That Maxwell Rand had to kill himself to be walking down the hallway he now traversed didn't bother him at all. His Earth life had begun as a comfortable bore, and had developed into a maddening tedium of power and insatiable lust. He had willingly ended that life, consumed by an eagerness to embark upon the journey he now undertook---an eagerness undiluted by regret.

The pathway to his destination was no longer traveled. For millennia the Gates had kept beings of both sides from passing through them, for the blessed protection of mortals who saw no benefits in trafficking with the Rhonarian demons and had wearied of the evil influences their influx had brought to the sons of Adam.

But Maxwell Rand found the Gates and opened them.

He stared in childlike awe at the dizzying perspectives of the hall. Nothing in the esoteric texts he had acquired by gold and by blood had prepared him for this. An architecture of flame surrounded him as he advanced, more dazzling than anything he had ever imagined.

Soon he would stand at the feet of the Demonlord, the only one who could give him what he wanted.

Maxwell walked carefully, expecting danger at every step. He believed what the old books had taught him, though the ancient sorcerers that scribed those brittle pages had given only warnings and no encouragement.

The sounds of the Demonlord's throne room reached him: sounds of inhuman pains and passions that ushered the approach of unwelcome second thoughts. Maxwell remembered shunning the two bright lights that had met him on this side of death, banishing them with arcane curses that sent them wheeling away from him. He had laughed at them, though he was still feeling the wracking wash of sensations that had accompanied his separation from his physical body. That laughter echoed even now, a hollow sound that melted into the walls of fire as he approached the Demonlord's throne room.

The walls of fire seemed to watch him, their many faces flowing through the rippling yellow-orange flux. Vague messages to turn back impinged on the outer edges of his mind, but Maxwell Rand ignored them.

The hallway widened as he advanced. Here the broad concourse was floored with shiny black stone he could not feel beneath his feet.

A mild amazement at the humanness of his spiritual body walked with him. He was complete, his form identical to his Earth body, though much lighter and slightly opaque. Naked and alone, he moved through the dreamlike corridor.

A flicker of movement ahead caught his attention. He stopped, unsure of himself. The flicker grew, becoming a flurry of photons. That swirling light gained substance as Max stared, resolving into a form that triggered memories of the frightening passages he had painstakingly translated from age-worn pages.

The Guardian spread its arms, barring his way. The face of the thing forewarned him of its murderous intent, its lips curling back to bare its long sharp teeth.

A mental presence accompanied its form, searching Rand's thoughts with brutal interest.

"Why are you here, mortal maggot?" it asked, its mouth mangling the English words that it drew from Rand's mind.

In answer Maxwell lifted his hands, showing his palms to the Guardian as the ancient tomes had instructed him.

For a moment Maxwell wondered if the books had lied to him, betraying him here to a death beyond death. But the Guardian's eyes read the sigils on his palms and nodded, its grin changing to one of malicious amusement.

"Kah!---the sign of Ahlzahrad. I have not seen it for many centuries." The Guardian lowered its arms. Its clawed hands poised at its sides, the fingers flexing and relaxing, but it did not move. "I ask again, why are you here---and take care, mortal, the third time I ask I will cause you great pain."

Maxwell instinctively took a breath to speak, but his chest did not move. He opened his mouth, wondering if words would come out of it at all.

"I seek audience with the Demonlord, the Great---"

"Kah!" the Guardian interrupted, holding forth one huge claw. "The name of my Lord is forbidden. Do not speak it if you wish to continue your existence."

"My apologies. Yet I seek him. Let me pass."

The Guardian hissed at Rand's manner. "Why do you seek my Lord?" he asked, taking a step forward.

Maxwell forced the fear from his face, staring up at the Guardian as he stood his ground. "I wish to become a Rhonarian demon---to become his loyal subject for all eternity."

The Guardian laughed; at least Rand thought that throaty sound was a laugh. "You are mortal," he answered. "Even now an Earthly cunt awaits your miserable return." The Guardian took another step toward him. "Let me help you on your way."

"No!" Maxwell held his palms up again, choking back his fear. "I bear the sign of Ahlzahrad. You cannot touch me or bar my way."

The Guardian roared, clenching fists the size of Rand's head. But it checked its advance, staring with a hate that made its eyes glow like the flames around them. "It is so," the thing conceded. Its posture changed; it stood before Max as the grudging executor of its duties, acknowledging that it was bound by its laws. "If you wish to be hung from the vaults, I cannot stop you. Go," he said, stepping to one side to let the first Earthling soul in more than a thousand years enter the Demonlord's palace.

The ancients had used words like "monstrous" and "awe-inspiring" to describe the Demonlord's throne room, but Maxwell was in no way prepared for the unearthly grandeur he found there.

The Demonlord's palace was fashioned of living flame; its vaulted ceiling reached to the limits of sight. And, yes, beings hung there, dotting the ceiling like dead stars, so far up that he could barely make them out at all.

A broad aisle led to the huge throne, but Maxwell could not take his eyes off the incredible periphery. A boggling array of beings, none of them human, engaged in variations of copulation and torture so inconceivable that in some cases he could not determine which one of those categories they represented. Screams filled the air---and other less identifiable sounds---a cacophony to match this bizarre array of sights.

Rand walked down the aisle, trying to ignore the wailing creatures. He passed a reptilian humanoid flailing a bound feathered female with a whip that writhed as if it, too, were alive. Beyond them a trio of shiny slug-like things wrestled, whether in passion or in pain he couldn't begin to guess. On his left, a pair of vampire-toothed creatures gnawed on a hanging figure that still screamed, though it was little more than a flesh-draped skeleton.

A blue demon licked its captive with a tongue of flame as he fornicated with it, its eyes following Rand as he advanced.

Maxwell passed lesser demons of many distinctions, all of them offering their lusts or their cruelties to the atmosphere of their Lord's palace.

As he approached the throne, two tall winged attendants rose into the air, obscuring his sight of the purple-skinned giant who sat upon it. They glided down the long stairway and landed in his path, their fanged mouths open in deadly greeting.

Rand found it difficult to look at them. When he did look, it felt like their teeth were chewing on his mind. But he faced them, determined to fulfill his destiny here.

"I wish to speak to the Demonlord," he said, his voice carrying over the noise around him.

"I wish to speak to the Demonlord," they mimicked with voices like rusty hinges.

Maxwell raised his palms. The attendants shared a shocked glance and then stared down at him with open curiosity.

"You bear the sigils of Ahlzahrad, mortal," said one. "Why do you dare such blasphemy?"

The other leaned closer, its face splitting with a grin. "That sorcerer is imprisoned here, where his soul withers to a husk in its cell," it said. "His torments are delicious."

"You cannot bar my way," said Rand, but his tone quavered with fear.

"You cannot bar my way," they repeated, mocking his words with their raspy voices.

Maxwell mustered all of his courage. "I tire of this," he said, a false bravado modulating his words. "Stand aside."

As he spoke, his eyes were drawn upward. Over the heads of the attendants he could see that the Demonlord had stood from his throne.

"Come forward," said a voice that boomed in Maxwell's thoughts.

The Demonlord's wide slash of a mouth hadn't moved---Rand realized that the resonant command had issued mind to mind.

The attendants moved out of Maxwell's path, and he ascended the steps.

The Demonlord stood over twice a human's size, his body hairless and sexless, though his muscular torso was definitely male. His face looked as if it had been chiseled from a chunk of purple marble by the hand of a mad genius who hated beauty and was obsessed by the compulsion to mock it. His eyes flared and flickered like the flames of two torches as he stared down at his unsummoned visitor.

"You have passed the Gates," thought the Demonlord, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "How did you do this thing?"

Rand felt the Demonlord in his mind, tearing through his thoughts like a lion through the jungle. He knew he could not lie to the Demonlord; imagining the consequences of any attempt to do so made him shudder.

"I traveled to Rome and kidnapped the sister of a Vatican priest. I forced him to break into the library there and steal books for me."

The Demonlord smiled; his three tongues twined in his mouth like a nest of hungry snakes.

"The books referred to others," Maxwell explained. "My search for them led me to Egypt and to India, where I bribed and killed to obtain them. I studied their languages and translated them; their passages provided spells that required the blood of an unbaptised infant of my line and, finally, my own. The power of those spells led me here, my Lord."

"This pleases me." The Demonlord's thoughts burned into Rand's mind. "The resourcefulness of mortals has often pleased me." He regarded Maxwell for a moment, and Rand knew that his fate hung upon that moment by the thinnest of threads. "So---tell me, Maxwell Rand of Earth---what is it you seek here?"

Rand lowered his eyes. "I wish to become a subject of this kingdom, that I may serve you for all eternity," he said.

Silence.

Maxwell expected the Demonlord to echo the Guardian's laugh; he was suddenly certain that he was doomed. He cursed himself for attempting to petition an entity such as this; the presence of the Demonlord made him feel small and frail, of no consequence at all.

"A mortal who wishes to be a subject of my realm?" He sent Maxwell a command to look up. Maxwell obeyed. "This, too, pleases me," the Demonlord said, the words cutting into Maxwell's mind like razors. The Demonlord's eyes of fire seemed to see through him. "What do you offer me as payment for this boon?"

Rand thought it over. He possessed an impressive fortune on Earth---he could retrieve it somehow, give it to the Demonlord, and---

"Gold," Rand said.

Now the Demonlord did laugh; it was a sound Rand hoped he would never hear again. "Foolish mortal. There are creatures here that shit gold. Such dross means nothing to me."

"I give you my soul," Maxwell offered, spreading his arms in a gesture of complete submission.

The Demonlord laughed again; the sound of it felt like barbed wire ripping through Rand's brain. "You gave me that when you walked into this room," he said, his grin terrible.

Maxwell dredged for an answer. To think that he had come here so unprepared made him cringe. In his lust for power and immortality, he---wait, that was it---lust.

"I offer you women," Rand said.

The giant's smile changed, filling Maxwell with fear. Max couldn't read that tooth-edged grin at all.

In answer, the Demonlord changed his posture, grunting with effort as his triple-shafted phallus dropped into view of the stunned mortal.

"Your women could never survive me," the Demonlord said, leaning back to thrust his hips forward as his three members writhed, the fanged mouths at their tips snapping at the air.

Rand's hopes dashed. He picked them up from his feet and tried once more to appease the Demonlord. "I offer you three women," he said. It seemed appropriate. "Body and soul. Three beautiful women of Earth, yours for your pleasure."

The Demonlord tilted his head, deciding, perhaps, whether or not to blast Rand to ashes.

The three snakelike phallic members lashed the Demonlord's thighs as he thought, drooling venom that hit the floor to hiss and bubble like acid.

"Show them to me," he commanded.

Rand thought fast. He had known many women, and he hurriedly filled his mind's eye with three of them that he hoped would appeal to the Demonlord.

The Demonlord's eyes danced like candle flames in an intermittant breeze. Rand's hopes flowered. He presented the Demonlord with special memories of three mortal women---passionate memories that would showcase their frailty and their tenderness as well as the intensity of their lust.

"You must not kill them," razored into Maxwell's mind. Maxwell nodded, listening intently for the sharp thoughts. "You must force them to take their own lives---only then can I bring them here to me."

Maxwell Rand nodded again, barely containing his triumph.

"The drawing of their essence will enable you to stay between the worlds in spirit long enough to achieve this."

"I understand."

"But remember, even as you draw from them---they are mine!"

"I will remember," Maxwell said, smiling up at his new Lord.