Page 18 of The Human Element (The Human Element Collection #1)

Samuel

Samuel was standing in front of his father who was raging; but when was he not?

“I don’t understand why we have to go through this as many times as we do.

You are a demon. Your purpose is to aid the movement against Heaven.

The reason we do it is because we must .

It’s the way of things. If we do not show our hand, Heaven will win.

..and this war is a chance for us to tip that balance!

To take our rightful place as the true rulers of Earth, and this Universe! ”

The amount of times Samuel had to be reminded he was a demon, was only one of the reasons his father resented him so much.

He wasn’t the son he ever wanted. He was the screw up.

The weak link. The one who didn’t want to fight for the cause.

The one who questioned the way things always were between Heaven and Hell.

And he knew his father deep down, loathed him for that.

Ever since his birth, Samuel had never been like the rest of the demons in his classes.

When they were learning about how to fight, how to hunt and destroy angels, and how to change forms or alter their voices to better manipulate humans—Samuel would be the only one who would raise his hand meekly asking why they had to fight back or harm anybody to begin with.

Each time the teacher would call his father, one of these fun conversations would take place.

But no matter how much his father drilled into him that he was the son of Lucifer, so he better act like it, Samuel never understood him.

Samuel was fascinated by humans. Although he was never allowed to leave Hell to go and explore the human world, he read book after book on them.

Their history and their way of life in places all over the globe.

It was the only sanctuary he found in this life; the life of the 17-year-old son of Lucifer, was no cake walk, especially when you didn’t want to take over Earth or kill angels.

The prodigal son, destined to be the Anti-Christ, wanted nothing more than explore the places humans dwelled, and be their friend. Figures, right?

In many ways, Hell wasn’t so dissimilar to the Earth.

Although it functioned in another realm or dimension.

Realm geography is a complicated subject, and to be honest, one Samuel never did well in.

So it was easier to think of Hell as not on Earth or inside Earth—as human religious texts suggest; they didn’t need to be surrounded by molten lava and fire—it was more…

around . And nowhere close to it at all.

Portals are involved, and nobody could leave the realm without his father’s permission.

Heaven apparently, is similar—both of them functioned on a different plane of existence, and time ran differently here, which explains the lack of aging or slower aging.

Long story short, Samuel was inevitably stuck.

Hell had schools, jobs, and demons had families and produced more minions for the cause.

The biggest difference was that most of the inhabitants had the occasional horn or whip-like tail.

In comparison, Samuel looked and acted more human than demon, so his father tended to remind him.

He didn’t have any distinguishing demon-ish marks.

No horns. No tail. No wings. And, no desire to harm the humans or to fight against the angels.

With only a mop of unruly, blazing red hair, and his inability to make a blow in their staged fights, Samuel never felt he belonged, which made him the disgrace of Hell.

Unlike the other students in his grade, Samuel was thin and lanky. Having always preferred to workout his brain rather than his body, he was never able to keep up with the other kid’s ever-growing strength and appetite for battle. Samuel was never meant to be the soldier his father dreamt of.

Or the son he dreamt of in general…

Samuel was lost in thought until he heard his father’s next words, which was a usual occurrence during one of his father’s drawn-out tirades; but when Lucifer’s voice boomed louder to get Samuel’s attention, reverberating the walls around them, Samuel dared to look at him.

“This is your last chance, Samuel. To prove yourself to me. I need a warrior. A leader. Somebody I can entrust when it is time for another to take my place. You were born the fucking Anti-Christ, boy. I bedded your mother to create the strongest force in the war the Universe has ever known—I created you for a reason; you are meant to lead this war with me, Samuel. It’s time you prove to me your worth. ”

Samuel’s mother was rarely spoken of; growing up without her was part of his father’s demands.

She was apparently a high-level demon; one Lucifer scoped out for centuries before deeming appropriate enough to bring Samuel into the world.

But after Samuel was born, Lucifer killed her.

He wanted no competition in the raising of Samuel; her worthiness ran its course.

As sad as it was to never know her, if she was anything like his father, he didn’t think it was worth having two blazing assholes ruling Hell; or his life.

Samuel was no Anti-Christ. The efforts his father went through to enforce this idea, bring about some unnatural power strong enough to take down forces of angels and to bring about destruction of Earth, was the top of Samuel’s inabilities to tackle.

From a young age, Samuel seemingly possessed no extraordinary abilities.

Lucifer’s thought process on the powers that would pass to Samuel between the mixture of his own, and of his powerful mother’s, was proposed to be enough to create such a force in Samuel.

But Samuel was never able to conjure or manipulate Shadow and Darkness, turning it into a weapon.

He was never able to control emotions or possess anything.

Never able to fight or block or even so much as make a dent in the stuffed dummy used for practice training.

Frustratingly, Samuel wasn’t special, nor compelling in any way, shape or form.

And once Lucifer realized the insufficiencies of his son, he all but left Samuel to his own devices; he gave up on him, finding it too much of a headache to even look at the child.

Samuel all but hardly saw his father, but every random occasion.

Then last month, Lucifer began coming to watch Samuel’s training sessions.

Disappointment seeped from him as he watched Samuel take blow after blow, without a single retaliation.

The only time Samuel was acknowledged by him during these random visits, was when Lucifer would come to him, bandaging himself on the bench in the training arena, scolding him on his inability to make a hit against his opponent, before silently walking away, not another word spoken.

Until today.

Samuel is about to give a snide retort when his chance to do so is stopped. Abruptly, footsteps began echoing off the walls of his father’s office as four demons walked in and stood in formation behind him.

Lucifer made no remark to the men who entered, only turning his eyes to Samuel. “I am sending you on a mission. You will assist Zanul and his team tomorrow.”

Zanul, his father’s personal guard. No matter how long Zanul had worked under his father, Samuel would never get used to those unfeeling eyes that watched him menacingly. Samuel felt small beneath his leer. He heard of the missions his father usually sent Zanul on, and knew how vicious he was.

One night while his father and his friends were playing a game of poker while Samuel was doing some homework nearby, his father turned to Zanul and asked how his most recent mission went.

Samuel saw Zanul’s eyes flare with satisfaction as he recalled the full details; far more gruesome than anything Samuel heard before, causing him to immediately puke in the nearby trash can.

Lucifer and his group laughed at him, and it took two full weeks to stop dreaming of the scenario Zanul described.

After that night, Samuel was more frightened of Zanul than ever before and did his best to keep out of his way.

Samuel swallowed, returning to give attention to his father rather than Zanul. “What will I be helping with?”

His father looked at him and Samuel could tell it wasn’t going to be something he wanted to participate in at all.

“You will be going on a hunt. Your mission will be to aid in the elimination of an angel and a human who are threatening the surety of the war. I expect you to fulfill any and all orders Zanul gives you; even if that order is to kill them both yourself. If I hear you have not complied, you will be destroyed.”

Panic welled up inside of him; he watched as his father spun on his heels and started walking out of the office. He yelled out to him, in desperation or in search of some semblance of care for his only child—Samuel wasn’t sure what he was searching for.

“How can you do that? I’m your son!”

Samuel couldn’t hold back the tears, the tears that he kept buried inside himself until he was all alone.

The tears he never allowed a soul to know the pain and torment his father put him through, the lack of guidance, the lack of nurturing, all of the diminishing comments, all the times Samuel was told he was useless—they all found their way to the forefront now, escaping in a turbulent flurry of erratic disbelief.

But this was Lucifer, Satan, the embodiment of Evil.

And he was that embodiment’s incompetent child meant to be the harbinger of that chaos—destined to forever be hated by his own father for the pure fact that he was nothing but a waste of space.

These feelings tumbled out of him, along with an anger he never knew lived in the pit of all that sadness.

Lucifer didn’t notice his son crying in shock behind him when he spoke again, only pausing a moment in his steps towards the door.

“No true son of Lucifer would behave the way you have since you came into this world. If you are my son, then prove it.”

And Samuel watched, falling to his knees in a ball of tears, as his father left him to begin his mission, without another word.