by Nancy Madore
There was a pause in which the creature appeared to be considering how to respond.
“Of course I’m interested in Tommy…Cat,” Amanda heard herself reply at last. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just tired.”
But Amanda could see that Catherine wasn’t buying it, and once again her hopes rose. If Catherine put two and two together she might be able to help Amanda. Though Catherine wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, she knew Amanda almost as well as Amanda knew herself. And it wasn’t that hard to figure out, was it? Yesterday Amanda thought she was being stalked by a ghost and today she was acting like an entirely different person. She didn’t even look the same! How dull-witted would Catherine have to be to miss it?
Amanda tried to reign in these secret hopes, just in case the creature could hear them. And yet, almost without her willing it, she could feel her soul crying out to Catherine for help. Did Catherine feel it?
And yet, if Catherine did feel it, wouldn’t the thing inside her feel it too?
“Well I’m tired too,” Catherine replied snippily. “Not to mention that I was late getting to work today.” It was obvious that she was still miffed.
“You were saying…” Amanda’s voice prompted impatiently, “…about Tommy.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Catherine, making a visible effort to get her enthusiasm back. “He came by H.R. today so I pulled him aside and told him everything that’s been happening to you. I told him how afraid you’ve been, and how I had to spend the night in your apartment last night. Oh, and I might have embellished a few things…just to make it more convincing. Like I said the lights were flickering on and off, and that you woke up one night to find the teapot whistling on the stove.” Catherine smiled sheepishly. “I saw that in a movie.”
This must have amused the creature because Amanda could feel herself smiling.
“Anyway,” continued Catherine, “I made him promise to come over here and talk to you!” Catherine stared at Amanda expectantly.
“Is that all?” Amanda heard herself ask.
“Ummm…yeah!” replied Catherine, making a visible effort not to get riled up again. “So…what are you going to say to him when he gets here?”
“I’ll think of something,” came the arrogant reply. “There’s no need for you to waste precious brainpower worrying about it. I can handle Tommy.”
“Really!” exclaimed Catherine, clearly offended by Amanda’s words. But she just shook her head. “Sometimes you can be such a…” Catherine hesitated, reluctant to finish the thought.
Amanda’s hopes faltered. This behavior wasn’t all that different from her own. It wasn’t unusual for her to play hot and cold with her friend. If only it was a little more obvious. Weren’t possessed people supposed to crawl around on the ceiling making strange animal sounds?
It occurred to Amanda that the creature might have been doing more than just stalking her that first day. It had probably been watching her, observing her every move and studying her daily routine in order to become her. But why?
Before the creature could respond to Catherine’s little outburst, Amanda’s eyes fell upon Tommy coming around the corner and heading up the aisle toward her cubicle. Amanda watched him approach with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she was filled with hope that together he and Catherine would be able to figure out what happened to her. But on the other hand she was afraid of what the creature might say or do next. And there was something else too. She could sense that the thing was observing and assessing Tommy—like it did everything else—and she got the distinct impression that Tommy was coming up short. In fact, she could feel the contempt as her eyes moved derisively over him. For the briefest moment, his over-confident swagger and condescending smirk struck Amanda, too, as repulsive. Yet this sensation came and went too quickly to leave a lasting impression.
“Hey, Shug,” he drawled, “I’ve been worried about you.” But his tone was light and playful—unperturbed. He gave Catherine a wink.
“About me?” she heard herself reply in just as casual a tone. “Whatever for?”
This seemed to throw Tommy for a loop. He glanced at Catherine. “Uh…I thought you needed saving from the bogeyman,” he replied satirically.
Amanda’s head fell back and she heard melodious laughter bubble forth from her lips. Both Catherine and Tommy stared at her in amazement. “Ah,” she sighed when her amusement was spent. “I’m sorry. I can’t keep this up any longer.” Her eyes rested on Tommy. “I was playing a little joke on Cat. I didn’t want to involve you, but…” the creature let the statement dangle as she lapsed into the pleasant-sounding laughter again.
Catherine was aghast. “What!”
The laughter settled into a titter. Amanda felt herself rise up from her chair, sashay to the front of her desk to where Tommy stood and perch herself prettily on the edge of it. This position allowed her skirt to ride up and reveal a silky thigh. Her gaze rested on Catherine. “I’m sorry Cat. I was just having a little fun.” Her eyes moved to Tommy. “It’s her own fault for being so naïve!”
Catherine jumped up from her chair. “Oh my god!” she cried. “It’s…she’s possessed!”
Now Tommy joined in the laughter at Catherine’s expense.
“I’m telling you, there’s something different about her!” insisted Catherine.
“Cat…do you mind?” asked Tommy, and with a snort of disgust she stormed out of Amanda’s cubicle. Now it was Tommy’s turn to examine Amanda, slowly taking in every inch of her. “Maybe Cat has a point,” he murmured suggestively. “Is it me, or do you look especially hot today?”
“If you ask me, it’s you and Cat who are behaving strangely!” came the mocking rejoinder. One of Amanda’s legs rose up to cross over the other one as she struck a seductive pose on her desk. “What did you want, anyway?” she heard herself ask in a tone that implied that she was growing bored.
“Lunch,” he replied, adding meaningfully—“I’m craving a burger.” This was code for ‘let’s go have sex.’
Amanda felt herself smile. “I’m not hungry.”
The expression on Tommy’s face would have been comical if Amanda had been in the frame of mind to appreciate humor. He looked at her with a combination of confusion and disbelief. Amanda had never turned him down before. She was convinced that her body presented the best means for winning Tommy over—and it didn’t even matter if sex was the last thing she wanted, she’d always been too afraid to risk it. Even now, with so much more to concern her, she felt a pang of alarm at the thought of his losing interest in her.
“Come on, Shug,” he urged with a little pout. “A burger…for Tommy!”
Although Amanda couldn’t see the humor in Tommy’s displeasure, she could tell that the thing inside her was struggling not to laugh. “I can’t!” it insisted jauntily. “I have work to do.”
“What work?” asked Tommy, echoing Catherine’s incredulity.
“What do you mean, ‘what work’?” Amanda heard herself demand. “I do work here, don’t I?”
Tommy ignored this. He moved closer, putting one arm around her waist and lightly brushing the fingers of his other hand up and down her inner thigh. His lips moved lightly over her cheek and stopped when they reached her ear. “Even the hardest working girl deserves a little break now and then,” he countered suggestively.
Amanda’s head slowly turned until her lips were in line with his. “I said ‘no.’” she murmured coolly, but then she touched her lips to his, very lightly, and her tongue flicked out to provocatively wet his upper lip. With a little groan, Tommy’s mouth came down on hers, hard. Amanda could tell that he was terribly aroused because, as always, he was coming at her like a wild bull that sees red. But suddenly, before Amanda could even figure how, Tommy’s bottom lip was caught between her teeth. And she was biting down—hard.
Tommy made a little noise, like a squawk. It was a strangely intimate moment that lasted a full minute before his lip was finally released. He took a few steps backward.
His bottom lip was bright red and beginning to swell, though the skin, thankfully, hadn’t been broken. Amanda sensed that she was smiling again. In fact, she appeared to be stifling a giggle. She watched in horror as Tommy’s face went from shock to anger.
What was this creature trying to do to her? Was it some malicious demon out to destroy her life?
Tommy appeared to be speechless. Amanda’s body, meanwhile, was moving back around her desk. “Darling,” she heard herself purr, “forgive me. I really do have to get this work done.”
Tommy’s fingers had unconsciously risen to his bottom lip, as if to ensure that it was still there. His stare was not unlike Catherine’s had been earlier. But the lust was still simmering in his eyes, clouding his judgment. “Okay…sure,” he mumbled. “I’ll see you later…I guess.”
Amanda wouldn’t have thought it possible after all that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours, but watching Tommy turn and walk out of her life—as she believed he was doing—devastated her. She felt as if she was losing the only thing that gave her life meaning.
“Don’t panic little one,” she heard herself say. “In a very short while we’ll have him eating out of our hand.” Amanda’s soul seemed to shudder and start, all at the same time. It was talking to her! And it sounded so confident…and determined!
We’ll have him eating out of our hand.
Was this possible? She’d heard about men falling for women who played hard to get, but deep down, she’d always supposed those women must have had something more to offer than she did. For all of her supposed confidence, she suddenly realized that she was terribly insecure.
And yet, there was no denying that Tommy had been intrigued by the new Amanda!
Was this a benevolent creature then—a kind of fairy godmother who had taken over her body in order to fix her love-life?
All of a sudden her head was turned and she caught sight of Catherine, who was peeking into her cubicle from around a corner. How long had she been there? Judging by her expression, it had been a while.
Caught in the act, Catherine was obliged to step into view, though she was careful to remain outside Amanda’s work station. Her eyes never left Amanda’s face. “What the hell is going on here, Mandy?” she demanded.
Amanda felt herself smile. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Cat,” came the smooth reply, “but my body has been taken over by a horrible demon that makes me…do things. Help?”
The calm, matter-of-fact manner in which this was delivered completely knocked the wind out of Catherine’s sails. And without the conviction that something was actually happening to her best friend, all she had left were hurt feelings over Amanda’s cruel behavior. Blinking back her tears, Catherine turned and stormed away for good.
“Now it’s back to work for us!” the horrible demon told Amanda cheerfully.
Chapter 27
Long Island, New York
“You didn’t go back to Kiriath Arba to warn them?” asked an incredulous Gordon.
“I was terrified!” cried Ornias. “I’d never seen anything like this before. I didn’t even know what it was that I had seen! I knew that Asmodeous was looking for special books containing secrets of the Qliphoth, but he never told me exactly what they did or how they worked. It wasn’t until later that I learned that Qliphoth could be captured this way.”
“So the Israelite army must have dropped the metal shavings in the circle they made around the city,” mused Gordon.
“I was too caught up in what was happening to notice,” said Ornias. “When I thought about it later, I wondered if it wasn’t their helmets that created the circle of metal. They were thick, and unusually heavy. The minute I put it on I felt myself growing weaker. I thought it was because of my wound at first, but thinking back, it was more like a sickening of my soul. I think that’s what gave me the overwhelming urge to flee. Thank goodness I was outside the circle when they recited the incantation.”
Gordon appeared to consider this. “And since ordinary souls were caught up in the circle along with the Qliphoth, they, too, were affected by the incantation,” he concluded. Nadia remembered how she had been similarly affected when inside the circle. “And that’s how the Israelites were able to conquer all those cities.”
Ornias nodded. “And they probably would have eventually conquered the world if the secrets hadn’t been taken from them,” he said.
This appeared to interest Gordon. “The secrets were taken from them?”
“Not taken…exactly,” said Ornias. “It’s more that they were rendered useless. You might say their power had been removed by an even higher power.” His smile deepened. “Yes. I think Asmodeous would like that.”
“I take it Asmodeous had something to do with it?” prompted Gordon.
“He altered the documents,” Ornias admitted. “Using the techniques of the Israelites, he copied them, incorporating false incantations and his own dry sense of humor to render them inaccurate and utterly useless. But unfortunately, by this time, the monks had already begun squirrelling many of the documents away…and hiding them in the desert.”
Gordon didn’t enlighten Ornias on where those documents ended up—though Nadia supposed it was easy enough for him to guess. “Where did you go, after the Israelites took Jericho?” Gordon asked.
“I didn’t get very far, I’m afraid,” Ornias replied. “I traveled east, in search of a land that would be safe from the Israelites, when, quite unexpectedly, I died. I still don’t know what happened. Heart attack maybe—though it wasn’t quick. I remember suffering in the desert for hours. When at last the pain stopped, I was back in the land of the dead.
“I had no druj in waiting this time. I made a few feeble attempts to breach the barrier between our worlds, with no luck. In truth, I wasn’t trying very hard. I was still very afraid. Where were all the Qliphoth whose bodies I saw fall in Jericho? It seemed more and more likely that their souls had been destroyed along with their bodies. I traversed the earth, learning to communicate with other Qliphoth, in my quest to find a soul whose body had been slain by an Israelite. There wasn’t a single one. This seemed to confirm my fear that the Israelites had somehow found a way to destroy us.
“Paralyzed by fear, I remained in the land of the dead for many years. I was content, for the time, to simply exist in this world, exploring its endless wonders. Yet I was always ultimately drawn to my homeland—or what I had come to think of as my homeland—Kiriath Arba. It was there that I stumbled upon the young man who happened to be a friend of the Israelite King. Something about the boy gave me a renewed desire to join the living—even if it meant living among the Israelites. I had to take my chances. The boy was surprisingly strong—or perhaps my soul had become terribly weak.” Ornias paused, as if trying to remember. “But I was determined. With each failed attempt I wanted it more. I clung to him—never quite in, but right on the edge, and kind of stayed there.”
“So…how did your ultimate capture come about?” wondered Gordon.
“I don’t know,” said Ornias. “Suddenly I was there, back in the land of the living, floating, exactly as I am now. I was stunned. There was a man sitting before me—a king—and I asked him how I got there. He told me he had bound me to his ring! I didn’t believe him at first, but there was no denying that I was under his power. I had an overwhelming compulsion to obey him. I told him who I was, where I came from, and everything else that he wanted to know. By simply reciting a few words he could make me appear or disappear. I had no sense of where I was when he made me disappear. I guess you could say I was nowhere...in limbo. It didn’t take long for me to realize that those other Qliphoth from Jericho must also be trapped in that ring.
“My appearance was as shocking to me as it was to Solomon,” continued Ornias. “I had no real form on the other side, and I’d always been inside a body when I was on this side.”
“Didn’t Solomon have other djinn?” asked Gordon.
“No,” said Ornias. “I was th
e first one that he was ever able to call forth. The others had gone directly into the ring. Among their many documents, he had found a spell for conjuring demons—that’s what he thought I was, based on what the little boy had told him. I think he was surprised that it worked.
“The problem was that the Israelites had no idea who—or what, for that matter—they had collected inside their ring, let alone how to get it out,” he continued. “Their incantation had simply bound every Qliphoth soul to the ring. The Israelites also had incantations for bringing specific souls out, but these required information about that soul’s origin, like their Nephilim name and the identity of the angel who started their lineage. I figured the Qliphoth from Kiriath Arba must also be inside that ring, and I knew many of their origins.”
“So Solomon’s keys were not really Solomon’s at all,” concluded Gordon.
“It wasn’t even his ring,” replied Ornias. “It belonged to the monks. But he was their king. And he was very inquisitive. He had a peculiar lust for knowledge that you don’t usually see in the sons of men. I knew I could help free my friends from Kiriath Arba by appealing to his curiosity.”
“So you told him how to get them out,” said Gordon.
“We sort of figured it out together,” said Ornias. “He found the spell for calling them out of the ring, and I had the necessary information for conjuring each individual soul. It worked! We were both as amazed by that fact as we were by the unique forms the Qliphoth took when they materialized. Yet they seemed to fit, too. Asmodeous’ was among the most fearsome, but there were others that were equally so. It was disconcerting for all of us to have ourselves so blatantly revealed.
“Once Solomon got started, he couldn’t seem to stop. He became obsessed. He kept trying to get more names from me, but I couldn’t remember the names of all the angels. Still, we conjured quite a few! He spent days questioning us. He enjoyed having this power over the spirit world. His thirst for power was maniacal.”
“And Asmodeous?” prompted Gordon.