Chapter Text
Alastor Boudreaux
My Morning Star
Mon âme sœur,
Are you spoiling me?
I confess, I had begun to think my efforts were entirely in vain. You may remember my earlier letters concerning my little experiments—the nights spent out in the bayou, calling your name into the dark until my throat was raw and my patience quite exhausted. I never truly believed any of it would amount to anything.
It was hope, I suppose. Foolish hope, perhaps, but hope all the same. The sort that persuades a man to do ridiculous things when he cannot bear the thought that he is entirely alone.
And now I find myself wondering whether I ought to take it all back.
Did you have something to do with this?
I am writing to you from my little cabin in the bayou, where I have lately found myself in rather unusual company. I made the acquaintance of a demon by the name of Rosie, a charming woman, I assure you, and considerably more pleasant than one might expect of Hell's inhabitants.
She came through the cathedral radio I had been using as a medium. Imagine my surprise when the thing began speaking back. She was gentle with me, at least at first. Her hands were soothing, her manner comforting, and she seemed to know precisely how uneasy I had been. Then she offered me power.
It is amusing, isn't it? I had never asked for such a thing. Not once. I had spent years asking only for an answer, and yet she was the one who placed the offer before me as though she already knew I would want it.
She knew my name, mon roi. She knew what I wanted. She knew what I had written to you.
And I am left to wonder, did you tell gossip about me? Did you speak of me to your subjects? Did you tell them about the persistent little mortal who kept writing letters to the King of Hell? Did you laugh about it over dinner? Did you send one of your servants to come collect me because you could not be bothered to answer yourself?
I do not know whether to be flattered or offended. Because there is one thing I cannot quite reconcile, my dear. Why was it not you?
I have spent years writing to you. Years putting my secrets upon these pages, confessing my sins, my fears, my hopes, and all the uglier pieces of myself I could never entrust to another living soul. I have called your name until I could scarcely speak it. I have studied your titles and searched for your symbols. I have spent more nights in this miserable swamp than any sensible man ought.
I have done everything I could think of to reach you.
And when someone finally came, it was not you.
Are you trapped too, Lucifer?
Is that why you do not respond? Is that why you only kept taking and never gave anything back to me? Because you cannot?
I am rather brilliant, am I not, my dear? I believe I may have finally puzzled this one out. There has always been a little thought in the back of my mind that I could not quite silence, and lately it has become rather difficult to ignore.
I am glad that you are not neglecting me out of cruelty. You are not neglecting me because you do not care. You simply cannot answer. Because something has you bound. It is a little refreshing to think that even the King of Hell, it seems, may have his chains.
After all, I only ever used your name in my rituals. I never called upon a different demon. I never asked for anyone else. I never even knew any other names to call. And yet, someone else appeared. Someone else came to me in the smoke and the candlelight and offered me everything I had been asking you for.
Curioser and curioser, as they say.
But keep your secrets, my darling. I will know them all soon enough.
There is another matter I ought to tell you. A few months ago, I had the most peculiar premonition. I cannot properly explain it. There was no illness, no warning from a physician, no enemy at my door that I could name. Nothing tangible at all. Only the sudden and persistent conviction that my time here is drawing toward its close.
It is much like the influenza that swept through the city years ago, something invisible until it has already taken hold. I wake some mornings with the certainty that something is waiting just beyond my sight. I find myself looking over my shoulder when there is no one behind me. I hear a name upon the wind and cannot afterward remember whether I truly heard it.
And my maman always told me to watch out for the signs. To keep an ear close to the ground for what fate is telling me. She said the spirits speak to those who listen. She said the world is full of warnings for those with eyes to see them. She was always right about things like that. She always knew when something was coming. She always knew when to be afraid.
I visited her grave yesterday. Perhaps for the last time.
I knelt there beneath the old oaks, with the Spanish moss hanging overhead and the cemetery so quiet that I could hear my own breathing. I told her that I loved her. I told her that I was sorry. I told her that I had not become the man she hoped I would.
And then I told her something rather terrible.
I told her that I hope I never see her again.
Not because I do not love her. You know I do.
But because I know where I am going, Lucifer. I know what awaits a man like me.
She deserves peace. She deserves Heaven. She deserves a place far removed from everything I have become.
And if I discover that she has been in your kingdom all this while—
Well, my King, I shall be most displeased.
I may even have to put a knife to your throat and ask you what right you had to keep her from me. You know how particular I am about my family.
And I do not make idle threats, my dear. By now, you ought to know that much. I have never been a man given to empty words. What I promise, I keep. What I vow, I see through. Every soul I told you I would send, I sent. I have been remarkably dependable in that regard.
So if I tell you that I shall have a knife at your throat, you may take me at my word.
I will find you. I will corner you. I will put a blade beneath your chin and ask, very calmly and very politely, where my maman is. I think you know me well enough to understand that I would not need to raise my voice.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
There is something else I have not told you. That is a curious thing, considering how much I have written to you over the years. I have given you my anger, my grief, my sins, my little triumphs, and nearly every shame I possess. Yet this I kept to myself.
Perhaps because I was ashamed of it. Perhaps because I was afraid of what you might think. Or perhaps because some things become rather more dreadful once they have been put into words.
I have developed a taste for human flesh, my King.
I cannot tell you precisely when the curiosity began. Perhaps it was simply another consequence of the life I have chosen. After so many years of watching men die, after so many bodies and so many nights spent wondering where the line between man and monster ought to be drawn, one begins to lose interest in the ordinary boundaries.
I wondered what they were like. And, being the sort of man I am, I eventually found out.
I shall spare you the particulars. You have never struck me as a gentleman who requires them. What matters is that I did not find the experience as horrifying as I ought to have.
That troubles me more than the act itself.
There is something peculiar about consuming what once belonged to another living creature. It is intimate in a most dreadful fashion. The man is gone, and yet some part of him remains with you.
They say a man becomes what he consumes. If there is any truth to that old saying, then I suppose I have made myself from wicked men.
Their sins. Their fear. Their cruelty. All of it swallowed down and made part of me.
Does that disgust you, cher? I find myself wondering.
Would the King of Hell recoil from such a thing, or would you merely laugh at my confession? Perhaps you have seen stranger appetites in your kingdom. Perhaps, compared with the things that dwell beneath your throne, I am still only a curious little mortal with peculiar habits.
I rather hope so.
After all these years, I should hate to disappoint you.
My King, I kept my promises. Did you keep yours?
Tell me, are they waiting for me there? All those men I sent you. My game. My delicious little prey. I have given you quite a collection by now, have I not? Years of wicked men, one after another, delivered straight to your kingdom. I said I would do it, and I did.
I have always been a man of my word. So when I finally arrive, I want to see them.
I want my father waiting for me. I want him to look upon my face and remember. I want him to understand that the boy he once thought powerless was the very man who sent him to Hell. And then I want to give chase.
Would you permit me that much, my King? To hunt him through your kingdom as I hunted him through the streets of New Orleans? To let him run until he understands that there is no corner dark enough, no door strong enough, no distance great enough to put him beyond my reach?
I want to hear him beg.
Is he there? Is he waiting for me? I certainly hope so.
Because I am not afraid of death, cher. Not anymore.
I have spent too many years thinking about what comes after this life to be frightened of it now. When my heart finally gives out, when my lungs take their last breath, when this old body can no longer carry me, I know there will be somewhere else waiting.
And, if I am very fortunate, so will you. I wonder if you are looking forward to it.
Your executioner is coming, after all. And, truth be told, I am getting rather hungry.
I have spent my whole life sending souls to you. I have kept my bargain. I have filled your kingdom with men who deserved no mercy, and I have never once broken my word. Now I think I have earned the right to come collect what is mine.
So do not keep me waiting too long, my King.
Even I must have a limit.
And to sweeten the bargain, I shall give you one final confession: I crave you.
The feeling is ill-advised, improper, perhaps even sinful. But I made my peace with sin a long while ago. I was never a particularly good Catholic, nor have I ever pretended to be a particularly good man. I am what I am, and I have grown rather fond of being so.
And what I am, ma lumière d'étoiles, is yours.
I think I have known it since I was young. Since that first letter, when I put pen to paper and confessed my ugliest thoughts to a stranger in the dark. Since the first time I spoke your name aloud. Since I first imagined standing before you and understood, with some embarrassment, that I was no longer writing to a figure of power.
I was writing to someone I wished to belong to.
Perhaps I have always been yours.
Perhaps I always shall be.
I crave your attention. Your time. The sound of your voice. The weight of your gaze upon me. The warmth of having you near. I want a little corner of your heart reserved for me, and I want it to be a place no one else may occupy.
I want to be the thought that crosses your mind when the room grows quiet. I want to be the name you remember. I want to be the one you reach for when you are alone.
And, curse me for a fool, I want you to love me.
That may be the most shameful confession of them all.
I love you.
Improperly, perhaps. Foolishly, certainly. With the sort of devotion that would make a sensible man blush and a priest reach for his rosary.
But I cannot seem to make myself regret it. So when I finally come to your kingdom, I ask only one favor of you:
Do not ignore me.
And whatever else you do, cher,
do not forget my name.
I am not certain this shall be the last letter I ever send you, so I may as well put the whole of it on paper. I have little left to lose, and perhaps something yet to gain from this curious correspondence of ours.
Even now, as I sit at supper with the remains of my latest quarry before me, I find myself imagining you across the table. Listening to me talk. Laughing when I coax it out of you with some bit of gossip. Perhaps reaching across the table to take my hand. Perhaps looking at me as though, for once, I am the only man in the room.
It does not trouble me that my time upon this earth may be short. I could be dead within the year. The month. The week, for all I know. I have made my peace with that.
This world has given me pain enough, loneliness enough, and more reasons than I care to count to become someone I scarcely recognize.
What matters to me is what comes afterward. What matters is that I shall be with you. Won't you promise me that, my Morning Star?
Grant your loyal servant one small mercy. I have given you my heart, my mind, and whatever remains of my soul. I have laid myself bare before you and asked for very little.
Only this. Only you.
I love you and you may do with that love whatever you please.
I know what they say about you. I know the stories, the warnings, the dreadful little tales whispered by frightened men in churches and behind closed doors. I know what sort of creature they believe you to be.
You could use me. You could break me. You could cast me aside when I have ceased to amuse you. And I suspect I would come crawling back all the same. I would write another letter. Then another.
I would love you still. That is how deep this has taken root in me.
I do not want freedom power salvation. I want you.
I want to stand beside you for whatever eternity awaits us. I want to belong to you, Lucifer. Entirely and without reservation. So when I arrive, and I shall, my King, you have my word, I will walk into your throne room without lowering my head.
I will look you in the eye. And I will say:
“I am here. I kept my promises. Now you must keep yours.”
And you will have no choice but to see me.
So, my dear king,
wear red.
For I do favor that color.
With love, for love,
Your Alastor