There was indeed evil on his soul, and the demoness was exploiting it mercilessly.
In the morning Jolie returned. "She came to you at night," she said flatly. Parry nodded. "I thought for a moment it was you. I finally drove her away with the cross."
"Finally?"
"Jolie, I am a man! I thought I was a friar, but now I know I am not. I will take my disgrace and go away with you; then she will leave me alone."
"Will she, Parry?"
"She will have wreaked Lucifer's vengeance on me and the Order! I will be of no further use to her! And I will be with you when you are reanimated. Proof against further evil."
She relaxed. "I hope so, Parry!"
He squared his shoulders and walked out of his chamber and down the hall to the Abbot's office. He had not requested an audience, but knew the Abbot would see him. Indeed, Parry himself could have had the office, had he desired it. Now he was glad he had not; that diminished the potential disaster somewhat.
The demoness appeared before him, discreetly clothed. "You can't do it, Parry. You have too much to lose."
"The world has too much to lose if I do not," he said gruffly.
"But the world need lose nothing! I will help you in any way you desire."
"To fight your evil master? I doubt it."
"Try me, Parry."
"Don't try her, Parry!" Jolie protested. "She only means evil!"
"I know that," Parry said. He pushed on, leading with his cross, and the demoness vanished in her normal manner.
And reappeared elsewhere, also in her normal manner. "Parry, you have not given me that chance," she said urgently. "Parry, with my help you could become Pope!"
"You'd like that, wouldn't you!" he muttered. "A corrupt Pope, in liege with Lucifer!"
"It would not be the first time."
Parry halted. "You lie!"
Her lips twitched. "May **** strike me down if I have not spoken the truth."
"It's irrelevant," Jolie said. "We must get this done. Obviously it will be effective against her, or she wouldn't be opposing it so."
"You are right, ghost-girl," Lilah said, grimacing. "He will be of little use to my Master if he loses his position. There would then be nothing for it but to proceed to the lesser aspect of His vengeance, and send in the vampires."
"Vampires?" Jolie asked faintly.
"I have fought off possessed creatures before," Parry said.
"These are not possessed," Lilah said. "They are the real thing. They would come first for your animate ghost-girl, depriving her of her new body. You might find her less appetizing. Parry felt a chill of apprehension. The possessed could be cured, but true vampires were beyond that. There were ways to resist them, but it would be difficult for one of flawed virtue.
The threat to Jolie—
"No," he said firmly. "This is a scare tactic. It shall not move me."
But Jolie, beside him, was fainter.
He reached the Abbot's door. He lifted his knuckle to knock.
"I will show you how to make your Inquisition truly effective against heretics," Lilah said.
"Why should you do that?" Yet Parry knew that the fact that he even questioned her meant that he was in doubt about his course.
"Because heretics are nothing to me or my Master, but your corruption is everything."
"A likely claim," Parry said, beginning to move his knuckle.
"Don't you understand, Parry—most heretics are incompetent ruffians. Seldom is a truly educated and dedicated man brought into Lucifer's service. You are worth more than all the rest."
"Before you said that it was Lucifer's vengeance that brought you here."
"That, too, is true. But His mode of it is devious. He never wastes an opportunity. He much prefers to corrupt you, so that not only do you serve His purpose, you know it is the worst possible perversion of your nature and of the faith of those who believe in you. You will suffer that realization for the rest of your life, even as you do ever-greater evil. That is the most exquisite nature of His vengeance. Perhaps you will even do such harm to the cause you once served that it makes up for all the mischief you have caused my Master."
"How can you tell me this, knowing I must reject this course?" Parry asked, appalled.
"That is part of the torture," she said. "You must know that you could have avoided all of it—and chose to enter into it instead, for the basest of reasons."
"What basest of reasons?" Parry demanded.
"Lust for a creature of Hell, despite the availability of the woman you loved in life."
"That's preposterous!"
"Is it, Parry? Then knock on that door." Lilah smiled cruelly, and her dress disintegrated, leaving her voluptuously naked.
Parry's arm muscles tensed—but his knuckles did not touch the door. He tried again, and again his hand did not move. He could not knock!
He looked around, seeking Jolie, but she was gone.
"No good, lover," Lilah murmured. "She knows what you know: you have accepted what I offer in your soul, and she is doomed."
"Jolie!" he cried with horror.
"Do not wail for her, mortal man. She has completed her onus, that bore down her soul despite an exemplary life. She has at last brought you to the evil you were destined for. Now she is free to go—and perhaps, if she is fortunate, my Lord will not treat her harshly."
"Jolie can't go to hell!" he cried.
"She surely can't go to the other place."
"She must stay with me, to be my conscience, as always."
"Your conscience is doomed, Parry. You are one of us now.
"No!"
"No? Then knock on that door."
Again Parry tried, and again failed. Even to save the soul of his wife, he could not do it.
He collapsed against the door, wracked by sobs. What an awful failure this was, this failure of his will!
The demoness embraced him, stroking him here and there, stirring his lust despite his grief. "Lover, this is only the beginning," she assured him. "You will rue this hour the rest of your life."
Parry was all too certain this was true.
Chapter 8 - LUCIFER
Lilah led him back to his chamber. Parry went without resistance, stunned by his inability to do what he knew was right. The demoness really had corrupted him!
In the chamber, Lilah turned, her clothing fuzzing to fog and wafting away. "You have joined us, Parry, and now I shall reward you."
Parry gripped his cross. "No!" She walked toward him, her torso moving with rhythms of its own. "Yes."
He jabbed the cross at her midriff. It passed through her without effect. She neither vanished nor screamed; she merely waited. "But—the cross!" he exclaimed, stunned.
"Parry, your icon is only as potent as the faith behind it. You have lost your faith. You can no longer invoke your prior god in your defense." She moved on in to him, and her hands went to his robe, opening it.
"Jolie!" he cried.
"She is gone, lover," Lilah said. "I am your woman now. But I want you to think of your ghost-girl as you indulge your carnal lust with me, so that you can really appreciate the irony. She started your corruption, and I am completing it."
"Get away from that"' he cried, pushing at her. But it did no good. His right hand, holding the cross, was unable to touch her body at all, passing freely through it, while his left came up against her plush right breast. There, the touch was all too tangible.
Meanwhile her hands were busy, efficiently baring his body. She moved the rest of the way in to him, pressing against him from thigh to breast, while his right hand continued to flail helplessly within her substance as if it did not exist. Then she quivered, and her belly seemed to stroke his while her hips rotated slowly.
"I beg of you—" he gasped, finally letting go of her breast.
She drew back. "I will always do what you ask, when you phrase it that way, Parry. But I believe you would really rather move on to the culmination."
"I am a fri
ar!"
"You are a man." She glanced at his body significantly. "You can see that your body wants me."
Parry grabbed for his robe, to cover his aroused body. "You are a damned succubus!"
"Faint praise, Parry! I am much more than that. But if you really wish to wait for the raw sex, I will wait. I have no carnal desire of my own, of course; I am only acting as my Lord Lucifer directs, to corrupt you suitably, and this is merely a single aspect of it. What other aspect would you prefer to start with?"
"No aspect! I don't want to be corrupted at all!"
"You are lying, Parry. That is good; you do need practice with that." Her left hand caught his right wrist, and lifted his hand back toward her left breast.
"I'm not lying!"
She smiled. "I have no need to prove my point, but it entertains me to do so. Doff your robe again, stand before me, and tell me that you do not wish to partake of my body."
Parry did not answer, aware that he could not pass such a test.
"But you know that my body is infernally crafted to evoke the basest lust in a mortal man," she continued. "You know the route you are headed when what rises is not your soul but your member."
"Damn you!"
"Thank you."
"Go away!" he said, closing his eyes. "Why, when you really do not want me to?" Her lips brushed against his.
"Please, demoness, leave me!"
"That's better, Parry. I will return when you retire for the night. I think you need time to yourself to adjust to your new reality."
He remained with his eyes screwed closed. She did not speak again. Finally he opened his eyes, and verified that she was gone.
"Jolie?"
But Jolie did not appear. He knew why: she had been banished by his accession to evil. She knew what he refused to acknowledge: the demoness had aroused his lust, and he could not free himself of it.
Was it too late to leave the Order? He walked to the door—and stopped, unable even to start toward the Abbot's office. He dropped to his knees and prayed. "Oh, Lord, grant me release from this bondage!"
"Now that would be foolish, wouldn't it."
Parry glanced up, startled. There hovered a small black cloud within the chamber. As he gazed at it, it sprouted horns.
"No!" Parry hurled himself away.
The cloud laughed and dissipated.
The wrong Lord had answered his prayer. His orientation had changed; he now answered to Lucifer instead of to God.
How could such a calamity have happened? He had labored so hard for the cause of God! How could a single episode of love with his wife bring such ruin on him?
But he knew the answer. He was a friar, and celibate. What Jolie had offered had been sinful, and had his faith been true, he would have rejected it. His faith had not been true, and this was the proof of it. His inability to give up his position as an important Dominican was another proof: he had succumbed to worldliness in the guise of holiness.
Still, he did not regard himself as an evil man, merely as a fallible one. Granted that he fell short of perfection, he could still do much good, just as a tree that was rotting at the core could still cast good shade and bear good fruit. Perhaps, if he continued his good works, he would in time recover his prior orientation and rejoin God. He felt better. He went about his business of the day, laboring for a cause that he knew was good even if he himself was not.
But when he sought to retire at night, the demoness was in his bed, as warm and luscious as ever. "Are you ready to enjoy me now, lover?" she inquired.
"No!"
"Your body says otherwise."
"My body lies!"
"Your mind lies, not your body. That's lovely."
"May God banish you, temptress!"
"Your terminology has no power when not backed by faith."
Obviously that was true, for she remained warm against him. "How can I make you go?"
"You really do not need to ask again, Parry. You know the answer."
"But you always return!"
"That is the nature of evil."
"I beg of—"
She silenced him with a hand on his lips. "Parry, we must end this charade. Do the forthright thing: accept your situation, and get on with it. I return so insistently only because you desire me to."
"That's—"
"The truth." She embraced him and kissed him, ardently.
"No!" he exclaimed when able to wrench his face free.
"Would it help if I took the initiative?"
"I—" He was unable to answer.
"That is a useful device for reticent maidens, who are constrained not to confess the base desires they feel. They would have it that they are powerless to prevent being ravished, but that is a legal fiction. We are experienced in all manner of fictions, in the Kingdom of Lies." She stroked her body against his.
Parry knew he should protest, but he did not.
She proceeded to make love to him, while he lay almost unmoving. Technically, she was doing it, not he—but he could no longer deny that she was doing what he desired.
She brought him to a phenomenal climax, enhanced by its great guilt. "I had hoped you would be more of a challenge," she remarked sardonically as he was in the throes of it. Then, as he spasmed, she faded away, leaving him to foul himself.
That, of course, was the finishing touch. He felt completely dirty and ashamed. "Never again!" he swore—but knew even then that he swore falsely.
In the course of the night, he succeeded in coming to terms with himself: the demoness had evoked his lust, and there was no staying it. It was better simply to indulge, leaving his mind clear for better things.
She reappeared at dawn. "Well, Parry, ready for the day's mischief?" she inquired brightly. The sight of her evoked his lust as if it had never been sated.
That, too, it seemed, was an attribute of the gifts of Lucifer: temporary satisfaction, lasting guilt. "Yes," he said tightly, and stepped toward her.
But she became smoke in his arms. "No, no, Parry," the smoke spoke, as to an errant child. "I gave you a mere sample. To obtain more, you must please me, and if you please me sufficiently, I may even remain throughout the night. Would you like that?"
He was done with lying. "Yes. How may I please you?"
"By doing a significant deed of evil in the name of good. As it happens, there is a case just now coming up: a heretic who refuses to recant. You must make him recant."
"But that will be a good deed!" he protested.
"For him, perhaps; not for you."
Parry found that confusing. He shrugged, and set about making the journey. He rode the donkey, as before, but now it was Lilah, not Jolie, who accompanied him. She chatted freely about all things evil, and it was amazing the breadth of things that included. She seemed to know all the gossip about prominent figures, and she clarified with quite believable precision exactly which aspects of it were true. Parry was disgusted with himself for listening, but nonetheless fascinated. Thus he was immersed in news of evil throughout, and knew this was further corrupting him, but he could not resist it. Each time he thought to reject it, Lilah's body became naked and suggestive, and his lust rose up, and he knew he had to have her no matter what the cost. He also knew that that cost would be ever-greater evil on his soul, leading inevitably to eternal damnation. That appalled him—but he had tasted her wares, so to speak, and now was addicted.
That was the ugliest part of it: he knew exactly what was happening, yet could not wrench himself out of the process. Lucifer's minion was doing her job perfectly.
The heretic had pled innocent, and no amount of persuasion had been effective. That was why Parry had been assigned. To this extent this was a normal case.
"But fair reasoning will not sway this one," Lilah said with satisfaction. "Neither will brutal torture; he will die first, and be lost to your former master. You must of course prevent that."
"Why do you care?" Parry demanded, knowing the nature of her answer but compelled to ask anyway
. If there could be some way out, some way to please her without further damning himself... but he knew there was not, for her purpose was to damn him.
Parry went into the dungeon and interviewed the captive. The man showed the ravages of his interrogation; he could no longer stand or feed himself, for the bones of his limbs had been dislocated by the procedure known as squassation: he had been hauled up on a pulley, with weights attached to his legs, and then dropped suddenly so that his feet did not quite reach the floor. This had been done three times, destroying his limbs, and it was obvious that he would not survive another. Despite the excruciating pain of this, he had refused to implicate any other heretics. This was a problem, because the local authorities were running out of heretics, and needed the revenues generated by continued confiscations of properties.
Parry shook his head. He had helped start the Inquisition in order to purify the faith, not to extort wealth from victims. The secular authorities might have base motives, but the Inquisition had only lofty motives: the salvation of the individual's immortal soul, and the purity of the faith.
"But you will help change that," Lilah said. "The desire for wealth is one of my Lord's principal tools in the corruption of men. So you must get this man to implicate others, that the chain of extortion may continue and grow, in the end corrupting the Church as well as the individuals."
The corruption of the Inquisition itself! Parry considered that, and balked. "Demoness, you demand too much! I'll not turn against—"
He broke off, for she was floating in the air, on her back, and spreading her legs toward him. His lust surged up like a living entity, paced by his guilt. Damn her!
He would have to make the prisoner talk. That would maintain his reputation as the interrogator of last resort, and would bring him the favor of the demoness. He hated both aspects of it, but knew he would do it.
But how could he persuade a man who was ready to die under torture rather than implicate another person? That was the problem that had brought him here.
"Remember," Lilah reminded him. "You are no longer constrained by ethical considerations. My Lord believes in effectiveness, and therefore can accomplish things your prior lord cannot."