The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  Ian, who was closest on Cait’s heels, saw the smile that spread across Barbara’s face before she caught herself and suppressed it. It was all he could do not to recoil.

  My God, he thought. She’s in love with the thing.

  Barbara and Cait’s relationship was no secret. The two had been living together since the ritual, and as a president of Hell, Caim expected certain physical needs to be fulfilled. That, too, was covered in the contract, which was a comprehensive document—terrifyingly so, covering every possible request their personal demon could make, from matters of personal comfort all the way to how they would react if the End Times began while Caim was prisoned in mortal flesh and hence in danger of being annihilated alongside the rest of them. It had seemed quaint, almost charming, in the beginning, the idea that getting their hands on a demon would require so much paperwork, so much precision.

  It wasn’t quaint anymore. It hadn’t been quaint in a long time. Caim was ruthless in enforcing the terms of the contract. It wasn’t unusual for any one of them to be woken in the small hours of the morning by a ringing phone and Cait’s dry, improperly inflected voice on the other end demanding some small comfort, some finicky point of subservience that was technically owed to her by the terms they had agreed to. If not for the unflinching accuracy of her foretellings, the way she reached into the future and pulled back lottery numbers, stock figures, anything and everything they asked of her, it would have been tempting to believe that she was in cahoots with Barbara, that she was still Molly, playing some sort of long, terrible con game on the lot of them.

  But when Caim predicted the future, the future came true. Every time. No matter how small, no matter how seemingly inconsequential a prediction, it came true. Cait was Caim and Caim was really a demon president of Hell, and whatever had called them here, it wasn’t likely to be something the rest of them enjoyed.

  “Barbara,” Cait said, and crossed to stand behind the other woman, touching her shoulder lightly as she passed. In that gesture, Ian saw the other half of the equation. Barbara loved, yes, but she did not love alone.

  It should have been soothing to realize that even demons could love, that even demons could learn to appreciate the humans around them. Ian knew he was going to Hell. All of them were. They had called a demon into the physical world. That might not have been enough to damn them, had they not then given that same demon ownership of a physical body and bound it to do their bidding. They had bought their own damnation one predicted future at a time. Only the fact that Caim didn’t seem to mind—indeed, seemed to find this all quaint and even pleasant, like an extended vacation from the duties of a president—kept him from panicking about it at night. When they died, they would go to a place partially ruled by someone who thought well of them, someone who could love.

  Someone who thought nothing of wearing a dead woman’s skin like a Sunday dress, walking through the world on a dead woman’s feet, smiling at a lover with the dead woman’s mouth. Caim was many things. Ian wasn’t sure “merciful” was among them.

  Cait sat at Barbara’s left. The last of Barbara’s smile faded, her eyes skirting across the three of them like they were something unpleasant she had hoped to forget by simple dint of waiting until they went away. Her gaze lingered on Helene for a moment. There was something there that Ian didn’t like, something that managed to be greedy and dismissive at the same time.

  You’re being paranoid, he chided himself.

  “Please,” said Barbara. “Sit.”

  With Cait there looking on, the word had the force of a command. The three of them found seats at the conference table, Ian and Helene side by side, Jared a few chairs away, trying not to stare at Cait, who seemed as alien and serene as ever. (“How can Barbara stand it?” Helene had asked once, after a little too much wine had loosened her tongue, leaving her soft and yielding and a little sloppy. Ian had tried to shush her, but she’d pushed on, saying, “It would be like fucking a robot or, I don’t know, a lizard. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something that shouldn’t be.”

  Ian had been oddly vindicated the next morning when her hangover had left her helpless and weeping. That’s what you get for risking Caim’s attention, he’d thought fiercely, and brought her Tylenol and water, and waited for the feeling of impending doom to pass.)

  “I want to thank you all for coming so promptly,” said Barbara.

  “Did we have a choice?” asked Jared. His voice was bitterness from top to bottom.

  “No,” said Cait. “But then, neither did I, when you summoned me onto this plane. Courtesy is granted to those who grant it.”

  There was a moment’s uncomfortable pause. Cait was normally more careful to avoid reminding them of her origins. They all knew what she was, what they had made, but it seemed somehow inappropriate to remind her, as if by reminding her they would remind the world, and possibly pull down the attention of things vaster and crueler than a simple president of Hell.

  “My apologies,” said Jared, dropping his eyes to the table.

  “The summoning we performed, while sadly lacking in courtesy, was effective,” said Barbara, with a quick glance to Cait. “It bound the demon President Caim in the human vessel of his own choosing, and kept him here, hidden from the eyes of the Archangels who might otherwise have cut his visit short.”

  “I do not wish to go before I am ready,” said Cait, calm and serene. “I enjoy this place and this vessel and this reality. I am a human woman, and it pleases me.”

  Helene, who had strong opinions about Cait’s status as a human woman, swallowed hard and said nothing, but her hand tightened on Ian’s until he thought he felt the bones grind together. He clenched his teeth and didn’t pull away. Attracting attention seemed unwise.

  “I wish to continue to be a human woman,” said Cait. “The contract which you have all signed specifies the prioritization of my wishes.”

  “Yes,” said Helene, sounding confused. “But it also states that we won’t do anything to eject you from your chosen vessel, and that we’ll defend your vessel against attacks. Is someone threatening you?”

  Cait’s expression softened. It was a small thing, almost intangible; something in the muscles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She still looked cold, still looked alien. But with that little change, she looked like something new as well.

  She looked tired.

  “Please explain,” she said, turning toward Barbara, reaching out to put her hand over the other woman’s. That, too, was new. Ian’s stomach churned as he realized just how demonstrative the two of them were being. By their eternally discreet standards, they were practically jumping on top of the table and ripping their clothes off. Barbara and Cait had never made a secret of their relationship, but they had never flaunted it like this.

  “All right,” said Barbara. She laced her fingers into Cait’s before turning to the rest of them and saying, in a voice that was almost as clear, almost as calm as her demon lover’s, “Cait is made of two halves. The demon Caim, bound here by our contractual agreement, and the human woman Molly, who agreed to the possession prior to the summons.”

  Jared said nothing, only grimaced and took a slug of his coffee, hand tightening around the paper cup. Cait looked at him coolly. Ian knew she was seeing the future in the man’s gestures, charting the course his life would take from here until it ended. All any of them needed to do to know the circumstances of their deaths was ask. Cait would tell them truly, if they did, which was why none of them ever would.

  “Caim is immortal and unkillable by human means. All that could be accomplished is banishment of the demon back to Hell.” Barbara’s voice faltered, and for a moment—only a moment—she looked less sure of herself.

  Helene’s hand tightened on Ian’s again. He glanced at her, and her eyes were wide and frightened. She saw something in Barbara’s loss of control that he didn’t, and the fear he saw in her face woke the fear in his own belly, where it coiled hot and restless and ready to strike.r />
  “Molly, unfortunately, lacks Caim’s indestructability,” Barbara finished.

  “Cancer.” Cait sighed. It was the rush of wind across the desert, it was the beating of a vulture’s wings, and it was no human sound. No human sound at all. “We are informed by the physicians that it is past the point of curing, although they have offered to see to my comfort during the final weeks of my material existence. Palliative care, it is called. I have declined.”

  The strange stiffness of the demon’s posture made sudden, terrible sense. If she had reached the point of palliative care, she must have been in excruciating pain, held upright solely by her inhuman will. For Caim to experience the pleasures of the flesh, he also had to experience its agonies. That was his side of the bargain.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Helene, before she could think better of it. Then she froze, terror sweeping over her face. “Are… are you going to…?”

  “I do not desire your face or form,” said Cait. “Your husband would be a tedious inconvenience. He would refuse to leave your side, which would discomfort Barbara, and I have no desire to be saddled with a human’s get.”

  The children. The children had saved them. Ian shot a triumphant glance at Jared, who had tried to convince them that having children while tied to a demonic bargain was tempting fate.

  Jared didn’t look at him. All of Jared’s attention was on Cait.

  “What do you want us to do?” he asked. “Kidnap a woman for you? Do you have a shopping list of things you’d like in a vessel?”

  “If I asked, you would be required to do so,” said Cait. “That is our agreement.”

  “What if I don’t like our agreement?” Jared half-rose. “What if I want out?”

  Cait looked at him without flinching. “Then I pick up a pen and write the time and circumstance of your death. I lock it into being. It becomes so. Can you live the rest of your life knowing how it ends? Many men have tried to do so. Very few of them have succeeded in any meaningful way. You are weak. I have known you were weak since I extinguished the guttering flames of your lover and saw you through her eyes. She screamed for you as she was being excised from existence. She howled your name, and you did not save her. You belong, then as now, too much to me.”

  Jared paled, sitting back down. Cait turned to the others.

  “I am fond of my existence,” she said. “I enjoy this place, this world and time. I appreciate the advantages offered to me by my chosen partner, and I possess no immediate desire to return to my throne. I could demand you find me a new vessel. But it has been brought to my attention that of the four of you, only one truly understood what you undertook in bringing me here, and thus, of the four of you, only one can be truly trusted. This will not do, if I am to adapt to a new vessel. You have been called here to be offered a second bargain. Tonight, at midnight, I will transfer myself to a new home of my own choosing, as I am allowed to do under the terms of our compact. If you can find the way to destroy me before that time, you will be free. The wealth you have amassed will remain yours. There will be no penalties for breach of contract. If you cannot prevent the transfer, however, you will lose more than you feel is fair, and you will have no way to reclaim what has been taken. Do we have an accord?”

  Ian frowned. “Why would we want to destroy you?”

  Cait’s smile was ice and flame, an echo of Hell painted on a human face. “Do not think me a fool simply because it amuses me to be bound,” she said. “You already do.”

  ***

  The three of them gathered in Jared’s room, which was twice the size of the room Ian and Helene shared. Helene rolled her eyes when she stepped inside.

  “Compensating for something, darling?” she asked, tone snide.

  “Always and forever,” Jared replied, crossing to the room’s built-in desk. A small array of liquor bottles had been set out there, despite the fact that they had only arrived that morning. He picked up the whiskey, tipped a healthy amount into the waiting tumbler, and drank before he said, “You try letting the love of your life become a mansion for a demon lord and see how much you have to compensate for.”

  “Caim is a president, not a lord,” said Ian. Had they tried for a lord, and succeeded, they would have lost a lot more than a single foolish college girl. The lords were as far above Caim in power as Caim was above the rest of them.

  Helene’s interests were more practical. “Molly wasn’t the love of your life,” she said. “She was thinking about breaking up with you after the ritual was performed. She said you were dull in bed and never wanted to talk about anything she cared about.”

  “We would have found a way to make things work,” said Jared.

  Ian looked at his friend and wondered if Jared understood how deeply in denial he was. This felt like something he should have seen sooner—but when he looked back to his own reaction to Molly’s selection, all he could find was relief. Relief that it hadn’t been him, that it hadn’t been Helene, that it hadn’t even been Jared, who had been foolish and impulsive, yes, but who hadn’t deserved to die. Of the others, Molly had always been the one he felt the least attachment to, and so it was only natural that he had been glad to see her pay the finder’s fee.

  He was sure that if he could convince Jared to tell the truth, the other man would admit to having hoped that the demon would choose Helene, who wasn’t his girlfriend and wasn’t his best friend. There was no shame in that. They had both gone into the ritual with priorities: it was just that only Ian had been lucky enough to have his fulfilled.

  “Let’s be reasonable here,” said Helene, wrinkling her nose as Jared took another gulp. “Cait is going to need a new vessel if Molly’s body is giving out. She wants to stay a human woman—”

  “You mean he wants to keep fucking our glorious leader,” muttered Jared.

  Helene pinched the bridge of her nose. “Is it so much to ask that we not fight about our personal demon’s gender identity again? I have a headache, we had to hire a sitter at the last minute to come here and that does not come cheap, and Caim has made his pronouns quite clear. When outside Molly, he’s male. When occupying a human vessel, she’s female. Caim and Cait. It’s not difficult.”

  “What’s difficult is understanding why you care,” snapped Jared. “We have a chance to be rid of it, without losing everything it’s already given to us. Why would you hesitate for a second?”

  “Well, first off, because I don’t know how to kill a demon president of Hell,” said Helene. “Do you?”

  Jared was quiet for a long moment. Just as Ian thought this was over—that Jared’s perhaps understandable tantrum had run its course—the other man took a breath, and nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  Silence fell.

  Understandably, given the circumstances, Jared was the one to break it. “Or well, not kill it, but banish it from this world. I’ve been researching,” he said. “If we kill the host and prevent the demon from leaving for one hour, it will be unable to seek another without a fresh summoning.”

  “How do we lock the demon down?” asked Helene.

  “You leave it to me,” said Jared.

  “Barbara will arrange a second summoning,” said Ian.

  “Not if we kill her too.” Jared glared at the rest of them, eyes suddenly alight with fanatic rage. “She wasn’t part of the lottery. She did all the research. She had to know that Caim preferred female vessels. She didn’t put her own name in the sigil. It was going to be Molly or Helene—a coin toss when it should have been one chance in five. She set me up. She set all of us up. Helene, do you even understand how close you came to being devoured by a demon? Ian, do you understand how close you came to losing her? This can’t be allowed to go on.”

  “You’ve benefitted from Caim’s prophecy as much as the rest of us have,” said Ian.

  “Because I knew that this day would come. The day when I had a chance to destroy the thing that killed Molly. I couldn’t get what I needed if I didn’t stay—a
nd if I didn’t have the resources to pay for the information I was looking for. I’ve been patient. I’ve paid. Now’s when I get what’s mine. Now’s when I get my revenge.”

  “You’re talking about murder,” said Ian.

  “You can’t murder the dead,” Jared countered. “Molly died when Caim entered her. The cancer is just a cherry on top of the shit sandwich she got dealt. Or maybe it’s a mercy. If that damn demon weren’t in her body, she would have been getting regular checkups.”

  Ian, who was fairly sure Caim’s ability to see the future meant the cancer had been caught as early as possible, and was hence genuinely untreatable, said nothing.

  “Barbara isn’t going to like this,” said Helene. “Even if Cait says we’re allowed to kill her, Barbara will try to stop us.”

  “You can’t murder the dead, but Barbara will sure as hell try to make sure we’re punished for doing it,” said Ian, feeling faint relief at the idea that here was an objection: here was something that might stop this mad idea before it could go any further. “This is foolishness. We signed the contract of our own free will—”

  “We were kids,” snapped Jared. “It was a game. I was still in that damn vampire LARP on the weekends, remember? People who spend half their time pretending to be vampires shouldn’t be allowed to pledge themselves to actual demons. When I signed that contract, I thought it was something a little naughty, but not anything real.”

  Ian, who had known Jared long enough to know that he was revising history, said nothing. Helene sighed.

  “Intent doesn’t matter,” she said. “Intent has never mattered. Barbara is the reason we’re in this situation. She’s the one who found the ritual, decided that we should secure our futures by summoning a demon, and told us what the costs would be. She never told us that she’d be holding her own name out of the lottery, now, did she? She never told us that when it came time to pay the tab, we’d be the ones holding the check.” Helene’s mouth settled in a cruel twist. “She deserves this.”