin, welcome to life..."