Ready for your usual chapter full of Cassie's dramatic angst? Just kidding! This is an interlude from your favourite demonic sidekick, Sebastian Black!
P.S. Sebastian says you should leave a comment. Come one, you know you want to. 591Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvnvBLGT4da
It took him a while to get back to Hell.
By the time he'd dragged himself out of the church, his wings were so seared and burned, there was no hope of him flying anywhere. He vomited on the sidewalk. The vomit was mainly bile - he didn't need to eat, and hadn't in a week or so. He leaned back against the wall, shaking violently. He felt truly, completely, utterly bare and weak for the first time in years. For the first time, Sebastian realised, since he was alive. It terrified him.
It took him time to heal. As soon as he could crawl, he got as far away as he could. A metre of distance, and the pain started to fade. Ten metres, only a lingering burn remained. By the time he was two blocks away, he was walking and the pain was gone, but the feeling of weakness remained.
Cassie Johnson had ditched him in a church, for saving her life. That self-hating, angel-loving stupid, reckless girl who had no idea what she was dealing with had ditched him in a church.
As soon as he was back in Hell, he flew to the Palace, savouring the sound of screaming and the comfortable heat around him. He'd hated the screams before, but he had quickly gotten used to them. It helped his conscience to know that the screams were of murderers, rapists, people who didn't eat the crust on pizza and in general the nasty sort that completely deserved a little torture - well, apart from Cassie's soul, but now that he thought about it, he wasn't very sorry about that either.
Soon, the screams faded and he reached the nicer part of Hell - the giant city surrounding the palace. It was the biggest city in existence, dwarfing anything in Heaven. Endless restaurants, discos, casinos, and dance clubs. There was a giant, unruly mob of millions of inebriated souls partying in the streets - there was always a giant, unruly mob in the streets. There were no houses, of course - what was the point when a soul never needed to sleep, or to eat, where the air was always just warm enough to feel comfortable, where you could do whatever you liked all day? Low-level demons ran the shops and stalked the streets, always dressed in black, red and grey, recognisable by their small horns. Sebastian always felt jealous of them - even most of the lesser demons had bigger horns than him, and his siblings all had much larger ones, but he'd been a demon for five years now, ever since he was eleven, and his horns had stayed stubbornly short. He averted his eyes from them, and flew faster. The city stretched out for millions of miles, but space worked differently in Hell, and it only took him around twenty minutes.
Finally, the Palace itself loomed into sight. It was bigger than any construction on earth. Thousands of stories stretched into the black expanse that could loosely be termed a sky, and even his advanced demonic eyesight couldn't make out the end of the massive, twisting spires that reached up from the top story - and Sebastian had very good eyes. The outside constructed entirely of a jet-black, glassy obsidian-like material that reflected ghostly flames and tortured souls that didn't actually exist. It was, as Satan had told him once, really all about the aesthetic.
Sebastian usually paused and watched in awe for a moment, but he was too angry too feel impressed. He flew straight down to the six hundred and sixty sixth floor. The Throne Room.
There was no need for him to take the usual route from the bottom - he had the very highest level of clearance. He flew straight to the massive balcony and strode in, folding his wings against his back. The guards by the balcony merely nodded as he passed, not attempting to stop him.
This was one of the more formal rooms in Hell. Apart from the hallways and balconies, most of the rooms had modern furniture and fashionable (if often black and red) wallpaper that changed to keep up with the latest trend. The throne room, however, resembled the outside - black, glassy stone reflecting flames and souls, and a smooth black marble floor. It wasn't as big as you might expect for the room Hell was ruled from - just large enough to intimidate and dwarf the visitor while still leaving them no places to hide and no room to run. A calculated effect, and one Sebastian couldn't help but admire.
Satan was sitting there on his throne of skulls, examining a scroll held in pointed fingernails painted red. His current and most common form was a thin, clean shaven English man with tousled blond hair and black eyes like Sebastian's. He was, of course, devastatingly handsome, with wings were well over twice the span of his chest and, (of effing course, Sebastian thought) his horns were twisting spires over a foot and a half long that went from the deepest of blacks at the base to shining white at the tips.
He looked up from the scroll, and tossed it aside as soon as he saw him.
"Seb. Finally. What took you so long? Ugh, have you smelled yourself? You reek like Heaven." he complained, waving a hand covered in dazzling bejeweled rings lazily in front of his nose.
Sebastian huffed angrily shook his head. "You have to give me another mission. I can't do this one."
"Why not?" he asked, alarmed.
"She's dangerous, Dad! You said it would be easy, and that she was nice! She's totally evil. She left me in a church! She's tipped boiling hot water over me, slapped me, banished me, and when she got kidnapped and prayed to me and I saved her, she ditched me there and told me to 'rot in the light'." Sebastian complained, his fingers sketching air quotes around Cassie's words.
His father blinked. "For the love of me, you're my son. You're rank is demidevil. You should be able to handle one human girl!"
Sebastian shrugged and crossed his arms. "Well, it's not like I can hurt her back!"
"Can't you?"
"No! She's just a human, and I'm supposed to be corrupting her!"
Satan sighed. "Yes, yes, I know, but really, Seb, you're being ridiculous about this. I know, being left in a church is totally the worst, trust me, I know, but you need to calm down here."
"I'm completely incompetent and have no idea how to deal with this." he announced, changing tack.
"I know, that's the point. You're going to have to learn, Sebastian. You can't just hang around the Palace playing video games and going on the internet all day. You need to get out and start learning how to be a real demon."
"I do work all day! Schoolwork, learning how to shoot and fight, black magic, all of that!"
"Yes, yes, but you've got all eternity to learn about science and math and history and whatever it is you do!" Satan said, dismissing his complaints with a vague wave of his arm.
"But I like learning about science and history and math!" Sebastian whined. "It's interesting!"
"Sebastian, you need some real experience here. You're need to learn how to be a real demon. So far, you've just been too complacent. You don't get into fights, you don't make awesome dramatic remarks as you use your powers. You don't sell souls at crossroads. You're ruining my reputation."
"I'm not a crossroads demon, that's not my job! And since when was it my duty to help your reputation, Dad?!"
They'd had endless arguments along these lines in the past, but his father was implacable. His Sin was Pride, after all. Sebastian's Sin hadn't properly manifested yet, but he had a feeling that if he was forced to carry on babysitting Cassie Johnson, it would turn out to be Wrath. 591Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO17tiU3Ce4
591Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXsNJcmllHo
"I'm the King of Hell, the Father of Lies, the -"
"Yes, yes, the Prince of Darkness, Old Nick, etcetera etcetera. I'm your son. I know your titles. I just wish... I wish I was a lesser demon, okay?" He sighed.
Satan's expression softened a little. "Look, I hate to be like this, I know. I would honestly love to see you actually rebel a little, but, you know, in a demonic way. Not a netflix-marathoning way. I would have pegged your Sin as Sloth, but you read books all day and you pay attention in your lessons. You just need to be a little more confident. You're only sixteen and you're an expert on black magic. Remember that. Trust me, Sebastian, you're best one for the job."
"So you want me to be the demonic version of him? Is that it? I have to be as good as Simon? Confident and convicted?" His voice turned from relenting to hard and bitter in moments.
"You know I didn't mean that. Look, this is your first job, I get it, but you can't come running to me every time it gets tough. You have to go out and do this."
Sebastian knew his father well enough to know that this wasn't going anywhere. Once he got to the 'inspiring speech about how he loved him and Sebastian just needed to be better' part, there was really no hope.
"She's violent. I want her put on the list of violent ones."
"Fine! You know what, perfect, she can be trained once she turns, and we'll put her into battle or espionage or something!" his father snapped, exasperated.
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
"Well... you know... er.... Look, fine, I'll go look after her. But I promise you, she is not going to be happy when she turns. She's got some serious mental health problems." Sebastian warned, and unfurled his wings. He launched into the air and out the window. In a moment, he was gone.
*****591Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCJc30Wrbf7
First, he went to his rooms in the Palace. He was on the six hundredth and sixty fifth seventh floor, with the hope of being moved down to the six-hundredth-and-sixty-sixth if he did well on the job. It was probably an empty promise, though - only the Archdemons, the Fallen Angels and the Princes ever got a room on the six-hundredth-and-sixty-sixth floor. Sebastian knew a demidevil with tiny horns would have next to no chance, black magic geek or no.
Sebastian sighed, landing on balcony. The black swirls in the marble floor aligned themselves to show him the way to his room - not that he needed it any more. He strode along the halls, enjoying the homely feeling of the soft, yellow light given off by the reflected flames.
His bedroom door opened as he approached. Sebastian hadn't slept since he became a demon five years ago, but he had a king-sized bed with a striped red-and-black duvet cover anyway, just for relaxing. It had far more pillows on it than he ever used, but whenever he took them off, he came back in to find them back on his bed again, as if the souls forced to clean the Palace were certain that he needed more. He wasn't entirely sure if it was a sign of affection or just an attempt to annoy him.
Books were scattered across every surface - some ordinary textbooks, some modern magical books, and a few ancient texts in old leather. His large desk had a clear space in the middle, where his laptop and notebooks sat, and books piled on the side. Posters lined the walls, covering the tasteful black wallpaper entirely - most of them k-pop bands, action movie, young adult book and tv posters, a couple of medals and certificates for math competitions he'd won as a kid, and above his bed, a collection of photographs from when he was alive. One person was in nearly all of them, but their face had been burned out. There were some parts of his past life Sebastian preferred not to remember.
A flatscreen television was mounted on the wall above his desk, where he could watch it from his bed. A few shelves were on either side, holding video games, consoles, and a few movies from couple of years ago when people still had real DVDs instead of buying them online (or using black magic to illegally download them).
There were three adjoining rooms - a kitchen, a bathroom, and a small library full of black magic books Satan had supplied. Sebastian would have been fine with just using a kindle app to store them all, but Satan refused to allow him to make digital copies of the rarer spellbooks.
He had a shower and changed his clothes to get the smell of church out, then walked straight to his desk and grabbed his protective necklace. It had a copper chain and a pendant - a star inside a circle, the sign of the devil. He hung it on his neck and picked up a slim black notebook - his own personal spellbook that he'd been working on - and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. He recharged his phone magically with a tap of his finger, and held his hand out flat. His earphones flew into it and folded themselves.
He'd done all he could to prepare himself. It was time to face reality. It was time to face Cassie Johnson.
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