Demon

“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 café 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.

“But those words spoken over the Passover table sounded with the hollow echo of a vault, sealing for eternity. As the first words of your creation had been full and pregnant, these rang now with the harsh sentence of exclusion, finality, and damnation.”

“Maybe the forgiveness was for you, too.”

He laughed, and this time the sound was low like thunder tumbling beyond the horizon.

“You are so blind, Clay.”

For a long moment we stared at one another, and I felt the gulf between us as I had never felt it before, as one breed considers the other, and his own mortality with it, knowing that he will be surpassed and survived by the other, that the other has unwittingly succeeded him.

“With sickened sense I saw it all,” he said softly, his expression expansive, eyes slightly widened. “They were going to kill him. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. It didn’t matter that his trial wasn’t even legal. It was a fiasco, politics and government being the twin playgrounds of Satan. It didn’t even matter that he was God. It was an appalling thought, the created killing the Creator. It went against every natural law.”

The tinge to his voice was not sympathy or horror but a strange brand of wonder.

“But Satan was out of control. The danger ran off his back like so much rainwater on slick and well-oiled feathers. El would not bend to the temptation of his flesh. Well then, let him suffer in it! More, the God-man would suffer by the hands of the people he insisted on submitting to, these miserable clay creatures that he loved so dearly—and he would suffer greatly. Our prince rose up with a glamour to blot out the sun and roared, Let him see how they love him in return!”

“Are you saying you didn’t want that, too?”