14

Beelzebub

Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck.

The gray overcast sky was a familiar horror to the woods I'd spent my first winter hiding within, the lush blankets of snow now seeped and stained with blood. I'd hoped to pick up at a later part of this memory, somewhere in the nearby cabin or the following day back in town.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Wally with the truth. Of all the people in all the worlds, in any and every time, he was the singular being I trusted with all things. I just hated the idea of Wally seeing such weakness. My vulnerability. My inability. I wanted him to see my strength, my perseverance, my insurmountable power, so he'd know I could and would always protect him from threats.

"Gods, are those corpses?" Wally stared at the black flames lapping up a stacked pile of bodies, burning so perfectly the fire only ate away the flesh, bone, and remnants of magic, avoiding the forest altogether.

The sweet, steaky aroma tickled my nose, teasing me with the savory smell carried in this memory. Wally's face turned queasy, likely finding the scent putrid, and missing the delectable flavor of candylike mana in the air, dancing on our tongues like snowflakes. Another reason I didn't want the memory to pick up here since this particular part involved an acquired taste.

I fought a smile, soaking in the scene of detached limbs and organs strewn about. Some we'd toss into the fire to add as kindling, others Mora would retrieve for a meal or potion or future barter.

Wally's eyes widened as he studied a particular favorite corpse of the mage who led the charge for this battalion of vanguards. His body dangled from a tree, his head bashed into the trunk—completely embedding his skull through the bark, which required a powerful and precise telekinetic strike that knocked the fool into the tree, slamming his head through the thick trunk without disturbing a single branch or shaking loose the snow. Picturesque. Captivating. Artistically etched into my mind for all of time.

"How many people did you kill?"

"Me?" I smirked. "None."

"Uh-huh, sure."

I snickered, allowing him to believe I had a hand in this fine craftsmanship that belonged to Mora. She always slaughtered with such finesse, messy and careful and artistic all at once.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Outside some Puritan settlement, well within Collective territory."

"Why here?"

"You wanted to see how I met Mora." I pointed beyond the black flames where she stood wearing the host body of an older blonde. Abigail Steward, a judge's wife and personal favorite of mine. Of all the hosts Mora had throughout the centuries, I always enjoyed Abigail best, perhaps because of how unassuming she acted as the matriarch of a God-fearing town, the motherly dotting she displayed for everyone, or how Abigail's seven children treated me like a sibling when I arrived guised as a cousin none had met before. They were such a happy family, unaware their mother had been replaced by a demon pulling the strings to influence a town of hypocrites.

"You needn't fear," Mora cooed, daintily stepping around stray pieces of flesh and blood splatter, hiking the edges of her dress up to keep it clean from stains. "There are such few Diabolics here in the colonies, most finding this endeavor unfruitful, but I'm always searching for a new venture."

Wally followed Mora's gaze, tilting his head curiously as she spoke at us, through us, to the figure guiding this memory. He turned, taking in my appearance in this memory. His eyes stared at the four horns atop my head, barely distracting from the disheveled mess of knotted, straggly hair. Then Wally's eyes fell to the slow healing burns on my light gray skin. The freshly charred, ragged clothes indicated these scars hadn't come from Hell, where I'd escaped, but from mages who sought to rid themselves of such a fearsome beast.

There were gashes sliced along my muscles from enchanted weaponry meant to hack me to pieces since the mages quickly learned a Diabolic with no host couldn't be bled dry so easily. I tsked. Muscles. Like I had much in that slender form, barely competent and lacking understanding of how to heal the Diabolic essence circulating through me. My wings were widespread because I'd considered flying away when the demon presented herself, slaughtering the foes who meant to detain and destroy me.

Wally's expression softened, not with sadness but polite curiosity in a way he would use when gently prodding for answers to things he wanted to know. "This is you."

"Yes," I said, fighting the urge to fidget like my past self, whose bare feet bounced back and forth in the crunching snow. "That's who I was."

Was.

Because that weakling didn't represent a single shred of who I'd become. I let that nothing wash away along with the blood of mages centuries in their graves. This weak, unwanted thing wasn't me. He wasn't Beelzebub. He wasn't Bez. He wasn't the persona I'd carefully crafted of the god-king toying with a mortal world out of boredom and curious fancies.

"You're a demon." My former self so astutely surmised after looking Mora over. I rolled my eyes at his baffled expression.

"And you're a devil," Mora replied, curtsying. "A pleasure to meet your acquaintance, Lord Beelzebub."

I hadn't replied to her assumption, hadn't corrected or denied it. Back then, I'd believed I was playing her, but in truth, Mora always knew more than the hand she revealed.

"I was honored to hear that a devil of such high esteem had come to grace us with his presence." Mora stepped through Wally's body, a ghost of the past rippling by as he remained silent and fully observant. "Then shocked to learn how disgracefully these mages treated you." She twisted her face in disgust and spit. "Collective trash. Apologies your visit has been met with such crass actions."

"I'm used to it." My past self shivered, not from the cold I couldn't feel without a host but from the acknowledgment my entire existence had been met with caustic hate from devils, demons, mages, Mythics, and mortals.

"I must ask, Lord Beelzebub." Mora continued subtly closing the distance between herself and the scrawny demon radiating devil essence. "Why run from these mages instead of ending them where they stood?"

"I…" My past self swallowed hard, struggling to find the right words.

"I see. So much time in Hell must've left you disoriented, confused on how to navigate the mortal plane in all its simplicity." Mora had a glint in her eyes, one I hadn't noticed then, only registering the carefully crafted compassionate expression she gave. "If you like, I can offer my guidance until you understand this world better."

"So, Mora was the first person to acknowledge you as Beelzebub?" Wally asked, ignoring her small talk to garner trust from a frightened feeble demon pretending to be brave. Always pretending.

"Yep, and thanks to her, soon other demons caught wind of me. They sensed the same devil essence Mora would, in turn, help cultivate. In time, I made a name for myself that spread like wildfire." I smirked. "It helped that I set actual flames to feed the legend."

"Wait, then why was the Collective attacking you now?" Wally asked.

"Did you not see my appearance?" I gestured to my scrawny form and obvious features, such as the three tails that twitched nervously the entire time speaking with Mora.

"Yes, you're not possessing a host, which I know isn't a requirement for Diabolics, but I always thought you preferred it for the sensations."

"I do."

"I just don't understand why the Collective would strike if you hadn't done anything wrong. Harmed anyone. Did you harm anyone?" He bit his lip, face reddening and entire body warming with guilt from the blurted question.

"No, I didn't. They attacked me, hunted me, because they saw a vile demon, a Diabolic, that didn't fit into the Collective philosophy or the accords they'd put in place for Mythics."

"Sorry. Sometimes I forget—or am willfully unwilling to accept—that the Collective is just cruel to be cruel most days."

"In defense of the current Collective," I said, playfully batting my lashes and nudging his shoulder with mine to lighten the mood. "I did spend the better part of the next century slaughtering mages whenever the whim struck."

"But not when you arrived," Wally said, conviction in his voice and a lack of remorse for the bodies he watched Mora telekinetically throw into the fire. "What'd you do when you first arrived here?"

"Damn, Walter." I pointed to the conversation between the former Mora and my past self playing out right in front of us. "I thought you wanted to know how I met Mora, why that—"

"All I want—all I've ever wanted—is to know more about you. All of you. All the parts you're willing to share." He stepped in close, delicately running his fingers along the hairs of my forearms, sending a delightful shiver through my body, then he cupped my hands into his. "No judgment. No reservations. I love you, Bez. I love everything about you. Even the things I hate—and to be clear, glorifying carnage and casually killing people are not high on my list of favorite things. But the Bez who lived in Hell had somber eyes; the Bez in this memory has a soft, curious expression. I want to know what he desired when he came to our world. What dream did the Collective take from him? From you?"

I practically choked, trying to form words. Gods, he was insufferable, always making me feel…seen. I hated how it made my insides warm and fuzzy. But I also couldn't imagine my life without those sensations anymore.

"Back when I first arrived, I wanted to be a champion for anyone in need," I said with a laugh because it was funny. It was pathetic and worthless and met with fear and disdain. Not only from the mages who didn't like pushback against their authority but also from the Mythics who found my essence rotten and the mortals who believed me the literal Satan due to their tiny, glamoured, and simplistic existences.

"You wanted to help others? Why?"

"Because I was deluded." I ground my teeth, unable to find the words for my obsession with true heroism or the guilt I carried for escaping Hell, leaving behind so many I despised, but wondering how many others like myself clawed at the locked walls, desperate for a reprieve I'd denied them.

I took solace in the fact that the knight who sparked such ideals in me had already lost his life before I abandoned my Hell. It would be far more gutting to know he suffered behind those closed doors for all eternity due to my cowardice.

Eligos, the dead fool, painted the mortal realm with such grandeur as one of the few demons offered leave from Beelzebub's domain. Beelzebub found the errant knight exhausting, how he had always returned to Hell explaining the nobility of honor and valor and compassion and generosity and too many virtues. Eligos proved anyone could achieve anything if they believed enough. He fought harder, stayed true to himself for eons, and even in the coup that killed him, he protected the demons around him.

Eligos…

The knighted demon in all his glory appeared in the memory, flickering in and out much like the forest itself, shifting to the walls of a castle I once had the displeasure of calling home. A place where I cleaned and served and obeyed for what should've been all of time, taking small comforts in his visits, his tales, his journey for change.

"What's going on?" Wally asked, watching the shifting memory.

I snarled, exhaling the frustration. Reminiscing of Eligos made me weak. His image. His belief. His kindness.

"It's nothing. I'm just not focused." I shrugged away the fleeting thoughts. "Thinking of one thing sort of spiraled into another thing, and all this dredging up the past is making my memories mix and get muddled."

Wally stared at the flickering knight so intently, the image of Eligos remained in the snowy forest near Mora and my past self, completely out of place with the memory.

"This whole thing is your fault," I teased. "I'm starting to think your whole overthinking behavior is contagious."

"I know him." Wally pointed to Eligos.

"You may've glimpsed Eligos during one of your saturated visits to my past," I said nonchalantly. "He's no one special. Just some demon from Hell. My Hell. But again, nothing—"

"No." Wally trembled, panic in his voice. "I've seen him here in the villa."

Wally reeled all his mana back into himself, retracting every ounce of saturation and snapping us into an abrupt awakening. The room was fogged over, perhaps a fleeting sensation from the weather in the memory or Wally's lethargic state after jolting awake.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I've seen that exact suit of armor three times now."

"Wait. What are you talking about?"

He sprang from the bed, tossing his clothes on, speaking in jumbled half-uttered thoughts, and rushing out of the room before he'd even squeezed his hips into his skinny jeans.

I sighed. Clearly, showing him my past had broken his curious little brain.

His feet pattered, swiftly rushing through the living quarters toward the helm. I took my time dressing, listening intently to his mutterings from afar. Once I'd slipped on my gray blazer and donned a scarlet pocket square, I zipped out of the room and closed in on my adorable but often frantic mage.

He burst into the helm, lost in his dazed inquisitive thoughts, not acknowledging my presence or Mora and Kell, who sat in the lone chair by the navigation panel.

Kell straddled Mora's lap as the demon caressed her wife's waist and kissed her neck. Heat and lust wafted off each of them, yet Kell's eyes lingered on some broken mechanism to an unnecessary project she was forced to abandon for romance. It sat disassembled on the control panel near the locked box holding the Demon's Demise that I wanted Wally to keep at the ready if need be.

Wally brushed past the pair, ignoring the giggle Mora's tongue elicited from Kell.

"Of course, now you're all in," Mora teased, her lips moving up to meet Kell's, but her gaze shifted to me. "Kell's always enjoyed an audience, but your mortal never struck me as a voyeur, Bezzy."

"Finally, something about him I like." Kell kissed Mora, grabbing ahold of her demon's hair and controlling the tilt of Mora's head as their lips enveloped each other with passion.

Kell thrusted her hips, rocking the chair that Mora kept from tipping over with a steady flux of telekinesis.

"Walter's not here for the show. Don't you have a room for this?"

"Three, in fact." Mora moaned as Kell continued.

Admittedly, Mora and Kell were always a fun pair to play with, but neither were Wally's type, and I no longer held the interest of burying my cock in whoever I stumbled upon. Plus, I had even less interest in sharing Wally with other partners.

"Why is he here?" Kell tore herself from Mora's lips, one hand resting on Mora's shoulder, the other instinctively venturing lower. "The command protocols still aren't functioning, so if you're trying to move us somewhere, it'll—"

"Where's the footage?" Wally asked aloud, but only to himself based on the inflections of his voice. "Gotta find the dungeon place thingy. No. No cameras there. But where else…"

I rushed past Mora and Kell in a blur; a powerful air current was carried by my swoosh, which spun their lover's chair round and round.

Wally's eyes flitted about, studying the hundreds of security videos he'd pulled up.

"Foyer works. Date was…" He bit his lip, puzzling together something in his maze of a mind.

"What are you doing?" I asked, placing a hand under his chin and turning his attention to me. It seemed the only way to steal his focus and get a proper answer.

"I've seen that armor before. In the baron's villa."

"You've seen a suit of armor," I corrected him. "We've seen a few dozen while investigating."

Novus had a vast collection of mortal armor and artillery spanning centuries back from across the globe.

"No. That exact suit." Wally returned to the control panel, zooming in on a camera positioned in a foyer.

He rolled the footage back.

"You think you saw it," I said. "Knight armor can be easy to confuse."

"No," he snapped. "This was the exact same suit this Eligos demon wore. I know how to distinguish minute details. That suit of armor came from tenth-century England."

Wally was right about the century. I recalled Eligos' particular fondness for that suit, having earned it on a pilgrimage in the mortal plane. He regaled many about his journeys as a knight errant.

"See." Wally paused the footage.

I found myself more fixated on the framed image of his frantic expression on camera—the same expression he had now—from the night of the Fae Divinity, backstepping from a looming shadow that must've been Novus.

"Look." He pointed to the suit of armor positioned behind him. "It's exactly the same."

I shook my head in disbelief. "They are similar."

"They're identical." Wally pointed. "Everything down to the dent, which should've struck me as odd considering the pristine condition Baron Novus kept everything else in his collection. Fixing damage like that would be easy, even without magic, so long as you know what you're doing."

I thought back to the many memories of Hell I kept buried, to Eligos, his nobility, his honor, his tales which offered a small reprieve from the constant torment of my existence. He'd earned it by slaying some Mythic beast—a dragon, I think, which is as cliché as it can get—and saving a village of mortals. That dent. The singular scuff he'd received from the slow-moving beast because he'd deflected a blow meant to kill a child.

He had been particularly proud of the suit's durability and the war wound it obtained, even as others mocked his sluggishness and need to prioritize a finite, worthless mortal life. It hadn't bothered him at all, though, and I loved how no one's opinions ever deterred his desires, his tales during meetings among the hierarchy of demon lords.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, the memories best left buried. None of them mattered. "Eligos is dead. Saw it myself."

The former reigning devil smashed Eligos and so many demons to pieces, shattering their forms and scattering their broken essence among the thousands of other defeated demons. A rebellion for the ages, one that Eligos would've told a thousand times over, except he had died.

"Diabolics don't die, not like others. You said that." Wally tugged at his hair, yanking away the confusion festering in his overworked brain, so he could come to a sound conclusion. "He could've been brought back or survived the attack or…"

I'd seen Wally get this way when unraveling a secret layered in lies and mysteries. Usually, he had great insight, fantastic instincts, and a knack for the puzzles people created. Hell, locked in a room with Mora, he'd likely learn all her secrets over a single cocktail.

But he was wrong about Eligos. I couldn't explain the similarities. Perhaps, I'd seen it around the villa, substituted it for my repressed memories of a fallen friend, a demon I regretted the death of.

"Even if Eligos had survived, which, to be clear, he didn't," I said. "He couldn't get through a closed doorway."

"Precisely." Mora smacked Kell's ass to draw our attention.

"Babe, he seems serious," Kell said, slipping off Mora's lap and straightening her skirt.

"More like overthinking it. Beelzebub's Hell is completely sealed off," Mora said, indicating she too kept a watchful eye on the world I'd abandoned, ensuring that particular Hell never opened again. "No way in or out."

"Unless," Wally interjected, continuing his wild theories, "Novus had been left to his own devices, which—oh yeah, he was—potentially figuring out a way through this locked realm in some nefarious plot. For all we know, Eligos is—"

"I never considered the former baron nefarious so much as narcissistic," a hauntingly chivalrous and familiar voice said. "Vapid, callow, arrogant by any man's measure. Certainly. Nefarious. Not even sure the Fae truly know the meaning, despite millennia of observation."

I quaked at the sight of his full suit on display, moving gracefully with his aligned essence and demon form navigating from within. Eligos didn't possess hosts, favoring the armor for the limited mortal shape. Well, the Eligos I knew. This couldn't be him. Still, those golden eyes peering through the slit of the helmet were uncanny.

"As for Beelzebub's sealed Hell," Eligos said, nodding his helmet at me. "Getting him here was the first step in undoing that travesty."

Fucking Eligos. How was he here? How had he survived? What did he want with me? Why was he trying to free Beelzebub?

"How did you escape?" The words left my lips like I'd become the frightened, whimpering demon all over again.

"You weren't the only one to cross through the portal before it sealed away," he said, which meant he'd been in the mortal realm for centuries. "Though, the state of near-death you left my essence in, it took a while to regain my bearings."

The state I left him in? My heart thumped loudly in my eardrums; the room whirled.

"So many tried to flee before you sealed everyone away and everything for all of time, but the triumphant devil did all in his power to keep a single one from crossing through. Seemed only my tattered broken being managed to skirt past unnoticed. That and the devil himself."

Eligos wasn't the only one to escape our Hell. I had, too.

Armor clinked; Eligos' blurred steps rattled against the floor.

"I've waited far too long for this hedonistic traitor." Eligos unsheathed his blade. "The mortal realm has left you weakened, Beelzebub."

What? He thought I was actually Beelzebub? The devil essence circulating deceived most, but couldn't he see the layers of demon essence feeding upon it? Couldn't he see the demon who listened to his tales a million times over? As someone who served the actual Beelzebub for eons, shouldn't Eligos have seen right through my deceit and known I wasn't him?

I reached out to my right, intending to stop his sword hand, but only grabbed air. His glove clasping the hilt rang from my left. Eligos held his bloody sword, and the room swirled.

I choked, struggling to stand upright. Wally screamed. Had he been harmed, too? Was that why I found myself struck with such fatigue? I tried calling out, but my throat burned. Blood soaked through my clothes. My legs wobbled, and I toppled over.