--Marching On--

"My name is Legion, for we are many."

-Mark 5:10

The streets of Sydney were empty, filled only with garbage and shadows. The streetlamps sputtered, churning those shadows, flickering off and off until they finally died. It was nearly impossible to see, but impossible eyes see everything.

Those blue things saw a man loitering in an alley, they saw him stop, and they saw the callous, blank look he shot. So Lucifer strolled through the thick dark, casually looking back.

"Go away," he said, approaching that stranger in the dark. The man's ordinary face didn't reveal a thing. It was just a mask, and excellent. The eyes, though, the eyes seemed to flicker like the streetlamps had. But then they stopped, just brown again.

"You don't command me." The voice was low and gratingly average. Nothing special about it.

"Really? And here I thought one of my few dozen titles involved Hell… and being the lord of it," he said with a worried frown.

"You're not the real lord of Hell," the man contended. He never smiled or laughed or frowned, only stared ahead impassive. "You're just some emo angel burning with the rest of us."

"What is your name, demon?" he demanded coldly.

"I forgot it." Like it never mattered to have received one at all.

"Of course you did," he said. "But I remember mine. Hell did not burn away my name or my memories, like it did yours, human. That is why I am its lord… and your superior."

"Human?" Disgust at the idea. "I am not a pathetic human."

"Not anymore," Lucifer agreed. "Now leave, before I send you back to the pit."

"You wouldn't," it said steadily, though the human eyes flashed again like faulty bulbs. Terrified, though light is an impossible thing to read.

"Tell me who sent you," Lucifer bargained with a smile. "And I will not."

"Never-"

"Exorcizo te, immundíssime spíritus, omnis incúrsio adversárii," he recited fluently, watching as the human gasped, its mouth open but the air sucking and rattling. Its ordinary face scrunched in pain, it doubled over against the spoken assault. "Omne phantasma, omnis légio-"

"Stop! Stop…" It breathed again, slow and deep, trying to replace its fleshy mask. "An angel sent me. One with six gray wings. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I want the truth!" he spat, squeezing its pudgy throat with a hand. He lifted the thing from the ground, making sure its cheap leather shoes dangled above the asphalt.

"No one sent me," it growled.

"Then what," he hissed, his face inches from his captive. "Are you doing here?"

"Looking to kill the Child of Destiny," it said, finally laughing.

Lucifer glared into its now constantly flickering eyes, seeing something else behind the human ones, something racing back and forth, something hiding and cowering. Just using these wide, brown things as windows.

With a huff he tossed the thing aside, watching as it slammed loudly into the brick-sided building. With another look a splintering crack echoed about the place. The demon gurgled as its stolen bones snapped. A dark stream of blood oozed from its mouth. It obnoxiously cracked its neck, barely noticing the physical trauma.

"Careful now. Don't want to hurt this innocent meat-sack."

"Oh, I would not dare." Then he flicked his wrist and another dozen bones shattered in place. A second line of creamy blood drooled out the demonic human's mouth. "But I will have the truth."

He was inside that twisted mind in an instant, just one burst of those insanely clouded eyes. Except there was nothing to see. Nothing at all but pain and anguish. It registered trauma and delight as one. Lucifer saw its latest work. Saw how it stole a body. Saw how it used the man to kidnap a young girl, slice open her belly and play with her insides as she screamed, then sobbed, then died with her entrails torn to shreds.

He saw how the thing took another and another, raping a few before mutilating their petrified faces and making their insides their outsides. How it violated their mouths and privates while hacking them to bits. It was a cinema of blood and sadism.

He saw what this thing had been once. Just flashes like the light. It was human, like all demons. Ignorant and sinful and carefree. Not a monster that sliced open girls, then women, then men, then anything that moved. The name was gone. It was just a thing now. Just a soul that was born, lived, and died.

No humanity left to it.

Then he saw Hell. The gurgling cries ripped through his chest and into his beating heart. He felt the heat sear his eyeballs, the cold stab his guts. The horror unfolded live before him, not flashing but running smooth and crisp. The torment in the thing's mind reached out, caressed his face, and dug its claws into his throat to pull him in. No. No. No!

"Pathetic. This is why you are not our lord," the demon said with a human voice, rubbing its neck as it looked down on him. Lucifer was sprawled on the ground, his breath ragged, hair wild and eyelids drooping. "But we'll have one soon enough. So all is forgiven."

"What?"

"I'm sure you didn't notice, being in Hell and all." He crouched down to be on eye-level. The smile was sickening, the still soft blood running from the lips. "We're being summoned, in greater and greater numbers. There are hundreds of us, maybe thousands. Quite the party."

"Who?"

"We don't know," it admitted casually. Light flickered in those eyes again. "But when we do… this world will have some fun."

"I know who," Lucifer said, sticking the Spear of Destiny in the demon's belly.

The nasty smile faded as the seraph twisted the metal in his gut, pushing him up as he rose. Clumsy human hands groped at the shaft, but the angel didn't mind, just watched as those eyes went wild with their flashing and dying.

"Y-you… traitor…"

"I will even give you a hint," he whispered. "Demons can not summon demons. Fallen angels can not summon demons. And humans tend to die when they deal with demons. Go on, take a guess."

"N-no," it argued, blood guzzling from its lips.

"I think so," Lucifer argued back, scrunching his nose and smiling. Another twist and those cloudy, manic eyes fled into the recesses of that body. Out came a man instead, more wide-eyed and pained than the other.

"M-made me…" There was a little bubble of blood on his tongue. "Aw-ful things."

"Quiet. You are free now," Lucifer said, not unkindly.

Then he grabbed the man's scalp and pulled back his flopping head, making sure he could see those eyes. They screamed at him, all in broken white. Then they filled in black, obscuring the whites and corneas entirely. It swirled like rotten mist in those windows to the soul, but congealed when struck with the devil's lovely blues. Like old poison.

"And you: back to Hell."

There was an odd kind of roar, beastly but sad, and the streetlamps flickered back to life.