by N. P. Martin
Oh Jesus, what have I done, I thought as I stared in horror at the beast before me. It’s going to rip me apart just like that other demon did to my family.
Baal reared up to his full height of six and a half feet or so. His body was again human like, thickly muscled, the skin greenish-black with bright orange markings like tattoos running across his whole ghastly frame. Baal’s glowing amber eyes—set deep into hollow sockets—glowered down at me. "Who dares to summon me?" it roared in a voice so deep and resonant, and so full of absolute authority, that I felt my bowels loosen to the point where I almost shat myself, which would have been a fitting response to that question. Somehow or other, though, my sphincter retained more dignity than the rest of me and retained control.
I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out were unintelligible croaks as my throat was so stricken by fear. This was mostly down to the fact that the demon hadn’t possessed the body of John Doe like I thought he would. Instead, he appeared in his true form, which made him a much bigger threat to me. Another fuck up, I thought. I didn’t have the time however, to ponder what went wrong.
"Speak!" the demon commanded as I felt the heat radiate off it, the smell of something foul and otherworldly creeping over me like a noxious gas, turning my stomach.
Come on. Get a grip of yourself, Creed. Take control of this thing before it fucking kills you!
"I am...August Creed," I said, somehow managing to stand up on shaky legs, the demon seeming even more fierce and frightening as I came face to face with it. "I…I summon you here to do my bidding, Baal.”
I put as much command and authority into my voice as I could, thinking it would be enough to take control of the demon, but it wasn’t. So I wasn’t expecting what happened next.
The demon stepped forth out of the magick circle like it wasn't even there and gripped me around the throat with one of his enormous hands, his skin like sandpaper around my neck, his grip crushing. Then he lifted me off the ground and held me up, turning my head this way and that like he was inspecting a half-dead animal found on the side of the road. When he pulled me close so my face was just inches from his own, his fetid breath—like the worst fart you've ever smelled in your life—blasted into my open mouth. I would have vomited if the demon's grip hadn't of been so constraining around my throat. I could barely look the demon in the eye as he continued to breathe his foul stench onto me.
"You think you have power over me, human?" Baal said, not as loud this time, but his voice still boomed in my ears. "You think you can command me?" I looked into the demon’s eyes long enough to see the black heart of evil in them before Baal casually tossed me against the nearest wall, slamming into a stack of shelves. When I crashed to the floor again, heavy books and glass jars rained down on top of me. It was as if a giant had casually swiped me aside and I could only lay there in shock as I struggled to breathe after being nearly choked to death. There was also pain, but my still dumping adrenaline masked most of it. Then the demon was on me again in a flash, his rough hand around my throat again, lifting me up and pinning me against the wall, holding me there as his eyes bored into me.
"Wait!" I managed to croak out before the pressure around my neck got too great. "I…left you…an offering."
The demon's huge maw stretched into some rictus grin, and it pressed me harder into the wall until I felt unconsciousness start to pull me under. “That rotten sack of dead meat? You insult me!”
Just as I started to black out, Baal let go of me so I crashed to the floor while it crossed the room in a blur of motion. Blood rushed into my head along with my returning consciousness, and I watched the demon pick up the body of John Doe like it was nothing and begin to rip it apart. In a matter of seconds, John Doe's body had been torn to pieces and thrown all over the basement. Hunks of flesh slapped into my naked body, splattering blood all over me. When the demon was finished, John Doe had been reduced to a thousand tiny pieces.
It's going to do that to me next if I don't do something, I thought in a panic.
The Sword Of Rashanti still lay inside the magick circle a few away. Quickly, I focused my magick and thrust out one hand as I concentrated on the sword, which rattled for a second and then skidded across the floor towards me. I grabbed it immediately and struggled to my feet, thinking what a stupid idea it was to fight a demon who could rip apart a body in seconds. But stupid or not, I knew it was necessary.
"Alright, motherfucker," I said, holding the sword high, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than I felt. "Let's fucking do this!"
Baal, covered in blood and gore, laughed and came barreling toward me.
21
Fight
BEFORE THE SUMMONING, I dared have in my head a little movie featuring Baal and me, the two of us talking and working things out, not fighting. I know, it was foolish of me even to think in such far-fetched terms, but my optimism got the better of me sometimes.
Baal got to within three feet of me before I thrust my hand out and stopped him dead with my magick. To be honest, I was shocked my magick even worked against such a powerful demon. But then I realized that something was different. My magick was different. Due to all the dark energy in the room—what with the demon, the still open book on the floor, all the bad intent in the air—my magick had shifted into darker territory. It felt different inside me. Not cool and flowing the way it normally did, but hot and burning, like a hundred snakes slithering around inside me, their bodies covered in tiny razors that cut my flesh as they moved along. The pain was dreadful, I have to say, but it was also somehow sweet at the same time, maybe because I felt the increase in power I was getting in return for all that pain and darkness swirling around in me. As I held the surprised demon back, I added a bit of pain into the mix, and that’s when I really felt the difference in power, when my magick became fueled by sheer bad intent that seemed to materialize unbidden from within me, serving as explosive fuel for my magick.
Baal growled in anger at first as he felt the pain in his chest, then he smiled and stretched his arms out, as if to say, “Bring it on, motherfucker. Do your worst.”
So I did.
I channeled as much pain and murderous intent as I could muster into the demon (and I seemed to be able to muster a lot), driving the beast back towards the wall, my features twisted by effort and the sinister feel of the black magick I was wielding. Even the color of the magick itself, normally bright blue or white, sometimes green or yellow depending on the spell, had darkened into tones of purple, deep orange and red, even black. A perfect reflection of the intent that fueled it.
And I loved it. It was like I had been injected with a massive cocktail of drugs that were now taking me on the ride of my life, the rush as strong and impressionable as any heroin junkies first ever hit.
The force of the darker magick coursing through me had now driven the great demon down to his knees. Even so, there was a look of defiance on Baal’s face and something else that seemed to suggest he was somehow pleased that I was doing what I was doing. “Can you feel it, Warlock?” Baal asked me. “Can you feel the darkness coursing through you?” His laugh was deep and sinister.
The evil intent in me had built up to a point where all I wanted to do was destroy the very demon that I had went to so much trouble to summon in the first place. I wanted to wipe it out of existence, tear it into a million tiny pieces and incinerate each one. Through sheer force of will, I channeled more of the black magick through myself and into the demon. Baal roared at the increased intensity of the magickal assault on him, his roar one of genuine pain this time. I still gripped the Sword Of Rishanti tight in my hand, and I raised my arm back in preparation for a decapitation. Rage and a burning desire for vengeance against demonkind fueled my will to kill as I brought the sword down towards the demon’s neck in a wide arc.
Stop!
The swords killing arc was cut short by a tiny, far away voice coming from somewhere inside my head, telling me to stop what I was doing, and that if I kil
led the demon, I would be killing the power needed to break the curse on me. It took a monumental force of will for me to listen to that tiny voice. Other, far more sinister voices were begging me to carry on, to let the darkness take over and kill the demon.
With a scream of effort, I managed to cut my magickal assault short and stepped away from the still kneeling demon. "No!" I bellowed as I tried to fight against the darkness taking hold of me.
“Don’t fight it!” Baal shouted. “Accept it!”
Every muscle and sinew in me were twisting against the darkness as I tried to wring it out of my system, at the same time calling back up the lighter magick that I had spent decades cultivating. Closing my eyes, I compelled myself to relax and focus on drawing up my own magick again. It took a few moments, but I was able to flush most of the poisonous black magick out of my system. Then I turned and looked at the demon, who was back on his feet again. “You knew this would happen,” I said, aware that I was back in danger now that I didn’t have the darker magick to increase my powers. “You wanted this to happen.”
Baal reared up, looking down at the scorching hole that went halfway into his chest like he had just been hit by a burning meteor. Then he fixed his fierce gaze on me. "You are more powerful than I thought you were, human." It grunted. "You have proven yourself to me." Another grunt left its mouth, low and guttural as it took a few steps towards me. "That doesn't mean I am at your service."
“What does it mean then?” I asked, feeling like the games were just beginning.
“It means I will help you, but only if you do something in return.”
And there it is, I thought. Always a condition. Did I expect any less? Of course not. “What do you want?”
The demon came closer to me, and I tried not to step back away from him. The fighting was over, and strictly speaking there should have been no need to fear Baal anymore, but I would have been foolish not to. “You’ve been marked.”
I frowned, not understanding. “What?”
“Another demon has marked you.”
Another demon? Does he mean the one who killed my family? “You know the demon?”
“I know it.”
“What’s its name?”
“That isn’t why you summoned me here.”
“How do you know why I summoned you?”
“I see your retreating soul. I see the energy of the spell you are under. You want me to reverse it.”
"And can you?" I asked, really hoping the demon would say yes, otherwise the entire summoning would have been a waste of time.
Thankfully, Baal nodded. “I can help you reverse the spell.”
I exhaled in relief. “Alright. Tell me what you want. I don’t have much time left to fix this.”
Baal grinned hungrily, exposing his glistening, pointed teeth. "I want souls who will serve as my slaves. Get me one hundred souls, and I will lift your curse for you."
“One hundred souls?” I shook my head in disbelief. "How the hell am I going to get one hundred souls? That's too many." It would have been bloody near impossible to gather up so many souls. Plus, I wasn't in the business of stealing people's souls, especially a hundred of them.
Baal glowered at me for a moment, infernal fires seeming to burn deep in his amber eyes. Then he grunted dismissively. “Find another demon to summon.”
Panic rose in me as Baal’s body began to turn to smoke and fire before my eyes. He was about to vanish, and I would be back to square one again. Shit. What did I expect anyway? That Baal would be happy with a case of beer and a carton of Lucky Strikes as payment? “Alright!” I shouted as Baal began to fade from view. “I’ll get you your souls!”
“Summon me again when you are done,” Baal said, no more than a fiery outline in the dark of the basement now.
I watched for another moment as the demon finally disappeared, leaving only a trail of smoke behind as evidence he was ever there in the first place (and the scattered remains of John Doe, of course). My body dropped in relief when the demon was gone. I thought for sure I was going to lose myself earlier as all that black magick was flowing through me. So powerful. So addictive.
Sighing, I noticed Blaez standing on the stairs leading down from the kitchen, smoke rising out of his pelt, his dark yellow eyes smoldering at me. I had no doubt the Garra Wolf heard everything. I also knew he understood everything he no doubt heard from upstairs.
I looked back at Blaez and said nothing.
22
Sanaka's Sanctum
THE FIRST THING I did after I left the basement was take a long, hot shower. I felt soiled by the infernally dark magick that had run through me, and I wanted to be cleansed of it, although I knew it would take more than a hot shower to do so. A Purification Ritual would have to be done to rid myself of all traces, but to be honest, I didn't see the point. Not yet anyway. A heavy feeling in my gut told me that I probably wasn't done with black magick just yet (or it wasn't done with me more like). And given what I now had to do to pay the demon I'd summoned, I would have been wasting my time with a Purification Ritual. A hot shower would have to do.
In the living room after the shower, I called Leona. “Hey,” I said when she answered. “It’s Creed.”
“Creed,” she said, sounding sleepy. “You know what time it is?”
“Three a.m.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled, despite her annoyance. “I thought you might want to know that I’m like, you know, still alive and all, so…”
“Alright. Thanks for letting me know, Creed. Now if you don’t mind, some us have to get up at dawn…”
"Sure," I said as if I was there with her (wishing I was). "Go back to sleep."
She had hung even before I finished speaking. Then as I stood holding the phone, a weird sort of cold feeling came over me, followed by an uncontrollable shaking in both my hands. Shivering, I made a fist with both hands in an effort to control the tremors, and after a moment, they subsided and my body returned to its normal temperature.
What the hell was that about? I wondered as I leaned against the wall.
Though I knew what it was about. It was my soul getting restless within me, wanting to leave the person it no longer recognized.
Ghoulship was getting closer all the time.
A while later, I slipped on my trench coat and teleported to my mentor Sanaka's house a few miles west in Little Tokyo, one of four Asian sub-neighborhoods located in Chinatown. Little Tokyo was a weird place, the buildings being an eclectic mix of Japanese and Western architecture that some found to be quirky and pleasing, others to be hideous. I quite liked the place myself as it was the closest you would ever get to experiencing the culture of the real Tokyo without actually going there (although not the otherworldliness of the place itself).
Sanaka's Sanctum was a small Pagoda style house set in a patch of forest on the edge of a small parkland. Unless you were looking for it, you would hardly even have know the house was there, and if you did see it, you would probably think it was some decorative feature of the park, in keeping with the Japanese fantasy theme of the park itself. Sanaka's house was a two storey, each floor having its own little curved roof that wing-tipped at the ends. The whole structure looked like it had been thrown together by a drunken Mage and a carpenter who'd taken too many magic mushrooms. The symmetry was all off, and there were odd protuberances here and there like things were pushing through from inside the house and buckling the wood, which somehow made the house seem more natural than the trees surrounding it. In all, it was like something only a wild eccentric would live in, which Sanaka was in many respects.
Even though it was almost 4 a.m., it was highly unlikely that the old Mage would be sleeping. Sanaka only slept once a week, which had been enough to keep him going for the last century or so. If he were at home, he would sense me immediately.
True to form, the front door opened wide by itself to admit me entrance into the outwardly ramshackle Sanctum. Inside told a different story, however.
It was like walking into a completely different house. The layout didn't seem to match the outside for a start, which didn't faze me as it wasn't the first time I had visited Sanaka at his home. I practically lived there at one stage while he put me through hellishly intensive training. My memories of the house were somewhat tainted by the daily anguish and pain I went through in order to push my magickal abilities to their limits. Most of that pain and anguish was mental in nature, but frequently physical, sometimes spiritual. As the mysteries of the universe are painstakingly revealed to you, there tends to be more than a little accompanying spiritual malaise as you get to grips with the seemingly infinite and highly magickal nature of the universe and the myriad worlds and dimensions within it. Sanaka as a teacher was particularly ruthless anyhow. He cushioned none of my pain or discomforts, believing I had to feel everything so that I could learn and know things properly. Maybe he was right, but I often hated the bastard for his, at times, sadistic leanings. That had been over a decade ago, however, when my tutelage under him ended, and I went my own way. Sanaka would always still be my mentor though (along with Uncle Ray, of course). We had a connection (or at least we did have before I was cursed) that would always be there. Plus he knew more about magick than anyone else I knew.
The inside of the house was all polished wood floors and sliding screens that led into many more rooms than there had a right to be in such a small house. The normal laws of physics did not exist in Sanaka’s Sanctum. It was so big inside that you could easily get lost for days if you didn't know where you were going. You would end up like I did more than once, wandering the corridors, frustratedly opening door after door, only to find some strange room filled with even stranger things. Sometimes you would open the door to a seemingly small room and find yourself stepping inside a huge library containing thousands upon thousands of books. Other rooms would expose some weird outside space, like a meticulously kept garden, or a forest or a river. The rooms were like portals to other lands. If you weren't careful, you could lose your way forever.