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.”