Demon's Play

by David McBride

  Lily tilted her head and smiled at his crouched form. “Do you like it? I grew tired of the body I wore for you. It was simply a reproduction of one of the men who worshipped me some centuries ago.” She turned the smile on me. It was a mixture of mischief and malevolence that wasn’t entirely foreign to a normal child, but the lack of emotion in the eyes was what made it alien. “This is a real body, not a fabrication. I’m wearing it especially for the Inquisitor.”

  Christian, remembering that I was still there, looked at me with open-mouthed shock. “Bow before your new Master,” he growled.

  The ropes suddenly turned heavy and dragged me to the ground. I didn’t resist. I couldn’t. Part of my mind was still reeling over the fact that Lily was the force behind Christian, and the other part was whispering I told you so in my ear, over and over again. It was too much effort to assimilate the information and fight to remain standing at the same time. My knees banged painfully onto the ground and the ropes ceased feeling like lead weights, returning once again to their light, almost insubstantial feel.

  “You,” I said through numb lips. I didn’t make it a question or an accusation like it should have been. It was simply a word, but it carried the destructive power of an atom bomb, wrecking the world around me, burning what I knew to the ground.

  Lily clapped her hands and giggled. She stepped up next to me, leaned next to me, and whispered, “You mortals are too easy, Uncle Frank. It’s no wonder our warriors keep coming here. It’s like a world run by newborns.”

  She stepped back to stand over Christian who had lowered his head to the pavement and was whispering his devotion. It was so simple, I realized as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. She had always appeared to Christian as a man, and as a little girl to me. The human mind had a way of dividing things into categories that we understood. Gender was one of those categories. So when Christian had referred to his master as “Him” I had assumed that it was Nathilog in the body of that biker that he served. Demon’s had no gender except that of the body they wore, and those were as interchangeable to Demons as clothes were to us.

  It was such a simple mistake, and now everyone was going to pay because I made it. I let my guard down and allowed myself to trivialize the threat that Rashonteif presented because she wore a child’s body and acted the part. And I had trusted in the binding contract that the wizards of the Committee had placed on her. Every fiber of my being had told me that that wouldn’t be enough to stop her if she wanted to break the deal, but I had foolishly ignored it.

  “You have shown me that I made the right choice in selecting you as my herald, Christian.” Lily placed her tiny hand under Christian’s jaw and lifted his face so that they were only inches apart from each other. A single tear of rapturous joy ran down his cheek. In his face I saw the hope of a boy who desperately wanted someone to love him, value him. Lily pressed away the tear with her thumb and kissed his forehead. He sighed long and deep, as if he had been holding that breath for years. “Give me the Book so that we can build our new world together.”

  “Yes my Lord,” he said through sobs. He held it out to her.

  I began to struggle against the ropes. I had one last chance. I needed to stall them. “Christian, don’t. It’s a trick. She’ll—”

  He turned eyes of burning hatred on me and snarled a word. The ropes constricted, one of the coils slipping around my neck, forcing the wind out of me and squeezing my airway shut. The harder I fought, the tighter they became. After a moment I had tired myself out, and my vision started to go blurry with the lack of oxygen.

  “Keep him awake,” Lily said. “I want him to see this.”

  “Of course my Lord.” The ropes immediately slackened. I gulped in huge, gasping breaths, my lungs burning with need. “I would do anything for you.”

  “I know,” she said with false emotion, playing on his need for approval. She placed her hands on the Book, but didn’t take it from him. “Do you give this to me of your own free will?”

  “I do,” he said. With the two of them so close and the Book between them it looked and sounded like some bizarre marriage ceremony. “Ascend fully to this plane so that I might serve you forever. Together we will banish death and rule the immortal earth!”

  “No,” I gasped as Lily took the Book of Names and cradled it in her small arms.

  A thunderclap resounded as the tome passed from him to her, as if the earth itself was rejecting what had happened.

  “Yes, Inquisitor,” she said, caressing the carvings that adorned the front of the tome. “You played a good game, but unfortunately for you it was stacked against you from the start.”

  “You never had any intention of working with the Council,” I said, shaking my head, wondering at how I had been such a fool. I had asked her if she would do as the Committee had asked and she had said yes. And I had believed her.

  “On the contrary,” Lily replied. “I am doing just as they asked.” And then she added, as if she had read my mind, “I never lied to you, Inquisitor. You just didn’t ask the right question.”

  Confusion clouded Christian’s wan features. “The Council? Master, what are you two talking about? What do they have to do with us?”

  She looked at him, all pretended emotions forgotten. “I’m afraid that you have gone from being my knight to a sacrificial pawn. A pity really, but those were the terms of the agreement.”

  She held out an empty hand and Christian convulsed. Black energy began pouring from his mouth and eyes and flowed into Lily’s open palm. He let out a piercing shriek like a mortally wounded animal. His tattoos slowly faded leaving his sallow skin plain and unremarkable. After a moment he was drained and he curled around himself in the fetal position, shaking and moaning.

  The ropes loosened, and then dissolved, becoming as immaterial as the air around me. I stood, wincing as pain shot through my legs and hips, and looked between the Demon and the broken necromancer. “What is this?”

  “This is how you attain peace.” Her face was an expressionless mask, the child’s soft features revealing nothing. “You win it with a sword and keep it with shackles.”

  “That may work in your realm, but it doesn’t apply here,” I snapped at her. “Now stop speaking in riddles, Demon.”

  Christian reached out a trembling hand and grasped the hem of her dress. He looked up at her, agony written in every line of his face. “What have you done to me Master? Haven’t I served you well?”

  “He said you agreed not to harm him,” I added.

  “I did, and I’m not.” She brushed away the hand that desperately grasped at her as if she were removing some unsightly lint. “All I did was remove the power that I lent him; if that causes him pain it is because he used so much of it that his body became dependent on it. Demon magic is not meant for mortals, paranormal or not.” She looked down at Christian. “Any discomfort you are feeling is entirely your own doing.”

  The last vestiges of Christian’s self-control crumbled, his face telegraphing a misery that far outweighed his physical anguish. I had seen that same look on parents who had to identify their children’s bodies at the scene of an accident, or even worse, a murder. It was the vision of a heart crumbling under immeasurable weight. The power he had been channeling had rotted him from the inside, but he had been so high on his new abilities that he didn’t even notice it. Now that everything had been drained from him he was left with a crumpled husk that wouldn’t last for long.

  “But…I love you,” he gritted out between grunts of pain.

  Lily, unmoved, only spared him a glance to say, “You loved what I offered you. Now be quiet. The Inquisitor and I need to have a word.” With a wave of her hand she made a dome around Christian that kept him from making a sound. From the look of it he was screaming in loud inarticulate cries, but nothing escaped the magic barrier.

  I took advantage of Lily’s momentary distraction and made a play for the Book. I darted forward, hoping that I could wrest it from her delicate-loo
king hands. Arms outstretched like a purse-snatcher, I ran straight into a barrier that rippled with crimson energy. It felt as if I had run head-first into a brick wall and went tumbling backwards, landing hard on my backside. Lily laughed at me.

  “Honestly, Inquisitor, you fight so hard, and for what? This?” She held up the Book, its elaborate cover glowing silver in the moonlight. “It doesn’t belong here and you know it. You don’t even want it in your city.”

  “But I don’t want something like you to have it.” I rubbed my left arm. It had gone numb when I ran into the barrier.

  “The Council wants me to have it. Don’t you serve them?” she asked innocently.

  “You lie,” I snarled. “They would never let you take the Book willingly.”

  “They wouldn’t?” She smiled. “I didn’t think so either when I made my deal with a disturbed young necromancer named Ethan Linklatter.” She looked at Christian’s shuddering form without pity. “I would give him power in return for him getting it for me. With my power added to his own he would be close to unstoppable. I didn’t know that someone else already had a game in session here, and they had…anticipated me. It was unexpected to say the least. A mortal willing to match wits with one of my kind was unthinkable.” She turned a wistful smile toward me. “It’s been millennia since someone has been able to surprise me, and I had grown overconfident, my planning had become lax. I mean, you humans are barely more than cattle to us, so what did I have to worry about? And then the Coven of the Flame summoned me.”

  “The demon tribes’ ruling council,” I mumbled.

  “Indeed. I didn’t know how they had learned of my summoning name, but I thought that I could keep a closer eye on things here if I accepted their offer as mediator between your races. I was in a perfect position, I thought. I could watch Ethan’s, or rather Christian’s, progress and perhaps stir up some conflict between your races in order to keep you distracted, keep your forces thinned and your sights off the real prize. But that all changed when we had our little parley inside your mind. What a revelation that was!” she beamed at me. “To see the inside of your mind and what they had shaped it for, that was when I first realized that I had put my pieces on someone else’s game board.”

  My mind raced with every implication, and I found myself parroting back her words. “Shaping my mind? What does that mean?”

  She waved it away and continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. “At first I was insulted when I saw the hunched old man that they had sent to barter with me. He looked so frail and weak. But then he spoke into the girl’s mind and I understood. I saw his plan and it was magnificent, a work of art that would have made any of our Warmasters proud. I still don’t know how he found out I was behind Christian or how he got my name and gave it to the Coven of the Flame, but he did, and he brought me right to you.”

  Jae Kwon, the psychic that had met us in my mindscape, the representative of the Supernatural Enforcement Committee that had contacted us. He was the one who had set these things in motion, the one who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of dozens of men and woman, paras and humans alike? “No. That can’t be right.” I shook my head emphatically, willing it to all be a lie even though part of me believed every word of it. “He’s an Inquisitor, a lawman. We keep the peace!”

  “Yes,” she said patiently. “But lasting peace can only be achieved by wiping out the aggressors. He understands this and knew how to use it to his advantage. He couldn’t openly make a deal with a Demon; it would be a scandal that the Council would never recover from. And we all know that deals between our races rarely end well.” I looked reflexively at Christian who was still screaming soundlessly. “Too often we are trying to get the upper hand on the one we strike the bargain with. Jae understood that and took a different tack. Instead of trying to use me against his enemies he offered to help me get what I wanted. All he needed were a few minor things in return and the Book was mine. He revealed part of the game he was playing to me. How could I refuse? While I was stuck in your mind I was at his mercy. If I wouldn’t play his game he would destroy the girl’s mind and send me back to my realm. I could return, of course, but by the time I did the Book would have been moved and every Inquisitor in North America would have been looking for Christian. He had trapped me.”

  “You don’t sound mad about it,” I accused. “In fact, you sound…impressed.”

  “I admit, if I were human I think I would feel lust for him. The way he orchestrated everything the way only someone who could see the future could.” She shivered and closed her eyes. “I saw a small reflection of his ability when you fought Nathilog and trapped him with that symbol. It was a dim reflection to be sure, but I can see why he values you so.”

  My mind switched gears at the mention of the other Demon. “What of Nathilog?” I snapped. If it were Rashonteif and not Nathilog that Christian had served than that meant that the other one was still trapped. “Where is he? Are Jon and Juliet alright? I swear if you hurt them—”

  “Don’t make threats you can’t follow through on, Uncle Frank,” she snapped. “Nathilog is right here.” She tucked the Book under one arm and held out her other hand, palm up. The spirit box materialized in her hand. “Your friends are unharmed. Consider it one of my gifts to you.”

  Relief swept through me, lifting the oppressive weight that had been sitting on my shoulders. They were alive. I could breathe a little easier. “How did you do that? It was in Jon’s safe room, you shouldn’t have been able to take it from there.”

  “When you had Jon distract me by showing me around I burrowed a hole through his defenses and left myself a backdoor.”

  Something clicked inside my head, a connection I could only see now that I had more pieces to the puzzle. “Nathilog is one of yours isn’t he?”

  “Yes, although I imagine that if the opportunity presented itself he would have tried to trap me in that bottle for real. It is our nature to exploit circumstances after all. I needed some way to move you from place to place, to keep you off balance enough that you wouldn’t have time to see what was right in front of you.”

  “And the Demon inside your stuffed bear?”

  “He was a way to communicate with Nathilog and Christian without your people finding out. Anything that I did while under your people’s contract would have been monitored. And he made a good sacrifice to convince you that I was in real danger from Nathilog.” She sighed. “He was a loyal soldier.”

  Anger burned through me as hot as the sun. It was all I could do to control myself. “None of this explains why Jae would want you to have the Book.”

  “Necessity,” she answered. “He didn’t want me to have it; he needed me to have it. Those portals that lead between our realms? There are seventeen of them, all spilling our lesser warriors onto this world when they stumble upon a gateway. That’s why no matter how many of the tribes you kill there is always more of them waiting to take their place. Your Council knows that the only way to close the gates from this side is to sacrifice someone’s spirit to each portal. Imagine that, Inquisitor. You could close a gate, but in order to do so someone has to willingly suffer eternal torment by fusing their soul to the portal. Do you know many people that would do that? Would you?” She shook her head. “No, of course not. But what if someone told you there was another way, a much easier way. This tome may contain names and summoning rites on this side, but in my realm it is a book of magic. Whoever holds it will be the unopposed ruler of all. But your Council doesn’t care who rules the infernal realm, the selling point for them was that whoever wields this power can close the gates. And I will. I will no longer countenance my soldiers running off, deserting their posts to come live here on this soft world.”

  “But why would he go through all of this?” I asked, confusion and betrayal making my voice weak. “All of the people who died. Hell, we almost all died in there.”

  She smirked. “You and the wizard and the vampire were part of the agreement. You were under my protectio
n the entire time. The only time you were in any real danger was back at your house when Christian decided to interrogate you by pouring necromantic energy directly into you. I was afraid I was going to have to reveal myself to get him off of you, but then Cassie stepped in and brought him back from the brink. That would have caused complications if I had revealed myself so early, but it all worked out for the best. And all of the others? Well, they would all have died eventually right? Better they die to serve a higher cause, don’t you think? The Council wishes to sow confusion and discord among their enemies while concealing their true purpose. They needed to make it look convincing. That’s where I came in.” She looked above at the towering columns of smoke that trailed through the sky. “I did a pretty good job, don’t you think?”

  “All of this subterfuge and deceit,” I said with disgust. “Why are you telling me all of this? If it was all supposed to be behind the scenes then you’re breaking the agreement.”

  “I’m telling you this because you need to be ready when the time comes. I know what they’ve done to you, what they are shaping you for. This whole exercise served multiple purposes, and one of them was to test their new weapon: You.”

  I recoiled as if struck. “Me? What are you talking about? I already work for them. I’ve had three years in the field and have seen my share of fights.”

  “True enough. But did you notice anything new lately, ever since you had been exposed to necromantic powers? Glowing eyes perhaps? An ability to undue necromantic spells? An unexplained out of body experience? Does any of that sound familiar, Inquisitor? I didn’t understand what I was seeing when I was a guest inside your mind, but it’s clear to me now, and if you allow yourself to look, you’ll see it too.”

  Her words forced their way into my head and wouldn’t leave. The past week’s events replayed themselves at lightning-speed in my mind. Something had changed in me and I had ignored it, or rather some part of me had chosen to ignore it. I took all of the things that Rashonteif had said and looked for something that corresponded with my new abilities. The training was sluggish, keeping me from the information I needed. It was almost as if it were fighting me.