Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Eleven:
Cinders

Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders,
Warming her pretty little toes.
Her mother came and caught her,
And whipped her little daughter
For spoiling her nice new clothes.
― Mother Goose, The Little Mother Goose, 1912

The Salamander just huddled in the corner of the doorless, windowless cement room shivering.

“Go,” DeBauck commanded, “or I will leave you here to starve. There is your food. Consume it.” It shivered, but remained in the corner.

“Aren’t you on a time schedule here?” Jackie asked, to distract him. “If I don’t die at moonrise this is all for nothing, isn’t it?”

“Shut up, bitch!” Suddenly a gun was in his hand and pointed at Jackie. “Salamander, I am your Master. You must obey me or be punished — and you know that I am very good at punishing you.”

“What are you going to do with the gun? If your theory is right, I’ve got to die in a blaze of fire, and a lead bullet isn’t likely to have much impact on a Salamander.”

“I said ‘Shut up!’ “ he shouted. ”You may have to die by fire, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a couple of painful but nonfatal wounds.” He fired off one shot in her direction to emphasize his willingness to hurt her, and laughed demonically when it went ricocheting from wall to wall.

‘Okay. Total wing-nut here,’ Jackie thought to herself. ‘Try to avoid sudden moves, Jackie-girl.’ She tried to move closer to the Salamander, since it had obviously been hurt by this whacky cornflake before.

“Enough stalling. Salamander, do it now or else,” he growled.

“It’s okay, Salamander. Come here to me. I'll take care of you.” Jackie coaxed the creature to her, her instincts telling her that the Salamander was hurting and afraid, and she felt that she had to protect it from that vicious snake, DeBauck, who’d spent all his energy hurting everything he touched as far as she could see, and had already murdered at least a dozen innocents. It quivered, but remained where it was. DeBauck fired another round, this time into the Salamander. It jerked, but still didn’t move.

“Stop that! Leave the poor thing alone,” Jackie pleaded. “It’s okay, boy, come here.”

“Salamander, burn her now! I command it.”

When it still didn’t move, Jackie shifted onto her knees as DeBauck watched warily. Slowly she began to crawl towards the Salamander.

“How brave and touching. I will accept your death however it occurs.”

Jackie ignored his sarcasm but continued to slowly crawl towards the Salamander to avoid frightening DeBauck into any hasty stupidities. At about two feet away she could feel the heat sheeting off it.

“Nnn-ooo. Vvv-ill hurt yyy-ou. Sss-toppp.”

“It’s okay. I trust you. You’re cold and scared. Come into my arms and I’ll protect you. He won’t ever be able to hurt you again.” Another shot from DeBauck’s gun emphasized the urgency of Jackie’s actions, but he still seemed to have no clue about her true nature.

“Get a move on. There are but seconds left for the sacrifice.” DeBauck glared at the still unmoving Salamander and cursed. “It will be better if it’s by a direct fire source, but I think a gun will do. After all, there is combustion in the chamber to expel the bullet.” With that he aimed the gun directly at Jackie’s head.

“Come on, you can do it,” she continued, desperately trying to coax the Salamander to her side. “Come to Mama.”

“Ten, nine….”

The Salamander quivered and slid about half the distance between them.

“Eight, seven….”

“That’s right, baby.” Jackie held out her hands so they were almost touching the Salamander. The sleeve of her blouse smoldered and turned brown from the heat. “Just a little closer, baby. Mama loves you, Sweetheart.”

“Six, five….”

She could hear the hammer of the gun as it moved backwards. In the silence Jackie could hear the click as it settled into the cocked position.

“Four, three….”

The Salamander jumped into her arms. Its skin had turned a dull brownish red. It seemed to be trying to control its heat, reducing it so that Jackie would not be harmed, which of course she couldn’t be, and the Salamander’s flame felt invigorating, even at its reduced level. The blouse itself, and all the rest of her clothes, had immediately flashed into brilliant sparks as soon as the Salamander had touched it. The flare of light revealed Debauck staring at her nude body in horror, outlined as it was by brilliant light, and he raised his gun, too late, of course, because Jackie was already turning insubstantial and falling backward through the concrete and into the sheltering earth, taking the Salamander with her into safety. The last sounds she heard were of the gun going off and DeBauck’s scream of frustration and rage turning into the incoherent babbling of fear and despair.

“Jackie!”

Frank ran to her and hugged her so tightly it seemed he was trying to crush her, rather than greet her. Lips found lips and there was a long sensuous kiss. Finally they broke for air and Frank suggested they leave the police station. It wasn’t until they were in the car and Jackie was driving away that they spoke again.

“Thank you. I’ll thank you properly when we get home, but thank you and I love you.” Frank’s hand rested lightly on Jackie’s back as she drove. He caressed her neck and back tenderly as she drove, unwilling, it seemed, to be separated from her.

“I love you too and I appreciate the offer, but it will have to wait. Just as I was leaving to pick you up I got a call from your uncle Hank. At the moment we’ve got your aunt Sarah and Hank waiting for us at our apartment.

“Aunt Sarah left the house? She hasn’t been able to do that for months.”

“Hank couldn’t talk her out of it. She wanted to see that you were really safe.”

“Did you leave a key for them? It’s not that great a neighborhood.”

“You don’t know your Uncle very well, do you? I asked if he wanted me to leave a key but he told me not to bother. He’s going to pick the lock.”

Frank laughed, but then became serious. “Do they know about — how special you are?”

“No.”

“Then what are you going to tell them?”

“The truth, I guess.”

“Ummm. I guess. If anyone will accept it, Aunt Sarah probably will.”

“You don’t sound convinced, Frank.”

“I’m not, but I’d hate to lie to her. She’s just too nice a person to deserve deceit like that. Hank is less likely to believe, but Aunt Sarah will bring him around.”

“Yeah. I agree.” The rest of the ride was in silence as they both considered what was about to happen.

“Aunt Sarah. Uncle Hank. It’s wonderful to see you.” Frank ran from the door to hug them both. “Jackie tells me that without your help and support I’d still be in jail.”

“It’s great to see you cleared of the charges, but I think I can speak for both of us,” Hank spoke as he broke from his hug to turn to Jackie for a hug from her next, “that Jackie is greatly overstating our rôles. In fact, I was hoping that she would fill us in on exactly how she cracked the case.”

Jackie glanced at Frank for guidance, but he just shrugged indicating she should do whatever she thought best and then surreptitiously jerked his head quizzically towards the fire roaring away in the fireplace. “Have you seen the official report?”

“Sure. You went back to the construction site. DeBauck came back, admitted that he had killed the twelve other people, tried to frame Frank for the crime, and then tried to make you number thirteen. You fought him off and he went mad when he wasn’t able to kill you on time. He’s babbling to the psychiatrists about how he’ll have to wait another thousand years before he can become a Phœnix and demanding to call Hong Kong or someplace to access the money he’s been siphoning off every other job but this last one so he can get a good lawyer. Good luck with that, of course, since he laid a careful paper trail of sworn and notarized documents to ‘prove’ that he had no other funds before he went crazy. They expect him to be determined to be incapable of standing trial by reason of insanity and locked up for a very long time.” Frank gave Jackie a long and piercing look. “Now, how about telling me what really happened?”

Jackie took a deep breath and then another one, which was two more than she actually needed, but it gave her something to do. Just as she was about to speak, Hank interrupted. “Whoa. Let me restate that request. Is there anything you’d like to tell a tired old cop whose curiosity is going to kill him but who will keep anything divulged during said conversation completely confidential? Oh yeah, and don’t feel pressured to say anything. This is family business, not police business.”

This time Frank shrugged again, but then nodded.

“It’s a long story … and very strange. I need you to promise to just listen until it’s done.”

“Certainly, dear.” Hank’s response was to look serious and nod. Sarah slowly lowered herself to the couch and put her head back as she listened.

“So, in summary…” it was clear that Hank wasn’t buying the story despite Frank’s assurance that it was true, “…you saying that you’re a twenty-one year-old man who was killed by a succubus, reborn as a succubus, decided to become a cupid, and found DeBauck in a secret room that no one can get into or out of. DeBauck was — scratch that — is a satyr with ambitions of becoming a Phœnix who went insane when he couldn’t make it happen. Oh, and you befriended a Salamander who was supposed to fry you but decided not to because you were nice to it. How’m I doin’ here?”

“You’re right on target.” Frank said, nodding his support for Jackie’s story.

“You’ll understand if I say this is a bit hard to believe?”

Frank and Jackie both laughed. “You should have seen what she had to do to convince me,” Frank said.

“Well, regardless of the pile of bull you’ve just given me, at least you’ve been cleared,” Hank noted. “It’s hard to be convicted of the murder of a man who is clearly alive. It’s just a good thing no one seems to care if he’s insane as long as he’s alive.” He glanced away from the couple and saw Sarah with her hand clutched to her chest and a rictus of pain on her face. As he watched she slowly crumpled and slid off the couch and onto the floor.

“Call 911 now!” he screamed as he kicked a book-laden coffee table out of the way, carefully stretched her out on the apartment’s worn carpet and started checking her vital signs. Jackie watched in shock as Hank bent over his ailing wife and began CPR while Frank ran to the telephone to call for help.

“She’s not responding,” Hank gasped between breaths into his wife’s lungs.

“Move away from her,” Jackie screamed before running to the fireplace to beg for assistance. “Salamander, please. We need you. Please help her. She’s dying.”

Hank ignored her pleadings, assuming she was crazed with shock and grief. But then the fire seemed to slowly crawl out of the fireplace as if responding to her pleas.

Hank was horrified. “Frank, the fire. Get a fire extinguisher. Quick!”

“No, Frank. Uncle Hank, it’s okay. Please just move away from Aunt Sarah.” The fire had slowly moved across the living room floor to within inches of Sarah’s limp body. True to his police training, Hank noted that the carpet it had passed over was unburnt.

“Hank, please stand away and let us help her,” Jackie begged, tears flowing freely.

The cardio-pulmonary resuscitation wasn’t working. If some kind of miracle didn’t occur, his beloved wife would be dead in moments. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in a long and difficult life. Slowly, Hank stepped back from his wife’s limp form. There were tears flowing from his eyes also. Frank came up behind him and hugged him, unsure of what was happening, but confident that whatever Jackie was trying to do was for the best. Tentatively, lovingly, the fire touched Sarah and paused.

“Please, Salamander. I’m begging you. She's a good woman.”

Flowing over her body, the Salamander seemed to envelop the prostrate woman, but it didn’t burn her. Instead, it formed itself into a close-fitting garment of pure flame around her. The blaze of glory turned from yellow-orange to white, to blue, then something more — a color beyond violet in a spectrum that was beyond nature. And then it was yellow-orange again and quickly flowing back into the fireplace.

All three stared expectantly at Sarah. All of her clothes and hair had been burned off but she looked younger, maybe nineteen — tops — instead of forty-nine, and free of all blemishes or other imperfections. It was as if a statue made of human flesh lay on the floor before them.

“What was that?” Hank whispered in the silence, ever the detective.

“A Salamander,” Frank whispered back. “The one Jackie was telling you about.”

“What happened to her?”

“Wait. I only hope that Jackie’s right.” They resumed staring at Sarah’s transmogrified body. Hank gasped and pointed with a shaking hand as Sarah took a ragged breath. He fell to his knees beside her, cradling her head in his lap as she blinked and opened her eyes. When she saw him she smiled and gently stroked his face.

“What happened?” she asked weakly. “Did I faint?”

Hank nodded.

“I feel better now.” Her voice sounded stronger already. “In fact, I feel better than I can ever remember feeling.” Gently pushing Hank to the side so she could move, Sarah sat up and flowed gracefully into a lotus position. “My God, I haven’t been able to do that in decades.”

She smiled and stretched into a standing position. “Oh!” She glanced down at herself. “I’m naked,” she said, but was somehow unashamed, as wide-eyed and innocent as a new baby.

At that Jackie started giggling as she grabbed an afghan off the couch and threw it over Sarah. “I think I have something that will fit you,” she said as she guided her into the bedroom.

A still befuddled Hank watched them go before dropping heavily into a chair and began to sob, weeping — his shoulders shaking from relief and unexpected joy — as he realized how close his wife had been to deah. When he finally regained control of himself, he looked up and asked, “Can somebody please tell me what just happened?”

Jackie heard him, of course, and popped her head through the closed door to say, “We’ll be with you in a minute,” before retreating back through the bedroom door and into the bedroom again.

The kitchen table was finally cleared. The books and papers that usually covered it were replaced by a delicate bone china tea set. In the seats about the table were Hank, Frank, Jackie and Sarah, with Sarah now wearing a pair of Jackie’s jeans and a skimpy tank top with no bra, looking like a bald coed.

“Now will you tell me what happened?” an exasperated Hank Ahtram asked. As a cop he was unused to having to wait for his questions to answered and was struggling not to fidget in his frustration.

“Of course, Uncle Hank. It was the Salamander. It saved her.”

“Okay, I believe you. I believe you’re a cupid or something. I believe a Salamander that looks like a snake of flame lives in your fireplace and just saved my wife’s life … but, for God’s sake, please tell me how?”

“Sure, Uncle Hank. It was partly thanks to DeBauck. Even before he tried to kill me, I was doing some thinking. I couldn’t figure out how he intended to become a Phœnix.

“What I realized was that, like most things mystical, there’s a lot of garbage and misleading information to wade through before you reach the truth and the Phœnix legend was no exception. It turns out that DeBauck was way off the mark. The sacrifices were unnecessary, stupid even, the full moons were unnecessary, even the thousand years between rising Phœnixes were unnecessary. DeBauck had everything backwards.”

“Necessary? So what was necessary?”

“The Salamander; just the Salamander, and a pure heart. Look at the many Phœnix legends around the world as if they were confused stories about something very real, but difficult to understand, and then look at how the Phœnix is depicted in all of them: In the archetypical — and most primitive — Phœnix story, the Phœnix builds its nest of twigs, then sets fire to itself and is consumed. When the fire dies down, either a young Phœnix or a Phœnix egg is discovered, and so a new Phœnix is born, a symbol of rebirth, immortality, and renewal, but also of sacrifice and loving care, just as every mother might sacrifice herself for her child. As the Ziz bird in the Bible, the ‘Phœnix’ is the protector of the birds, and by extension all that is small and relatively helpless. As Garuda, King of all the birds in the Dharma religions, the Phœnix is the implacable enemy and devourer of serpents, both literal — because serpents eat bird eggs — and figurative — with the serpent seen as a metaphor for evil. In the ancient Egyptian religion, the Bennu bird, a type of Phœnix, is the Heart-Soul of Ra, the Supreme God, and the Guide of the Gods to the Tuat, or afterlife, so is a friend and guardian to all. In the New Testament, we see nearly the same figure: ‘And God so loved the world …’ and ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ Many modern theologians see the Phœnix as a prefiguration of Jesus, in whom all believers are reborn, and who was himself reborn from his true death on a wooden beam or stake — which is what the words stauros and xylon actually mean in the New Testament, just as they do in translations of the Tanach — the so-called ‘cross’ is a relatively modern invention, and so might reasonably be seen as a metaphor for fire, at least in the original language. Then finally — a more recent version of the Phœnix legend — the Russian Firebird, is a magical, glowing, fiery bird from a faraway land, and is always both a blessing and curse to the man who tries to own it, or to keep it for himself, and will eventually bring him to his doom unless he’s able to conquer his greed and ‘spread the wealth,’ as the saying goes. Notice the underlying theme? Love, pure love, brings spiritual — and perhaps physical — rebirth. Selfishness brings spiritual death. The Phœnix is born from love, as we are all reborn in love, and the Salamander is an instrumentality of love. It’s a conduit through which love flows like electricity through gold wire, springing forth from the ultimate source of the pure energy of divine love. Not the gross physical energy that physicists talk about, but the real energy of boundless love that’s at the heart of the Universe, the basic form of all energy, a combination of magical and natural energy, and — I blush to admit it — my particular specialty in both of my potential forms.”

“So?”

“So, it means that DeBauck never had a chance to achieve his goal, since he was evil and greed incarnate. The people he killed died because he was a murderous lunatic, not the so-called ‘sacrifice’ he imagined. If he’d ever dared to embrace the Salamander, as I did, he would have been consumed as thoroughly as his victims were, because the Salamander draws upon that primal energy of love that underlies what we call reality and focuses it. If that focused energy surrounds a loving individual, the cleansing flames cause both a spiritual and physical rebirth, so that individual becomes younger and all physical blemishes are removed to reflect the inner beauty of their soul. If the individual isn’t worthy, it causes death, another chance at the roulette wheel of reïncarnation, just as the Wicked Witch of the West was destroyed by the cleansing water young Dorothy Gale accidentally threw on her in her effort to save her friend the Scarecrow. This is the true meaning of the Phœnix rising, that it’s only through a willingness to sacrifice one’s self that one can truly live, and that immortality is only useful if you plan to do something good with it. Sarah has been reborn as a Phœnix, the archetypical avatar of loving kindness and good, and her true nature shines forth as the essence of her soul.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I wish I knew for sure, but did you ever see that old movie with Olivia Newton-John, Xanadu?. I think it’s something like that, only lots more real, and with much less disco roller-skating. I couldn’t really figure it out from the research I did, because I suspect it’s a case of ‘Those who can, do.’ Those who can’t, write about it, so I probably know more about it than the writers did, because I too have an affinity, or link, to the same source of spiritual power, and it’s even stronger now, because I embraced the Salamander with a heart filled with compassion and love. My angel Sam, Semangelaf, had tried to tell me this, when he told me that I didn’t have to feed off anyone’s spiritual energy, and it turns out that he’s right. All I really know is that Sarah is now a spiritual creature like me, and that she has a long, long time to discover her purpose in life.”

“But….”

Sarah’s hand gently stayed the police officer’s mouth. She smiled adoringly at her husband as she spoke. “It’s alright, dear. We’ll find out together, and in the interim, try very hard to think happy thoughts.”

It was a tribute to Sarah that no one asked what would have happened if she had been less than wholesome and virtuous, and perhaps a tribute to Jackie as well, whose intercession had saved the Salamander, and had helped to cause the transformation, but whose ‘sinful’ past occupied the minds even of her friends, and prevented them from seeing the growing purity of her love, even when expressed in carnal forms.

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah