The Demon Abraxas (13 page)

“I still don’t get why they call themselves demons.”

“That’s because you think there’s something wrong with having a dark power rather than a light one. Just because your powers are based in darkness, divisiveness, anger and hurt doesn’t mean you can’t use those just as effectively for good. Think of the human soldiers who want to fight and found a place where they can fight to protect others—or the surgeon whose ability to cut into a person and cause a wound is what saves that person’s life.”

Ana rolled the mug between her palms, watching the remaining inch of froth rock from one side to the other. An unwelcome image of her brother, Mack, came to mind and she wondered if people like him could ever learn to turn their rage to good. And yet, it made a kind of sense to her. In the fight against the men who’d kidnapped her, she wanted the biggest, baddest, meanest creatures on her side. Maybe that was demons and not angels.

“Can the protector demons take care of these summoners?” she asked Lily.

“We can’t allow them to continue to operate in this city, but the local demons have limits to what they can do and how much they can interfere in human matters.”

“I’d like to see them all go to jail. Can you help me do that?”

“I can try.”

“And can you get Abraxas out of me?”

Lily watched the man’s shimmering form. “Not right away. He needs a body or a vessel to contain him while he gains strength. It’s best if it’s a living human body, but I could theoretically put him into a vessel of power.”

She asked him a question and he answered with a few words. Lily choked back a laugh. “He’s asking if his current vessel would like to become more worthy.”

“I am not your damned vessel,” Ana snarled at him. “I have a life of my own that your nonsense is screwing up right now. What’s Sabel going to think if I tell her I’ve got a demon sharing my body? Or Ruben? Oh my God, Ruben! Lily, can I use your phone, he’s going to be frantic if Sabel shows up to meet me and I’m not there.”

Lily brought her the phone. In a coincidence of great luck, she got him five minutes after he’d come in the door with groceries, while he was still trying to figure out if she’d left him a note somewhere.

“I’m so sorry, I forgot to leave a note,” she said. “I just had to get out and I went to that third bookstore. The woman here is really great. But Sabel was supposed to come with me and she’s going to show up soon.”

“Oh honey, I can keep her entertained,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

His eager tone worried her. She didn’t like the idea of the two of them talking about her. She looked at the time on the phone and resolved to be out the door in twenty minutes or less.

“What’s so good about a living human body?” Ana asked.

“Well the dead ones start to smell,” Lily said and then shook her head at herself. “I shouldn’t joke. Demons were originally created without bodies and as a result they were easy to bind and control. Solomon found a way for younger demons to be born with bodies and that paved the way for humans and demons to interbreed. Through those crossbreeds, the nonphysical demons learned how powerful they can be when they have access to everything that’s in a human body. While Abraxas has his home in you, no one can compel him and it’s much harder to work magic on him, though I suspect he can still be banished, yes?”

She asked that again in the other language and Abraxas made an affirmative sound.

“What’s banished?”

“Sent back to one of the nonphysical realms that they come from in the Unseen World. Most demons hate to be compelled or bound, and aren’t too happy about banishing either. Being in your body gives Abraxas a place to recover and learn about the world he’s in now. If you were willing, you could help him accommodate to this world more quickly.”

“And that would get him out sooner rather than later?”

“It improves your chances.”

“What do I need to do?” Ana asked.

“Give him access to your senses and some of your surface thoughts so he can learn English.”

“Can I reverse that later or push him out if I don’t want him to hear what I’m thinking?”

“Yes.” Lily got a pad of paper and wrote down a simple phrase to let him have access to her senses and surface mind and another to cancel it. They were in English and seemed silly and unceremonious to Ana.

“Shouldn’t it be in Latin or something?”

“The words are the focus, it’s your will that works the change.”

Lily watched as Ana read the first set of words off the page and the shimmering form of Abraxas slid back into her body. Then Lily got off the couch saying, “I have an idea,” and disappeared up the stairs.

She returned with a worn leather book the size of a family Bible in her hands, holding it with reverence. If there had been words on the cover, they’d long ago worn away, but when Ana opened it a title was written three times in neat script, twice in English and once in an Arabic script.

Demonologie of the Moderne Aeon
and below that a signature she could not decipher. Next was a date: 1604. Below that, another, even neater hand, had penned a second title:
Modern Demonology
.

“This is a four-hundred-year-old book written by hand?” she asked in wonder.

“It’s been copied by hand from the original. There are only a few copies of that in the world.”

Ana turned a few pages and saw that each right-hand page was in an older dialect of English, one that reminded her of Shakespeare, and the left-hand pages were the Arabic text. It wasn’t too hard to read in the English and as her eye scanned the page her mind easily translated it into the modern English she was used to.

“If you let him move your hand, he can find pages in the Arabic and you’ll see the English translation. It will help you communicate and also let him learn English faster.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small tan envelope. “I think you’ll need this too. It’s the banishing salt I use, in case you get more little adversaries at your door.”

Ana tucked it into her purse gratefully and, while she was in there, pulled out one of her cards. “My cell phone number’s on that.”

Lily was scrutinizing her again as she handed the card over. “You seem to be holding up pretty well,” she said.

Ana laughed. “That’s just because you didn’t see me screaming and hitting myself early Friday morning. I’m eager to get this over with.”

“You may not want to be so eager. Few people on the planet ever get an opportunity like the one you have there.”

“It doesn’t feel like an opportunity. It feels like my whole life getting completely screwed up.”

“Sometimes,” Lily said, “that’s what opportunity feels like.” She helped Ana up from the couch, and Ana found that she could put a modest amount of weight on her right foot. They made it down to the car easily.

Her mood lifted as she started the engine. Now she had someone on her side who could get this demon out of her head and call in the cavalry to help deal with the dozen crazy men who might kill her in order to keep their mischief a secret. Ana wanted to see them pay. Could she help to discover their identities and turn them over to the police?
Put that down as the next item on the to-do list
, she thought.

* * *

When Ana pulled into the garage and tried to get out of the car, she was surprised by how strong her legs felt. Despite the fall down the stairs, she stood up without trouble. She had the impression that Abraxas was helping her body heal itself—at least he came with benefits.

With her right hand, she held the heavy tome to her chest. Its leather felt like rough skin against her palm, as if it held her as much as she held it. She braced her hand against the wall and took two slow steps up the stairs. There was no pain at all. Grinning, she went up the rest at a normal pace.

When she turned to peer into the kitchen and dining room she saw two people sitting on the back porch chatting and drinking what looked like mojitos. Ruben’s tousled brown mop and broad back sat next to now familiar straight black hair and slender shoulders. Sabel turned as if she heard a sound and saw Ana through the window.

She was on her feet in an instant and Ruben got up with her. He pushed open the glass door and strode through the dining room.

“What happened?” he asked with a tone that suggested Ana had a fresh bruise somewhere obvious. She should have looked in a mirror before driving home.

“I’m okay,” she told him. “Are those mojitos? Where’s mine?”

Ruben rolled his eyes at her and huffed into the kitchen, but that was just his way of showing he was worried. Ana put the thick leather book on the coffee table and settled back into the support of the couch.

Sabel walked into the room and looked down at Ana and then the book. She reached down to touch the book and hissed through her teeth like she’d hit a thorn. Her hand pulled back quickly. She took the armchair in the far corner of the living room and waited while Ruben handed Ana the cold, skinny glass. Then there was nothing for it but to tell the story—or at least most of it.

“The other night with the ritual and the summoners, the demon thing, well, they think I ran off with their demon and they want it back.” She talked quickly so they couldn’t interrupt with questions she didn’t want to answer. “And the bad news is that demons really do exist and these two people showed up at the front door with my purse. No, I didn’t let them in, I’m not stupid. But the guy had a demon in a bottle and it came through the crack in the door and possessed me.”

“Slow down,” Ruben said. “I didn’t see this movie. What are you talking about?”

At least Sabel was watching her with eyes full of steady comprehension. Ana didn’t know if she should even tell Ruben this, but he needed to understand a little of it in case the summoners returned to the house when he was there.

“Just…listen as if I’m talking about something that could maybe be real,” she told him. “These two people looked like an average couple, but the guy had a bottle and when he opened it this smoky thing came out and then I couldn’t move. The guy tried to push into the house, but I managed to get my left arm and leg free and slammed the door. I fell down the stairs on the way to my car, but I got away and drove to another bookstore where I met Lily. She did something that pulled this demon out of me and questioned it and then sent it back to…wherever they go. And she gave me the book.”

Ana slipped a hand into her purse and came out with the small envelope Lily had given her. “She also gave me this,” she said. “As defense against future possession. I’m not making this up.”

Sabel pushed out of her chair and took the envelope from Ana’s fingers. She opened it and sniffed, then lifted a pinch to her tongue. “Tastes like salt and bitumen and something else. Crude but it should work.”

“That black sand drove a demon out of you?” Ruben asked. “And that’s, like, a real thing?”

When he said it that way it sounded ridiculous and stupid. A wave of fear and nausea passed over her.

“I’m not crazy,” Ana insisted.

Sabel held up a hand. “Give him some space. He still doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”

Ruben looked back and forth between them and his sculpted, expressive eyebrows conveyed his deep doubt and confusion. His chest rose with an extended inhale and then fell with a whoosh. “First things first, I’ll bring the phone and you call the police and describe the people who showed up here.”

He was walking back into the room with the phone in his hand when his cell phone rang. He gave the house phone a puzzled look and then figured it out and pulled the cell from his pocket.

“My agent,” he said apologetically and put the house phone on the coffee table by Ana. Then he answered his cell phone and disappeared toward the kitchen.

Ana took a long sip of the mojito and the minty alcohol warmed the back of her throat.

“You should think about how much you tell him. You’re putting him in danger too.” Sabel’s voice sounded low and accusing. She was sitting in the armchair but balanced forward with her hands on her knees, her lips thinned, a frown creasing the sides of her mouth. The expression didn’t make her any less attractive.

“Don’t lecture me,” Ana shot back. Her good mood was shifting into anger. She thought about the way Sabel had touched the book and recoiled and felt blamed for things she didn’t understand. “Ruben needs to know to be careful if people are going to show up here.”

“I read the police report. You’d have to have a lot of money and dedication to outfit a basement like that. These guys must have been in operation for a long time. You have no idea how dangerous they are. Ruben needs to be more than careful.”

“You read the police report?” Ana asked. “
My
police report?”

“I read everything I could, not just yours.”

“And somehow you think this is fair, that you can look up whatever you want and tell me what to say, but you won’t tell me the least bit about what you’re into?” Ana asked. The words carried more emphasis than she intended, but hearing them come out of her mouth made her realize how truly frustrated she was.

Sabel’s voice didn’t rise. She looked surprised. “I was in the room when you gave the police statement,” she said.

That was true, and it wasn’t the contents of the report that upset her, it was the idea that Sabel could go around finding out information without her. Or maybe that Sabel had years of information more than she did about magic and demons and all of this.

“What aren’t you telling me in the name of protecting me?” she asked. “Because I’m pretty sure you just told me the barest fraction about yourself and this witch business yesterday.”

The heat of anger rose in her chest and she got off the couch and walked toward the fireplace where she could pace a few steps back and forth. Looking down at the hearth tiles, she recalled a half memory of Sabel here the night she stayed. Ana had gotten up to use the bathroom and come part way down the stairs, just to look and see if Sabel was really asleep on the couch. She’d seen Sabel kneeling on this hearth, her hands on her thighs with the fingers turned in. Her head was bowed and her hair falling straight and dark on either side of her face, hiding her expression.