“What is it, Lucifer? Why are we stopping?” His tone was querulous. He brushed his hair back, patting it into place. “We’re nearly there. I’m tired. This body needs a–”
The Devil shook his head, left and then right. If he’d had hackles they would have risen. Now Sitri caught the Devil’s tension and his manner changed, his theatrical disdain draining away. He looked down the road and then back to the Devil, quiet and alert.
Late afternoon sun flashed across the Devil’s face and his eyes glowed orange.
“Someone is here,” he said. An undercurrent of glee threaded his voice. He rolled his shoulders. “Let’s go.”
They came around the last bend and the trailer sat before them. The sun had gone behind the trees, but a weak light still filled the sky. Six beings stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of Carrie’s dirt-patch, dog turd-littered yard.
Sitri hesitated, nearly stumbling. He’d never seen this many Patrons together. Amabilis and Patroclus guarded against demonic possession and he could guess they were here because of him; he hadn’t told the Devil that the circumstances of his habitation of this body were not quite within the rules of the game.
Christina stood next to Dymphna. Hermes and Maturinus were closest to the trailer. Those four were the Patrons of the insane. That there should be four of them just for one woman…it made Sitri’s borrowed body’s blood run cold.
The Devil stood, hands on his hips and tilted his head back. He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, as though scenting the six Patrons. Then he lowered his head and opened his eyes, smiling. Patrons were not strong creatures as they had once been humans, but this many together–they might pose a problem.
Amabilis was the first to come forward. He floated over the ground, not even stirring the dust beneath his feet. He’d once been human, and though he occupied his original body, it was ghostly and ethereal. He was dressed plainly in robes and cowl befitting his era of death. He was mild looking, especially in comparison to Patroclus behind him, whose stance and manner were that of a warrior at the ready. Patroclus dealt with the more malevolent demons. Along with being taken aback, Sitri was also a bit flattered…both of them? Just for me?
“Amabilis, you are looking gloomier than ever,” the Devil said. “Is the work wearing you down?”
Amabilis’ eyes welled with tears, making them deep black pools of disillusionment but still he smiled.
“The ‘work’ as you say, is my calling, my contribution. Difficult though my work may be, it is God, Himself that I serve and I do so with a joy that sings from my heart.”
The Devil rolled his eyes.
“Amabilis, do you never tire of hearing your own rhetoric?”
Amabilis shimmered briefly but smiled again, hands out and palms up.
“Could I tire of serving God, Himself? No. I could not,” he said. “Not as you tired of it, of course; going against God, Himself, as you did.” He tilted his head and his smile became a caricature of commiseration. “How do you feel that’s working out for you now, Satan?”
The Devil’s smiled disappeared and his features turned stony.
“You know very little, Patron,” the Devil said. His voice had flattened and Sitri felt a swelling fear course through his borrowed body. “You are a mere sycophant trying to worm your way nearer His throne. You want what you cannot have, what you can never have. And it makes you bitter inside. No, Amabilis, you’ll never be an Angel, no matter how long or how much you weep for the humans, because you are, yourself, a mortal of the earth.”
The smile finally left Amabilis’ face, replaced with a small moue of pique. He shrugged his robed shoulders, causing himself to shimmer almost to invisibility.
“Let us not play these games with each other, Satan,” Amabilis said. “Suffice to say that I am very troubled, seeing you here.”
“I’m not,” Patroclus said from behind him.
The Devil glanced at Patroclus and nodded brief acknowledgement.
“And you, Patroclus,” he said. “I am surprised to see you here as a mere spear carrier for Amabilis. I thought your place would be at the head of your own helm, not slinking along behind a lesser Patron, tongue at the ready to clean his ass.”
Patroclus floated forward, his face pulling into lines of anger, but Amabilis raised a steadying hand.
“Save your taunts, Satan,” he said. “Dismayed as I am by the display of your disregard for His demands by deserting your post, Patroclus and I are not here for you.”
Amabilis directed his gaze past Satan to Sitri.
“It is Sitri we seek,” he said.
Sitri ran his hands over his hair and raised his chin. The Devil glanced at Sitri and then back to Amabilis.
“What is it you want of him?” he said. “This cause and his part in it are no concern of yours.”
“Ah, but I’m afraid it is, Satan. Sitri has broken the rules by taking a body not destined for death.”
The Devil was surprised but held his feelings close.
“This body?” he said and gestured to Sitri. “Oh, please. If it was not destined at the exact time he took it, surely it was not far off. I think we can call this one a wash.”
Amabilis shook his head.
“Of course we cannot ‘call this a wash’. There is a soul in that body, Satan, and it is in torment!”
Amabilis’ eyes shone again with unshed tears and the Devil was reminded that this was why he detested the Patrons. Their immersion. Their involvement with the dailyness of human need. Their inability to ever get beyond their own mortal beginnings. So what if Sitri had taken a sinner minutes or even hours before his time? So what if its soul was in torment? It deserved all of that and more.
“The torment of the soul of that sinner is nothing as to what it will receive when it is mine in Hell, Amabilis. It is no less than what it deserves.”
“That is where you are mistaken, Satan,” Amabilis said. “That soul was not earmarked for the nether world. And neither was it set on dying.”
The Devil turned and looked at Sitri full on. He raised his eyebrows in a question.
Sitri ran his hands through the magnificent head of hair one more time. He looked from the Devil, to Amabilis and then back to the Devil. He smiled a strained smile.
“I just…I liked this one,” he said and the Devil took a breath that expanded his chest, even as his eyes closed. “It’s so…it fits me, Lucifer, you can see that! Surely you can even if the Patrons are too–”
The Devil turned, giving Sitri his back and cutting him off.
Looking past Amabilis, thinking hard, the Devil addressed the other four Patrons, his voice stern.
“And you? You would protect the soul of that worthless woman? That murderer of her own baby?”
Christina the Astonishing stirred and floated forth. She and the others had watched the exchange between the Devil and Amabilis with interest but had not participated. Given the choice, they’d not fight Satan at all; but given the circumstances, it seemed they might have to.
“Satan,” she said. “You more than any other being in existence understand that it is God, Himself, who commands us. What we do, we do only according to His will.”
The Devil shook his head in obvious disgust.
“You are all the same: all Patrons, all mortals. You presume to know the will of God, Himself? Never has He spoken to one of you; no mortal could withstand His voice, not even one designated with a wisp of the divine as you Patrons imagine yourselves to be. What you think you know…you only presume.”
Christina smiled. It was a slow and pitying smile, worse than the false commiseration of Amabilis. She would pity him? Unthinkable.
“Christina,” the Devil said and now his voice was quiet, barely audible as the last vestiges of light leeched from the sky. “You are Astonishing only to other mortals. The rest of us–who have known God, Himself and who have sat near to His throne even as you whine at the gate like a stray dog–we find you merely Annoying.
“Now listen and mark me well, Patrons,” the Devil continued. “I am going into that trailer and the miserable huddle of human flesh I will find in there is going to lead me to my true quarry. And you will not stop me.”
The Devil and Sitri stood facing the six wraithlike Patrons. Neither side moved. Then Sitri sighed in irritation and stepped forward, as if determined to get the upcoming nastiness well behind him.
Amabilis and Patroclus fell upon him, elongating and disappearing up his nose and into his mouth. Sitri’s borrowed body flew back, eyes wide and stumbling and landed on its ass. He grunted and bent forward, trying to grab the ground before him as he was dragged backward. He could not get purchase as the Patrons inside the body flipped it up and over, face down in the dirt and kicking.
The other four Patrons came forward and ringed the Devil. They stayed a small distance back, shifting and shimmering, looking for an opportunity into the body the Devil occupied. It would most likely take all four to dislodge Satan. His powers were far beyond that of any regular demon and the Patrons still felt terror at the aspect of losing their immortal souls.
Christina came forth, elongating as she did so, and the Devil tracked her with his eyes. She flew to within two feet of him and he reached for her, but her maneuver was a ruse. Dymphna came around from behind the Devil, even as Christina feinted quickly left.
Dymphna was partly up the Devil’s nose, thinning more as she went. Christina rushed back in, aiming for the other nostril, when the Devil met her eyes and winked. She stopped in astonishment and hung suspended, a foot from the Devil’s face. She watched in mounting horror and the Devil heaved in a breath that pulled Dymphna all the way in. Then he smiled. He reached out and put his hand into Christina’s midsection, holding her in place with his fist even though she had no real substance. He drew her to him as she struggled in his grip. He brought her face close to his.
The Devil’s eyesockets had emptied and become windows to the flaming, charnel pits of Hell. Christina could see Dymphna within the Devil’s eyes and Dymphna was the picture of torment. She turned and twisted with the damned, buffeted by flames, getting her first, truly close up view of the sinners condemned by God, Himself, to an eternity of burning.
The Devil grinned widely at Christina, his face bathed in an orange and flickering glow.
She cried out and struggled harder in the Devil’s grip. At her cries, Hermes and Maturinus came forward but at the Hell burning from Satan’s eyes, they were stayed. Hermes was an ancient Saint, having died a martyr in Greece and Maturinus was not much younger. Neither had ever had a chance to witness the Devil, Himself made flesh, much less contemplated trying to best him in battle.
Christina lashed in the Devil’s grip and bade them come to her aid and again, they pressed forward.
Behind the Devil, Sitri’s borrowed body was whipped to and fro, leaving the ground entirely, seemingly in defiance of gravity itself. His eyes had rolled back into his head as if to witness the spectacle within.
Sitri fought in desperation for the body he’d possessed. Being pushed from it now would cause him an untenured stay back in the charnel pits.
Amabilis and Patroclus expanded themselves and a holy light began to seep from Sitri’s pores, pushing him farther from the soul that cowered in the nether regions of this body. He was losing his grip on this plane.
Amabilis bade the soul to fight for itself, to fight the demon possession, but it merely trembled in the darkness Sitri had strung it in.
Patroclus forced himself further and further into the outer reaches of the body and the light glowed brighter, illuminating the Devil ten feet away.
The Devil still held Christina and now he’d also gripped the insubstantial form of Hermes, but that was a mistake. Christina and Hermes pushed against each other and the Devil struggled to hold them together. They pushed his arms wide and as he cried out in frustration, Maturinus slid into his mouth.
The Patron knitted himself to the Devil’s arm and weakened it. Maturinus pulled free and flew in a frenzy between the Devil’s gritted teeth. He enmeshed himself in the muscles of the Devil’s neck and brought his head back, pulling him over. The Devil landed hard on his back and lost his grip on Christina.
She flew into his gasping mouth.
His diaphragm had tightened when he fell and now she was constricted within it. Then the Devil pulled in a breath and she continued down to his legs.
Behind the Devil, Sitri’s body was wracked with tremors so violent that they had cracked six of the body’s false teeth. The glorious pompadour was dusty and tangled. But the former occupant’s soul was finally shaking itself awake as if from a nightmare.
The Patrons’ holy God light had finally reached it.
The Devil heaved himself up, fighting against the numbness coursing into him as the Patrons fought for control of Mark’s body. He staggered to his knees, howling, and pushed himself upright. Leaning over, hands on his thighs, he began to heave. Hot light shot from his eyes and his mouth opened wide, pulling his jaws apart nearly to the breaking point.
He heaved again, his diaphragm becoming rigid as iron, his stomach nearly touching his backbone.
He heaved again.
Behind him, the body Sitri occupied had grown still, but something began to whistle from deep within it. It began as a teakettle whistle, hesitant and stuttering, right before the water is ready to boil. Then Sitri’s head dropped slowly to the left and his mouth hung open and the whistle became louder, stronger; now a teakettle at medium boil. The white light still shone from the body and now it had puddled around it like ground fog, ghostly blue-white.
Amabilis and Patroclus appeared in the light around Sitri’s body, wearily condensing from the leaden glow.
Now the teakettle was a whistle at full boil and then it shot through the registers, climbing higher, getting louder. Now it sounded like a train half a mile from the depot and getting closer. Amabilis and Patroclus floated tiredly to one side, watching sternly and resignedly, seemingly unbothered by the fever pitch train whistle.
The whistle got as loud as it seemed it could get, drowning out the world, and all at once, Sitri appeared next to the body. The whistle died away into a line of faint, breathless squeaks as the body’s chest deflated.