Devil's Conflict

by Percival Constantine

  “You called for a masseuse?” she asked.

  Asmodeus smiled. “Why, yes. Come in, my dear.”

  He closed the door behind her and she began to set up the table. She produced a towel from the bag and draped it over the table and she turned to smile at Asmodeus. “Please lay down on the table and take off your robe.”

  Asmodeus did as he was told, undoing his robe while the masseuse watched. He kept his eyes locked on her as he took it off and then kept watching while he laid on the table. The masseuse placed a small, folded towel over his ass and she squirted some oil onto his back before she began to massage his shoulders.

  Asmodeus relished the feel of her hands on his flesh. The woman knew how to do her job, and it made him almost regret what he would have to do. But he didn’t have much in the way of choice. If he was going to be ready for what was to come, he’d need to restore his strength. The driver’s essence provided him with a good boost, but it wasn’t enough. Asmodeus would need more. Even this woman might not be enough for his purposes.

  What had happened in his time away, he wondered. He imagine his underlings would keep things quiet at the club, which was to be expected. But what of his domain? Surely by now, someone in Hell knew he was missing and he had no clue what they would do about that.

  The woman ran her trained fingers down his legs, applying pressure where necessary and working the knots out of his muscles.

  “You’ve got a lot of tension,” she said.

  “You would too, if you had been where I was for the past several months.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Somewhere…unpleasant.”

  “Why were you there for so long?”

  “For a business deal that didn’t quite go the way I’d hoped,” he said.

  “Did it fall through?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Well, that’s in the past now,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”

  A smile passed across Asmodeus’ face. “Yes, I’m sure you will.”

  “Okay, you can turn over.”

  She picked up the towel and held it up as Asmodeus turned onto his back. She placed the towel back over his crotch and started massaging his chest. Asmodeus watched her work and she kept her eyes on his chest.

  “You work out?” she asked.

  “Not so much.”

  Her eyebrows rose at that comment. “Wow, you’ve got killer genes then.”

  He chuckled. “You have no idea.”

  She worked her hands down his abdomen, moving closer to the edge of the towel. She looked at him and smiled, staring into his eyes as her hand went under the towel. Asmodeus drew in a breath of satisfaction.

  “Mr. Pearson said you looked like you needed some…special treatment,” she said.

  “Mr. Pearson was correct,” said Asmodeus.

  She pulled the towel off and then leaned over him, one hand working below while she placed the other on his chest, moving her head closer to his. She pressed her lips to his and he fell into the kiss, sitting up and placing a hand on the back of her head.

  Asmodeus’ hand tightened, gripping her hair. The masseuse’s eyes opened wide and she tried to pull away, but couldn’t Asmodeus kept his grip on her, and her body started glowing. The same white light that had appeared within the cabbie now appeared in her, the energy flowing from her body and into his.

  When he released her, her corpse collapsed on the ground. Just like the cab driver, she was now little more than a burnt-out husk. Asmodeus hopped off the table and pulled the robe back on. He felt stronger, the masseuse’s essence certainly helped. Normally he preferred not to strengthen his power that way, behaving like a common vampire, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Asmodeus walked over to the table where the cigar box and brandy Pearson had sent up were waiting. He took a cigar from the box and with the provided cutter, cut a bit off the end. Asmodeus lit the cigar with the tip of his finger and puffed on it, savoring the taste.

  He poured himself a glass of brandy and walked over to the large window and sat down in a chair, staring out. The brandy was smooth and sweet. He’d been deprived of the simple pleasures of the flesh that he’d come to love about being on Earth for far too long.

  But this wasn’t just about returning to his old ways. Asmodeus had a score to settle. There was only one way he could convince Thanatos to release him from Purgatory, and it was something he was loathe to do. Choices were not something the Hell Lord had in abundance, though.

  He allowed the smoke to billow from his mouth. In the window, he could see the reflection of the cloud and in the middle of it, his yellow eyes glowing brightly.

  Raziel. Cain. Luther.

  Three men Asmodeus thought he would have been able to trust. But now, they were three men he’d have to confront. At the end of the day, Asmodeus’ only choice was to watch out for himself.

  “Get ready, Chicago,” he said with a smile. “Your favorite fallen angel is back in town.”

  4

  I sat at the desk in my home office, reading a massive, leather-bound book, a lit cigarette held in my left hand as the right turned the pages. If you looked up the nephilim in the Bible, you wouldn’t find a whole lot of detail. Religious scholars couldn’t even agree on what the nephilim actually were. Some argued that they were children of fallen angels while others said they were the descendants of Seth and Cain’s offspring.

  The texts most religious institutions held as sacred were really nothing more than Cliff’s Notes, and not even really good ones at that. References to texts not included, shifting definitions, and you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a translation that contradicted another translation.

  If you wanted the truth, you had to go deeper. And that’s what I was doing. Being raised by the Sons of Solomon granted me access to their library. Some of the books in there only had a couple of copies in existence. The time of the nephilim was pre-Gutenberg, so anyone who wanted a copy of the journals available back then had to make it by hand.

  Though I wasn’t a member anymore, I called in a few favors after Dakota left with Raziel last spring. I was able to arrange for some books to be delivered. Of course, by the time they arrived, that whole mess with Purgatory started up and once that was over, I couldn’t have cared less.

  So why was I doing research? I basically told Morrison to fuck off. If I got mixed up in this, it would probably just make things even harder on Dakota. But I also knew that the way I planned things and the way things ended up turning out weren’t always exactly the same, so better to be prepared for the worst.

  And if little Malcolm turned out to be an asshole, I’d have to be ready for that. To protect myself more than anything else. I’d have to know just what I’d be up against.

  Most of the stuff written in these journals didn’t give me a lot to go on, unfortunately. Basically just provided background on the nephilim. Angels sent to watch over humanity fell in love with the daughters of men. In the Bible, they told you these angels took the women as their wives. Not surprising. Couldn’t tell the masses that the heavenly beings sent to watch over humanity were actually a bunch of rapists. And as usually happened in these situations, those powerful beings were given a slap on the wrist. Those daughters of men were betrayed by their own people, accused of seducing the angels.

  The more things change…

  The nephilim were another story. Angels were created to serve, to obey. They were soldiers, nothing more. But humans were created with free will and the desire to use it. The intermingling of an angel’s power with a human’s creativity was enough to scare the shit out of anyone. Throw in that contradiction of obedience versus free will, plus the cherry on top of both sides shunning the nephilim and, well…many of them snapped.

  That’s where things got a bit fuzzy. Heaven and Hell both saw the danger in keeping the nephilim around. They reached an agreement. The nephilim were destroyed and the creation of further hy
brids was strictly forbidden.

  Didn’t stop the demons from continuing to spread their seed, but Hell had an easy out. They’re demons—fallen angels and humans, they can’t really be controlled, only contained. But even Heaven didn’t care too much about that. Cambions were mostly content to satisfy their own pleasures with humans and no one really cared about them. The nephilim threatened to destroy a planet, but cambions were just considered beasts, no different from any other apex predator.

  But how did they stop the nephilim? That’s the part I couldn’t find any information on. Don’t shirk me on the ending, let me know how things turned out in the end.

  I leaned back in my chair and sighed before taking a drag on the cigarette. I exhaled and once the smoke passed my lips, it seemed to take on a life of its own. It flowed through the air, the cloud expanding as it settled in front of my desk.

  I sat up and watched the smoke condense and accumulate, slowly shifting into features. Humanoid features. It solidified and the figure who stood in front of me was a beautiful woman with pale skin and red hair, with glowing yellow eyes and dressed in red leather pants and a tight black shirt.

  “Lilith,” I said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  In case you weren’t up on current events, Lilith was the first demon. She thought herself Adam’s equal but Adam and Heaven thought otherwise. She refused his advances and was seduced by none other than Asmodeus himself. She gave birth to the first cambions and when she died, she became a demon.

  When the decision was made to contain the nephilim and the cambions, Lilith was the scapegoat offered up. She was imprisoned in Hell for over a millennia and only recently escaped. And now, her and I were partners. Together, we ruled Asmodeus’ former realm.

  “Don’t get cute, Luther. We need to talk.”

  I cringed. Nobody ever needed to talk. That was code for ‘I’m about to tear you a new asshole.’

  “Okay, let’s talk,” I said and pointed to the chair in front of my desk. I started to stand. “You want a drink? I can go—”

  “No. Not here.”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh, Lil. I’m not going down to—”

  Lilith ignored my protests and her eyes burned, hellfire emerging from her body and reaching down to the floor, circling around us, trapping us inside. The flames rose as high as the ceiling and all I saw was a flash.

  The light faded and my senses were immediately assaulted. Demons, particularly the lower-level ones, gave off a sulfuric stench. So in a place where they congregated, that smell was stronger than ever. I felt my eyes water as the odor invaded my nostrils.

  In the distance, a cacophony of screams could be heard. The wails of doomed souls being punished for their sins. Tortured endlessly by demons who had once been human until Hell corrupted them.

  But even worse than that was my sixth sense. As I said earlier, being a cambion gave me a kind of supernatural radar. So when I was in a realm where literally everything was supernatural, my senses were screaming like a smoke detector that wouldn’t stop.

  I fell to one knee and tried to pull myself back up. I looked up at Lilith and she just stared back at me with impatience—arms folded over her chest, foot tapping on the ground. I tried to get a handle on the new assault on my senses, focus and push them away.

  Wasn’t the first time I’d been to Hell. Technically, I was the ruler down here and I was given the walking tour by Lucifer himself. In those initial weeks, I was able to get a handle on the surroundings. It took work to do, though, which was why I left the day-to-day operations to Lilith and I stayed in Chicago.

  “Are you done yet?” she asked.

  I groaned and shook my head. The screams had faded into the distance and my sixth sense had calmed down after the first assault. The brimstone stench was still there, but I was getting used to it. Even though I wanted to throw up, I could manage. I rose to my feet and glared at her.

  “Give a guy a warning next time,” I said. “You know what this place does to me.”

  Lilith rolled her eyes. “Maybe you’d get used to it if you tried spending some actual time down here.”

  I took notice of the room for the first time. It was a parlor room with couches and a coffee table between them arranged in front of a fireplace. With a snap of Lilith’s fingers, a blazing fire ignited the wood. A painted portrait of Lilith with a seductive half-smile and holding a rose dripping with blood hung above the mantle.

  “You’ve been decorating,” I said.

  “Gotta do something to pass the time.” Lilith walked over to the curtains and pulled them apart, revealing floor-to-ceiling glass doors leading out to a massive balcony.

  I approached the window and took in the view. The terrain was mountainous with flames shooting from the rocks. The skies themselves were the color of blood and the buildings looked like they were constructed from bone.

  “Welcome home, lover,” said Lilith. “Now, about that talk.”

  I sighed and returned to the center of the room where I sat on one of the couches. Lilith sat across from me and crossed her legs, leaning forward on them.

  “You got out of here pretty much as fast as possible,” she said. “That’s caused problems.”

  “We had a deal, Lil,” I said. “You wanted Asmodeus’ realm, I got you his realm.”

  “Problem is I’m not the one in charge here, you are,” she said. “The natives are restless now that they’re under the command of a cambion. Plus, you’ve got something of a reputation. There are a lot of demons who either know someone you killed or were personally exorcised by you.”

  “I can’t change the past.” I reached into my leather jacket and took out my monogrammed cigarette case.

  “No, but you can change the perception many here have of you,” said Lilith. “They think you’re just a puppet of the angels. As a consequence of being your consort, that assumption extends to me as well.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “A show of strength,” said Lilith. “There’s a resistance growing in our realm. Right now, it’s pretty much chaos, but—”

  “But nothing, you said it yourself. It’s chaos. Keeping demons in check is like herding cats. Sure, it’ll be a headache for us, but that also makes it ten times as hard for them to really organize.” I lit my cigarette. “Just look at what happened in Chicago when Asmodeus went missing. Iblis, Kimaris, you. The only thing that really got things under control was Lucifer giving me control over Asmodeus’ territory.”

  “This isn’t Chicago,” said Lilith. “But I’m glad you brought up Lucifer, because my idea actually involves him.”

  I sucked the smoke into my lungs and shook my head as I exhaled. “I’m not doing that.”

  “If we’re going to have any chance of success, you’ve got to make some alliances with the other Hell Lords,” she said.

  “So do it,” I said.

  “I don’t have a seat on the Infernal Court, you do. More than that, your father was one of the original Fallen.”

  “Yeah, and he betrayed the Court and tried to take all of Hell for himself,” I said. “Being the son of Abraxas isn’t gonna do me any favors, trust me.”

  “It gives them reason to fear you, especially since you can use the stone,” said Lilith. “They may hate you, but if you make them fear you, you’ll win their respect. They’ll forge an alliance with you in order to preserve the peace. But you need to make some big moves of your own first.”

  I took a long drag on the cigarette and slowly exhaled the smoke. I missed the time when Lilith and I were a pair of rebels on the run. Now that we had a Hell dimension to rule over, it was like all the passion had been sucked out of our relationship. I guessed this is what marriage must have felt like.

  “I didn’t do this to start a demonic Rotary Club. I don’t want to get to know any other demons or Hell Lords. I did this because I need the power that comes with being a Hell Lord. That’s what’s going to provide me with protection.”

&nbs
p; Lilith scoffed. “Protection from what?”

  “That’s my business, none of yours.” I stood and looked down at Lilith while taking another drag. “If you have to make friends with some of the others, you go ahead and do that. The only one I had any kind of a relationship with was Asmodeus, I’ve never even met the others. But keep me out of it. I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  I concentrated and the flames in the fireplace flared up. They shot out from the fireplace and spreaded towards me. The flames quickly swallowed me up and then returned to the fireplace.

  But me, I was sent back. I opened my eyes and I was in my office once again. I stamped out the rest of my cigarette in the ashtray and sat back down at my desk.

  I could already see this was going to get complicated.

  5

  Asmodeus exited the taxi right in front of the Willis Tower. He stared up at the massive building, knowing what secrets were held above it. The Willis Tower was nothing more than a gateway to a pocket dimension that housed Eden, a kind of embassy for Heaven.

  His strength was improving with each moment that passed. The longer he was in Chicago, soaking up the emotions of those around him, the better he felt. The initial boost in power he got from draining the life force of the driver and the masseuse was enough to make him feel more like his old self again.

  Asmodeus walked through the front doors into the lobby, dressed in a dark, crimson suit with a vest, black shirt, and black tie. He entered the elevator and stood in the back with others, waiting as the floors ticked by and they all disembarked, little by little.

  Close to the top floor, Asmodeus was the last one left. He stepped up to the panel and circled his finger above the buttons, muttering in Enochian and drawing an angelic sigil with his finger. A button materialized into view and Asmodeus pushed it.

  The elevator felt like it was rocketing up faster than before. It came to a stop and the doors opened, filling with a bright, white light. Asmodeus closed his eyes and walked towards that light, which quickly faded and gave way to the image of a pristine night club with several levels and a large, outdoor terrace. Everything here was sterile and white. It wasn’t the most pleasant thing for Asmodeus, who preferred the unrestrained sin of his own club.