This has to be some kind of prank, I thought as the purple mist rolled over me. The dead squirrel. My college crush at the door. All the weird devil shit. I’m on some kind of prank show…
For a few moments, I couldn’t see a thing—the purple smoke was too thick. Christina’s hand squeezed and squeezed, a high, keening wail of horror escaping her throat.
Then the fog rolled over us, and we were in a large, stone chamber.
It looked like some sort of medieval dungeon—the kind of spot Vlad the Impaler would take prisoners before doing the thing that earned him his nickname. Thick tapestries hung over stone walls, with greasy torches at intervals casting the only light. There were no doors or windows to exit the chamber that I could see—just a big wooden table in the center of the room with a chair behind it.
The smoke coalesced behind that table, forming into a man. Christina and I sat on the floor, the same way we’d sat in her bedroom, looking up at him with shock.
For a moment, I would’ve told you I was looking at the coolest fucking dude in the world. The kind of guy who could walk into a club anywhere in the world and get drinks just off the strength of his stories. Who’d end up walking out the door with not the hottest, but the three hottest girls in the whole place—all of whom would be fighting over which one got first dibs on his cock. He looked like an old-school movie star, with a short, closely cropped beard and impeccable black robes. Something dark and cunning glittered behind his intense eyes—the same kind of gaze Rasputin used to hypnotize the Russian court.
A moment later, his appearance collapsed. He became ancient, decrepit—except for those dark, dominating eyes. Those stayed the same, even while his body became a thing wrapped in decay.
The man let out a grunt and cracked his neck, then leaned back in his chair as if testing it. “Rise,” he commanded, his voice sounding like it hadn’t been used in years.
With some hesitation, Christina and I got to our feet. My legs had gone half-asleep beneath me, and now my footing wasn’t as sure as I’d have liked.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, looking around the room. “Where are the cameras?”
The man appeared amused. “Cameras?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t this the part where the producer comes out with the camera crew and says, ‘you shoulda seen the look on your face’?”
For a moment, the man stared uncomprehendingly at me. Then he chuckled. “I could do such a thing if I wished it,” he said, his voice still gravelly but getting better. “I do not wish it.”
Christina and I shared a look. “Luke, I’m scared,” she admitted, still squeezing my hand.
The look in her eyes activated every single one of my protective instincts at once. “Don’t worry,” I told her, sliding an arm around her waist. “I’ll get us out of this. Whatever this is.”
The man behind the table let out a low, wheezing laugh. “Young man, you entered this willingly. It was you who chose the path of Darkness, not I.”
His words reminded me of the strange option on my laptop—the laptop that I’d just watched turn into mist before my eyes and vanish. If whatever this thing was hadn’t brought Christina along with me for the ride, I’d have thought this was some kind of strange hallucination brought on by too much stress. Like the squirrel—except I was beginning to think I hadn’t been seeing things when it came to the squirrel, either. That was real, and the too-large room and the books in Latin were real, too.
All of this was connected.
“Who are you?” I asked, marshaling my courage and looking the man in the eye. “What have you done to us?”
For a moment, he didn’t say a word. He steepled his long, gnarled fingers on the table, looking down at them as if he was disgusted by the sight of his own hands. I couldn’t blame him there—if he saw himself as the suave man I’d first seen upon his arrival, I understood his disgust.
“I am known by many names,” he said, still staring at the table. “Lucifer, the Morningstar, Mephistopheles.” He looked up at me, the beginnings of a smile spreading across his face. “Shaitan. Beelzebub. Old Scratch. The Great Deceiver. Any of these ringing a bell?”
“No.” I shook my head, unwilling to believe. “That’s not true.”
The grin spread. “Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name…”
“You’re the Devil?” I took an involuntary step backward, shocked to my core. “Satan?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding amused that I didn’t already know. “You chose to enter my realm the moment you selected the path of Darkness. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone with the guts to make that selection, Luke. Someone who’s worked his way up from a bad situation, the way I once did—who may actually deserve the woman on his arm.” He nodded at Christina. “You were about to reap the rewards of such a transition, were you not?”
Reap the...hold on. Is he saying what I think he is?
I glanced down at her. She shook like a leaf in my arms, yet it was clear from her gaze that she knew what Lucifer was talking about. As her gaze traveled to me, she gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Wait...” My jaw hit the floor. “Christina, were you and I going to…?”
She scoffed. “That’s really what you’re thinking about right now? I mean...you’re pretty fucking hot, and
