Demon

But I ate in sullen silence, having given up altogether on trying to complete a synopsis. The story wasn’t finished, I told Helen, and I had no idea yet how it would end. “I just don’t know where my characters are going to take me right now.” It was one of those writer’s claims I had always treated with derision, always contending that writers were in control of their characters, even if only subconsciously. I still believed this, though I had come to wonder if there were indeed other writers in my position, influenced by forces they could neither publicly own nor predict.

At any rate, Helen thought whatever I had might be enough for them to make a decision. They would look at it after the offices reopened in January, while I was sunburning on the beaches of Cabo during the day and holed up with my laptop at night.

Meanwhile, the attention I’d focused on when and where Lucian might show up and on writing the account was giving way to my growing fixation on how the account would end and whether our strange relationship would end with it. Would he disappear from my life once his precious story was published?

The thought brought me no peace.

Lucian locked his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Lucifer failed.” He sighed. “I was confused. Nothing about this made sense to me, and my lack of answers only unsettled me more.”

I knew that feeling. “What were you unsettled about?”

“Everything.” He shook his head, the boyish curls brushing against the thick cords of his neck. “This God-man, this aspect of the Almighty in the body of a mortal, this Messiah, went about his business in exceedingly unsavory conditions. I mean, he hung out with whores and extortionists. I was flummoxed. Having gone to the trouble of becoming human, why not choose better company? Why not announce it with fanfare? A little panache? Hades. Why not awe the masses? This was the creator of the universe, after all.” He threw his arms up.

“What did it matter to you?” I scooped couscous onto my fork.

“It galled me, the way people treated him—not because I wanted to see him welcomed or worshipped, certainly, but for the sheer fact of who I knew him to be.”

Like so much of Lucian’s account, it was something I had not thought about. The story of Christ was such a cultural fixture, such a central theme throughout history that I had never dwelled on these details.

“He had more coming. I simply didn’t see it yet.” He lowered his chin, studied the zipper dangling from the neck of his polar fleece. “He performed a few miracles at least. It was something. Still, I came away disappointed, waiting for more. This was Elohim, the Alpha and Omega!”

“More, such as?”

“A mass-healing. Something.” He lifted his head and rubbed his goatee, his mouth slack. “Even your televangelists purport to do that much. But this was El. He could have reshaped the earth, restored Eden, shown even a portion of that terrible power that had spoken the green and wild earth into existence. He could have restored the humans to their original state. Hadn’t he come to save them, after all? They were uninspiring creatures to begin with, but at least he could have done that much.”

“Why do you think he didn’t?”

Lucian’s face went blank, “He seemed more interested in restoring individuals. I didn’t understand it. Why mend one vessel when the rest are cracking all around you? Why mend one when the rest don’t even like you?” He laughed. “But it got stranger: The priests of El himself called him a blasphemer and claimed he derived his powers from us.”

I wondered where I had missed all of this, growing up. How pale, how superficial and ritualistic, had been my early experience with the church and their packaged God.

“As though our powers could compare. It was too ridiculous. El was humiliating himself and getting spat on for his efforts. And I came to think that now, at last, he would experience firsthand the misery of this mud race, and that in this way he deserved it. Still, as I look back on the hatred, the scoffing, the pointed fingers, I don’t know how he stood it.”

“Why did they do it?”

“Because he went against the religious establishment!” He laughed, the chords dancing in his thick neck, the sound of it arcing up now beyond his earlier chuckles to an octave it should not have reached, rankling. The man in the apron behind the cafe counter glanced our way. I was prepared for the instant composition of the demon’s features but not for the haunted look that crept into them.

“Lucifer, for his part, wasn’t happy about having this walking testament of his failure roaming the earth, embarrassing him. And something began to happen with him. His luminescent eyes turned shifty. He raged as he had not since the new Eden. We avoided him, entertaining ourselves with all the usual things—the running of his earthly government, temptation of the faithful—in hopes of raising his spirits. But he paced and stalked, and followed this Jesus wherever he went. He was obsessed, filled with loathing yet unable to stay away from him.”

I piled crumpled napkin and plastic silverware on my plate. “How long did that go on?”

“Several years. Then, in the space of one night, everything changed.

“It was Passover, and though Jews knew it as the saving of the firstborn by the lamb’s blood upon the doorframe, it will always be, to my mind, the thwarting of a perfectly good mass killing.”

I stared at him.

“That night the God-man did a strange thing. He broke bread with his followers, saying it was his body, and he gave it to them. He gave them wine, saying it was his blood. But then he said something that chilled my immortal heart—now mark me well—he said it was spilled for them in a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins. Do you hear this? Do you understand it?” He leapt to his feet, pacing several steps away and back, not waiting for my answer. “Pardon my human reaction: my skin crawled.”

He sat down again and leaned over the table, closer to my face than I liked. “We had waited an epoch for El to do away with these people, to, in the very least, give them their due condemnation. If we, glorious creatures, had fallen so far from favor, then we would never stand by and willingly allow these clay people—these humans—to replace us in his affections. Never.”

The hairs along my neck stood on end.