Lucifer Reborn 2

by Dante King

  “I guess it’s easy when you’ve got wings, though,” Maddie agreed.

  “No elevators,” I said, glancing back down at the lobby. “Guess the song was right; you have to take a Stairway to Heaven—”

  Judyth paused mid-step, turning back with an arch expression. “More secular music,” she said with a sigh. Glancing up and down the stairs and realizing the three of us were alone, she shrugged and lowered her voice. “Fortunately, there was no one else around to hear it. You two need to be more careful, though—you walk on thin enough ice already. The authorities will be looking for any excuse to expunge you from the Book of Life before you can even put down your signature.”

  My thoughts had been down the same track so recently that I wondered if Judyth had a little bit of telepathic ability. “I thought you were the authority,” I said, shaking off my worries. “Aren’t you the woman in charge?”

  Judyth’s eyes narrowed. “You’d think that,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “But you’ve already gotten some inkling that it isn’t truly the case, haven’t you?”

  I thought about that moment after I’d first arrived at the Pearly Gates. Seeing past the clouds, getting the impression of a massive unblinking eye in the sky above me—the feeling of terrible, inhuman power brushing over my skin as something stared down at me. Maybe the Almighty. Maybe something else. Either way, it was clear that Judyth was far from the most powerful being in this realm.

  “Maybe we’d better finish up our orientation, then,” I said, nodding at Judyth. “Wouldn’t want there to be any more incidents…”

  After the luxurious splendor of the Admissions Office, entering the room where the Book of Life was kept was as much of a shock as having cold water thrown in my face. It resembled nothing so much as the actual Admissions Office of a college campus, barely larger than a broom closet. I remembered my cramped meetings with a poorly paid advisor my freshman year, signing up for my classes, and got a sensation of deja vu so strong I had to suppress a shudder.

  The room had a single desk with a comfortable armchair behind it, along with two far less salutary looking seats for Maddie and me. We seated ourselves, my girlfriend coolly crossing one tanned thigh over the other as she relaxed. Maddie was gorgeous, poised and in control, with a current of excitement coursing through her body like lightning. She was ready for this—and so was I.

  Judyth cleared her throat. “As new students of the Celestial Academy, there will be several guidelines you will be required to follow on the path of light. As our dear Myles Featherfinger already explained to you, chiefly among these are the power of belief. Everything runs on belief in the Celestial Realm: the belief in the sanctity of the rules, in the inviolability of the restrictions placed upon the students of the Academy, and the belief that these things are not only for your own good but a necessary component in order for you to thrive. If you keep nothing in mind during your stay with us save for those principles, you will know 90% of what you need in order to be in compliance already.”

  Maddie and I shared a look. “That’s a bit different than I’m used to,” I admitted. “My other school isn’t really big on rules.”

  “It’s much more about what you can get away with,” Maddie added with a giggle.

  The look on Judyth’s face told me everything I needed to know about what she thought of that. “We do things differently,” she said. “Allowances are made for new students, of course, and we are generous with the lightness of our corrections. Now, without further ado…”

  The Headmistress reached down and opened a desk drawer. A golden light spilled from inside, illuminating her from the chin up like someone about to tell a spooky story around the campfire. She deposited a heavy tome with a green cover on the top of the desk, its pages faintly glowing with magic.

  “The Book of Life,” I said, running a finger over the weathered cover. The names of every student within the Celestial Academy would be contained within, their names written down in golden ink just like I’d learned so long ago. “It’s beautiful.”

  I wasn’t ready for what happened next. Judyth laughed.

  “Oh, that’s not the Book of Life,” she said, tugging an identical volume from the desk. She set it down next to the other copy, depositing one in front of myself and the other Maddie. One of her long nails brushed the cover, burning words into the surface. “This is our student instruction manual.”

  I gasped. The thing was as big as Atlas Shrugged, and probably twice as painful to read. “You’re kidding,” I spat.

  “Just a few rules and regulations we expect our students to be intimately familiar with before they take classes at the Celestial Academy,” the Headmistress explained breezily. Was it my imagination, or did her halo shine a little brighter at her joke? “Seeing as you’re both new students, however, the faculty will be happy to give you a period of adjustment to familiarize yourself with our commandments. Say... a week?”

  I understood the game immediately. From the way Maddie bared her teeth, I could tell she did, as well. There was no way the two of us could follow every stricture within these two identical, heavy tomes. Hell, the two books probably weren’t even the same—it would have been well within the boundaries of a prank to slip something into one that wasn’t in another, just to ensure the Celestial Academy had some justification to throw Maddie and me out.

  Judyth smiled, and in that smile was a message: you’re already expelled, and you don’t even know it yet. I can get rid of you whenever I want—so you’d better prove to me you’re worth my time.

  “Wow,” Maddie said, holding up the book. “This is a lot. I had no idea becoming an angel involved so much work—”

  Well. No sense in trying to sugarcoat it. “Yeah, I thought that every time a bell rings, a girl like Maddie gets her wings,” I drawled. “Look, both of us know I’m not reading this book, Judyth. Whatever clever little technicality you and your people want to get Maddie and me in trouble for, I couldn’t really give a shit about.”

  “Oops!” Maddie’s eyes lit up. “More swearing in the Celestial Realm!”

  Judyth ran her fingers along the lacy fringe of her robe, smiling like a cat with an entire bottle of cream. “You misunderstand,” she purred, cocking her head to the side as if I were the one who’d caged her instead of the other way around. “These are the rules that every student is expected to follow, not just the ones who’ve been a little too chummy with the Prince of Lies before their arrival. They won’t need to be enforced, of course—unless there’s a problem with your lessons, that is.”

  There it was. Blackmail. The only question was—what the hell was Judyth blackmailing me for?

  “So, I need to stay on your good side,” I said, picking up the thread she’d left for me. “How exactly do I do that?”

  Judyth chuckled. “Smart boy,” she said, wiggling a finger at me. “I can see why Lucifer thinks you might be the one. Here’s what I want from you, Luke. First, I need you and Maddie to inscribe your names in the Book of Life, so you can both become students at my institution. Then…”

  “Then?” Maddie asked.

  Judyth made a steeple of her fingers. “Then I want you to go check on your friends down below,” she finished with a faint smile.

  On the surface, this was a perfectly reasonable request. It was just what I’d been planning to do once I got settled in, after all. But coming from the Headmistress’s lips made it sound like the most lascivious, depraved act possible. It didn’t take me long to figure out why.

  “You want me to spy on the Infernal Realm,” I realized, sitting a little straighter in my high-backed chair. “You want a man on the other side.”

  Judyth spread her hands as if to say, You made the suggestion, not me. “As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, angels are an extremely diligent and proud people. However, even our best specimens are somewhat... lacking when it comes to social graces. Suffice to say, it’s much easier for someone from down below to fit in among the winged se
t than it is for one of our agents to pretend to be a member of the Infernal Realm.” Judyth leaned forward, exposing the deep cleavage cut into the top of her robe. “I don’t get very many opportunities to spy, Luke, and I make the most of every single one that comes across my desk.”

  Maddie let out a scandalized little noise, but her eyes shined with excitement as she put her hand over her mouth. “You want Luke to work against Lucifer!” she said, sounding delighted. “A double agent!”

  “The Prince of Darkness isn’t the only one who thinks he can master both sides of the fence,” Judyth said proudly. “Help me out with this, Luke, and I’ll make sure any minor infractions”—she waved the book chock full of reasons for me to be expelled—“get overlooked by our disciplinary board. I can’t have my star pupil getting into trouble, after all.”

  I thought about it. And came to a series of conclusions, very quickly.

  One: I didn’t trust Judyth as far as I could throw her—before I became a candidate for Archlord.

  Two: being a spy would let me travel between both realms without difficulty.

  Three: I had zero issues playing both sides against the middle. My harem contained both demons and angels, after all—and besides, this seemed to be what Lucifer wanted. Why send me to a school filled with his mortal enemies if he didn’t want me to learn their ways? In fact, I was sure this was all part of his plan.

  “Alright,” I said, giving Judyth a nod. Next to me, Maddie literally squeed with delight, her hand gripping my thigh in a way that was anything but platonic. “I think we can make that work.”

  “Very good,” the angel purred. She reached down further into the desk, exposing more of that luscious cleavage, only to stop herself on the verge of placing a third tome on the top of the desk. “You’ll make your reports to me directly, Luke. In private.” Her eyes flashed to Maddie for a moment. “I don’t want anyone finding out about our little arrangement. Maddie, you won’t have any problem keeping your boyfriend’s secrets, right?”

  The implication of private meeting couldn’t be any clearer. To her credit, Maddie looked even more game for all this than I was. She beamed from ear to ear, giving me a little go get ‘em, tiger punch on the shoulder. I had to say, one of my absolute favorite things about coming to this strange new world and chasing the mantle of Archlord was just how willing my girls were to share each other. It would have felt strange to go back to Earth and deal with a jealous woman—one whose reaction to seeing a hot girl flirting with me was how dare you instead of damn, threesome opportunity!

  “I understand completely,” Maddie giggled, leaning over to display some cleavage of her own. “I’ll keep this matter between us.”

  Is that it? I wondered. I felt vaguely like a piece of meat that had just been split between two butchers. I probably should have felt violated, but hell—I kinda liked it.

  “In that case,” Judyth said, pulling a much weightier tome from the desk, “all that’s left is to sign on the dotted line.”

  Unlike the glowing handbooks we’d been issued, the Book of Life was a curiously terrestrial tome. A faint sheen of dust covered its pages, like a library book left on the shelf without anyone to check it out. I ran my thumb along the edge of the cover, but the dusty appearance remained, as if placed there by magic.

  Inside was a familiar sight. Tiny columns of script ran up both sides of each page, covered in the minuscule names of students. This part of enrollment, at least, was exactly the same as in the Infernal Academy.

  “Do we need to sign in blood?” Maddie asked. She already looked ready to bite a fingertip to produce the necessary fluid.

  “Of course not!” Judyth looked offended by the very idea. “I have a quill for you right here.”

  Maddie looked vaguely disappointed as she reached for the writing implement. She wrote her name in tiny block letters at the bottom of the nearest column, letting out a little sigh of relief as she handed the quill to me. “I’m going to be an angel, baby,” she said, giving me the cutest smile I’d ever seen.

  “You’re already my angel,” I told her, meaning it. Then I wrote the words Luke Bell underneath hers, finishing it with a flourish.

  The page glowed for a brief moment, the ink drying instantly. The names of both Maddie and me were in the book. We were students. We’d done it.

  Lucifer’s chosen was now officially attending the Celestial Academy.

  “Fantastic,” Judyth said, tucking away both quill and book in the blink of an eye. She left our rulebooks sitting on the desk, though she looked as if she didn’t particularly care whether we took them with us or not. “Now Luke, I assure you Maddie will be as safe with me as she would be in her own bed. I would ask that you hop back to the Infernal Realm briefly to, hmm, how should I say? Check in on things down below. Take the temperature of events.”

  And make it clear that I’ll be jumping from realm to realm, I mentally added. So it won’t look suspicious later when I start spying for you. Oh yeah. I could pick up what this angel was putting down.

  “I’m fine with that,” I told the Headmistress. “Um, how exactly does that work?”

  For a moment, Judyth just stared at me blankly. Then her expression brightened. “That’s right, you really haven’t the mechanics of this place explained to you yet, have you? Your subspace works within the Celestial Realm exactly the same as it does in the Infernal—in fact, it makes a convenient waypoint between your two Academies. Jumping into subspace from here and walking out into your dorm at the Infernal Academy is much easier than driving all the way from Heaven to Hell. Trust me.”

  I thought it over. It could have been a trap, but if Judyth had wanted to trap me, she’d have had dozens of opportunities to do it by now. She seemed serious in her desire to have me as a double agent against Lucifer’s forces, although there was definitely something she wasn’t telling me about the whole arrangement. I’d have to look more deeply into it later.

  “Alright, let me give it a shot,” I thought, concentrating. Then, with a worried glance at Maddie: “You’ll be fine here, right?”

  My girlfriend gave my new Headmistress the kind of look that normally led to a naked party in the nearest bedroom. “Oh, absolutely. I’m looking forward to getting to know the staff here a little bit better.”

  As long as my staff’s the only one you’re putting your hands on, I thought with a wink. Closing my eyes, I pictured my subspace. My own pocket universe, connected to both of my Academies but truly a part of neither.

  “I don’t think it worked,” I muttered after a moment. “Judyth, are you sure I can access my personal space from the Celestial—”

  I opened my eyes.

  And found myself standing back in my living room, inside of my subspace.

  Chapter 3

  “Hello? Is anybody home?”

  Immediately, I realized this was not the same place I’d left only a short while ago. When I’d taken Maddie into the bathroom and made an honest woman-slash-angel out of her, my personal subspace had consisted of a suite barely bigger than my college dorm room. A smallish bedroom dominated by a king-sized bed, a bathroom, and a short hall leading to the kind of living room one normally shared with two or three roommates.

  This, on the other hand, was one hell of an upgrade.

  The only thing I could think was that my promotion to the Celestial Academy had given me more energy to play with inside of subspace. What had been a drab, dorm-like space resembling a studio apartment now looked like the penthouse suite at the top of a Las Vegas casino. Plush black leather couches framed a wall-mounted TV and fireplace, with granite backsplash that reminded me of the stairs leading to the Celestial Academy’s main offices. Inlayed lighting bathed the room in a chiaroscuro of colors, giving me the ability to turn my living room into a cinema or a rave at will. Flipping the switch on the wall revealed it even had a ‘blacklight’ setting, in case I wanted to get really freaky.

  I looked around, stunned, wondering how I’d accidentally fo
und my way into some other demon’s subspace. Then I saw a familiar sight. Whatever energy had remodeled the place had put in all new kitchen fixtures—but there was still a crack against the bartop seating, in the exact shape the impact of Mareth’s horns would make. This was my subspace, and that was the very spot I’d fucked my gorgeous succubus until she became a permanent member of my harem, bound to me for all eternity (or near enough for my purposes).

  So I was home. But where was everybody?

  By my count, the subspace should have had at least three occupants: the aforementioned Mareth, my girlfriend Christina, and my henchman Oni, a bound demon. They’d been just outside the bathroom while I had sex with Maddie, cheering us on. The fact that they’d seemingly disappeared within the span of an hour or two filled me with dread. It wasn’t so long ago that a demon named Karl broke into my subspace and stole Maddie out from right under my nose, prompting me and the rest of the gang to go rescue her. Mareth had assured me she’d taken precautions to keep something like that from happening again, but who was to say a more powerful demon couldn’t override whatever wards she’d put on my subspace?

  “Christina?” I asked hopefully. The couches and the rest of the furniture looked new. If Christina or Mareth had been lounging on it, they’d have left gouges with their claws and tails. “Mareth?” I paused, my lips forming a tight little line. “Oni?”

  No dice. The subspace was empty—as quiet as a tomb. No running water from the shower, no tinkling bassline from Maddie’s music on my phone. Only…

  Only I heard something. A moan, as if from a great distance away.

  I stiffened. Fuck. Karl’s here.

  I thought I’d killed him, but did demons really die so easily? Or maybe some other candidate for Archlord had taken advantage of my disappearance, swooping in to stab my harem through the heart before I could rocket up the leader boards. They wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for it, after all—in Hell, initiative like that was rewarded.