Asmodeus chuckled. “A hero, eh? There’s always at least one of you bastards. But are you certain? The price is higher than you might be willing to pay.”
“Answer! Do you have them or not?”
“Yes, I have them right here in my grasp, but what do you have, Hero? Nothing, not even your own soul to trade. So what are you going to do about it? Take them from me? No, I don’t think so. You’re too honourable a—”
Adam made a desperate lunge and felt his blade pierce flesh in the dark. The resistance shocked him; he hadn’t expected to hit let alone stab inches into the demon’s hide, and now its body had crumpled over, hands in a panic, grabbing desperately at where the sword had pierced. A second’s time stretched over an eon before Adam’s instincts finally kicked in. He extracted the weapon, and the demon let out a cry, not the low tone of the Charred Skinned Angel, but that of a young girl—of Magdalynn.
The Messah’s heart seized. His hands went weak—dropped the sword—and he screamed, groping for where the girl’s body should be. Through the darkness he reached, reached, reached finding nothing but warm vapors and the sense he’d been tricked. Three eyes reappeared behind him.
Asmodeus laughed again and said, “Yes! Yes! You’ll do just fine. You’re kind don’t often venture this far. I think we have ourselves quite the bargain.”
“You’re toying with me,” declared Adam, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Yes, and you’ve been the most fun I’ve had since Lucifer crossed the abyss. It’s a shame I can’t keep you, but there is business to attend. I propose a contract: your soul in exchange for the girl, Magdalynn.”
“But I’ve already sold my soul.”
“And I’ve already rended hers, but I don’t doubt we can cheat death as easily as we can cheat the Devil.” He brandished a bone knife in the glow of his jasper eyes. “What do you say, Hero, to cutting that crest off your neck?”
†††
They watched Adam wash ashore, Adnihilo, Ba’al, and Pandemonium’s court, surrounded by black waters on an isle of iron sand, patches rusted red, a half-moon wall spanning the western end with cyclopean arches. Atop it, benches marked the north and south; but the west itself belonged to the throne: old, yellowed bones of man and animal, bound by sinew, high backed, and uncushioned. A bitter seat, thought the half-blood, donned in Paimon’s spider silk tunic, breathing deeply against the weight of a bronze cuirass. From his waist to shoulders, the armour shaped him trim and muscular. And the demons had plated his extremities as well, greaves on his legs and a cage-faced helm. He squinted passed the thin bronze bars at Adam, saw that the Messah was awake.
“Naberius,” rasped a command from the high seat, and the crow demon leapt from the northern bench onto the pale body, snatching it up with taloned feet, then leaping again and depositing Adam on the sand floor before the King. Something had changed. Adnihilo saw right away the raw scar where the brand had been, and the extra pallor of his skin, and his expression—eyes hard as ice like David’s had been that night at Eemah’s parish, and they were looking at him.
Ba’al coughed and wiped the blood from his chin onto the front of his silk tunic. Weakly, he shouted, “That’s the last of us! We’re all here now!”
A murmuring issued from the demon lords crowding the benches north and south. They’d had grown impatient waiting on the lost human. There was much yet to be accomplished. “Are we at lassst ready now? Shall the Anointment finally begin?” begged the Lord Astaroth from his seat furthest on the northern bench.
“Lord of Flies has the first order, I thought,” replied the half-griffon Focalor, stretching his wings and leonine haunches while his upper, angel half leaned against the parapet wall. Beside him, the vulture winged Murmur nodded his head.
“That would be most prudent. The Anointment can begin once their contract is finished,”
“It begins when I give my blessing,” said Lilum, sat comfortably at a branch-seat at the left hand of the King. She was dressed in silk as well, a silk tunic like the ones made for Ba’al and Adnihilo, white as snow and tied with a sash at the waist. It reminded the half-blood of the dress of the singers, especially as she stood and spoke with command over the Throne Room. “For thousands of years of held faith with the Great Father. I’ll receive my crown before the boy receives his.”
Owl-headed Andras bowed from the southern bench. “As wills the King.”
“As wills the King,” the lords echoed in unison—that is, those lords who spoke. Adnihilo wasn’t sure he heard the crow at all, and the voices of centaur Kimaris and the goat demon Aamon were drowned in the emphaticism of Andras and the Charred Angel.
The King himself sat silent on his throne, his head wrapped in shadow, his body in a sable cloak with what looked like a broach pinned at his right shoulder—that was until the hornet’s eyes began to glow, compound at the sides and three at its forehead, amber all just as the mural depicted. The Lord of Flies, the centurion Beelzebub. He spoke by rubbing together his wings in a nightmarish buzzing, the words seeming to steal into Adnihilo’s brain.
“The court has spoken—Ba’al, we shall begin with you.” The demon hornet disjoined from his place at the King’s right hand, hovered down from the wall, and stopped just above the rust iron sand. Wings fluttering faster than the slash of a sabre blade, Beelzebub hovered and buzzed their terms. In exchange for an advance of suspended death and, as a reward, a position of office, Ba’al would give lease of bodily habitation until the route was clear of the Walls of Barzakh.
The bishop’s pained face forced out a grin. “I’ve held up my end of this bargain, and don’t forget, I delivered the
