The Summoning (5 page)

I stood up and howled one more time, to let everything that heard know that I was there, this was my city, my domain, I had laid my claim, and I would make my claim good. When I finished, I headed down the hill and went to look for the demon.

He wasn’t hard to track. From my place, he’d headed down Philadelphia Street to the center of town. He was probably still hungry, and that’s where people are, and food. It was still early enough for the restaurants and cafés to be open. I got up on my two feet when I came under the streetlights. I lost his scent in the dozens of others outside the disco on the corner where Nixon’s office used to be. I picked it up again on Greenleaf, down near the church where the homeless guys get their soup twice a day, but it was old. I turned uptown and picked up his scent again, fresh and clear.

I spotted him standing on the curb by the little plaza beside the coffee shop where the musicians hang out. He was talking to a big guy, a biker, with large shoulders and beautiful, muscular legs in tight leathers. The biker kept reaching out to him, touching his hair, smoothing his jacket, I noticed as I walked towards them. I thought maybe this was how the boy made money for his keep, turning tricks. His head was down, though. He wasn’t the one making the come-on. While his face was turned away, he caught sight of me. His head came up. His face was tight, his skin a little flushed. His eyes were haunted. If anyone ever called for help without speaking, that guy did. At the same moment, the biker got on his bike, and pulled him, unresisting, up behind him. I walked a little faster. While the biker put on his helmet, started up his machine with a roar, I thought the demon would just step off. He wasn’t being constrained that I could see. But the bike started up, and the demon reached his hands around the biker’s waist. He reached under his jacket in a gesture of practiced intimacy.

All right, I thought. I stopped. So much for him.

The demon caught my eye as they passed me, reached out with his hand, and dropped something at my feet. He torqued around on the bike and stared back at me, until the bike turned the corner, heading for the freeway. I picked up what had fallen. The biker’s leather wallet. With his driver’s license. And his home address.

I can take a hint.

I can’t say I hurried, but I didn’t waste much time, either. I got my car, checked the map, and headed down the 605 to Laguna. The biker’s name was Thomas Fallahan. He was 6’ 2” and weight 190 pounds. He had dark brown hair and brown eyes, and did not require corrective lenses, and he lived in a pretty green clapboard bungalow on a corner two blocks from the beach. I parked across the street. The biker’s motorcycle was parked out front. The boy’s scent was still fairly fresh.

The house was hidden behind a tall green hedge, with a fanciful iron gate in front, under an archway of climbing roses. The gate was locked, and behind the hedge was a fence. I walked the fence line along the front and side of the house to where there was a gap in the hedge at the end of the property line. I slipped behind the hedge and tested the pole that secured the fence. It wobbled quite a bit. I wobbled it some more until I was able to step around it. I was enjoying myself. It was fun to have an excuse to do some mischief again.

Most of the windows of the house were lit, but covered from scrutiny by curtains or blinds. I walked around three sides of the house. Behind the fourth was a row of trash cans and recycle bins, a pile of lumber, and some firewood.

I could break a window, but that would make noise. I could break down the door, same problem. Far easier if Thomas Fallahan came and opened the door himself. I walked up the front steps and knocked. Just on impulse I added the shave-and-a-haircut tattoo, and was rewarded by a big voice from inside calling, “Chris? That you?” There was a rattle of locks being undone, and the voice continued, “Forget your keys again…?” Then Thomas opened the door wide and found me outside it. He did look surprised.

His broad face was framed by a neatly trimmed beard. He stared down at me from deep set, tired old eyes. He was dressed in a long, brown, silk paisley robe, loosely belted at the waist, that hardly covered his big hairy chest, and draped all the way to the floor. He smelled of incense, sweat, sex, and… the demon.

I gave him a big smile. With teeth. “Hi. Thomas Fallahan? I think you dropped your wallet.” I held it out to him while he instinctively reached for his pocket that wasn’t there. I started walking forward, and I let myself grow larger as I came.

He stepped back as I approached him, on instinct. “Uh… yeah… thanks…”

“Actually,” I said, as I crossed the threshold and stepped passed him into his living room, “I came here looking for someone.” And then it occurred to me: I didn’t know the demon’s name.

“Hey, listen, thanks for the wallet, but—”

I ignored Thomas Fallahan and looked around his living room. The floor was hardwood, glowing with proper care. The walls were paneled with the same dark wood. A fire burned in the fireplace, beyond a beautiful fur hearthrug—no cousin of mine, or Thomas’s luck would have run right out that night—a set of comfy leather furniture, and half a dozen candles set at strategic intervals around the room.

“Very nice,” I said.

“Uh, thanks. You want to go now? Here. I’m kind of in the middle of something.…” He opened the wallet, and pulled out a couple of bills. I ignored him.

Three doors led off the living room. One went to the kitchen, I could see that. One door was closed, the other partly open. Through this one emanated the smell of incense and lightly scented steam.

“Actually, I came here to get someone.” I called loudly, “Hey! You in there?”

That’s when Thomas Fallahan grabbed me. Poor guy. What he touched wasn’t what he was reaching for. I should make it clear: there’s no long, slow process when I change, like some Hollywood make-up job and time-lapse photography. I can change my nature as quick as I can turn my head. That night I may have done it quicker. He reached, I changed, and he backed up so fast, his mouth open almost as big as mine, that his heel caught on the hem of his robe, and he went down without my touching him. Really.

The demon emerged from the bedroom at the thump of Thomas Fallahan’s fall. He was naked, pink with the heat of his bath, his fair hair plastered to his head, and scented with the steam and incense. He did look a tasty morsel. I shook myself mentally, and changed.

He stared at me.

“Hey,” I said. “I came to rescue you. But if you’d rather stay, I mean, if this is your scene…”

“No,” he said. “Thanks—”

“All right. Get your clothes and let’s go. This guy’s expecting someone.”

“I know,” the demon said. He dived into the bedroom.

After a few moments, Thomas Fallahan began to stir. “Hey,” I called out toward the bedroom. “You coming?” I stepped over to look in. The demon had not dressed. He was on the floor, halfway under the bed. “What the hell are you doing?”

He came out fast, went swiftly to the wall of voluminous mirrored closet doors, pulled one set open and began rummaging through it. “I’ll be right there—I have to find…”

I went back into the living room where Thomas Fallahan was sitting up, touching his head. When he saw me, he lunged—not at me, but toward the coffee table, where he grabbed a cell phone and flicked it open. I changed and jumped on his chest. He went down again. I picked the cell phone delicately from between his fingers, moved it back in my jaw, and bit down. Very satisfying crunching noises ensued. I dropped the parts on his robe. I got off him. While he was down and I was still angry, I stood up on my two feet and I turned the couch over on him. It was just his size.

I went back into the bedroom to find the demon tearing his way through a blanket chest at the foot of the bed.

“Will you get dressed already? I’m leaving.”

“Yes… please. Just a minute…” He spotted something, and jumped up on the tall bed with the tousled red satin sheets and the drooping comforter. The headboard had a shelf in it. On one side, there was a little mirror, purely decorative, I thought. He pushed it with his fingers and a small cupboard opened. “Ah,” he said. With gentle delicacy he withdrew a softly glowing little glass bottle. He turned, holding it to him with great care as though it were alive. His eyes had softened. He looked young. “I’ll be right with you. Half a sec, I swear.”

I went out. Thomas Fallahan lay resting peacefully beneath the couch. Outside I heard a car door slam and steps approaching. Company was coming. I listened another second. Company that had a key to the front gate. I heard it creak wide open. “Hey!” I called, but as I turned to the bedroom, he came out. He was wearing his own pants and jacket but had taken a blue silk shirt that belonged to Fallahan. And a laundered pair of socks.

“You got the wallet?” he asked.

“Yeah, I gave it back to him. Come on.”

The demon saw the wallet, and the fallen bills, lying on the floor. He gathered them up, opened the wallet, and pocketed what looked like quite a lot of cash. He looked up at me with a mean little smile. “I’m worth it,” he said. Then he followed me to the door.

I opened the door as the person outside reached out for it. Chris was also tall, also well-built, also good looking, with a trim little mustache over his full lips. He carried a grocery bag from which protruded a long loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. He looked up at me in surprise. I gave him another one of my big smiles. Funny, people almost never smile back.

“Hi,” I said. “Thomas has had an accident.”

“Is he all right?” He hurried past me. The demon relieved him of the grocery bag as he went by, and I don’t think he noticed.

He looked around the living room and saw the turned-over couch. Tommy’s feet were protruding from under it. “Tommy!” He called. “Is he all right?” He started heaving on the couch, trying to shift it. It was darned heavy, I know. “Tommy?”

The demon said, “Tell him that I won’t be coming back.”

Chris paused and looked up at him. “Look, man, it wasn’t my idea. All right?”

“Just tell him.” The demon walked past me out the door.

He sat relaxed and easy in the passenger seat as I found my way back to the freeway and headed for home. I had a couple of strong questions for him.

“Why did you go with him?”

“I had to,” he answered quietly.

“Yeah? Was that your old master?”

“Not precisely. He only thought he was. He had something of mine. I had to get it back.”

“What? The money?” I knew it wasn’t that, but I said it anyway.

“No.”

“That thing you found? In his headboard?”

He pulled it out of his jacket pocket. I saw the glow in his hand. “My soul,” he said softly, leaning over it. “It’s mine again. And now, everything has changed.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I
t wasn’t that late when I pulled into my carport. The moon was still pretty high. He got out of the car after me, holding the bag of groceries I’d forgotten we’d stolen, that had sat on the floor between his feet on the drive. “Hungry?” he asked.

Just the sound of that word can make me hungry. This time I sat at the table listening to his light, pleasing voice, and let him do the honors. He emptied the grocery bag and brought two plates from the dish drainer. “Fresh bread, of course.” He sniffed it. “Chris would rather die than eat day-old bread, ever since he spent a week in Paris. Brie, that’s Tommy’s favorite, and here’s Chris’s Gouda. Garlic olives. Oysters… hm. I wonder who those were for? Not me, I bet.”

“You don’t like oysters?” I was starting to feel my exhaustion.

He gave me a sideways look. “If you like,” he said enigmatically. He dove back in the bag again. “Blood oranges. Now I know where he bought all this. And—Chris’s secret vice: Belgian chocolate.” He found a knife for the bread at my direction and cut us each a generous chunk. He spread cheese and dished olives and oysters and even peeled the oranges. He found a couple of mugs and decanted the wine with a flourish. All accompanied by his ceaseless running chatter, slipping along like a friendly brook in the spring. Finally he sat down. “Anything else?” he inquired, when I made no move for the food.

“What’s your name?” I asked him. Suddenly I had his whole attention. I didn’t know why that alarmed him, but he went taut like a bow. I added, “When I got to that guy’s house I was going to call out for you. I didn’t know your name.”

He hesitated a second, then told me, “Tommy and Chris called me Stan.”

“That’s not your name?”

He shook his head, still wary.

I reached out to my plate for a piece of the bread and cheese. Really tasty. That bread was good.

He hadn’t moved. Now he said, “What would you like to call me?” I continued chewing, so he added, “Almost every master I’ve had has given me a new name.”

“Oh yeah?” I started on the olives. “What was your first name? What did John Dee call you?”

He hesitated again, but I didn’t think that he had forgotten. “Phaedrus,” he said, with obvious dislike.

“What kind of name is that?” Damn, those olives were good.

“He was a student of Socrates. He’s supposed to have been beautiful.”

“I’m not going to call you Phaedrus. Tell me another one.” He relaxed again, and finally reached for his food. I suddenly realized why. “No, I know. Tell me your real name. Your true name.” I leaned forward, pointed a finger at him. “Your demon name.”

His hand stopped and withdrew. His face was tight. He didn’t want to tell me, but I waited, and at last he did.

I tasted the strange syllables. “How do I know that’s really it? You could say anything.”

He shook his head. “I told you. I’m not permitted to lie to you.”

“But you could be lying now.”

He shrugged. “Ask me, by that name, to go play in the traffic, or swing on a powerline, or eat glass. What you command, by that name, I must perform, to the end of my existence.” He shrugged again, but his eyes were bleak.

I said the name, tentatively. I certainly had his complete attention. It was as though I had my hand on a knife in his belly.

“If you please,” he said quietly, “call me by something else. It is better that name should not be overheard. It’s dangerous.”