The Demon Abraxas (15 page)

In the moment when Ana broke the kiss, Sabel had been too upset to think. One moment she was safe and alight with desire and the next cold and alone again. Her reason turned itself off and she only wanted to get out of the house before she did something stupid like cry.

For the first time, she’d found a woman whose will was at least as strong as hers—and Ana had pushed her away. She’d said, “I can’t.” But why? At the noodle place when they were talking and flirting, Ana didn’t seem to have any reservations. The only element that changed between that lunch and the kiss was the appearance of the summoners on her doorstep with a demon to possess her. That was a significant change for anyone. The logical conclusion was that Ana felt overwhelmed and was afraid for herself and the people around her.

Now that she’d replayed the scene a hundred times in her head and her higher brain functions were coming back online, Sabel had to admit to herself that Ana’s reaction probably had more to do with circumstances than with Sabel herself.

So it was time to change the circumstances.

Sabel went up the stairs to her two-room second level. She put the shirt and pants on the foot of her bed and changed into loose clothes. Then she stepped into the smaller room and approached the altar along the far wall. It was a simple wooden table with framed photos, candles, incense and symbols of the four directions. She had a traditional dagger for the east and a wand, given by a friend, for the south. But the west was represented by the action figure of Death from the Sandman series and the north was a necklace of semiprecious stones made by an old friend.

She lit the candle and from it a stick of incense and invoked the space of this room. Technically it was more of a re-invocation because she never completely dissolved the circle of magic that protected her space. Then she knelt on the meditation cushion and began to quiet her mind.

Every witch had to create her own interface for working with the layers of reality and the powers available in the many worlds. Sabel had begun building hers as a teen, before she knew what she was doing. In the silence of night, apart from the pressures of the day, she imagined a place for herself—a pristine white house by a serene blue sea. It was a place she had been during the summers as a child and it always reminded her of calm and freedom. The Atlantic was the first ocean she ever met, so when she discovered the Mediterranean, it’s warm, inviting, beautiful water came as a joyful shock. By the time she was a teen, her family no longer spent summers in Greece, but she returned to that place in her mind until it was as real a part of her daily life as her bedroom.

The Hecatine witches taught her how to simultaneously protect that place and to open it to select guests. And they showed her how to create a workroom within it that she could use to perceive the greater forces of the world.

To get to her home in the Unseen World she relaxed her body and then turned her awareness inside of herself and stepped backward out of her body and onto a short flight of white stairs. Six steps up and she opened the door to her home. While her body remained motionless in her room in the material world, she could use this space to direct her magic and to meet with Josefene.

Over the years this small house had grown into a sprawling whitewashed complex of rooms, some open only to her. She went into the long front room with its expansive windows open to the dark blue sea and bright blue sky. Josefene waited for her there.

The image of herself that Josefene chose to project in this space looked like a movie producer’s ideal of the goddess Athena, but aged over fifty. Josefene was tall and elegant in a white draped chiton: sleeveless, gathered at the shoulders in myriad little pleats, V-necked, belted at the waist with a golden cord. She had copper-gold hair piled high on her head. Her eyes were hawk-bright and well-lined with wisdom.

Sabel had never met Josefene outside of this imagined place. She had no idea what the woman actually looked like, nor did she know how much of this image she now saw was created by Josefene’s mind or by her own.

“There’s trouble,” Sabel said and told her about the summoners taking Ana and then showing up again on her doorstep.

“Why do they return to her?” Josefene asked. Her voice was throaty and lightly accented in a way that Sabel had never been able to place.

“She said they thought she had their demon.”

“Does she?”

Sabel paused. “It’s possible she does have a demon in her and doesn’t know it. I didn’t sense it the night of the ritual, but it could be dormant inside of her. Otherwise the summoners may simply be using that excuse as a reason to silence her.”

“Or she’s one of them and seeks to escape her commitment to them,” Josefene pointed out.

“Unlikely,” Sabel said. “Unless she’s really good at hiding what she knows…but she doesn’t strike me as a person with that level of guile.”

“You will continue to watch her?” The words were part question, part statement.

“I want your blessing to do more than that. I want to find the summoners and I need your help.”

“Go on,” Josefene said. They’d worked together long enough that Josefene would already know Sabel had a plan before she proposed a course of action.

“There are thirteen summoners plus Helen and their demon. Do you have anyone who can find the identity of any one of them? If I have a name, I can pretend I want to join the group and see if I can get an interview with them. I can find out how much they really know and if they’re working with the local demons or if it’s a rogue.”

“Why involve yourself in demon business?”

“It’s human business. They killed Helen. If Ana isn’t one of them and they think she has something of theirs or that she can identify them, what’s to stop them from killing her? Do you want a group of killers attracting and then disposing of the magic-gifted people in this city? I don’t.”

She didn’t say that the real reason she wanted to pursue this was entirely for Ana, so she could be free of the threat of the summoners, and by extension for herself. That argument wasn’t good enough to earn her permission for what she wanted. Her family had taught her that the easiest way to mask her feelings was to channel them in a similar but different direction—to turn her concern for Ana into a general worry, to turn her desire into indignant anger.

“Do you know what a demon could do with your Voice?” Josefene said. “One of those profane creatures with the power already to entice a circle of humans to do his bidding, given access to the power to directly control the minds of others—have you considered the consequences of that?”

Sabel bowed her head. She had not looked at the consequences because she didn’t want to. After a long silence she asked, “How would you deal with it?”

“Wear a leash,” she said.

Sabel’s head jerked up. “No,” she breathed.

The energy leashes woven by the Hecatine witches gave them a profound level of control over the person who wore one. Sabel thought they were only for the mentally unstable. She’d only seen a leash in action once and it brought a powerful witch to her knees faster than thought. Sabel worked on her own self-discipline arduously just so that no one would ever have to control her from the outside and the thought terrified her.

“As you will,” Josefene said.

“Wait. Tell me what it would do. Please.”

The lightest brush of air went across the back of her neck and Josefene circled her. “It would sit under your skin around your throat, heart, and center. If demon magic touches your energy body, it would begin to tighten—slowly if the magic is slow and fast otherwise. If you’re just close to the magic, you’ll have time to get away, but if a demon tries to possess you, it will render you unconscious immediately.”

“How close can I be?” Sabel asked. If she was going to try to infiltrate the demon summoners, she couldn’t do it while wearing a magical device that would knock her out as soon as she got physically close to them.

Josefene seemed to understand the nature of her question. “If there is a person with some demon blood or a half-breed, or a skilled fully human summoner, as long as they don’t use magic, you can be next to them and not trigger the leash. The same goes for a demon in a host body. You would be able to shake their hand without loss of consciousness, but if anyone is actively using demon magic you’ll not want to sit next to them for very long. You would feel the leash start to close on you; there is a warning time period. It’s only instant if the magic moves quickly into your body.”

“So if someone is using demon magic but not using it on me?”

“You’ll need to keep some space between you—about five or six feet. It’s not a perfect system and the leash can’t discern between them using magic near you with the intent to influence you and using it near you with no intent.”

That seemed doable. It wasn’t like she wanted to cozy up to the summoners, she just didn’t want to sit down next to one in a restaurant and suddenly pass out. Still, it wasn’t her first choice to wear the leash.

“May I think about it?” she asked.

“Of course,” Josefene said and then abruptly she was gone.

Sabel walked to the windows and looked out on the calm ocean. Gray clouds were coming from the far horizon as the weather here often mirrored her internal state.

It felt strange to her to be so afraid, considering how she preferred to give up control in the right situations. But it was one thing to willingly surrender for the pleasure of it and another entirely to give the other witches the ability to knock her out instantaneously.

She had been studying with them for over a decade now, but still they were human like her and she never trusted other people completely. Everyone had their vulnerabilities. Once they put a leash on her, what else could they do with it? How could she know it would stop where Josefene said?

* * *

Ana woke in the early morning darkness still thinking about the kiss with Sabel. She pressed her fingers to her lips and tried to remember exactly the feel of Sabel’s mouth under hers and the slender body in her arms. How long would she have to wait until she could do that again and not stop? What could she do to speed up the process?

She slid out from under the blankets and went down the hall to her office. The modern demonology book was on her desk. She opened it to one of the first pages and looked at the English, letting her mind translate from the early modern to the modern:

The demons pressed me to write this chronicle of their realms and principalities that they be known to humanity. I have been able to live among them because of the form given to me by my friend and I have become like one of them.

Under the skin of her right hand, a tickling breath moved. It was a question.

“Yes,” she told him. Lily said they could use this book to communicate. Now that she had an ally who could get this creature out of her, Ana felt safer talking to him. She wanted to be able to ask questions and get answers. And if more demons showed up in her body, being able to talk to Abraxas might save her another fall down the basement stairs.

The tickling filled up her hand, like a hot balloon under the skin. He turned the pages with her fingers, then came to rest on one.

The reader should not think that I speak of a world other than this one that we currently inhabit, for the realms of the demon princes, and indeed the angels and the divine, all that make up the Unseen World, overlay the worlds of human
—
which I am told are themselves numerous: worlds upon worlds, each perceptible to those who have eyes to see them. These demon spirits have lived alongside humanity since before creation and will be with us forever.

“Are you a prince who lives alongside humanity?” she asked him. Was that the point he wanted her to glean from this passage? Or was it the worlds overlaying worlds, which she didn’t understand?

The sound in her mind was faint but came from inside. It reminded her of wearing headphones, the way the music seemed to originate between her ears, only now the headphones were turned too low. She couldn’t hear words but only a sound, low and burbling like water.

No, not water, laughter. Was he laughing at her?

“What’s so funny?”

Now the sound was still soft and breathy, but she heard words.
Amir
, he said and then,
Prince
. Laughter again.

“All right so you’re not a prince, whatever, what are you?”

He leafed through and showed her another page.

The word demon comes from the root meaning “to divide” and they are known for their ability as divisive spirits. However, the beings known to us today as demons had their origins in civilizations far older than this etymology. They are half-ether and half-substance, being made primarily from fire, where humans are made primarily of earth. While the essential mode for angels is that of a messenger, a conduit, and the essential mode for humans is as creator, the essential mode of demons is that of will and passion. This will is what leads to their divisive natures and has caused them from time to time to be considered evil.

It was still dark outside the windows and now she’d begun to feel tired again. She thought about going back to bed but instead moved to the overstuffed armchair. There was a question in her mind from Abraxas, a wordless wondering if he might read while she slept. That sounded harmless.

No sooner had she thought that than she fell into a deep sleep and through that darkness into the dream of the desert she’d had once before. It looked brighter here today, the sand more white than gold. Again he walked beside her and she couldn’t turn to look at him.

“I thought you wanted to read,” she said.

“I am reading.” His voice sounded exactly as she expected it would, a thickly accented male tenor. Then she realized that wasn’t his voice at all, it was her own mind turning his intentions into words. What would he sound like when she could hear him? Was his voice more like the laughing, distant wind and water sound she heard in her mind earlier?

“You can read and dream at the same time?”