Page 13 of Altar of Flesh

It turned my chin this way and that. It did not bother with pretence, not hiding its assessment of me as its eyes raked over my face and body. I opened my mouth to reply, and it squeezed my cheeks together so hard my lips pursed and my face practically distended.

“How did you enter here, little priest?” it whispered, and only when my eyes widened did it release the pressure on my face.

“W-what?” I gasped and then coughed, sliding back ever so slightly on the wooden floor to put even an inch of distance between the two of us. Furcas allowed this with only a raise of its arched brow to suggest it knew I was frightened.

“I believe you heard me clearly.”

“Yes,” I said, “Yes, I heard you.”

Frustration gleamed in the demon’s eyes. “How did you come to be in Hell as you are?”

Stop talking back. Who do you think you are?

Blushing, I explained, “I—my Prince told me to find it. To walk into Hell. I tricked a bishop and had him lead me to theCave of the Sibyl, and there I performed a ritual. The gates opened. But I also. . .I stabbed myself.”

I didn’t say the rest, but Furcas, with its great knowledge of rhetoric and logic, could hear the unspoken words. It tipped its head thoughtfully. “Ah. . .you can’t tell if you’re dead or alive?”

I thought of the numerous notes on my scent the demons had given me. That I reeked of the light and of life, like godliness and incense and oxygen had knitted into my skin. I thought of the hags in Malphas’ territory who had fed me to settle my stomach and keep me grounded in this realm.

I told Furcas, “I think I am alive.”

It nodded thoughtfully, standing and walking to the bookshelves. “I believe you are. Some humans have entered Hell before, you know.Enteredbeing the crucial term there. Plenty of humanity’s souls have haunted the abyss for a long while. But, of the way you entered, you are not the first.”

My stomach twisted, and heat fired behind my eyes. My heart raced, and I realised I did not know what I was feeling—except terrible, and worthless, and barely alive. “Who?” I demanded. “For Asmodeus?”

Furcas looked at me over the shelves. The milky white eyes unsettled me from this distance, blurring as they did into the demon’s beard and hair. It bore those sharp teeth at me and began to cackle. The laughter went on, distended and elongated and entirely unnecessary. I baulked standing before Furcas, whose old face bobbed oddly as if decapitated, body hidden as it was behind the shelves. Then, Furcas’ jaw cracked and inexplicably began to lower. It dropped uncomfortably wide and then wider still; I saw the yawning chasm of its tar-black throat, the slate grey of its tongue like meat about to turn. The sharp teeth were rotten in places, and the gums were green. The jaw lowered and lowered until the impossibility of the mouth was near hilarious—though I could not laugh. I could not even dreamof laughing. Pink fleshy tendon knitted the top and bottom rows of teeth together, and as the jaw stretched, so too did this poor suture, which at times began to snap.

I became so dizzy with fear that I began to scream.

8

CHAPTER EIGHT

“What do you want?”I howled, not understanding the change in Furcas or this demonic energy. “What do you want from me?”

With terrifying speed, it rounded the corner and galloped at me. A board cracked beneath the sudden force of its approach, and I screamed and went to my knees. Furcas stopped before it crushed me and ran its fingers through my hair, gripping hard.

“Stop screaming,” it hissed, and I clamped my mouth shut. Tears fell—I could not stop them leaking from my eyes.

“You are a stupid fool of a human,” Furcas told me. “About as pathetic as your kind can get. But you have also a misplaced wisdom or a luck—something favours you. You could not have made it this far otherwise. I will tell you this. Your jealousy of other humans, whether they have entered Hell for Lord Asmodeus or not, will be your undoing. The Prince might find it sweet for the first blink of an eye, but it has had a millennium of whores, demonic or human, or the occasional angelic on the verge of losing its status. Surely you know you are not special?”

“I know that,” I said. I had already come to this conclusion. “But I am human. I feel certain ways, and sometimes I can’t always help it.”

“You have let yourself be fucked and used by plenty of demons. Do you fear Asmodeus will fuck other holes in its wait for you to reach it?”

Furcas loosened its tight grip on my hair as it spoke. I slumped. Its question defeated me.

I struggled to form the words. To explain to this demon the complexities of human desire, of my insecurity, of the greatest sacrifice I had made. Everything I was had been reduced to this, naked and shivering before a demonic centaur. Could something as ancient as Furcas or, indeed, my Lord Asmodeus, ever understand the act of devoting one’s life if one wasimmortal?

“Tell me,” it whispered. “Speak to me your fears.”

Shaking, I let it all out. “I am jealous, sometimes. Often fearful. I have no worth except for my body and my devotion, but I will give it to Lord Asmodeus, as I promised it on Earth. And I have given the entirety of myself. Even my mortal life.” I looked up at Furcas, who stared down at me, hooves clopping as it shifted its weight. “So I am not jealous of Asmodeus using other creatures. I am scared that, by the time I reach it, it won’t remember me. That I’ll be forgettable. That it’ll. . . it’ll all have been for nothing.”

The last words turned to a whisper, strangled high.

“Then you must stand out, don’t you think? You must show Asmodeus just how willing you are to become its toy. Even to the extent of pleasuring me, an old man with the body of a horse. For this repulses you. I can see it in your eyes. You may wonder about the size of my cock pressing into you and bulging out your stomach, but you wish it was attached to something you could find pretty in the right lighting.” Furcas’ touch became soft. I couldn’t quite comprehend the shift in its attitude; the wisdomturned to wild and unfettered insanity, curtailed once more to encourage me to bend over for it.

I would have done it anyway. Did it not know that? I needed no convincing on my journey to Asmodeus.

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