by N. P. Martin
Oh Jesus, what have I done, I thought as I stared in horror at the beast before me. It’s going to rip me apart just like that other demon did to my family.
Baal reared up to his full height of six and a half feet or so. Like his head, Baal's ghastly and thickly muscled body was bipedal in a humanoid fashion, the skin a greenish-black hue with bright orange markings running its full length (perhaps revealing some Underworld characteristic at the core of our own tribal tattoo practices). Baal’s glowing amber eyes—set deep into hollow sockets—glowered down at me. "Who dares to summon me?" it roared in a voice so deep and resonant, and so full of absolute authority, that I felt my bowels loosen to the point where I almost shat myself, which would have been a fitting response to that question. Somehow or other, though, my sphincter retained more dignity than the rest of me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out were unintelligible croaks as my throat was so stricken by fear. This was mostly down to the fact that the demon hadn’t possessed the body of John Doe like I thought he would. Instead, he appeared in his true form, which made him a much bigger threat to me. Another fuck up, I thought. I didn’t have the time however, to ponder what went wrong.
"Speak!" the demon commanded as I felt the heat radiate off it, the smell of something foul and otherworldly creeping over me like a noxious gas, turning my stomach.
Come on. Get a grip of yourself, Creed. Take control of this thing before it fucking kills you!
"I am...August Creed," I said, somehow managing to stand up on shaky legs, the demon seeming even more fierce and frightening as I came face to face with it. "I…I summoned you here to do my bidding, Baal.”
I put as much command and authority into my voice as I could, thinking it would be enough to take control of the demon, but it wasn’t. So I wasn’t expecting what happened next.
The demon stepped forth out of the magic circle like it wasn't even there and gripped me around the throat with one of his enormous hands, his skin like sandpaper around my neck, his grip crushing. Then he lifted me off the ground and held me up, turning my head this way and that like he was inspecting a half-dead animal found on the side of the road. When he pulled me close so my face was just inches from his own, his fetid breath—like the worst fart you've ever smelled in your life—blasted into my open mouth. I'd have vomited if Baal's grip hadn't been so constraining. I could also barely look the demon in the eye as he continued to breathe his foul stench, such were the tears flowing freely to blur any image I might've otherwise been able to make out.
"You think you have power over me, human?" Baal said, not as loud this time, but his voice still boomed in my ears. "You think you can command me?" I looked into the demon’s eyes long enough to see the black heart of evil in them before Baal casually tossed me against the nearest wall, slamming into a stack of shelves. When I crashed to the floor again, heavy books and glass jars rained down on top of me. It was as if a giant had casually swiped me aside and I could only lay there in shock, struggling to recover the air from nearly being choked to death, and that final bit which had been whooshed from my lungs when my body contacted the wall. There was also pain, but adrenaline and endorphins still being dumped by my brain and other related systems masked most of it.
Then the demon was on me again in a flash, his rough hand around my throat again, lifting me up and pinning me against the wall, holding me there as his eyes bored into me.
"Wait!" I managed to croak out before the pressure around my neck got too great. "I…left you…an offering."
The demon's huge maw stretched into some rictus grin, and it pressed me harder into the wall until I felt the darkness starting to pull me under, blackening out my vision until only a small tunnel existed in its centre. “That rotten sack of dead meat? You insult me!”
Just as I started to black out, Baal let go of me so I crashed to the floor while it crossed the room in a blur of motion. Blood rushed into my head along with my returning consciousness, and I watched the demon pick up the body of John Doe like it was nothing and begin to rip it apart. In a matter of seconds, John Doe's body had been torn to pieces and thrown all over the basement. Chunks of flesh slapped into my naked body, splattering blood all over me. When the demon was finished, John Doe had been reduced to a thousand tiny pieces.
It's going to do that to me next if I don't do something, I thought in a panic.
The Sword Of Rashanti still lay inside the magic circle a few feet away. Quickly, I focused my magic and thrust out one hand as I concentrated on the sword, which rattled for a second and then skidded across the floor toward me. I grabbed it immediately and struggled to my feet, thinking what a stupid idea it was to fight a demon who could rip apart a body in seconds. But stupid or not, I knew it was necessary.
“All right, motherfucker," I said, holding the sword high, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than I felt. "Let's fucking do this!"
Baal, covered in blood and gore, laughed and came barreling toward me.
21
Fight
BEFORE THE SUMMONING, I dared have in my head a little movie featuring Baal and me, the two of us talking and working things out, and certainly not fighting. I knew it was foolhardy to even consider that such far-fetched notions could be possible, but all I can really say is that my idealism and optimism sometimes get the better of me, especially in such otherwise unfathomable situations.
Baal got to within three feet of me before I thrust my hand out and stopped him dead with my magic. To be honest, I was as shocked as Baal to find it could even work against a powerful demon such as he. It was also just this kind of plaintive consideration that led to the conclusion staring me in the face, but which had otherwise been missed in the heat of the moment: my magic was working differently! Due to all the dark energy in the room—what with the demon, the still open book on the floor, and all the bad intent in the air—my magic had shifted into darker territory. It felt different inside me. Not cool and flowing the way it normally did, but hot and burning, like a hundred snakes slithering around inside me, their bodies covered in tiny razors that cut my flesh as they moved along. The pain was dreadful, I have to say, but it was also somehow sweet at the same time, maybe because I felt the increase in power I was getting in return for all that pain and darkness. As I held a surprised Baal in place, I added a bit of pain into the mix, and that’s when I really felt the difference in power, when my magic became fueled by sheer bad intent that seemed to materialize unbidden from within me, serving as explosive fuel for my magic.
Baal growled in anger at first as he felt the pain in his chest, then he smiled and stretched his arms out, as if to say, “Bring it on, motherfucker. Do your worst.”
So I did.
I channeled as much pain and murderous intent as I could muster into the demon (and I seemed to be able to muster a lot), driving the beast back toward the wall, my features twisted by effort and the sinister feel of the black magic I was wielding. Even the color of the magic itself, normally bright blue or white, sometimes green or yellow depending on the spell, had darkened into tones of purple, deep orange and red, even black. A perfect reflection of the intent that fueled it.
And I loved it. It was like I had been injected with a massive cocktail of drugs that were now taking me on the ride of my life, the rush as strong and impressionable as any heroin junkies first ever hit.
The force of the darker magic coursing through me had now driven the great demon down to his knees. Even so, there was a look of defiance on Baal’s face and something else that seemed to suggest he was somehow pleased that I was doing what I was doing. “Can you feel it, warlock?” Baal asked me. “Can you feel the darkness coursing through you?” His laugh was deep and sinister.
The evil intent in me had built up to a point where all I wanted to do was destroy the very demon that I had gone to so much trouble to summon in the first place. I wanted to wipe it out of existence, tear it into a million tiny pieces and incinerate each one. Through shee
r force of will, I channeled more of the black magic through myself and into the demon. Baal roared at the increased intensity of the magical assault on him, his roar one of genuine pain this time. I still gripped the Sword Of Rishanti tight in my hand, and I raised my arm back in preparation for a decapitation. Rage and a burning desire for vengeance against demonkind fueled my will to kill as I brought the sword down toward the demon’s neck in a wide arc.
Stop!
The swords killing arc was cut short by a tiny, far away voice coming from somewhere inside my head, telling me to stop what I was doing, and that if I killed the demon, I would be killing the power needed to break the curse on me. It took a monumental force of will for me to listen to that tiny voice. Other, far more sinister voices were begging me to carry on, to let the darkness take over and kill the demon.
With a scream of effort, I managed to cut my magical assault short and stepped away from the still kneeling demon. "No!" I bellowed as I tried to fight against the darkness taking hold of me.
“Don’t fight it!” Baal shouted. “Accept it!”
And there it was, the final clue telling the wary what the darkness and its agent wanted, likely the thing my father neither had the desire or conscious mind to care what road he was heading down in pursuit of his sole care, more power and consequences be damned, including those he was meant to love and protect, those who'd proven they'd do anything for him, a sentiment denied in return.
Every muscle and sinew in me were twisting against the darkness as I tried to cleanse it out of my system, while at the same time calling back up the lighter magic that I had spent decades cultivating. Closing my eyes, I compelled myself to relax and focus on drawing up my own magic again. It took a few moments, but I was able to flush most of the poisonous black magic out of my system. Then I turned and looked at the demon, who was back on his feet again. “You knew this would happen,” I said, aware that I was back in danger now that I didn’t have the darker magic to increase my powers. “You wanted this to happen.”
Baal reared up, looking down at the scorching hole that went halfway into his chest like he had just been hit by a burning meteor. Then he fixed his fierce gaze on me. "You are more powerful than I thought you were, human." He grunted. "You have proven yourself to me." Another grunt left his mouth, low and guttural as he took a few steps toward me. "That doesn't mean I am at your service."
“What does it mean then?” I asked, feeling like the games were just beginning.
“It means I will help you, but only if you do something in return.”
And there it is, I thought. Always a condition. Did I expect any less? Of course not. “What do you want?”
The demon came closer to me, and I tried not to step back away from him. The fighting was over, and strictly speaking there should have been no need to fear Baal anymore, but I would have been foolish not to. “You’ve been marked.”
I frowned, not understanding. “What?”
“Another demon has marked you.”
Another demon? Does he mean the one who killed my family? “You know the demon?”
“I know it.”
“What’s its name?”
“That isn’t why you summoned me here.”
“How do you know why I summoned you?”
“I see your retreating soul. I see the energy of the spell you are under. You want me to reverse it.”
"And can you?" I asked, really hoping the demon would say yes, otherwise the entire summoning would have been a waste of time.
Thankfully, Baal nodded. “I can help you reverse the spell.”
I exhaled in relief. “All right. Tell me what you want. I don’t have much time left to fix this.”
Baal grinned hungrily, exposing his glistening, pointed teeth. "I want souls who will serve as my slaves. Get me one hundred souls, and I will lift your curse for you."
“One hundred souls?” I shook my head in disbelief. "How the hell am I going to get one hundred souls? That's too many." It would be bloody near impossible to gather up so many souls. Plus, I wasn't in the business of stealing people's souls, especially a hundred of them.
Baal glowered at me for a moment, infernal fires seeming to burn deep in his amber eyes. Then he grunted dismissively. “Find another demon to summon.”
Panic rose in me as Baal’s body began to turn to smoke and fire before my eyes. He was about to vanish, and I would be back to square one again. Shit. What did I expect anyway? That Baal would be happy with a case of beer and a carton of Lucky Strikes as payment? “All right!” I shouted as the smoky vapors became nearly completely transparent. “I’ll get you your souls!”
“Summon me again when you are done,” Baal said, no more than a fiery outline in the dark of the basement now.
I watched for another moment as the demon finally disappeared, leaving only a trail of smoke and a sulfurous smell behind as evidence he was ever there in the first place (and the scattered remains of John Doe, of course). My body dropped in relief, now that the demon was gone. I thought for sure I was going to lose myself earlier as all that black magic was flowing through me. So powerful. So addictive.
Sighing, I noticed Blaze standing on the stairs leading down from the kitchen, smoke rising out of his pelt, his dark yellow eyes smoldering. I had no doubt he had heard and understood everything from upstairs.
I looked back at Blaze. “I’m sorry, buddy,” I said. “I don’t like this shit anymore than you do, but it had to be done.”
Blaze made a slight mewling noise as the heat died down on his body. Then he came down the stairs and pressed himself against me, a gesture which at least made me feel like I wasn’t completely alone, and which at that point, I highly appreciated.
22
Sanaka's Sanctum
THE FIRST THING I did after I left the basement was take a long, hot shower. I felt soiled by the infernally dark magic that had run through me, and I wanted to be cleansed of it, although I knew it would take more than a hot shower to do so. A Purification Ritual would have to be done to rid myself of all traces, but to be honest, I didn't see the point. Not yet anyway. A heavy feeling in my gut told me that I probably wasn't done with black magic just yet (or it wasn't done with me more like). And given what I now had to do to pay Baal, I would have been wasting my time with a Purification Ritual. A hot shower would have to do.
In the living room after the shower, I called Leona. “Hey,” I said when she answered. “Its Creed.”
“Creed,” she said, sounding sleepy. “You know what time it is?”
“Three a.m.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled, despite her annoyance. “I thought you might want to know that I’m like, you know, still alive and all, so…”
“All right. Thanks for letting me know, Creed. Now if you don’t mind, some of us have to get up at dawn…”
"Sure," I said as if I was there with her (wishing I was). "Go back to sleep."
She had hung up even before I finished speaking. Then as I stood holding the phone, a weird sort of cold feeling came over me, followed by an uncontrollable shaking in both my hands. Shivering, I made a fist with both hands in an effort to control the tremors, and after a moment, they subsided and my body returned to its normal temperature.
What the hell was that about? I wondered as I leaned against the wall.
Though I knew what it was about. It was my soul getting restless within me, being made to leave the person it no longer recognized.
Ghoulship was getting closer all the time.
* * *
A while later, I slipped on my trench coat and teleported to my mentor Sanaka's house a few miles west in Little Tokyo, one of four Asian sub-neighborhoods located in Chinatown. Little Tokyo was a weird place, the buildings being an eclectic mix of Japanese and Western architecture that some found to be quirky and pleasing, others to be hideous. I quite liked the place myself as it was the closest you would ever get to experiencing the culture of the real Tokyo without actuall
y going there (although not the otherworldliness of the place itself).
Sanaka's Sanctum was a small Pagoda style house set in a patch of forest on the edge of a small parkland. Unless you were looking for it, you would hardly know the house was there; and if you did see it, you would probably think it was some decorative feature of the park, in keeping with the Japanese fantasy theme of the park itself. Sanaka's house was a two story, each floor having its own little curved roof that wing-tipped at the ends. The whole structure looked like it had been thrown together by a drunken wizard and a carpenter who'd eaten too many magic mushrooms. The symmetry was all off, and there were odd protuberances here and there, like things were pushing through from inside the house and buckling the wood, which somehow made the house seem more natural than the trees surrounding it. In all, it was like something only a wild eccentric would live in, which fits Sanaka to a tee.
Even though it was almost 4 a.m., it was highly unlikely that the old wizard would be sleeping. Sanaka only slept once a week, which had been enough to keep him going for the last century or so. If he were at home, he would sense me immediately.
