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I slept by some miracle, and when bright morning sliced through the window against my eyelids, I snapped awake in terror. Scrambling up, the sheets gathered at my waist, and I cast about expecting all manner of things, all manner of evils. A part of me thought I was still a priest, just little Alessandro about to be chastised for sleeping in well past a respectable time. The rest of me thought: why am I still in this bed?

None of the other demons had done more than their duty with me, really. But when I turned, Vassago was staring up at me through those long lashes, and several emotions vied for my attention—fear, hope, lust, a strange despair. I must not have hidden any of it, for Vassago pushed up from the mattress and cooed to me, running a smooth hand across my face.

“There is no need for this,” he whispered lovingly. A hot breath rolled off my neck as leaned forward, lips parting against my ear. “You are so close, little priest.”

With all the eagerness of a child, I pressed my forehead against his face. Clutching at something —I needed the approval of this man, this demon , before I could extricate myself from his bed.

“A Duke,” I whispered. “I please a Duke, and then I am before my Lord once more.”

Vassago held my face and kissed me, not with any passion, but with a gentleness it felt odd for him to possess.

“The bibliotheca awaits you,” he whispered, and took both of my hands. Naked, the two of us rose, and he walked me to the window of his tower. Beneath, many demons still gathered and called for his attention, but Vassago was looking out at the mountainous distance.

“Let us burn away the final dregs of shame. Let us fill you up with fiery love that goes beyond passion. You do not have to be confused for much longer: whatever is left to hold you back will be eliminated soon.”

I said nothing as he leaned forward and pressed his lips against my eyelids. He led me away from the window to the far wall where he waved his hand. Bricks dispersed, colliding against one another in their desperation to move out of the way. As they folded into one another impossibly fast, I saw the design of beautiful coloured tiles poking out from beneath.

The design revealed itself to be quite human in appearance, the same as Vassago himself. Stretching green vines looped over bright yellow tile in a confronting hue. It reminded me of all the Italian hamlets I had visited. More bricks shifted, and I was staring at a fireplace, one absurdly large, with an opening tall enough to fit a person. If this fireplace had been functional, I imagined all the soot would smoke up Vassago’s room in a few heartbeats.

“Step inside.” Vassago gave a gentle but insistent push toward the open maw. A cast iron grate sat low, and I had to step over it, feet crunching against the husks of firewood that promptly fell to ash beneath the force of my weight.

Vassago smiled. He raised his fingers and his clicked forefinger and thumb together. Fire erupted from the motion, engulfing his hand, and in the burn of the flame, I saw part of his true form revealed: long black fingernails curled over reddish skin, his hands elongated unnaturally. A thrill ran through me at his deception.

“Good luck,” he whispered before setting me aflame.

The fire rushed from his fingers into the fireplace, and it wasn’t the ashy wood that caught alight, but I.

I was consumed by heat. Flame burrowed into my skin; I felt it drying and cracking off, curling over and over into itself as it was eaten alive, exposing my tendons and the red flesh of my innards. I screamed. The pain was indescribable—sudden, all-consuming, inescapable. There was nothing but the fire. I was going to die. I was already dead. I thrashed and wailed in the fireplace, howling, and in my head, I was begging for it to end. Why had Vassago done this? Why had I trusted him?

But halfway through my next impassioned wail, the pain abruptly stopped.

I opened my eyes to find myself squatting in a fireplace with my body intact, like nothing at all had happened to it. I patted myself down, making sure, half expecting my skin to slough off in wide sheets.

Nothing.

I stood too fast on my way out of the fireplace, smacking my head against the arch and scattering ashes beyond the grate. Stumbling free, I skidded to a stop as I realised I was not in Vassago’s domain any longer.

He had done what I had asked.

The Bibliotheca awaits , he’d said.

The fireplace had deposited me in a sleek, thin tower room. Bookshelves ran floor to ceiling with only the faintest slits between shelves to act as windows. Narrow rays of silvery light cleaved through the dark. A cast iron staircase lay to my right, and I took it, spiralling down from this top room to another and another until, finally, I came to a larger landing. It was there that I discovered the sigil for the Duke.

I was at once relieved and terrified. I went before the sigil but made no quick moves to summon the demon. Instead, I pondered on what Vassago had taught me and what I had promised my Lord Asmodeus, and I—froze.

There was still a great fantasy of mine I hadn’t much explored. So much of my life had involved the institution of my faith, and for too long, that had been a source of my fear.

If I wanted to be Asmodeus’ completely, what would I have to do to be free of that?

Could I ever be free of those thoughts when it was my long-held lust, my shame at my longing, that led me to summon Asmodeus in the first place?

I closed my eyes and centred myself. For years, I had entrusted a God who had never answered my call. Asmodeus had answered. What was I doing by not trusting its ability?

Asmodeus had chosen all the demons I had encountered for one reason or another: for my pleasure, for its pleasure, or to unburden me of the shackles in my mind.

Whoever this Duke was, I imagined the demon would know intrinsically how it was supposed to touch me. How it was supposed to change me.

There was no knife by the sigil, but as I looked around the landing—dense with paraphernalia for study and the like—I found a plain-handled dagger waiting for me. I slipped it out from beneath the books and did once more what I needed to do; I sliced deep to draw forth blood and offered it to the sigil.

Something compelled me to bow before the magic had even taken effect. I pressed my face into the aged hardwood, breathing in dust and mildew and age. A gurgling sounded as my blood was consumed, and the silvery light cast by the moon grew briefly stronger, sending large boxy highlights across the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter.

I could sense this demon almost in the way I could sense Asmodeus. The power of it loomed large in my mind, like something always in the corner of my eye: a shadow whose size was inescapable. Call it the nearness to my Lord, or simple wishful thinking: in any case, I knew when it had manifested before the floorboards creaked with the sudden new weight. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel it craning over me. Then footsteps shifted, the weight of the demon moving, and a chill went through me—not heat the way I felt beneath Asmodeus’ touch.

A long, clawed hand reached into my hair. I melted beneath the touch, catlike with my eagerness, pushing into the touch like it might save me from what came next.

It didn’t, of course.

The hand tightened, sweet grip becoming rough, and suddenly I was being wrenched to my feet by a fistful of my hair.

I yelped, pain searing in my follicles and then in sharp jolts down my neck and back. I scrabbled in the air, squirming, eyes closed against the pain.

“Look upon me,” a voice commanded.

It was husky, a deep whisper. Compelled to obey, I opened my eyes. For a while, I could see nothing but the umbral pool of its gaze. No other features made themselves known to me.

“What is thy name?” the voice asked.

“Alessandro,” I told it. “I am Asmodeus’—”

“Toy in training,” it breathed. “I am aware.”

A second passed and it was only the two of us breathing. I smelled of sweat; I was sure I smelled of sex. This demon smelled of pine and ocean breeze.

“And you?” I whispered. I shook slightly in its grasp. “What name do you keep, lord?”

It exhaled nosily and lowered me to the ground. All the while, I could only see its unblinking gaze.

“Dantalion,” it told me. “Duke of Hell.”

Like that, my pin-hole vision was revoked, and the whole room’s vision came hurtling back.

The Duke was very tall. It wore a long, great robe that, from the right angle, I could have mistaken for a cassock. Its visage slipped into the uncanny, bearing both the faces of men and women and oscillating between them with each blink of its two eyes. Even they rapidly changed in size, shape, and colour. What was fascinating to me appeared ever banal for the demon: this was simply how it looked, like everybody and nobody at once.

“If you know who I am, then you know my plight and what I must accomplish here.”

Perhaps my eagerness was getting the best of me: I wanted nothing more than to be used and sent to Asmodeus. I had forgotten everything I had promised Asmodeus and, frankly, could not be bothered spending time on overcoming whatever human traumas were keeping me in my shame.

How fickle of me. How brash. I had clearly learned nothing.

Dantalion looked down at me, eyes shifting in size and shape but never in emotion: always, its eyes showed the faintest hint of disdain. Of pity. I shrunk beneath it. “I do not wish to have thee,” it said.

“Then we are at an impasse, my Duke,” I said whilst shaking, my whole body contorting on the ground. “For I must fulfil my Lord’s wishes, and as its underling, you must do the same.”

Where had this brashness come from, if not from my wilful and desperate desire? Dantalion looked at me and said nothing, but the pity in the inky wells of its eyes made me shudder. With almost petulant silence, Dantalion turned its back on me and began to pace its own library, finger gliding over tomes. It selected one and moved to the corner, where it draped itself like a beautiful, terrifying ornament.

I stared.

Dantalion had an age to it, an ancient thing, and yet, in this moment, the demon felt adolescent.

“What is it you are usually summoned for?”

Dantalion gave an affronted huff. “He draws blood for me without even knowing what he wants, and what I have to offer.” The demon glanced up slightly from its reading. “An apt descriptor of thee, I presume?”

I flushed because it was entirely correct. I knew what I wanted in vague terms. I was frightened to demand my own pleasure. I had told Asmodeus I would overcome this by the time I returned to its side, but I couldn’t fight the cotton-mouthed feeling in me to tell Dantalion.

The demon’s eyes narrowed. I expected it to push me as so many other demons had. Even Furcus had, in the end, wanted to plough me, to root his seed in me—despite the hours of talk beforehand. Dantalion—I couldn’t be sure it even wished to look upon me.

With nothing to do, I stood and gazed upon the library Dantalion kept. The Bibliotheca. Since the demon hadn’t evaporated, I assumed it would stay summoned until we fulfilled our joining. This gave me ample time to explore.

I thumbed a tome made of white leather, pricked with a soft down, like feathers. The first few lines read;

ON Heaven’s Hierarchy of Angels

Penned by the Seventh Angelic Scribe

The sound of a book being roughly slammed, and then brisk, sudden air—the sense of mass behind me, boxing me in between bookshelf and body. Clawed fingers rose over shoulder and plucked the tome from my grasp.

“Not for your eyes.”

I spun to Dantalion. “That was a book from Heaven.”

“I am a demon. Why does thievery surprise you?”

I glanced at other tomes, which looked nothing like the books I had seen in Furcus’ realm. So many of those had been empty save for the knowledge I craved. I said, “Furcus had?—”

A scoff. “All the books in that Knight’s sad excuse for a library comes from mine.”

“What were you, in Heaven?”

Dantalion turned to me, grip flexing over the spine of the tome again and again. “What I am here.”

“Which is?”

“Startling bored. Keeper of old tomes. Cowed by the whims of humans. I?—”

“I need your help.”

I said it suddenly and felt much smaller and younger than my thirty-five years. Dantalion must have seen it in me, that kernel of weakness or of innocence to be crushed, for it came closer to me, fingers flexing as if it were about to point.

“There,” it said. “Have courage. You have already summoned me; your heart has a desire. Speak it.”

Was its new eagerness genuine? Was this glee because in speaking, I would leave its domain sooner? I eyed Dantalion and turned bodily toward it, pressing close.

Rage flashed in Dantalion’s eyes. When I reached up to touch its face, it slammed its fingers around my wrist, holding me still.

It bared its teeth, showed me how strange and sharp they were, but as it regarded me, the anger died away.

“You mean to anger me,” it said, “to avoid speaking your desire.”

I went limp against it. I was a man and yet a child in this sense. I turned away. My chest seized with guilt, with shame— why? After all this time, after whoring myself and enjoying it, after making love to Vassago, why did it panic me so to say what I wanted?

“Tell me what you would do to me first,” I whispered.

Dantalion hissed. “A way for you to cheat, a dilution of your desire, if you can spot your own inside mine.”

I looked up at it. Tears stung my eyes—ridiculous! My response made no sense. I enjoyed my desire. I partook in sexual acts. Was it really so difficult to open my mouth and say, I want this, and this, and this?

“I want. . .to know what I want.”

Dantalion let go of my wrist and pressed a finger to my lips. “You know what you want. You proved that with the Prince Vassago. You are just afraid of your wants.”

That was true enough. If I closed my eyes, I could recall living as I had. More than two decades of a lust-filled haze could only be survived through repression. Through self-denial. It had been the bravest thing, to throw it all off and choose Asmodeus. But in choosing Hell and this path, I had still been answering the call of another: of Asmodeus itself.

What would it look like if I’d answered my own call? What would my life have looked like if I had given in long ago?

Oliviero came to me unbidden. My fantasy, realised through the apparition of him on his knees, tongue on me, lips sucking over my rosary. If I had faced him in reality and told him my carnal desires, he would have been appalled.

They all would have. Wouldn’t they?

I said none of this, but when I looked up at Dantalion, its eyes were bright and hungry.

“Do you wish to find out?” it whispered.

A gasp escaped my lips. “Another fantasy?” I whispered. “I—I could want that. I do want that. I would want to enter Oliviero. I want?—”

“If it were not a fantasy, what then?”

I didn’t understand. I frowned at the demon and gestured to the grand structure of its bibliotheca. “I am dead, my Duke. I committed a mortal sin to enter here. I am no human any longer.”

And Dantalion smiled, faces and lips oscillating in shape and size and colour. “This is something I can give you. This is what I, Duke of Hell, can do. A small amount of time, anywhere in the mortal realm. When the time is up, you will return: there is no way for you to survive longer than my allowance. Your spirit will return here, to the bibliotheca, to me. But if you have unfinished business, as it appears you do, then how will you be my Lord’s plaything wholeheartedly?”

I swallowed and gestured at it. “You cannot pretend you have no interest in me, if you are willing to do this.”

Dantalion conceded with a shrug. “I have an interest.”

“It is my duty to bring you pleasure. If I don’t?—”

“What I want to do is akin to torture for you,” Dantalion snapped quickly. “Perhaps in your mind, there is still denial at what your brethren think of you. You think: perhaps they never rolled the rocks away. Perhaps they never found the bishop and mine corpses. My death might be a holy tragedy to them . But the real holy tragedy is your true nature, and if you go to them now, they will know with certainty exactly what creature you are. What kind of man they supped with all those years. I am curious to see if you will follow through.”

But Dantalion’s words had stirred me. Rather literally—the thrill of the transgression filled my body with untampered heat. I wanted that.

I wanted them to see me. I wanted them all to know. I desired both the humiliation and the ultimate freedom of their knowledge: I would never be able to hide again.

I would never return, not ever, to anything other than this.

So I met Dantalion’s eye with defiance.

“I want that,” I told it. “I want them to know exactly what kind of man I am.”