“May I?”

“You intend to?”

“It an App. You know Pesudomonarchia Daemonun? Well, this is the app. Your summary. One zap”

Gremory, who'd been reclining, shifted forward throwing his arms wide delighted “Marvellous. Oui, e’ Zap me child”

She swallowed a bemused grin and tapped the app with her thumb. Error – 2 Corinthians 11:14. Send Error Report. Don’t Send. Faith's fluency in biblical verse was poor and she frowned at her phone.

“Un probleme?”

She shrugged a touch sorry to disappoint him “Some kink”

“Well” Gremory stabbed his cigarette out in a thick-set, cloudy glass ashtray “For you mon amour I am an open book. You may ask as you wish”

Faith raised her eyebrows “What is it you want me to ask you?”

“Ah Faith, I like that, I like that very much. Shiesera Faith. Tell me what you know of Leviathan’

“Third of the Hierarchy below Beezlebub”

“You can give me more than this”

“Oh-kay. It’s the guardian of boundaries. Door-frames, windowpanes, time frames, life and death. It can dissolve the boundaries of reality. It can grant omnipotence, it’s how Amon and Adramalech got theirs. The larger majority of it at any one time likes to uniformly suspend itself at a thousand feet in any translucent surface that can contain it. Erm”

“Non, non. Très bon. Au contraire Leviathan does not like suspension at in-betweens. This was its imprisonment. Once, it was unyieldingly powerful. I can recall deliberations within the 69 that sheer mentioning of Leviathan be accompanied by blasts from a fleet of organs piping miasmatic thespian. Leviathan, Faith, cher, fornicated with Ose, of level two, deity du insanity. Ose’s flippant possession of mechanical monkeys, curious colour co-ordinations, her compulsion to flambé aluminium soda cans and deranged obsession with le soggy potato waffle. Leviathan was enamoured. One climactic encounter curdled Leviathan's mind. It began meddling with laws of nature. So appalling was this interference Lucifer, Beelzebub and the entire inner sphere of Seraphs imprisoned it between worlds”

“Which law did it mess with?”

“It established le law of Shiesera. Listed in Lucifer’s Top Ten Historical Hiccups I believe. A curse inflicted upon all damned vivant et à venir. Their souls spliced in two, marinated in magnetic resonance, to wane, mourning, until the time that it should find its segregated half. Shiesera translates from Sumerian as life or soul imprisonment. An example of a semantic substitute may be soulmate”

“uh-hu”

“Leviathan wished for all to share in the suffering of obsessive, consuming love”

“uh-hu”

“Alanaha was my own. She died. Many centuries ago”

“Oh I-eh- Christ, I’m so sor-

“A demon separated long enough from its Shiesera for whatever reason corrodes” he snapped his fingers and an Alp swooshed staggering before them under a darkly bound volume the size of a late nineties PC.

Flaky, gold engraving read Decarabia’s Encyclopedia Demonica. Gremory began peeling silk thin pages apart, paused and leant forward to hand her the book “read”

Faith had been unprepared for its weight and the Alp had to help balance it on her knees dispersing a faint odour of Frankfurt sausages as it did “Shiesera: loss/prolonged absence. Behavioural attributes: disinterest, melancholic, inclined to sporadic outbursts of hunger and rage [See: Human Adolescents]. Sensation: pain comparative to replete process of birthing a Cyclopes” Faith looked up “A Cyclopes?”

“Ah. The perceptual prowess of the cyclopes. Cyclops singular. Contrary to common Greek mythology, they are elephantine, singular eyeballs with disproportionately spindly legs which by middle age normally swell to the size of canoes from oedema and are culturally amputated in favour of a spherical velocity through life”

“Urgh. Oh. Dear. I mean carrying one to term couldn’t be so comfortable either. Oh, right [See: Cyclopes Birthing]. Submission accredited to Seril the Sorrowful only known survivor of Shiesera loss currently resident in level 7.V as he finds the endless, agonizing torture something comparatively tranquil to focus on. D'yuh reckon he birthed one, ey?”

Gremory gave her a reserved, sad smile “Undignified, the human aging process, unjustly so. Akin to trying to clasp water. Myself. Herself. I could not save her from her own mortality. So, I chose instead to save myself. Beelzebub granted a division of my Shiesera into two offspring. Two humans I would encounter in my life to come. As is the law of Shiesera that division was unequal. Shared between five including myself’

“You split, Alanaha's, soul”

“Oui”

“But because Shiesera splits souls Catherine and Marc have Shiesera as well?” Faith tried to get her head around this. So Gremory would only have Alanaha's soul when he had Marc, Catherine and two others. Faith wasn’t unintelligent so naturally, she was becoming hysterical “Equal split between the four?”

“No. Crudely we could say fifty percent of my shiesera resides in Catherine and Marc combined. Twenty-five for each of their own”

“I do enjoy math” Faith took a sobering moment “why didn’t you ask Beelzebub for Alanaha’s soul back, immortal?”

“Politique”

“Mm-hm. Or make Alanaha demon the way you have them?”

“Politique”

"Uh-hu. Why didn't you get Beelzebub to recycle Marc and Catherine demon? You would’nt’ve had to, you know"

Decarabia’s Encyclopedia Demonica describes the enduring pain and psychological trauma of human conversion into any higher order sub-breed as though being slung, immortal, into a deep fat fryer soon after consuming a toxic level of white rum, amphetamines, and six Carolina chili peppers.

"Ma Cherie, there exists only two interacting entities which may forge demonic entities. God and humanity"

“Hm?”

“The underived, Faith. You know what this means?”

“The underived are pure demon. They originated as demon. Their ICs are high and erm, all of the 69 are underived”

“Non”

Faith looked affronted “oh”

“Forgive me. I expect too much of you. You are by no means ignorant. It is a poor definition. The underived originated from what is known as Shadow Reserves. Pure, undifferentiated masses of IC”

“Of God?”

“Vulgarly paraphrased”

“Oh. Sorry”

“Please, do not apologize to me in these matters. I find you more intelligent than you allow yourself”

“Uhm”

“Shadow reserves early in time took on the colorings of the deities and damned dreamt up by humanity” he shrugged “Lucifer himself is nothing more than a puzzle box of deities amalgamating in what became the Catholic heretic and the deity of today. I would, however, not mention this to it over hors d'oeuvres. A damned which originated from a shadow reserve is underived, will indeed have a very high IC, but do not be fooled not all of the 69 are underived”

“Are you?”

“I believe you can guess the answer to this”

“You are”

“Oui. My point is, you see, nothing can form demon from the innate but the complicated interactions between God and humanity. So it was necessary for Marc and Catherine to be born human”

“But if you’re underived, then you were a shadow reserve, so you were, like God”

“Non”

“Oh”

“Well, yes, but technically all is fundamentally God. Tell me why I’m telling you this, Faith”

“I’m trying to avoid a conclusion on that”

“Tell me what you think of Marc”

“I’d rather not”

“Why is that?”

“Good question”

“To which the answer is?”

“Couldn’t say”

“Try”

“Well, in the presence of God, twice removed” Faith took a theatrical breath "nope, no idea"

Gremory licked his lips “You, mon amour, are his Shiesera”

Faith audibly swallowed I am not! in favour of “Mhm. And you know this how?”

“Two reasons, one I feel is not my place to tell you but his, the other is I can sense it. A quarter of your very essence belongs to me. I am not mistaken”

Faith was mildly outraged by that sentence “You can sense it”

“Magnetic resonance”

“Well bugger me magnetic resonance that doesn’t sound fuzzy at all. In fact, if we’re to get along, never say those two words again” she glanced wearily up at Gremory “Hold on, the last generations of nobles have been called, so, where's your last twenty five percent?"

"You concede that you are Marc's, Catherine's and my own Shiesera" Faith opened her mouth to protest but Gremory cut her off "It is possible that Catherine's Shiesera will not be noble. Or" Gremory hesitated "that I will never have the last of Alanaha's soul"

Faith felt herself waver. His tone saddened her.

“Tell me why shiesera upsets you so”

“It’s just a bit. Lucifer, noble, press. I just wanna eat, sleep" she caught herself "I feel a bit trodden on if that makes sense”

“I see. I do not mean to tread however you must understand that you would not exist without me. Without Alanaha. You are a form of property. A form of family. My family. You object only because you are human, were suspiciously misplaced at birth, raised under inappropriate conditions and are unconditioned”

“Unconditioned? Whoa, okay, I’m. I’m broken. I’m already there. Don’t, don’t think about that. Clear that thought from your mind” she was feeling faint

Gremory held up a calming hand “It is gone”

“I can’t tell you my relief”

“Do I displease you so?”

“Not at all”

“How do you feel about me?”

Faith dropped her head into her hands “I'm so, very sober”