Summoning Trouble, page 25
“I was going to use the magaru to get her out of there. Until that bitch sent her pet demon to destroy it!” Francis shouted.
“That pet demon is your Uncle Zadkiel,” Uriel said.
“You lie!” Francis shouted. Uriel sighed.
“I have done so many things wrong with you and your mother,” Uriel said.
“Don’t talk about my mother! You should have helped her!” Francis shouted. I raised my eyebrows, do what? Did Francesca and Francis have different mothers? I wasn’t sure that was possible, because as far as I knew Uriel and his wife had been together for eons. Or had Uriel strayed and had a child with someone other than his wife? I added it to the list of things I needed to ask someone about later.
“You’re right, I should have done more to help her when she was first injured. I waited too long and lost her. Now, we’ve lost you too unless you let Soleil try to heal you,” Uriel said, sounding defeated.
“She’s a liar and manipulator, she won’t heal me, she’ll destroy me, like she did with the magaru!” Francis shouted.
“No, I will try to heal you,” I said, and it sounded lame even to me.
“My mom told me you were evil. I’m not going to trust you,” Francis said.
“Your mom doesn’t know me,” I said. “How could she know what I was?”
“She does and you tried to kill her once. Why wouldn’t you try to kill me?” I raised my eyebrow and decided glaring at him was my best option. I was also going to shut up, because I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“He’s talking about Francesca,” Remiel said to me, and Francis whacked him in the face with the book instead of on the top of his head. Blood spurted from Remiel’s nose. Now I was totally confused. I didn’t believe I had ever attempted to kill Francesca. She was a lot older than I was and wow... If Francis was Uriel’s and Francesca’s son... incest was not okay. “You don’t get to say her name either,” Francis said and went to whack Remiel again. Uriel stomped over, bent down and grabbed the book, yanking it out of Francis’s hands. “Uriel isn’t his father; Uriel is his grandfather,” Remiel told me, and I actually sighed with relief.
“You murdered my father, let my mother go to prison, and now you’re going to let her murder me, while she’s pretending to help me!” Francis said, somewhere between a shout and a cry.
“I have never tried to kill your mother!” I protested loudly, relieved by the revelation Francis was not the product of incest. He continued to struggle with my two uncles. Fuck it. I dug the key out of my pocket and walked over and stuck it on Francis’ forehead while trying to find the break in his soul. The missing half of his soul returned to his body once the magaru had been destroyed, which was the spray of blood I’d felt in the Stygian. But being in the same body didn’t mean they would go back together. I wasn’t sure I could heal it. The key was still just a key as far as I could tell.
“The Key,” Francis breathed, with great reverence.
“I don’t know about it being the key, it is certainly a key, though,” I replied.
“The Stygian key,” Francis said and still sounded reverent.
“Yeah, okay someone can explain that to me later.” I began pushing magic. When my magic washed over the key, it glowed red for a moment and then went back to being a large, rusty key. I wondered if we should all get tetanus shots after handling it, perhaps two in Francis’s case since I was pushing it into his forehead quite hard. The soul was not knitting back together. I pushed more magic. Still nothing. I did the only thing I could think of, I yanked both halves of the soul out of Francis, leaving him dead for all intents and purposes for a few moments. Uriel started to say something and then shut up. I pushed more magic at the soul. Still nothing. I pushed more magic. Nothing. Finally, I pushed all the magic I had at the soul. It remained broken down the middle. I sighed, took a few deep breaths and took the stupid key off Francis’s forehead. I stuck the key in the soul and turned it like it was a lock. Nothing. I repeated the gesture while pushing magic at it. Then I shoved the soul back into Francis. He gasped and tried to sit up, but Remiel had used the moments he was dead to get a better grip on his limbs. Fuck!
Still kneeling I grabbed Jerome’s hand and we both pushed magic at the soul. Still nothing. Jerome grabbed Uriel’s hand, and I saw magic flare between them. After a moment, Uriel took hold of Remiel at the shoulder, again magic flared, and we all thought about the healed soul.
Fuck!
“Soleil,” Uriel said, and his voice broke. “It’s not going to work.”
“It has to work!” I told my uncle.
“The soul doesn’t heal like the body or mind,” Uriel said to me. “It is what it is.” Uriel looked down at Francis. We all did, and then Uriel ripped the soul back out of the body. Francis lay still, no heartbeat, no breathing, nothing. Uriel said something to the soul and then the soul disappeared. I stared at him.
“We could have gotten the entire throne together and tried,” I told my uncle.
“It wouldn’t have helped. Please leave me with my grandson. Send Magda and the AESPCA investigators in here to collect the body and start the investigation. Oh, and I guess that new guy. I’ve forgotten his name, but the one that replaced Magda,” Uriel said, and knelt down next to Francis.
“Come on,” Remiel said, getting up and taking hold of Jerome at the shoulder and guiding him out. I numbly followed them.
“We could have tried with everyone!” I protested once we were out of the archive.
“Uriel’s correct, chance it would have worked is slim.” Remiel told me. “Once someone has fractured their soul, going insane is the best that can be hoped for them.
“But to just kill him?” I asked.
“Was the kindest fate we could have hoped for.”
“I just...” I stopped. Okay, I wasn’t a huge fan of Francis or Francesca, but this seemed cruel.
“Soleil, come on,” Remiel said, and started down the hallway, taking my arm at the wrist and pulling me along. We ran into Magda about halfway down the corridor. She stopped us and Remiel told her what had happened.
“Poor Uriel and Francis,” Magda said and sighed. “No doubt Miguel will need to take statements from you tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When I got home, Janet was drinking coffee with her sister at my dining room table. My sister was there as well. They were chatting quietly and solemnly. I got a cup of coffee and sat down. Penelope, still in obvious pain and struggling to find a comfortable way to move, produced a bottle of Irish cream and added an ounce or so to my coffee, but at least Magda’s coven healings had gotten her out of danger and accelerated the healing process. I told them about Uriel and Francis in the archive.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t have anything left in me. I’m going to bed. I may sleep for a year,” I said, and took my coffee to the other room. I finished off the coffee and then went to take a shower. Jerome had gone home with Remiel so I could talk to Janet alone. But I just couldn’t tonight. I couldn’t do anything else tonight. Nothing. If I hadn’t been covered in dry, stiff blood, I wouldn’t have bothered with the shower. With the water as hot as I could stand it, I scrubbed until all my skin was red and a little sensitive to the touch.
I felt unclean. Even after the shower, I felt like I would never be clean again. I lay in bed and cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Francis’s father was Dragonislav,” Uriel said to me, sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee. Kabal also sat at the table. Irish cream had been poured into all of our cups. “We discovered Francesca was pregnant after he was dead.”
It had been four days since Francis died. I was still struggling with the fact that I couldn’t heal him. The key, as it turned out, was the physical embodiment of the Stygian Divide. I wasn’t sure why Uriel had thought it might help heal Francis’s soul, but maybe he’d just been desperate.
“I think this is where my story picks up,” Kabal said, as he finished off his coffee and refilled the cup with straight Irish cream.
“I have regular whiskey if you would prefer.”
“Nah, if you’re drinking to get drunk, anything will do,” Kabal responded. “Dragonislav was my great grandfather. After his death, my grandfather Brandeis was sent to live his mother’s people. He was raised fey. He fell in love with a fairy and had children. My father and uncle. My father was ashamed of his fairy kin because they were battle fey, not regular fey, who are pretty with giant wings. Eventually, my father fell in love with an angel and low and behold, they too had twins. Uther was older than me by a half hour. He inherited angel wings, and with my father’s encouragement, he became dedicated to elevating the status of the Throne. I always found this bizarre, because while my brother looked more like his angelic kinfolk than I did, he had almost zero magical abilities. He didn’t have glamour or defensive magic like I did, and realistically, he struggled with even basic angelic magic in school. I performed better than he did, and I wasn’t great at it by any means.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I can probably read about it in a book,” I told Kabal.
“Nah, it’s okay. Besides, if I time it right, I’ll be drunk by the end of it.” Kabal smiled at us. Uriel raised his cup to him. “Uther managed to gather a following. No idea how. It wasn’t through magical prowess, that’s for sure. He convinced them he was capable of seeing the future. He couldn’t but he made the claim and sometimes that’s all it takes. The nickname Uther the Wise was meant to be ironic, but after some time, people began to take it seriously, and that got him more followers. He declared himself king of his flock. I suspect Dragonislav’s madness was strong in him. That was about 1700 or so. Uther preached that The Reckoning was coming—the return of demons to Earth in their physical form—and that only an angel could save the world. His followers believed wholeheartedly in him and his predictions, even after some of them didn’t come to pass. Apparently, whatever controls this madhouse called Earth didn’t agree to work with Uther. As a matter of fact, I felt there were signs it was definitely working against him. But I was just the brother. He converted our parents and his angelic cult flourished. I am giving you the condensed version because the long version has more blood in it. But sometime in the 1800s, Uther began requiring his followers be possessed, because once they’d experienced demonic possession once, he claimed they couldn’t become possessed during The Reckoning. However, possession isn’t like smallpox, you can’t gain immunity to it by exposure. Some of his followers pointed this out to him and he had them sacrificed to The Reckoning.”
I opened my mouth to say something and shut it.
“For some reason, even after he began sacrificing people, others still flocked to him. That was when I met Remiel for the first time. He suspected my brother had some kind of magical artifact that was getting people to believe him. It turned out Remiel was right. Together we found the item, a statue created by some long-dead pharaoh with magic in spades. We stole it. A few weeks later, there was a revolt, and my brother’s followers turned on him and sacrificed him and our parents to The Reckoning.”
“Balthazar Leopold and Francesca were members of the cult,” Uriel said. “They even dated for a short time. Then Francesca went back to letting herself be used and abused by another man. I don’t believe Francesca could have revived the cult on her own, and Francis was too weak to do it.” My uncle took hold of my hand. “Which unfortunately means your fight probably isn’t over.”
“You think a man convinced her to revive it?”
“Yes.” Uriel nodded. “Usually, women who repeat a cycle of abuse were abused as children, but neither my wife nor I abused her. If anything, we overindulged her, trying to keep her from going the way of Iago. I can’t tell you why Francesca fell into the pattern of abuse, but she has, and she probably always will be.”
“Sometimes, a woman falls into the first time by accident and if she doesn’t get help with the trauma, she then ends up repeating it,” I said, thinking of Helia.
“I would never emotionally or physically abuse your sister,” Kabal said to me.
“I know, but Helia needs to prove that to herself. If you love her, you’ll just wait for her to come to that understanding on her own. The asshole she married did a fantastic job of gaslighting her and convincing her that everything was her fault. It could take a century or more for her to deal with the trauma of it,” I told him.
“Then I will wait for her for a century or longer,” Kabal said to me. “I thought she wanted marriage and the whole thing; that’s why I proposed. I was worried if I waited, she’d dump me because I wasn’t moving fast enough.” He looked into his cup.
“Ah the complicated joy of youthful love,” Uriel said with a smile. “What do you think, Soleil, do you think we can work on mending fences?”
“Yes, I’ve had a low opinion of you in response to your opinion of me. With that out of the way, if we both make an effort, I think our relationship can be improved,” I told him. “But not today. Today I am going to kick both of you out and talk to Janet. Oh shit, I still need to go to the possession ward. Azrael tried and he couldn’t dislodge the demons, either. Whoever the new potion maker is at the AESPCA for the BEDR group is doing a terrible job. I still need to ask Penelope about that, too.”
Uriel and Kabal both stood to leave, and I stood as well. I had so much to do yet.
I went to the possession ward first and found a room full of unhappy demons, stuck in their hosts without any power. Wow. The new potion-maker really was absolutely dreadful. I called Penelope and had her come to the ward.
“So, I don’t know who is making potions for BEDR, but they have got to be stopped. They are summoning demons who don’t have the power to do anything, but the possession portion is so good even Azrael can’t dislodge it,” I said when she came in.
“Uh.” Penelope frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean BEDR used to get lust demons for a reason. Incubi and succubi are usually easy to exorcise, and they get power from sex, so it was sort of a win-win for the demon and the host. The demon made them irresistible, and the person got to have lots of sex. Then after a few weeks the demon would be exorcised. They’d rest up for a few weeks, and then they’d drink another potion and start the process over again. Whoever is making the potions now is specifically tailoring them to summon demonlings of Belial, Belgaphor, and Beelzebub, all of whom are violent demons who feed on fear, even more so than a regular demon. Demonlings aren’t great for possession because they are so young they don’t know how to use their magic. So, they are just sitting in their hosts, miserably hoping for something to happen to give them strength. The binding in the potion is making them almost impossible to exorcise. If I can’t do it, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“Oh shit,” Penelope said. “Okay, I will get to the bottom of it. Do you need anything for the exorcism that I can get you?”
“No, I brought Jerome just in case we needed to magnify powers. I’m hoping if I fail, his ability to perform my magic combined with his magic will do the trick. But I’ve never seen a demon lodged into a host so well before.”
“I will get on it immediately,” Penelope said. “Let me know if it doesn’t work.
“What do you think, kid?” I asked Jerome. He shrugged at me.
“You got this!” he said with a nod. I wished I had his confidence in me. I had been sure I could heal Francis, but I couldn’t. I began to gather magic. I wasn’t going to try a mass exorcism for this. I was going to walk around the ward, grab a demonling and pull it out, working my way through, person by person. Hopefully it worked. I grabbed the first one and yanked. It stayed. I grabbed it a second time with my magic, and this time it came free. Once it was free, I was able to send it back across the Divide.
In total I performed twenty-three exorcisms. The people were in rough shape afterward. A large squatting demon was no picnic, but a small squatting demon might be worse. The nurses and doctors had been waiting with trays of food and blankets. Everyone would spend another day or so in this ward, and then be moved to a regular room on a regular floor for a few days to recover.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“It started slow,” Janet said. “Not with threats or anything like that. Just a comment here and there. Then at eight weeks pregnant I became possessed. I didn’t know how it had happened, but it was so early in the pregnancy.” Janet shrugged.
“You lost the baby,” I said.
“After that, the comments became more regular and he would say things about the possession being my fault, and I was obviously not fit to be a mother. Then he found my daughter and convinced her to come live in that commune where he was king and where every day was a long-drawn-out conversation about The Reckoning. The thing is, I think he targeted me,” Janet said. “I think he wooed me because he knew I was your business partner. Conversations about you were as common as conversations about The Reckoning. It was awful and I couldn’t get out, because if I did, I knew he’d hurt Bethany.” Her hands shook as she sat at the table. “By the time he got around to robbing people for magical items, I was stuck. I hadn’t talked to any of my friends or even my sister much. I felt like if I left...” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I thought. I was stupid.”
“No, you weren’t. You were being controlled by an abuser.” I touched her hand. “Did you call the therapist Helia recommended?”
“I did. I have my first appointment with her in two days.”
“You can stay with me as long as you want,” I told her. “But I hope you can clarify two things for me. The first; in March we were dispatched to deal with a dragon, and at that time we were connected to books via magic. Somehow your group got one of those books. But when we triangulated the spell, it was cast at the dragon.”
“No, it was aimed at you by Francis. I was with him and tried to get your attention, but there was a dragon.” Janet gave a weak smile. “Francis knew if he cast it up and let it fall on you as a group, he’d capture more of you with it. Otherwise, he would have needed to cast the spell individually on each of you. Also, he’s crazy. While I can answer this question, I’m not going to guarantee the next one.”
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