Chapter 5

Iwent still, breath caught in my throat. Blood rushed to my face. If I had thought I’d escaped shame, it all came back to me tenfold and with a vengeance. I felt the demon move. All the pressure from my waist vanished as it stood, and hot air rushed into my half-crushed lungs. Without its support or its control over my body, I collapsed against the stone, shivering. Shock and latent arousal made me slow. I should have been up by now, saving face, defending myself or. . .

Or what? Will you let this demon ravage the monastery? Will you let it fuck someone else?

I had no right to be jealous, and yet I felt that keen sense of possessiveness drawing me tight, a thread pulling through my centre towards the demon’s body.

The Prince of Lust growled low and angry, a deep rumble in its throat that descended into a hideous roar. It paced agitatedly as Oliviero screamed.

I gathered myself, stuffing my half-hard cock into my undergarments and pulling the remains of the shredded vestments around myself. But after that, I sat there like a fool. Fear and shame made my mouth run dry.

I didn’t know what to do. I had been caught. In the vein of a damned man, I saw the entirety of my life flash in my mind’s eye: a second of time, a blip on this earth. Every squandered opportunity, every moment I had denied myself. The power I’d allowed Bishop Jonah to have over me. The power he still had, even after his death.

Anxious rattling in my mind, a voice saying, If they work out what you’ve done. . . If they knew how much you wanted this—no. In the seconds it took Oliviero to scream, I saw all of this, then crawled forward until I found the strength to stand.

Oliviero—beautiful, blond, young and innocent—stood slack-jawed and terrified. He was barely a man, just blond curls, sad chin hairs that sprouted intermittently; innocent shock. Seeing him spurned cruelty to swim into my mind. Rage, too. He had interrupted. He was standing and sputtering, pointing at something ancient and beyond him. I surprised myself with a shocking amount of anger. I thought about killing him. Wringing his neck. Punishing him. I thought about taking my lust out on his body in the form of its brother: rage, anger, fury —had I always been like that? Was it the sulphur and the proximity to the demonic creature that was corrupting every moral thing in me? Or had it always been there?

Your mother saw it. Saw you. She knew before the others what you really were. Are. What you hope to become. What you want done to you.

No. No. I didn’t want harm to come to Oliviero. Not really. This interruption was just bad luck.

I started to say, “Olivi—”

My voice drowned beneath another one of his boyish screams. The demon moved forward, clawed hand swiping at the air.

Oliviero’s eyes shifted to the pentagram on the floor. Colour drained from his face.

I knew what he was going to do. I couldn’t stop it.

“No!”

I pushed forward with my shout. All the work I had done, how long I’d waited, everything I’d risked drawing that perfect symbol—the thought of what I would lose eclipsed all this fear. My eyes shifted to Asmodeus. But the boy thought he was saving me.

He rushed forward and skidded across the floor, destroying the clean, solid lines of the pentagram. Panting, he looked up with a smile, expecting the demon to have dissipated.

Nothing happened.

My heart seized. It felt like a reunion or a homecoming: that quiet relief at finding something lost again, at accessing something real within nostalgia. Not a hair was out of place on the demon’s perfect body. Its breathing was erratic and quick, and its fingers twitched in uncontrolled spasms by its side, but it was still there.

Seeming to realise this itself, Asmodeus roared triumphantly and pounded across the floor. I stood terrified. Felt childlike. I saw it all play out. The demon’s claws would cut across Oliviero’s throat. He would choke on the blood or, if the prince pressed hard enough, would be decapitated with a strike. Arterial blood would spray, and the body would crumble, and then what? A boy dead and me alone again—I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I worried about myself and the kind of person I might become in that interim moment, the liminal space and time where I could let myself be fucked by a demon in the blood of a brother before I had to decide what to do with myself. Would I tell the truth? Continue living as a don? Regret what happened to the boy so I could be stretched and gaped and filled?

“Stop!”

I shouted so desperately my ragged voice cracked under the strain. Asmodeus shuddered to a halt. I heard its body stop, like a carriage halting suddenly, iron creaking, clanging, groaning. It turned slowly to stare at me. I cannot describe the look in its eyes. The disgust, the rejection, the utter disdain. This being was older than anything I could’ve comprehended, and I was made worthless in its gaze. I dropped to my knees. The way I might in worship, I said, “Mercy. Have mercy.”

God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Luke 18:13. It became a mantra in that long stretch of a second.

“Ant,” Asmodeus rumbled. “A pestilence, your kind.” Its tail lashed out at me, and that sharpened end dragged slowly across my jaw. “Tell me what to do again, and I will dance in your blood.”

But before it could threaten me—or tease me—further, Asmodeus vanished into smoke.

The loss I felt was sinister and dark. I frowned in puzzlement and then despair, not understanding the full sense of emptiness that had opened in my guts. I must have looked shocked or otherwise pathetic because Oliviero scrabbled up to me. I turned away from him. My cock had started to grow soft, shocked into flaccidity, but I still tried to hide it from the boy. The thought kept coming: don’t let him see how aroused you were. Don’t let him know how much of a slut you really are.

Oblivious, Oliviero was mumbling a prayer, hands moving instinctively in the sign of the cross and blessing me in the same way. I did not feel blessed. I felt trapped.

“Don Alessandro,” he murmured. I thought he might hold me or touch me; he kept leaning close as if desiring an embrace. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t know what to say. I gave him a small smile and nod.

He searched my face, frowning. “How did this happen?”

I shook my head. Silence would be my friend: I had no other excuse.

I stumbled here and found it like this—weak.

I ended up gesturing to the room and said, “I heard a noise. Growling,” and then I trailed off, hoping shock was a good enough cover for my lack of detail.

“If I hadn’t come,” Oliviero began and then flushed. “I do not mean to claim I’ve saved your life, don, but. . .”

It was exactly what he meant, but I couldn’t fault him. Ego and youth go hand in hand, even amongst the faithful. I reached out and squeezed the man’s shoulder. But his eyes had wandered. He spotted the scroll I used to summon Asmodeus and another burr caught in his brow.

“That is meant to be under lock and key.”

I stood slowly and approached it, feigning surprise. I glanced at him and tried to strike some conspiratorial bond between us without a word. Oliviero looked frightened. It was a delicious expression, all twisted brows and short, staccato breaths.

“I’ll take the book to the restricted section,” I said, like all of this was nothing. I don’t know—I couldn’t bring myself to act scared. I hoped shock would be a good excuse for my despondence. As I picked up the scroll, I caught a glance of the sketch—of Asmodeus’ hulking body. I pressed it close to my chest.

Oliviero stands too. “We must contact the bishop,” he said. “Tomorrow, anyway. You should sleep; I can take it back for you.”

“No,” I said it too quickly. Oliviero flinched. I summoned some kind of lie and tried to soften the blow. “I don’t want to put you in any danger, Oliviero, and this book... is about as dangerous as you can get.”

His eyes went wide with the kind of trusting innocence that a child would have for its parent. The guilt struck me hard, but I had committed to the act now, you see. Return was not possible, nor was it wanted.

But Oliviero accepted my words. He blushed and nodded, then slipped out of the room, all legs and awkward height. He flashed me one final look before he disappeared for good, and as soon as he was out of sight, I forgot about him completely.

After coming so close, after being so hard and so willing to let Asmodeus, Prince of Lust, have its way with me, there really was no going back. God’s collar lay abandoned on the floor. I did not kneel to pick it up.

I wasn’t God’s anymore. Perhaps I had never been.

No matter what it took, I made the covenant there with myself. No matter the ritual, the sacrifice, the blasphemy, the price, I was going to be that demon’s toy.