The Demon Abraxas (20 page)

“Lily,” Ana’s voice called back at the same time Lily spotted the other woman’s ruddy blond-brown hair around the bookshelf that separated the sales area from this meeting space.

“Back here,” she said and sat back down on the couch. “There’s hot water in the pot if you want.”

A short bookshelf held an electric kettle, mugs and a variety of teas and cocoas. Ana got herself a steaming mug and brought it to the table.

“I’m making progress on finding another vessel for Abraxas,” Lily said. “But these texts are deliberately obscure and when I asked Abraxas the other day, I got the impression he was obfuscating.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “Get over it,” she grumbled quietly, and then to Lily, “Not you.”

Lily smiled. For a woman surprised with a demon passenger a week previous, Ana had adapted better than she’d expected. She didn’t even react as Lily lit a candle and set it on the side table so Abraxas could form himself a temporary extension of body from its flame.

The problem with moving Abraxas was that Lily couldn’t just dump him into an amulet or statue and let it be. Working with demons for decades, Lily had seen tremendous variation, but never one as elegant as Abraxas. She imagined it was his centuries on the paths of the dead that wore away the arrogance or grandiosity so many of the older ones developed. Abraxas had the attentive gentleness of the truly ancient beings. She wanted to create a vessel that honored and protected what he was.

It would have to amplify his power, draw him into himself faster, and give him some mobility. That was the problem that occupied her this morning. If she put him in an amulet or token, he’d be squeezed in, limited to one or two abilities.

“What kind of vessel would you like?” Lily asked him.

The face he made himself became more detailed every time she saw him. Now his full lips pressed together briefly and then opened in a breathless sigh. “Unbreakable,” his voice whispered out. Without a real mouth or lungs, he wasn’t actually speaking but causing the illusion of words, much as he did inside Ana’s mind. He could have spoken only to Lily, but she guessed he was too polite to exclude Ana. “A pendant or a ring, maybe stone. No bottles or lanterns, if you please.”

“We can’t go too small,” Lily told him. “I’m not sure what the limits are, but according to these authors…” she couldn’t resist the joke, “size matters.”

Ana choked on her tea and nearly spit it back into the cup.

“Then perhaps you should transfer me into a standing stone,” Abraxas replied.

Lily laughed. “You’d like that? Some massive lingam?”

“Do demons have relationships?” Ana asked. “I know Drake said he was involved with Helen, but I think she was really with someone else in the circle, another human.”

“It depends on the demon,” Abraxas said. “We are each unique.”

“And human lives are so short,” Lily said, watching his face. He looked up and met her eyes. Instead of pupils, he had candle flames and for a moment they held steady without flickering.

“I don’t mind that,” he said. “We are all eternal.”

Ana looked up from the table and stared back and forth between the two of them. Lily felt her cheeks coloring and went to get more tea. Yes, he was mightily compelling, but the man didn’t even have a body. This was beyond the pale even for her history of doomed attempts at relationships.

“I found something at Helen’s,” Ana said hastily and Lily returned to the table with relief. She pushed together some of her papers to make a place for Ana to set down the thick file folder she pulled out of her bag.

As Ana explained the purpose of the clippings, Lily made a list of the men’s names. She could give this to Asilal and see what he could discern about these men. Ana volunteered to send a copy of the list to a reporter friend of hers to see if he’d heard anything about these men. They needed more solid proof to involve the police, but it was a better lead than Lily had hoped for.

Lily looked over her research with fresh eyes. Maybe she could put Abraxas into a small standing stone, perhaps even in lingam stone meant for a fountain. It would serve him right. Smiling she went up to her library for more books.

* * *

Lily set another mug of hot tea next to Ana on her way to close out the register and Ana curled her hand around it feeling spoiled. It was almost time for the shop to close but she didn’t want to go home.

The chimes on the front door jingled and Lily asked, “May I help you?”

“I hear you have a remarkable rare books collection.”

That was Sabel’s voice. Ana jumped up off the couch wondering how Sabel managed to track her down here when she’d never given her the address. Seeing the slender woman standing just inside the front of the store in a long, charcoal skirt and lighter blue jacket, Ana realized Sabel hadn’t expected to see her at all; Ana had only called this place “Lily’s store,” she’d never used its real name. Sabel must have stayed late at the university and come here because she really was looking for books. Apparently Ana wasn’t the only one who learned that if you needed to know more about demons, this was the place to be.

“I was going to call you,” Ana said and then realized how stupid that sounded. “I mean, I got some leads, a list of names.”

“You know her?” Lily asked as the two of them walked from the front of the store to the area where Ana had been sitting.

“Lily, this is Dr. Sabel Young from SFSU, she helped me get away from the summoners.”

“You were recommended to me,” Sabel said to Lily. Then to Ana, “What names?”

“I, um, got into Helen’s place this morning and went through her files because I thought the police might have missed something since they think the case is closed and anyway they weren’t looking for demons, you know. I found this file folder of clippings of stories about men who’ve been accruing a lot of power in the last few years.”

Sabel sat carefully on the far end of the couch. Ana handed her the folder and she began to page through it.

“Gabriel Leonard, good,” she said.

“You know him?”

“He’s on my list too.”

“You have a list?” Ana asked.

“I wasn’t going to leave you to deal with this all by yourself. I have an idea for finding the identities of the summoners.”

“Oh?” Ana asked and Lily arched her eyebrows with a similar, unspoken question.

“I talked to Leonard yesterday about joining the group,” Sabel said without looking up from the folder.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” Lily asked.

“Less dangerous than Ana walking around in a city where they all know her face and have already come after her,” Sabel said.

“But you’re the one who wanted me to stay home,” Ana pointed out. “You’re the one who yelled at me about going to my office.”

“You know I have more resources to protect myself than you do,” Sabel said. She set the folder down and stood up from the couch, but that did nothing to back up her point. Lily raised her eyebrows. Standing next to Sabel she looked like a cat next to a bird. Lily was shorter, but solid, almost weighty in her thick boots, even though she wasn’t a heavy woman.

“Perhaps we should spend more time comparing notes,” Lily said. “Neither of you should go rushing after these men. They still have at least one powerful demon with them and you,” she looked at Sabel, “look pretty human to me. Do you even know how to bind or banish a demon?”

“I’ve never tried.”

“But you think you can defend against them? Because at least Ana has Abraxas and he’s growing in strength—”

She stopped abruptly because Ana was vigorously shaking her head, but it was too late. Ana circled a couple of steps around Sabel to get between her and the door so she wouldn’t rush out.

“Abraxas?” Sabel sounded out the name. “As in the Gnostic deity? How are you under his protection?”

“He’s not a god, he’s a spirit,” Ana said. “I mean a Sangkesh or whatever.”

“You mean a demon,” Sabel said and the word “demon” crackled with accusation. “And you put yourself under his protection?”

“Um, not really. I mean, I didn’t have much choice.”

“You didn’t tell her?” Lily asked Ana, which didn’t help the situation.

“Hey, I’m still getting used to this! Last week as far as I knew demons were made up and now there’s one talking to me inside my own head and pardon me if I didn’t want to broadcast that!”

Sabel stood up and turned on Lily, “You didn’t banish him?”

“He’s too weak.”

“
He
is? That’s why they’re coming after Ana and you’re going to let that happen because
he’s
weak? You’re lecturing me about danger?”

On the table nearest where Ana stood, a candle’s flame leaned sideways and traced filaments of fire on the air. The head and torso of a man formed and Abraxas’s wind-soft voice blew through the store.

“I protect her while she hosts me,” he said.

Ana saw Sabel draw a breath and raised a hand to stop her, but it was too late. The words that leapt from Sabel’s mouth had the force of a landslide behind them.

“
Demon,
o
ut of her!
”

Pain lanced across her skin and for a split second she felt Abraxas thrown out of her and out of the store entirely by the power of the words. But although he was out, he was not unconnected from her. A thick energy bond stretched between them. The bond jerked her off her feet and she was falling backward through the air. She struck one of the windows and felt it pop out of its old, wooden frame. It shattered on the pavement and then she hit two surfaces nearly simultaneously. The first was warm and yielding and it lessened the impact of the second, which was asphalt.

Thank you
, she offered silently to Abraxas, who’d done all he could as she fell through his insubstantial body. He was fully inside her again and already working to repair the damage from hitting the window and the street. At least she’d missed striking the light post or landing in the shimmer of shattered glass left by the window.

She was on her feet before she realized it and vaulting through the now empty window frame. Lily had wrestled Sabel to her knees and had her subdued with her arm across her throat. Sabel’s eyes were half-closed from lack of oxygen and in another moment she’d be unconscious.

“Not in my house, witch,” Lily snarled at her.

“Lily, don’t,” Ana said. “Let her talk. She won’t do that again.”

Lily paused for a moment and then said quietly to Sabel, “
Maarevas
, I know you now. If you use that voice again against Ana, or Abraxas, or me—there won’t be a place in this city that’s safe for you.”

She moved her arm and Sabel gasped.

“Sorry,” Sabel said breathily, still sucking in more air. “Not supposed to happen like that.”

“He’s connected to my body. When you threw him out the connection dragged me with him.”

“Hurt?” Sabel asked.

“Less than you’d think.” Ana struggled with what to say next, but Lily cut in.

“She’s using you,” Lily told Ana. “The witches always do.”

Sabel rose gingerly to her feet. “Oh and you’re not beholden to anyone? You work entirely for yourself then?”           

“The Sangkesh protect this city and they’ll do everything they can for Ana,” Lily said loudly.  

Sabel raised the volume of her words to match Lily’s, “The Sangkesh would go after a fly in a china shop with a baseball bat and damn the humans too stupid to duck—you call that protection?”

“Are you using me?” Ana asked of no one in particular. The other women both turned to look at her.

“The other witches assigned me to watch Helen,” Sabel said. “That’s why I found your phone and knew you were in trouble. I came after you on my own. But yes, I’m a Hecatine witch and I report to our governing body and I keep them updated about what’s going on here.”

It made sense, but it stung. Sabel found her not because she’d started out watching over Ana, but because she was checking up on Helen. And she reported to some other group of witches—which made Ana feel angrily self-conscious.

“Do you tell them everything?” Ana asked.

Sabel dropped her gaze. “Not everything,” she said quietly.

“And you?” she asked Lily. “Are you lying about how hard it is to remove Abraxas just because you’re fascinated by him?”

Lily’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll have him out of you within a week, maybe less. Do you really want him out so badly you’d kill him to do it?”

“No,” Ana admitted.

“And hasn’t he already protected you?”

“Yes.”

“There,” Lily said decisively. “And now if you’ll pardon me, I have to call the glass company.” She stomped to the front of the store with more force than her boots warranted.

“You didn’t tell me,” Sabel said.

Ana noticed that she took the chair furthest from the couch. Instead of sitting, Ana paced, careful to never get closer to Sabel than the far end of the couch. If Sabel didn’t want anything to do with her now that she knew about Abraxas, then fuck it. She wasn’t sure how pissed she should be about the fact that some governing body of witches were behind Sabel following her in the first place.

“I have a fucking demon in me.” She spat the words. “What was I going to say? I’m sorry I can’t make out with you ’cause there’s a fucking demon in me?”

“You went to the Sangkesh rather than ask me for help.” She gestured toward the front of the store where Lily was facing away from them, the phone held to her ear.

“I’m not part of your politics. I was in pain. I went to someone who could help.”

Sabel turned to look at the broken-out window and then ducked her head in acquiescence.

Ana wanted to shake her and demand that she explain herself. Why did she look so defeated? She sat down on the edge of the couch close to Sabel and leaned toward her.

“Sabel…”

She was still trying to figure out what to say or to ask when Lily walked back to them.

“Excuse me,” Lily said to Ana. “I need to reinforce the protection on the store now and I would like to do it without the witch here.”

“We’re on the same team here,” Ana told her. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s Team Ana and you two have to set aside whatever bullshit politics you have going on.”