A Demon in the Dark Read Free Page A

damage you’ve done is too great. I cannot trust you.”
    “Soldiers often pray to strange gods before battles. Constantine’s interest in the Christian God is but a phase. There was no lasting harm in my actions.”
    “Constantine was to become a bloody tyrant! If he feels the Enemy saved him this once, he is not like to reinstate the old policy of state persecution, as I have planned for so long. Constantine was meant to seem tolerant in Britain and Gaul so the people would rally behind him, but now he may become tolerant, even in power. He will slaughter no Christians if he has a vision of their God in his memory, and when the Christians are not dead, their words may yet spread. We will all have less blood on our hands than we desire.”
    “And you are certain that a Christian emperor would deliver less blood?”
    As the great devils continued their bickering, Balthior noted the way the demon crowd watched Xeres. Fear was writ upon their faces, and along with it, admiration. Underneath these, though, lay envy. Balthior knew it because he felt it himself. If Constantine became the first Christian emperor and Xeres’s name was soiled, many would act on that envy, rushing to fill the void of power. To have a name as known as Xeres’s, to speak a command to any demon and have it obeyed, to be remembered across all history for my sheer cunning and raw might. Let them watch. Let them covet. All the power of Xeres will belong to Balthior one day. Perhaps one day soon. Balthior the Great.
    The throng was so enamored of Xeres’s commanding voice and presence that it didn’t notice the dull roar in the distance. Marcus, who had once been so reserved, had grown quite heated in the last hour of the quarrel, and in retrospect it would be obvious that he was stalling. Om was the first to recognize the roar as a cavalry charge; the human battle had begun without the demon horde. A lack of demonic intervention now left the battle’s outcome to chance, and to the humans’ limited intellects.
    Balthior rushed through the woods. The demon army came barreling out behind him into early morning daylight. They dithered as they absorbed the breathtaking sight of the chaotic battleground at the Milvian Bridge. Countless horses and men had already drowned in the Tiber, and though the Praetorian Guard were making a last stand on the far side of the Via Flaminia, Maxentius’s defeat seemed imminent. Constantine’s legions pounded the remnants of his foe’s disorganized army mercilessly. Maxentius had formed his lines too close to the river, with no path of retreat save the makeshift pontoon structure his army had constructed in the bridge’s shadow. Only five men abreast could fit across the width of this structure, but many hundreds now tried to dash over it, since the Milvian Bridge itself had been mostly destroyed before the battle to prevent Constantine from crossing the river. Constantine had been outnumbered two to one, and now he will be victorious. A clever one indeed, though not so clever as me. For if Balthior could save Xeres’s reputation by slaying Constantine, the lowly Rat would have a chance at becoming the great demon lord’s right hand.
    Constantine’s new standard was the Greek letter chi crossed with the Greek letter rho, the first two letters in the name of Christ. Gold on crimson, this abomination stood strong and tall on nearly every vexillum across the battlefield. Balthior spotted Gnaeus running in circles, brazenly waving one of these emblems like a loon. From where he had gotten the flag, Balthior hadn’t a clue. He entered the man’s weak mind, made supple from years of comfortable possession, then made him turn and run away from the battle.
    The field’s chaos was too great for Gnaeus to be noticed by anyone, including the other demons, many of whom now joined the fight, whispering confusion into the ears of Constantine’s soldiers, trying in vain to turn the tide against him. Balthior found