Demon

4

As he rounded the bend of the front counter, I fully expected that he might not return. To my surprise, though, he came back a moment later with a small pot of water. He refilled my cup before pouring a drop into his own—all the cup would allow, as he had never drunk any of it.

I looked at my teacup.

“Go on—” he gestured at it—“I want to watch you enjoy it.”

“As though you haven’t seen people doing this for centuries.”

“Millennia. But I’ll never tire of it. I like to wonder what it must be to take pleasure in something so short- lived.”

I took a sip. “Let me ask you something.”

“Of course.” He reseated himself with a magnanimous tilt of his head.

“It’s obvious you haven’t liked telling me this part of your”— I fumbled for a moment—“background. So why do it?”

I had a strange sense then—the same one I used to have as a boy when I ran up the basement steps, chased by shadows—that coalesced into this thought: Were his compatriots here? Did they know, and would they approve of his coming to me like this?

“Are you with him now?” I added, on impulse.

“What, this minute?”

I nodded.

He gave me a queer look. “Are you serious? Oh, you are. No, of course not. Like you—and like him—I can be in only one place at a time. Really, you watch too much television.” He glanced at his watch, seeming to weigh the time.

A surge of anxiety streaked toward my heart. But the demon, normally so well tuned to my discomfort, seemed to be in conference with his own thoughts. Finally, he crossed his arms. “When people talk about this story, they make it so idiotic: ‘Lucifer was proud, he wanted to be like God. When he rebelled, a third of the angels followed him.’ I’ve heard all the stories—yes, even in your churches. But you have to understand: We were all proud. And Lucifer—he was the governor of the mount of God. So how natural and right it seemed that when he held out his hands like a liege accepting fealty, we would give it.

“For a moment—whatever that can be without the boundaries of time—we forgot El. And I heard Lucifer’s thoughts then as clearly as if he had exercised his voice, raised up his fist, and shouted. And why shouldn’t you praise me? Why not bow down? Am I not your perfect prince, with strength a thousand times a thousand of you, with beauty a thousand times greater, with power beyond measure? Watch now! I will go up to heaven. I will raise my throne beyond the stars of El. I will sit upon the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the clouds of glory. I will make myself like the Most High!”

His gaze had left me again, and I knew that a part of him was back in that place, in Eden then. There was a curl to his lips, but the smile was not congenial.

“A moment, an eternity earlier, I would have known it for blasphemy, for damning ambition, independent of Heaven. I would have known! But in that instant his logic was perfect. How could anything less come from such a creature? In the shadow of Elohim, he seemed worthy to do it. He seemed like a god. His glamour was so great; I wanted him to be God.”

Lucian picked up the tea ball and stabbed it into his cup, sloshing water into the saucer.

“Did he know it?”

“How could he not? The assumption was—unspoken, of course, but put forth in suggestive and sultry thought —that those of us who followed him would be something greater as well. He would be a god, and we would become like him.

“The bulk of the Host stood stunned at the discordant thunder of this break. Still, I bowed to him, as did many others like me. And with that, the fate of a legion was set in motion. Time, not yet created, had begun its phantom tick for us alone. Not that we knew it then; we were caught up. We rushed the throne of Lucifer in all its shining estate there in Eden. It was the seat of a government outgrown, and we rose up, ready for our new order. And we seized the throne, determined to move it. I can remember the feel of it in my hands still. Can you understand, Clay? No, of course you can’t!”

Before I realized what he meant to do, he grabbed my hand, his skin tingling against my palm. I started, but as in the bookstore, his grip tightened. I couldn’t pull away.

“The gold of it was hot, burning glory—the glory of Lucifer. It branded me the moment I touched it”— he squeezed my hand tighter—“melding flesh with metal like skin melting on an iron. But instead of letting go, I clasped it tighter, reveling in the white-hot burning of my flesh, the happy cost of my metamorphosis.”

The tingling in my hands turned to pain. His palms seemed inhumanly hot. And then I felt it: a rush of power, thudding through my veins like adrenaline. The drum of my heart roared in my ears, faster—faster. In another minute I was sure I would have a heart attack.

Or that I could run a marathon.

I heard the demon from a distance now: “I, too, would become something more than the mere angel I was. And this would be my transfiguration. This searing was not pain but alchemy!”

The track lighting, the fliers on the wall, the bins full of exotic teas faded into my periphery. Once, back in college, when I had torn a groin muscle while running hurdles, simple shock and the rush of blood to the injury had caused me to nearly black out. I felt the same way now, except that I was not nauseous, and my vision had not narrowed to a tunnel. In fact, it had expanded, pushing reality to the fringes of my consciousness like curtains sliding into the wings of a stage.

Now came a distant rustle. It grew in volume into the beating of a thousand wings, as though I had entered an