by N. P. Martin
“Now is not really a good time,” I told her.
"Did I used to come here much?" she asked, completely ignoring me as she moved further into the house toward the living room.
Sighing, I closed the front door and followed her into the living room. “Quite a lot, yeah.”
Leona was now standing in the center of the living room, looking around in near wonder. “How do you live with all this…clutter? It would drive me insane.”
"I know. You got used to it."
“And why are there books stuck to the ceiling?”
“They rise up there by themselves. Some magic can be…buoyant.”
“Buoyant books?” She shook her head. “Every day is something new.”
I cleared my throat as I hovered casually by the living room door. “So what brings you here again?”
“I told you, I just came to see if you were still alive after your demon summoning.”
“Oh, right. I haven’t done it yet.”
“Why not? I thought you wanted this shit sorted.”
"I do. I just have a few more preparations left to do."
She nodded, still looking around the room at what I knew she saw as a state of chaos. If you've ever been inside Leona's Worthington apartment, you would know what I mean. She takes her minimalism very seriously, as she does her cleaning. "Okay. I was kind of hoping you'd done it already. I'm…intrigued as to what my memories are of you."
Given how we ended our last meeting before I got cursed, I thought, she’ll probably sock me in the face first chance she gets. At least I have that to look forward to.
“Really?” I said despite myself. “So you find me intriguing? I’ll take that.”
“I’m intrigued as to the content of those memories, not intrigued by you necessarily.” She smiled, almost wickedly. “Not the same thing.”
"That's okay. I already know how you feel about me. Felt about me, I mean."
"And how did I feel about you?" she asked.
“See, I have you intrigued now.”
She shook her head. "How did I feel about you?"
"You loved me."
She snorted, then laughed. “Seriously?”
“I’m glad that amuses you.”
“Fuck off, Creed. That can’t be true.”
"And why not? Is it because you think you could never love anyone? That there's something wrong with you that you can't love properly?"
The usual scowl on her face disappeared for a moment as she took on a look of vulnerability, then discomfort. She didn’t need to ask how I knew all that, but she asked anyway. “What the fuck would you know?”
I held my hands up. "Maybe a little soon to be going that deep. I'm sorry. It's still true, though. We had a good thing going, you and I. I miss it."
Leona stared at me for a long moment, like she was trying to detect some deep connection between us. Then she frowned and shook her head slightly as she looked away.
As he usually does whenever he detects Leona's presence, Blaze chose that point to appear in the kitchen, having presumably climbed the stairs after recognizing her stop was more than a passing message. His ears went down when he saw Leona, and he went padding over to her, rubbing his head against her thigh. Leona gingerly stroked Blaze’s head like she was still unsure about the wolf.
“You two were close,” I said, glad to feel some of the tension dissipating from the room.
"Seems like it," she said. "You have a basement, I see."
“Eh, yeah.” I moved across the room to the kitchen entrance and tried to lean casually against the wall. Jesus, I thought to myself. Could I make it any more obvious?
Leona’s eyes narrowed as she stopped stroking Blaze. “What you got down there?”
“Oh, not much. Junk mostly. Nothing you’d want to see.”
She walked forward. “You know, normally when people say that it means they have something to hide. You have any dead bodies down there, Creed?”
"Dead bodies," I guffawed a bit too theatrically. "Wise up, will you? You think I'm Dr. Frankenstein or something?" I laughed again as I shifted nervously around like a suspect under questioning.
Leona stared at me, a hint of knowing in her eyes. “You can cut the act now, Creed. I smelled it as soon as I came in.”
“Smelled what exactly?”
She shook her head. “The dead body, Creed. You know how many bodies I’ve smelled over the years? Course you do. That wolf of yours would have nothing on me when it came to sniffing out death.” She glanced back at Blaze. “No offense, Blaze.”
I sighed. “Damn you and your keen senses.”
She smiled and made her way past me into the kitchen, then down into the basement. I didn't even try to stop her. There would have been no point. "Jesus," she said when I got down into the basement to find her standing over John Doe. "You could have picked a better-looking corpse."
"I didn't have the luxury of time," I said. "Plus I didn't pick him for his looks."
“Clearly.”
“The corpse is just a tool.”
She raised her eyebrows. “A tool?”
“For the summoning, of course. The demon needs an offering before it will appear. Sometimes they like to have a human body to possess as well.”
"You'd think they'd prefer a live one, wouldn't you?" She prodded John Doe's ribs with her boot as if she expected him to wake up any second.
"They sometimes do, but I'm not about to make a live offering, am I?"
Leona turned to face me. “I suppose not.” She kept staring at me.
“What?” I asked, a little uncomfortable under her gaze.
Taking a short breath, Leona came toward me and stopped with her face close to mine. It took me by surprise to have her willingly move so near. To smell her delicious scent and to take in the fine beauty of her facial features. Even the small scar on her right cheek that only added character, which she'd gotten from the fine edge of a knife slash whilst on special assignment in an undisclosed location with the Army Rangers. How perfectly shaped her mouth was, her lips having just the right amount of fullness to them. The specks of hazel in her ice blue eyes. And of course, how incredibly deadly she seemed up close, like a Jaguar eying up its prey.
“You know,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked you exactly what country you were in when you got that scar. I only know it was in South—“
That was as far as I got before she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth, her tongue gently probing my lips for precious seconds. Then she pulled her head back and stared at me again, this time with a slight smile on her face.
“I was curious to see how that would feel,” she said, the croak to her voice sending shivers of excitement through me. “Or if it would trigger a memory or something.”
"Did it?" I asked, unable to take my eyes off her, wanting nothing more than to pull her close so we could kiss again, but knowing that if I did that, I probably wouldn't like how she reacted.
She shook her head. “No. Didn’t feel a thing.”
“Oh.” I tried to conceal my crushing disappointment. “I thought maybe…you know…that there was something there…”
Her head shook again. "Not for me."
There was a slight twinkle in her eye this time as she gazed back at me.
"Are you…messing with me?"
She snorted in my face. “Yes, Creed, I’m fucking with you. Jesus, are you always this easy?”
I at least allowed myself to laugh. “When it comes to you, yes, I am.”
“Does that mean you're my bitch then?”
“Eh, not quite.”
"I bet you're my bitch. Admit it. You bow down to me, don't you?"
I laughed again. “All right, my esteem has taken enough of a battering. Time for you to go. I have a demon to summon.”
“I should stay then. Help you out.”
I looked at her like she was mad. “No way. Not happening. Absolutely not.”
“You're seriously gonna do this alone?
”
“I have to. If I get killed then hey, fair enough. If you get killed, my soul would never be able to live with itself.”
Leona stared at me for a long moment, and I could tell from her face that she was somewhat taken aback by the genuine feelings I clearly had for her. "Okay," she said eventually. "I get you. My soul would probably hunt and kill your soul for killing me anyhow."
"I don't doubt it."
She walked to the side of me and then stopped, her breath soft on my cheek. “Be careful, Creed,” she said, then added as she was walking out of the room, “Oh, and by the way. The country? It was Paraguay.”
19
The Summoning
AFTER MAKING Blaze go upstairs so he was safely out of the way, I locked the basement door and began the process of summoning a demon. Needless to say, I was scared shitless, and I couldn't stop thinking about the night my family was torn apart. But I was also determined to go ahead with things, determined not to cave into my own doubts and fears. For my own safety, I needed to go into the ritual with an open heart and clear mind, otherwise the ritual could fall apart.
I wanted the curse lifted, I wanted people to remember who I was (Leona especially) and I wanted not to turn into a damn ghoul. I also wanted to find out who it was that put me in that situation in the first place. That person was still out there, most likely getting ready to kill again if they hadn't already done so. And given that they were communing with Dimension Lords, who knew what sinister magic they were going to work next. They had to be stopped before any more people got hurt.
The first thing I did in the basement was clear space in the middle of the floor, pushing the large table and stacks of books to one side of the room, giving myself half the floor space to work with. Then I went about drawing a magic circle on the concrete floor, using red chalk that partly contained the dried blood of a lesser angel to draw the design I was copying from The Book Of Many Hells And Demons. It was a complicated design that contained a number of geometric shapes and characters from a language that had long since died out. The circle was mostly for my protection, so I spent nearly two hours trying to get the design as perfect as I could. Of course, the thing about protective magic circles is that they didn't always work as they should. Some of the more powerful demons could not be bound by such things, no matter how strong the circle was. It would hold them back for a while, but if the demon was determined to get at you, it would, and there was nothing you could do about it. That was another thing about summoning demons: wizards liked to feel as if their power and knowledge gave them control over such beings, but in many cases, they were only kidding themselves, and often to their detriment.
Which meant I needed a backup plan if the demon managed to break the circle. That backup plan came in the form of the Sword Of Rishanti, which was forged many centuries ago by an old Hindu wizard for the express purpose of killing demons. The sword—with its short, curved blade made from a metal not found here on Earth—was part of my uncle's collection, handed to me like everything else in the Sanctum. It remained to be seen if the sword did as it was supposed to. I also hoped I wouldn't have to use it to find out.
After I had finished drawing the magic circle, I went about lighting black incense candles that were made mostly from the dung of creatures found in the underworld. The candles reeked and filled the basement with a heavy, ammonia type odor that felt cloying and thick in my nostrils. I used six of the thick candles, all set around the outside of the circle.
The next thing I did was prepare the body of John Doe. On him, I had to cut a number of symbols into his softening and reeking flesh. The air of putrefaction John Doe was putting out was stomach churning, to say the least, and I didn’t exactly enjoy desecrating the poor guy’s body either, but it had to be done. I then dragged his body toward the magic circle, lifting the corpse in so I didn’t break the circle.
The ritual also demanded that I leave a cup of my own blood for the demon inside the circle, so I used the Sword Of Rishanti to make a cut on my right arm and allowed my blood to fill a small bronze bowl that was covered in engravings and precious stones, an artifact I found myself while traveling in Tibet one time.
And that was it. All I had to do then (after healing the cut on my arm) was to strip myself naked (a requirement of the ritual, something to do with symbolically uncovering the soul), sit just outside of the magic circle and read the invocation from The Book Of Many Hells And Demons.
The more powerful demons of the Underworld are not easy to summon, chiefly because that to summon a demon, you had to know its true name first, and coming by a powerful demon’s name wasn’t easy. Demon’s are protective of their names, to say the least. The Book Of Many Hells And Demons contained a fair few of those names, but only a few were attached to a demon powerful enough for my needs. The demon I chose to summon was known as Baal. There was little description of the demon in the book, except to say that he was very old and was possessed of the “dark magic of the Cosmos”.
"Here goes nothing," I said as I sat cross-legged outside the circle, the book open on the floor in front of me, its thick pages seeming to flutter in excitement at the dark magic that was already gathering in the room. It crackled and sparked in the air around me as if hundreds of tiny fireflies were doing a mad dance as if the demon Baal was close by, waiting to break through the Veil Of Darkness, the thin veneer surrounding this world that is supposed to keep out the Underworld dwellers. Until some fool like me gives one of those dwellers access, that is.
Closing my eyes, I began to focus my mind on the task at hand, pushing out all extraneous thoughts and feelings that didn't serve the purpose of the ritual. This kind of concentration used to be difficult for me until I spent three months in a Tibetan monastery learning meditation under an old master. Thanks to that intensive training, I could focus my mind on a single thought for hours at a time if need be.
Once my mind was clear and free from distractions, I started reading the invocation from the book. “Dakumk uk sra dordmakk omd kemeksar Umdarvurrd, rara kae corr, cuka kursr kruk sra vesk uk rarr omd ubaae kae Baal,” I said in a voice that barely sounded like my own. Every ounce of concentration and magical energy that I had went into those words, necessary for Baal to hear my call through the Veil Of Darkness, which clearly he did because I felt the ground beneath me begin to rumble and shake. The shelves on the walls rattled noisily, and the table shook so much that glass containers vibrated off it and shattered on to the floor. And as I continued with the evocation (despite the rising panic in me), a wind began to blow fiercely around me, picking up so much pace that it felt like I was sitting in the center of a whirlwind that didn't take long to chill my blood along with the dropping temperature in the basement. "I kikkum sraa rara muv, osoemks srae verr. Hara ka sraos Baal! Hara ka muv! Braod srruisr sra qaer uk dordmakk emsu srek krosera vurrd omd raad kae cukkomdk! Trae vuvar ek rapierad, em rasirm kur o kocrekeca uk bruud omd krakr. Hara ka dakumk! Cuka su ka muv! Braod sra qaer omd kruv aeuir koca! Las ka ruud ivum sraa muv! Cuka kursr! I cukkomd sraa! Cuka kursr em sra moka uk orr aqer, em sra moka uk orr Baal!”
The invocation was almost done, and despite my focus and concentration on the task at hand, I still recognized the cold fear welling up from deep in my belly, more so when the air in front of me seemed to split in two all of a sudden, like I had sliced the very fabric of this world from another dimension. And as if seeping through that tear, there came the stench of utter filth and decay, so sickening that I turned my head and vomited on to the floor. But I barely even noticed that I had done that because my focus was still on finishing the evocation, even if I was inviting death to come get me.
My heart pounded against my chest and sweat ran over every inch of my exposed skin.
Then just as a clawed hand shot through the tear in the Veil, I forced myself to swallow down my fear and all but screamed the last line of the evocation, which translated roughly into: Come forth in the name of all evil, in the name of all magic! I command
thee!
Through the tear in the Veil Of Darkness, the burning and strangely smiling eyes of Baal glared out at me.
20
Baal
THE DEMON'S EYES were the fiercest I'd ever seen. Bulging orange orbs with dark elliptical pupils surrounded by flecks of blood red. They were eyes that were full of wickedness and diabolical intent as they glared at me through the torn Veil Of Darkness like a monster peeking through the curtains at a scared kid, enjoying every second of the fear it was inducing. Then one of the demon's enormous clawed hands burst through the tear in the Veil, joining its other hand as it then began to force back the Veil further, exposing its face and the rest of its body. It was all I could do to keep myself together as that monster began to climb forth from the depths of the Underworld on the other side of the Veil. My whole body was tense with fear, every vein in me bulging, every pore sweating. The dark power that poured through was overwhelming as it flooded through me to tear at my insides as though it contained a thousand tiny claws, turning my blood to acid in a manner akin to liquid fire circulating where my blood had before. The pain was so great, and so unexpected that I soon started screaming like a torture victim in some dark enclave of the Underworld.
While I was lying on my back outside the magic circle, screaming for my very life, the demon Baal was busy climbing all the way through the fabric of the Veil. And the more the demon stepped into this world, the more I felt its dark and brooding presence.
Then the pain just stopped as if it were never there to begin with, my screams cutting off only after the agony had blessedly ceased. I caught my breath and sat bolt upright on the floor, my body now dumping relief in the form of adrenaline and endorphins by the boatload. Even so, I had to force myself to look upon the wicked thing I had summoned forth from the unfathomably dark depths of the Underworld. This thing was no spirit. Baal was flesh and blood. He also looked more unsettlingly human-like than I expected, given the monstrous, indescribable horror of the demon that had killed my family back in Ireland. The demon Baal had a human-shaped head if you discounted the pointed lumps of bone that pushed upward out of its skull like the tips of spears. He also had four sets of black horns, two smaller pairs near the center of his skull and a larger pair that curled up and back over his head. The demon also had two slits that flared in the center of its face where a nose should have been. His mouth had so many teeth of different lengths—all of them pointed in some way—that I couldn't even count.
