corrupting her to bring about her own fall from grace. She could be with them in Hell for all eternity. They refused that suggestion as well. Lucifer raged, while his youngest son, Azmodeus, sneered at his brothers. He disliked Leianna and her influence on them as intensely as Lucifer did. Their mother, Affaeteres, said nothing, for Hell had long ago crushed her, and she rarely gave advice.
Bael and Ashtoreth backed off. An uneasy truce developed in that fifth year between Lucifer and his eldest sons. They went about their duties and refrained from mentioning Leianna. Lucifer never questioned their absence on certain nights from Hell, while knowing full well that they were with her on the upper planes, and that Heaven had permitted his eldest sons to enter its gate, to tempt Lucifer with the Alliance, and with the false promise of his own redemption and return from exile.
A sly and crafty lure, one he would never snap at.
And so Bael and Ashtoreth reported their father’s denial to Leianna, who felt their task might well be hopeless, and to Quatama, who quietly smiled at them and asked that they be patient with Lucifer.
And Terence Dearborn paid scant attention to the whole Alliance business, believing it would either succeed or fail, while his business was to help Leigh Ann’s earthly existence have value and purpose. There were many ways to contribute to one’s world in a given lifetime. Leianna had helped him to recover his lost musical compositions after his death. Together, they had attended the debut of his symphony, sonata and nocturne at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in January, 1972. Terence, of course, had been incognito, invisible to both the performers and rest of the audience, but his final legacy had been salvaged and preserved for posterity.
Leigh Ann had musical talent; he was helping her master the guitar, and she enjoyed creating songs. Perhaps she could aid her world through music? He loved her with an intensity he’d never felt for any other woman. He knew she also loved him. But she felt an equal but different love for Bael. Terence had stepped back from that, allowing Bael to win her. Terence had agreed to a platonic relationship with Leianna, for anything more would cloud his judgment as her spirit guide. Her happiness came first. Bael brought her happiness. Terence would never deny her that.
This was the tangled web of love, hope and the desire to move onward, of anger, hate and the refusal to change, that marked the beginning of 1977. But Leigh Ann Elfman’s mortal life, and her immortal life as Leianna, was about to change forever.
CHAPTER 3
Surprising Lucifer
Lucifer first heard the distorted version of Eve and Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eliom, a dimensional world parallel to Earth but not on that planet, and his role in it as the serpent that corrupted Eve, almost 30,000 years before this night. This story of Earth’s first man and woman, of the snake tempting the woman to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the woman beguiling her husband to taste the forbidden fruit, both intrigued and infuriated Lucifer.
The tree, its fruit and the snake were pure fantasy, merely symbols masking the ultimate truth.
But mortals repeated the tale through the ages as their hearth fires cast shadow and light on the walls of their caves and huts. They added the tale of Cain and Abel, also distorted, for the twins had not been Eve’s first-born, and certainly not Adam’s get. Adam had raised them after Eve’s mortal death, causing the confusion over their parentage. Cwuh had sired them on her.
Lucifer had long ago ceased to be mystified by humanity’s need for its religious symbols, although it still amazed him when they took their symbols at face value, as gospel.
Lucifer’s rebellion, neither cold-blooded, nor furtive, had been passionate and honest. He sneered at the hidden sexuality in the image of the snake tempting Eve. He and Eve had been dear friends. He had never seduced her or cuckolded her husband Michael, once loved like a brother. Lucifer, before he fell from Heaven, had been faithful to his wife, Affaeteres.
Five thousand years after conquering the astral wilderness of Hell and building his kingdom, Lucifer heard the first mortal chants of the Garden, naming him the serpent within it. The reptile was maligned on Earth, despite having no greater or lesser need to survive than any of Earth’s other creatures. Lucifer decreed that all snakes in his kingdom were to be treated with respect, for there were snakes and other animals in Hell. Hell had evolved like any other world in the Creator’s universe. Snakes were native to Hell, Earth and Heaven.
But he would not abide any artistic depiction of the limbless creature in his kingdom and banned the snake’s image and his association with it.
Hell’s artists grumbled over Lucifer’s proclamation, but none dared defy it. His throne room where he now sat, awaiting his eldest sons whom he had summoned, held many fantastic images but contrary to the paintings of many mortal artists, nothing serpentine. He had decorated it with images and symbols of his fall from his lost homeland, Eliom.
The right arm of his marble throne, as it faced the vast hall from the smooth, black granite dais, flowed into an eagle at rest, its eyes glaring and its beak opened threateningly, as if daring any to disturb it. The left arm segued into a crouching wolf, ears flattened and teeth snarling. The tall back of the throne held, on Lucifer’s right, the standing profile of a proud, bull oxen, its tail at the end, its bovine head toward the center, turning to gaze coldly at those who stood before the dais. To its left, padding toward the oxen as if the beasts might meet in the middle, a powerful lion also turned its head to face those Lucifer surveyed from his throne, both the willing and the unwilling, its countenance harsh.
The throne sculptures represented the four Seraphim who disgraced Lucifer during Eve’s trial and after it in Eliom, a reminder of his vow to one day face them again and win their atonement.
Lucifer savored the grandeur about him. Six, thick, marble, gold-veined pillars, three on each side of the central reception floor, rose up to support left and right balconies. A palace guard stood before each pillar, dressed in the manner of Roman soldiers in the reign of Tiberius, Lucifer’s elite. Six more guards stood rigidly at attention: two before the elaborately carved, gold and jewel-encrusted, central throne room doors, two unseen from the throne at smaller entrances under the balconies, and two more stationed at private doors that led to and from the dais.
Below the balconies were the galleries, open areas with shadowed recesses, once lit by lamps filled with sweet oil, now replaced with softly glowing electrical light fixtures jutting from the wide, wooden, balcony support beams. Displayed upon the gallery walls, extraordinary paintings, ten feet in height and width, portrayed the long ago expulsion of Lucifer and those he championed from Eliom, their struggle to survive in Hell, and their triumphant conquest and taming of its wilderness.
Lucifer leaned forward on his throne, fingering the hard sculpted fur of the stone wolf impatiently. He stood up and strode abruptly down the three wide steps, descending the dais, and briskly over to the first painting adorning the left-hand wall. In it, rebel angels captured by the winged Seraphim were lifted into the roiling cloud above the village green in Eliom, where Lucifer had earlier argued heatedly against the incarnation of the angelfolk on Earth. The complaisant angelfolk were shown in a wide circle around the green, separated from the disobedient angels by an energy field. Only one of the obedient dared to breech it: Leianna. The artist had lovingly painted the lethal sparks that flew about her, igniting her hair, robe and body as she blindly strove to break through its barrier. She had not reached Bael. The electrical charge threw her violently back; she’d been nursed back to health by her family and her spirit master, Quatama.
“Father.”
Lucifer didn’t turn. “You know, Bael, it’s a wonder that electricity didn’t maim her for life despite the healing ability of the angelfolk.
