Covet

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Demon was such a nasty word.

And so damned old-school. People heard demon and they conjured up all kinds of Hieronymus Bosch helter-skelter—or worse, Dante's stupid-ass Inferno crap. Honestly. Flames and tortured souls and everyone wailing.

Okay, maybe Hell was a little toasty. And if the place had had a court painter, Bosch would have been at the head of the pack.

But that wasn't the point. The Demon actually saw itself as more of a Free-Will Coach. Much better, more modern. The anti-Oprah, as it were.

It was all about influence.

The thing was, the qualities of the soul were not dissimilar to the components of the human body. The corporeal form had a number of vestigial parts, like the appendix, the wisdom teeth, and the coccyx — all of which were at best unnecessary, and at worst capable of compromising the functioning of the whole.

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love…prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude…all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy.

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