Father was, as usual, lounging on his throne. I swallowed back a sneer of distaste. It was made from human skulls. Not exactly my décor of choice, but I was not in charge.

A number of impish sycophants scuttled around him, chewing on the ragged ends of his toenails, massaging oil into his horns. I grimaced at that. Having one’s horns rubbed was akin to having one’s nethers attended to. The fact that he allowed those scaly little critters to touch him so personally—and in front of his progeny, no less—made me shudder.

He looked like a carbon copy of me—huge, heavily muscled, his skin somewhere between scarlet and ruby. His hair was shockingly white, where mine was pale blond. He did not look a decade over eight hundred, although he was multiple millennia old. But when I looked him in the eyes (something I mostly avoided like humans would the bubonic plague), the years were all there. His eyes looked … bored. As if there were nothing in all the worlds that he hadn’t already seen, over and over again.

I wondered if that was why he had stopped visiting the Human Realm to reap souls. Had the repetitiveness of the task become so tedious to him that he no longer had the stomach for it?

Even when the trickle of souls entering Hell had continued to wane … and the Pit Demons had become restless with a lack of misery to feed on … he had not recommenced his sojourns into the Human Realm.

Which brought us to the reason Hellen was about to tattle on me to him.

“What the home is your sister racketing about this time, Junior?” Father asked dolefully, flicking a hand to where Hellen knelt, panting beside his throne, clutching at her side. Her screeching had turned into a sort of ragged gargling as she struggled to regain her breath.

“He … keeps … going to … the … HUMAN REALM!” she squawked between gulps of air. “Won’t … tell me … why!”

Father’s expression went from jaded to amused within seconds, and he sat up straighter on his throne. He raised a white, bushy eyebrow at me.

“Indeed?” He smacked at an imp who was polishing his horn with excessive enthusiasm. “Leave us! All of you!”

“Yes, King Satan!” they chorused, their claws clacking on the stone floor. When the door to the throne room shut with an echoing boom, Father leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees.

“And what have you discovered on these little sojourns, son?” he asked, a devious smile curling his lips. Hellen, somewhat recovered from her race to tattle, smirked at me, her eyes glowing a vindictive yellow.

I almost grinned, knowing how her expression was about to change.