The Desire of a Hybrid

Chapter 3- Il Libro Dei Demoni

It was alarming how quickly one could go from being at the top of the world, to skulking around at the bottom of it. 

My office looked nothing like the Hell humans would have imagined. It was deep in the caverns away from the main cities of pain and torture, away from all the screams of desolation and suffering given to the souls who'd turned their backs on God. In fact you couldn't see or hear anything from the terrible outside, because the walls were sound proof and windowless. I knew my human half wouldn't have been able to take the constant sights and sounds from the dead, and there was a time long ago where I wouldn't have really liked to stomach them either.

But the softness of my heart was as dead as the souls out there.

The rest of my work place, despite its surroundings of scorching fire, was fairly unexceptional. The walls were a stone grey, lit by numerous blue flames in weathered torch-brackets that gave the room a general dull glow: perfect lighting for plotting things of an unspeakable nature. Opulence was also key here: the grand desk and my leather throne proudly dominated the room over the two small chairs, used for anyone unfortunate enough to visit me. Decanters of liquor were the only things that occupied my table space, other than the file that Dev was eyeing studiously in front of him. 

"Dev," I said, catching his attention and nodding at him.

He got up and immediately shook my hand. He was of an average size, about five foot ten with a bulky build, and had sandy, blonde hair accompanied by a pair of red eyes. The demons of Hell were set up in a hierarchy, and anyone that was deemed a lower class had these crimson orbs: it was seen as an honour to be able to infiltrate the human world with normal eyes. Only Satan himself could change the colour, and pretty soon Dev was being awarded with this well-deserved promotion. 

"We have a problem," he said simply as we both sat down, pushing the file he had been studying over to me. The cover of it had the bland title of a woman named Darcy Robbins, but she couldn't have been that boring because the file was stock full of paper.

I looked at Dev to elaborate in exasperation because this situation was bizarre enough: I rarely dealt with one single person anymore. 

Most recently I had been increasing our demonic strongholds over the L.A mafia, which hopefully meant more souls for the devil to collect. The fuller Hell was, the more powerful we became, and it wasn't exactly hard work. It was surprising how many humans were drawn in to the darkness of the mafia, but their complexity was built by God, not me, so who was I to argue?

Finally, Dev began to explain the situation, much to my relief. "Robbins has become a real problem in the last few months. She's made lots of initiatives to help prostitutes, drug addicts and other humans who would have been easily guided to Hell." 

"I'm guessing the fact she's a good person isn't the reason why you brought me down here." 

"No," he said, without a trace of his usual humour. "There's a bigger problem. She's a converter: there's been a total of roughly two hundred souls saved so far in the past three months, and that's a lot of power lost for us. Heaven's getting fuller by the second with her around." 

"So just get rid of her," I was getting slightly irritated. He knew the protocol here; he didn't need me to help him with every little thing. 

"We've already tried to. And after those attempts failed she started coming after us with some kind of success. The mafia isn't safe for us anymore." 

I had to admit, that was not the answer I was expecting. It was rare that Christians went on vendettas against us because they had no idea on who we actually were. The bible wasn't very descriptive on our kind because God didn't want to scare his people, and with good reason. If some of the Christians on Earth really knew the full extent of our power, I'd be pretty sure they would chicken out of doing anything useful in the world: too frightened of the potential danger we could bring.