by J. L. Doty
In that instant Paul felt a strange urge, a compulsion to go somewhere as if being called from a great distance. It was as if he stood in a slowly flowing river with the current tugging relentlessly at him. It had direction and force, and the more he resisted the more it pulled him toward some unknown destination. On the steps of the church Katherine reached over, tugged on his arm and whispered, “I think I sense my father’s summons.”
The compulsion grew to such an intensity it became a need he could not resist, or perhaps a need the demon could not resist. Reality shifted along a sideways track, a slippery, unclean pathway and blink, Paul was now in a third place as well as the other two. He stood in the middle of a silver circle inlaid in a marble floor, with the circle surrounded by a silver pentagram also inlaid in the floor. Enormous breasts weighed down his shoulders uncomfortably. He looked down at his own chest, at the wealth of quivering cleavage exposed there. He ran his hands over his breasts, down his belly, stopped at his crotch and was surprised to find that, beneath the material of his skirt, he was no longer a man, but now possessed the genitalia of a woman. Confused, he explored the strangeness of it for a moment, then looked up and saw McGowan seated on the floor in front of him, and the older hippie woman seated behind him. McGowan sat at one point of the pentagram with the hippie woman leaning forward and whispering something in his ear. They both wore white gowns of some sort, and McGowan held fire cupped in the palms of his hands.
To one side sat the two leprechauns, dressed just like the humans. Both of them smiled and beamed at Paul, one of them winked at him comically, and the other flashed him a thumbs up. Then they high-fived each other.
Paul’s mouth opened through no volition of his own and he said in Katherine’s voice, “Am I not your daughter?”
Both leprechauns shouted in unison, “It’s lying.”
The demon glanced their way unhappily and its eyes flashed an angry red. Then it turned back to McGowan and changed its image to that of young Conklin. “The two lovers are with me at this very moment. I think I’ll have the young man fuck her while I watch. I’ll make him fuck her in every hole she’s got. She has lots of holes to fuck. Then I’ll fuck them all myself.” To emphasize its point, the demon’s image of Paul suddenly grew a large bulge in its pants. The bulge grew steadily until the front of its pants ripped open and a massive phallus tumbled out.
The leprechauns shouted, “You’re disgusting.”
Behind McGowan Colleen whispered. “It’s just trying to goad you. Don’t let it get to you.”
McGowan was surprised he could keep his voice calm and even. “I don’t believe you own their souls. You’ll have to prove that to me.”
The demon suddenly took on the image of McGowan, seated in one of his wingbacked chairs in his study, a glass of cognac on a small side table near at hand. It spoke in McGowan’s voice. “Do not these images tell you the truth of my words, wizard? Could I have such knowledge of you and her and the young man if she wasn’t already my thrall?”
McGowan had learned long ago one didn’t enter into a debate with a demon. It would be a horrible mistake to allow it to set the agenda, to allow it to pick each point they might argue, and the order in which they argued them. “Yes,” he said. “You could have such knowledge without her enthrallment. So prove she’s enthralled.”
The demon smiled with McGowan’s lips, but its eyes still contained goat-slitted blood-red pupils. “As I said, they’re with me now, as we speak. Ask them a question through me. Ask me any—”
The demon, in McGowan’s form, suddenly closed its eyes and grimaced. It lifted its hands and cupped them over its ears as if trying to block out some noise, and it shouted, “Nooooooo! You are mine to command, mortal. You are mine. Mine! Mine! Mine!”
Katherine watched the demon shift its image to that of a young child she didn’t recognize. It said, “Daddy. Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”
Paul’s mouth opened stupidly, then the demon’s image changed to that of a pretty young woman. “Paulie-boy, I’ve missed you so much,” it said longingly.
Paul cringed, and tears flowed freely down his cheeks. Clearly the child had been his daughter and this young woman probably his wife, for he looked upon her now with such longing and pain. And then he looked up, looked into the demon’s eyes.
Katherine cried out, “No,” and lunged for Paul. But she was too late. She stepped away from him as the look on his face turned to that of blank wonder.
But suddenly the demon, still wearing the shape of the young woman, grimaced, cupped its hands to its ears and shouted, “Nooooooo! You are mine to command, mortal. You are mine. Mine! Mine! Mine!”
Katherine looked at Paul, then at the demon, and Paul looked back at her with eyes that had turned hard and angry. Fully enthralled, he’d do anything the demon commanded, including dragging her with him off the church steps, off the protection of hallowed ground. Then he closed his eyes and stood very still for a moment, as if listening to a faraway voice. She took another step back, and then Paul opened his blood-red goat-slitted eyes and lunged for her.
Standing on the steps of the church, standing on the sidewalk in front of it, standing in some dark room with McGowan and the hippie woman and the leprechauns, the images Paul saw from all three perspectives collided, clashed, formed a confusing collage of overlapping scenes. He tried desperately to sort them out, failed miserably and couldn’t distinguish one image from the other.
“Obey me,” the demon snarled into his thoughts.
He thought back at it, “Fuck you, ass hole.”
At that moment the two demons, the one standing on the sidewalk in front of the church, and that standing in the dark room with McGowan, both closed their eyes, cupped their hands over their ears and started shouting at him. Its words rang in his thoughts as if he was standing in the bell tower of a giant cathedral next to a massive bell.
With two sets of eyes closed, the Paul standing on the steps of the church looked at Katherine. She stepped away from him fearfully. As the demon’s shouts continued to hammer into his skull, he closed his own eyes, and with the confusing kaleidoscope of images now shuttered, he could see his connection to the demon on the sidewalk, and its connection to the demon in the dark room with McGowan. And then he saw how to create a path directly between where he and Katherine stood on the church’s steps, and the demon in the dark room, and from there he saw the path to the dark room itself, without the aid of the demon. It was that slippery sideways track in reality he’d sensed earlier.
He opened his eyes and saw a terrified Katherine cringing away from him on the church steps. He lunged for her and wrapped his arms around her as she screamed, “Nooooooo.”
He closed his eyes.
Blink.
The demon in the protective circle had gone mad. It thrashed about wildly, its image shifting crazily from Katherine to Paul to McGowan to a frightening chimera with serpent legs. It pounded on the shimmering veil of the protective circle. One instant it was McGowan doing the pounding, then Katherine, then Paul. Then suddenly it stopped, stood as still as a statue for just a moment. Then it screamed in Katherine’s voice, “Nooooooo.”
The room rang with an explosion that sounded like a massive cork the size of a freight train popping out of a Champaign bottle the size of a skyscraper. McGowan’s ears popped, and behind him Colleen grunted painfully. The two leprechauns jumped to their feet and cheered like fans at a baseball game as young Conklin and Katherine appeared in midair in the circle about six feet above the floor. They were horizontal, in a lover’s embrace, young Conklin’s eyes squeezed tightly shut, Katherine’s face twisted in terror as she screamed the single word “Nooooooo.” It seemed as if they hovered in the air for a moment, but McGowan understood that in reality his own sense of time had frozen in an instant of utter surprise. And then the instant ended and the two young people plunged to the floor.
Young Conklin landed on his back, his head smacking into the marble floor. Katherine
landed on top of him, their faces smashed together painfully, and blood sprayed from her nose. She groaned and laid there on top of him, the wild tangle of her hair cascading over both their faces. Then she rolled off him, groaned again and lifted a hand to her face.
“Quickly, Walter,” Colleen shouted. “They’re hurt. Break the circle.”
“Wait,” he growled, still holding the fire of magic in his palms. He saw no sign of the demon, but he dare not weaken the circle until he could be certain the monster had returned to the Netherworld. And yes, there in the dark mirror he saw his own reflection, his mortal image with blood-red goat-slitted eyes.
“The darkness no longer rules here, minion,” he said, speaking the ancient formula. “Return to the darkness, now. I command it.”
The demon’s image disappeared and the mirror went dark. Satisfied, McGowan killed the flame in the palm of his hand, simultaneously extinguishing the flames in the four candles, and the shimmering veil of the circle vanished.
Colleen rushed past him to Katherine, while the leprechauns danced a jig as if it was all some big party. McGowan strode purposefully to young Conklin, who lay unmoving on his back. Katherine mumbled weakly, something about “ . . . enthralled . . . demon eyes . . .” while Colleen said, “It’s all right, child. You’re back. You’re safe now.”
McGowan squatted down next to young Conklin and looked at him carefully, trying to see something more than just an ordinary young wizard. Yes, the fellow was a practitioner of the arcane, which, to one such as McGowan, was neither extraordinary nor unusual. And yet the old man didn’t know what he’d just witnessed.
Colleen helped Katherine to her feet, helped her limp to the door and open it, but she paused and turned back to McGowan. “What just happened, old man?”
McGowan shook his head. “I don’t know. But whatever it was . . . it reverberated throughout the Three Realms.”
“What just happened?” Magreth shouted as she marched into the room where her advisors and mages had gathered, her eyes lit with incandescent fire, the shadows of ancient Sidhe spirits darting about her in a display of maddened chaos.
Cadilus stepped forward. “We know very little, Your Majesty. We’ve been monitoring the Old Wizard’s abode, so we know it took place there, but even our most powerful mages cannot penetrate his wards.”
All of her advisors, including Cadilus, cringed as she strode across the room, stood with her back to them and stared out a window at the horizon of Faerie. “The old man cannot throw such powerful magics about without being held accountable.”
Cadilus approached and stopped only a short pace behind her. “I think even he would agree with you on that, Your Majesty. I recommend we send a diplomatic mission, and politely demand an explanation.”
“Yes,” she said, turning to face him. He watched her struggle to calm herself. “He’s always proven to be . . . reasonable.”
For the first time she looked into his eyes. She frowned, leaned forward and whispered, “You know something.”
He whispered back. “I don’t know, but I suspect. There was a powerful summoning. I fear one of the Nine Princes tried to cross over to the Mortal Plane.”
Now he had her full attention. “That hasn’t happened for almost two thousand years.”
He nodded. “Yes, and when it did those conquering Romans fell, were swept aside by an age of darkness that corrupted both Faerie and the Mortal Plane for five-hundred years. But I think the Old Wizard banished the demon in a most spectacular fashion.”
Magreth leaned away from Cadilus and spoke in an offhand manner, as if thinking out loud. “That would mean the old man is even more powerful than we suspected.”
Ag shouted and screamed as he beat and kicked Anogh mercilessly. “You were there,” Ag screamed. “How can you plead ignorance?”
Anogh lay on the floor and did not resist. To so much as curl up into a fetal position would be considered an act of defiance. Even when Ag stomped on his hand, crushing several bones, even then Anogh merely laid still and absorbed the pain. Simuth stood to one side, watching Ag’s cruelty with a smile on his face, a look of envy Anogh recognized all too well, though Anogh could never be sure if Simuth envied Ag’s place delivering the beating, or Anogh’s place receiving it.
Oddly enough, Anogh was grateful for the beating. As long as Ag’s temper ruled him, he’d ask the wrong questions, or ask no questions at all. Anogh could not lie to the ruler of the Unseelie Court, not outright. He could at best evade and dissemble, and while Ag could be a fool in so many ways, he was quite adept at unraveling the deceits of his courtiers. If he asked the right questions he might gain a hint of Anogh’s subterfuge, and given even the tiniest of intimations, he’d gnaw at it like a dog worrying a bone, and eventually uncover the truth of the matter, a truth Anogh had only recently discovered, and one Ag must never know. At least not until certain preparations had been set in place.
Eventually Ag wound down, more through his own exhaustion than any sense of compassion. Compassion was not a word known in the Unseelie Court. Ag stepped away from Anogh and sat casually on his throne. “If the Old Wizard is that powerful,” he said, still breathing heavily, “then perhaps we should see to his death.”
Simuth stepped forward haughtily. “I would be most honored, Your Majesty, to accept such a commission.”
Anogh shook his head and sat up, but couldn’t stand. He was careful not to put any weight on the crushed fingers of his left hand. “May I speak, Your Majesty?”
Ag negligently gave him permission with an impatient wave of his hand.
“The Old Wizard will not be an easy target, especially if, as we now believe, he’s even more powerful than we’d thought.”
“You do have a point,” Ag said petulantly.
“Have faith in me, Your Majesty,” Simuth pleaded. “I’ll lay the old man’s head at your feet.”
Anogh added, “And succeed or fail, to merely make the attempt will mean open war with all mortal practitioners.”
“You’re right,” Ag snarled, though he clearly didn’t like the taste of the truth. He turned to Simuth. “That was a stupid idea, you idiot.”
No one bothered to correct the king, to point out that the idea had been his.
Baalthelmass had sensed the Lord’s return to the Mortal Plane, and Its hunger blossomed ten-fold. It had also sensed the momentary emergence of the Primus caste, and was pleased it had been banished. Baalthelmass did not want to live in the shadow of some cruel master. It wanted the role of cruel master for Itself.
That foolish Tertius had gotten itself banished back to the Netherworld, though even Baalthelmass did not understand how. However, the Tertius could still be useful, perhaps even worth the cost of summoning it back.
With no more than a thought It summoned the thrall Belinda, and in a matter of seconds the door opened and she stepped into Its study. As always she knelt before It and bowed her head, then waited for Baalthelmass to speak.
It looked at her carefully. She was a truly beautiful and desirable creature, at least in the eyes of mortals, a woman capable of arousing the most carnal needs in even a man of the cloth. But such physical desires were meaningless to Baalthelmass; the erotic needs of mortal flesh meant nothing to It, held no sway over Its desires.
“Belinda, my dear,” It said, “I have a task for you. You must bring back that foolish and troublesome Tertius. And then I think I’ll have you play a more direct role in this young Lord’s seduction.”
Chapter 9: Elves?
McGowan helped a badly dazed Paul up to one of the spare bedrooms, helped him out of his clothes and into bed, then spelled him into a deep sleep. He called a doctor, a friend and an arcane practitioner who understood the need for discretion.
The doctor prodded and poked, peeled back eyelids and did other doctor things. “He was conscious when you brought him up here?”
“Pretty groggy,” McGowan said, “badly dazed. Nasty smack on the head when he hit the floor.”
“Remove the sleep spell, please.”
McGowan extinguished the spell and Paul responded immediately. “Wassa happens . . .” He tried to lift his head, blinked his eyes.
The doctor pressed Paul’s shoulders back down to the bed. “I’m a doctor. You’ve had a bump on the head and I’m examining you, so hold still.”
That calmed Paul a little. The doctor did more prodding and poking while asking Paul a continuous stream of questions. Paul answered each in a reasonably coherent fashion, though between answers he kept mumbling about snake-legged demons.
The doctor looked at McGowan. “It would be helpful if he slept now.”
McGowan renewed the sleep spell and Paul lay back peacefully.
The doctor stitched up a few cuts and bandaged them while commenting, “Nasty concussion, though not life threatening. But it wouldn’t hurt to have Colleen do some healing on that. She’s better at that than me.
“Couple of nasty cuts, some serious bruising, but no broken bones. Fellow took quite a beating.”
When the doctor finished McGowan escorted him to the front door, thanked him, then returned to the bedroom where Paul slept peacefully. From the small wastebasket near the bed he retrieved a bloody bandage and examined it carefully. With threads containing Paul’s blood he could locate Paul almost anywhere, at least while the blood remained fresh; perhaps three or four days.
And Katherine’s bloody nose had dripped all over the floor of his workshop. He had the means at hand to keep a close eye on both of them. With that thought, he turned and headed for his workshop.
McGowan was standing before the fireplace in his study when the knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. He’d been contemplating the flames in the hearth, trying to see in them some insight into young Conklin. He didn’t turn from the flames as he said, “Come in, Sarah,” knowing with his wizard’s senses it was the woman he employed as an assistant, a witch of medium strength who would not look askance at his unusual lifestyle.