Hollywood Hills

Chapter Thirty

"Okay, smartass. This all leads to one of the key points to my thesis. There are all sorts of books about demons and demonic possession that survived from the Middle Ages and later, but almost all of them were written by the Church or by clergymen scholars, who cast demons as ... well, demons. One of the main claims of the Regensburg IX document was that there was no discernible difference between angels, devils, and demons ... that they were all part of the same species."

"Dove," she said as she patted his hand, "I went to the same Catholic school you did. Everyone knows the Devil is just a fallen angel."

"The differences according to the author of R. IX is more confused .... Look, you read my silly thesis. What did the demon say about that?"

"Well ... according to Perfesser Pitt-Rivers, a war broke out in the heavens, and it raged across the universe until the two sides fought their final and decisive battle here on Earth. Afterwards, the losing army fled to some unidentified 'other region,' where the winning army trapped them. But, and this is the sort of creepy and sort of cool part, some soldiers from the losing army didn't flee Earth. They abandoned their angelic forms and stayed here, where, according to the manuscript, they survived ... by hiding among us."

"Question. If creatures in Heaven are angels, and those in the other region ... Hell ... are demons, what are the creatures who stayed on Earth?"

"Does it really matter what you call them? Like you said, if they exist, they live among us, taking over human bodies in some sort of creepy ... possession, and they just pass themselves off as humans. And that's the part that weirds me out a little. Doesn't that mean anyone you meet could be one of them?"

"Maybe," he said with a faint shrug. "So?"

"Yuck. It's freaky. And I got my eye on you, because you said they prefer taking over the bodies of the weak and dying."

He started laughing. "As a matter of fact, I did write that," he teased. "Are you convinced a demon took me over when I was in the hospital?"

"No," she said in a tone that sounded somewhat like appeasement, "but I think it's what got you interested in the whole thing." She then added, more reluctantly, "... and, okay, maybe I thought that for a split second. But I'm not crazy anymore, so I don't want to hear it."

"Anyway," he went on with a smile, "the pith of this ... let's just call him a demon. The pith of the demon's story in R. IX is that God really wasn't a god at all. He was just another angel, a very powerful angel, but just an angel. And the war in Heaven wasn't about rebellion, it was about the fact this uber-angel, who R. IX demon admitted was one of the most ancient of their kind, started bossing the other angels around and began claiming that he, the uber-angel, had created the rest of them."

"Are we still Catholics?"

"Not that I've thought of that in twenty years, but I suppose we are ... until we see an article of excommunication."

"So, when was your last confession?" she asked.

"To you, a couple of weeks ago. Can we get on with this?"

She felt that goofy smile spread across her face.

"I'll take that for a yes," he said. "But I don't think you have to worry about bumping into any angels or demons. According the R. IX demon, creatures like him are incredibly rare. Vast legions of angels were killed in the war, and most of those few who survived split into the two camps of Heaven and Hell. Though the demon was convinced it was just a matter of time before the war flares again. Either way, the ones who stayed on Earth afterward and hid were only a tiny handful."