Chapter 3
Oh, how can I explain that moment as it stretched between us, when something almost human flickered in that red eye. I felt Asmodeus hesitate, a notion so blasphemous I scarcely dared acknowledge it. Yet it was happening. The demon wavered, for reasons unknown, on revealing something to me.
After a lifetime steeped in biblical mystery, resigned to the unknowable nature of God, I should have accepted my new lord’s silence without question.
I should have held my tongue, been content to do so.
But the child in me, the thieving, reckless boy who always tested his limits, rose now to the fore.
“What aren’t you telling me, O Lord?”
Asmodeus’ nostrils flared. Steam burst forth, molten hot. I dropped to my knees, head bowed, trembling, but defiance made me lift my gaze. The demon leaned close, its brimstone breath wrapping around us both.
“You dare speak back to your betters?”
“I am obedient when it matters,” I whispered. “But if you sought only a slave, you would not have tested me so.”
Was that true? I could not say. Asmodeus was a demon, beyond the reach of human nature as I understood it.
If a demon wished to strip a man of faith, to debauch him, to see him surrender his body again and again to demons and other abominations, was that not expected of such a creature?
If it wished to toy with him, lead him to believe himself chosen, only to cast him aside when he presumed too much, was that not a particularly exquisite cruelty?
Time and again, I had been reminded I was not special. Others had come before me. Asmodeus had lain with men before. My path was no unique revelation, only a repetition driven by lust. Every instinct urged me to remain silent. And yet, I could not.
“Tell me.”
The silence between us stretched thin as a blade, keening with an edge I could almost feel on my skin.
I should have bowed lower. I should have held my tongue. I should have smothered that childish part of me, the boy who always wanted too much. I should have bitten down on my curiosity and left well enough alone.
But it was too late. The words hung in the air between us still, staining the space with my hubris.
And Asmodeus—my Lord, my tormentor, my salvation—watched me with that red eye that saw too much.
A stillness had crept into its frame, one so profound it made my stomach roil with dread.
A lifetime of scriptural study rose unbidden in my mind.
I thought of Moses trembling before the burning bush.
I thought of Isaiah’s cry: “Woe is me! I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips.” And yet, was I not beyond such fears now?
I had cast my faith down into the pit. I had given myself over to Asmodeus.
My soul was already stained blacker than the darkest, soulless lake of Hell.
Then why, oh why, did some ancient tremor still rattle in my bones?
Asmodeus breathed in and out, slow and deep.
Steam wreathed the space between us, as though the very breath of Hell exhaled through its nostrils.
It reached out with its clawed fingers and clipped those sharp claws across my skin.
I trembled against those claws, for they could so easily bring my death.
“You presume too much,” it said. The growl in its voice struck hard, the sound edged with threat.
Then a trace of amusement slipped through, lightening the tone in a way that caught me off guard.
Eventually, it pulled away, body creaking like the trunk of an ancient tree subjected to bitter cold. I met that fiery gaze.
“There is. . .more I have not told you,” it said at last.
I felt my mouth part, but no sound emerged. My heart pounded furiously in my ears. I was no Isaiah, no prophet. I was a ruined man on his knees in Hell, and even so, I had dared to question a King. Thus, when Asmodeus reached out a hand for me–for me!–I froze in fear and did not take it.
“Rise,” it commanded. Even then, when I scrabbled to stand, I did not take the proffered hand.
You must understand: before, with its mouth on me, I was the object of its desire.
I was fulfilling my intended role in the unspoken covenant between us.
We were master and servant, and when Asmodeus offered me its hand, it felt like God reaching out to an ant. Impossible. Ridiculous.
“I…” I swallowed. “I do not understand, my Lord.”
A faint smile curled those perfect lips, cruel and knowing.
It slipped its hand back to its side and tilted its head.
Then, it leaned in so close that the heat of it soaked into my skin.
Its fingers wrapped around my throat. This was how changed I was.
My body went limp, sinking into the touch, and in doing so, pressed harder into its grip.
The tightening made me choke, but still a deep, shameful relief unfurled through me.
“You see, little priest,” Asmodeus murmured, “I have tested many. This you know.”
I nodded. It was as I had been told. I was not the first. I would not be the last. Perhaps I would become a consort, one of hundreds. I thought this until Asmodeus said, “I have tested them, used them, discarded them.”
I thought of the others—the nameless humans, the broken vessels who had come before me.
How many had walked this same path? How many had spilled their seed and their souls upon these stones, only to be forgotten by the abyss?
Part of me saw no fault in their fates. Lust burned so fiercely in me that I would not have minded being used so thoroughly. I was broken beyond repair.
“But you,” Asmodeus continued, voice like dark velvet, and my breath hitched in expectation. Asmodeus’ lips quirked. Its finger grazed my lower lip.
It had said nothing, yet I heard much in that silence. Was it pride to hope? Was it vanity to wonder if I had set myself apart? I thought of the verses etched into my heart — “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Had I, by some foul twist of fate, been chosen?
My breath came faster, shallow in my chest.
I fought the urge to say again, I do not understand. Instead, I bowed my head to it and leaned into the touch of its hand like an eager dog. “I have faith only in you,” I whispered. “But I am only mortal. I do not understand what you imply.”
“My little whore.” Asmodeus’ gaze did not waver. “You are a fissure now. You stand in the thin place between what was and what could be.”
My mind reeled. Images surged through me: the veil of the Temple torn in two, the trumpets of Revelation, the rift in Heaven where the Morning Star fell.
And now—me. A wretched man, once a priest, body defiled and soul blackened, trembling on the cusp of some unseen threshold. I had killed my flesh to enter Hell. I had eaten from Asmodeus’ dominion. I had thrown my very state into flux. Was that what my Lord meant?
“The flowers,” I said. “The hags and crones offered me flowers of your realm. I ate of them.”
“Do you know,” it replied, a low chuckle stirring the air, “that no one has done that before?”
There was a strange softness in its tone. After all its fury, the sound unsettled me more than any threat. I feared what such sweetness might mean, feared how it might shift the covenant between us.
But it spoke as if I had done something extraordinary. Necessary, perhaps, to survive this realm. I had killed the man I was. What remained was no longer fully human.
Ah. Was that it, then?
“What…” I swallowed. “What exactly have I done?”
Asmodeus gave no answer. It pulled me away from the pillar and set me in the centre of that hall. Then it began to circle me, gaze sharp and appraising. Now and then, a low sound escaped it, something between approval and hunger. A claw traced lightly along my skin.
When it reached my back, it struck—an open-handed slap across my ass that made me cry out. Before I could draw breath, its hand closed around my throat, pulling me back against its body. I felt its member pulsing and prodding at my back and arched desperately against it.
It moaned into my ear, and the force of my arousal nearly buckled my knees. The ache of it made me dizzy. This dance was killing me.
“Please,” I gasped, though whether I begged for answers or release, I could not say.
“I hesitate,” Asmodeus said at last. And there—yes, there it was. I heard it. An admission of imperfection. A fault line beneath its power. “Because what comes next,” it murmured, “I have not done before. Not in all my long dominion.”
My skin prickled. I felt as though I had been laid bare beneath the sun, every secret exposed.
“What… what comes next?” I whispered.
Silence answered first. And then, slowly, deliberately, Asmodeus licked a forked tongue over my ear. I shivered against it, malleable as damp clay, and knew I would do whatever it asked of me til the end of time.
“I will bring you before the Court of Kings.”
My heart stopped.
The Court.
I had never heard of it, yet years of religious schooling conjured the shape of it in my mind. The Court of Kings. Surely it was a place of judgment and spectacle, where the ancient Kings of Hell gathered to weigh and to witness.
The Kings of Hell being, of course, those crowned among the Seventy-Two, sovereign in their domains, their thrones set deep in the various levels and architecture of the Pit itself.
Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Lightbringer.
Beelzebub, Lord of Flies, glutted on pestilence and pride.
Astaroth, great Duke and counsellor, his tongue forked with ancient lies.
Belial, the Worthless One, father of corruption and root of all perversion.
Asmodeus, my Lord, King of Lust, the furnace of flesh and hunger.
Paimon, crowned with gold, Master of infernal knowledge and dark arts.
Baal, first among Kings, whose voices speak in a chorus of three.
I had known their names once only as warnings, ancient threats in my catechisms, spoken with trembling reverence or disdain.
Yet now, they burned bright in my mind, no longer myth, but real, and I would soon stand before them.
And if Asmodeus was to be believed–which, as my Lord, it was–then no mortal had stood in that place before.
Nor any half-mortal, if that is what I now was.
My mouth opened, but no words came. The air caught in my throat.
Asmodeus’ smile deepened in my periphery, slow and knowing. “They will see you,” it said. “They will know what I intend.”
My voice broke free at last, rough and small. “And what... what do you intend?”
The pause before it spoke felt vast as the gulf between Heaven and this place. I craned toward it, eager.
And it said, lips pressed against the flesh of my neck, “To make you mine.”
I thought inevitably of our first encounter.
I had summoned Asmodeus out of a feral desperation, willing to forego my immortal soul for a piece of pleasure.
It had seen through me to my basest instincts, and the Prince of Lust had said, “I do not want to kill you. I want to fuck you. I want to use you. Until you can’t take it anymore.
For eternity. Isn’t that what you want? To be mine? Mine to use? Mine to keep?”
“As your toy,” I whispered, though a question hung in my tone. A shudder ran through me, sharp as a blade drawn against the spine.
Asmodeus then said the thing I feared most.
“No.”
I spun toward it. All deference vanished as fear thrummed through me–not fear that it would send me away now, but fear that something was changing. Something beyond my human comprehension.
“Not a pet. Not a slave. Not some common thing to be used and discarded. Mine. And not merely in flesh,” Asmodeus went on, voice lowering to a dark purr. “Not merely in this pitiful human form.”
Its gaze sharpened, burning through me as if to strip me back to the marrow in my bones. It grazed a clawed finger over my nipple, which stood to rapt attention beneath the demon’s interest. I twitched at that touch, but my arousal couldn’t suppress my fear.
“You will not leave that Court as you entered it. You will be remade. You will be marked. You will be transformed.”
I trembled. My breath came ragged, chest tight with the weight of it.
Be transformed.
Scripture rose once more unbidden. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. A verse meant for the faithful, twisted now to fit the damned.
But what new thing awaited me? What would I become? A demon? A thing of lust and shadow? Yet beneath the tide of dread, another voice whispered low in the depths of me.
You want this.
And God help me, I did.
I wanted it more than forgiveness. More than redemption. I wanted to be seen. To be chosen. To belong to Asmodeus completely.
The Prince of Lust watched me still, gaze unwavering, voice a slow, deliberate caress.
“You will walk beside me,” it said. “Not as a mortal. Not as a slave. As mine.”
I found I didn’t need the specifics. The words pulled something from deep within me.
I was used to serving. I had struggled enough with enjoying my own pleasure and taking of men even at my Lord’s command.
But this demanded a change in my status.
Asmodeus wished to mark me as different.
That seemed such a fine line to walk; my past as human and priest would always mean I was lesser, and I could never wish to feel equal amongst fallen angels.
But where I was comfortable being called filth, and eager to prove my whorish nature, discomfort ate at me now for reasons I couldn’t name.
What exactly Asmodeus wanted for me, I couldn’t say.
But to be seen and chosen. . .I could not stop what rose to my lips.
“Do you…” I swallowed, throat tight. “Do you want this, my Lord?”
A stillness settled between us, vast and heavy. Then Asmodeus spoke, each word steeped in something ancient and hungry. “I burn with my want.”
I was shaking now, every inch of me alive with that same want and human terror.
My body ached. My mind reeled. But beneath it all, beneath all reason, I knew there was no turning back.
Perhaps there never had been. Perhaps this path had been written beneath my skin from the first breath I drew.
Perhaps God had seen and let me stumble into the Church as a child, knowing how thoroughly I would betray it.
Asmodeus rose to its full height, towering above me. One clawed hand lifted, and for a breath, my heart stopped, sure it would seize my throat.
But instead, it traced the line of my jaw, the touch both possessive and unsettlingly tender, sharp enough to draw a thin ache beneath the skin.
“To the Court.”
And I followed, half out of obedience, and half out of want.