The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  “Please,” she moaned. “Please.”

  “You were called; you came; you were chosen,” said Barbara. “You can’t escape your duties with a few petty pleas and a heart that forgets loyalty for the sake of self-preservation. Seize her.”

  With a sigh, Ian lumbered to his feet, realizing as he did how lightheaded he was. Jared grabbed Molly from behind, holding her in place as Ian advanced, as she thrashed and moaned. The look on Jared’s face was one of indescribable regret. Ian smirked at him.

  Bet you wish you hadn’t fucked her now, don’t you? he thought. This would have been so much easier if Jared had only waited. “I’ve got her,” he said, and grabbed her right arm, allowing Jared to shift his grasp to her left. Together, they pulled the struggling, wailing woman toward the waiting Seal. She fought them—how she fought them!—until her breath caught in her throat again, and she began to choke. She was still choking when they cast her into the center of the Seal and stepped quickly away.

  It was one thing to agree to take part in a lottery of sorts, one that would end as soon as someone was chosen. It was something else to be chosen after the game had ended. Neither of them was willing to risk that.

  Molly curled up in the center of the circle like an infant, hugging her knees to her chest, coughs wracking her body. She was still clothed. It would have been better if she’d been willing to fulfill her promise to the rest of them, to go naked and willingly, but that wasn’t necessary. Better was an ideal to strive for not, thankfully, the minimum that had to be achieved.

  “We have drawn the circle in salt and silver,” intoned Barbara. Her voice was perfectly clear. The smoke didn’t seem to bother her at all. Ian thought, for one envious moment, that she had somehow never been in danger of being selected.

  Unaware of his envy, or perhaps simply unconcerned by it, Barbara continued: “We have shaped the sigils in lead and gold. Every door has been opened for you, Caim, who knows the speech of bird and beast, who speaks truth to the faithful, who sees what is yet to be. We have prepared you this good offering, ready for your use, waiting only for you to come before us.”

  There was no sound apart from the rasp of Molly’s breath and the snivel of her fear. Jared and Ian exchanged an uneasy glance across the circle. When Barbara had proposed this as a better way to get ahead than grad school, they’d been desperate enough, and afraid enough of further student loan debt, to listen. Now, standing in a smoky basement with their friend having what looked like a nervous breakdown in the middle of a modified Seal of Solomon, this all seemed a little less realistic, and a little more like a children’s game gone horribly wrong.

  The candles blew out. The smoke, rather than rising toward the ceiling, fell out of the air like it had suddenly been weighted down, becoming too heavy for suspension.

  Molly laughed.

  It was a low, burbling sound, nothing like her usual flatly bitter tones. It was laughter filtered through soil and stone, run through a shield of sea salt and regrets. Ian fought the urge to step backward, away from the circle’s edge. Jared started forward, only to be stopped when Barbara shot him a harsh look, warning him away.

  “Who comes?” she demanded. “Speak your name, and be remembered before the world.”

  Molly’s laughter continued. No: not Molly’s. The fear was gone. Even more telling, the thin line of curdled regret that had always seemed to haunt her voice was gone as well, replaced by chilling delight. Slowly, she uncurled, stretching until the tips of her small breasts pointed toward the ceiling. There was nothing sexual about the motion, which made Ian even more uncomfortable. Molly had always been a woman aware of her effect on people, fond of straight men and lesbians, anyone who would dance to the tune behind her smile and the shimmy of her hips.

  This Molly didn’t look like she’d care about what people did when she looked at them. This Molly didn’t look like she’d care about much of anything. She ran her hands along her sides, practically purring at the touch of fingers on solid flesh.

  “Yes,” she said, voice low and virtually toneless. It was the voice of someone who hadn’t spoken in years, who didn’t know what she sounded like or how to stress the syllables in a natural manner. It was like listening to a rainstorm decide to carry on a conversation, and it made Ian’s bowels turn to water while his skin turned to ice.

  What had they done?

  “Yes?” echoed Barbara.

  “Yes.” Molly turned toward their high priestess, the woman who had brought them to the dark beneath the world, and smiled. “This will do. You have fulfilled your portion of the bargain. It is mine to keep?”

  Jared made a low, animal noise, but was otherwise silent as Barbara nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “The contract was signed in blood, and all forms were properly observed. The vessel belongs to you, now and always and until you have finished with it.”

  “That will be a while,” said Molly—no, not Molly, not anymore; never again—and stood, running her hands down her sides for a second time, until they came to rest just above her hips. She looked around the room and frowned. “So few of you. There are no great powers in this room. How is it you’ve called me with so few?”

  “We asked thirty-five,” said Barbara. “The number recommended in the scripture. These are the ones who agreed.”

  “So few,” said Molly again, more peevishly. “Never say the word ‘scripture’ in my presence again. You have the contract?”

  “I do,” said Barbara.

  Ian squirmed. He had helped to compose the contract, back when this had seemed like an impossible long shot. Molly’s body was already forfeit, the cost of the summons. Now came the tithing, the promises of wealth and comfort and anything the creature—the demon, oh, God, they had summoned an actual demon—desired, forever.

  Barbara produced the thick sheaf of paper and handed it over for Molly’s perusal. For her part, Molly stood unconcerned, flipping through the pages and nodding. Finally, she looked up, and smiled.

  “It will do,” she said.

  “Welcome, Caim,” said Barbara, and it was done.

  ***

  “It’s funny,” said Jared, sipping his overpriced latte, his legs extended in front of him and crossed at the ankles. To look at him, Ian would never have been able to guess that he had grown up poor and angry, never sure where his next meal was coming from, willing to do anything—anything—to get ahead.

  Six years of absolutely everything a man could want certainly made a difference. As did a decent suit. Ian was willing to bet that Jared’s current outfit cost more than his first car. It fit better, too, at least when measured against the rest of their environment.

  “What is?” asked Ian finally, rising to the prompt.

  “I was going through some boxes from the old apartment yesterday, and found a photograph of Cait, smiling. For a moment, I didn’t realize what I was looking at.” Jared blew on the surface of his coffee and took another sip. “I’ve adapted. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought that was possible, and yet here we are.”

  “Here we are,” agreed Ian.

  Here they were, six years after opening a door and inviting what waited on the other side to come through; here they were, standing on steady ground while everything around them shifted. Their investments always seemed to bear fruit. Their choices always seemed to be good ones, even when they made little sense in the beginning. They were the golden boys. The golden girl, as well: Helene had done just as well for herself as her companions. Ian thanked the heavens nightly that Molly had been chosen in place of himself, in place of the woman who had become his wife, and when he kissed their children before bed, he knew that everything they had done had been more than justified. The ends were glorious enough to put the means into their place.

  “Do you know why she wants to see us?”

  Ian shook his head.

  Summoning the demon Caim—a president of Hell, who could speak to animals and understand the messages in the rushing of water, who
could foresee the future—had been Barbara’s idea. A Classics major, she had always been a little to the left of ordinary, a little overly willing to believe in the impossible. She had been the one to go around their college campus with a petition, gathering signatures to summon her own little oracle.

  It had only been after the fact that Ian had learned she’d asked exactly thirty-five people to join her circle, a number she’d derived from some book of sacred alchemy. It had only been after it was all too late, after they had signed in blood—willingly, God, they had all signed of their own free will, and if that didn’t prove Barbara had been a sorceress even before she’d managed to summon a demon, nothing did—that she had explained the form the summoning was going to take.

  “Demon presidents of Hell don’t have material forms that can survive in this world,” she had explained, calm and easy as if she were telling them how they were going to handle rental fees on the room beneath the library, the one where the smell of smoke still lingered, even now, and would never quite come out of the walls. That, too, had been in their budget: an electrical fire, a cleaning fee, a series of carefully planned excuses that had been designed to be believable to the administration, even as they did nothing to touch upon the truth. “If we want Caim to come to us, to listen to us, to help us, we need to offer something in return. We need to offer a body.”

  They had been so innocent then, so easily led by promises of wealth and power—and to be fair, Barbara and Caim-now-Cait had delivered on all of them. With a demon who could see the future and talk to animals accessible at the press of a button, how could they not have become richer and more powerful than their wildest dreams? How could they have failed to thrive, once the world was entirely adjusted to their pleasures?

  Ian had no regrets about the last six years. He had a lovely home, a beautiful wife, two precious children, and more money than he would be able to spend in a dozen lifetimes. Even after paying what he considered to be his fair share of taxes—because why should he be beholden to more than his fair share, when his only crime was success? Really, it was unreasonable in ways he couldn’t even find words for—he knew he would never need to worry again. None of them would. And all it had cost them was a little bit of blood, a few hours every month to renew the summoning circles, and Molly.

  But Molly had come willingly, just like the rest of them. She had made her own decisions, and when those decisions led her to a dark place, she had been lost forever. It was sad. It was tragic, even, especially if you asked Molly’s family, who had never learned what became of her. But it wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t like anyone had forced her to pick up the bone and sign in blood, when all of them knew what it could cost. Even if none of them apart from Barbara had believed, they had all known.

  That had been enough. Contracts with Hell had to be specific; they had to be detailed; they had to cover every eventuality. They did not, it turned out, need to be believed. Signing was binding, and once bound, there was no getting away.

  Helene appeared at Ian’s elbow, her own latte in hand. She no longer announced her approach with the staccato click of heels: instead, she wore blue jeans and comfortable shoes, eschewing the armor of her younger years. She had matured into her beauty, softening and stretching it until it fit her like the finest silk. Resting her hand on her husband’s shoulder, she smiled at Jared, who sat up a little straighter in his seat.

  Too late, thought Ian, fighting back the urge to smirk. Had your chance, chose the wrong girl. Now back off. Their little “demonology club” had seemed like a great way to meet girls. It had been, discounting Barbara, who had always been far more interested in her books and sigils than meeting Mr. Right. And then, for Jared, it had turned into something far less pleasant, when his chosen girlfriend had become the new fulltime residence of a president of Hell.

  “Barbara says she’s almost ready for us,” she said.

  Jared sat up further still, looking pained. “You spoke to her?”

  “No.” She held up her phone. “Texted.”

  “I still can’t believe you carry that thing on business.”

  Helene rolled her eyes. “I can’t go silent or the babysitter will have a panic attack and call the police. If you had kids, you’d understand.”

  Jared grimaced, and said nothing. Helene shot Ian that venomous sideways smile that he loved so much, the one that said she was still and forever the girl who’d joined a demonology society of her own free will, looking for power and prestige just as much as the rest of them. If her ideas of power took a slightly different form, that was her choice. Ian loved her all the same, and always would, for her fierce intellect and unflinching willingness to do whatever it took to get ahead.

  Their children were going to rule the world one day. He was sure of it.

  “Do you know why she called us here?”

  Helene sighed. “If I knew, I would have told my husband before coming over here to tell you. United front, Jared. Remember?”

  “We put it in our wedding vows for a reason,” said Ian smugly, and snaked his arm around Helene’s waist, pulling her snugly close.

  That wasn’t all they’d put into their vows, of course, and with Cait in attendance, those vows had been remarkably binding, all things considered. She had called it her gift to them, a lifetime of loyalty, love, and absolute fidelity. Ian supposed there were worse things she could have done than compel him to remain faithful to his wife.

  Jared opened his mouth to reply, and froze, looking for all the world like a rabbit that beheld the shadow of a hawk swooping overhead. Helene stiffened as well, her body becoming an iron bar against Ian’s side.

  There was only one thing that could—or would—get that kind of reaction out of the two of them. Ian didn’t turn, didn’t flinch, didn’t do anything that might make him seem like a target. The united front he and Helene presented had been mandated by their vows, but that didn’t mean he had to draw fire away from her.

  “Hello, Cait,” he said.

  “Hello, Ian.” There were, as always, strange undertones in her superficially feminine voice, acoustic angles that were neither human nor acceptable to the ear. She walked like a human, talked like a human, but she wasn’t human, any more than the person in the giant Mickey Mouse head at Disney World was a real mouse. She was playing a role. Whether she played it well or poorly didn’t change the fact that it was all pretend.

  Helene pulled away from him, his arm unwinding from her waist, until there was nothing preventing him from putting his coffee down and rising. A united front once more, they turned together to face the demon in the dead woman’s body.

  Like Molly before her, Cait was pretty enough to move through the world without attracting undue attention. “Great beauty and great ugliness both have their appeal, but it is the median where true security can be found.” That was what she’d said when Helene—who was a great beauty, and always had been—had asked her, very carefully, whether there had been outside forces influencing Caim’s choice of host bodies.

  (Helene had taken this response as a great relief, since it meant she would never be seen as a suitable host vessel, even if something should happen to Molly. Ian, who was more ordinary looking, for all that he had been attractive and ruthless enough to catch Helene’s eye, had been somewhat less reassured. Only the fact that Cait seemed to enjoy being a woman kept him from going to Barbara with his concerns.)

  “What can we do for you today?” asked Ian, with the stiff politeness that always overwhelmed him when he was faced with the source of everything he’d ever wanted. He was much more comfortable dealing with Cait from a distance. She emailed daily, supplying each of them with the keys to the kingdom in the form most likely to benefit them. Sometimes it was big things—stock projections, the results of major sporting events or political elections, changes in federal law that couldn’t be stopped but would influence future profits. Sometimes it was smaller things. They had learned of both of Helene’s pregnancies from Cait, when the daily email
s had included details on the best prenatal vitamins and the correct doctors to guarantee a trouble-free delivery. They had learned that their youngest, Sabrina, was going to fall from her horse during a riding lesson and break her ankle.

  They had learned so much. The future, once recorded, was virtually impossible to change; Cait’s daily emails not only predicted, they preordained. Only spoken prophecy could be evaded. Sabrina’s broken ankle had become inevitable when it was written down, but they had been able to be there for her, ready on the scene with ice packs and a trip to the hospital. Sometimes the small things were the best things they could do.

  “It is time,” said Cait patiently. “I informed Barbara of this; she contacted the three of you. It is not my duty to contact you with anything beyond our bargain. You do remember the terms, do you not?”

  “You tell us our futures, and we come when you call,” said Jared. He moved to stand on Helene’s other side, flanking her, presenting a different sort of united front. The three survivors of the ritual circle. The ones who’d walked away.

  (None of them counted Barbara among their number. Cait—Caim—couldn’t lie to them. The rest of the world, yes, but not to them. That had been a part of the contract. When Jared, emboldened by too much wine and embittered by seeing the woman he loved replaced by a demon, had written and asked her if Barbara’s name had been included in the lottery, the answer had been a single word: No. Nothing had been the same after that.)

  “Yes,” said Cait. “I have called. Now you will come.” She turned and walked away, soft-soled shoes making no sound on the hotel’s marble floor.

  The other three exchanged an uneasy glance before following her, deeper into the maze of twisting halls and spiral-set conference rooms, like sacrifices striding into the labyrinth, never to be seen again.

  ***

  The room Barbara had found for them was pleasant, in the way of expensive hotel conference rooms: the carpet was plush, the drapes were floor-length, and the soundproofing was first-rate. The wide table which dominated the space looked to have been made from real oak. Barbara was already seated at its head, her ever-present notebook open in front of her, writing quickly. She looked up when Cait opened the door.