Page 1 of Demon Loved
Prologue
The voice echoed all around him, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“You have transgressed.”
Belshegar frowned, then wondered if he should have allowed himself even that small reaction to those three damning words, which resonated on the air like a plucked bass string. The manner in which he’d been summoned here felt very different from those times when Elena Salazar had reached out from the mortal plane to ask for his company or his help, or when she needed a friendly voice during the times she thought she had no one else to turn to. Those summonings — if one could even call them that — had been much more like a casual invitation to tea, or perhaps like a familiar voice at the other end of a phone line…even though of course no phones existed on Belshegar’s plane.
In fact, very little intelligent life could be found there at all. He knew others of his kind existed, but he’d only encountered a few of them in his long, long life, and they’d seemed content to acknowledge his presence and then move on so they could attend to their own business in the corner of the plane they inhabited. Odd as it felt to admit such a thing to himself, he found himself almost more at home in the world humans called theirs, even though Elena and her husband Alessandro…well, and the ghost Victoria, who’d inhabited their home before Belshegar helped her move on to the next world…were the only beings on the mortal plane who had ever seen his true form.
Whoever or whatever the voice belonged to, it had been no friendly invitation that had brought him here, to this gray, featureless place of eternal mist and not much more. However, the solid surface beneath his feet told him that it possessed some ground, even if he couldn’t see it.
No, being called to this place had felt much more like being yanked out of bed on a cold winter night…or at least, how he imagined such a thing must feel, since he had no true frame of reference of his own.
“‘Transgressed’?” he repeated, hoping he didn’t sound too timid…and that the owner of the voice wouldn’t take offense at such a mild question.
Perhaps he would have felt comfortable being a bit more forceful if he hadn’t known there existed a council of highly evolved beings whose sole purpose was to keep an eye on the doings of those on the lower planes, occasionally reining them in…or worse…when they overstepped. Belshegar had never had any interactions with them, but the knowledge of their existence still occupied some space in his mind. It was an understanding that lived at the core of his being, similar to the way he knew how to tend the gardens that surrounded his home without ever being taught…and how he knew that when such a summons came, even his great powers wouldn’t be sufficient for him to ignore it.
As much as he racked his brains, though, he couldn’t quite fathom why the voice believed he had committed a crime serious enough to require him to be brought here and then questioned about his wrongdoing. He’d been living quietly in his massive stone house, tending the lush plants in his gardens with their leaves of brilliant teal and blooms of fuchsia and cobalt blue, and he had no idea why he had been singled out by the Council.
“You put on a human guise and mingled among mortals, made them believe you were one of them,” the voice said, its tone now bordering on contemptuous, as though it couldn’t comprehend why an advanced being would wish to lower himself in such a way.
Belshegar’s ebony skin was not the sort that would allow him to blush the way humans did. However, he couldn’t quite hold back the wave of uneasiness that went over him at hearing the accusation, even as he thought,
That was so very long ago.
Time in his world didn’t have the same meaning that it did for humans, of course, but because of his interactions with Elena Salazar, he thought he had a better grasp on it than most of his kind. That was how he knew it had been almost a year since the demon lord Loc — now married to a Castillo witch — had kindly bestowed a human guise upon Belshegar so he might attend Elena’s marriage to Alessandro Escobar and dance with her at their reception, just as he’d promised. No one present had seemed to find anything out of the ordinary about him, and Belshegar thought he’d successfully carried off the impression of being a normal human being.
Apparently not.
“No one knew who I was,” he ventured.
Even though he couldn’t see the person addressing him, something about the atmosphere in the gray fog where he stood seemed to grow colder, almost tense, as if reflecting the mood of the being…or beings…who controlled it.
“That does not matter,” the voice said. “It is enough that you allowed yourself to cavort with humans — wearing a disguise provided by a demon lord who himself has fallen from the true path. This sort of indiscretion must not be allowed to stand. Especially,” it added, its tone growing even more sepulchral, “since this was not the first time you went to that plane and interacted with humans.”
The thought flickered through Belshegar’s mind that if he truly had made such a colossal mistake, it seemed odd that the powers-that-be had waited so long to take him to task regarding his so-called “transgression.” The wedding had been a year ago, but Elena had first called him to the human plane more than a decade before that, and certainly no one from the Council had intervened during any of those occasions. However, he reminded himself once again that time was very different to him from the way it was perceived by humans and therefore must be an order of magnitude greater for those in the planes above. Because of this, he probably shouldn’t allow himself to be too swayed by such a quibble.
And if they’d been tracking him this whole time, then the list of his transgressions was much longer than he’d first thought.
“How must I make amends?” he asked. He did not like posing such a question, but he also knew he should not dance around the issue and should instead accept his punishment, whatever it might be.
Hopefully not death. Even beings such as he could die, although their lifespans were much longer than those of humans. Belshegar had never feared the end of his existence, for he knew that relinquishing this body would only allow him to move on to the next plane, and yet he still didn’t want to think of his life being cut short far before he had planned to exit this world.
Again, the atmosphere around Belshegar seemed to shift, and it now carried with it a note of something that felt almost like satisfaction. “Because you seem to enjoy being human,” the voice intoned, “you will take on that guise once again. It has come to our attention that several artifacts which have no business being housed on the mortal plane are in the keeping of a certain witch and warlock, two mortals who have no idea what they have in their possession. As a human, you will travel to the place where those artifacts are located and retrieve them, then bring them back to us. Once you have completed that task, we will consider that you have successfully atoned for your…missteps.”
Belshegar didn’t like the sound of any of this, not least because the mere mention of a witch and warlock made unease swirl in the pit of his stomach. True, the mortal plane had many witch clans, and there was no reason to believe that the two people the voice had just remarked upon were members of the same family that Elena claimed as her own.
But what if they were?
His oversized hands — ones that could have swallowed up Elena’s delicate fingers many times over — clenched at his side. However, he made his voice mild and unassuming as he responded, “Where is it you wish me to go?”
“A place in Arizona,” the voice said without hesitation.
“It is called Jerome.”
1
Funny how the life of a witch could be so…mundane.
