by Jenny McKane
Hair trigger with the human face, Sunny noted. Right.
“The dragon visage is haughty, supreme, and interested in nothing short of total world domination and hoarding gold, naturally,” Asmodeus continued. “The dragon head got control of Baal for almost 500 years and spearheaded the start of one of China’s most successful dynasties—and Baal is the reason dragons are still so revered in China today, by many accounts.”
Sunny thought back to the many dragon figures and textiles she’d come across in Seattle’s Chinatown when she visited. To think they were all because a demon with a dragon head was after world domination and a bunch of coins was definitely an interesting side note she’d learned today.
“And the serpent,” the archdemon went on. “The serpent is actually my favorite facet of Baal’s many personalities, but for a human, it would be the most difficult to convince to cooperate. The serpent head hates humans. It’s a simple as that. Whenever the serpent head is in control, Baal goes on a killing spree that usually gets him imprisoned for a few hundred years. Nobody’s been able to speak to the serpent head in memory.”
Sunny leaned forward at that part of the story.
“But he’s your favorite?”
Asmodeus nodded.
“Naturally,” he said.
“Why would that be natural? It doesn’t speak. It wants to kill everything,” Sunny said, trying to add it all up. “How does that equal a creature you like?”
Asmodeus clasped his fingers together.
“Because with the serpent, you know you’re dealing with a creature only looking out for its ultimate survival—who has one singular goal in mind. And when you know someone’s ultimate prize, you can make it work for you.”
Maybe if you were an archdemon with nearly unlimited powers, but Sunny didn’t have those at her disposal. She’d have better luck praying that her luck held, and the human face showed up when she summoned it.
“One more thing,” Asmodeus continued. “Baal is on a different sort of quest than the others,” he said. “He doesn’t want what they want.”
What the others wanted?
“Revenge?”
Asmodeus nodded his head and gave Sunny a grin for her cleverness.
“Exactly. Baal has no debts of vengeance he’s necessarily after,” the archdemon said. “He’s after something much more difficult to attain.”
Immortality? He already had that. A fortune in gold coins? He probably had that, too.
“What? What is Baal after?”
“His true love.”
The answer could not have shocked Sunny any more than it did.
She knew demons loved. Hell, Gideon was proof of that. But epic true love quests? That certainly had Sunny’s attention.
“It’s very likely a story you’ve heard in one form or another many times. A male and a female are in love—a love so fierce it could rip the fabric of the universe with its utter devotion and purity. Yes, even demons can feel that level of love, Gabriel,” Asmodeus said, likely catching an eyeroll from the archangel. “Not that I, personally, have felt it or would desire in the least to experience that—but it exists for all beings, even demons.”
All beings? Sunny wondered about archangels and other angelic creatures. Did they have the capacity to love like that, but not the permission? Or were they simply not wired to connect so deeply with another being—that hole in their soul instead being filled with a love of their mission and service?
It sounded very noble to Sunny—and hugely miserable if she was being perfectly honest. Part of the great thing about being a human (and now, it seemed, a demon) was that ability to connect with another and create that spark, that fire, from nothing. To burn for another with a flame that could engulf the entire world if set free.
Sunny paused and looked at Asmodeus for him to continue the story. She was worried about where it was headed now.
“If you’re wondering if Baal got himself cast to the earth for reasons outside of the Solomon ring, yes, Sunny, you would be on the right track,” he said. “Baal leveled the population of four kingdoms when they’d captured his lady love. Estimates range between a half and three-quarter million people were dead by the time Baal’s rampage had ended and the entire civilization was cast into myth—so completely destroyed that generations that followed wondered if they’d ever truly existed.”
Sunny’s eyes darted to Asmodeus again.
“Atlantis?”
She had heard of the mythical city and race of humans that’d simply vanished one day. The story claimed them to be advanced for humans—way beyond their contemporaries in the arts and sciences, especially medicine—but one day they’d completely vanished from the map. Many of the stories had given them a better ending than the one Asmodeus was hinting at—saying that Atlantis had simply dropped into the sea and the population had survived in their underwater kingdom, thanks to their advances in science.
But if what Asmodeus had hinted at with his single nod, Baal had actually put the Atlanteans down and ended their reign on earth in a fit of rage over a lover.
“Who was she?” Sunny asked. As far as mythology went, she was now past her comfort zone and had no guesses. This was all terribly new.
“No idea? None?” Asmodeus was enjoying the rapt attention with which the entire group was now giving him and his story.
“I’ll spare you the drawn-out suspense, I suppose, though I don’t know why—we have another half a day of traveling ahead of us with nothing to do,” he was nearly pouting as he spoke. “The keeper of Baal’s heart, the reason he put an entire race of humanity out of existence and cursed himself with imprisonment, was none other than Lilith herself.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Baal, murderer extraordinaire, wanted to be reunited with his lost love. Asmodeus assumed Lilith was long gone—dead about a thousand years ago, but he mentioned not having any proof, either.
Sunny was having a hard time wrapping her head around the legend of Atlantis falling at the hands of a murderous Guardian demon, too. She wondered what other common stories and myths were really attributed to demons, too.
“You’ll just have to find out the old-fashioned way, won’t you?” Asmodeus teased. “By surviving and asking more questions along the way.”
That was the old-fashioned method? Sunny rolled her eyes and braced herself for the plane’s landing. She hated that part. Like, really, really hated that part. It made her stomach clench and her panic skyrocket, and she swore that each time the plane descended, they were going to end up in a giant ball of fire on the runway.
“Technically, it’s the takeoff that you’re more likely to die during,” Asmodeus said absently, as he scrolled through his phone. He was probably looking up the data around plane crashes and the very thought seemed like a bad omen to Sunny.
“Turn off your phone,” she said, swiping across the aisle at him for it, but he was quicker and kept it out of her reach.
“No, no, no.” He tsked at her, a laugh on his lips.
Gideon was asleep beside her, so in an effort to show Asmodeus how annoying he was, she turned her body toward Gideon and tried to calm down.
His face was at rest, his eyes closed. He was breathing normally and seemed unaware that both the plane was landing and that Sunny was staring at him.
No matter how much she tried not to think about what she thought she remembered in her hotel room a few nights ago, her mind seemed to travel back without fail.
In that moment, he had seemed so foreign to her—so far removed from who she assumed Gideon was. Had she missed anything? Was there trouble brewing that she was refusing to acknowledge, even now? Closing her eyes, she tried to let her heart reach out and feel. Anything—a sign that she was making too much out of this. That she was on the right track. Anything.
But, as usual, she got nothing. She was left with her own thoughts and a partner who seemed oblivious both to what he might have done that night as well as to the mental torment she was enduring
since then. He had no clue that she was tearing herself up over the whole thing.
In a way, this whole thing with Gideon was a slow form of torture for Sunny. More than anything she wanted to believe that there was nothing out of the ordinary, that she hadn’t witnessed any sort of strange happenings with Gideon that night in her hotel. But there was also a part of Sunny that refused to let it go — that knew something was amiss, even if she was not sure quite what it was.
As with every airplane landing, Sunny felt like she barely made it through without having a heart attack. As they disembarked, and gathered their luggage, Gideon had his arm around her shoulder. It was strange; Gideon, even at his best, was not a demonstrative individual. But ever since that next morning, he’d been laughing louder than ever, and showing Sunny more PDA than ever. Was he trying to prove something? It certainly wasn’t normal for him, and only added to the list of what Sunny was trying to wrap her brain around. She didn’t feel that she could confide in any of the team members either.
Without a doubt, they would all remind her that there was a bigger problem at hand. That Sunny had no time to worry about her boyfriend’s changing personality. If she told them that she thought she saw Gideon turning into a nox demon, their entire operation would plummet into chaos. So Sunny squared her shoulders and promised herself that she would do what she always did — she would do her best to make it up as she went along, try to make the best choices possible with what she had at hand.
There was nothing wrong with Gideon. Sunny wouldn’t even admit to herself how many times she had to repeat that mantra to herself as they made their way to the hotel they were staying at.
*****
If she thought the first two summonings were fast-paced, Sunny was in for a rude awakening. They had hardly put their bags down in their hotel rooms in Kagoshima when Asmodeus rallied them to the lobby.
“We have no time to waste,” the archdemon said. “It seems like were being hunted on two sides and face multiple enemies. The faster we get these generals summoned, the better.”
It was a wise approach, and Sunny could get behind it. She really didn’t want to waste any time at this point, now that the big cities were beginning to fall. She still wasn’t certain what was going to happen after they got the fourth general summoned, and she hadn’t had the nerve to ask Asmodeus yet.
Just like he promised, the third general, the Guardian of the East, had summoning stones at the foot of a volcano.
The stones themselves were in the backyard of an ancient Buddhist temple, a fact that Sin found humorous.
“Didn’t ancient Buddhist monks used to hunt demons like us?” He was talking to Asmodeus, fan boy that he was.
“Hunt demons like you, yes,” he said with a sniff. “Hunt archdemons like me? No. We were often mutually beneficial to one another and the ancient warrior monks and the guardian demons used to get along famously.”
That was an interesting point of fact to Sunny.
“What about Christian monks and nuns? Were you ever allies with any of them?”
Asmodeus pinched his nose up and shook his head.
“With the Christians? Never,” he said haughtily. “So many of their own crimes and horrendous acts were written off as belonging to demons—all to cover their own tracks. It set Christianity and demons on opposite sides of the playing field from the get go.”
Sunny considered his words.
“And yet you assisted Solomon?”
“Coerced,” Asmodeus snapped quickly. “I was coerced and forced to interact with that dreadful man, and only through my sharp mind and amazing negotiating skills was I able to salvage that pact and turn it into a deal that would have benefitted me as well.”
Except, it’d all gone to shit eventually—killing Solomon and a good number of his heirs as well as trapping the Guardians.
“Just curious,” Sunny began cautiously, as Asmodeus was prickly with his information when he wanted to be. “What was the boon you’d earned yourself before the deal broke down?”
He looked back to where she stood at the front steps of the temple (they were waiting for Eli to make a quick bathroom break before the whole demon summoning began) and for a split second, she was certain that he would shut her down.
“The temple,” he finally said, breaking the silence and making her look up at him in surprise. “I would have inherited the temple we’d built after the death of his 5th heir in the lineage. It would have been a palace for the Guardians, and for me, to be proud of—built on our own backs and with our own blood. Something none of us had ever had or dreamed of having—esteem and prestige among the humans.”
Had he hoped to be a normalized part of human society somehow? Would that even have been possible?
“But it fell apart,” she said instead, her voice soft as she took her eyes off Asmodeus.
“It fell apart,” he repeated and turned toward their destination once Eli returned.
Sunny knew there was more to this story than she realized or that Asmodeus would let on, but as his body language and his reaction to telling it made clear, now was not the time.
*****
Given that it was winter, Japan was cold.
But something about stepping past the temple’s boundary (a path of stones littered with a dusting of snow), toward the giant stacks of smooth, oblong rocks, made the air around them even colder.
She hugged her jacket closer around her body and fought against the shivers. Eli was standing beside her as Gideon was toward the back of the group and he was telling Sin a joke he’d heard on a podcast he had listened to on the way over.
Sunny did her best not to dwell too long on her feelings that now was not the time to be sharing jokes, and she bit down anything she’d want to say about it.
“I feel like a broken record, Rosie,” Eli said as they watched Asmodeus draw the triangle with the salt, “but I’m here for you.”
Eli had been hovering closer since the nox incident with Gideon, too. Had her face betrayed her? Could he sense something amiss among the team dynamic? Or was Eli sensing something was wrong with Gideon just like she was?
“I’m counting on it,” Sunny said with a nod and deep breath.
Asmodeus had promised her that this was going to be harder than the two previous summonings—that Baal had more anger and emotion built up than both Agares and Zepar, so she was to be on her guard.
Not that she’d summoned either of the first two demons without being fully on her guard, but she appreciated the warning Metatron had given her just the same.
Gabriel hung close to her and Eli and rubbed his gloved hands together to create a little warmth, not escaping the notice of Asmodeus.
“You’re not going to survive our next stop,” the archdemon snickered to himself.
The north. Sunny guessed Alaska but had been told she was wrong. Maybe further north? The Arctic? Iceland? Greenland?
Asmodeus refused to give up his plans—partly because he was superstitious and partly because he was afraid of the word getting out somehow. People overheard things all the time and he didn’t want their next destination disclosed a moment too early.
“The triangle is ready,” Metatron motioned to Sunny.
This time Asmodeus stopped Sunny before she stepped across.
“You control this interaction. You’re wearing the ring,” he said sternly, leveling a hard gaze at her. “Do not let him alter your course with his antics. Don’t let him try to scare you, don’t let his tears fool you. He murdered an entire civilization and would do so again in a heartbeat to achieve his ends.”
With a deep breath and a squaring of her shoulders, Sunny marched across the salt line and said the summoning words, drawing up Baal. Unlike Zepar down in Mexico, Baal didn’t need to be summoned three times. He came like a ball of screaming anger through the void and slammed into Sunny full force, knocking the air out of her as she landed on her back.
Chapter Thirty-four
Her ears were ringing,
and she found the air heavy and hard to breathe in. Sounds around her were muffled and as she blinked her eyes back into focus, she found she was staring up at what could only be described as the head of a dragon.
Shit.
Asmodeus had repeatedly told her their best bet was with the human face.
It was a very traditional looking dragon, from what she could recall in the myths and legends from the far East. It had large, wide eyes on both sides of its head and a large, square snout. Smoke curled from its nostrils as it leaned over her.
“Speak, human,” it said, its voice disembodied and its mouth not moving. “Before I leave you as a pile of ashes.”
Sunny heard whispers behind her. No, not whispers. Muted sounds of shouting and struggle. Glancing back, she saw Eli and Gideon banging against an invisible wall, unable to push through to get to her. She also couldn’t hear them, make out their words.
“What did you do?” she croaked, suddenly more worried than she had been.
“Shielded myself against whatever sort of attack you have planned with your minions,” the dragon voice boomed.
Sunny winced at the intensity.
“You don’t have to yell,” she said. “You’re hurting my ears.”
The dragon head paused and cocked slightly to the right.
“You really are human?”
She gave a slight nod of her head as she pushed herself to a seated position.
“I’m here because of this,” she said, holding her hand up, showing him the seal.
The dragon head tilted the other direction and just when Sunny thought he was going to speak, he launched at her, its maw open and fangs gleaming—heading straight for the ring like it was going to snap off her hand in its mouth and eat it.
She screamed, pulling her hand in and tucking it behind her body as she held her breath against the impending attack.
But nothing happened, and instead of feeling the creature’s sharp teeth ripping at her skin, it shrieked in pain and curled up in a ball a few feet away from her, at the edge of the salt line.
