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

confirming it with a glance at Christina, who nodded. “And I know that the angels—the ‘cloud-sitters’, as you so eloquently put it—live in the Celestial Realm.” I sat back in my seat. “But I’ve never heard of the Fae Realm before.”

“Nor should you have,” Lilith said with a shrug. “I doubt even Christina has heard of it. It wouldn’t be in any of the books our Lord gives his rank-and-file devotees. It’s possible you’ll go there one day—our curriculum involves a number of field trips to various other Realms and Circles of Hell. There’s even some practical on-the-job training for our advanced students.” She grinned. “We’re not some ivory tower where theory is exalted to the exclusion of practice. Leave that to the angels. Our graduates come out ready: ready to torment mortals, to form soul contracts, to bind lesser demons beneath them.”

“And the Fae?” I asked, unwilling to let it go. Something about that word tugged at the back of my brain.

“I suppose,” Lilith said, giving me a strange look. “If that’s your aim, however, you might want to learn to crawl before you run, so to speak. Entering the Fae Realm requires some very difficult rituals—and, potentially, some intramural cooperation with the...other side.”

Lilith spit to the side as she finished her sentence, as if mentioning collaboration with angels disgusted her. After a moment, Christina leaned over and did the same.

They don’t like the idea of working with angels at all, I thought. And yet, Lucifer didn’t have this prejudice at all. Hell, he seemed pretty excited about me potentially having angelic powers…

“Lucifer was an angel once,” I blurted, before I could stop myself. “A fallen angel.”

Christina let out a little squeak, her eyes going wide as dinner plates. Lilith looked poleaxed.

“An astute point,” the gorgeous demoness finally said. Far above her head, the living flame in the chandelier twirled, alternating dappled bars of shadow and light across the canvas walls. “We could all stand to remember that, I suppose. I wasn’t aware that you knew about the other Fallen Angels, Luke.”

I didn’t. “Others?”

The corner of Lilith’s mouth curled in a smirk, and I realized she’d let me into this little narrative trap on purpose. She wanted to tell me. “A very special cohort of demons,” she purred, putting one hand over the other. Her nails raked the back of her hand, showing off like a model. “Very close to our Lord. The only demons to neither come from Hell itself or be transmogrified by a demonic entity or mortal.” Her eyes traveled to the ceiling. “They came from up there. That’s all I’ll say about them for now.”

For a moment, there was silence in the tent. Christina leaned over and put her hand over mine, sniffing loudly. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that both she and Lilith were thinking about Lucifer’s mortality.

“I was a human once,” Lilith suddenly blurted. For a moment, she looked almost vulnerable. “I don’t suppose you knew that, did you? Either of you?”

Both Christina and I shook our heads.

“I don’t suppose you would,” Lilith purred, tapping a complicated rhythm across the tabletop with her nails. She paused so long I almost expected that to be it, then she continued. “Like you, I was not transmogrified in order to gain my demonic powers. My abilities have been augmented by my bond to the Prince of Darkness, of course—but my immortality came from a different source.” She gazed up at the ceiling, a hateful look spreading across her gorgeous face. “By him.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who she meant. “The Almighty?” I asked, provoking Christina to wince again and kick me. That name sounded too exalting, I supposed. “The Man Upstairs?”

“That’s a good name for him,” Lilith said ruefully. “Like a landlord—one who never shows up when you need your plumbing fixed or your fuse box reset, but always expects you to follow the rules.” She leaned forward suddenly, her ass lifting into the air behind her. Her tail was longer than Christina’s, and segmented with overlapping scales like a dragon’s. “You mean to tell me you’ve really never heard of the Lilith? The one they named the fair after?”

“I never paid much attention in Bible school as a kid,” I admitted.

“Not that it would have done you much good!” Lilith said with a laugh. “Considering your current occupation. Well, I’ll have you know, I was Adam’s wife. Before Eve—she of the forbidden fruit and the conveniently placed fig leaf. I never bothered with either, which might be why the ‘Man Upstairs’ cast me out in the first place.”

“You refused to serve,” Christina said, her eyes fixed on Lilith. She said it like she was talking about her favorite musical artist’s best album. “You told Adam to go fuck himself.”

“The world would be a better place if he had,” Lilith said with another laugh. “Much more peaceful. Anyway, once I was cast from the Garden, I bounced around a bit—on the rebound, you know how it is—and then I met him. Lucifer.”

“And the rest is history?”

Lilith’s smile widened. “Just as with Adam, I was our Lord’s first wife. The first woman to share his bed, to bear his children—to be called his partner. A woman like me is a Queen of Queens, Luke. Someone like me deserves the best of everything, wouldn’t you agree?”

Then, I had the weirdest vision.

Chapter 20

When the vision hit me, it washed over me so quickly that it took long moments to recover. Within the span of a blink, the tent and its stately desk vanished, replaced with a high-vaulted chamber that smelled of incense and sex. Cool, damp air covered my now-naked body, reminding me so much of the Lust School that for a moment that’s