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“And
I strained to perceive what I now heard, that free-will was the cause of
our doing ill.”
St. Augustine
, Confessions VII
The City Of Suffering
from Blood of the Saints
Beyond the Valley
of
Nightmares
it’s always twilight, never darkening to night or lightening to dawn.
Spring never comes here, or summer; it’s a chilly country that lacks the
golden red of autumn or the icy grandeur of winter. Still, it has a bleak
beauty of its own, especially for a mind inclined to melancholy. A palace
stands on a cliff, its walls carved from black marble and onyx, inlaid
with fire opals alive with dark lights. A long colonnaded terrace juts out
from the palace, its roof supported by intricate bronze pillars, its
floors of polished black slate. The view takes in the lights glowing from
less grand dwellings below, and the dull white sheen of the
Sea
of
Ice
beyond. On the terrace is an ebony throne, a more modest version of the
massive jeweled seat in the Great Hall. On this throne the Prince of the
realm sat dreaming, looking out over his domain.
He remembered another palace, the inverted reflection of this one,
all white marble and moonstones, golden pillars and silver mirrors, alive
with the music of fountains set in an endless spring froth of blossoms. At
every turn he could see his own legendary beauty, of which he was vain in
spite of himself, reflected in water and liquid sheets of mercury. This
present dark palace, even in its luxury, was meant to be a painful symbol
of what he had lost. Here, his fountains froze in crystalline waterfalls,
his mirrors reflected only shadows, and his gardens bloomed with poisons.
Down below, he watched a single moving light separate from the
others. Probably a hanging lantern stirred by the wind, or someone walking
in the narrow lanes carrying a torch, but in his present frame of mind,
which was none too peaceful, the Prince thought of Diogenes with his
lantern, searching for an honest man.
For as long as he could remember, the Prince had been looking for
the same thing, hoping for that one glimmer, however tiny, of true
selfless virtue. He never found it. One thing he learned is that everyone
has a price, and it’s never money. He would say that it made him
cynical, but he had been cynical from the beginning.
It wasn’t a question of evil, although he would be the first one
to admit that evil certainly exists, and that there was a time when most
of it began with him. He once believed that the day would come when these
enticements, entanglements and temptations of his wouldn’t be needed and
would invariably fail, but now he couldn’t see an end to it.
Footsteps tapping down the great hall leading to the terrace came
closer, causing the Prince to stir on his throne. He sat upright, becoming
aware of a slight chill, and folded his great golden wings over his
amethyst velvet sleeves.
He knew the footsteps, knew it was his Chancellor coming nearer. In
the old days, he was the closest companion of the Prince, second only to
him in power. That hadn’t changed.
The footsteps stopped, the Prince turned his head. “Beelzebub,”
he said.
“Lucifer,” the Seraph answered. Beelzebub, dressed in gray
silk, was still warmer than Lucifer. He didn’t feel the chill, had never
felt it as keenly as Lucifer did, and his dove-gray wings were folded back
out of his way. The strong planes of his face and his silver hair gave him
the majesty of an ancient king, a gravity that Lucifer had always envied.
Beelzebub was still the consummate statesman, always weighing
probabilities and outcomes, advantages and disadvantages. He gathered
facts and considered issues, whereas Lucifer always had reason to regret
his own impulsiveness and quick temper.
Beelzebub was pragmatic in his choices. He did what needed to be
done, regardless of his own preferences.
They referred to themselves as Seraphim, as they had every right to
do. Elsewhere they were referred to as The Fallen or The Rebels or even --
in some quarters -- as demons
or devils, but all of them were created as eternal angels, in the highest
ranks of Seraphim, and nothing could ever change that. Lucifer had been
first among the Seraphim, followed by Beelzebub and Leviathan then by
Michael. Only Michael still lived in the marble palaces above, and the
less said to Lucifer about that, the better.
Lucifer went to the balcony, still looking at the moving light. His
purple robes, heavy with silver embroidery, followed him as if they were
part of his body, mobile and supple. He wore a great golden pectoral
necklace set with an enormous diamond, his insignia as the Morning Star.
Nothing would ever change that, either.
He pointed out the light, now almost hidden behind walls. “What
is that, I wonder?”
Beelzebub glanced over the balcony. “Probably one of the Grigori.
On his way to or from the libraries.”
Lucifer lost interest in the light and sank back down on his throne
with a sigh.
“Did you ever consider,” he said to Beelzebub, “what would
have happened if we’d won?”
Beelzebub’s wings stirred with slight irritation as he spoke.
“You’ve got to let go of this. You know perfectly well what your
purpose is.”
Lucifer shrugged. “I
suppose I should be grateful for how enthusiastically the human race has
thrown itself into iniquity.”
“Michael was equally wrong, you know. He finally conceded your
point about mankind’s needing to be educated by the angels. Isn’t that
why you took in the Grigori when their mission failed?”
The Grigori, Watcher angels, had originally been sent to supervise
mankind’s activities on earth. The problem was that they had become too
attached to human beings, so attached that they fell in love with the
daughters of man. The attraction was mutual: humans have always been drawn
to angels, to their unearthly fascination and their mystery.
The results had been disastrous, resulting in a race of monsters.
That ended the education of man by angels.
Brokenhearted at the chaos they’d caused, and unable to regain
the Celestial realms, the repentant and sorrowful Grigori had retreated
from the earth, asking Lucifer to create a place for them. Since they were
natural teachers, Lucifer put them in charge of the imperfect but
redeemable souls in Purgatory, teaching them what they had failed to learn
in life. As Lucifer put it, Purgatory was higher education on a grand
scale.
It was a useful task for the Grigori and they were good at it.
Other places in Hell, presided over by very different entities and
reserved for the truly damned, were not so pleasant.
“Why was I so concerned with man being given free will in the
first place?”
Beelzebub shook his head. “You should never have brought up the
word mistake.”
Lucifer turned and made a wry face at Beelzebub. “To my eternal
regret. And it seems that I do mean eternal. Perhaps I simply should have
said it was prematurely optimistic.”
Lucifer always amazed himself at his own propensity for learning
the obvious much too late. “I had no idea of the long-term plan. Not
until I understood that the war and the fall were necessary.”
“I always wondered...how did you find out?”
Lucifer shrugged. “He told me. Later.”
“Well, He never confided in me like He did in you.”
“So here I am, in a job I never wanted, but undoubtedly deserve.
The diabolus, the
obstacle on the path to grace. Collector of souls, ruler in Hell, tempter
and punisher. And I took a third of Heaven with me.”
Beelzebub had heard these self-indulgent rants before, but he was
famous for his patience. “We agreed with you, as you’ll recall.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier up above, dancing,
playing the harp, radiating celestial light, singing Kumbayah...”
Beelzebub sighed and gave Lucifer a sharp look. “Are you going to
be in this mood all day?”
“No, but I plan on luxuriating in my misery for another hour or
so. Why?”
“Balberith has some news. He’ll be here shortly with Azazel.”
“Azazel?” Lucifer said. “This can’t be good.”
Balberith and Azazel had sided with Lucifer in the Rebellion. Now
both of them moved freely between the Underworld and the Earth, Balberith
as Lucifer’s eyes and ears as he wandered among men unnoticed, and
Azazel as the Angel of Death.
Balberith’s scarlet robes with gold silk embroidery, and his
black-feathered wings, dark eyes, and long black hair made him look more
like the humans’ idea of Lucifer than Lucifer did. It amused them both
that Lucifer frequently sent Balberith when humans tried to raise the
Devil. Balberith usually grew horns and a tail just to satisfy the
expectations. Sometimes he turned his skin blood-red and showed up nude.
It was a crowd-pleaser.
Balberith’s puckish sense of humor, unfazed by his fall, was the
only bright light in the Underworld, a natural trickster. The humans who
“summoned” him always wondered why their infernal bargains went so
wrong. One human who asked for a million dollars got it the next day in
gold-foiled chocolate coins. To another who wanted a quiet, submissive
woman who would satisfy his every carnal desire Balberith sent a plastic
blow-up doll with an invoice from “diabolicdates.com.” Even the most
elaborate requests and contracts (which placed no obligation on the Fallen
anyway, and were especially non-binding on Lucifer), full of supposed
escape clauses, simply brought out Balberith’s most ingenious loopholes.
Not that souls weren’t sometimes accepted in exchange for favors,
but the humans had to have been destined for damnation in the first place.
The bargain simply speeded up the process, since they usually carried a
time limit. You repaid your debt on Hell’s timetable.
When Balberith returned to the Underworld to recount his
adventures, Lucifer usually burst out in amazed laughter at his audacity.
Balberith’s favorites were humans who used elaborate Satanic
rites. However, if they killed animals, his appearance was terrifying, his
wrath swift. Balberith loved animals and was once a guardian angel for
them. He felt that their innocence put them above mankind.
Most “Satanic” rituals were no more than excuses for orgies. He
always showed up
for those, and in his most seductive incarnation.
“I may be Fallen, but I’m not crazy,” he told Lucifer.
#
One of his imp servants stepped quickly before Lucifer’s throne.
“Prince Balberith comes, my lord.” This was unnecessary as the sound
of approaching wings
always announced Balberith more loudly than the imps did. Balberith was
fond of drama, and preferred to fly into Hell after his reconnaissance
missions. Lucifer waited for the sound, but this time, Balberith simply
appeared.
“I understand you have news?”
“I’m afraid so, and it’s not good,” Balberith said, his
face troubled. “A priest had his throat slashed right before the altar
of his church while he was at prayer, and a saint’s relic was stolen.
There’s evidence that, except for the victim, no human was involved.”
Lucifer’s brow furrowed. Sacrilege was never to be committed
without his direct involvement, and there had better be a good reason. It
attracted too much scrutiny from the Celestial realms, and that was never
a good thing.
“Who did this?” Lucifer demanded. His tone made Balberith back
off slightly.
Before Balberith could answer, Azazel materialized beside him.
Lucifer was struck, as he was many times, by Azazel’s appearance.
He took corporeal form as a young man of no more than twenty, with wide,
innocent eyes. When his light touch took the living, his gentle smile
soothed the dying soul.
No pleading, no bargaining, no mercy or inner compassion of his own
moved him. Death does what is needed, not what is desired. The destination
of the dead didn’t rest with him, nor was death at his own discretion.
He made no judgments, but went unquestioningly where he was told.
When it was required of him, his sweet appearance transmogrified
into a nightmare. His livid face and sickly yellow eyes, his body clad in
billowing rags clotted with blood, became terrible and inexorable as he
stretched his huge claws to drag the damned -- paralyzed with fear and
suddenly aware of their transgressions -- to the place of punishment.
Because Azazel’s duties placed him at the call of either the
Celestial realms or the Underworld, it had been agreed that he would be a
messenger between them. Now his placid eyes fixed themselves on Lucifer as
he handed him a scroll with the Celestial seal.
Lucifer read the message with increasing discomfort, then
incredulity, and finally with grim resignation. And I thought things
couldn’t get any worse.
After a moment he looked up at Azazel. “This doesn’t tell me
who killed the priest. You had to have been there. Do you know?”
Azazel gazed at Lucifer and said quietly, “I never see the
instrument of death.”
Lucifer had forgotten that. Azazel saw only the dying body and the
soul in transition.
“But you did, Balberith? I assume that’s why you’re here.”
Balberith suddenly looked very uncomfortable. A bad sign if
Balberith’s equilibrium had been disturbed.
“Of course I couldn’t see the actual murder inside the church,
but I saw someone going in, then coming out holding a reliquary.” Fallen
angels were prohibited from making incursion into holy ground.
“What part can’t you bring yourself to tell me?”
Balberith leaned close to Lucifer and Beelzebub and whispered a
name.
Beelzebub was speechless, the first time Lucifer had ever seen him
so.
Lucifer rose violently from his seat. “Impossible.”
He paced behind his throne, drumming his fingers against it, trying
to make sense of what he had just heard
“With all respect to your considerable powers of observation,
Balberith,” Lucifer said, “I think you may have been deceived. More
likely this is an escaped Transforming Demon in a disguise so shocking
that it hopes we’ll be thrown off.”
“Possibly.” Balberith glanced worriedly at Beelzebub. It
wasn’t all that possible. Beelzebub kept close tabs on two levels
of demons under Lucifer’s command: Transforming Demons or
shape-shifters, and Possessing Demons. Beelzebub knew where they were
sent, what they did there, and why. Not that some of them didn’t escape
his notice and sneak out on their own.
Lucifer sat back down. “At least it’s not complicated to get an
escaped demon back. Just go capture it, Balberith, so I can begin to
repair the damage. I’m surprised you didn’t do that already.” He had
the uneasy feeling that he was babbling.
Balberith touched Lucifer’s shoulder. “It wasn’t a demon,”
he said gently.
Lucifer buried his head in his hands and his pale hair shimmered
over his face. After a moment he regained his composure.
“Azazel, please return to the Celestials. Tell them I understand,
and I’ll do as they ask.”
The angel nodded, then left.
“Who are you sending to take care of the situation?” Beelzebub
asked.
“I’ll deal with this myself.”
The glaze of hope in Lucifer’s eyes alarmed both angels. All of
them were long since past hope, and no one understood that as
completely as the Prince of Darkness.
“Why put yourself through this? Send Abbadon, none of the
Avenging angels are more powerful or more loyal to you.”
“I don’t need an Avenger!” Lucifer shouted. “If things have
gone this far, it’s my fault!” He closed his eyes for a moment and he
could see a face as clearly as if it were before him now, eyes desperate,
voice fading into the distance. The guilt of this vision dominated his
life. Sometimes it receded and he’d thought he was free, but weeks or
months later it blindsided him, fresh as the day it happened.
Lucifer’s robes and wings disappeared, and in their place he wore
an expensive suit and his favorite ruby cufflinks. Of his many disguises
when he walked the Earth, this was the one he preferred. It undeniably
made him look human, but even he often admitted it was probably because of
his vanity.
Right now it was simply expedient because he had to get to Earth
fast. If the information was true, what he had to do there would break
whatever heart he had left.
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