“What do I need to know about this Akashareth dude?” I asked, trying to put my mind somewhere safer.
Devlin’s face darkened. Damn, I was an asshole. I’d bitten his face off for bringing up my mortal enemy and how I got screwed over by him, and then I’d gone and done the exact same thing to him.
“Never mind,” I said. “That was shitty of me.”
“No, it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind. Like you, I grow angry whenever I think of him.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Sorry for being such a bitch.”
“I accept your apology. What do you want to know?”
I sighed. Devlin was clearly a better person than I was. If he’d turned the tables on me like that, I’d have probably flipped him off and walked out on him. After telling him what an asshole he was.
But I’m twenty-six. Devlin is three hundred, seventy-one. I guess you kind of mellow after three-and-a-half centuries.
Either that, or I’m just a real shitheel. I’d be willing to bet either way.
“So if we’re gonna face this badass motherfucker down, what do I need to know about him. How does he fight? What kind of powers does he have?”
Devlin opened his mouth to speak, but he shut it immediately. A second later, our server returned with a fresh beer for me.
“There you go, hon,” she said.
She was pretty – shoulder-length, blonde hair, a round face with a button nose, dimples in her cheeks. Her brown eyes sparkled as she smiled at me. They reminded me a little of Felicia’s, especially with the blonde hair.
“Thanks,” I replied.
I watched her walk away. She was wearing tight pants that did wonderful things for her ass. The way her cheeks shifted up and down as she walked was magical. And she wiggled her butt a little bit as she went. This girl understood what made her attractive and how to use it to her advantage. I bet she made pretty good tips.
I sighed. Sometimes being bi was a real pain. It basically doubled the number of people I found attractive. I realized I was low-key horny. Damn. Must be the stress. When I was majorly overwhelmed, getting off helped lower my tension.
“You were saying?” I prodded, trying to get my head out of my sex drive.
“Akashareth is a Prince of the Kingdom of Abaddon,” Devlin explained.
“Those are the destroy-everything guys, right?”
“Yes. And Akashareth particularly enjoys his mission. He was delighted with the results of his manipulation of my village. I have since come to believe he manipulated his colleagues too. For not only did he dupe my village into sinning atrociously, he inspired Ezripan to target the Indian tribe for Wrath, thereby doubly visiting horror on my people.”
I nodded. I really didn’t know shit about demons, but that seemed to fit, you know? It just felt like the kind of assholic trick a demon would pull.
“So what do I need to know?” I asked.
“Akashareth enjoys turning a victim’s best attribute against them. He studies the man or woman to determine their most virtuous trait. And then he turns it to evil.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, sipping my beer.
“Whatever is most virtuous about you, whatever your finest quality is, he will find a way to twist it, so that it works his evil, so that it brings about your downfall.
“This is what he did to my village. He saw how pious we were, how devoted to God. And he noticed that we believed our success was due to our righteousness.
“He therefore turned our eyes to the Native Americans, to heathens who were prospering, who perhaps were doing even better than we. In this way, he inspired Envy in our elders. He fanned the flames of jealousy in their hearts. They, in turn, spread this anger to us. Akashareth knew that a people obedient of God would look to its elders for spiritual inspiration. So he turned their own piety against the rest of us.
“Soon, we hated our neighbors for having more than we. Worse, they did not worship the One, True God. They were pagans, idolaters. And when this anger took root, when we became so envious of their success despite their lack of faith, then could sin fully bloom in our hearts. It was not long after we were prepared to act monstrously.
“And all this came about because Akashareth recognized our piety and found a path to exploit it. The thing that should have exalted us to Heaven instead condemned us to Hell.”
He fell silent. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I’d yet to meet the hyper-religious person who wasn’t brimming with hatred of anyone they considered an Other, whether it was homosexuals or foreigners or liberals. The fervently religious always seemed to be willing to commit atrocities. This was how we got people willing to fly jetliners into skyscrapers. This was how we got folks picketing gay funerals.
So it was hard for me to accept Devlin’s premise that his village had been comprised of good people who had been tempted away from the path of light. You don’t go from jealousy to mass rape and murder in one short step. Most people have enough moral fiber to stop short of committing terror, even if they fantasize about it.
But Devlin believed his story, and there had to be some truth to it. I didn’t doubt that Akashareth looked for what most people considered a good thing and then tried to turn it bad. That was pretty much human history in a nutshell right there.
“So how do we fight him?” I asked.
“Fighting him is much like fighting any other creature,” Devlin said. “But you must guard against his temptations. Do not allow him to turn your strength against you.”
“So what then? Make sure he can’t use my magic conversion ability against me?”
“No, it has nothing to do with power. It is your strength of character, Sarah. That is what he seeks. Whatever is your most positive trait he will target. Only you can know what that is.
“But be careful not to deceive yourself. If you misidentify your moral strength, you’ll guard against the wrong attack. You won’t see him sneak past your defenses to hit you where you are really weak.”
I had another chug of my beer. This conversation was getting as dark as the previous one.
“I don’t have any strength of character, Devlin,” I said. “I’ve never accomplished anything. I hurt everyone who loves me. I run away from trouble. I have no strength for this demon to use against me.”
Devlin regarded me carefully. That blue-eyed gaze crawled over me. I sipped some more beer to avoid looking at him.
“I don’t know you well, Sarah,” he said. “Indeed, I barely know you at all. But you slew a vampire—”
“After he kidnapped my girlfriend.”
“It is still an accomplishment. Moreover, you don’t run from trouble.”
“What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“I saw you fight courageously in Mt. Pleasant, Sarah. You could have run. Instead, you stood your ground and battled the threat.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Devlin. That’s not courage. That’s desperation.”
“I am sorry you see it that way. But I disagree.
“I don’t know about hurting the ones you love. I don’t know you well enough, or even at all, to make that sort of assessment. But if you think you’ve inflicted pain on your loved ones, you have the ability to apologize. That is something I wish I had. My wife and children have been dead for three hundred, forty-four years. If there is anything left of them at all, they are just skeletons in the ground.
“And they are dead because I sinned. I committed atrocities. I carried out the mad wishes of a demonic lord.
“I cannot apologize to them. I cannot beg their forgiveness. Neither can I make amends the people of my village whom I led to ruin or to the Native Americans upon whom I committed atrocities. They are all dead, Sarah, and they have been for over three centuries.
“What I can do is atone for my sins by hunting down the fiends who wrought this savage crime. And I can train you to be stronger than I was, wiser, smarter.
“If you hate yourself, Sarah, Akashareth will find a way t
o use that against you. He will learn that you do not value your merits, your finer qualities. And he will turn them against you and the people you love.”
“Hold up,” I said. “‘The people of your village you led to ruin’? Before you said it was the village elders who organized the raid. Are you telling me it was you?”
His face fell. I could tell instantly he hadn’t realized he’d made that confession. He flushed red. Then a darker curtain of shame than I’d seen before fell over him.
“You are intuitive and intelligent, Sarah,” he said. “Yes. I was one of the elders. Sometimes, I forget that I was. I only remember the horror we wrought and lying in the ruins of the settlement as the demons surveyed their handiwork.
“But I was tempted by Akashareth. I failed this test. I and my compatriots incited our people to violence, to sin. I damned us all.”
Devlin fell silent. He dropped his eyes to his plate. I sat there unable to fathom it. How could you live with that kind of guilt? How would you even go on? And he’d been living with it for almost three hundred, fifty years? I could never have done that.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. Dear God, we were both in so much pain. We both had so much to apologize for. And there was no one to whom we could appeal. His family, his people, were dead. And while mine were alive, I could not go to them. I could not return to Cincinnati. It would put Felicia and Ben at too much risk. I couldn’t do that to them.
I wiped away my tears and quaffed the rest of my beer. My head was buzzing now. Being tipsy was the closest thing to feeling good I’d experienced in days.
Server With The Sweet Ass materialized as if out of thin air and offered me another. I nodded – proof I was letting the booze do the thinking at this point.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as I watched the server swing her behind towards the bar.
“Of course.”
“What’s it like being alive for so long?”
“I’m not really alive, Sarah.”
I cocked my head.
“Wait, you’re undead? Like a vampire?”
He chuckled softly.
“No, it’s not like that. I am not undead. I simply do not age or ‘live’ like a normal person. I have been twenty-seven years old for three hundred, forty-four years.”
He fell silent for several seconds as the server returned with my beer. She set it down and smiled at me.
“There you go, hon,” she said again.
She lingered for just a second. Then she tossed her blonde hair as she sauntered off. She must have noticed I’d been checking her out. This woman was either gay or willing to pretend to be to increase her tip. Nice.
“So you’re, like, immortal?” I asked, dragging my eyes back to Devlin as I sipped my beer.
“No,” he said. “When I finally capture Akashareth, I will die. But not until I do.
“In the interim, I never age. I never rest. There is only the quest. And I am tired, Sarah. I want it to be over. I did not know what I was agreeing to when I accepted Alara’s ‘gift’. If I had, I might have reconsidered.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “It can’t have been all bad. I mean, you got to see all sorts of amazing shit. You were there for the development of modern medicine. You saw polio get cured, for instance. And the development of indoor plumbing. And disinfectants. People underestimate how important that is.
“You got to see the first cars, the first planes. Hell, you were there when the Wright Brothers got airborne. You were alive for the moon landing. You’ve seen some amazing shit, Alistair.”
“True,” he conceded. “I have also seen great evil. I saw the African slave trade firsthand. I witnessed horrific wars. You talk of modern medicine? Imagine wars without it. I have seen Civil War soldiers endure amputation without the aid of anesthesia or proper antiseptics. I have seen science used to create machine guns and mustard gas so the enemy may be more efficiently and more horrendously killed. Did you know that much of modern dentistry was discovered by Nazi doctors torturing Jews in concentration camps? Have you ever seen a man mortally wounded but not yet dead, so that he screams in agony, begging God to save him? But the only salvation is death.
“History is too often written to emphasize the great things we have accomplished, Sarah. We prefer to think about how brave the Wright Brothers were than how we used the knowledge they gave us to fight wars in the air, to bomb the helpless on the ground. We prefer to think about the great achievement of sending men to the moon, without remembering that the rockets on which they flew were first developed as weapons.
“I have seen entire populations butchered over territory. I have seen genocide committed against whole peoples. I have witnessed segregation and lynching and acts every bit as vile as the horrors I committed against those Indians so many years ago.
“Mankind was not meant to live forever, Sarah. Live long enough, and you come to understand how terrible human beings really are. You see nothing but evil. Even great things, goodness in the world, breeds evil when humans touch it. You need only look at what centuries, millennia even, of men have done to the words of Jesus Christ. He told us to love one another. Yet somehow, despite the parable of the Good Samaritan, we feel we must love only those like us. We hate all others.
“In three hundred, forty-four years, the only thing that has changed is the technology. The cruelty, the inhumanity, remains constant. Man is a damned race.”
I couldn’t really argue with him. I pretty much felt the same. I mean, I saw it every day. Dave the Creeper’s misogyny at the game store. The hundreds of little microaggressions I endured regularly. Black people don’t accept me, because I’m too White. White people don’t accept me because I’m too Black. No one sees me as a human being, and half the ones who see me as a woman want to use me as a sex toy and then toss me out. The laws people make to keep rich people rich and spit on the poor. The nationalism and bigotry that are marching out in the open since the election in 2016. My little corner of the world is a terrible, terrible place, and we’re supposed to be the greatest nation on Earth. If that’s true, God help us all.
“So, I wish all this were over,” Devlin went on. “I wish I could just lay down this staff, go to sleep, and never see any of it again. I understand human evil too well, and I don’t want to see any more of it than I have.
“But the only way to do that is to finish my quest. I must fulfill Alara’s mission for me and capture all five of the demonic lords on which I swore vengeance. I’ve imprisoned four of them. I’ve one left. And I pray to any god that will listen that this lead I have now will finally bring me to the end of this journey. I have suffered enough for my sins. I want to finish my redemption and die.”
Tears formed in my eyes again. I’d had a hard life. It wasn’t easy growing up poor and light-skinned but still Black. It wasn’t easy being a nerd girl. I’d dropped out of college because I hated it, and I’d worked nothing but shitty retail jobs ever since. I had a half-brother who wanted to kill me and was willing to feed me to a vampire and send actual fucking demons after me.
But all this sounded trivial to Devlin’s suffering. Sure, he’d done monstrous things. I didn’t want to know all the terrible crimes he committed when they raided that Native American settlement. But three hundred-plus years of penance? Slowly going mad at the sheer inhumanity around you? That was terrible. I couldn’t imagine that level of pain. Twenty-six years was already more than enough bullshit for me.
I drank half of my beer and then set it down. I was definitely lit up.
Forcing my vision into focus, I stared into Devlin’s blue eyes. From the moment I’d first seen them, they’d smoldered with some quiet rage. I understood now that that hatred was only partially aimed at the demon he stalked.
He hated himself too.
Damn, but I understood that. I had enough self-loathing to share with at least three other people who might need some. I just wanted to feel good again. I’d felt good before, hadn’t I? Maybe a long time ago? I just
wanted all the hurting to end, even if it was just for an hour or two.
I reached out and put my hand on his.
“Devlin,” I said. “Alistair. Maybe I can take away your pain. For a little while, anyway.”
He met my stare. Those blue eyes of his searched me, trying to peel away the hidden meaning. God, he was beautiful. I struggled to keep him in focus, but he was gorgeous.
“Take away my pain?” he said, confused.
“Yes,” I said.
I squeezed his hand and hit him with a soft gaze.
“How?” he said.
I smiled.
“Let’s go back to the hotel.”
Eleven
As soon as we were inside our room, I grabbed Devlin by the front of his pants and pulled him to me. He had half a second to look shocked before I put my lips on his. They were salty, rough. His breath smelled vaguely of steak.
Dear God, his scent was powerful. Musky, strong, intoxicating. I inhaled deeply, luxuriating in it as I kissed him. I couldn’t get enough. My head was spinning. I needed more. I needed him.
I knotted my hands in his hair and pulled his face tightly to mine. I opened my mouth, but he didn’t slip his tongue in. His kisses were tentative, frightened. I pushed myself against him.
“Sarah,” he gasped. “Wait. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
Maybe it was the booze lowering my inhibitions. Maybe it was all the stress I’d been under the last few weeks, hell, the last few months. Maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t been laid at all this year. I was unbelievably horny. I’d gotten wet just walking from the restaurant to the hotel, anticipating this. I was not taking no for an answer.
“Shhh,” I whispered and smashed my mouth to his again.
“No,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
I grabbed his balls. He groaned in pleasure.
“I understand all I need to, Alistair.”
I kissed him again, and this time, he didn’t resist. He ground his hips as I massaged his crotch. Feeling him in my power, realizing he was at last responding to my touch, got me hotter.
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