Cardinal Vices Series: The Coming of Pride

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“That’s such a beautiful doll!” I whisper quietly into the little girl’s ear, “Her blonde hair is shining so brilliantly, it’s a perfect match to your hair.  That other girl doesn’t even have blonde hair.”  I step back a few steps to observe the subtle change in her delicate facial expressions.  The girl can’t be more than two years old, yet her heart still screams for something she knows is wrong.  There really is no such thing as childhood innocence; it just takes a lesser form.  Speaking of lesser forms…

“Take the doll!” Vespas screams directly into the girl’s ear.  Immediately the girl gets up and yanks the doll away from her friend, and runs back to her spot on the Daycare’s puzzle-like floor tiles as her little friend starts sobbing.  The attendant gets involved right away, considering she saw everything take place in front of her.  She makes the little girl; Paige was her name apparently, give the doll back and sends her to a time-out.

“You are an idiot,” I sneer at Vespas.  He looks at me in confusion. 

“I’m an idiot?  While you were taking your sweet time, I got her to take the doll,” he retorted.  Meanwhile, I’m still in disbelief that I was actually assigned to work with this moron.

“Yes, you are the idiot!  You weren’t careful, and you made the kid get caught and punished!  Now it will be harder to influence her to do these things next time because she won’t want to risk the consequences!”  I can see the white flames of my devil’s blaze in my eyes reflecting off of his fearful black ones and quickly blink them away, contented that he’s smart enough to finally realize his place.

“Do you think Prince Mammon will be mad?” he asks shakily, referring to my brother, the Prince of Greed.  He was the one who assigned this mission to us.

“Oh no,” I assure him, feeling the white blaze igniting again as I take hold of the demon’s twisted black arm, “He will be furious.”  With that, I shift us out of the human world and back to Mammon’s throne room, where he stands expectantly.

“Well?” he asks, his burning yellow eyes shifting between the two of us.  After seeing my angered expression, he turns to glare at Vespas.  “What happened?”

“The kid got caught, I don’t get what the big deal is,” he explains dismissively.

A look of surprise washes over Mammon’s features, “Oh don’t you?” he asks with mock amusement, “In your experience, is it easier to influence adults or children to sin?”

“Children,” Vespas answers, still not understanding where this is going.

“Do you know why?” Mammon asks calmly, almost as if he was talking to a child himself.

“No…” Vespas starts before he gets interrupted.

“Because children don’t know the difference between right and wrong!  When they get punished, something clicks in their little sponge-like brains that doing the things we tell them to do only has undesirable effects, and then what happens?  They stop listening to us!” Mammon booms, “Only the children who are surrounded by expert demons grow up to do great things.”

“Well, I guess I have a lot to learn,” Vespas chuckles uneasily, but silences himself upon seeing my brother’s expression.

“Unfortunately for you, this isn’t a training school,” Mammon sneers, unveiling his instrument, a weapon that each of us devils have, designed for the punishment and death of a demon.  Mammon’s is a golden scythe, which he uses to slash through the sad excuse of a demon, turning it to ash instantly.  Once the problem is taken care of, he turns his attention to me again.  “We expect to see you at dinner,” he says curtly before disappearing, the “we” meaning he and my other six brothers.