Lucifer (Dark Angels Book 1)

came into view.  The space was lit by ancient wooden sconces.  The flames of the candles guttered in a draft, giving the whole space an eerie feel in the half-light.  He moved swiftly to the large, raised dais before the back wall.  Five steps led up to the Portal that would take him directly to the town square in Outer-Sheol.  The Portal was a large, rectangular opening with black swirling shadows and intermittent pulsing red light.  It was flanked by two carved-stone, demonic warriors in full armor holding swords, their tips resting on the stone floor.  Above the portal, an inverted pentagram was carved into the stone, the five points held rubies that glowed brightly as Luc approached.  The shadows began to swirl faster and faster the closer he got, sensing the approach of a traveller.  He should have been used to Portal travel by now, but could never get used to the feeling of being pulled apart and put back together at the molecular level.  Transdimensional travel was a bitch.  Damn, did he ever miss the feel of spreading his wings and flying.  All he had left were the long diagonal scars on his shoulder blades where his wings had been severed.  They still itched and he occasionally felt the urge to spread his phantom wings.

Luc stepped into the portal and felt the darkness surround him like a shroud.  The feeling of slowly dissolving overtook him and his mind went blank.  Moments later, his mind came back online and he felt himself coming together like an elastic band that had been pulled too tight and then snapped back into place.  His eyes focused and he found himself outside the main portal of Outer-Sheol.  This city operated much like those in the human realm.  Vehicles drove down the lamp-lit streets, children played in parks, citizens milled about, shopped, headed to restaurants or back to their homes.  Of course, the children weren’t all humanoid; the shops were decidedly not simply selling clothes, books, and jewellery; and the restaurants had much more diverse menus than the human world.

Outer-Sheol was divided into quadrants in order to maintain a relative peace.  Not all species of demons played well with others.  Each quadrant was sealed off with electrified razor-wire fencing and policed by Iustus demons, who had the ability to mentally connect to those around them, seeing their motivation and intent.  The city was filled with high-rise living, all grey and black brick buildings.  Gaslights lit the cobbled streets.  With very little natural light, the city had a constant appearance of being in falling twilight.  The farther one got from the center of the city and its approximate one hundred thousand inhabitants, the more decrepit and crumbling the buildings and streets became.

The city was laid out with the main Portal at its center, everything else radiated outward like a spiderweb until you hit the Roman-style wall that encircled the area.  A thick, black smoke spiraled upwards beyond the reaches of the wall into the sky.  Directly outside the wall was a fiery lake that went on as far as the eye could see.  A small, thin stone bridge led outside the city across the fiery expanse and disappeared into the distance, providing the only way in or out of the city by land.

Luc headed down the lamp-lit street.  He needed to reach the quadrant where the Jinn lived.  They were a notoriously secretive species, coming and going without detection.  They often worked in the human world and were quite successful, given their ability read thoughts and spy on others without being seen.  They could render themselves invisible to the naked eye by cloaking themselves in the spirit world, straddling two dimensions.  If only the humans knew that some of their top corporate CEOs were Jinn conducting their own specialized form of corporate espionage.

Today he was looking for one of the Jinn in particular.  Luc had helped Amir out of a sticky situation a few centuries ago and was owed a favor…a big one.  Luc walked up to the imposing gate of the Jinn complex in the most posh area of the city.  An Iustus demon stepped out of the adjoining gatehouse at his approach.  He was dressed in military-style fatigues, his bald head gleaming in the lamplight which illuminated the scales of justice marked on his forehead.  Two small green horns stood out on each side of the marking.  Stepping directly in front of the Iustus, Luc stopped and looked directly into his eyes.  As the Iustus nodded in greeting, his irises turned black and expanded engulfing the whites of his eyes.  A moment later, the Iustus broke eye contact, glancing down then back up.  His eyes had returned to their natural red hue.  He nodded again and motioned Luc forward as the gate began to open.

There was nobody in the courtyard or entryway of Amir’s building.  Luc took the elevator up to the twenty-third floor, headed right, and took the hallway to Amir’s suite.  The door swung open — just as Luc was about to knock, leaving him with his fist hanging in the air — to reveal a handsome man with closely cropped midnight hair, and startling honey-colored eyes.

“Long time no see.  What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Amir, how the hell did you know I was at the door?  I didn’t even get a chance to knock.”

Amir gave Luc an amused look and shook his head.  “When are you going to learn, man? I could hear you coming as soon as you got off the elevator.”

“Seriously?  From that far away?  I'm going to have to start reciting song lyrics in my head to keep you out!”

Amir gave him an apologetic half-smile.  "So, are you going to just stand there or are you going to come in and ask me what you came here to ask me?  Or should I just keep pulling it right out of your head?”

Luc shrugged and stepped over the threshold.  “I like you too much to