Hello beautiful creatures! Just a quick note before we proceed, firstly, this is my first foray into the Bible fanfiction fandom (which I honestly didn't even know existed), so hi there everyone! Secondly, this work is a highly cherished piece that I'm actually in the process of submitting to literary magazines, part of a larger series I'm seeking publication for. I'm hoping to be able to share it with some people who will hopefully enjoy it and give me constructive criticism, that said, please use good judgment when reading and do not reproduce or "borrow" characterizations or plotlines. It's obvious, just be conscientious. Also, I obviously don't own the Bible, so there's that. Anyway, enjoy the story and God bless you all!

Let it stand, for posterity if nothing else, that I did not leave Hell because of a lover's quarrel. First off, 'lover' should never be confused with underling and sexual partner, and 'quarrel' should never be confused with screaming match accompanied by bouts of violence and bursts of flame. Lilith harbors a delusion that she holds some sort of emotional sway over me, perhaps because she is my chosen Antichrist, (Yes it's a girl, idiot, did you expect me to be predictable?) perhaps because she's been my on-again, off-again paramour since the sixteenth century.

I know, I know; I shouldn't mix business with pleasure, but pleasure is my business, so can I help it if I occasionally partake? So before we proceed, let me make it clear that I did not get run out of my domain by my shrew of an Antichrist. I was faced with the choice either of losing my temper and hurdling her headlong into the lake of fire, effectively ruining my well-laid plans of world domination, or taking a short jaunt aboveground and finding some other fancy to divert my worthy attentions.

So I opted for the latter. Of my own volition, are we clear? I'm the bloody Prince of Darkness, I don't do damn a thing unless I full and well please. But I digress. On with the story, then?

The mists between worlds swirl eerily around my ankles as I step in a very unnoticeable manner from the rift in time, sweeping it shut with shadows behind me. For the public edification, I've perused many a world in my travels, despite the whole damned-for-all-eternity gig. It took me under a century to pick the locks and two decades to find the back door. That's what happens when you don't plan eternal bondage thoroughly.

I breathe deeply, tasting the sweet tang of mortal air. It's Mediterranean fauna and the salt of the sea, laced with oregano and the mechanical notes of the city. I look to the crumbling piazza on my right, admiring how the silvery moonlight bounces off a nearby river to illuminate the façade. The refined iniquity hanging in the air is rich and robust, and the tinkling of lover's laughter is a beautiful contrast to the blood that's been split onto the cobblestones underfoot for so many a generation. After eons in my profession, you learn to find beauty in sin, and what better place than Italy?

I stretch my fingers experimentally, glancing in a darkened shop window to catch my reflection, and smile idly at my human veneer. This one is male and relatively low profile, mid thirties and blonde. Good looking, of course. I tousle my hair and slip into a handmade leather jacket left out so very graciously by a street vendor who appears to have taken an extended smoke break.

Italy is kind to me as always, and her sloping thoroughfares envelop me like the gloom gathering overhead. She whispers tales and bemoans her ill-treatment to me as I run my borrowed fingers across her walls. I stroll down an alleyway, passing cheerily lit cafes, run-down tenant houses, and brightly painted apartment building, all crammed together in a splendid clash of means and style. I stop to press a palm to an exceptionally old hotel. The language and essence of the city are leeched from the brick and into my body, swimming through the ether in my mind like neon schools of fish. I pick out the traces of love, hatred, calamity and confusion etched into the wall much in the way a human wine connoisseur tastes every tang of citrus and note of musk.

"The years have been unkind to you," I mutter. "And so many wars in so little a time..." I grin, scratching my name into the caked mud with a fingernail. "I have been a very busy boy…"

It occurs to me that it may be unbecoming for the Devil himself to be slumming it in Italy out of boredom, but it's not as if I have anything better to do nowadays. The humans practically do my job for me. I just can't put the fear of God (play on words, yes I just did) in people like I used to anymore. The few that still believe I exist are actually more of groupies than the making of a proper righteously indignant mob. People do what I ask before I ask it of them, and even when I do dream up a truly grand scheme, some idiot with a handgun always beats me to the punch line.

I sigh, rummaging around in my pockets for the pack of cigarettes I never leave home without. I light one up and lean back against the hotel wall, wondering where my life went wrong. The Apocalypse is fast approaching and I'm not getting any younger. This is a damn identity crisis it what it is. The cigarettes are good, however, and I try to turn that into some kind of feeble consolation. I invented them, you know. Along with reality television, rock music, sodomy, political parties, wine coolers, and push up bras. Thank me later.

Suddenly something hits my consciousness hard, snapping me out of my mire of nicotine and self-pity. It's pain, radiating off a source so focused and acute that it stabs through this human heart like needles through felt. This is no cloud of clinical depression or shock of a family death, it's something refined and true, subtle in its intensity but deep and velvet-rich like a starless night. I take a moment to enjoy this aura which sings to me a cacophony of shattered dreams in the most poignant of minor keys. I could pick that melody out of any jumble of human emotions, no mater how tangled the web or numerous the bearers. That, my darlings, is the pain of a suicide.

I follow the wailing notes through the nearest maze of alleyways and it leads me to a small bridge stretching over a dark and fast-moving river. I spy her almost immediately and struck dumb by the cinematic, almost rapturous scene before me. A girl in a tattered white dress stands on the railing of the bridge, her shoes lie lined up neatly behind her, and her dark hair, thick and glossy as any Italian's, tumbles down her back. She looks down mournfully at the river, anguish scrawled across her pretty face. It's a snapshot out of an infernal greeting card, and I could almost kiss her for her sense of symbolism. The white dress, the water, on a full moon? Pure Ophelia.

I linger at the edge of the bridge out of sight, marveling at this broken china doll. She takes a few, well balanced steps across the railing, the wind stirring the lace of her dress. It's macabre ballet, the utter surrender of which sends an illicit thrill through my soul. I send her gentle signals of dark persuasion, stretching the shadows I find in her mind to insurmountable foes. After a few moments of deliberation, I see her troubled face go smooth and I know then that I've won. She's given herself up.

But then something…Shifts. A single crystal tear sparks in her eye, taking a moment to reflect the moonlight before dripping down the join the rushing river below. Suddenly a thin sliver of panic interrupts my thoughts, and I haven't the faintest idea as to why. I want this, I want to see the finale and offer my triumphal applause when the water claims her. But something is wrong here, and it nudges at instincts long since thought dead, those of a more divine time. This in itself scares me.

I could just let her jump. Go home, make some semblance of an apology to Lilith and hopefully score angry makeup sex. But whatever's different this time around, whatever variable is setting the angel in me on high alert, needs to be dealt with immediately.

"Scusi."

The girl spins around jerkily, nearly losing her balance in the process. I really wish she would. Then I would have fulfilled my duties to investigate whatever weird metaphysical vibes are coming off this kid without actually making contact. But Ophelia, as I'll call her for simplicities sake, catches herself at the last moment and looks at me imploringly with doe eyes. Great. Now I've got to talk to it.

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