Yesterday, midnight:
"Justin, my boy! Sit down, sit down!" It was nearly midnight on day number twenty, and Justin Russo stood before the Dark Lord himself, responding to Rosie's summons. It was one thing to make rebellious noises when his pet came to call on you, quite another to refuse his summons. Rosie was curled at the foot of Gorgon's throne, her eyes lowered deferentially. The flickering light from the torches caught the sparkle in her black sequined corset, and made it shine. In the jittering shadows, her split and swollen lip hardly stood out at all. Her vulnerable pale skin was flawless, which only emphasized the elegant black feathers of her perfect wings. One of Gorgon's gloved hands was tangled in her red hair.
Her eyes lit on Justin briefly, secretly, but he could read no private message there and no remorse; only a queer species of drugged bliss he felt unclean for having seen. Beautiful, soiled and damned, Rosie was surely the very opposite of love. Her master saw her looking and ordered her from the room.
"Don't pay any attention to that little whore," he said dismissively, while she was still easily within earshot. "Only good for one thing, am I right?" Justin said nothing.
In a grotesque pantomime of the perfect host, Gorog rose from his throne to greet his guest. Even his garb, his top hat and velvet gloves perfect, his tuxedo expensive though oddly stained, contributed to the formal charade. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? The blood of innocents?" Gorog made a guttural chuckle. "Ah, that last one was a joke. Unless, of course, you want it." He peered at the boy with a sharp, assessing look Justin didn't like very much. "Do you?"
"No... thank you," Justin murmured, dropping his eyes obsequiously. He wanted to stand, or perhaps even to leave, didn't want to enter into conversation with this, this thing, but he lowered himself into one of the monstrously carven chairs strewn across the dais, instead. The cushions seemed to cradle him, whispering comfort as he relinquished his weight to them and they exhaled air.
With a merry snap of his black gloved fingers, the Master of the Dark Realm vanished from the throne, then rematerialized sitting across from him.
Justin wondered, not for the first time, what he kept under his gloves. Under his hat. He never took them off, not even to sleep.
"Well, Justin," he said chummily, with the kind of manic good cheer that was his trademark, and which Justin already suspected hid something much more frightening... a giggling madness, maybe. "What do you want? Think hard, Justin m'boy. Because you see, today I'm your fairy godfather. I'm Santa Claus. I'm that bad old magic lamp with just one wish left Justin dear, and I'm here to make your dreams come true!"
Gorog spread his hands theatrically, eyes rolling to show the whites, and the bruised sky obliged him with an evil peal of thunder. Justin smiled dryly.
"Yes, you have to love the special effects," the Dark Lord agreed. "But Justin, enough fucking around. Let's talk turkey. Man to man?" He snapped his fingers again. The sound of velvet on velvet barely was a hush, hardly there at all, but reality slid sideways and they were in a new room. Justin disliked it at once.
Justin and Gorgon sat in matching thrones at a long conference table. The light in the room was faint and murky, although a shiny banker's lamp sat on the table between them. The bad lighting wasn't the room's worst feature, though, nor was it the fetid, rank smell of rotting meat that permeated the place. Instead, that distinction was reserved for the rusty metal hooks hanging from chains in the dim ceiling, and the bald, bleeding carcasses they held. The nearest one, Justin noticed, appeared to be an excessively large turkey.
"My little joke," Gorgon tittered, and Justin noticed that the other carcasses spread across the ceiling and dangling from meat-hooks in various states of decay or curing were decidedly human. Well, human-ish, for several sported horns, extra heads or other appendages, and in a few cases, (he tried not to shudder), the delicate lattice of bone framework to show where wings had been.
Dizzy, Justin closed his eyes. A slimy tendril of cold blood fell from the ceiling and slid down the back of his neck. . He folded his wings flat against his back, as if that would protect them from what was dripping down.
At Gorog's chuckle, he opened his eyes again . "Your dregs of magic won't work in here, my dear," he murmured, leaning in as if sharing a secret. "Oh yes, I know about that. I know about everything that happens here. I watch you sleep, and I know when you're awake. I know your secrets, Justin. I'm like God here. " He smiled, and with his smile the claustrophobia in the room increased tenfold. Justin couldn't help but notice that the Dark Angel took no notice of the spatters of blood and other body fluids rained down on them; his face and suit became smeared and spattered with red, but he didn't seem aware of it at all.
Justin swallowed, hard. He had very few comfortable pretensions left, and this bad place forced that suppressed knowledge to the forefront of his brain. He wasn't a hardened evildoer, not a fiend from the pits. He was only a wizard boy far from home, his magic waning, his soul blackened by his own evil deeds, and his heart almost but not entirely broken by the world he thought he'd understood. The light in his eyes dimmed.
"Now," said the Master in a voice that was very nearly sane, leaning toward him, "Let's talk."
Justin was finding it hard to listen. It seemed that Gorog talked for a long time. He talked and talked, while Justin focused on not passing out or throwing up. Now, he seemed to be saying something about the nature of evil, and Justin tried hard to pay attention.
"The thing it comes down to, sweetheart, is and always was choice," he was saying. "A man's choice. The choice of a Wizard or an Angel. Your choice, Justin.
"Evil, you know, isn't absolute. It isn't all-powerful. Although," he interjected almost casually, "if you let that get around, I'll have to have your tongue removed. No, Justin, Evil always comes down to choice. And people, or Wizards, will choose it again and again, and do you know why?"
Justin said nothing. He'd said nothing so far, and it had been well-received. All around him, the nightmare-room loomed and dripped.
"Alright, scaredy-cat," the Dark Lord gloated, "I'll just tell you why. It is because in their secret hearts, people, wizards, and angels are selfish, Justin. They are cruel and petty: they are stalked by greed and fear and blinded by pride. They suffer from," he seemed to consider, "…ah, the very persuasive needs of the flesh, hmm?" He glanced at Justin with a commiserating look, as though they shared a secret, and then chuckled politely when the boy refused to return his smile. "Well. There is evil because of you, Justin, my cherub. Because of all of you. And because of you there always will be. I'll certainly never want for business! What you are, that is the true evil... Isn't that simply delicious? Er, wouldn't you say? Eh?" He smiled beatifically, as if expecting applause.
"Say, that reminds me! Getting hungry?" The master made an odd flourish with his hands, and huge, steaming platter of something Justin very fervently hoped was roast turkey with stuffing, appeared on the table between them. Gorgon twisted a leg free with a bone-breaking *crack*, his grin widening crazily.
"Yes, delicious! Would you perhaps care for a bite?" Justin felt his gorge rise.
He nodded, slowly. "I... I suppose it is, Sir, but I'm not hungry, thank you." He felt as though he was regressing, becoming the old Justin again, one with good table manners and deference to his elders. That Justin had been haunted by tremulous fears, but also blessed with a belief in the essential goodness of things. He was a good boy. A boy who stuttered in English but spoke Alien Languages fluently, and who, sometimes, saved the day. He felt, distantly, that he was becoming himself again. He hated the way it felt.
Was it possible that he been Really Justin, Justin for Real, and unchanged, all along? He remembered what Rosie had said about his essential nature, how it couldn't be changed; only muted. Had he been lying to himself all this time, hoping to survive? The thought was a very bad one, and he quickly pushed it down into the secret part of himself, and turned away from it.
"So now, sweet boy, " Gorog was saying, "... the choice is yours. I'm offering you, alone among my legion, a choice. And here it is." The monster drew off his hat with a mild flourish, rummaging about in it, his hand disappearing up to the elbow. Justin tried not to stare at the cankerous and rotting flesh the hat concealed, the flesh of the Angel's scalp peeling away. It was almost as if he had died a long time before, and his process of decomposition was working away at him. He was feeling around in the hat like a stage magician who'd mislaid his magic trick. "Where... Blast it... ah! Here, then!" and he drew out a long, tea-colored parchment that curled up on itself at the ends, with golden letters that shone softly in defiance of the room's darkness. From the hat's brim he produced a quill. "Now then, you're not stupid, lad. I suppose you know what this is?"
"It's a contract," said Justin, dully.
Gorog beamed at him. "Good boy. And here's the extra credit... I know how you like extra credit...tell me what the contract will buy then, hmm?"
"My- My soul," said the fallen Wizard, the Dark Angel, his tongue thick in his mouth. Inside him, a heart that he hadn't realized be still retained, twinged.
"Good lad! Now here's the really tough one... Tell me, Justin: What's the price of your soul?"
Your SOUL your soul YOUR SOUL
The monster's voice grew and grew until it reached the last syllable, when it twisted snakelike into his consciousness and bounced from the rusting walls of the room, booming. the price of your soul price of your soul... price what's your price WHAT'S YOUR PRICE…
It rose to a devilish cacophony, and the throatless things swaying above his head joined the chorus with jangling metal voices like the chains they hung from…
…Justin understood, with something like gratitude, that his mind was going to shatter. He lifted both hands to cover his ears... but the noise was gone. If, in fact, it had ever been.
Gorog slid the contract and the quill toward Justin. Justin backed away.
"No, no," The Master crooned, patting the air. "Don't decide now. It's a big decision isn't it, oh my yes! No, you just take that with you. I'm offering you your heart's desire, boy... and that's not an offer I make with regularity. But you... you're something special, eh? A fallen wizard, such a rare, powerful thing. Did you know your family is famous? I have great hopes for you, 'Justin Russo'... Great hopes!" He flashed him what he obviously thought of as a warm smile, though it chilled the young Wizard to his very bones.
"Come and join our little family, eh? I'll be Father and Mother to you, as well as Master... Just like I am to our dear Rosie." He chuckled, seemed to reconsider. "Well. Not exactly like I am to Rosie."
Justin shuddered. Obediently he took the scroll and tucked it into his jacket, rising from his seat before he remembered there was nowhere to go.
"Take the pen," Gorgon reminded him, and he did. The nib pricked his him as he lifted it, and he stuck the thumb in his mouth to suck the drop of blood.
"You know, of course, what sort of ink to use for such a special contract, do you not? A smart boy like you?"
Justin grimaced. The wall of the room ran with gore, and death filled his nostrils. He nodded his head. He knew.
But... he had to ask. "And... If I don't sign it?"
Gorgon pointed above, to the hooks. "I'll come after you and flay the skin from your bones, m'boy. I'll let you watch while I kill what you love. And then I'll kill you for a long, long time after that."
His gaze held no humor at all. He settled the hat back on his head at a jaunty angle. "Did you have any more questions before we finish up?"
He didn't.
"Well, good then! Justin, I've enjoyed this more than I can say, but unfortunately I have another engagement to attend to. It's been a pleasure..." He rose, taking Justin's hand to shake it. Touching him was horrible, and Justin's stomach, controlled all this time, rebelled.
"... Do try and let me know by, oh, let's say midnight tonight, dear."
Justin nodded, dizziness and nausea overwhelming his senses. Oh god, that smell...
He pressed the demon's hand, remembering his manners… And the world spun around him in a crazy arc, and he was falling from and into the void.
