by P. S. Power
“A puzzle for me indeed. I can see that you would be distracting, but I have dealt with attractive women before. True, you’re the most lovely I’ve seen in a decently long life, but still, I think I can resist. Unless you have more to you than it seems?” He stepped towards her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It did, of course, falling into place in a way that he really hadn’t seen coming. The vision in front of him smiled gently, moved towards him and kissed him gently on the cheek.
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Then backhanded him so hard he flew backwards into the stone and mortar wall some fifteen feet back. It very nearly took his head off and did break his jaw in at least one place. He could taste the blood leaking through his system. His lungs gasped, even though the pain fled from him after a few moments, allowing him to stand slowly, reforming his body. Pulling energy from all the sources he was linked to, glad to have had the human blood that Rebekah had served him earlier. If it wasn’t for that it might have taken hours to heal from the damage.
After half a minute, the woman standing there calmly the whole time, just observing peacefully, he was able to speak again.
“Ma’at I take it?” Or at least a facsimile of something near that power level. Nothing else could both look that good and do that kind of damage. It was less than fun, but clearly she wasn’t trying to kill him yet, or he’d be dead already. He’d barely seen her hand move, meaning she was faster than he was. By far.
“Yes. I see that you’ve brought my key? Very good.” She held out her hand toward Mortimer, who was shaking as she held firmly to the hat with the magic sack held in his hand. He didn’t move to give it to her, even if he was scared out of his mind.
Or possibly because he was.
“Mortimer, no! Don’t give her the key…” The normally jolly man was scared, that was clear, but it wasn’t clear why. Ma’at didn’t move to harm him, or any of them, she just stood, hand out, smiling.
“Oh, I think he will. Mortimer is it? Be a good… thing, and do what I tell you, or I’ll… ” She glanced at Santa as if it had meaning, her face suddenly turning vicious. Then she looked at the others in the room and shrugged. “Or I’ll take each of these people and start pulling limbs off, one by one, like a child playing with an insect. Which do you want me to start with… Mortimer.”
Santa moaned, which got Mort to do the same. In this wall of sound Hally spoke, her voice suddenly different. Commanding instead of kind and gentle. It held power that it hadn’t before at all.
“Why don’t you start with me then, Ma’at?” The elf girl, human looking and freckled stepped forward, putting herself bravely between the Greater Demon and the others. Richard almost gasped. It was incredibly foolish after all. You didn’t challenge a Demon. Not if you expected to live.
“No.” Where the words came from actually took him by surprise. His own lips had moved, which wasn’t what he wanted to happen at all. He needed to be saying something about how Balthias should grab them all and run, but instead he stepped forward, next to the human girl. “No. This is… my puzzle, isn’t that right Ma’at? The thing I have to work out to move on? Isn’t that what you do?” He tried to sound reasonable, but there was fear in his voice. That didn’t happen normally at his age, but this was probably the last thing he’d ever do, so it seemed fitting.
In the ending of a life, there was either fear or peace and he really doubted that he’d manage the second one. That had been true since his change, three hundred years before. It was sad that he wouldn’t get to be a Congressman, but he wasn’t going to let a brave little girl do the job he was supposed to either.
Ma’at laughed at them both, moving towards Hally, but slowly enough that Richard could move in the way, ready to be hit again. For some reason the Greater Demon didn’t do that. Instead she just looked at him, the kind of thing that said she was fascinated by his actions, as if they weren’t reasonable at all. It bought him time enough to yell one line he figured.
“Bal, get them out! Now!” Then, as fast as he could, drawing on every bit of life energy from every source he could without killing them, he jumped in and grabbed the woman, holding her for all he was worth. Of course it would be futile in the end, but he had to try.
For what seemed like an eternity nothing happened, then he noticed that everyone in the room was gone. Including Santa. It was just him and the Greater Demon left. Closing his eyes he prepared to die. In the end he was dying for the girls, which tickled him a little. It was a lot more heroic than he really figured his passing would be. He kept holding the Demon, not really knowing why he did it. She wasn’t even struggling. He also wasn’t having a lot of effect on her, that was clear. He was powerful enough that doing this to a human would have killed them in a few seconds, but this female being didn’t seem to be concerned at all. When he opened his eyes she was looking directly at him.
“There you are.” Then without a word, she glanced at her right arm at the point where his were wrapped around her. “Are you going to let go, or should I hug you back?”
It was a dry statement, but not brittle. Not filled with rage either. She didn’t even threaten to rip off both his arms, though she clearly could. The one little tap she’d given him earlier had shown that. Richard let her loose and stepped back, wonder how his death would be coming. The Demoness patted his arm with her right hand, a gentle movement and turned to walk away.
“Are you coming? I don’t know if they’ll be back for you, but it will be simpler to reach you from the outside of the dwelling if they do. I’ll need to be on my way, no doubt, since those two…sisters of mine have decided to stick their noses into my business.” She waved at him and then smiled. “Until next time Congressman Swerlin?”
Then she just walked away. He followed slowly, not certain if it was a trick or not, though that probably didn’t matter, in the long run. If she wanted him dead, it was going to happen. It had been stupid of him to try to grab her in the first place. Not that he had a better idea about what he should have done, even now. Life had been a lot easier before he decided to be a public servant. Now he had to do all this… serving.
The Demoness started talking as soon as they reached the front room.
“Could you be a dear and take a message to The Technician for me?” She stood still, a perfect thing that made her look like a statue made of granite just for the barest second while his mind tried to adjust to the change.
He waited for her to kill him then, or maim him perhaps. That was the traditional method that his kind used to send messages and they’d gotten it from Demons, eons before. It was going to hurt, no doubt.
She nodded a few times and then stepped back several steps. It was a measured thing, meant to reassure him. It didn’t work, but he got that she was at least letting him know she wanted him to think she didn’t intend harm.
“Please tell The Technician, and The Mistress of Souls, that I seek no quarrel with them. They may keep the girl, Maci, if they simply deliver to me the key, in working condition. If not, I will… have to reclaim my property. Make sure you stress that it has to be in useable condition, by me, at my will, as often as I like. The Technician will know what that means.” Then, as if he’d agreed to do as she asked when he wasn’t paying attention, she vanished into thin air. It was just as sudden as when the others had done it earlier. An impressive trick that only a few beings had access to. Mainly Demons of one kind or another.
Richard decided not to wait, walking to the front door and going out into the early morning chill, deciding that living through that was a win as far as he was concerned. Ma’at could have pinned a note to his corpse just as easily as having him speak a few words. Of course this way it made her look like a reasonable being, didn’t it? Leaving him alive was kind of like saying that she’d keep her word, if given what she wanted. It was a lie of course. A controlled one, maybe even a thing the Demon didn’t know about herself, but she wouldn’t be keeping her word on this one. She couldn
’t.
Even if the other Greater Demons found her words compelling, she badly wanted a key that could unlock anything. That sounded nice to him, but he was a Vampire and sooner or later it came up that having a master key could be helpful. A Demoness would already know a thousand ways or more to get around locks however, meaning what she wanted access to was something behind a magical enclosure. No one bothered to hide gold or jewels that way, did they? Something that someone like her would want, that needed an item of magic created by the innocents of the world…
Well, Richard could be wrong, but he didn’t think it would turn out to be a good thing. Especially since she’d left him alive after attacking her. It should have been a very short and painful fight from the moment he’d moved, but instead it had been… something very different. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wasn’t going to be outthinking Greater Demons. It wouldn’t even shock him to find out that this whole exercise had been planned for some reason. A trap, or trick, meant to move all the pieces into place for some other reason.
He hated it when that happened. Vampires were good at that kind of thing, so it was extra annoying that he had to deal with beings that were so far ahead of him in this game he couldn’t even tell what the rules were. As he moved out into the snow away from the cabin, near where Balthias had been coming in each time, as far as the footprints told him, Richard wondered what Ma’at meant about Maci.
It was a death threat of course, but that would hardly influence the players involved. Of them all, he was the only one that might care about her overly. Perhaps Hally would, given her innate goodness. That thing with the list had been startling to say the least. Richard wondered if the definition of good had simply changed that much over the years? Regardless, she was a good person, so it would harm her if Maci were killed. Especially since it would no doubt be in some kind of horrible fashion.
He just stood, wondering if he should start heading south soon. He could, in a pinch, run about four hundred miles in fifteen hours. It would mean being late to work, but that was better than being stuck for an extra ten, waiting for rescue that probably wouldn’t come for the likes of him. That was less than fun to think of, of course, but the truth was his utility to The Mistress of Souls was probably fairly limited. He could act as a way into U.S. politics now, and possibly as a conduit to Vampire kind. The problem there being that she didn’t need him for either of those things. She could just enslave a few key officials and run the whole government if she wished. As far as Vampires, she could send a note with Rebekah and his people would listen pretty hard.
Thinking that very nearly got him to start walking when the four beings appeared in the snow in front of him. Three good looking women and Balthias. He nearly blinked as Hally ran to him, stumbling a little in the snow.
“Mr. Swerlin! You’re alive!” She gave him a quick hug, then pulled back, her face making a cute expression to indicate she was thinking. “Or, well, not alive, but you get what I mean.”
“I’m not in three or four neatly stacked piles?” He decided to risk giving her a small hug back, even though the others were watching him carefully as he did.
The Mistress of Souls, Keeley, he remembered to call her, gestured at the house, staring at it hard.
“I’m not getting any sense of one of us in there. What happened Richard?” Odd as it seemed the girl, or ancient Demon that looked like one, seemed genuinely concerned.
“I was left to deliver a message. Let me see if I can get this right.” Closing his eyes he relived the scene as best he could. It wasn’t perfect, but he thought he had it about right a moment later. He cleared his throat, feeling a little awkward suddenly, hoping that they weren’t believers in killing the messenger.
“She said, ‘Tell The Technician, and The Mistress of Souls, that I seek no quarrel with them. They may keep the girl, Maci, if they simply deliver to me the key, in working condition. If not, I will… Have to reclaim my property. Make sure you stress that it has to be in useable condition, by me, at my will, as often as I like. The Technician will know what that means.’ I may not have it perfect as to the inflections but I think I have the words right.” He didn’t have to wait long to find out their reactions.
Or to find out that what he’d thought earlier was pretty close to the truth.
It was Keeley that spoke, her eyes on Hally, who was still without a jacket and was starting to shiver. Richard pulled his off and handed it to her without thinking, which was a temporary solution at best. The Mistress of Souls sighed and stared at the cabin again.
“We’ve had word that Ma’at has been trying to breach the silver circles. It’s a cage of great power, in which five of the most dangerous and deadly Greater Demons have been locked away for well over two hundred years. We suspect that she needs the key from Saint Nick in order to open it. It allows passage anywhere, and even a thing that was never supposed to open again might be breached if it’s used.” She turned and looked at Balthias, her voice polite and gentle, even if she did have a reason to be a little worked up.
“Can you take them back home please Bal? I think that this should end the activities for the day. Hally has school. I do too for that matter. I don’t want to ruin my attendance record. It’s perfect you know.” She seemed proud of the fact, but Hally snorted gently and patted her master on the arm.
“Nope, you missed a day earlier in the year. When you were putting together the homecoming parties for all the schools? Not like you to make a mistake like that.” It seemed overly friendly, but instead of lashing out, Keeley just smiled and raised a single eyebrow.
“Like I haven’t changed those records already? Besides, that was for school, so it shouldn’t count.”
There was almost a bit of pouting in the voice, which had to be designed to make him smile. The blonde Demon didn’t seem as amused, and looked at Balthias herself.
“Get them home. We’ll try to scout and find Ma’at. For right now I need you to guard Santa and keep him safe. If anything strange starts to happen, take him away as fast as possible. Do you understand?” The tone was bossy and superior, which got the Lesser Demon to stiffen and glare at her.
“I don’t take orders from you, Technician.” There was a low growl to the words that would have made him very scared if Hally hadn’t started laughing.
“Really Darla, all you have to do is say please. Balthias is our friend. Here, watch…” She turned to face the giant beast, his skin more red than it had seemed in the dark and under the inside lights. “Balthias, would you please take us home so that these two can search for Ma’at?”
Before she could add anything else the large thing threw off a dirty look towards The Technician and held out an arm. After a second he did the same for Richard too.
“Let’s away then.” The second cold Vampire flesh hit leathery Demon skin, they were gone.
Chapter seven
The scene was a lot more festive and happy than Richard felt about things, but he knew more than Santa or Mortimer did about it all. It was pretty clear that Ma’at wasn’t going to be content to just leave them all alone or anything like that. It was possible that he could be left out of it all, but little Maci was a pawn. Jonas should be safe and Richard did something that he would have never imagined even the day before.
“Would it be possible for my secretary here to go back to the office? That way he can answer the phones and take messages while I make sure this is finished up correctly.” He didn’t know if it would be allowed, but the boy was too young to be wrapped up in things like this and didn’t owe him anything near the kind of loyalty the situation had already demanded of him. He hadn’t even gotten paid yet.
Keeley smiled and touched him on the arm, then, surprisingly, moved to Jonas who had looked up, but was sitting very close to Rebekah, their legs touching, both looking relaxed about the whole thing. Then they hadn’t been left with an upset Greater Demon. Not that it was their fault however. He’d called out for the Lesser Demon to get them
away. It was his command and the only amazing thing there was that Balthias had actually listened for some reason. It had worked too, better than he’d hoped it would, what with him still being alive and all.
The Mistress of Souls smiled and looked at Rebekah warmly.
“Don’t worry, you can go visit with him soon. Balthias will gladly see to that, just let him know when you want to go, right Bal?” Her young voice was smoother than it had been before, almost silky when the words were said, but the Lesser Demon nodded his huge head.
“It won’t be a problem.”
It was a bit blunt, but Jonas grinned about it, looking charming enough about the whole thing. He stood and turned towards Rebekah, who made her way up as well, but they just looked at each other. It made sense. They’d only known each other for a few hours after all. Traumatic hours at that. She did touch his arm with two fingers, a light thing that could have meant they were growing close, or just that the woman didn’t want to insult the boy.
“I’d like that, if you’re ever free?” She sounded pretty shy about it, but said the words clearly, her blood red eyes fixed on the man’s gray.
Before he could say anything Keeley chuckled and both she and Jonas vanished, with her returning less than fifteen seconds later.
“There we go. I set you up for a date on the twentieth, Rebekah. My wonderful and intelligent father, Finias, is having a party. You should come too Richard. I know he wants you there. You can bring your wives this time. That just leaves me to find a date.” The chuckle that followed was girlish and happy sounding. Playful even.
Hally distracted them all from that topic by moving to Santa, her arms going around the plump man who wasn’t that much taller than she was. Five-eight or so, now that Richard got a good look at him. He was freed from the silver chains, which lay on the ground in a heap, next to the small table that Maci had colored at earlier. The man smiled happily, his cheeks just as rosy and beard as white as the stories always said. The top of the key was sticking out from his belt, and he had the magical sack tucked in on the other side, since it was empty now. As if trying to complete the image his red and white fur hat was back on his head, even though it was warm in the room.
