Demon

You’ve heard of Gabriel and Michael—”

There was a slight, just-perceptible intonation to his words when he spoke these names, as well as the name of Lucifer, and even his own name. Not quite an accent, it was more an elongation on the tongue, as though the pure names in another language might be unpronounceable in ours. Hearing it now, I remembered it in the speech of the woman in the bookstore and of the man in the cafe.

“I won’t go into detail about all the various kinds of cherubim and seraphim. It may be best that I not describe them, lest, with all those faces and wings, you think us a spiritual freak show.”

Beyond his profile, a stained-glass saint stared out upon us both with hollow, fractured eyes. “And you? What about you?”

“Ah, me.” He spread his hands on his lap. They were lighter colored on the inside, the creases in them dark. The calluses on his palms struck me as aberrant. A stainless-steel watch peered beneath the edge of his cuff. “I was a member of the Host. A shining light, mere and marvelous.”

“How did it happen then—your change, I mean?” The question tasted surreal on my lips.

Lucian reached up to rub the back of his neck. I had seen Sheila do the same at the onset of her migraines. “I should tell that story from the beginning. But this place isn’t conducive to talking.”

“Because of the crosses?”

“No, because the praying of those people is giving me a headache.”

“The crosses don’t bother you?”

“They should bother you a great deal more. They were used to kill humans.”

I had not thought of that.

“Stay if you like, but I’m going.” He rose and moved down the length of the pew to the side aisle where he’d entered. Two weeks ago I would have gladly let him go. I would have camped out, in fact, in the front pew and inquired about moving in. But now I needed to know what this, any of this, had to do with me.

This, the question that had niggled at me these last two weeks, was helped not at all by his cryptic answers.

We stepped out, blinking, into the cold afternoon light. Now I could see the wiry gray hairs above his ears, the dark spots dotting his cheeks, betraying his age. He had a presence about him, an unflappability that I found slightly unsettling. He was casually dressed, his pants not dissimilar to mine that day in the bookstore, albeit softer around the knees. To any other eye he might have been a local academic out for a casual weekend. An accountant on his day off. A tourist.

“So you popped up from hell to meet me in church.” I shoved my hands into my pockets.

“I’ve never been there.”

“To church?”

“To hell.”

I squinted at him.

“You’ve got so much of this wrong, Clay. Your conventional wisdom lacks one thing: wisdom. None of us have been to hell.”

“So it doesn’t really exist.”

“Not now, no.”

“So you mean you haven’t been to hell yet.”

He flashed me such a baleful glance that my heart tripped in my chest. I started down the street, stiffly, my shoulders having risen toward my ears in the chill. A moment later, the demon fell into step beside me.

“To begin my story I should say that my beginning predates yours by a brief infinity.”

“You’re not making sense.” I didn’t look at him.

“The beginning of the world is only the beginning of time. Your Scriptures, being written for your benefit, begin at the point where you enter history. But my beginning came long before.”

“In heaven, I suppose.”

“No, Eden.”

“What, the garden of Eden?”

“Yes. That garden, the green one, was in Eden. And Eden is here. This.” He spread his hands out toward the expanse of sidewalk in front of us. “Eden preexisted that garden and the first of your kind. It was Lucifer’s—and my—home first.”

I raised my brows.

“What—you thought the world was full of nothingness before your creation?” He gave a short laugh. “Rather ethnocentric of you, isn’t it? Do you believe the earth is flat, too? Listen to me: Elohim created Eden. He also created us. And that includes Lucifer—which is important because no creation is equal to the creator. What that means for you is that, contrary to popular myth, Lucifer is no evil opposite of God.”

“I thought Lucifer was God’s nemesis.”

He stopped. “Clay, for this to work you have to let go of that. This is not your so-called classic human tale of the struggle between good and evil. Hades, but you humans always have a way of distorting the truth into something utterly simplistic and banal—not to mention trite.”

We walked again, and for several moments there was nothing but the steady sound of our heels on the sidewalk and the occasional brittle leaf that skittered across it, joined from time to time by the orphaned bits of