Demon

There Lucifer exploited his hunger like a general attacking the weakest defense of the enemy. He questioned his identity. If you are the Son of God, he said. He is an expert rhetorician, experienced and so suggestive. Why not turn these stones into bread?

“But the man was steadfast. There was a purpose to the fasting, and he wouldn’t be tempted to eat. He wouldn’t yield to the dictates of his human flesh.”

I thought of all the times I had been nearly incapacitated by low blood sugar. By plain hunger. By pain, by sleeplessness.

“So Lucifer appealed to his pride, taking him up to the top of the temple in Jerusalem. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down. It was ingenious.”

“Why is that ingenious? Wasn’t he essentially telling him to take a flying leap? To die?”

Lucian smirked. “I never thought of it that way. But no. The temple was the one place people expected to see the Messiah. And the Host would never have let him die from a physical fall; it was guaranteed in Scripture, and Lucifer knew it. You could argue that he was doing the God-man a favor—at least this way people would know who he was. And I heard Lucifer’s thought: Let them see him then. Let him throw himself down and prove who he is.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. His ego held no sway over him. Rather surprising for a man who went about saying he was God. By now Lucifer was showing signs of strain. So like a gambler on the last hand of the night, he held back nothing. He drew the God-man to a mountain and cast a mighty vision, a menagerie of nations, against the sky—Babylon and Persia, the government of Rome and commerce of the Mediterranean. Spices and olives and wine, fleets of ships, the jealous pride of kings and queens and emperors.”

As he was talking, the tabletop shimmered, emitting more light than the reflected lamps of our corner nook. Between the abandoned bowl of bread pudding and his coffee cup, I saw the sun, setting in a dark gold disk. As it melted into the horizon, it became the wheat fields of Egypt. Then the stalks of wheat were not wheat at all but a field of people. A nation of people. Lucian’s voice wafted toward me in what could have been the voice of a singer: the mighty millions of the land of Han, flowing with silk, roads pulsing with trade. The roads swept beneath me, beneath the surface of the polish, of my bird’s-eye view, miles at a time until they became a sprawl of cities and I recognized pyramids—Egypt. No, not Egypt. These were the stepped ziggurats of an undiscovered west. Teotihuacan, city of gods, came the voice. I saw the gold masks, the priests in their robes, arms raised to the sun.

A coffee cup sailed over the image. Lucian had pushed it across the table toward me.

“Treasures of the East and fertile lands yet undiscovered, rich in commodities of a future age. Lands of people pagan and unconquered, of client kings and vassals and dominions to come. Like diamonds against black velvet, he showcased the world and all that might belong to the God-man so splendidly that those of us who had walked the streets and corridors and dwelt in the inner chambers of those places blinked and staggered at the sight of their collective glory. It was the mosaic of all of Eden’s wealth. And Lucifer offered it all to the God-man if he would do one thing: fall down and worship. Just one, simple, singular act.” He looked up at me. “It would have been so easy. I knew from experience.”

“What good would that have done Lucifer?”

He shook his head. “It was the thing he had always craved and often won—except from the one from whom it would mean something. And now El stood a hand’s reach away in the body of a man, with a man’s cravings and a human’s proclivities. We hardly dared breathe. For a moment it was as though I stood again in that ancient rock garden, the sand of the desert as hot under my feet as the rocks of that place had been. And I watched from below with spirit eyes as Lucifer, arrayed with Legion and surrounded by Host, aspired to the godhood he craved, his beautiful eyes as covetous as they had been that first day an eternity ago when he cast his ambition like grappling hooks up into heaven.”

His gaze wandered. He seemed to be looking at something in the direction of the bar. But when I tried to discern what it was, I saw only a cluster of random business travelers, a few stray reception-goers bored with whatever was going on upstairs, a man and woman talking together. He seemed more and more distracted of late, and it was starting to concern me.

I looked from him back to the bar and considered the reception-goers more closely. They were two women, possibly sisters; both looked half Asian, one with curly, highlighted hair. She sat at the bar while the other leaned against it, turned in our direction. The seated one gazed sidelong in what I thought was my direction until I realized that no, she was looking at Lucian. Figures.

“This time there was no violence. Clay, listen to me! Our time is short.”

My attention snapped back. “I’m listening.” As though I could do anything else! I was fairly certain that whatever he said would return to me later, regardless of how closely I listened.

“This time there was no violence.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair. “This time he would take heaven by word, by simple trade, offering the world in exchange for that proclamation of divinity.”

“Was he offering that much, really? I mean, considering that El made it?”

“It was the sum of Lucifer’s wealth, his kingdom, his all. He was jealously possessive of everything within it. Would he sacrifice it so readily for the sake of one dangerous temptation posed to God himself as he stood hungry in the desert, strained by human flesh? Yes. Yes, I knew he would. And it would be Lucifer’s best and greatest moment. You have to know that wealth meant nothing in comparison to that—to this victory.” He glanced over his shoulder.

Something is wrong.

“What were all the kingdoms in the world against the triumph of proving El’s so-called son a fraud, a mortal as hopelessly weak in his clay trappings as the rest of them?” he said, his voice trailing over his shoulder.

“What is it?” I said finally, exasperated.

He blinked at me. “I’m fine. Listen now, this is important. There was something more than that, though. I realized it as I stood there, with Lucifer as close to the human act of sweating as a cherub can be. I didn’t know it at the time, but Lucifer had seen in this man some great vision, some latent danger.” He shifted in his chair, glanced at his watch. “And though he never said it, I saw in that moment that he was desperate.”

I had never seen Lucian quite like this, and I was becoming nervous by proxy. I was worried he would leave too soon. And I needed this—every word he spoke. For the completion of my manuscript. For myself.