Lucifer Reborn by Dante King (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

“Demons, too,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t get it. Wrath being an arena makes sense, so does Envy being all smoke and mirrors, I guess. But Greed’s both a bank and a courthouse?”

Xora shrugged. Behind her, a fat demon in the silken robes of a judge squeezed through the opposite doorway, entering a different classroom to thunderous applause. “Every sin of man comes through a courtroom, it’s true: from avarice to usury. But these demons aren’t just arguing old court cases. Witness!”

The rusalka peeled back a curtain near the end of the hallway. Within, a number of demons with academic robes thrown over their street clothes worked with long pens, scraping them across parchment. As I watched, a cute demon with a single horn growing from her forehead dipped a quill in ink, licked the tip, and made an alteration to her work.

“Mara,” Xora said, indicating the one-horned demon. “Show our new students a sample of your work.”

Mara looked up from her work, irritated by the distraction. She handed the scroll over to me, and I held it between me and Christina so that both of us could look it over.

“Yep,” Christina purred knowingly. “I’ve seen one of these before.”

I hadn’t. I’d heard of such things, of course—horror novels and science fiction were full of them—but I’d always expected the language in them to be flowery and full of double meanings, like a blade capable of wounding its wielder as easily as its target. This was a contract that spelled out in precise legal wording what a person would receive in exchange for selling their soul to the Devil. This one contained a complaint so long it covered most of the scroll. Apparently this person had been wronged by some sort of customer service associate, and they were willing to exchange their soul in return for the business the employee worked for going bankrupt. Evil, indeed, I thought, my eyebrows raising. Someone would sell their soul to the Devil for that?

Well, not the Devil. Some demon with a name I didn’t recognize. The Devil himself probably didn’t need to bother with contracts: a handshake and a crossroads was all he needed.

“Thank you, Mara. That will be all.” Xora took the scroll from my hands and gave it back to the demon. She began working on it again almost immediately, smoothing it out across the surface of her desk. “Greed is all about what binds people, Luke. What they truly value. Be that gold, their good looks, or power over others.”

“We give it to them,” Mareth said solemnly from behind the rusalka. “For a price, of course.”

“A price I gladly paid,” Christina added with a chuckle. “Hey, there’s not a horde of those contracts laying around anywhere in here, is there? I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on my original agreement with Lucifer and making a few alterations to the text…”

Xora and Mareth both laughed like this was the funniest joke they’d heard in a long time. But it got me thinking.

“I’d assume whatever contract you signed no longer applies to you,” I mused, looking at Christina. “After all, you signed it when you were a human. You’re not a human any longer—you’re a demon.” I looked at Xora, pieces snapping together in my brain. “A demon can’t sign a demonic contract, can they? I mean, I know Lucifer can, but — he’s the Devil. Could another demon take possession of another demon’s soul? Their will?”

Taking my dick out and pissing all over the floor probably would’ve offended her less. Xora’s already pale face went sheet white at the suggestion, her long locks twisting upward like snakes preparing to strike.

“Shit, what did I say?” I asked. “I was just messing around. Arguing the law, you know?”

“Such magic,” Xora said, soothing her hair down with a visible effort, “is absolutely illegal. Not to mention extremely dangerous. A demon binding the soul of another demon—or worse, a mortal binding the soul of a demon—would be expelled from the Infernal Academy at the very least. More likely, they’d have to have a personal talk with Lucifer…”

Oh shit, I thought. She’s not talking about Oni, is she?

I’d almost forgotten all about the big guy. Mareth had given him directions to the Infernal Academy after I’d nearly hit him with my car and bound him to me. Meaning he ought to be here by now. Now that I thought about it, I was a little surprised I hadn’t run into him at the front gates or something like that. I hoped he was alright, and that he’d made it to Hell okay. I made a mental note to check once I was done with the tour.

In the meantime, I should have shut the fuck up. The looks both Xora and Mareth were giving me trended in that direction—only Christina looked interested in taking this discussion further. But I couldn’t just let it go at that; not when what Xora described sounded so much like my own power.

“But I’ve bound Christina to me,” I said, putting an arm around the blonde’s waist as I spoke. Her tail caressed my wrist, then wrapped gently around it and tugged the hand holding her hips down to her ass. Cheeky girl, I thought proudly. “She didn’t used to be a demon before—I did that, when her and Mareth and I got freaky in my subspace. You were even joking about how she has to do what I say earlier. How is that any different than these binding rituals that are so illegal?”

Xora had apparently stopped listening at the word ‘Mareth’. The rusalka’s jaw hit the floor, her hair tightening so hard around her breasts and neck it threatened to cut off her circulation.

“You were involved in this, as well?” Xora asked, her cheeks going beet-red. Apparently the fact that Mareth was more than just my guide hadn’t