Fantastic Hope

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Lucifer got more than his due in France, demon. Who are you?” My mind flashed back to the night I lost Anna, the night that sent me spiraling into madness and bloodlust that I barely came back from.

  “My name is Abbadon. Humanity is mine by right, gifted to me from the Father. Now release me and I will be merciful!” He roared the last bit, lunging forward and slamming into the circle, repulsed by the magical boundary.

  Abbadon. Fantastic. Originally Muriel, he did have a deep connection to humanity, since he was the one who scooped up the clay that Adam was formed from, then stood guard over the garden and its inhabitants. Apparently he had a quarrel with Michael when the enforcer with the flaming sword tossed his pet humans out of the garden, and found himself tossed into the flames with his buddy the Morningstar. Now he was back, and in Jersey City. I knew this place really was hell.

  “I don’t need your mercy, Abby. I just need you to go home. And now that I know your name, I can send you there.” I started the rite of exorcism, but paused after the first few lines. The demon was smiling. I worry when demons smile; it generally means bad things for anyone within a few miles. He didn’t seem terribly concerned about being banished, and he should be sweating my having his real name. I was fast approaching the moment in the ritual where I had to name the demon and scrub out a portion of the binding circle so the magic could touch him, and he was still grinning at me like the cat that ate the canary.

  I walked around the circle until I was facing east, directly where the sun would rise in a few hours, and drew a pentagram in the air. With my toe, I scrubbed out a few inches of the circle and poured my magic into the barrier holding the demon that I suddenly didn’t believe was Abbadon. My mind raced through what I knew about demons, and liars, and the most powerful demons associated with trickery and lies, and I decided to take my shot. If I was wrong, I was probably going to die. If I was right, this demon would be gone and the idiot cultists would spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out where they went wrong.

  “I call upon the strength of Uriel, Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel to aid me in banishing you, foul Belial, from this place. Begone, foul creature! Begone! BEGONE!” With my final shout, a beam of pure white light shone from my hands and struck the demon full in the chest. It screamed as though every nerve was on fire, then winked out of existence as if it had never been. I sagged, every ounce of fight gone from my body, and looked around to see if anyone needed help I wasn’t sure I could provide.

  Luke stood over one unconscious cultist, and he nodded to one whose throat was ripped out. Jacob. He lay in a pool of his own blood, his yellow-flecked eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. “He was too far gone, Quincy. I am sorry.”

  “I know, Uncle,” I said. “I knew he wouldn’t see another winter when I first looked in his eyes. He was a rabid dog, infected with the demon’s taint. He could never walk among normal humans again.”

  “This one isn’t quite so far gone, I think,” Renfield said, gesturing with his pistol to the man he stood over. “I know a young nun in the city who may be able to rid him of this corruption.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  “You’re family,” Luke replied. “That’s what we do.”

  “I expect family was at the root of a lot of this,” I said, gesturing around us to the bloodstained bandstand. “Renfield, do you have anyone you can call?”

  “To clean up, Master Quincy? Of course. I’ll just be off to a pay phone and be back in a jiff.”

  “I’ll watch this lot,” Luke said. “I believe you should speak to the young lady.” He pointed to where Rosalyn sat on the floor, her back pressed to the wooden railing.

  I walked over to her. “May I sit?”

  She nodded without speaking and I slid down beside her, feeling a few bruises I hadn’t noticed before as my legs and rear came into contact with the wood.

  “What was that?” she asked after a few seconds.

  “That was a demon,” I said. No point in trying to hide the truth from her now. “Your friend Jacob was never calling an archangel. He was summoning a demon. A big one. One that could have killed a lot of people before it was driven back to Hell.”

  “Did you kill it?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s almost impossible to kill a demon here, if it can be done at all. I believe they can be destroyed in Hell, but I’m not in a hurry to go down there and find out. He was banished, so now he’s stuck back in the fires until someone else summons him. Hopefully that’s a long time from now. So you should be safe now.”

  She laughed, a short, sharp thing that faded away in the night like it was afraid to be caught. “Safe? I’m safe? I’m a Jew, we haven’t ever been safe. If what happened in Europe taught us anything, it was that reminder.”

  “That’s what you were trying to do, isn’t it? Go back and make it so none of it ever happened. Not the camps, not Hitler, none of it.”

  “That’s right. Jacob told us he had been praying and an angel came to him, just like the burning bush came to Moses. He said if we cast the ritual on the solstice, when the veil between Heaven and Earth was thinnest, the angel would help us reach back through time and make sure Hitler never came to power.”

  “And none of the people you lost would die,” I murmured. It was a good lie. It sounded so easy, just push one thing out of line and it would save so many lives. Too bad you can’t do it.

  “None of them. Not my aunt or my cousin. Not Hiram’s wife. Not Rachel’s mother and father. None of them. We could have them back, and everyone else, too. It sounded so . . .”

  “Good?” I asked, my voice gentle.

  “Yes. It sounded like it couldn’t be anything other than good. It would take away all that pain, all the loss, all the loneliness, all the . . .”

  “All the guilt,” I said. “I know that guilt. I watched the woman I love die at the hands of a Nazi, and it drove me crazy for a while. Why did I have to lose her? Why did I get to live when she had to die? She was so much better than me, so kind, so pure, so . . .” My voice trailed off and I realized my cheeks were wet. I hadn’t cried for Anna in years, but now the tears flowed like raindrops.

  “Yes,” Rosalyn almost whispered. “Why did we get to live?”

  “Because sometimes the good people die to remind us what is worth living for.” Luke’s voice was soft, and when I looked at him I saw centuries of pain and loss in his eyes. I remembered the painting he moved from home to home, always in his bedroom, of a beautiful woman with brown eyes and dark hair. I saw her face in his eyes at that moment, just as I saw Anna’s face before me.

  “Sometimes the best of us die to leave us an example,” I said with a nod. “They show us what life is supposed to be, but they have to die to pull it into focus. And sometimes . . . well, sometimes people just die. And there’s no reason for it, and it’s stupid, and it’s evil, and it hurts so bad it makes you want to do anything to fix it . . .”

  “But you can’t,” Rosalyn said, her voice a butterfly’s wing in the night air.

  “No,” I agreed. “You can’t. But you can live. You can stand up, set your chin, and you can see each sunrise.”

  “Is that what you do?” she asked.

  “Most days,” I admitted, my grin more than a little rueful. “Some days I can’t quite manage to get my chin straight, and those are the days I lean on my friends. My family. My other survivors. Because the best way for me to honor Anna is to live, just like I would if she were by my side.”

  I saw Rosalyn’s eyes widen, but I shook my head to ward off the questions I didn’t want to answer. “Go home, Rosalyn,” I said. “Go home, get some sleep, and see the sunrise. We can’t go back in time. We can’t rescue our lost. But we can live our lives, and we can honor them.”

  Then I stood up, and without looking back at the girl with the achingly familiar eyes, I walked out of the park and never return
ed. I went to Battery Park and I watched the sunrise, and I wept a river of tears for the woman I loved and lost. And then I got up, wiped my cheeks, and returned to the living.

  ASIL AND THE NOT-DATE

  AN ALPHA AND OMEGA STORY

  PATRICIA BRIGGS

  The old wolf ran, leaping over drifts of snow, his dark brown coat indistinguishable from black in the night. In the summer his coloring meant he could easily run unseen in the Montana forests, but the snow made that an effort he didn’t bother with.

  It was cold and the silence was deep in these woods, so different from the wilds of his youth. But Asil had been here for years now, and he ran most nights to exorcise the demons of memory and to calm the raging wolf who shared his skin. Even the cold that made the snow squeak under his paws was an ordinary and familiar thing, though he had been born to much warmer climes.

  Someday soon, he was sure, these runs would not be enough. His wolf would break free and start a killing rampage that only the Marrok who ruled them all could stop.

  He wished that he were certain the Marrok could stop him. They thought it vanity that he had come here for his death. He owned that vanity was one of his sins. But he knew, and the Marrok knew, how deadly he was. How old he was. Just because he was vain did not mean he was wrong.

  * * *

  —

  Surrounded by mountain wilderness, his home allowed him privacy for the brutal change from wolf to human. When he stood once more in human skin, Asil wiped off the excess snow and moisture with the towel he left on the porch swing for that purpose.

  Without his wolf’s fur, the night’s chill bit at his skin. Unlike someone wholly human, he could have stayed out all night without ill effects, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. When he was dry, he folded the towel neatly and returned it to the swing, drew in a deep breath of the cold air, and waited.

  And waited.

  But the usual weight of depression, of an apathy that hindered his control of his wolf, did not burden his soul as it had daily the past few centuries. His old enemy was not vanquished, he could feel its touch, but, for now, it only lingered on the edges of his mind.

  Inside his house his computer sounded the reception of an email. It could be an advertisement for potting soil from his favorite gardening site or a note from his son, who ruled Asil’s old pack in Europe. Or it could be from Concerned Friends who had given him a peculiar gift for the Christian holiday season—the current reason that held his ennui at bay. To paraphrase Sir Arthur, there was a game afoot.

  He opened the door and walked naked into his home. There might have been, had he cared to admit it, a spring in his step.

  The email awaiting him was disappointing. He was the lucky recipient of a hundred-dollar Amazon gift card if he would participate in a survey by clicking the provided link. Asil deleted that email and another from a Nigerian businessman with bad grammar who would give him money, doubtless in return for his banking information. Asil rose from his computer desk and put on the clothing he’d taken off before his run.

  Fully clothed, he went into the kitchen to brew himself some tea in hopes that the task would lend him some patience, which he should only need a little of. They had given themselves—and him—very little time: five dates from online dating sites chosen and set up by them, all to be completed in two weeks. He had finished two of them.

  The first email from his Concerned Friends had read, in part:

  You should know that all of these people think they have been talking to you and are looking for you to bring a little spice into their lives. We have carefully chosen people we think would be very hurt to find out they were unwitting participants in a game. Some of us believe that you would not hurt a stranger just to avoid a little discomfort. Others think that knowing that we have informed the whole pack (via email) and instigated a betting pool will be better incentive. Especially since no one, so far, has bet on you attending more than one date.

  As blackmail, it was pretty effective. They (or possibly he or she, because Asil wasn’t convinced two or more people could keep themselves secret from him, and he had not been able to discover who was at the heart of this) knew what moved him. Most people wouldn’t have thought he would care that people’s feelings would be hurt.

  Even so, he was pretty sure that no one but himself knew the biggest reason that he’d accepted.

  Inshallah.

  Asil had, in his very long life, accepted that Allah sometimes made use of his most disobedient servant. This game had, from the first, felt like one of those times. The first two dates had done nothing to disabuse him of that notion.

  The water had barely come to a boil when his computer chimed again. He waited until his tea had steeped before going back to his desk.

  Dear Asil,

  He smiled and sat down.

  We admit your second date did not turn out quite as we expected. We had no idea that the “must love cats” woman meant loving cats in the biblical sense.

  “I hope not,” murmured Asil. “Or we really will need to have a talk when this is all over and I find out who you are, my friends.”

  To be fair, the dating site (when we contacted them) also had no clue that a certain subset of the population had begun to use their site for such meet-ups. We had a nice chat and we feel certain that, in the future, they will actually do the background checks that their website promises.

  May we say that while we owe you apologies (again) for the unexpected way that one turned out, you once more managed to stay within the bounds of our bet. You were with your assigned date for four hours and twenty minutes. It did expose a loophole in our rules; we did not state that your date must be conscious for any of the time, let alone all of it.

  There were, somewhat to our surprise considering the circumstances, no dead bodies. There is a slight possibility that Aaron Marks might not make it. We debated, but decided that since he has survived forty-eight hours after your date ended, and the damage he suffered was from the lioness and not you, we will grant that you have met the “no dead bodies” portion of the agreement.

  Since everyone involved was unable to run by the time the date ended—the lioness excluded—it could be argued that you were cheating. But wiser heads prevailed and gave you the nod. However, you are establishing some odd precedents and we don’t think that we would let anyone we cared very much for date you.

  The Seattle Zoo accepted our anonymous donation for the care and welfare of the lioness and informed us that you had done the same. That was well done of you. Someday you will tell us how you managed that drive with an unhappy lioness in your backseat.

  Asil smiled. Maybe he would tell them. Maybe not.

  And that brings us to your next date.

  We will restate the rules you have agreed to. You must complete one date with your next victim . . . er, our selected person from an online dating site of our choice. That date must be at least two hours long—and you must spend at least an hour and a half of that with your date. No dead bodies, and neither you nor your date can run screaming out into the night.

  For your third date we found a person who sounds very normal on PlatonicPlantophiles.com—a Meeting Place for Plant Lovers. We would accept credit for this, but there were only two people listed on the site who were within a reasonable distance of your home. After the oddities involved in the first two dates of our bet, we did a thorough background check on both and chose the one we thought would be the least trouble. We trust that Tami will be less dramatic than your last date.

  * * *

  —

  Tami Reed tapped her foot nervously and looked around the restaurant she had picked. Spokane was a foodie city. There were literally dozens of good restaurants that she could have decided upon; this one had probably not been the wisest choice.

  She’d been thinking she wanted a quiet place where she and her “platonic internet conversat
ion partner” could talk. It was quiet here, for sure. Only as she was sitting at a small dark table set with illusionary privacy in a dark corner with soft music playing in the background did she realize how intimate, how romantic this restaurant was.

  This kind of awkward misjudgment is one of the reasons why you have no social life, she told herself. She had no love life—she’d just dumped her last boyfriend two weeks earlier—and no friends who weren’t coworkers. She sighed and sipped the very good wine she’d ordered so she wouldn’t feel guilty about taking up a table a half hour before her not-date was supposed to start.

  The no-friends thing probably had more to do with her job than with her famously awkward moments (like bringing a not-date to what was probably the most romantic restaurant in Spokane). If she wasn’t at work, she was asleep. Even her last boyfriend had been someone she met at work—social worker meets police officer, and hadn’t that been a train wreck.

  What was she doing here? Who needs the internet to find a friend? This was really stupid no matter what the people in her favorite Facebook hangout said about the new service for people who wanted to talk about gardening with other like-minded people. Platonic Plantophiles had sounded so promising, a not-dating site. Someone to talk to who wasn’t a client and didn’t work with her—and was not interested in a romance in any sense of the word. She’d had enough of romance for a while.

  In a fit of optimism, she’d inputted her information and waited.

  The first reply had come from Spokane. Members of Platonic Plantophiles had been instructed to use a single name only (preferably your actual first name, but usernames were acceptable), for safety’s sake. Over half a million people lived in and around Spokane, and there were probably a dozen Phoebes. But the Phoebe she knew loved lilacs and owned a business downtown. Tami would rather stab herself with a fork than spend an hour talking to that Phoebe.