and one does not douse or melt the other.” He lowered his hand. “No, Lucifer doesn’t want you back in my life. He’s never forgiven you for siding with the Creator. He’s hoping that you’ll screw up, that the millennia we’ve been apart have changed us.”
She pursed her lips, troubled. “I think that they have. Don’t you?”
“Yes, intensely so. But it seems some things don’t change.”
“My Lord,” the guard holding Bael’s dinner jacket interrupted them. “Your father requests that you and the Lady Leianna join him and the other dinner guests. They are about to sit down.” The man nodded to another guard, who walked briskly off, having delivered his message. Both were dressed in a perfect imitation of a Praetorian guard of old Rome. Perhaps there was some significance to Bael’s remark about Roman citizens, some parallel history. The guard now held out the jacket like a butler, helping Bael into it, then stood once again at attention at his post within the archway.
Leianna noticed that he held a spear, and a short sword was sheathed in a scabbard hung on a belt around his waist, but she saw no guns. Considering that Bael had said that sulfur and phosphorus were plentiful, she wondered if the guards were ever really called upon to protect their masters, or if the spear and sword were merely ornamental.
Bael held out his hand. “Come. Duty calls, Leianna.”
She grasped his hand and walked beside him through the cavernous hall that connected the tower with lower palace floors. The silken folds of her lilac gown brushed the stone corridor, its petticoat undergarment rustling softly. Soft sconces positioned along their way lent a golden cast to the gown’s delicate, white lace collar. The collar draped its scoop-necked bodice and covered her upper arms demurely. They moved downward to the ballroom and banquet room.
“So tell me why?” Bael said.
“Why what?”
“Why were you questioning my status here, my power? Why do you ask about servants?”
They turned a corner and now various aromas filled the air, both of baking and of roasting, rich and beckoning. Leianna wondered what they could possibly eat in Hell; it smelled inviting and she hoped the aromas genuinely matched the food to be served. “First, I want to make sure that you can protect me here. Secondly, I want to know if your servants are condemned souls, forced to serve you as slaves.”
He slowed his pace, squeezing her hand. “I can protect you if I am beside you, my love. That is why I forbid you to come here without me, or to go wandering off without me or my having designated a trustworthy guard for you. I have already made it very clear to my people, as did Ashtoreth, that if any who owe allegiance to Hell should in any way harm you, be it done in Hell, on the astral planes or on Earth, they will be punished beyond severity. Aside from that, trust in the protection that Quatama, the Seraphim and the Creator have given you.”
“And the servants?”
“They are all willing and loyal, whether they are condemned to Hell because of Earthly misdeeds or they have chosen to descend to our realm of their own volition.”
“In mortal slave cultures, a job in the house of the master was a cushy job.”
“And so it is here, but if a soul is not being punished for a serious sin, he or she is treated decently.” Down at the end of the corridor large double doors opened for them. Inside, four male waiters stood stiffly in dark suits near the long dinner table set with linen, china plates, silver cutlery and crystal goblets. In the eight chairs ranged about the table, six people sat, waiting for them.
Leianna saw Quatama nod to the two empty seats to his left. Ashtoreth, his golden hair neatly brushed and wearing a Roman toga, his favorite mode of dress here, sat at Quatama’s right side. Across from Ashtoreth, sat a woman Leianna hadn’t seen for 35,000 years: Affaeteres, Lucifer’s wife, mother of his sons. She had some minor facial lines, the only hint of those years having passed, her long blonde hair coiffed in an intricate upsweep. To her right and across from Quatama sat Lucifer himself, his own hair as thick, golden and wavy as Ash’s, for Lucifer’s first son resembled him strongly, although Ash’s sea green eyes matched his mother’s. He had not inherited Lucifer’s piercing, blue eyes.
Leianna was also seeing Lucifer for the first time since he fell from grace. To Lucifer’s right sat a beautiful slender woman with blonde hair a shade or two lighter than Affaeteres’s and a face that could easily have been her daughter’s. Leianna took her seat next to Quatama and across from this girl. With typical candor, she told her, “We’ve never met, I believe. My name is Leianna. Are you a family member whom I’m unaware of?”
The girl appeared confused and turned to the young, fair-haired man who sat to her right and directly across from Bael as he sat down next to Leianna. The girl asked her companion, “May I answer?”
The young man, who seemed familiar to Leianna, said, “Of course, you may, Regan. And tell Leianna who I am as well.”
“Good evening. I am Regan, a concubine from the harem of Lord Azmodeus and honored to sit here at this table with him and to serve him and his family.” She spoke demurely and lowered her eyes after speaking.
Leianna sat quietly for a moment and then gazed at Azmodeus, Bael and Ashtoreth’s younger brother. “I didn’t recognize you, Az, until you spoke. I remembered the fourteen-year-old I once knew. You’ve obviously become a man, but your speech patterns haven’t changed.” She didn’t mention the Halloween over five years ago when he had disguised himself as an obnoxious, sarcastic teenager in the mortal world and harassed her as she, as Leigh Ann Elfman, and her sister Ginnie were taking Daniel out trick-or-treating. She also hid her surprise when Regan asked his permission to respond to her and then described herself as his concubine. Now she nodded to the timid girl and said: “Good evening to you, too, Regan.” The girl raised her eyes briefly to meet her own and gave an almost imperceptible nod back. “You look so like Affaeteres that I thought, at first, over the long years since we’ve seen one another, that she might have had a daughter.”
Affaeteres spoke for the first time. “My son simply wishes to insult me by parading about a woman whose beauty is similar to that which I once possessed.”
Leianna simply stared at the woman who had once been like a second mother to her. “Mother Aff? You’re still just as beautiful.”
“Are you blind, Leianna? I have shriveled in this realm, my skin dry, my hair dull, my nose pinched. My youngest son has to remind me of this, even on this day when I am to reunite with you, Bael’s beloved, who was to be my daughter through marriage, whom I loved and nurtured when you were little and your true mother, Eve, was trapped on Earth. Azmodeus, why did you bring your trollop to this monumental dinner?”
Regan’s cheeks burned crimson; she appeared torn between appealing to Azmodeus for direction, who sat there motionless, and fleeing the room. A thick, coagulating silence engulfed them. Leianna felt Quatama’s hand briefly touch her arm. She looked at Affaeteres. “Mother Aff, perhaps you feel that way inside. Bael told me of how Hell has tested and tried you. But although I don’t know Regan at all, I feel that she is not deliberately trying to mock you by resembling you. She has no control over that at all, and your accusation may have deeply hurt her. Az is not using Regan as a mirror to remind you of your flaws. You are not flawed, your beauty is your own, and any who resemble you only compliment you.” Leianna sat waiting to see how Affaeteres would react, glancing anxiously at the troubled woman.
Affaeteres stared back, her eyes suddenly wet with tears. She stood up stiffly. “My dear, soon-to-be adopted daughter through marriage, it took your visit to Hell to open the thickly scabbed wound that Hell has inflicted upon me.” She pulled back her chair and began walking away from the banquet table. “It still pains me, and now it bleeds again.”
Leianna also stood up. “Please don’t leave, Mother Aff. I need you here!”
The older woman hesitated, turning back.
“Please! Don’t leave me. Not alone here,” she said, sincerely uncomfortable confronting