Chapter Text
It started with a girl.
Her name, she said, was Lili. She was, she said, their age, which she seemed to need to have confirmed before she would commit to 16. Her hair was long and wild, reaching down to her hips, and her eyes were yellow. Ten minutes after she met the Them on the bus coming back from London, she had already separated Adam from the group and was sitting at the front with him. It certainly appeared that she was holding his hand.
“She’s a demon,” Pepper said.
Brian gave her a doubtful look. “Are you saying that because you really do think she’s a demon,” he asked, “or because you get mad every time Adam spends time with people that aren’t us?”
“How dare you even ask me that!”
“You spent three weeks trying to convince everyone that Warlock was a Mossad agent here to kill Adam ‘cause you wouldn’t believe they were brothers.”
“Yes, well.” She paused her glaring at Lili to give Brian a good glaring. “That’s different.”
“It’s really not.”
“It really is! I’d never use this term lightly, after everything that’s happened… She’s an actual demon. That girl reeks of sulfur.”
“I think that’s just her perfume. It’s kinda nice.”
“Our best friend is being… assaulted by some sort of… demonic succubus, and you won’t even have the decency to believe me!”
“I think they’re just kissing a bit?”
She banged her head against the seat in front of her. “Wensley! Help me!”
“I am.” He glanced up from his phone, which he had been furiously typing on for the entirety of their conversation. “It says here that different herbs can be used to help banish demons. If we can use them on her, maybe Adam will be freed from her influence.”
“I’ve got a bit of focaccia left in my bag from lunch,” Brian said.
“Oh, so now you’re going to help us free our friend from a demon.”
“I mean, I’m not giving up the opportunity to throw some bread at someone, demon or no demon.”
They had ended up dividing the focaccia between them and storming the front of the bus as it stopped at the Tadfield stop, pelting Lili with bread and shouting random Biblical-sounding things at her, dragging Adam away by his shirt collar in the confusion. At the very least, she didn’t follow them, and though Adam was incredibly confused and mad that they didn’t save any focaccia to eat after, they considered it a job very well done.
-
Back on the bus, Lilith quietly murdered the bus driver, taking his place as she shoved his corpse under a nearby seat and started the bus back to London. She fiddled with the radio until it landed on a station that filled the empty bus with the sound of billions of lost souls screaming in agony.
“Your son did not accept me, My Lord,” she said. She could feel her form slowly return to something much more comfortable; she hadn’t been looking forward to spending any amount of time as a stupid teenager again, even as a favor to her dark master and his ungrateful brat of a son. She wouldn’t tell him that, of course. “Forgive me for my failure.”
The only response was an increase in the screaming. Well. Better them than her, she always said.
When the bus pulled back into the station in London, everyone was so caught up in the horror of finding old Robert dead that nobody noticed the elderly woman slowly parting her way through the distraught crowd.