Reluctant Demon (13 page)

Or maybe they were simply curious and wanted to hear Satan's side of the story for themselves. More likely they had forgotten how cunning and crafty he really is.

Every one of the demons in second heaven gathered on the ledge and tittered nervously among themselves like schoolgirls at a sock hop as they watched Satan approach the prince of Persia. I was apprehensive, but I stood by as well and hoped they wouldn't come after us.

"Hail, mighty one, son of God," Satan called out to the prince as he bowed low before the surprised angel.

Although he tried to appear nonchalant about it, one could not miss the twinkle in the prince's eyes that betrayed his pride at receiving such a greeting from his former superior. I wished I could have been a voice of reason in the prince's ear. I would have warned him of what was sure to happen.

"You do not know what Lucifer has become," I would have whispered. "He isn't here to chat with you. Run!

Run like the wind. If he is talking, he is lying. He will flatter you, and you will believe him, and then you will want to hear more."

The mighty prince of Persia puffed up like a toasted marshmallow as Satan lavished him with praise. No doubt he would have drawn his sword and lopped Satan's claw off if he had only known how many times his former mentor had derided him before God. When Lucifer, as he was known then, learned of his judgment, he slandered all of the other heavenly beings, especially the mighty ones who ruled Earth. Now here he was, fairly groveling as he bowed down before the prince and flattered him with all sorts of unbelievable adulation. By the time Satan set the trap, this "mighty" one stepped right in.

Satan did what he does best. He asked a question,

"Have you considered the daughters of men?"

For a moment, I was paralyzed by the horror at what I knew was coming next. Someone must stop him. I tapped and tugged at the leering demons there on the ledge, trying to get someone to listen to me.

"Stop him! Stop him before it's too late," I pleaded.

They rebuffed me and pushed me away from where they stood.

"He knows what he's doing," one said.

"We don't need your opinion," another added, "Get to the back of the line and leave us alone."

"No, you must listen to me," I begged as I tried to wiggle my way in among them again. "God will not stand for it. I know what I'm talking about. You must listen to me."

But they would not. They kept watching and sneering with delight at the transaction under way between Satan and the prince. I had to try again.

"Don't you see what is happening?" I screamed at their lustful faces. "If he succeeds in tempting the mighty ones to breach the forbidden zone, it will be the end of us all.

God will not hold back. He will not show mercy."

"Mercy?" the ugly one snarled. "What mercy did we ever receive? We were banished, thrown out, discarded as if we had never mattered."

I shot back, "You are still alive, you fool. God let you live. He let us live instead of turning us to ash, as He could have. If Satan does this thing, we will be cast forevermore to Tartaroo."

He drew back for a moment at my words. We knew about Tartaroo, the deepest part of hell reserved for rebellious angels.

"Then we will reign there," he bragged.

"Is there no limit to your stupidity? For once in your pitiful existence, just try to think five minutes ahead.

Are you so thick-skulled that eternal damnation means nothing to you?"

Demons do not respond well to constructive criticism.

When I regained consciousness, I tried desperately to remember what happened to cause me to be hanging upside down by my tail over the jagged edge of the cliff that rimmed second heaven. I was bewildered and completely helpless, dangling over the abyss below. One of my wings was broken, and my eyes were swollen shut. I could feel several loose teeth. When I opened my mouth to moan in pain, one actually fell out and tumbled into the blackness below. Everything about me hurt: my hooves, my claws, my scales, and my other wing had a tear in it.

It was awhile before I could recollect what I had done to get myself into such a fix. I hung there in the darkness for the longest time, trying to get my fragmented memory back together. When the image of Satan and the prince came crashing back into my consciousness, I was terrified. I had to get down. I swung myself back and forth in hopes that my tail would break off and I would at last fall into the bottomless darkness below me.

Whatever was down there would not be as bad as the wrath I knew would soon be loosed from third heaven.

"Perhaps the abyss won't be that bad," I said to my quaking self. "Perhaps I will fall forever and simply cease to exist."

I swung harder, but my tail did not break off; it only hurt more.

"Limbo," I muttered, "I'm caught in limbo. I can't go down and I can't get up. Help! Help! Help!" I shouted to a demonic horde that was no longer there and would not have responded even if they had been.

I should have known no one was going to help me the least little bit. I flapped my working wing for all it was worth until I was able to levitate upward to the edge of the cliff. I grabbed hold with my good claw and pulled myself up until I could rest my cracked head and broken appendage on the ledge. I unwound my tail from the protruded stone below where I had hung for who knows how long. Somehow I was able to pull the rest of me up until I lay on the rim, exhausted and wishing I were dead. After a while, I crawled back to my perch and waited to see what would happen next.

I felt the sound before I heard it. I cringed into a ball at the blood-curdling screams coming from the women of Earth. For all the horror we had wrought upon Earth, there had never been a sound of despair like this. The floor of second heaven reverberated as the cries from the women went up and up and up until it was only a matter of moments until they would pierce through this realm and reach third heaven. Soon God would respond to the terrible thing that had happened on Earth.

The sanctity of mankind had been breached. The mighty ones, incited to indulge their lust by the deceit-fulness of Satan, transgressed their own nature to violate the daughters of men. The holy angels surrendered to sexual immorality and went after the forbidden flesh of human women, condemning themselves to suffer His vengeance in eternal fire.

Satan danced and laughed from the safety of second heaven as Earth reeled at the rape of the women. Freaks and giants would soon be born, and many mothers would die in agony in their birthing. In their lust, some of the mighty ones went after the human men and the men became insane from the violation and in turn deposited their seed into the animals. The gene pool of all human and animal life was degraded beyond redemption.

"How do you like it now, God?" Satan jeered toward heaven.

And for a moment, it seemed as if Satan had finally won, his revenge accomplished against the mighty angelic guard, who had remained faithful to God in the cosmic rebellion and now plunged into the unquenchable fire of His wrath for degrading His most prized creation.

"Woe to Earth," I moaned. A species God did not create was now in the midst of mankind.

The Nephilim were upon the earth.

CHAPTER 16

IT WAS HORRIBLE
. They were awful. A half-breed demon turned out to be far worse than a demon in its natural state, and much more dangerous. A regular garden-variety demon, as all of us were, had limitations when it came to our ability to interact with humans. We who were part of the fall could create circumstances that would cause humans to do terrible things to each other, but we ourselves could not actually touch any of them.

God left a gaping hole in security when He failed to anticipate that the faithful angels might at some point rebel, because He neglected to place the same prohibi-tion on them.

I suppose it never crossed God's mind that His elite force might think to be anything but helpful to mankind.

They would never have dared be any other way to this new life form God seemed to favor so much. That is surely the reason God's wrath was unleashed upon them so ferociously. They weren't condemned to a fallen state in second heaven as we were. Much worse, they were judged right there on the spot and thrown down to the dreaded Tartaroo. Let me tell you, our punishment had been but a swat on the backside compared to their complete banishment.

It seemed that Satan had won in that regard as well.

The faithful elite guard who failed to follow him in the cosmic rebellion ended up being caught in yet another of his webs of deception. Satan's revenge on the heavenly host was now satisfied.

I don't know why, but it was unsettling to me that God had not anticipated something like the Nephilim.

As a result, they carried a human gene, and it gave them legal access to afflict humans directly. No seduction, clever ruses, or half-truths were necessary. If a Nephilim wanted to devour a human, it just took one.

Satan wanted to throw a party to celebrate his triumph over heaven and Earth, so he released upon the Nephilim all of the spirits of lust he had held in captivity. They went wild. The demons in second heaven danced around, vicariously participating in the revelry and gloating as if they held some great victory in their hands. I really wanted to join in. It gets tiresome being the only one who sees the cloud behind every silver lining. I couldn't get in the mood when I knew the celebrating was premature.

How could they have forgotten what God was like?

Maybe I should have tried to warn them again.

"Better yet," I said to myself, "maybe not."

After all, I was still feeling the beating I had endured at their claws when I tried to reason with them before, only to be left hanging upside down over the abyss for my trouble. My equilibrium had not righted itself either, and I was fearful of tipping over and giving them something else to ridicule. I picked up my injured tail and slunk off to find a place to lie down.

"Fools," I was tempted to shout at the reveling demons.

"Don't you know God is brooding over Earth this very minute? No matter how it looks at the moment, this is not going to end well."

Instead, I said nothing. It wasn't worth another pounding from them just to be proven right later on.

"We've won! We've won!" they shouted in their drunken delight as the lustful Nephilim ravaged every living thing upon Earth.

And I have to admit, the longer it went on, the more it looked as if they might be right. After all, God imposed upon Himself the rules of engagement over Earth. If mankind could not redeem it, then Earth would be Satan's possession forever. Not only had Adam and Eve failed miserably, but now the whole gene pool of man and beast was corrupted beyond redemption. God would have to scrap it and start over with a new batch if He wanted to continue trying to make the humanity thing work. There was no way I could see for God to get around having to destroy the whole Earth and everything in it.

Satan saw it as well. He was delirious with anticipation.

The whole demonic horde was irrepressible in their glee at the seeming certainty of having Earth back to do as they pleased. Since God had restored it so marvelously from the devastation of Lucifer's flood (in preparation for Adam, of course), it was in great shape. All of them were excited to have it back to rule over again without interference.

As the mayhem continued and God seemed to be doing nothing but stalling for time, I started to feel a little less nervous about a terrible retribution. God simply could not fix this and stay within the rules, so I wondered if He had decided to accept the inevitable—Earth was lost to Him.

Although things looked bad for God, somehow I knew it wasn't over. That's why I continued to watch Earth, just in case. I wanted to go inside to get away from the tremors, which were making me queasy. It had been happening for days now. The atmosphere shuddered under the weight of God's eyes as He searched to and fro about Earth. He was looking for something I suppose, but for what, I could not guess.

After a while, it looked like it might finally be over.

I was about to give it up and go party with the others when company came. I should say came and went. He rocketed past me faster than a lightning bolt, singed my injured wing, and knocked me over as He passed through second heaven without slowing down. Nothing was left in His wake but the clashing of thunder as the air He had split crashed back together. Oh, I knew who it was all right. It was Him—Ruah Ha Kadosh—racing to Earth below.

"Why is He going down there this late in the game?"

I wondered. I moved back to the edge and followed the trail of light that flowed after Him, enabling me to track His movements. Tracking Him may be a bit of an overstatement since I could not actually see where He was but only where He had been.

I was about to be proven right again. When I was sure of what He was doing down there, I left my post and went inside with the revelers to give Satan the news. I tried sauntering into the party room as I had seen Satan do when he wanted to pretend that he wasn't really worried. Sauntering was apparently not in my skill set.

The partying stopped short and every eye darted my way as if I had walked into the room with an off switch that abruptly stopped the festivities.

Satan saw my expression and glared at me as if daring me to bring bad news. "You saw something. What was it?" he growled.

"They missed one, sir," I stammered. "The Nephilim—they missed one."

"One what?" Satan demanded.

"A human being, your majesty; they missed him, one uncorrupted man. He must have gotten away during the raids," I explained.

Satan spun rapidly and pointed his claw at one of the largest demons.

"Get down there! Find out who it is." Satan yelled as if the demon were off in another dimension instead of five feet away.

"No, wait," I blurted out before my mind caught up with my mouth. "It's too late."

"Too late?" Satan snarled, daring me to tell him something he did not want to hear.

"Ruah Ha Kadosh—He's already there. He found a man named Noah."