Lucifer Reborn Dante King (books that read to you txt) 📖

I turned back. The splendid vista was gone. The only thing I could see through the window was a blurry red smear. The hell?

“Where’d the money go?” I asked, tapping the glass. “Is this some kind of spell?”

Blink. The window moved like a shutter, a massive eyelid coming down and raising up just as quickly.

I shot back from the square of glass like a bullet, nearly going over on my ass. “The dragon!” I cried. “Fuck!”

Both Xora and Mareth began to laugh. “It does that,” Mareth giggled, looking like she’d been through the same prank the first time she’d been to the Greed School, too. “Just about every student falls for it, too.”

“The dragon’s an ornery beast,” Xora said in a cooler tone. “And with good reason. Those are no ordinary coins you see in that vault, Luke.”

The massive eye retreated, the dragon settling back on top of the hoard. Undaunted, Christina peeked into the tiny window when it became clear I was in no hurry to look again. “I feel like I could go for a swim in all that,” the demoness whispered, a strange tone entering her voice. “God, I bet it would feel like the most decadent thing in the whole world…”

Dimly, I remembered Christina had strong feelings about decadence being a laudable quality for those who followed the Prince of Darkness. She might have been a demon now, but some things remained the same, no matter what.

“It would likely be quite painful,” Xora said with a faint smile. “Cartoons are just that —entertainment. They don’t reflect reality in any way. Case in point: each of those coins is far more than a simple means of exchanging goods and services. Each represents a mortal’s soul.”

Christina’s jaw hit the floor. “They’re soul contracts?”

Xora looked briefly confused at this response. “That’s right,” the rusalka said with a chuckle. “You’re a Mog—I keep forgetting. You probably signed one of those contracts, didn’t you?”

As Christina nodded, I looked out over the pile with new eyes. Each one of those tiny coins represented a mortal’s soul? There were so many —picking a single one out from the pack was like plucking a single grain of sand off of a beach. And yet they represented the very core of what it meant to be a person. A human soul, individual and irreplaceable…

“Mine must be in there somewhere,” Christina purred, putting her face against the glass. “It’s been years since I signed my contract with the Prince of Darkness, though —it’s probably near the bottom somewhere, underneath too many coins.” A frown spread across her demonic visage. “Or maybe I’m one of the jewels?”

“The jewels are...special cases,” Xora said, turning away from the glass. “They don’t represent mortals at all—they’re the tokens of powerful demons who have sworn their service to our Lord. Not your ordinary imps or incubi, either. Names like Nyarlathotep. Yaldabaoth. Abbadon…”

Abbadon. Where had I seen that name before? That’s right—on the Morningstar Program. The computer program that had brought Christina and I to hell in the first place. As I stared at those jewels, taking in each one, I wondered what forces beyond my control those glittering gems might represent.

“Come along,” Xora said, disrupting my train of thought. “The dragon’s not going to do a trick if you keep staring at it. You wouldn’t like the pranks it starts playing after it finishes with the eye thing.”

Not wanting to know what the dragon would consider a ‘prank’ for someone caught staring at it for too long, I quickly followed Xora and the rest of our group. Beyond the cavernous entrance of the bank lay a hall of lecture rooms, facing each other at intervals like the rooms of a courthouse. In fact, almost before I’d realized it, we’d swapped one for the other.

Xora paused before a room in which two cackling demons in white wigs were arguing vigorously. It seemed to be some kind of organized debate, where the two argued a point in front of a hooting crowd while a handful of instructors scored their responses and arguments.

“Demonic law,” the rusalka explained in a whisper. She put a finger over her lips to indicate we should stay silent. Only a moment later, I realized it wasn’t a finger—that was one of her living strands of hair, teasing her glossy, pouty lips. I recoiled backwards, hitting the doorframe, and both demons turned mid-argument to stare at me.

“As I was saying,” the taller demon growled, turning back to the crowd, “the evidence is ridiculous on its face! Prima facie, the presence of a fine summer morning or the dappling of rain on one’s forearms while running down the street with a loved one is not admissible evidence against a legally binding contract! Res ipsa loquitur, Your Honor!”

Several demons in the front row hooted and hollered. One even tossed a wig of its own in the air, catching it in clawed fingertips before shoving it back down on top of its bald head.

“Sunlight?” I asked, dropping my voice as I spoke to Xora. “Romance? What the hell are they talking about?”

It was Mareth who spoke up. “They’re rehashing the Daniel Webster case,” the succubus said with a giggle. “It’s a common first-year scenario. One of the very few times in which a court of law found against the Devil, in point of fact.”

“And he never forgot it,” Xora added ruefully, watching the demons argue.

“‘If he be merely on a frolic of his own’,” the first demon quoted, trying to regain momentum, “then one can hardly—”

“Silence!”

“Heretic!”

The whole thing broke down rapidly from that point. Xora shuffled me away, a little embarrassed at the sight. “Without the law, mankind is little more than an angry mob,” she said by way of explanation. “As you can plainly see.”