The Demon's Apprentice

by Ben Reeder

  My father's black Lincoln Town Car was waiting in the back parking lot when we pulled back into Truman High School. I slipped out of the van and headed for the doors as soon as the van stopped. My father was at Dulka’s side before I even cleared the seat leather. He probably had business he needed some help with. In Stefanos “the Spartan” Fortunato’s line of work, that usually meant he needed someone killed or maimed, and Dulka was his go-to guy for untraceable murders and mutilations. Since those didn’t involve any deals or contracts, I was off the hook.

  They muttered together for a couple of moments as we made our way down the dim hallways. I never liked the halls at Truman. The floor was a puke colored pattern, and the walls were a beige so bland it bordered on white. Lincoln Heights was also the only school in the city that didn’t have a church, mosque or synagogue within three miles of it. My father had bought out the nearest church, registered another one on its property and left it empty. Then it had been a simple matter of going in and breaking the sanctification without desecrating it. With that protection gone, there was nothing to keep a demon out of the area. The low murmur of the conversation behind me and the dull slap of shoe leather against the stone floors made my skin crawl as I approached Dulka's wards. I slipped through them with a shudder of revulsion and waited for my Master and my father to cross them as well.

  I looked back over my shoulder at the old man, and tried not to see myself in him. His hair was as dark and curly as mine, but had plenty of gray in it, and his nose had a bigger hook to it than mine. Of course, over the past few years, it had been easier and easier to stop seeing any resemblance. His cheeks had gotten fatter, and his lips reminded me of two dead fish, all pale and slimy. He'd started a collection of chins, too, each one weaker than the original, and not even the Armani suit could hide his gut. I was grateful to my mom for giving me more of her looks than his. They passed the wards, and the familiar pressure across the back of my neck settled back into place as Dulka reactivated them.

  “Boy, go prepare the circle. You have a love spell to do tonight!” Dulka crowed as my father grimaced.

  My father hated these visits, and so did I. He didn't like to see me work magick. I just hated my father. Not in the usual teenage “I hate you because it’s trendy” way. I had a good reason; I was his first-born son…and his price for power.

  I bowed my head and headed for the unused science lab that I had called home for the past four years. A few neglenom charms made sure people ignored the door to the lab, and over time, the charms' influence had even made them forget that room 113 ever existed. They were some of my earliest charms, and I'd been adding to them every year. By now, they even protected the room from divinations, so that the Conclave of the Magi couldn't sniff us out and send their Sentinels after us.

  A fist-sized bag of bone ash mixed with dried blood sat between a bone knife and an iron rod on the teacher's desk: the basic tools for casting a sorcerer's circle. By themselves, they were useless to me. I could prepare Dulka's circle with them, but it was still his circle to do with as he pleased. He'd inscribed it into the floor himself; all I was doing was charging it. It wouldn't keep him out any more than a strong breeze could stop a charging minotaur. The tools felt cold and greasy in my hands as I walked the edge of the circle, dropping a fine stream of bone ash beside me as I muttered the protection curses in Infernal patois. As I completed the circle, I twisted my right foot and bore down with my toe. The piece of glass that I'd wedged into the soft rubber grated almost silently across the etched line of the circle's edge, and broke it.

  With the circle done, I headed for the store room off the lab, supposedly to get the supplies for the love spell for my father. Not tonight, though. The old man was going to have to get laid without my help from now on.

  I looked around the little room for a moment, and realized I might actually miss this place. This room was where Dulka kept me. I only had a pallet on the floor under one of the storage tables, and a few changes of clothes, but this was the one space that was even a little bit mine. At least, up to now it was. But, I really didn’t have the time to be all gushy and sentimental. I still had work to do.

  I reached up to one of the higher shelves and grabbed the jar hidden in the back. There was a pale glint to it as I brought it out into the half-light of the room and pulled the large glass dish up to set beside it. The jar held a golden amulet that I’d made months ago, hidden in a solution of aqua regia, the only acid I knew of that would dissolve gold. I dumped that into the glass dish, then added a reactant, and traced a symbol of Recollection in the air over it. In seconds, the amulet was re-forming, bubbling back into existence in reverse of the way it dissolved months ago when I first dropped it into the corrosive bath. I snatched it up with a pair of glass rods, and laid it on another dish before the suddenly potent aqua regia could start to work on it again. Carefully, I wiped the last residue of acid from it and slipped it onto a leather thong that I wrapped around my wrist. Next came a quick trip to Dulka’s potion supply. The amulet was designed to negate Dulka’s magick, and it went through the wards on the cabinet like butter. I snagged the last curative potion, and tucked the half-full bottle into my jacket pocket for later. What I had in mind was going to get violent.

  “Boy!” Dulka bellowed. “Get your worthless ass out here!”

  I stepped out into the room and into the middle of my own circle, which I had etched into the floor with a razor blade over several weeks. Inside it was an upright pentacle, with its primary point facing North. From my jacket pocket, I took two packets of salt I’d lifted from McDonald’s that afternoon and tore them open, so that the coarse grains fell into the palm of my hand.

  “My name is Chance Fortunato, asshole!” I growled by way of challenge, both fists clenched tight and held at my sides. “Hear me, oh Master.”

  “Insubordinate and submissive in the same breath,” Dulka said with a wicked grin. “Have a seat, Stefan, this should be fun to watch.” Dulka got up and stepped around his desk, letting his form shift from the high school science teacher into his true shell on this plane: a black-skinned demon with ram’s horns on either side of his head, black eyes, and cloven hooves. Wicked talons stretched from his fingertips, and spikes stuck out from his elbows and knees.

  “Let me remind you of something, slave. I own you, body and soul. You’re property, my property. Daddy here sold you to me fair and square, and Mommy didn’t even put up a fight for you.” He laughed, a loud, harsh sound, and I knew he almost believed the crap he was spouting.

  I opened my right hand, revealing the pile of salt.

  “Oh, my!” he gasped melodramatically. “What’s this? Salt? For a circle? Whatever will I do, Stefan?” he asked as he put the back of his right hand to his wrinkled black forehead. “The half trained familiar that I taught to use magick is going to cast a circle! I’m doomed!” My father joined in on the laughter then.

  “Circumvare!” I chanted. The salt flew into a perfect circle with the quick-casting invocation.

  Dulka laughed as he stepped up to the edge of the floating column of white crystals and ran his finger through them, seemingly unaffected by their border. I cringed back, and he laughed again.

  “Hmmm, looks like somebody went and broke the circle you cut into the linoleum,” he taunted. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice the box knife missing every night? That I don’t know every single thing you do?” He reached through the swirling cloud for me.

  “No, I kinda counted on you noticing that one,” I said, smiling as his hand got almost to my throat. I leaned back as I went on. “I made two.” I held up the last of the razor blades and closed the inner circle with a flourish. Dulka barely had time to look surprised as the salt closed the inner ward with his hand still inside it. Energy filled the circle as the salt closed around his arm like piano wire. The over-pressure of energy slammed him away, but he left a lot of his skin sliding down the inside of the circle before he smashed into the chalkboard.

  I had
made the more noticeable circle with the box cutter, knowing Dulka would be watching me. At the same time, I’d used razor blades to inscribe a second, nearly invisible circle a foot inside it as I went along. He’d found the one I wanted him to, just like he’d found the four I’d made before.

  Dulka picked himself up and stood facing me, disbelief plain on his face.

  “Thrice three times has the sun set on the hour of my birth since you I crossed your threshold,” I intoned. The first words of the rite hung in the air for a moment, and Dulka’s brow wrinkled up a little more. My father stopped laughing and looked to Dulka.

  “The Rite of Severing,” Dulka snarled as he stalked toward me. “Who taught it to you?” I flipped him off by way of reply.

  “That only applies to apprentices,” he said, his confidence almost convincing. “Your soul belongs to me.”

  “My father gave me to you as part of his price,” I said with a glare at the offending parent. “I never signed a contract.” Dulka’s face looked like he’d just eaten a Communion wafer for a moment, then he smiled.

  “You think you’re clever, slave, but you forgot that it’s only been eight years,” he said as he walked toward me.

  “Eight years, nine birthdays,” I said. “You took me on the morning on my seventh birthday. I was born at night.”

  Dulka’s eyes narrowed as he saw the wide-eyed confirmation on my father’s face. It was a technicality, but demons lived by them. Their magick was ruled by them. Dulka roared and slammed his fist into the edge of the circle hard enough to crack the windows behind me, but the barrier held. I smiled until he drew his left hand up and uttered a harsh-sounding syllable in Infernal.

  “Kneel, slave, and know the agony I reserve for those who forget their place!” There was a pressure on my mental defenses, but by now, even his best effort wasn’t much more than an annoyance. The smug grin on his face faltered when I cocked my head to one side.

  “You done with the warm up? You haven’t been in my head for years now. Try harder.”

  He stepped back and threw a solid lance of Hellfire that flickered against the shield before dying away. Two more followed it in quick succession, and I felt my defenses being pushed toward their limits. I bolstered them with my own energy, leaving myself drained when he finally let up. I brushed the sweat out of my eyes as I straightened, and Dulka smiled.

  “You’re not as strong as you think, boy.”

  “Strong enough. Three blows unanswered, and still I stand,” I recited the next part of the Rite. “Thrice I claim my freedom, and state it clear. I am free.” The words reverberated inside the circle and rang through the room as Dulka’s controls over me strained against my will.

  “I am free!” I said louder, and the glass in the windows behind me exploded into the room as the spell shattered under my will.

  “I AM FREE!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I stepped forward as the last words left my mouth, and the opened circle burst out in a wave of force. Desks flew across the room and the walls buckled when it hit. It knocked my former boss back against the chalkboard again, and I heard other things breaking elsewhere in the science wing. “Thrice I say, and with you…be done.”

  Now came the hardest part.

  “Thrice three times, I smite thee. Once rebuked art thou for each year’s passing lost to thee!” I yelled. Then, I unleashed the soul essence I had taken for Dulka that day. It flared around me like a living flame as I stepped toward him, drunk with the pure power I held in the palm of my hand.

  Soul essence fueled a lot of Dulka’s spells, and most of his defenses. I sent a ton of it at him, a blast of pure Soulfire that slammed into his chest and knocked him through the wall, across the hallway, through the next wall, and out into the courtyard. I sent another gout of it after him, pinning him to the ground while I walked toward him through the smoking hole I'd made. I reached down and pulled him to me by one horn. The skin on his chest was raw and blistered, and wisps of fetid smoke rose off his skin, but he was still alive. Not happy about it, maybe, but still alive.

  “No!” he cried as I kicked him between the legs. He doubled over in agony, his hands cupping his crotch. Even demons had sensitive gonads. I grabbed the other horn and muscled him up to his knees. I drew on my will as I pulled my left arm back and drove my fist into his bovine nose, using every ounce of the strength I had taken from McKane. There was a crunching sound and a snap as he went flying. The curve of a horn was still clutched in my right hand, and a crumpled demon lay several feet away. My left fist throbbed as I walked over to my fallen former owner. With a toss, I moved the broken horn from my right hand to my left, and drew back again, using it to club him while I held him by the other horn. The horn broke again on the sixth blow, and I realized it on the eighth. I punched him one more time, to make the full nine. He hung limp in my grip, his physical form barely solid, his grasp on this realm weakening with each blow.

  “Nine blows unanswered…for my freedom,” I panted as I tucked the piece of his horn in my back pocket. “I have bested thee. Thou art my master no longer,” I finished the ritual phrase while I dragged him back into the lab by his other horn. I was starting to feel sweat run down my back as I pulled him through the hole I'd made in the wall. My father moaned as he started to come to, but I ignored him. The Rite was almost done, but the last part was the most important and the hardest.

  Once I had dragged my Master's limp form into the circle I had started out in, I took my place at the northern point and closed it again. Words that were never intended to be heard by human ears, much less uttered by a human tongue, fell from my lips like verbal bricks. Most of them hurt to pronounce, and it felt like I was going to choke on a few of them as I walked around the circle three times deosil, or clockwise in magickal speak. It felt good to finally be doing something the right way, though. When I completed the third circuit, I stopped at the northern point again.

  “As once you bound me, I bind thee, self to self,” I hissed at him. I coughed on smoke and went on. “Thou art beaten by thine own student, undone by thine own teachings, bound by thine own hand through me. Choke on it, you ugly son of a bitch!” The circle closed with a vile sound. I left Dulka's limp form in the circle and turned to face the old man. The rite was done, and I was almost free. But I still had business with my father.

  “Son, wait!” he cried as I started toward him.

  “You never get to call me that again!” I screamed at him, rage making my words raw, ripping them from my throat. The wall behind him cracked with the force of raw emotion given impact by the magick coursing through me. “You gave me to a demon, and beat the crap out of me whenever I didn’t make things easy for you! Well, I am done being your price!” I reached for him as he stumbled against the wall, and I loved seeing the fear in his face. Someday, a tiny voice reminded me, I might regret enjoying his terror, but today sure as hell wasn’t that day.

  “Don’t you see?” he asked, gesturing at Dulka with his outstretched hands. “Don’t you see what an opportunity this presents for us?”

  “Us?” I growled.

  “Yes! If you kill him now, he’ll be sent back into the Abyss! My contract will be null and void! I’ll be in the clear!”

  “Not everything is about you, you selfish son of a bitch,” I growled, parroting the words he had said to me eight years ago on my birthday. I balled my fist up and punched him in the mouth to make my point. It had been all me: no borrowed strength or magick, just a pissed off teenager beating the crap out of his asshole of a father. Damn, it felt good. “You’re not getting out of your contract, you son of a bitch. Dulka still gets your soul when you die, and you still go to Hell.”

  “Son, please!” he cried. I hit him again.

  “Never again!” I yelled at him. My left hand was swollen and bruised, and I could barely make a fist, but with a little draw from the strength charm, it delivered one last punch across his jaw. He folded like a wet noodle and went down. I coughed again and went back to my pallet i
n the store room to grab my gym bag.

  “Well, done, slave,” Dulka's voice caught me up short as I walked past the circle.

  “Fuck off,” I said as I started walking again.

  “You're still not free, boy. You haven't crossed the threshold yet, and I promise you, I won't let you make it to the door.”

  That made my gut clench. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right.

  “Circle's too strong,” I said as I walked to the hole in the wall.

  “The fire will weaken it. I'll get out before you make it halfway down the hall.”

  Fire? I turned toward him, and saw what he was talking about. Scattered papers and desks were still flickering from the blasts I'd thrown around so casually a few minutes before. But they weren't that bad: just tiny fires, already guttering and dying. Then the smell of natural gas hit my nose. Somewhere, a line had busted. It was just a matter of time before it went up.

  I hissed an Infernal curse and scrambled to my father. He was still out. Damn it! Limp as he was, “dead weight” didn't even begin to cover how hard it was to move him, but I finally managed to get him through the smoldering hole in the wall and out into the hallway.

  Dulka's irritating laugh followed me into the hall. Then, the gas caught.

  Chapter 3

  ~ A man is best repaid in his own coin. ~ Johann Faust 15th century Mage

  I shook my head and tried to get to my feet. My legs turned traitor on me and I flopped back down on my side. The second time, they worked a little better and I staggered through the smoke to my unconscious father. My left hand was pretty much useless now, and my ears were ringing from the explosion that had knocked us both down the hallway. There was no way I was going to get us both out of there like that. And I wasn't going to leave him to die. With all the crap that was already on my soul, I wasn't going to add any more.

  Without being able to use my left hand, it took a little extra fumbling to dig the curative out of my pocket, and I nearly dropped it on the floor before I got a good grip on it. The cork crumbled under my teeth as I pulled it out, and I spat flecks of it out before I upended the bottle. The pain in my left hand faded before I could so much as gag on the taste, and I heard the grating of bone on bone as it knit itself back together. Even the rib that Dulka had cracked that morning stopped hurting. It should have hurt like hell, but all it did was feel weird as my body did things it wasn’t meant to do. Curatives were expensive for a reason. Now, I all I had to do was drag my father out of a burning building.