“You delivered us?” Lilum scoffed, scanned the benches north and south. “Or was it not we who delivered you—Hear your queen, my court, when I say that this man would have died by my own supplicants’ hands if not rescued the precious wards he was doomed to deliver. I could say the same about our encounter in Mephisto with the Sons of King Solomon, and those are only the times mine eyes have been privy to this mortal’s impotence.” Her voice softened slightly as she redirected her speech. “Lord Beelzebub, I’ve been informed it was your spirit residing in the flesh of Bishop Ba’al. Certainly, you’ve witnessed his dependence for yourself? Then why are we speaking of rewards? Does he not owe this court a debt?”
“You bitch!” was all Ba’al could get out before another coughing fit began. By then, the benches were filled to the brim with whispers, the lower court with the constant drone of Beelzebub’s wings—those holding flight and those performing speech.
Ear-grating, they said, “Step forward, Ba’al.”
The bishop raised his bloody chin, gaped and trembled. Then the fit came back on him and knocked him to his knees.
“Bring him to me, Adnihilo…Adam.”
The Messah didn’t hesitate; Adnihilo watched as the pastor’s son dragged Ba’al before the demon lord. Nor did Adam pause when Beelzebub ordered the bishop stripped of his tunic. This was easy vengeance for him, the half-blood saw—but why not for himself? Adnihilo felt only that his stomach was tied in knots, but it made no sense to him that he should feel nervous and not elated. Had he not finally found his place? But what is this place? he asked himself, watching Beelzebub’s six arms alight upon Ba’al’s head and shoulders. The demon’s stinger coiled under and stuck the bishop high in his chest where he’d branded himself with the Crest of the King. Then there was a pumping sound, like slow swallows of cold, viscous honey.
Strange that Ba’al didn’t scream, thought Adnihilo till he noticed the bishop’s muscles had gone taught as cord beneath his skin. Even his face became as stiff as a statue’s locked in a cross between a grin and a grimace. And his chest, too; it gave no seeming of breathing, nor did his skin turning blue—nearly black, like the hornet’s carapace. Ba’al’s hair turned to spines, his fingers to stingers, his two amber eyes became those of flies and a third sprouted on his forehead.
Beelzebub retracted his stinger and arms from the bishop’s laxing body—not limp but supple, the bishop stood strong as the odious drone of wings continued, “Ba’al of Pareo, for your leal service lent to the King, you’ve been granted a body and soul befitting your title. Kneel, and renounce your old home before the Xanthos Throne.” Happily, Ba’al obeyed, his chest puffed up and his head raised in gloating toward Lilum’s loathsome face. “Now rise,” the demon finished, “as a child of Pandemonium and the Bishop of Cathedral Nox.”
A languid clamor rounded the court, what was presumably meant to be a congratulation. None of the lords were excited, it seemed, that a mortal had been raised to peerage—none save for Astaroth slumped at the far end of the northern bench. He’d just received a second servant; Adnihilo pitied the demon for that.
The first order of the court accomplished, Beelzebub returned to his place right of the King. It was Asmodeus who replaced him, who at once ordered Naberius deliver Lilum to the lower court. She was still bristling over the bishop’s ascendance, anger jutting her jaw and wrinkling her forehead, as the crow snatched her up like a piece of cargo and dumped her a foot from the hard iron sand. She landed on her hands and knees, uninjured, but stained with rust on her palms and the skirt of her tunic. Without getting up, she spun to face the Xanthos King. The half-blood didn’t know what this would be, but he felt certain it wasn’t what the priestess expected.
“Lilum of Iisah,” started Asmodeus, “it was your covenant with the King to remain faithful to his will. In exchange, you have received eternal youth and beauty as befits a the queen of Pandemonium.”
“And I shall stand at his side above all he presides over,” she asserted herself.
The Charred Angel paused. “Yes; however, you have not been faithful, have you?”
Lilum’s breath quickened. She climbed to her feet, tried to wipe away the stains but only managed to spread them. “You dare bear false witness against me in the Father’s presence?” she asked, her tone flattened, her face a porcelain mask pale and brittle, “What foolishness! He knows the truth behind my intentions. You cannot trick him with lies like these.”
Asmodeus’s jasper eyes glimmered gleefully. “Indeed he knows you body, mind, and soul. But why do you presuppose that you know? How many millennia have you lived? Yet still the reasons and consequences of your decisions elude you, hidden behind opinions and delusions of grandeur. That was why you fled Barzakh and branded Light Bringer a traitor. It is why you couldn’t stand to see the Bishop ascend, because if not for him you’d have remained forever lording over your horde of tribal impotents!”
“Lies!” her mask cracked, “Tricks! Nothing you’ve said has anything to do with my loyalty to the Father.”
“Doesn’t it? It seems your spirit blinds you even to implication, but we of the court are philosophers all. And those with eyes can see full well that Lilum of Iisah could never stand the authority of another: you could not with the legate, and you cannot with Bishop Ba’al. Why then should the King think he’ll be received any differently?”
Lilum stole a moment to catch her breath. Her veneer had been broken, and it was all she could do to keep it together to hold her body rigid, to pretend she was calm as she answered the charge, “You know my story well but see it only from your own lowly intentions. They are but
