The Demon Behind Me

by Christopher Nelson

  “What bullshit?” Kyla held her palm out and showed us the sigil. The oozing blood had already been absorbed back into her body. “My grandfather was given a choice. He could give my father to House Leviathan, or give up the rest of his family. He chose my father and tattooed the sigil on him, and my father tattooed the sigil on me. If I have a child, I’ll bind him or her to the House as well. As long as we stay bound, our extended family is safe.” She smiled slightly. “I sometimes attend the reunions.”

  Tink leaned forward and frowned at the sigil. “You could have this binding removed by any master mage, you know.”

  “I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t do it either.” Kyla withdrew her hand. “I could be free, but generations of my extended family would be open targets to anyone who wanted to hurt me or my allies in the House. See, Anna, I don’t support separation from humanity just for our sake, but for humanity’s sake as well. Too many demons think like Dras, and their number will only grow if humanity continues to fan the flames against us.”

  I looked at Tink. She looked down and cleared her throat before looking back up at Kyla. “I misjudged you. Sorry about calling you a skankdemon.”

  “Not something you hear every day,” I mumbled.

  “Apology accepted. I’ve been called worse.” Kyla smiled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make a call and request a new intelligence liaison.”

  Chapter Four

  We got out of the car and Tink let out a low whistle. “I know it’s been a few years, but damn. Our timing is terrible.”

  The building where House Lucifer had once put Becky on trial was nothing more than rubble. Fences blocked it off from outsiders while workers in hard hats worked on carting bits and pieces away. Heavy machinery growled in the back of the lot. The news I had only dimly remembered had announced the upcoming demolition. “Let’s go take a closer look,” I suggested.

  “You want to break in?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we’ll need to,” I replied as I saw a work truck parked nearby. “Take a look at who’s running the show here.”

  “Silvatini.” Tink grinned wide. “How appropriate. Bet she wanted to oversee this one personally.”

  We walked around to the gate and I peered in. No one caught my eye, but I’d worked with most of the company’s career supervisors, and even if one of them wasn’t there, I could drop a name or three. I took a few steps through the gate and one of the resting workers started to intercept me. “Hey, you shouldn’t be coming in here, man,” he said.

  “Sorry, just trying to find someone in charge,” I said. “Who’s the site supervisor here?”

  The worker sized me up. I wasn’t wearing anything especially distinctive, just jeans and a shirt. The shirt was tight enough to show I had some muscles, though. “You looking for work?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I know a few of the guys from Silvatini. Just wondering if the super’s someone I know.”

  He relaxed a little. “All right, man. Wait at the gate here, I’ll get Rick.”

  “Rick Neilson?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Great. I know Rick. Thanks.”

  He nodded and sauntered off. I returned to Tink. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she scowled at me. “Any luck?”

  “Yeah, sounds like the site supervisor’s someone I’ve worked with a few times. He’ll talk with me.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We get permission to go in, take a quick look around for anything interesting, and then leave.” I looked up to the side. “Hey, Kibs, you listening to this?”

  “I’m listening,” he said without phasing into visibility. “You do realize I’m charging you freelance rates for this shit, right?”

  “I also paid you a retainer,” I pointed out. “You’re my bitch till those kegs run out.”

  “I need to triple my rates. What do you need, Zay?”

  “Check the mess out. See if there’s any place you can’t get into while phased. Otherwise, just check for something out of place, or looks like something House Lucifer would have made. You know the sort of thing we’re interested in.”

  “Yeah, the shit that fucks with us,” Kibs said. “You know how pissed off the Chairman would be if he saw me doing this?”

  “So pissed.”

  “So fucking pissed.” The imp’s voice faded away.

  Tink snorted and we waited another couple of minutes before Rick showed up at the gate. He hesitated for a moment before extending his hand toward me. “Zay, good to see you again, I guess. You here to do some work for once?”

  “Afraid not, Rick,” I said as we shook hands. His grip tightened before letting go. “I actually wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “Of course you do. You’re all about favors. Well, I don’t owe you any, so why should I even listen to you?”

  I frowned. “Whoa, man. Why the hostility?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and glared. The man was a bit taller than I was, he was broader, and he had the bronzed physique of those who worked outdoors for a living. “You always fucked me over, Zay. You’d vanish halfway through a job, never let me know, and I always had to scrounge for day laborers just to get half as much work done in twice the time. The bosses never gave a damn, they just got pissed when we were running late and over budget. Once was bad enough, but you pulled it three times on me. Shit rolls downhill.”

  “Hey, I haven’t bailed on any projects in the past year,” I said.

  “You’ve only worked on one,” he said. “And it wasn’t one of mine. You might be a damn good worker when you actually work, but you have a rep now, and a couple good jobs ain’t making up for it.”

  I sighed. “Look, Rick, I had some serious family issues going on back then. I got my shit back together now. I’m not looking for anything major, I promise.”

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  “I just want to borrow a couple hard hats and vests,” I said, pointing at Tink. “We were here a few years back and wanted to check through the debris. No big deal. We’ll be careful and stay out of the way.”

  “You know the rules about safety violations. No can do.”

  “Come on, Rick. You know me.”

  “I don’t know her, and I don’t owe you. You want to work, I’ll let you work, but you are going to pull a full day or I swear to God, I will scream all the way up to the top about what a piece of shit you are.”

  I sighed and looked toward Tink, who simply shrugged at me. There was a way around this, and I hated to do it for multiple reasons, but I didn’t have the time or will to argue. “Rick, we need to get in there,” I said as I burned ichor and pushed a mild suggestion into his mind. “It’s important for a host of reasons, not to mention Becky would appreciate it.”

  His head rocked back slightly and he looked glazed over for a few seconds. “Becky? Dammit, Zay, you know I shouldn’t do this. It’s my ass on the line if anything happens to you.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll be careful. I’ll owe you a big one.”

  “Fine. Shit. Let me see if I can find anything to fit her. God, why’d I let you talk me into this?”

  Tink waited until he was just out of earshot before turning on me. “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  I nodded and rubbed the back of my head. My powers of suggestion were rusty and it gave me a headache. “You know I don’t like it.”

  “I thought you were just going to sweet talk your way in.”

  “I didn’t feel like calling Becky up for a favor.”

  “Would she even give you a favor these days?”

  “I’d give her time with you.”

  Tink growled at me, but before she could do anything about it, Rick came back to the gate with a pair of hard hats and vests. “You’ve got thirty minutes,” he said. “That’s all I’m gonna give you.”

  “It should be all we need. Seriously, I owe you one.”


  “You sure do.” He crossed his arms again. “If you’re still here in thirty, I’m calling the cops and the boss, in that order. Understand me? And I don’t want to see you here again unless it’s to work.”

  “Got it. Sorry, Rick. Hopefully next time I’ll make this up to you.”

  He snorted and watched as we walked into the construction area, hats and vests declaring us as safe as anyone could be. Tink’s hat sunk down low on her head and the vest draped her like a day-glow dress. “Is this seriously the smallest one they had?” she complained.

  “Do you see a lot of workers here your size?” I asked. “Hey, Kibs. Got anything?”

  The imp’s voice spoke up between us. “I zipped around. Nothing blocked me, but there’s something fucking weird in one area. Felt like I was flying through water.”

  “You mean swimming?” Tink asked.

  “Sweetcheeks, it was more like drowning than swimming. Like I said, really fucking weird.”

  We headed through the rubble to the area. With a few minutes of triangulation, Kibs and I narrowed it down to what seemed like the remnants of a conference room. “So, how the hell do we actually find anything in this mess?” Tink asked. “I know you can throw a few hundred pounds around, but we don’t have enough time to dig through all this shit.”

  “And I’m not going to risk getting knocked out of phase into a solid object,” Kibs added. “The longer I’m here, the worse I feel. You are not paying me enough for this shit.”

  “Tink-“

  “No, I’m not stripping for him again.”

  “Damn. All right, Kibs, thanks. We’ll take it from here.”

  The imp’s presence vanished and Tink crouched over a piece of concrete. “So, again, what’s the plan?”

  I sat on a chunk of masonry and looked around. “Here’s what I’m thinking. Can you think of any way technology could block an imp, especially if they’re phased out?”

  “Not a chance,” she said. “I’m no science geek, but the imps are demonic in nature, right? I’ve never heard of any technology affecting them.”

  “Magic,” I said. She frowned at me. “House Lucifer had a mage on their side back then, right? What if they were using magic to lock the imps out?”

  She shook her head. “The mage wasn’t there, remember?”

  “How would we know?”

  “Would Becky know?”

  I shrugged. “All she saw were a bunch of people. Any number of them could have been demons or humans.”

  Tink frowned and kicked aside a rock. “All right. So maybe human magic can do it. The question is how?”

  “Easy.” I crouched and picked up the rock she had kicked. “You can enchant things for a long duration, right? You’ve done it before. So maybe their mage made something along those lines.”

  She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Could be,” she said after a minute. “But the spell was huge. It covered the whole building, or at least a major portion of it. It would need a lot of blood to imbue, and a lot of blood to keep it running for any length of time. More than a single mage could provide, at least.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose blood is used, right?” I asked. Her eyes widened. “I mean, I know I’ve powered magic circles you’ve drawn, and I assume the answer is yes, but what about unwilling blood? Or unknowing?”

  “The power’s in blood. The more willing, the better, but any blood will do. Are you saying they raided the Red Cross?” She paced back and forth. “This is exactly the sort of fucked up idea I expect from you. The worst part is, I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.”

  “And if I’ve thought of it, the Eternal Conclave has too.” I pointed down at the rubble. “Now we absolutely need to secure or destroy whatever this is. If they get their hands on it, figure out what it does, and reverse engineer it, they’ll lock out imps from anywhere important. No spies, no intelligence, no portals. Assuming I’m right, can’t you pinpoint where the magic is coming from?”

  She nodded. “I could, but it’d take longer than the twenty minutes we have left. Do you want to come back when the workers are gone?”

  “The Conclave has to be keeping an eye on us,” I said. “If we’re here, they’re going to wonder why. Once we’re gone, they’ll look for themselves, and they’ll be able to take their time. Bad outcome for us.”

  Tink scowled. “So if we’d never come here, they’d be blissfully ignorant, right?”

  “Well, we were looking for traces of Lucifer, but they don’t know what we’re doing, do they? Besides, wasn’t this your idea?”

  She growled something too quiet for me to hear. “Rather than argue, what do we do? Not enough time to find the spells buried here, unless you want to fuck with the whole crew. I hate to say it, but it might be a good idea in this case.”

  I sat back down on the rubble and considered the options. I could burn ichor to suggest Rick give us more time, but I didn’t like doing it on moral and practical grounds. Plus, other workers were likely to get curious and I’d have to make more suggestions, or make a blanket suggestion to the area. Either one of those options would require me to convert blood to ichor before burning nearly all of it, which would leave me weak and vulnerable. While I didn’t think any Conclave mages would attack us in the open, I didn’t want to tempt them. “Could I add ichor to your detection spell to speed it up?” I asked.

  “It’s not that sort of spell,” she said. “It’s a guided spell, so it’s only as fast as I can guide it. I might get lucky and find it right away, but might as well roll the dice, it’s just a gamble.”

  “Teach me the spell?”

  “Not enough time.”

  I sighed and considered more options. “Making a blanket suggestion is off the table. We can’t find the spell in the time we have. What else can we do?”

  Tink grinned. “Destroy it. How about making a booby trap?”

  “Something that won’t kill the innocent construction workers, please.”

  “No shit. A magic booby trap.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She crouched and looked around for a moment before drawing her knife and pricking her finger. She traced a quick spell before speaking again. “Can’t sense anyone eavesdropping, so we should be clear. What we do is simple. We’ll make some serious incendiary spells with your ichor, and I’ll make a bunch of incomplete circuits. Once someone uses some serious magic on them, they’ll trigger and boom. Fire. Lots of fire.”

  I frowned. “Seems a little too obvious. What’s keeping them from disabling your spells?”

  “First, redundancy,” she said. “Second, we’ll make a timed trigger in a nice out of the way place. Just a drop of blood to finish a circle late tonight, and boom.”

  “I like it. The workers won’t trigger it, but it’ll give mages a nice surprise. Next question. Will the fire destroy the spell remnants?”

  “Maybe, if it gets deep enough. We’ll need to make a hellfire trap to make sure.”

  “That’s really dangerous,” I said. “I’ve never suspended hellfire in a long duration spell before.”

  “Neither have I. Let’s do it.”

  A few slashes and cuts later and we were decorating the area with blood and ichor. She traced lines of force to complete magical circuits while I slowly fed hellfire into magical containment. With the couple of minutes we had remaining, we set up decoys and the redundant timed trigger. Before Rick could kick us out, we were already heading for the gate and handing off our gear.

  As we got into her car, she looked over and jinxed everything. “That was easy. Too easy.”

  I sighed. “Great. Just had to say it, didn’t you?”

  “Shut up, demon. We’re never this lucky. Want to buy a lottery ticket?”

  “You don’t need any more money.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  My phone rang as we pulled out of the lot. Opheran wanted a chat. The other shoe was about to drop, no doub
t. “Yes, my Prince?”

  “I have interesting news, Isaiah.”

  “I’m not sure I like interesting. Do you mind if I put you on speaker so Tink can hear?”

  “Not at all.” I toggled the speaker and held the phone out. “We have received a formal request from Nathan Kane, Grandmaster of the Eternal Conclave, for a meeting between himself and the Host. Apparently, he wants to negotiate with us.”

  I snorted. “That’s certainly interesting.”

  “It’s certainly bullshit,” Tink added.

  “I agree with both of you,” Opheran said. “But, as a formal request, we can’t simply snub it. We also can’t overlook the small chance this is a legitimate negotiation.”

  “Did he give any sort of agenda?”

  “The primary topic would be to discuss the withdrawal of the Infernal Host from Earth, and how to best expedite it. He implied the Conclave would be willing to assist in the effort.”

  “I’m going to make a guess and say his assistance would be reducing the number of demons to be withdrawn by killing them.”

  “That is one interpretation we’ve already considered,” Opheran said.

  “I’m also going to make another guess and say you want me to represent the House.”

  “No.” I exchanged looks of surprise with Tink. “You’re too valuable to risk, Isaiah. I called to seek your opinion on who should be sent.”

  “No one,” Tink said. “Snub his ass.”

  “We have to send someone,” Opheran said. “If we snub them while the other Houses don’t, there will be a quorum. In the unlikely case they are being truthful about assisting us, we would be subject to terms we had no voice in. It also shows a divide in the Host they could exploit.”

  “I don’t think it’d be so bad,” I said. “But if we do need to send someone, they need to be at least a Marquis, but preferably a Duke. Someone who’s important enough to not be insulting, but not someone we can’t afford to lose.”

  “You are thinking this is a prelude to war,” Opheran stated.

  “Of course. We’re already most of the way there,” I said. “Aren’t you thinking along those lines too?”