Staring down the barrel of thirty years, Alastair is starting to get frustrated. It isn't just that the stubbornness is delaying Lucifer's rise; it's a blow to his professional pride. This man should have cracked like an egg, all empty bluster and fragile machismo, but Alastair hasn't managed to pry loose even a single corner yet. So it's exciting, when finally he slips. Alastair asks, and gets the expected No, but then it's followed up with, "Wrong. It's wrong." Alastair doesn't react visibly, but he knows he's found it, the lever he can use to pry the Righteous Man wide open.
A week or so later, as he's getting ready to ask, Alastair says idly, "Everyone who's here deserves to be, you know." He doesn't follow it up, just lets the seed grow. And every day, after that, as he wrings out the screams, he tells stories about the other souls, the ones who are here because they deserved it, not because they sold themselves. He talks about the murderers, the rapists, the men who stole from the helpless and the women who beat their children; he watches the anger grow.
After weeks of it, he pulls out his trump card. "I'd like to introduce you to my priest," he says silkily. "He usually went for the bright ones, the stubborn ones. The ones who'd never do what they were told without asking why. He liked the challenge most of the time. But sometimes he wanted a good little boy. Obedient. One who'd never open his pretty mouth except to say Yes, sir or to suck his-"
"Yes," the man says, and Alastair looks up in well-feigned surprise.
"What did you say?"
"I said yes, goddamnit. I'll do it."
Alastair smiles.
He keeps smiling as they take the Righteous Man down, as he puts the knife in his hand, as the blood oozes from the first cut. He keeps smiling even as the blood collects and trickles down the whimpering soul's flank. He keeps smiling as the first drop fattens, loosens, falls to the floor.
When it strikes, there is no shock; the foundations of Hell do not quake.
The seal is not broken.
The waiting crowd, here to see the first step in Lucifer's release, shifts uneasily. Alastair snarls and the man-not the Righteous Man-frowns in puzzlement that lasts for only a moment before Alastair's knife slashes across his throat. He crumples, choking. Alastair turns to his assistants and says, "Put him back on the rack before he wakes up." Two of them nod and start forward, and as they do Alastair seeks out Azazel's eyes.
"It's his son," he says.