“You may know I’m not solid.
“You may know I can never hurt you.
“But will you sleep? Night after night with me prowling your room, screaming at you in a voice no one else can hear, cursing you with the anger I’ve built up over a hundred centuries—will you sleep then?”
He smiled fiendishly. “Or will you lie awake night after night, quivering in your bed, trembling at the wrath of Guptas? Will you grow pale and weary—”
“Oh, shut up!”
Guptas fell silent.
Kyle walked over to where the demon stood and thrust out his hand. It went right through the scaly hide.
“Cool,” he muttered.
Guptas glanced at him with contempt. Suddenly he threw himself at Marilyn’s feet and clasped his arms around her legs. “I want to be real again!” he cried desperately. “Make me real!”
“Talk about co-dependent,” said Kyle.
Even though the demon wasn’t actually there, the illusion was so powerful Marilyn found herself trying to keep her balance in his grip.
“Please!” he cried. “Please let me out! I won’t be bad. You know I won’t! You know why I’m there. I’ve suffered long enough. Let me out!”
“So you can kill us like you killed her aunt?” sneered Kyle.
“I never did!” shrieked Guptas. “I told you, she died all by herself. She wasn’t supposed to do that!” His voice grew sly. “Besides, I did that while I was bound to the amulet. I can do it again, whether she frees me or not. I just send a picture, as I’m doing now. As I’ll continue to do.”
One look at Marilyn’s face and he changed tactics again. “But not to you!” he cried, banging his head on the floor at her feet. “You know my story! You know the truth! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”
Marilyn hesitated. Finally she said, “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.”
The demon arched his back and spread his arms and screamed. Marilyn covered her ears. But even with her hands pressed against her skull she could hear his anguished pleas.
“What do you mean? Why can’t you free me?”
“Because of the curse the king put on you!”
Instantly he stopped screaming and rose to his knees. “What do you mean?”
“Well, what he said when he put you in there. You’re bound there until someone trusts you. I can’t just say, ‘Oh, come on out, it’s okay now!’ If I don’t trust you, it won’t work.”
“You can trust me!” cried Guptas eagerly. “You know that. You can trust me. I’ll even be your servant. I’ll fetch and carry for you and always do what you ask and …”
Marilyn actually broke out laughing. “What would I do with you if I had you?”
“I’m a very good servant,” said Guptas sullenly.
“No, you are not,” replied Marilyn sternly. “You betrayed your master before. You would do it again.”
“Not if my master was true!” cried Guptas. “What about that? What about that, eh? What about what Suleiman did?”
“What did Suleiman do?” asked Marilyn. “You wouldn’t show me. You kept it hidden.”
Guptas turned away. “He was cruel.”
“That means nothing,” said Marilyn. “What did he do? You want me to trust you, but you won’t trust me. You won’t even tell me the whole story.”
Guptas turned back to her.
“If I tell you, will you let me go?”
“If you don’t, I won’t.”
“That’s not the same thing!”
“I know that. But it’s the best you’re going to get. Never mind. I’m getting tired of you anyway. Get ready, Kyle. I’m going to make him take us back now.”
“Wait … wait … wait … wait … wait!” howled Guptas. He was rocking back and forth, clutching his knees.
“Well?”
“All right, I’ll tell you.”
Marilyn tightened her grip on the amulet and waited expectantly.
Guptas hesitated. He glanced at Kyle, then turned again to Marilyn.
“Suleiman was my father,” he said at last.
16
THE LAMIA
The three of them—Marilyn, Kyle, and Guptas the demon—sat in a circle on the floor, their legs crossed Indian fashion, trying to make sense of the story the demon had just told them.
At one point in his tale Marilyn had interrupted to fill in Kyle on her earlier experience of seeming to live part of Guptas’s life.
“How did you do that, anyway?” she had asked the demon.
He shrugged. “You asked me a question while you were holding the amulet. That gave me permission to answer it.”
“But how did you answer it? Did you just send a picture from your head to mine, or—”
Guptas broke in. “No, you were there. I took you back in time to the reign of the Suleimans. And then I let you merge with me, so you could see my story.”
“You mean I was really there—really in the past?”
He smiled and nodded. “Fun, wasn’t it?”
She shivered a little.
“Let’s get back to the point,” said Kyle. “How do we find out if you’re telling the truth about your father and this … what did you call her? A lamia?”
Guptas did a backward somersault and stood on his head. “You can’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Can’t you show us, like you did before?” asked Marilyn.
“I can’t take you back to before my birth. How can I show you things that happened before I was born?”
Taking a guess, Marilyn whispered, “Then show us her death.”
Guptas tumbled to the floor. He actually seemed to go pale for a moment. Looking up at her, his eyes filled with misery, he hissed, “No.”
“It would make things easier.”
“No.”
“I could command you.”
The demon shrugged. “I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
“Which would be …”
He looked directly into her eyes. She flinched, but did not turn her gaze away. Once again she had the sensation of looking into the fires of hell.
“A memory,” he said at last. “A memory you will carry with you the rest of your life. A nightmare you’ll have to live with.”
“You’ve already threatened me with that if I don’t free you. I’m stuck in the middle.”
“I shouldn’t have threatened you before,” said Guptas. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him in astonishment. His voice sounded genuinely apologetic.
He read her eyes. “Don’t be so surprised! I know right from wrong. You’ve seen part of my life. You know I’m different from the others. Look at me! I am not a demon! I am Guptas—half Suleiman, half demon, and different from anything or anyone you’ve ever heard of. Don’t judge me by what you think or what you fear or what you’ve heard! Judge me by what I am!”
“Right now you’re hysterical,” said Marilyn softly.
Guptas began to laugh—a harsh, coughing sound that was two steps on the far side of pleasant.
“Do you really want the story?”
She nodded.
“Him, too?”
She looked at Kyle. His face was grim. But he nodded.
She held up the amulet. “Tell us both. No tricks.”
Guptas looked hurt. “I had no tricks in mind. How do I make you trust me?”
“You don’t,” said Kyle softly. “You just make it possible—by being trustworthy.”
Guptas shot him an angry look. “Put your hand on the amulet,” he said. “Both of you hold it. And remember … you asked for this.”
Kyle slid around next to Marilyn and closed his hand over hers.
And they were gone.
Guptas stood cowering behind his father. Suleiman laid a hand on his head to comfort him.
Marilyn relaxed at the touch. The king had the hands of a healer.
Only he wasn’t king yet. Guptas aimed some thoughts in her direc
tion, and she understood that what they were about to see predated her last experience in the past. The king she had seen that time was still a prince now. His father was on the throne.
His name was Suleiman, too—as was that of every king who had reigned before him.
Guptas’s father wore a short tunic made of black and scarlet cloth embroidered with gold. A band of silk circled his forehead, binding his long jet-black hair. He had a strong nose, olive skin, enormous dark eyes. He was incredibly handsome.
Marilyn felt a surge of emotion. It was coming from Kyle. With a start, she realized it was jealousy.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“In the Hall of the Kings,” replied Guptas.
“I know that,” he said sharply. “But where in the hall? Where are Marilyn and I?”
“Inside me,” said Guptas simply. “Just watch. Both of you.”
She watched. The hall was filled, as before. And there was an air of expectancy. But this time it was not joyful. There was fear in it, and horror.
Two guards brought in a woman. A murmur of disgust rippled through the court.
Marilyn cried out at the surge of emotion that ran through Guptas. She felt Suleiman’s hand slide down his neck and onto his shoulder, drawing him close. Guptas clung to his leg, which was like a young oak. Suddenly she realized that at the time of this scene Guptas was little more than a babe.
“Twelve hundred years,” said Guptas, in answer to her unspoken question. “This is twelve hundred years before the last scene I showed you. The Demon Wars are still raging in their full fury. Suleiman-the-king, he who sits on the throne, has reigned for over eight hundred years. In all that time he has never been able to defeat the demons.”
He paused, then added: “Now his son has fathered one.”
The woman struggled wildly, until she looked over at Guptas. Then she stopped. Marilyn read a terrible longing in her face.
Whatever else she was, she was beautiful.
It was a wild, terrible beauty—untamed, fascinating, almost frightening.
She was dressed in gossamer rags. Marilyn had the feeling they were the remnant of some once beautiful gown she had destroyed in her fury.
Her hair was fire red, redder even than Marilyn’s, something she would never have thought possible.
And her eyes …
Her eyes were locked on Guptas now, looking right into him—and at the same time, it seemed, into Marilyn. As in the demon cave, she had the uneasy sensation that perhaps her presence here was not a secret after all.
They were wild eyes, wild and filled with anger. But there was a softness in them when they gazed on Guptas.
The demon tightened his grip on his father’s leg, digging his claws into the flesh.
Prince Suleiman seemed not to notice. His eyes were riveted on his wife. Marilyn felt a tremor run through his body.
The king rose from the throne. He was tall, taller even than the prince, with a great gray beard that flowed over his chest. He wore a thin circle of gold on his brow. His face was deeply troubled.
He went to the woman.
“Behold!” he cried to the court. “Behold, the lamia!”
Reaching out, he grasped her hand.
Marilyn recoiled in horror as the woman dropped her human shape and revealed herself for what she really was.
Her skin blistered over, turning red and scaly. Great peaked wings shot out behind her. Dark claws curved out from her fingertips.
Prince Suleiman flinched. This was the woman he had loved, the mother of his child.
Two guards held her, but it was the power of the king that kept her in check. She writhed in their hands, cursing the king, cursing the race of the Suleimans. Her eyes were like fire. Her tongue, flickering out between blackened lips, was like a cleft snake.
“Will anyone speak in her defense?” asked the king.
The court was silent, a silence that seemed to fill the great hall with a heavy sense of doom.
The lamia wrenched herself around to face the prince. Her demon shape faded and she was a woman again, soft and desirable. Her eyes pleaded with him.
Prince Suleiman shuddered, but remained silent. Blood trickled down his thigh where his half-demon son was sinking childish claws into the flesh. The prince tightened his grip on the demon child’s shoulder.
“Father?” whispered Guptas.
The prince said nothing.
The woman faded, and the lamia reappeared.
They brought in the ice, and she began to scream.
They were back in their own bodies, in the echoingly empty Hall of the Kings.
“What happened?” cried Marilyn. “Why did you bring us back?”
Guptas turned on her in fury.
“Wasn’t that enough?” he cried. “Must I watch my own mother be executed a second time just to satisfy your curiosity?”
He strode away from her. “Ice,” he whispered. He spun back, and his voice rose to a shout. “They did it with ice! She was a creature of fire, and ice was fatal to her. They brought in a great jagged block of it and slowly pushed her into it. The first bits of it that touched her hissed and melted against her flesh.”
He shuddered.
“Her skin began to peel off. She screamed and cried to my father for help. I turned his leg to ribbons with my claws.
“But there was no help for her. No compassion from anyone in that hall—because she was a lamia, a mother of demons, and had tricked the prince into loving her. So they stood in silence as the king’s murdering guards pushed her into the ice and her skin sizzled away from her body.”
The demon’s image walked back and stood before Marilyn. “Do you still wonder,” he whispered, his voice intense, harsh with pain, “why I had mixed feelings about my father?”
He paused, then stretched his claws upward and screamed, “Or about myself? Look at me. Look at what they made me! I was the firstborn child of the firstborn child! I have royal blood coursing through my veins! I should have been king. I should have been Suleiman!
“But my father loved a lamia, and then let her die.”
He turned away and sat huddled into himself.
“That was the beginning of the end of the Demon Wars,” he said after a while. “My father fought as no Suleiman ever had before. He led the people into battle, and they were invincible. But I know that with every slash of his sword he was slashing at his own heart. I know his guilt. I know his fury at himself for remaining silent.
“I even understand it! That’s the hardest part of all! I can’t even condemn him totally. She should never have come to him. She was wrong. He was wrong. Everybody suffered. And in the end I destroyed their world. And my own.”
“I’ll let you go now,” said Marilyn.
Guptas turned to her in astonishment.
“What?”
“I’ll let you go now. You’ve suffered long enough.”
He threw himself at her feet. “Thank you!” he cried. “Thank you. Oh, thank you!”
“Stop it!” she said in disgust. “Remember who you are!”
He stood, a strange expression on his face, pride and surprise mingling together.
She lifted the amulet and began to speak.
“Don’t!” cried a voice behind her.
She spun around. It was Eldred Cooley. Beside him stood Zenobia. She held Brick in her arms.
“You must not do this,” said Cooley sternly.
Guptas howled in despair.
17
JUDGE AND JURY
“Never trust a demon,” said Eldred Cooley. He glared at Guptas so fiercely that for a moment Marilyn thought he might actually attack the creature.
Zenobia broke the tension by speaking. “Marilyn, are you and Kyle all right?”
Marilyn nodded. “How did you get here?”
“Brick.”
Kyle laughed. “You mean that cat is actually good for something?”
“Cats are good for a great deal more than most people reali
ze,” said Cooley sternly. “Their ability to track down demons is one of the reasons they were highly valued in the ancient world. It’s interesting,” he said, turning to Zenobia. “You would think they would have lost the ability over the last several thousand years, since there was no use for it.”
“Stick to the point, Eldred,” she replied tartly.
“The point right now,” he said, turning back to Marilyn, “is how to dispose of that creature you have gained control of.”
“Why can’t I just let him go?”
Cooley looked at her incredulously. “Do you really want to release such a monstrosity on the modern world?”
“He’s had a difficult life,” said Marilyn defensively.
Cooley roared with laughter. “Let him go free and you’ll find out what difficult is. How do you know he had a difficult life? Did he tell you? He is a master of lies. I repeat: never trust a demon.”
“He didn’t tell us,” said Kyle. “He showed us.”
Zenobia dropped Brick, who strolled over to sniff at Guptas. “What do you mean, he showed you?”
“Well, he took us back in time.…”
“He touched your minds!” cried Cooley. “Oh, we’ve got trouble, Zenobia. Lord only knows what he’s done to these two kids. They could be completely under his control.”
“No!” shouted Guptas.
The sudden shout caused Brick—who had been trying without success to catch a scent from the demon’s image—to jump a foot into the air. When he landed he hissed and arched his back.
“I wouldn’t do that to them,” said Guptas firmly. He made a little slashing motion at the cat, which scurried over to hide behind Marilyn.
“It is pointless for you to say anything,” said Cooley, “since we can’t believe a word of it anyway.”
“Use your brain, you old fool! What is the curse that was laid on me? I cannot be freed of the amulet until someone trusts me enough to let me out. What good would it do me to put them in my power? I could gain obedience, maybe even acceptance. But never true trust. I could never break the binding that way.”
“Don’t try to use your persuasive ways on me,” said Cooley. “I’m too wise for that.”
Guptas made a noise of disgust, then vanished.
“Now see what you’ve done!” said Marilyn.
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