Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as through the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the highest forms, which are divine.

— Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)

 

And so Adam, in that his speech to Eve
uttered his faith in the promise made to her
of her seed, so in that respect Adam himself
came in under her covenant.
— Thomas Goodwin

 

PART ONE: DEMONIC CONCEPTION

 

Chapter One:
A Night on the Town

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;
men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, 1911

“And so my brethren, I leave you this day with a quote from Ephesians: ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God.’”

Jack Renfrew politely applauded with the rest of the congregation and rose from his seat on the heavy wood bench along with the thirty or so other parishioners at the morning’s service, but rather than complete the experience with the usual greetings and milling about in front of the church, he struggled against the flow of humanity about him to exit through one of the side doors, leaving his roommate Frank to document his other roommate George’s next failure to convince Julie to date him. Blonde, beautiful, and in pre-med like George, she never seemed to have time for anything but classes and studying. Jack ran his fingers through his dark brown hair while positioning his arm so as to prevent George from seeing him snicker.

It was a matter of seconds for Jack to reach his car and — after a brief prayer for a fast start — turn the key. It wasn’t his normal behavior, but it just seemed right after attending services. This time the engine caught the first try and he headed out of the parking lot to the blaring sounds of John Kay and Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild on the golden oldies station. Just because it was Sunday didn’t mean it was necessarily a day of rest, and Jack had a major paper to complete before Friday morning. For the next five days he was going to have to eat, sleep, and breathe demonology if he was going to complete his paper entitled “An Examination of the Myths and Misunderstandings that Resulted in Devil Worship.”

“Jack, it’s the day after ‘over-the-hump-day’ and it’s time to unwind.” George Dombrowski and Frank Ahtram were at the door to Jack’s small bedroom in the apartment-style dormitory they shared. Frank expanded on George’s comment saying, “Come on and join us at the Arlington. There’ll be female-type creatures there.”

“Yeah, and at least a few of them won’t be Julie Oliver,” Frank chimed in with an evil grin.

George was still down from his latest failure with Julie and took time to glare at his friend.

“Sorry guys,” Jack rubbed his sore eyes and blinked several times. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ve got a major paper due tomorrow for Professor Long and I haven’t finished the footnotes and bibliography yet.”

George and Frank glanced at each other. It wouldn’t be the same without Jack but, being serious students themselves, they respected his needs. “Okay,” Frank answered as he gestured toward the door to get George moving. “We’ll let you slide this once, but you owe us some quality party time tomorrow night. No excuses.”

“You got it. I’ll even try to come up with something special for our TGIF celebration,” Jack called after them as they closed the door to his bedroom. Deciding it was time for a break; he stretched and stood to work the kinks out of his back. The stretch was not enough and Jack realized that it was time for a “level-two” work break — he paced. Three paces brought him to the unmade bed and three more to the far wall and the “Playmate Collage” poster on the back of the door. Finally, after about five minutes of pacing, he headed back to his desk. It was even harder to get back to work with thoughts of missing out on party-time flitting through his head, but Jack was a serious student. He planned to go into teaching, and good grades and glowing recommendations from his professors was a key part of his strategy.

With the paper done and handed in, it was truly time to celebrate. Jack had promised something extra-special and he was driving, so they ended up cruising toward the south side of town. It was the opposite end of town from the University, so they rarely went there, but he had gotten a recommendation from one of the folks in his class on Mythology. The area was, well, not seedy — exactly … there were no street people urinating on the dumpsters, or cars slowly cruising past overly made up and underdressed women standing by the street corners — but it wasn’t exactly pristine either. Every building seemed to have at least one boarded up window and the signs were worn and barely legible. Functional street lighting was spotty. The place Jack was looking for wasn’t much better, with a fairly shabby and worn-out front façade and broken second floor windows. It was called “Calaca E.” and, from the sounds emanating from its dark interior, the “joint was jumpin’ ” as Professor Long, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mythology would have said.

Inside, there was the expected bar and dance floor, but surprisingly this place had a stage also, so evidently they did live shows sometimes. The other surprise was the motif; a mixture of Aztec and Mayan art and statuary lined the walls of the club, along with that of at least one other early American civilization that none of the boys could name just off-hand, but many of the pictures were of happy skeletons, dancing, feasting at tables stuffed with food, and one huge mural of what seemed to be a dead woman with a huge flowered hat, but she was grinning … well, she had no lips, but she seemed happy. Jack hadn’t mentioned anything about the place, as he had wanted to surprise his friends, and it worked for all of them. His informant hadn’t mentioned the weird interior, although he had warned him about the neighborhood. Even he was a bit surprised by the extent to which the club had been transformed to look like it was some kind of strange cross between an ancient temple and a frat-house Halloween party.

Once they gave him a moment, Jack explained that Pedro, a guy from his Mythology class, had said that it was a great place to go, but had warned us not to try to pick up any of the girls there. Apparently, there was a large group of locals who frequented the place and they were a bit on the possessive side about their women.

After that warning, he told them what the name meant. “ ‘Calaca E.’ stands for ‘Calaca Extraordinario,’ which means ‘Strange Skeleton,’ or even ‘Wonderful Death,’ or other things, depending upon how you translate it.” Frank and George almost decided to leave after hearing that, but Jack convinced them to stay.

The bar was as crowded as the dance floor. Frank grumbled about it, but finally agreed to get drinks while the other two found someplace to settle in. They ended up right next to the stage since it was the only area not overflowing with people.

Three rounds and they were all loose enough to try to find someone and get out on the dance floor, all of them forgetting — or deciding to ignore — Pedro’s advice. Frank had been searching out unattached girls since they had first arrived, taking care to seek out dark haired beauties for himself and blondes for George and Jack. He had found several trios meeting their esthetic requirements who’d seemed to be awaiting their attentions but every time the boys approached a likely group of girls, some of the locals would get there before them. Each time they would head back to their table and have yet another beer. The beer buzz was getting noticeable and they were getting annoyed with being shut out by the locals. It was quickly becoming clear that Pedro had not been joking about his warning. George was sufficiently fed up to suggest heading back to one of their regular haunts when the lights dimmed and a hidden loudspeaker announced the start of the stage show.

“Did you know there was a stage show tonight?” Frank asked Jack as he settled back into his seat.

“Nope.”

“Let’s get out of here,” George said, rolling his eyes toward the latest girls he’d struck out with when their ‘novios’ showed up. He still stood by the table waiting for the others to join him. “We can’t even talk to the women here without the locals getting their noses bent out of joint.”

“Let’s at least see what kind of show they’ve got here. If we still want to leave after the first act, we can.” Jack was actually proud of himself for being so logical after more than a half a dozen beers.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the speakers blared, “the Calaca E. is proud to present the dance stylings of la bailarina sin igual, la mujer mas bella del mundo, la estimable … Lilith!”

“Oh great,” George grumbled and rolled his eyes. “‘Dance stylings.’ I can’t wait.”

Music replaced the announcer’s voice, slow, sensuous, erotic music. None of them recognized it, but it was so blatantly sexual that it made Ravel’s “Bolero” sound like a nursery rhyme. George and his complaints were forgotten as they all stared at the stunning raven-haired beauty who flowed onto the stage with indescribable grace. They’d all read stories about people exuding sexuality, but this was the first time they’d ever encountered it. The boys were mesmerized. They had no idea what she actually did on the stage. It was all a blur, except for one vague memory of her permitting Jack to place a dollar bill in what might have been a gee-string if it were larger.

They slowly came out of their trance as the sounds of applause faded away. A bit shaky and confused, they finished off the last dregs of their beers and headed back to the dorm. No one seemed to want to extend the evening and they all went directly to bed upon their return. Usually, they’d have sat around talking for a while, talking about the girls they seen, or even what a dump the place was, but they were all bone-tired by the time they left, which Jack at least attributed the the long hours he’d spent sweating bullets over his paper.

Jack dreamed of “her” that night, the woman called Lilith, vivid dreams, erotic dreams, impossible dreams. She came to him dressed in the sheerest of gauzy negligees, floating in the air above his bed with her hair flowing gloriously about her. An alabaster hand gently reached out and she touched his cheek. Like a faint breeze, her hand slowly slid down Jack’s neck to his hirsute chest, pausing briefly to lightly graze each nipple before sliding downward, following the contour of his stomach hair down to his navel and below.

Her touch was the most erotic thing Jack had ever felt. His nipples were rock hard in the wake of her hand’s gentle, teasing passage. He was painfully erect before she reached his navel and exploded at the first touch of her hand to his genitals. The orgasm was incredible, both in how it felt and in its duration. It went on and on — filling him with exquisite sensations of pressure in his loins as he spilled himself into her hand. It was like the all the fluids were slowly being milked from his body by this incredibly luscious vision of femininity, her touch so delicate it felt like a feather on his loins, like a breath of air, yet so powerful that it conjured a series of multiple orgasms like he’d never experienced before, like those he’d heard that some women had, where the trailing edge of one convulsion led immediately to the build-up to the next, which was even more powerful than the last, building and building until he was finally exhausted, and her touch, so gentle at the beginning of their dreaming enconter, became gradually imperceptible, until there was nothing left. When it finally ended, Jack was so exhausted that he lay in a stupor, and never saw her slowly fade away.

The next thing Jack remembered, George was shaking him. “Jack. Wake up. Are you all right? It’s nearly dusk. You’ve been asleep the entire day.”

“Wha? Go ‘way. Lemme sleep.” The words were barely intelligible.

“Your choice, guy. Get up now or live with a cold dinner.”

“All right, all right.” The words were only a bit louder or more coherent. “I’m coming. Give me five minutes to clean up.”

“Hey, George. Really great hot meal.” Jack looked at the hot dogs with a side of macaroni and cheese on the paper plate in front of him with distaste. Frank ignored the others and kept shoveling in macaroni.

“Hey, if you don’t like it now, wait an hour and then try eating it cold, congealed, and rubbery,” George suggested. They all shivered a bit at that thought. They lived in the one dormitory that had kitchenettes because they had pledged never to eat in the school cafeteria again.

“That’s okay. I’m not really hungry anyway.” Jack weakly pushed the plate away and struggled to rise. “Actually, what I really want is to go back to sleep. I’m bushed.” George and Frank glanced at each other.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Sure. I feel fine. I just didn’t get a good night’s sleep last night, although I’ve got to admit it was an interesting night. Wow, what a dream.”

“Huh?”

“I dreamt that stripper from the Calaca E. came floating into my bedroom and gave me some of the best sex I’ve ever had.” The grin on Jack’s face kept growing as he thought about it.

“That’s funny,” Frank spoke around the food in his mouth. “I dreamt about her too, but I guess she didn’t like me as much as you. She just floated through my room and left, but what a fox.”

“Me too.” The three stared at each other before laughing.

“That’s cool. We all had the same dream.”

“No, I had the same dream as Frank, but she passed through my room without stopping too. I got the feeling she was looking for something or someone.”

The other two returned to their food, but Jack slid his chair back and carefully stood. “I’m going back to my bedroom and rack out. See ya, guys.”

“Say hello to the floating babe if she comes back,” Frank called after him, grinning lasciviously along with George as Jack turned to leave.

“Hey Jack. Did you spill something in chem lab yesterday afternoon?”

“Nope,” Jack responded, turning back with a puzzled expression. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve got a huge light spot on the hair on the back of your head.”

“I do?” Jack reached back and stroked his hair as he tried to get a better view of the back of his head in the darkened window over the kitchenette’s sink. He couldn’t see anything, but noticed that his hair was much shaggier than he remembered.

“I better check it out,” he said and headed for the bathroom. “And I guess I’d also better get a hair cut tomorrow.”

He stopped for a huge yawn. “But right now I need some serious rack time. I’m dead on my feet.” With that, he changed direction and went back to bed.

“But he doesn’t want to go anywhere.”

“Damn it George, I don’t care what he wants. He’s not eating, he’s slept most of the last two days, and he looks … different.”

“So what do we do?”

“We call the university health clinic. We make an appointment. Then we get him to the clinic even if it means knocking him out and carrying him there.”

“I don’t know if I want to carry him. Maybe he’s contagious.”

“Yeah, and maybe he’s really a voodoo zombie waiting to steal our hearts for his … his … oh hell, I can’t even remember what they call someone who makes and controls a zombie.”

“You mean a witch doctor?”

“Nope.”

“A shaman?”

“Nah.”

“Then I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Jack.”

“Yeah, if he ever wakes up. I’m calling the clinic. You try to wake him up.”

“Wha? Ooh, what’s that smell?” Jack blinked himself awake, his eyes were burning and the lining of his nose was on fire.

“Good, Mr. Renfrew, you’re awake. The aroma is what’s left of the ammonia ampoule we used to wake you. We need to talk.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re at the University Health Center. How are you feeling now?”

“Fine. I’m feeling fine, just tired. Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Brannigan. Your friends are worried about you. They say you’ve been losing weight, not eating, and sleeping most of the last week. I also looked at a picture of the three of you taken last month at one of the Greek parties.” You’ve developed a variety of unusual symptoms including: hypersomnia, selective forms of both hypertrichosis and hypotrichosis, gynecomastia, hypogonadism, hypotension, and hypocalcemia. Have you been taking any unusual drugs or herbs?”

“No. I don’t do drugs.” The Doctor’s expression was clearly skeptical, which annoyed Jack. “And what were all those hyper/hypo things you listed?”

“They mean you’re losing hair on some parts of your body and gaining it on others, your blood pressure is dropping to unusually low levels and you are developing what appear to be female secondary sex characteristics.”

Jack just lay on the hospital bed in shock.

“I’d like to do some tests on you; nothing fancy, just a urine sample, some blood work and a small tissue sample. Then, I’d like you to see some people I know at the university hospital.”

“Why? What’s wrong with me?”

“I,” he paused to consider his words, “I don’t have the equipment here to do a through diagnostic work-up. This is just a clinic and I’m only a general practitioner. You’ll need to see some experts for a definitive answer.”

“Fine. I’d rather just go back to my dorm and go to sleep, but I’m too tired to argue with you.”

“Good. Please sign here.”

“We’d like to see Jack Renfrew please.”

It had been more than two weeks since Jack’s hospitalization and Frank and George had been phoning every day since, trying — still unsuccessfully — to talk to their roommate, or even get someone to talk to them about him.

“Are you family?”

“Yes.” George kicked Frank under the desk before he was corrected. “I’m George Renfrew and this is my brother Frank.”

“Very well. He’s in room 1514. Let me get you passes. Take the elevator to the fifteenth floor and turn left.”

The receptionist turned away and — seeing Frank sucking air into his lungs to object — George again signaled his friend to be quiet with a kick. The receptionist turned back with the passes and the boys silently accepted them and headed off to the elevators.

Once the elevator doors closed Frank railed at George, “Why did you kick me, and why did you lie? If they checked our IDs we could have been in big trouble.”

“I kicked you to stop you from giving us away and I lied because I’m tired of being given the run-around.”

“Well,” Frank was obviously still angry, “all right. But next time tell me before doing something like that.”

They made it to their friend’s floor without further incident and no one was at the nursing station so that wasn’t a problem either. Finding the room took a bit longer, but that’s mostly because they were too intent on other things to watch the room numbers. Frank was still angry about being kicked and George was too busy trying to keep from being kicked in return as they good-naturedly scuffled while walking down the hall. As it was, they only had to double back two rooms.

“Are you sure this is the right room?”

“The lady said fifteen fourteen, didn’t she?”

“That’s what I heard and that’s what’s written on this pass,” Frank replied after glancing at the piece of paper on George’s chest rather than try to read his upside down.

“So come on. Let’s go in already,” George hissed, practically dragging the larger man into the darkened hospital room.

“Hey. Cut it out.” It seemed funny listening to the large man whine. “And why is it so dark in here.”

“You mean besides the fact that the lights are off and the curtains are closed?” Frank asked.

“Yeah, smart ass.” The whine was now a growl. “That’s what I meant.”

“I don’t know, but I think I can work some magic to solve that problem.” With a flourish, Frank flicked on the light switch and they were briefly blinded by the sudden light.

“Hey Jack,” George whispered when his eyes had adjusted enough to see again.

Whoever was in the bed gave a muffled groan and rolled over pulling the covers more tightly up over their head.

“Shut up George,” Frank hissed. “Can’t you see he’s sleeping?”

“Sure, but now that we’re here it’s time to wake him up.”

They moved over to the bed. Frank examined the covered form with a confused look on his face while the other man grabbed the chart at the end of the bed and began reading it.

“Just because you’re pre-med I suppose you’re going to tell me you can read that stuff?”

“Sure. It’s English,” George replied, grinning wolfishly as he paused for effect before continuing. “I just don’t necessarily understand it.”

“So why are you bothering?”

Frank was still staring at the body under the covers. Something was bothering him, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Because I am pre-med,” he answered without looking up from the chart. “What I don’t know I’ll look up when we get back to the dorm.”

Frank was done examining the body. “George?”

“Umm.”

“George!”

“What?” He looked up from the chart.

“Are you sure we’re in the right room?” Frank asked.

“I thought we went through that already. It’s the right room already.”

“Then why does it look like that’s a blonde woman in the bed?”

“What?!” George jerked his eyes away from the chart and carefully examined the sheet-covered body. He stared at it carefully for almost a minute before intently flipping through the numerous pages of the chart. “It says Jack Renfrew on each page and there’s no one else in the room. Lift the cover and we’ll check it out.”

“No way, George. I’m not getting accused of rape or sexual harassment or anything. Let’s get out of here and ask the nurse.”

“Lift the damn cover. Then we’ll be sure.”

“I’m sure enough. If I can’t tell when I’m looking at a female body at my age, I may as well join a monastery. You lift the cover if you think it’s so important. I’m leaving.”

“An excellent idea,” said a woman’s voice behind them.

They turned as one to the door where a nurse was standing; hands on hips, and her jaw set in anger.

“What are you, ah, gentlemen doing here?” she asked in a tone of voice that made it clear that the intruders were in big trouble.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Two:
A Hunger in the Gut

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
― Marcus Aurelius, The last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ of the Roman Empire

The room was that ugly institutional green that only hospitals and army bases seem to favor. The chairs were waiting room modern — stackable metal and green plastic torture devices specifically designed to be uncomfortable for any length of time — and they’d already been waiting for the best part of an hour, so George and Frank were both reacting as planned. The nurse had left, but the security guard at the door was reason enough to wait as she’d told them to. Frank paced nervously while George, having tried the chairs already, sat patiently on the more comfortable table.

“What’s going on here? Why are we being held here?” Frank demanded of the guard.

The guard looked bored and ignored them. Frank was about to pursue the issue farther when the nurse returned along with a short balding, pot-bellied man in a white coat.

“Hello, boys. I’m Doctor Dunlevy. I’m the internist treating your friend, Jack Renfrew.”

“Why are we being held here?” said Frank.

“I apologize, gentlemen, but I felt it was important to speak to you, and you were present in a patient’s room in violation of hospital policy.”

“So why didn’t you call us in the first place?”

“I would have been glad to call, but you didn’t leave a telephone number when you called earlier in the week, several times, in fact, but according to the call log,” he consulted a file folder, “first ‘Frank’ called for ‘his friend Jack,’ then ‘George called for Jack Renfrew,’ and so on through the week. While I’m sure you’re both extremely famous people within your circle of intimates, unlike ‘Cher,’ ‘Madonna,’ and ‘Björk,’ you haven’t yet reached that stage of notoriety in which last names are superfluous. It was you, wasn’t it?”

George made a sour face. “So why didn’t you call the college and ask them to connect you?”

“Actually, Nurse Cattrell tried several times,” he nodded towards the nurse, who smiled briefly but coldly in response, “but the college has some rather stuffy rules about giving out information regarding their students to perfect strangers, citing” he looked at his folder again, “ ‘privacy concerns’ and ‘confidentiality’ regarding putative students who’d completely failed to leave adequate contact information, and for some strange reason wouldn’t give us a list of their students so we could go out fishing for the right students amongst thousands, and so refused to give us the opportunity to contact you earlier. And then, lo and behold, you show up in person and invade a patient’s room after having given out false information regarding your identities in an effort to subvert strict medical seclusion intended to protect the public from what might be a dangerous and contagious disease. How am I doing so far?”

Further discussion was interrupted by ironic applause from George, who was still sitting on the table. “Very interesting. I’m totally awed by your bullshit. Now can we get down to basics? Why is there what appears to be a woman in his room, with his chart hanging on her bed, and what the Hell’s happening to our friend?”

Nonplussed for a moment, Dunlevy cleared his throat. “Have a seat.”

He gestured to the others and then moved to sit at the head of the table. The guard remained at the door, but the nurse joined him at the table, as did Frank. George crossed his legs and remained sitting on the table. He split his attention between glaring down at the others and staring out the window at the hospital courtyard through the dimming light of the setting sun.

“Your friend is suffering from a variety of symptoms not usually associated with each other. First there is hypertrichosis. That means unusual hair growth in some areas, in this case his head. He’s growing hair at an astounding rate. Then there’s hypotrichosis, which means unusual hair loss. In your friend’s case it means that he’s losing the hair on most of the rest of his body, again at an astoundingly rapid rate. These two symptoms don’t usually occur together and usually there is a genetic cause for each.

“Next, there is gynecomastia, the growth of breast tissue, which is usually associated with the intake of any of a variety of drugs. We’ll get back to that later. He also seems to have hypogonadism, which means his testes are quite small and one is undescended. This is not uncommon, but it is unusual for someone to live to be as old as your roommate without someone diagnosing and treating it, especially as testicular cancer is common if an undescended testicle is left untreated.”

“That’s impossible,” Frank interjected. “We’ve taken gym together. Hell, as kids we used to compare sizes to see whose was biggest. We would have noticed something like that. The last time we saw him, Jack was a perfectly normal guy.”

“Be that as it may,” Dr. Dunlevy continued unperturbed. He was in his element when he talked about medicine, even though his bedside manner was the pits. “Next there is hypotension, the opposite of high blood pressure.”

Frank looked confused, but George appeared to be listening intently.

“Finally, there is osteolysis, which means that he is losing bone mass, which could be the result of some undiagnosed metabolic disease, although his kidneys seem to be working properly and he doesn’t appear to be suffering from a vitamin deficiency.” Dr. Dunlevy took a breath and looked about the room. The hostile young men were gone, replaced by two very anxious and worried young boys.

“So what are you doing to help him?” George asked as he slid off the table and into a more respectful position in one of the uncomfortable chairs.”

“Androsterone and testosterone. Male hormones,” Dr. Dunlevy explained. “We’re using them in an effort to slow the physical changes, I confess in desperation, because nothing else seemed to work. They have the secondary benefit of treating the hypotension, and seem to have helped slow the progress of what would have been a fatal complication of whatever it is he’s suffering from. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t even be talking to you, but were hoping that you might remember that he’d fallen into a pit of toxic waste or something that might give us a clue about what’s happening.”

“But why does he look so … so strange?” Frank asked in confusion.

Dr. Dunlevy’s answer was postponed by the beeping of his verbal pager as the PA system outside echoed the same words, “Doctor Dunlevy, Doctor Dunlevy. Doctor Hart, Doctor Hart. Room fifteen fourteen please. Code Blue.”

“Excuse me.” The physician ignored the question as he jumped up and headed toward the door at a fast walk.

“Hey! That’s Jack’s room,” George noted. “What’s the matter?”

Hurrying out the door, followed closely by the nurse, Dr. Dunlevy called back. “I don’t know, but I can’t wait to answer your questions now. Please wait here and I’ll return when I can.”

“Oh no you don’t. We’re coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” he impatiently paused by the door. “You’re going to let me do my job and help your friend.” Then he was gone.

Frank stood up, unsure what to do, but George moved purposefully toward the door, only to be stopped when the security guard’s beefy arm moved from his chest to stretch across the door.

“Let us out,” George said, his voice pitched low and angry.

The guard said nothing as he reached behind himself with his other hand to slowly close the door. Still without saying a word, the guard stepped back to place himself against the now closed door and refolded his arms. Frank hesitantly sat down again. George stood almost chest-to-chest with the guard. At a head taller and easily a hundred pounds heavier than George, the guard calmly watched the smaller man bluster. Finally, George stalked off towards the other end of the room, grabbed a chair, moved it to face the window and stared grimly out at the lights of the city.

“You could at least tell us what ‘Code Blue’ means,” Frank grumped, but the guard said nothing so Frank looked to George in desperation, hoping he would know the answer.

George just shrugged, but said, “It’s probably a hospital emergency code, but they all have different names for the codes, so patients don’t know exactly what they mean, but it’s nothing good.” He looked worried.

Frank settled for pacing impatiently.

An hour later, the nurse came back and had the security guard escort them out of the hospital, still without any explanation. At least George was able to give her their telephone number before they left.

The orderly was pushing the gurney at top speed while a nurse ran alongside holding an IV bag with several doctors in tow, one giving chest compression on the run, the other with a stethoscope monitoring her vitals as best he could. With a loud slam, they all burst through the double door into the operating theater section of the building, leaving a wake of startled people. With another slam, the door to the emergency operating room burst open and a middle-aged man with a slight potbelly and receding hairline looked up from the cot he’d been sleeping on.

“We’ve got a code here, Doctor Venkataraghavan,” the orderly called out as he backed out of the room, happy to avoid the confrontation he expected, leaving both of the trailing doctors and the nurse behind.

“Well, well, it is Nurse Ratched, is it not?” he asked, speaking rapidly and with the slight singsong common to those born in India and speaking English as a second or third language.

“That’s Richards,” the nurse responded angrily, hands on her hips. “Unless, of course, you want another grievance filed.”

“Whatever,” the Doctor growled, but then decided to end the battle of words and turned to the patient on the gurney. “What do we have here?”

“Female, approximately twenty years of age.” One of the doctors said, all business, but still trying to catch his breath. “They had her in critical care and she entered atrial fibrillation, unresponsive to diltiazem and metoprolol. We haven’t tried digoxin, as she seems healthy otherwise and is very young for that to be her problem.”

“History.”

“Here’s the chart.”

Taking it from him, he flipped it open and examined it briefly. “This is useless. It is the wrong chart.” He threw it off to the side.

“It’s the one from her room.”

“Well, unless she is a twenty year-old male named Jack Renfrew, it is still the wrong chart. Never mind.” He was all business as he started checking pulse and respiration. “Get me some Lidocaine. I want a five CC IV drip stat, and the rest of you, clear out. This room is too small for a peanut gallery.”

“Yes, Doctor, said the nurse, as the two other doctors left, irritated by the ER specialist, but he was right; they’d just get in each other’s way in such a confined space.”

“And hook her up to the monitors.”

“Yes, Doctor, she said.”

They worked frantically and then there was an erratic beeping from the monitor.

“It’s hooked up. Her heart is racing. Blood pressure is two ten over fifty. Pulse is rapid and thready. If she keeps this up she’ll stroke out.” The nurse and the physician huddled about the body in the bed from room fifteen fourteen while the noises of the unhappy humanity in the emergency services waiting room occasionally wafted into the operating room.

“Increase the Lidocaine drip to 10 CCs.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Damn. She’s still fibrillating. I need Digoxin stat.”

“Yes, Doctor.” A syringe slapped into his hand.

“No change. Get me another syringe of Digoxin.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Another syringe slapped into his hand.

She said, “BP is down to one fifty over fifty and still dropping … one hundred over forty … eighty over thirty….”

“Give me the paddles and clear. I want four hundred joules. Clear!” The body jerked like a puppet on a string.

“Still nothing. Six hundred joules. Clear!” Another jerk.

“Still no heartbeat.”

“Damn. What the hell do we have to do here? Live already!” the ER Doc cursed and pounded on her chest with a series of rhythmic blows, then began chest compressions. “Crank it up to eight hundred.”

“But, Doctor, six hundred joules is the recommended maximum.”

“And the patient is in terminal cardiac arrest. If eight hundred joules works, we have a living patient who can sue me, if she wants to. If it doesn’t work, we have a slightly singed body. Now do it, stat!”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Clear.” He placed the paddles carefully, then thumbed the trigger. The patient’s body arched off the table, but her heart was still and she wasn’t breathing.

“Still nothing. She’s gone, Doctor.”

“Let’s try it one more time.”

“Doctor!”

“Again!” He still had the paddles on her chest, properly placed and waiting for the therapeutic charge to build, which never happened. He turned to the nurse, who held up her hands to plead with him.

“Doctor, please stop. If you do this again, I’ll have to report your conduct, and I don’t want to do that. Do you want to face the Medical Practices Review Board? Do you want to face censure or maybe loss of privileges? She’s gone, Doctor. I’m sorry.”

The silence was deafening. Finally, he took the paddles away and slowly lowered them to their places in the crash cart.

“You’re right. I do not know what came over me. I could not keep my detachment. I could not bear the thought of losing her.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor. I didn’t realize you knew her. My deepest sympathy and condolences.”

“But that is just it. I do not know her. I have never seen her before in my life, but she seemed so familiar.” Two confused people shuffled arm-in-arm towards the door of the operating room leaving behind one corpse and the continuous tone of a still connected heart monitor. The nurse seemed to be comforting the physician until his hand slid down to give the woman’s buttocks a firm caress.

“Why you….” She turned to slap him, but instead her hand reached around his neck and pulled him into a kiss as they both began frantically pulling at each other’s clothes. Seconds later they were half-naked, in the throes of carnal passion on the tile floor as the nurse cried out, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! I never realized!” and the Doctor crooned, “Alison! Alison! My beautiful Alison! I’ve always wanted you!”. They never noticed the corpse’s hand twitch or the monitor start beeping again.

“Hey, Frank. Get the phone.”

“You get it. I’m working on my project and I can’t move until the glue dries.”

“And I’m in the bathroom,” George called back.

“Then I guess they’ll have to leave a message on voice mail.”

“So, tell me again. What did they say?”

“I’ve told you twice,” George responded irritably. “Here, listen to it yourself.”

Frank waited impatiently while George dialed for his voice mail and then shoved the phone at Frank. When the message was over, Frank punched the keys to repeat it yet again. After the hearing the recording for a second time, he carefully replaced the telephone on its cradle and sat down on the living room couch facing George. Neither spoke for quite a while.

“So what do we do now?” Frank’s question finally broke the silence.

“I guess we go down there and identify the body. Gee, that might even be more fun than being rejected by Julie Oliver again.”

Frank didn’t even acknowledge George’s pitiful attempt at humor. “That was in the message. I meant after that, George.”

“I don’t know. Make arrangements for a funeral?”

“Yeah. With no family, I guess it’s up to us.” Frank shook his head as if in pity, but his moist eyes put lie to the illusion. He ran his hand through his brown crew cut and surreptitiously wiped his sleeve against his cheeks on the way back down, trying to avoid acknowledging his tears. “So, how do we do that?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

More silence.

“We’d better get down there.”

“Yeah,” George answered, but neither moved.

More silence.

Finally, George shook himself as if to get himself moving and slowly stood. Frank just stared after him. “Coming?”

“Yeah.” Frank swiped at his face, this time more blatantly, then got up and dragged along behind his friend.

At the dorm entrance, they stood under the starry moonlight sky. “Car or bus?”

“I don’t know. Car, I guess.”

“Are you up for driving?”

“I guess so. I just don’t really want to see anyone else right now.”

“Okay.”

“Geez these guys are confused,” George noted for the fifth time. “You’d think that they had lost the body or something.”

The trip to the hospital had taken only a few minutes, but they had been waiting in the lobby of the emergency room for almost two hours.

“That’s not really funny, George,” Frank said angrily.

“I know. I’m just getting ticked off at all the waiting and the mealy-mouthed excuses. I’m going to check again.” George stood and stalked over to the information desk. When the family in front moved on, he spoke. “Excuse me, but we’re still waiting for Doctor Dunlevy. It’s been quite a while now.”

“Yes, sir,” the gray-haired receptionist responded. “Doctor Dunlevy has been paged, but he hasn’t answered. I’ll try again.”

“You did that three times already.”

“Yes, sir. This is a hospital. Sometimes our physicians are busy. He’s probably dealing with an emergency.”

“Yeah, right. He’s probably worried that he’s hooking his golf balls again or something. Then is there anyone else we can see? We’re supposed to identify someone at the morgue.”

“Certainly, sir. Why didn’t you say so?” the receptionist said and smiled brightly as she dialed another number. George just stared at her and muttered to himself about incompetence while wondering what color her hair had originally been.

Not for the first time, Frank marveled at how many contradictory ideas could rattle around in George’s head without stumbling over themselves. If it was a blonde joke, it seemed to be in poor taste, considering that he was crazy about a blonde who was clever enough not to date him. Then again, maybe it was a case of sour grapes, with all blondes everywhere tainted by Julie’s failure to fully appreciate exactly how wonderful George really was.

“I’ve reached Doctor Nikruma. She’s Chief of Pathology and she said she would see you. Please follow the green lines to the elevator,” she pointed to the various colored lines on the floor, “and go to the basement. Then follow the black line to Pathology.”

“Thank you.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice as George gestured for Frank and headed off. The basement hallways were empty and they had to knock repeatedly to get someone to come to the locked door that was the entrance to the Department of Pathology.

“Geez,” George grumbled. “Don’t they even answer the door when they know someone’s coming? If this is how well they do when the body can’t move, I’d hate to think about how well they do with the living.”

“Shh. Someone’s coming.”

“At last,” George snorted.

The door opened to a tall, pretty, black woman of indeterminate age, wearing blue scrubs and removing a second bloody surgical glove. “Yes? What do you want?” The words were brusque.

“Are you Doctor Nikruma?”

“Yes. Once again, what do you want?” The gloves were tossed into a red contaminated waste container.

“We were told to see you about identifying the remains of our friend.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ve been awake for the last two days. We’ve been busier than usual. People have been dying to get in here you know.” When they failed to smile at the old chestnut, she continued in a more business-like manner. “Come this way, please.”

At a desk in what looked like a small reception area, she brought out several sheets of paper. “Please sign here.” She pointed.

“What’s this for?” George asked, curious despite his annoyance.

“It’s a wavier releasing the hospital from any damages resulting from your viewing of a body.”

“Damages?”

“You know. Legal action, in case there are any pathogens or biohazards you may come into contact with.”

“Fine.” They both signed. “Where’s our friend?”

“Name?”

“Jack Renfrew.”

“One moment please.”

She wrote the name on the sheet of paper walked through a set of double doors into the back area. The two friends fidgeted while they waited. After what seemed like an hour, the Doctor returned with a scowl on her face.

“There’s no one here by that name. Are you sure this is the right hospital?”

“Yes, we’re sure,” they responded in tandem and looked at each other aghast. “We brought him here ourselves about two weeks ago.”

“Let me check again. Describe him.”

“I’m not sure we can,” George answered.

“What? Is this some kind of prank? If it is I’m not amused.” Her voice rose in annoyance.

“No.” George’s voice rose to match hers. “It’s not a joke. He was being treated by Doctor Dunlevy for a variety of symptoms that were changing his body shape. We don’t know what he looks like any more. The only reason we’re here is because we were told by a Doctor Ven … Vena … V-something to come here to identify our friend so he could be released for burial. Now I really think an explanation is in order and rather quickly.”

“Just a moment. That was probably Doctor Venkataraghavan from Emergency Services. Let me try to call him.” She turned on her heel and strode rapidly through a second set of double doors into the lab area.

“Great,” George snarled as he turned to Frank who, although silent, had been shaking in rage. “You weren’t kidding about them losing the body, were you?”

Frank just shook his head, afraid to speak. They silently paced as they waited.

Finally, Dr. Nikruma returned and spoke a bit more politely than before. “I just spoke to Doctor Venkataraghavan. He says … well, I’ll let him explain himself. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. In the mean time, why don’t we move into the conference room to wait?” She gestured to a door off to the side of the reception area.

“Gentlemen, this is Doctor Venkataraghavan,” Dr. Nikruma made introductions as she gestured towards the swarthy man just entering the conference room.

“You can call me Doctor Vee, if you prefer” he said with a smile. “Most people in this country don’t find it easy to say my full name.” After shaking hands, he sat next to Dr. Nikruma, facing George and Frank.

“Doctor, this is George Dombrowski and Frank Ahtram. They’re here about Jack Renfrew.”

“Hello. And how are you two today?”

Frank and George just nodded without even a polite smile in return. As it was, they were both so angry that they had almost refused to shake hands.

“Let’s get right to it then,” Dr. Venkataraghavan said, after clearing his throat. “I called you about a Ms. Jackie Renfrew. Your names were on the contact card, but it was probably a mistake. There was some confusion about the records and they also listed Ms. Renfrew as male.” He shushed them before they could correct him. “So, after calling you, I attempted to contact the primary care physician, a Doctor Dunlevy. Unfortunately, Doctor Dunlevy has taken ill. He is currently unavailable, so I was not able to correct the records. I assume your friend is still in his room being treated. I am sorry for any inconvenience.”

Dr. Venkataraghavan stood to leave.

“That’s it?” Frank took over the conversation at a near bellow. “You called us down here to arrange for the burial of our friend and then tell us he’s not dead?” George just sat back and listened. He knew from past experience that Frank was not easy to anger, but once he was, watch out.

“I think an explanation is in order. I want to hear you explain exactly how this hospital could possibly be so inept that it could confuse people who were not even the same sex. I also want to know exactly where Jack Renfrew is and I think you better show us our friend right now.” Frank gulped air. “Oh, and he had better be alive, as you’ve said.”

“But of course. I understand your anger,” the physician responded, smiling brightly. “I am waiting to be paged with exactly that information.”

As if it were planned, the pager buzzed. Dr. Venkataraghavan glanced down and smiled even more brightly, if that were even possible. “If you will excuse me, that should be the information we seek right now.”

He quickly rose and left the room. Dr. Nikruma fidgeted uncomfortably under Frank’s glare while George just rocked back in his chair and smiled evilly. A short while later Dr. Venkataraghavan returned, accompanied by several large security guards. The guards stood silently by the conference room door while he sat down again. This time he was not smiling.

“Mr. Dombrowski, Mr. Ahtram, on behalf of this hospital I owe you an apology. Something extremely unusual has happened and I assure you there will be a thorough investigation. At this time I cannot go into detail, as I have been advised not to comment in any way. I can, however, assure you that the individual you know as Jack Renfew did not die in this hospital. Now, I am going to ask you to leave the hospital with the assurance that as soon as our internal investigation is completed you will be advised of the outcome.”

He turned to the guards. “Please escort these gentlemen off the hospital premises.”

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Three:
It’s Not What it Looks Like

Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.
― Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1897)

“I’m still starving. I don’t understand it.” The young woman surveyed the myriad empty plates covering the table before her as she spoke to no one in particular. She’d gathered a small but growing crowd in the hospital cafeteria as she consumed at least one of every item on the menu. The onlookers’ comments swirled about her, ranging from raw jealousy on the part of some of the women, “My God, how can she look so fabulous wearing a hospital gown and no makeup?” to the lustful, “Damn, I sure wouldn’t mind being stuck on a desert island with her.” A few of the more jaded souls were running a tally of what she had eaten and were taking bets on what she would eat next, when she would finally regurgitate the food she had ingested in her frenzied gluttony, and even who would be the first to date this hungry goddess, since insatiability in one area seemed likely to spill over into others, or at least that was the quiet consensus among some of her male admirers, who had seen an instant metaphor between this particular mortal sin and at least one other. There were more than a few stares that seemed less fixated upon her consumption than upon her body, which was, in their estimation, fine.

The young woman was oblivious to their stares and comments, focused entirely on her own needs, so much so that the people around her seemed almost unreal, as if they were phantoms in a dream. Somehow she was — ever so slowly — feeling less ravenous. At the moment, that was the only thing that mattered. The intense, driving, unbearable feeling of starvation was gradually subsiding enough to give her the leisure to actually think about what had happened to her in the past several weeks, but as she thought, she drifted back to where and when it happened, and could see herself acting out her part, as if she were a puppet on a marionette stage, but her body looked strange and misshapen, distorted somehow from its true form.

Almost three weeks ago she’d experienced an incredibly sensuous dream of being visited at night by the dancer called Lilith she’d seen at a local nightclub, a dazzling raven-haired beauty whose dance was wonderful, but whose touch in her dreams was better than sex, and she’d had what seemed like an endless series of orgasms until she’d fallen into a stupor of bliss, almost like a trance, but from her new perspective she could see Lilith more clearly, how her … aura…? seemed more … substantial…? satisfied…? as her old body yielded itself to lust. She could even feel? smell? taste? the peculiar energies she let fly into the substance of the plane she partially inhabited and observed from.

When Lilith’s … spirit? … drifted away, she drifted closer, tasted her own waning energies from the source, and they were good. She felt more powerful, more complete, as she did so, and exerted her will upon her own unconscious body to bring herself to yet another orgasm, which she consumed.

The next day she’d fallen ill, sleeping almost continuously, aside from Lilith’s nocturnal visitations, and her own parasitic sequela to each, for several days, until her roommates had become sufficiently worried to bring her to the University Health Clinic. She wasn’t worried, because she knew the eventual destination this path led to, and welcomed it, because she could see the entirety of her experience laid out before her, as if upon a scroll, or a movie reel, and saw the increasing damage to her heart and internal organs as it progressed under the heavy doses of steroids the doctors would use in a misguided attempt to ‘save her’ from an outcome which she could see was inevitable, but was horrifying from their own perspective.

From there, she’d been transported via ambulance to the critical care unit of the University Hospital, where the erotic dreams had continued as before, but had turned increasingly strange, in a confused mélange of images and feelings that switched rapidly between the separate viewpoints of the participants, so that sometimes she just laid there while the woman stroked and manipulated her to orgasm, but in other dreams it felt almost as if their roles had been reversed, so she could see himself in front of him, and she was working on him until he erupted once again, which was even more satisfying for some reason, as if she’d gotten off twice. She wondered idly where Lilith was in this, or even if she were still present, because she now seemed to fill Lilith’s role on her own.

Eventually, she’d been hooked to an IV set and told that this would provide a continuous supply of intravenous nourishment and male hormones to counteract the effects of her disease, but this treatment had been a complete failure, and hadn’t affected the progress of the pervasive changes to her body in the slightest. In fact, it had seemed to escalate the changes, but by that time the doctors were desperate, so continued doing what they thought ought to work even when it obviously didn’t. It had been the nurses who’d started calling her Jackie, because they were uncomfortable calling her ‘Jack’ when it was becoming increasingly obvious that she couldn’t possibly be male.

Finally, after losing over a hundred pounds, her heart had simply given out, although she couldn’t say — in an existential sense — whether the original depredations of the vampiric angel had been at fault, or if it were the male doctors, whose visceral reaction to seeing a man whose male energies were being drained encouraged them to desperate actions intended to ‘save’ her from her ‘horrible’ fate through massive doses of steroids — male hormones and their precursors — that they’d pumped into her veins in a futile effort to allay their own terror. She’d apparently had a heart attack and — despite all efforts to save her — had died, but somehow remembered the whole experience. They’d tried to resuscitate her, pounding on her chest, even shocking her with a defibrillator, but it hadn’t worked and at 7:52 P.M. yesterday she’d been officially pronounced dead. But even that was strange, because the doctor who’d been working to save her life, and the nurse helping him, had decided to have sex on the floor of the operating room, while she lay helpless on the table just above them, feeling not exactly dead, but very lethargic, although she’d felt somewhat better whenever the two on the floor climaxed, which they did repeatedly until they’d finally got up, put their clothing back in order, and walked hand-in-hand out of the operating room without a backward glance. She smiled, looking back, when she saw what she’d done to them as she was born.

Then, about an hour and a half later, the she she’d been back then started feeling better, and had stirred when she felt someone gently stroking her cheek and saying something like, “…young and beautiful. What a shame.” Apparently, the orderly who was wheeling her to the morgue was so shocked when her eyes fluttered open that he’d fainted right there in the elevator. That he had his pants around his ankles had seemed irrelevant at the time, but now she realized that her growing power had forced him to masturbate himself to orgasm, and that she’d fed upon the warm energy that had exploded from his body as if it were a shot of brandy, reviving her. She smiled again. ‘Good girl,’ she thought.

When the elevator door had opened, she’d risen unsteadily from the gurney and shuffled out to the nursing station to tell them about the sick guy in the elevator, then followed her nose to the smell of food and the pristine clarity she’d experienced from outside looking in was subsumed into a physical sensorium and broken into chaotic bits.

Sitting in the cafeteria, sipping languidly at a third double chocolate malted milkshake there was an urge to giggle at the thought of being dead. Here she was consuming vast quantities of just about anything put in front of her and they thought she was dead, just because her heart had stopped, and she no longer breathed. Someone placed a plate with a burger and fries on the table next to the shake and she nodded her thanks as she stabbed at several fries with her fork.

‘He wants me.’ Jackie stopped mid-stab. She resisted the urge to turn and look, turned crafty now, like a cat in a room with a fluttering bird.

“Uh-hum.”

The woman turned to see Dr. Dunlevy beside her. She remembered him from several of the brief intervals of wakefulness she had managed while sick, but he wasn’t the one.

“Oh, hello, Doctor. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you, Ms. Renfrew. However, I must insist you return to your room so we can examine you and complete some tests.”

There were several groans from the gamblers in the back and at least one who cheered, “Yes!” before the young woman could compose herself and answer. Unsure how to respond, she blurted out the first thing to come to mind, “But I’m still hungry.”

“We’ll provide you with all the food you require, Ms. Renfrew. Will you please come back to the room with me now?”

“‘Ms?’ Why was he calling her ‘Ms?’” She massaged the question with her still-addled mind as she tried to comprehend. She was a guy, wasn’t she? What kind of a Doctor was this Dunlevy, anyway, if he couldn’t even tell what sex she was? Then she stumbled over her own thought process, because when she’d thought that, she’d unconsciously thrust out her breasts, as if to emphasize her femininity, and then she looked down and was astonished to see that she had ‘assets’ to emphasize.

“Please, Ms. Renfrew.” He placed his hand gently on Jackie’s bare arm … and promptly fainted.

Flustered, but feeling much better, Jackie stood and backed away from the bustle of medical staff converging on the now supine Doctor. Almost as an afterthought, she realized she was no longer hungry. In fact, she felt great. So great, in fact, that she decided she should get some decent clothes and go back to her dorm room.

Jackie continued backing away from the crowd and made it out of the cafeteria without being noticed. Actually, it felt strange, almost as if she were floating down the hallways. It was mildly disconcerting and she tried to focus on what was happening. She was walking, but her strides seemed to be longer than they should be, or even could be. She stopped walking and discovered that she was still moving.

‘What the hell?’ she thought. Frightened, she made a conscious effort to stop and found herself motionless in the hallway outside her hospital room. People were passing her by without paying her any attention, as if she were invisible, which was fine with her as she wanted desperately to exchange the hospital gown she was wearing for some real clothes. Once she’d noticed that what she’d thought of as a nightshirt was actually open at the back, at some point on her progress back to her room, she’d realized that she’d been showing her bare ass to everyone in the cafeteria, which explained at least a few of the laughs. The door to her room was closed, but it opened to her touch — or maybe it hadn’t because it was still closed when she walked into the darkened room. No one had seemed to notice her, but this seemed irrelevant, because her room had changed.

“Now what?” she muttered aloud. The room was empty, the bed stripped, the dresser top cleared of her few personal effects. Jackie slapped her hand against the wall in frustration, only to jerk when the action produced a loud noise. After a furtive glance through the door to confirm that no one had heard, or at least hadn’t bothered to walk over from the nursing station and investigate the noise, she checked carefully and realized that the noise had been the blood pressure cuff falling off the wall and crashing to the floor when she’d struck the wall.

With a nervous giggle, Jackie returned to the problem at hand; clothing, her favorite jeans would be nice — worn soft with many washings, and so comfortable that she tended to save them for times when she really wanted to kick back and relax, but was afraid that one day the seams would just disintegrate, like the deacon’s wonderful one-horse shay — and her best Ærosmith tee-shirt, from the Wantagh concert during their tour with Mötley Crüe would be fantastic, and she wondered if anything of hers had been left behind. Stalking to the closet with that purpose foremost in her mind, she yanked the partially-open closet door open the rest of the way. It was empty. With a deep feral growl, she slammed the door closed and gasped.

There was a wall mirror mounted on the outside of the bathroom door, but the closet door had obscured it. Now it showed her dressed in her tee-shirt and jeans, exactly as she had envisioned, right down to the torn knee. She stared in confusion, not remembering changing out of the hospital gown. “How? When? And shouldn’t she be wearing a bra?”

Even those questions were forgotten as she watched, mouth agape, as she slowly realized that the image in the mirror was that of an excruciatingly lovely young woman who looked exactly like her, and nothing at all like Jack Renfrew, but Jackie knew that her image ought to look different, like Jack, but that made her head start spinning again. Suddenly Jackie’s knees felt weak and she collapsed to the floor, her head exploding with questions and confusing answers and a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach like she was hungry — again.

The room door opened and a hospital aide peeked in. Seeing Jackie sitting sprawled on the marbled vinyl floor he asked, “Miss? Are you all right?”

When she didn’t answer, he came into the room and stood over her. “Miss?” And again louder, “Miss?”

When she failed yet again to respond he reached down to shake her gently — and collapsed on top of her as soon as he’d touched her. This had the unsurprising effect of snapping Jackie out of her daze. No one else was around, so she struggled out from under him, rose to her knees and patted the man’s face to try rousing him.

With each pat, Jackie felt better and better, although the guy wasn’t waking up. Instead, after the third or fourth tap, something strange happened. The man began convulsing. His hips began to buck back and forth like he was riding a bronco — wait a minute … like he was dry-humping the air … and he looked like he had an erection so turgid that it looked like an iron pipe had somehow gotten jammed against his crotch, and Jackie was starting to feel … satisfied, filled almost to the brim with something very pleasant and tasty. ‘Shouldn’t I do something about that?’ she thought, and then blushed, because she’d also thought that she ought to give him a hand, and had felt that one good turn deserves another, but then wondered what she really meant by that.

Fearful for the well-being of the aide — but suddenly reluctant to actually touch him — she stepped back.

He’d stopped writhing and was now merely groaning as he lay panting upon the floor, Jackie rushed into the hallway and called for a nurse. Within moments there was a nurse kneeling beside the still groaning man and ignoring Jackie. Knowing that she had little to offer medically, and still embarrassed by her thoughts, Jackie silently backed out of the room.

Standing in the hallway beside the still open hospital room, Jackie pondered what to do. A nervous breakdown was tempting, but for some reason, Jackie just could not bring herself to a proper state of disorientation and depression. More frustrating was that it shouldn’t have been an issue of ‘bringing herself’ to do it. If anything, she should have been struggling to avoid it, but what should have been and what was were just not matching up today. In fact, she felt better than she had in many days.

Giving up on her impotent contemplation of a nervous breakdown that apparently was not to be, Jackie considered her other options. She could go back into her room and wait for more doctors to come poke and prod her, but somehow, she didn’t think she’d ever be permitted to leave if she did that. Given her apparently unique situation, it seemed likely they would treat her more like an experimental animal than a human being, especially since she’d been declared dead already. She wasn’t an expert on the law, but she couldn’t recall ever hearing that dead people had any rights at all.

The experimental animals at the university lived well, but briefly as a rule, and with nothing of their own beyond the four walls of their cage, so that was clearly not an acceptable option. Besides, she was pretty sure they had absolutely no idea what, why, or how this had happened to her and, when she thought about it, finding out exactly what had happened to her had become extremely important.

What other choices were there? Going back to her old life would be difficult, as this was a remarkably conservative part of the country, despite the presence of the university, and either she wasn’t her old self or the mirrors at this hospital were really great liars. What would her friends think? Would she still be able to share her current dorm room with two guys? Would she even be allowed to return to classes like this, especially if she left the hospital now, without medical clearance? Finally, what would she need to do to have access to her bank account? She didn’t even know if her driver’s license was valid any more, and what would she do if it wasn’t?

Clearly there were many more questions here than answers. Jackie decided that the first thing to do was to get some help figuring out exactly what options were actually available to her. Family was out. She didn’t have any real family to speak of, besides her uncle and his wife, and he was a cop, so might feel obligated to enforce the law, whatever the law was regarding dead people. That left Frank and George.

The aide was being wheeled off to Emergency as Jackie was finishing her internal debate. The orderly pushing the gurney nearly bumped into her as he rushed off with the aide. He didn’t even say excuse me, which kind of annoyed Jackie. It was as if he hadn’t even seen her, but Jackie was more concerned about getting back to the dorm now that she’d made her decision. Instead of stopping the orderly and confronting him about his rudeness, she followed him out to the emergency room waiting area.

Spotting the exit, she veered to the left and went out into the parking lot, then stopped again to get her bearings. The hospital was part of the university, but located about a mile and a half from the main campus and Jackie’s dorm room. There was a bus that traveled back and forth between the hospital and the campus, but Jackie could see from the City Hall clock tower that it was well past midnight, which was when bus service between the hospital and the campus ended. That made things more difficult, since she didn’t have any money. She could have risked flashing her school identification card and hoped the driver would not bother checking the picture if the bus were still running, but a quick check of her pockets revealed that her wallet was gone, probably wherever the rest of her personal effects had gone when they’d cleared her room. With no money, a taxi was out of the question and there was no one in the parking lot from whom she could beg a ride. That meant hoofing it, so with a sigh of resignation she headed off into the darkness.

She had made it just two blocks away from the hospital and already Jackie was questioning the wisdom of her decision. Having never walked this route before, she had failed to recognize that even the good side of town had some seedier areas and even friendly and inviting business areas seem more sinister at night when they were barren of crowds and only intermittently lit by harsh metal halide street lights, because the city turned off every other lamp after midnight. The area she was walking through was mostly stores, closed for the night except for the occasional bar or nightclub.

As she passed one, a brightly lit bar called Callahan’s, she could hear music and laughter. Through the storefront window, Jackie could see about two dozen people inside. She licked her lips. Despite her desire to get back to the dorm, the urge to enter was a palpable pressure and she stumbled slowly toward the door, towards people, towards food.

Fingers just touching the door, Jackie struggled as she tried to control the craving driving her. She jumped and squealed in fright, jolted back to reality by the sudden sound of a siren immediately behind her. A passing police cruiser had turned on its lights and siren and surged off into the darkness. There was also a surge of something else, a feeling of excitement, or maybe lust, that Jackie imagined she felt from the direction of the departing vehicle. It was as if she somehow knew that the man, she was sure it was a man, in the police car was sexually aroused at the thought of the possible conflict in which he was about to become involved. Serendipitously, Jackie also noted that the pressure to enter the bar had lessened a bit. With a nervous giggle, Jackie let her hand drop from the doorknob and slowly strode off towards school. The craving was still present, but for the moment, it was controllable.

Rounding a corner a block from the campus, Jackie could just glimpse the dorms in the distance, behind the science and technology building. She was in a residential area, not as quiet or devoid of people as the business area, although the streets were just as barren. Jackie could feel the warmth of humanity behind many of the apartment windows. It was a curious feeling and not a little disconcerting to realize that she was feeling something she had never felt before. Concentrating a bit, Jackie realized she could detect differences. Some of the bodies were more — for lack of the right word — intense than others. One set of bodies about two floors up and a bit in front of her seemed almost painfully intense. Trying to determine what she was feeling, Jackie stopped and concentrated intently on the two strongest feelings of warmth. It was like something was about to happen that was just out of her reach — and so annoying. She concentrated even harder and she felt herself floating into the air, not flying so much as dreaming of motion that became real with an idle thought.

They were teenagers and they were on a couch in a nicely-appointed living room watching an old horror movie on television. There was a large bowl of popcorn sitting between them on the couch. Lust was barely contained in their eyes, but they sat primly on opposite ends of the couch while sneaking glimpses of each other from the corners of their eyes when one thought the other was not watching.

Wow! Nice hallucination, Jackie thought to herself. I wonder why they didn’t warn me about these?

Floating in the middle of the living room Jackie realized that the lust-filled couple was staring through her to watch the television behind her. Double wow! They can’t see me.

The girl licked her lips and a drop of sweat was forming on the boy’s upper lip. They both squirmed uncomfortably. The intensity of their lust seemed to be growing and Jackie felt more satisfied and at peace with herself than she had in weeks. With a blinding recognition of the truth, Jackie realized that their emotions were affecting how she felt. The more sexual tension they felt, the more replete, satisfied, full Jackie felt, as if she had just finished a really good meal.

With this insight came the decision to experiment. Hallucination or not, if concentrating could bring her through the air, through walls, to their apartment, what would concentrating on the two teens do? Jackie decided to find out and concentrated on what they were doing to each other, and how they were feeling.

More squirming. The girl’s nipples were hard enough to be seen through her thin cotton blouse. The guy was trying to unobtrusively shift things around in the area of his crotch. Each struggled to look away from the other. Simultaneously hands reached for the popcorn, and touched. The couple froze. Slowly they turned to face each other, hands still touching. Fingers intertwined and they stared soulfully into each other’s eyes as if in desperate need, but afraid to act. And then they lunged at each other, popcorn flying to the floor as they embraced while a shocked Jackie sucked in her breath at the sudden rush of emotion.

It felt fantastic, erotic, powerful, and … and … satisfying? Embarrassed beyond her most horrible dreams, because she was acting like a peeping tom, getting off by spying on two lovers, Jackie tore her attention from the erotic activity in front of her and the intense feelings were dramatically reduced. The ardor of the couple on the couch subsided. Mid-kiss, their eyes opened and they stared at each other in shock. They pulled apart and the girl huddled on the couch, evidently ready to burst into tears. The boy stood trembling as he faced the girl, mouth opening and closing as he tried to think of what to say. He was so close Jackie could have ruffled his hair with an exhalation, yet neither acknowledged her presence.

“Come on, say something,” Jackie muttered in frustration, afraid her intervention might have destroyed budding young love. Just as she had concentrated before in order to sense the warmth between them, now she concentrated to make the boy say the words she was sure he needed to say.

“I….” The words would not come, “I….”

“Say it, damn it.” The words were spoken out loud before Jackie had realized. Her hand shot up to her mouth, afraid they would realize she was in the room, but they didn’t appear to have noticed her presence, much less heard her words.

“I love you,” the boy finally said. It sounded strained and forced, but it came out. The boy looked shocked that he could utter such blasphemous words, then quizzical, and finally relieved as he realized that he meant it.

“I love you,” he said again as he smiled and reached out entreatingly. “I love you.” He said it louder, more firmly, and with a huge smile on his face.

The girl grinned, then leapt back into his arms and sighed as they just held each other close, cuddling in blissful happiness, looking deep into each other’s eyes, as if truly seeing each other for the first time.

Jackie looked at the happy couple and began to smile in her joy for them. That’s when the agony came, sharp, stabbing, excruciating pain as their emotions built to a different level entirely, and it was too strong, too much for her to take. With a scream of anguish, Jackie fled the apartment for safety — the safety of her dormitory room. The young lovers continued their embrace, oblivious to the world around them, unconscious of the fleeing wraith that had nudged them past the barriers they’d both felt, just as Jackie was unaware that she’d fled straight through the apartment wall and had flashed through the air into her own apartment.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Four:
Hitting the Books

Never ask a question unless you’re very
sure that you want to hear the answer.
― Anonymous

“Do you believe those idiots?” It was a full day later, but Frank was still annoyed. Even now, as George and he entered the dorm building again after classes, he was complaining, but at least his recriminations were finally down to a grumble.

George was angry too, but he held his peace, knowing that anything he said would be additional fuel for Frank’s anger. George mostly wanted to figure out what to do to get their friend back, or at least find out how he was. He too was upset about their friend, and annoyed at being unceremoniously kicked out of the hospital, but he needed Frank to be calm enough to plan things out if they were going to succeed in getting past the security guys.

Frank was good at that, a planner and a schemer, where George was more the pound somebody into the ground type. He’d identified with the Han Solo character in Star Wars, when he’d blown up the communicator thing when he couldn’t keep his story straight.

Frank, on the other hand, was more like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and would have talked the Storm Troopers into helping them escape, provided he didn’t get bogged down in the Dark Side of the Force, which he did whenever he got bogged down in problems of social injustice, esoteric morality, and/or basic human rights.

George had even made them stop for groceries at the all-night supermarket, to give Frank a little extra time to calm down, and now were taking the stairs rather than the elevator for the same reason. Frank was so mad that he wasn’t paying attention to the distractions George kept tossing at him.

“I’ll get the door.” George piled his grocery bags on top of the ones Frank held. They were piled so high he could barely see around the sides.

“You’d better, after making me walk up three flights of stairs with my hands full of groceries.”

“Aw, come on, you know it’s good exercise. You’ll thank me when you make it to varsity.”

“Right, all because you made me walk up three flights of stairs with groceries in my hands? What do you want in return, my first born child?”

“That depends. Will she grow up to be a fox?”

“Cradle robber.”

“Indian giver.”

The last brought a smile to Frank’s face at last.

“Milord,” George said as obsequiously as he could as he unlocked the door to their apartment and threw it wide open while making a caricature of a deep, courtly bow. Frank snorted and walked in, head held regally high. George smiled. The old Frank was back. Not to be outdone, he followed, dragging one foot behind him as he pretended to be Igor, the hunchback from “Young Frankenstein.”

Frank blindly struggled into the kitchen still holding all the groceries. He called back to George, “Will carrying all the bags make me Team Captain? George?”

George didn’t respond. He was staring slack-jawed at the shapely blonde sitting sprawled on their couch and scrawling notes in several notebooks, at random as far as he could tell. She was hunched over a huge book and surrounded by at least a dozen others, but she didn’t remind him of Igor at all, or even Teri Garr. Teri Garr was very pretty, but this woman could easily persuade the Pope to give up the rule of celibacy and allow women to serve as Priests and Archbishops, if she’d put her mind to it.

Frank dropped the bags on the counter in the kitchenette and finally, with his view restored, turned to see a beautiful, erotic, exotic, raven-haired woman on the couch.

As usual, George was first to react. “Hello. Who are you? What are you doing here, and will you bear my children?” He swaggered over to the beat-up lounge chair that was the room’s only other seating and slouched down into it. Frank, usually the more assured of the two in the presence of women, joined her on the couch, sitting on the other side of the stunning beauty, after moving a few books to make room, so as not to block George’s view of her.

“It’s my apartment too, isn’t it?” She looked puzzled for some reason. Her voice was melodious and silken, wanton and virginal at the same time. Both boys shifted a bit to hide their growing excitement.

“Excuse me,” Frank said as he finally just gave up and placed his hands over his lap, “but I’m quite sure I would have remembered a dark-haired beauty like you sharing this apartment with us.” He gestured to include George in the “us.”

George gave Frank a strange look, but said nothing.

“What are you talking about?” she said. She looked back and forth between them, and looked confused as well. “We’ve been roommates for a year and a half, George. Remember when I helped you with calculus? You wouldn’t have passed without, I think. Remember when you had the flu and wanted to call that babe you’d been seeing, Samantha Armitage, to break your date, but couldn’t stop sneezing enough to dial the phone?” She pointed to George and pouted prettily.

“And you, Frank. Who helped you design some of those house models your professors liked so much? Wouldn’t they be just a bit annoyed if they knew you’d had help?”

“This is a joke right?” George said. “Jack put you up to this. Where is he, in the bedroom watching?” George turned to the bedrooms and called out. “Okay, Jack, the joke’s over. You can come out now?”

Now it was the girl’s turn to be confused. “What are you talking about? I’m right here. I’m Jack.”

The silence was deafening, but then again, there was rarely a lot of noise at half past three in the morning, even in a college dormitory. George snorted and stalked off to check the various bedrooms. Not finding anything, he returned to the living room to stand, hands on hips, towering over the still seated woman. “Okay, Blondie. You’re beautiful, and I’d love to get to know you, but neither of us are in the mood for jokes about our friend, so what’s the story.”

“No story. I’m Jack Renfrew. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Jack Renfrew was not a babe,” George responded through gritted teeth.

“George, stop it! Look at me! You know who I am! I’m Jack Renfrew, your roommate. Now tell me, who am I?” Jackie stared intently at her friend as if willing him to recognize her.

George got a strange look on his face, dazed, almost like he’d been sucker-punched and was ready to pass out. He spoke with a wooden monotone, “You are Jack Renfrew. You share this apartment with Frank and me.”

“Good. Now grab a seat and chill out.” She looked at Frank who was watching George march over to the chair he had vacated and slouch down into it. “Now, how about you? Do you know who I am?” This time she was beseeching rather than demanding.

“You look like the most beautiful black-haired babe I’ve ever seen.”

Her face started to cloud over in a frown, but it was a cute frown, and Frank continued rapidly, “…but you seem to know things that only Jack should know. Before that damned hospital kicked us out, the doctor treating you said you were changing, and the shape I saw in what seemed to be your bed sure looked like it was female, so I guess maybe you are Jack.”

“Oh thank god. I was beginning to believe I was crazy,” she shrieked gleefully as she lunged out of her seat and hugged Frank, who immediately got the strangest look on his face and then grunted explosively, totally confused, but with a slack jaw and his eyes glazed over as he started to collapse. Jackie let go and quickly returned to her seat while Frank sagged onto the recliner behind him. It looked as if he would have sank right through the floor if the chair hadn’t, by purest chance, been there to catch him first.

“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, Frank. I guess you might want to go clean up a bit.”

“What happened? How did you know? What’s going on here?” Frank was confused and then scared when he saw the damp stain on his pants.

George was still staring off into space, having evidently reached the mystic state of Satori, ‘No you, no me.’

She frowned again, but it was even cuter than her last frown. “Clean up while I try to bring George back to the land of the living. I think I know what’s happening, and can explain, but it’s pretty fantastic and I’ll need help from the both of you to confirm it.”

“Mind if we have some coffee?” Frank asked. “It’s been a long day and a longer night?”

“Sure, Frank,” Jackie responded sexily. “May I have a cup too?”

“How do you want it?”

“Like I always have it, Frank, with lots of cream and four sugars.”

Frank said nothing but rolled his eyes and prepared the coffee as requested. Jack had liked his coffee as black as midnight and as strong as sin.

“Still checking me out, Frank?”

Frank said nothing, but blushed as he brought over the coffee and sat at the counter of the kitchenette with the others.

“Okay.” George interjected. He was back to his usual domineering self. “Can we have an explanation now?”

“Right.” Jackie took a dainty sip of her coffee and sighed. “This is going to be hard to believe.”

“Harder than explaining how my dark-brown-haired male roommate turned into a gorgeous blonde bombshell?” George snorted.

“That’s twice you’ve said that,” Frank interrupted.

“Said what, Frank?”

“Said she was a blonde, when she’s clearly got black hair.”

George looked at Frank like he’d grown an extra head until Jackie interrupted while gesturing as if peering into an unseen crystal ball. “If you’ll just listen, gentlemen,” she said playfully, “Madame Olga will explain all…”

Still looking confusedly at each other, the two men subsided and waited.

“Thank you. Like I said, this is pretty fantastic, and I still don’t have all the pieces together, so bear with me.” She glanced at her two roommates, who nodded silently.

“Have either of you ever heard of a succubus?”

“It’s a female demon of some kind, isn’t it? The monks invented them to explain wet dreams or something.”

“Two points for George,” Jackie purred. “For another two points can you tell me what a succubus does?”

“Something to do with sex?”

“Close, but no points. For ten points and the win, can you take it, Frank?”

Frank just sat dumbly staring at her as she hummed the “Jeopardy” theme song; somehow making it sound like a striptease.

“Buzz. Time’s up. No points for you, Frank,” Jackie sighed. “Geez, guys, for all the time I spend helping you guys with your homework, you’d think you’d have picked up at least a little bit of what I was studying. “A succubus is a female demon, a member of the Lilim, the result of assorted couplings between the first woman, Lilith, and the Djinns. According to Sumerian legends, the Lilim were considered the first vampires.”

“You’re a vampire?” Frank self-consciously crossed himself while George visibly shrank away from her.

“No,” she sighed. “Although I suppose succubi and vampires are cut from a similar cloth. Where the vampire feeds off the blood of human beings, the succubus feeds off their sexual energy.”

“So why are you drinking that coffee, or do you still need regular food?” George was trying to keep it light, but it fell flat.

“Actually, if you’d seen what I’ve eaten in the last day you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve just got to enter the next food-eating contest. But to answer your question, I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Still, it’s something normal and I could really use a little of that right now.”

“So you now live off sex? That’s a bit hard to imagine.”

“Harder than imagining that I can look like a blonde to you and a brunette to Frank?”

“Okay. I’ll agree that something weird is happening here, but there seem to be three questions that need to be answered. First, how did this happen? Second, what other weird surprises do you have for us? Third, can you prove any of this?”

“Add a fourth question.” Frank had been listening pensively, but now added a thought of his own. “How do we get you back to normal?”

“Oh, thank you,” Jackie beamed happily as she jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “I knew I could count on you guys. I could just hug you.”

“Uh, are you doing something?” The two men squirmed uncomfortably as they stared at her chest like it was the most important object in the world — as, perhaps, it was.

“Oops. Sorry.” Jackie concentrated for a moment and both Frank and George looked relieved.

After a brief pause to rearrange themselves yet again, George continued. “How about you finish explaining? And let’s add another item to the list: Why the Hell are you acting so girly now, when you’re claiming to be good old Jack Renfrew, man-about-town and normal college student?”

“Sure, at least I’ll explain what I can.” She took a deep breath and sighed before continuing. “As to how, I think it had something to do with that stripper we saw at Calaca E. Ever since that night, at least until I died, she’s been in my dreams.

George and Frank both looked shocked.

“What? What’s the matter?” Jackie asked as she stared worriedly at her friends.

“You died? Then the call from the hospital was real?”

“I don’t know about any call, but let me finish and I’ll explain. That night, after we got home and went to bed, I dreamed that that stripper had come floating into my room and we had fantastic sex, well, she sort of jacked me off that first time, but it was pretty damned good. She became more inventive after that.”

“Yeah, I remember. We all dreamed about her that night.”

“Well, I don’t think it was a dream. She came back to me every night for more than two weeks, even while I was in the hospital. I think she was a succubus. I think she was sucking my sexuality, or at least my masculine sexuality, from me, a bit at a time until I died.”

“Why you?” George asked. “Why don’t we hear about this all the time? And, once again, what do you mean you died?”

“Is anyone keeping count of how many questions you two have asked already?” Jackie asked flirtatiously before continuing. “Why me? I don’t know? I never thought of myself as being so excessively sexually endowed that I would be a magnet for some sexual vampire. As to why you don’t hear about such things, again, I don’t know. Maybe there aren’t a lot of succubi around, so it doesn’t happen all that often, or maybe most guys don’t get the full treatment I got, so just wake up the next morning with sticky underwear, a smile on their faces, and get on with their lives. How should I know? I’m just the woman who got struck by lightning. I have no idea how the lightning works, or what the odds are of getting hit and surviving.”

“Or maybe it was the treatment the hospital was providing,” George mused aloud. “I checked out your medical chart. They were using a non-traditional and somewhat controversial treatment, I think, pumping you full of male sexual hormones. For something that feeds on male sexuality, that might have been like catnip to a cat or waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

“I think that makes sense too,” Jackie acknowledged, but it was evident from her hesitant tone of voice that she wasn’t completely convinced. “It would explain why she kept coming back long after any natural male sexuality had been drained from my body.” With a wry grin, Jackie added, “I suppose I should be happy that I died like a man, orgasming to the end. Maybe for most people they stop after the initial depletion and it seems like little more than an especially vivid ‘wet dream.’”

“What about the girly stuff. You sure don’t act like Jack did, not at all, you even move differently.”

Her brow creased slightly. “I’ll get to that. Anyway, sometime that night I must have died. I remember being in a sort of dream state most of last week. I couldn’t rouse myself enough to talk or let anyone else know, but I was aware of what was going on around me. She came for me yet again. She did whatever she does to me again and then there were people rushing about all around me. The funny thing was, they never saw her as she floated above my head smiling down at me with a really strange expression on her face, sort of mingled sexuality and … crazy cruelty, the sort of expression you’d imagine on Jack Nicholson in The Shining, if Jack Nicholson was a sexy girl.

“Anyway, I watched, unable to speak or move as they took me to the emergency room where they gave me a couple of injections and then shocked me a couple of times. Funny thing. I couldn’t feel anything except a light tickle, as if someone was gently running his hands over my skin where I was being manhandled, even when the doctor shocked me with those watchmacallit things, and pounded on my chest, trying to get my heart started again. Then they pronounced me dead and I still couldn’t move, but started to feel this terrible hunger. The only other people in sight were the emergency room Doctor and the nurse working with him. I remember finding the energy to turn my eyes to glance at them, thinking I could finally move and was getting better, but when I looked they were having sex on the floor, right in the ER with what they thought was a dead body on the table above them. Jackie shivered a bit at the thought. It was gross … I think …. Wasn’t it? Jackie was momentarily nonplussed as she wondered why she might question whether sex around dead bodies might not be gross. With an imperceptible shake of her head to clear the cobwebs, she continued.

“Once they were done, exhausted and lying there, but not moving around much, I felt a little better — still starving, and still almost frozen to the table when they finally managed to pull themselves together and walk out the door, but they were still holding hands, so I didn’t know whether I’d done something to make them have sex with one another, or whether they’d had feelings for each other all along, and watching me die had … aroused them both, as happens to many people who’ve experienced dangerous or exciting situations.

Eventually an aide came by and pulled me off the operating table and rolled me into an elevator, where he evidently got so carried away by my dead beauty that he dropped his pants and started masturbating, or something, right there in the elevator, although my brain wasn’t working all that well at the time, so it took me a while to figure out what was happening. Anyway, after that I was able to move a bit more — so I got myself up and followed the signs to the cafeteria, because I was hungry.

“In the cafeteria, I just walked up to the line, took some food, and sat down. The cashier asked me for money, but I was starving and I asked him to let me pay later, but I was acting all flirty, like a girl on the make, and it just came naturally to me, as if a whole … life had been grafted onto me. I know what my damned bra size is, for example, even when my body changes, which it does, depending on who’s looking at me, and I know what color eyeshadow would look hot on me, and how to coördinate my lipstick, and rouge, and … everything, instinctively, like you might grab a baseball out of the air if someone threw it at you. Anyway, he got this glazed expression and repeated back what I had said to him in a monotone. He ignored me from then on, even when I went back for seconds, thirds, and so on. Several clusters of people gathered watching me eat, and eat, and eat. I ate more than I would normally eat in a month and was still hungry. The food wasn’t satisfying me, but there seemed to be a trickle of something — I’ve since figured out that it must have been sexual energy — coming from the crowd, because there were quite a few guys who were sort of putting the make on me, carrying over new stuff from the cafeteria line and stuff, but it didn’t bother me for some reason, even when they rubbed up against me — which felt pretty good, now that I think about it — and that finally filled me enough to stop eating.” Caught up in the tale of her death and rebirth, Jackie didn’t realize that tears were streaming down her face.

“Then what?” Frank gently prompted and handed Jackie a loose napkin that had been lying on the floor by his chair from a previous pizza feast.

“Then I went back to my room to try and find some clothes — until then I’d been wearing nothing but a standard-issue hospital gown….”

“You went traipsing around a hospital in a hospital gown looking like you do?” George interjected, always the practical one. “It’s amazing you weren’t groped in the hallway.”

“I’ll get back to you about appearances. Suffice to say, I think each of us has a different image of what I look like.” The other two looked puzzled. Jackie saw their expressions and sighed.

“Fine. We’ll do that first. Frank could you hand out some paper and pens. I’d like each of you to write down what you see when you look at me. You know, the obvious: gender, hair color, clothing, physical attributes.”

They all concentrated on their papers for a while, and then Jackie waited while the other two scribbled.

“Good. Now George, would you please read each description?”

George cleared his throat. “I’ll read mine first. ‘Female, about twenty years of age, blonde, well built, about five foot six inches tall, fantastic blue eyes, wearing a pale blue tank top and cut off jeans so short they should be illegal.’ I drew a picture too.” He held it up, and it was a pretty decent portrait of a buxom young woman, obviously blonde, although it was just a pencil sketch, and with light eyes that obviously represented blue

Jackie watched Frank listen incredulously, then look at George’s drawing. “You’d better read Frank’s now.”

“Okay,” George agreed and shuffled papers. “Frank wrote, ‘Female, about twenty years of age, black hair, well built, about five foot ten inches tall, green eyes….’ ” His voice faded away in confusion.

“That’s what I expected,” Jackie sighed. “Please finish reading, George.”

George hesitated, but then continued. “Wearing a red lycra mini dress.” He looked at Frank like he was crazy.

“He’s not crazy, George” Jackie sighed and gently reached out a hand to comfort him only to jerk it back at the last moment for fear of doing to him what she had done to the orderly at the hospital. With yet another sigh, she said, “Now read mine, please.”

George nodded and shuffled papers again. “Male, about twenty years of age, light brown hair, slight pot belly, about six-foot one-inch tall, brown eyes, wearing a dark blue Ærosmith tee-shirt and faded blue jeans. Jackie, this just isn’t possible,” George declared and waved the papers in the air.

“I’m afraid it is, and it isn’t exactly what I’d thought I could do at first. I seem to be able to do several things. I made a list, based on my experiences so far and what I could glean from my textbooks.” She pulled a folded paper out of one of her textbooks and read.

“One: I feed off sexual energy.”

“Two: I can control other people’s minds to make them do what I want, more or less.”

“Three: At first I thought that I could take on any appearance at all, because I practiced for a while — after I came home — when I realized that I’d gotten myself dressed in my favorite ‘comfy clothes’ in an empty room. My first tries all had me as one kind of foxy girl or another, but by concentrating I could manage to look like Jack, or so I thought. You two have disabused me of the notion — which is too darned bad, because I’d thought that I’d solved all my problems, since I could go to classes, and drive, and maintain my normal life with hardly any effort ….” Her voice trailed off, and she pouted slightly, than shrugged and went on. “Anyway, I can appear as almost any female shape to others, usually whatever they themselves consider the ideal woman, which I must do unconciously, because it happens by itself, but I can also control it to some degree, if I concentrate. The other person’s own desires and expectations can modify my … presentation, to some extent, especially if I’m not putting a lot of effort into maintaining the illusion, so that’s why I could make myself look male to me, at least for a short time, and why I looked a lot like both your own ‘ideal women,’ which is blonde for George, and dark for you, Frank. but then I slip back into a default female mode that looks a lot like your idea of me, Frank, and I guess like my own former notion of what my ‘ideal woman’ was. I’ve already noticed that it’s getting hard to hold the illusion of being male, even to myself, because I don’t really want to be a guy anymore, so it’s just something I sort of half-way expect to be, but know that I’m not, like you might see a figure in a fun-house mirror maze and think for a minute that it was your own reflection, but then realize that it wasn’t. I’d guess I’ll be fully socialized in a more traditional orientation and expectation very soon, because guys look attractive to me now, and I’m starting to find it difficult to remember that I was ever a man. so I suspect that it’s built into the spell — or whatever it is that woman did — that turned me into what you see now.” She furrowed her brow slightly as she concentrated, and turned herself sequentially into a petite Chinese woman, then a Geena Davis look-alike at six feet tall, and then a reasonable facsimile of Grace Jones before flowing back to what they thought she looked like. What I can’t do — evidently — is change myself to look like any kind of male, except to myself, and even that ability is fading. My brain is already rewriting my childhood, so I can remember my favorite dolls now, and the dress I wore for my Senior Prom, which ought to feel a lot weirder than it does.” She looked puzzled for a while, then shrugged again. “What is, is. I’m not going to worry about what can’t be helped.”

“Four: I can disappear.” She demonstrated by flicking into invisibility and back again, as easily as blinking her eyes.

“Five: I can float through walls and I guess you could say I can fly, seeing as how I can control the speed and direction of my movement as I float.” She levitated herself until she was floating near the ceiling, but not too close, because she didn’t want to muss her hair.

“Six: I’m probably impervious to just about any type of pain or injury, as far as I know now. I’ll leave that to your imagination, though. I got that from my books, and I don’t trust them much further than I can throw them. With any occult work, there’s a lot of nonsense woven into what might be true, because people like certainty, and a Sorceror or High Magician who acts like a scientist and admits his ignorance doesn’t sell many books, or attract many students.”

“Seven: I think I can live just about forever, although there’s some reference to several angels sent to destroy demons like me. Their names are Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf, although the names vary slightly in different traditions.”

“Eight: Love, real love, is painful to me. I’m guessing that’s what I felt when those teenagers went at it. Anyway, love is the antithesis of what a succubus is about, lust, and I suspect other forms of magic could be painful and might be able to override my will.”

“Teenagers?” George asked. “What teenagers? I don’t remember you mentioning anything…”

“Sorry. It was on the way back to the dorms. I floated into an apartment and there were two teenagers. They went at it and I fed off their energy, which disgusted me, so I stopped. Then they went at it again and it was horribly painful. I’m guessing they fell in love and that’s what hurt so much. Anyway, nine: I’m supposed to have some type of control over animals, especially snakes.”

“Ten: I may have some type of control over, or affinity with, fire, although I’m not sure what. All I could find about that was that some descriptions of Lilith, the mother of all demons, describe her as being a woman from the navel up and fire from the navel down. I wonder, though, if that isn’t just an allusion to the fire in the loins some poets use to describe sexuality….” She drifted off into her own throughts again, then looked up at the two of them and offered a wry smirk. “See? That’s the trouble with scientists and scholars. No final answers and no pounding on pulpits, only lots of questions.”

“If there’s anything else, I haven’t been able to do it or find it in my research.” Jackie folded the paper and stuffed it back into the book. He waited for the others to speak.

Finally, George took the bull by the horns. “This has got to be some kind of elaborate joke. Magic doesn’t really exist. Succubæ don’t really exist. You can’t really be Jack Renfrew.” He turned to Frank. “Tell her, Frank. Tell her this is a crock.”

Jackie sat quietly waiting for the tirade to end. When Frank didn’t confirm his opinion, George finally sputtered to a halt and Jackie asked, “What do I need to do to convince you?”

“Prove yourself,” George blustered. “Do some of the things you say you can do.”

Jackie thought while George stewed and Frank waited patiently. “I’m already appearing to each of you as a different person and that hasn’t convinced you? I levitated and that didn’t convince you? I ran through changes on a handful of totally different ‘looks’ and that didn’t convince you? What do you want me to do, go find Saint Peter as a character witness?”

George shook his head no. “Stage magicians do that sort of stuff all the time. I want to see something hard.”

“Well, I guess I could float through the walls, or disappear and bring back a pizza or something, but you’d probably say it was another trick. Same if I were to let you drive a knife into me to show I can’t be hurt, and I’m not sure about that, so I won’t do it anyway. I don’t know about the fire or animals yet, so I’d rather not try something in that area. How about I give you an orgasm where you sit?”

“I’m so close now if you bent over and showed me a bit more of your tits or ass I’d be there. That won’t work.”

“If I were really as much of a girl as I think I’m becoming, I’d probably either be insulted or flattered,” Jackie noted as she smiled sardonically. “But as I’m not, let’s just say that I’m a tough-minded broad who can smack you on your ass if I feel like it, and anything I say about that would be unprintable. That means I need to bring out the big guns.”

Again she thought for a moment. “How about I make someone fall in lust with you? Frank maybe?”

“Not on your life,” George said. “I’m already wondering if he’s not in on this prank.”

Frank looked relieved. “Thanks, pal. I like you, but I’d prefer our friendship to remain on the other side of shaking hands, and I believe her. I’m convinced, and you’re just being a jerk.”

Privately, Jackie agreed, but George was her friend, so she wanted to cut him some slack. The ‘scientific method’ was very important to George, almost an article of faith, and whatever it was that she was, didn’t seem like science at all. “Well, I hate to bring some other unsuspecting victim into this, but I don’t see a choice. How about this? You name the person, any person, and I’ll have them here as soon as they can get here.”

“Anyone?”

“Anyone,” Jackie repeated, but then thought better of her blanket statement. “That is, anyone human who’s not some kind of magic user. I don’t know of any at this time, but if I can exist, I’ve got to believe they can too, and you can’t take advantage of them, whoever it is, since that wouldn’t be fair.”

“No problem. I’ll even make it easy for you. She’s right here in this dorm. Can you read my mind and tell me who I’m talking about?”

“I can’t read your mind without certain … consequences, although I could probably make you tell me and then forget you told me, which would seem like almost the same thing. The funny thing is, you’re so predictable, I don’t really think I need to read your mind anyway.” Jackie watched George cringe at the thought of having his mind controlled by someone else. He didn’t want to believe, but he was getting there.

“Let me guess. You’re probably thinking about Julie Danson. You’ve lusted after her since you first met, a year and a half ago, and it’s been killing you that she’s a lesbian.”

George nodded.

“You’re sure I can’t convince you some other way?”

“Not that I can think of.”

Jackie sighed. “I guess that’s it then? Will you really believe me if she walks up to the door to this apartment, knocks on it and then, when you open it, she seems glad to see you?”

“Not only will I believe,” George smirked, “I’ll be very relaxed.”

Another, even bigger sigh came from Jackie. “Very well, but you can’t take advantage of her. That wouldn’t be fair, and more than that, if you try it, I’m perfectly capable of draining you dry in five seconds flat, which will be an interesting start to a ‘date.’ Give me a few minutes. She’s still living downstairs, right?” George nodded and she faded out.

Less than five minutes later she was back. Reappearing behind George, who was still looking for some secret trick, mirrors or something, to explain her disappearance, she tapped him on the shoulder and, after he had jumped in shock, said, “Answer the door, George.” She sounded resigned and regretful.

“Why? No one’s knocked on it.”

With a frustrated glare at George for his stubbornness, Frank walked over to the door. Just as he reached it, there were several tentative knocks. When he opened it, Julie was standing there in a baby doll nightie. Her eyes feverishly scanned the room and, when she saw George, she smiled and lunged at him, giving him the biggest and best kiss he had ever received.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Five:
It was Never This Hard for Nancy Drew

The axe forgets what the tree remembers.
― African Proverb

George staggered out into the living room a bit after noon wearing nothing but jockey shorts and a tired smile. Frank and Jackie, relaxing on the couch watching television, both gave guilty starts and then greeted him.

“Way to go, jerk-face. Do you believe me now? You promised not to take advantage of her, asshole,” Jackie said angrily.

“Either you’re telling the truth, or that was one hell of a great dream.” George’s smile grew bigger, if that was possible.

“Where’s Julie?” Frank asked.

“She’s still sleeping. I must have really worn her out.” George dropped into the lounge chair in the living room and scratched himself absently, which ticked Jackie off.

“Yes, George. She’s still asleep. She’ll stay sleeping until we agree what to do about her.”

“Huh?”

“As it turns out, she didn’t need much persuading, because she already had a crazy crush on you, but thought that you were always busy with other women so you kept blowing her off. I presume that was you playing Mister Macho Man to impress her, which it did, but not the way you thought it did. What are you going to do about it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s under the impression that you’re deeply in love with her now, and formed the crazy scheme of having one of your ex-girlfriends visit her to inform her of your secret passion, so she thinks this is a serious, once-in-a-lifetime love affair that drove you to desperation, so I want to know, is it?”

“Hey! What business is this of yours?” he said.

“Cut it out, George” Frank interjected. “Jackie’s right. She’s only here because Jackie made her come here to prove herself to you, because you were being an asshole, and it sounds like Julie’s formed the impression that you set her up as a go-between, so Jackie’s asking if you’re prepared to follow through like a man.”

“True, but I didn’t force her to come here; Jackie did. I love her. I always have.” George seemed rather proud of his logic.

Frank bit his lip knowing that Jackie would have to respond to those comments and that it wasn’t going to be pretty. He was right. It only took her the time to take a deep breath.

“Okay, you horse’s ass. I know you love her. I had to get as far as possible from your bedroom because I couldn’t stand the pain of the pure unadulterated love in that room, but does she? I had to feed off Frank, but I’m feeling guilty about both things, because I may have meddled in some woman’s life in such a way that she could be hurt.”

Frank had blushed when she mentioned ‘feeding,’ but nodded to confirm that part of her statement.

His discomfort was not lessened by George’s “Way to go, horn dog.”

She glared at him with a look that could have blistered paint. “I’m warning you, George, if you treat her like dirt, I’ll have your ‘horn-dog’ ass in a sling for the next fifty years.”

George just smirked and said, “And what’s more, Miss Smarty-Pants, you don’t know everything, because she loves me too! So there!”

Jackie frowned and asked, “She loves you? How do you know? I shouldn’t be able to do that at all.”

“None-the-less, she does. She told me so last night, and you didn’t do it, so there! Just like I’ve been acting like a goofball, because I was afraid to tell her how I really felt, she’s been afraid to tell me how she felt, because I was acting as if I was such a hot stud that she felt intimidated, because she thought she’d never be able to measure up to the raving beauties she imagined I was having every night. I felt like a putz. She was trying to pretend that I was persona non grata because she was sure I’d just laugh at her. She wouldn’t talk to me because she thought I was being smug and condescending. She was always giggling to her girl friends when I was around because she was embarrassed. She never even dated any other guys. We all thought she was a lesbian.”

“It’s true.” Julie was leaning against the bedroom doorframe in the baby doll nightgown in which she had arrived earlier that morning. She sauntered over to George, dropped down into his lap and placed her arms around his neck possessively. “I don’t know how she knew it,” Julie gave a nod of her head in Jackie’s direction, “and I can’t imagine how she persuaded me to build up enough nerve to come up here and throw myself at you — especially when I’ve never even seen her before — but I’m glad I did and I do love you.”

She radiated love to the point that Jackie winced. Then she turned back to George and the glow was gone. She snarled and slapped him as hard as she could. “But that’s for even thinking I was a lesbian, and for being such a jerk.”

George was shocked. He reached up to rub his smarting cheek and said, “I sorry, baby, because I was a jerk. I was just as scared as you were. All that macho stud stuff was just the same as what you were doing, in a way. Ask either of these two. I have exactly zero ‘success’ with girls, so I pretended to be Mister Irresistible so I didn’t feel like such a failure, and with my luck, I figured you must be completely unavailable, because the only woman I really wanted would have to be. I’m very sorry. I should have stood up for myself and told you how I felt instead of acting like a stupid schmuck.”

Her anger faded as quickly as it had appeared and she gently took his hand in hers and kissed the already reddening cheek. “I know you are, Sweetie. Come to Mama so I can kiss it better.” She glared at Jackie with fierce protectiveness and said, “Did you guys really laugh at him?”

Frank answered first, embarrassed. “Well, not exactly, but we did tease him a bit,” he admitted, “because he was carrying such a torch for you and didn’t know what to do about it. I probably helped along his delusion, for which I apologize. I should have been more supportive, but I was having problems of my own at the time. You know how guys are, don’t you? In Grammar school we ride our bikes into walls to get the girl’s attention, then in high school we do stupid things with cars. ‘Goofball’ is sort of our default setting. It takes time to grow out of it.”

Jackie coughed politely to get everyone’s attention. “Gee, guys, it’s been really neat seeing as how everything is hunky-dory between you after all this angst, and I hate to be whiny, but could we talk about me now?”

Julie and George both glared at her, and even Frank rolled his eyes.

It took quite a while to convince Julie that Jackie used to be the guy she’d seen with Frank and George, but when she levitated for them, she started thinking that it was a possibility, and after she’d talked with her for about five minutes on their own, she admitted that no real girl could possibly be as stupid as she was, so she had to be a former guy.

Which brought them up to their present situation.

“What the heck are we doing here?” George muttered to himself. “We must be crazy.”

Julie and George were huddled behind a dumpster next to the rear entrance to Calaca E. Julie shivered from the unseasonably cold wind blowing through the alley and George stopped muttering and complaining long enough to unzip his coat and offer her the opportunity to huddle inside it with him to share the warmth. The plan was simple: Beard the demon in its own den, so to speak. Julie and George were out back, as near the back door as possible. Given that they were dealing with a creature that could become invisible and float through walls, their job was not so much to stop it as to encourage it to go in a different direction in order to avoid the pain of their “true love.” The hope was that the other direction would be one that would bring it closer to Jackie. In the meantime, Frank and Jackie were going in the front door. Frank, with his athlete’s body, was to act as Jackie’s escort and keep the human wolves away while Jackie tried to find her maker. The plan wasn’t all that great, but it was the best they’d been able to devise.

The first signs that the plan was coming undone came in the form of laughter and shouting from behind Julie and George. Turning, they saw a group of five tough-looking young men strutting down the alley toward them.

“They won’t see us here behind this dumpster,” George whispered hopefully to Julie.

“Sure. No problem.” Julie shivered again and huddled even closer to George.

“Hey, boys. Lookie here! Two darling little love birds. How precious!”

Julie yipped and jerked when the dumpster was suddenly pulled away and uncovered their hiding place.

“Hey, darlin’, give us a little kiss.” One of the men pointed to his cheek and made kissing sounds while the others laughed uproariously.

When there was no response he pointed to another part of his anatomy. “I said give me a kiss, cunt. Share the wealth, girlie.”

George stood up, flexing his muscles and stretching to his full five-foot eleven as he moved between Julie and the taunting men.

“Hey, guys. Get a load of Captain America! I’m shaking in my boots, man, but where’s your magic shield? And shouldn’t you be wearing shiny tights?” He sneered and the others snickered.

“Yeah, Macho Man here scares us all to death,” one said.

“We don’t want any trouble so why don’t you just go wherever you were going?” George struggled to keep his voice from cracking. He was not weak and he was not small, but he was only one man against five. Julie moved up behind him to clutch him for protection and that added to his worries as he tried to protect her too.

“So sorry, fairy boy. You found it. Now move out of the way and let your pretty little slut show us how good she is. If she’s really good we’ll even let you have sloppy seconds later.” They moved closer, beginning to circle their victims. Suddenly a knife appeared in the leader’s hand.

“Oh shit.” George had muttered the word so quietly even Julie hadn’t heard, but the leader must have, or at least guessed what he meant from his moving lips, because his sneer grew even broader. The gang began to close in.

Frank and Jackie pressed, apparently aimlessly, through the crowd in the nightclub. Frank was leading, but he was moving according to gentle guidance from behind as Jackie tried to sense and locate the faint traces of magic that might be the succubus that had created her. She hadn’t even known she could do it until she had glanced out the window of the car as they drove to the club and realized that every now and then there was a glow that should not have been there. When she had concentrated she had found that specific people and objects seemed to have the glow and wondered why. At first, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, but then it had come to her. It was a logical assumption, but there had been no time to prove it. She only hoped that her guess had been correct — that it was some kind of magic aura — because that hypothesis was now being put to the test as they meandered through the club looking for an aura similar to her own.

There was nothing. Jackie had seen more auras on the drive then in the club, some brighter than others and speculated that the brighter auras meant more power. They had swept the bar area and the dance floor without success. All that was left were the bathroom and the employee areas. With Frank waiting by the entry hall leading to the bathrooms and beyond, Jackie checked the ladies’ room. Still nothing.

“I’m going to check out the men’s room and then the employee areas. Wait here.”

Frank nodded and then blinked as she faded into invisibility. Seeing it happen made it no less unbelievable.

“I think we’re in trouble,” Julie whispered from behind George. If he had any doubt about her feelings, Julie’s fear could be felt in the death grip she had on George’s arm. The young Galahad carefully watched the men threatening them while he struggled to get Julie to release his arm long enough to remove his jacket without making her think he was abandoning her. He desperately wanted to have it wrapped around his arm as a protection against the knife the gang leader was brandishing.

The leader paused to encourage his troops. “It’s ‘pussy time’ guys! Watch my style!” They cheered and he turned back to the frightened couple, unbuttoning his Levis with one hand while he menaced them with the knife.

“Eep!” Julie squeaked as she unexpectedly backed into the wall as she retreated from his advance.

A woman’s voice, as low and sultry as a teenage boy’s wet dream, cut through the fear like a strong wind. “Oooh! Just look at that huge knife. Oh my, you must be a brave one. Is that supposed to make up for what you lack below?” The entire gang stopped advancing on the couple and turned as one toward the new voice. Jackie was posed enticingly against the back door, the unshielded fixture above the frame casting bold shadows down her front that highlighted her more-than-ample ‘headlights.’ Her arms were held languidly above her head, as if she were cooling off after heavy exertion, and her breasts thrust out provocatively in a pose straight out of a girlie magazine. You could even see the extra shadow that molded her prominent nipples, as if she were … excited. George thought he saw a faint glow as she smiled at the gang members, most of whom were transfixed by her allure.

“Just stay there, bitch, and we’ll take care of you next. Paul, Mike, get that bitch and hold her while Arty and Al help me take care of these two.”

“No problem, Ricky.” The two gang-members closest to Jackie shook themselves, and then rapidly closed on her. Each grabbed one of her arms — and instantly collapsed with matching grunts as they ejaculated in their pants and fell unconscious.

“What the hell?” Arty’s exclamation grabbed the others attention and they again stopped advancing on George and Julie as they turned to see what had happened to their associates.

Jackie stepped daintily over the fallen men. “Yum, yum. They were tasty tidbits, although I’m glad I didn’t actually have to touch them. What’s the matter, boys? Am I too hot for you? Can’t you handle a real woman?”

“Arty, Al, get that bitch,” he growled, “and hurt her.”

Jackie just smiled. Al waved his stiletto menacingly, but drew back in surprise and confusion when Jackie just kept swaying closer, her hips moving in a slow dance that promised instant bliss and a lifetime of pleasure. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as he muttered, “Shit, man. She’s some kind of crazy witch.”

Arty shrugged, and started unbuttoning his fly. Crazy or not, this was one hot broad and he intended to have a piece of her tail.

They lunged as one — and fell through the space Jackie had been occupying. Jackie appeared behind them. “Peek-a-boo, boys,” she called out as she reached out and daintily touched each boy with just the tip of one finger, then took a tissue from between her breasts and fastidiously cleaned her hand and threw the tissue in the dumpster while the boys collapsed, almost like the first two, except that they spent a few moments jerking their hips against the pavement as if they were tying to ram their cocks right into the concrete before they too lost consciousness.

Ricky watched in shock as his gang was incapacitated before his eyes. Then he heard a male voice behind him. “Uhm, excuse me.” Ricky turned back to his original victims with a puzzled expression on his face, which lasted only for an instant before George’s fist slammed into it with all the power of an outraged male athlete. He was unconscious before he hit the pavement, and managed to lose two front teeth in the process.

“Thanks for the help, Jackie.” George turned and enfolded Julie in his arms as she shivered in reaction to her terror. “How’d you know we needed the help?”

“It was weird. I was just about to check the dressing rooms when your glow disappeared.” She paused for a moment. “Oh, did I tell you I can see your love as a golden glow?” She saw their blank looks. “Guess not. Anyway, it seems I see these auras around things. Lust comes out as a reddish glow, love comes off as a golden glow, magic is a pale blue and demons like me are various shades of black.”

“What about the other succubus?” Julie asked.

“I haven’t found her yet.”

“Ah, actually, you have.” A sensual voice from off to one side caused the others to turn as one.

“Déjà vu all over again,” George muttered. Lilith was posing just as Jackie had, by the stage door, and looked, if anything, even more alluring.

“Well, well. I haven’t seen a sister in decades,” the new succubus said as she floated closer to Jackie staring at her. Suddenly, her voice was no longer friendly, “What are you doing here?”

George and Julie glanced at each other. “I guess we’ll be leaving now,” George suggested, as he kept himself between the two demons and Julie. Walking backward, he tried to slowly back out of the alley while Lilith and Jackie warily assessed each other.

“So why are you hunting in my domain?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to find you.”

“Why?” the succubus asked. She stepped back and assumed a crouching defensive stance.

Just as they backed around the corner, leaving the alley for the main street, George and Julie heard Jackie answer, “Because, I think, somehow, I’m your daughter.”

“So what did she say?” Frank sat on the apartment couch beside Jackie, his arm around her shoulders, stroking her neck and shoulder as he gently tried to pull her closer to him.

“She said, my research was pretty good and my guesses about magic auras were even better,” Jackie explained as she shifted position so that Frank was rubbing her shoulder instead of her breast. She had long since stopped trying to keep him from touching her, realizing that he couldn’t help himself. No matter how hard she tried to turn off her sexual magnetism, a lot still seeped out, so Frank really couldn’t be blamed for his attentions, and Jackie had to admit that it felt … good to have him near and touching her. She tried not to suck up his sexual energy, not wishing to treat him as she had the thugs last night. “If I live long enough, I’ll probably even learn enough to do some magic.”

Frank kissed her lightly on the head and Jackie squirmed uncomfortably. George and Julie were in George’s bedroom and there was no question in Jackie’s mind what they were doing. She wished they would stop or she might have to take a walk until they were done. “She also told me to watch out for Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf, because they couldn’t be trusted.”

“Huh?” Frank stopped nuzzling Jackie for a moment. “Who are they?”

“They’re the angels I mentioned earlier, sent by God to destroy Lilith’s demonic children….”

“I thought succubi were demons?”

“Slow down,” Jackie pleaded with a sigh. “Let me tell the story at my own pace.” Frank nodded and started nibbling her ear.

“When God created man, he also created Lilith, Adam’s first wife, although the names vary in different cultures. Eve was his second wife. Did you know that Cain and Abel weren’t actually brothers? They were only step-brothers?”

Frank shook his head.

“Cain’s mother was Lilith, and he was born before they left the Garden, but Abel’s mother was Eve, so he was born after the Fall. Lilith was made from the same earth that Adam had been made from, at the same time, so there was none of that ‘I was here first!’ or ‘You were made from my rib!’ for Adam to brag about, and Lilith was apparently the world’s first ‘liberated woman.’ ” She thought for only an instant before adding, “First woman, period, but also liberated. She refused to be subservient to Adam, which was sort of contrary to what God had in mind at the time, or at least what Adam expected from her. Lilith’s nose is still a bit bent out of joint about it, and she becomes angry whenever Adam appears in the conversation, so I’m not exactly clear what went down, but evidently Adam thought that her proper rôle in life was as his bedmate and household servant. Lilith disagreed. When Adam tried to force her to obey him, she thumbed her nose at him and then at God, when they both tried to make her act like the supportive ‘little woman.’ There were words spoken and rather than risk being turned into a pillar of salt, she fled. God sent three angels as emissaries to reason with her and get her to return to Adam, but they failed, since by that time she had a new boyfriend, Samael, the Angel of Death, who evidently had all the right moves, to hear Lilith tell it, and wasn’t nearly the idiot that Adam was besides.” Jackie shrugged, momentarily pushing Frank’s hand away. It was creeping towards her breast again.

“Anyway, instead of going back to Adam, Lilith just bugged out and did a lot of begetting, some with angels, and some with a magical race called the Djinni — who were sort of like angels, I think — the Bible left out a lot of stuff, and kept what the compilers thought were ‘the good parts’ — anyway, the Djinni were doing some special projects in a nearby part of the world — the folks that were later known as the genies of Middle Eastern lore, although they have many names in many different places.” Jackie shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. George and Julie must be thinking especially romantic thoughts in the other room. Frank hugged her even more closely and Jackie had to admit that it felt kind of good, now that she had learned how to control her hunger so that she didn’t suck the masculinity out of every male who touched her. Of course there would always be a link between them, now that he had touched her, although Lilith had been rather vague about what that meant. Jackie had formed the distinct impression that Lilith really didn’t care, and thought about men with the same friendly disinterest as a poultry farmer thought about his chickens. As long as they were useful, well and good. If they stopped being useful, well, there were other ways for poultry to pay for their keep.

“So?”

She started, realizing that she’d stopped talking. Frank’s caresses did feel awfully nice. “Oh, sorry. I must have been daydreaming. Anyway, Lilith had thousands — maybe millions — of little demon babies over the years, just to piss off God. Did I tell you she’s also called the Mother of All Demons? Apparently God wasn’t taking his Prozac with any regularity back then, and he was really pissed off about Lilith flipping him off, so he gave the three angels he’d sent to reason with her a different job. They had to kill all Lilith’s children — children like me.”

“Why? Why are you leaving?” Frank was beside himself as he watched Jackie sort through the few possessions she had worth taking. It was down to his class ring and a couple of photographs in which George and Frank were prominently portrayed. George and Julie were in class, apart for one of the few times they had to endure each other’s absence during the day. They were already making plans for a wedding after the spring semester ended.

“We’ve gone over this, Frank. I can’t stay here. Being around those two turtledoves is becoming increasingly painful. In addition, the longer I stay, the more likely I am to slip and suck you dry. I don’t want to hurt my best friends and I much prefer you as you are, rather than as my new gal pal.” There was moisture around Jackie’s eyes and she kept her face turned away from Frank as she spoke.

“If you leave, you’ll be alone. Stay here and we can help you.”

“Against angels?”

“You believe all that crap Lilith fed you?”

“Look at me.” Jackie wearily posed before Frank. “What do you see?”

“My friend.”

“No really. What do you see?”

“A beautiful raven-haired woman who’s about five-foot seven-inches tall, my favorite look, by the way.”

“Wearing?”

“A white, form-fitting sweater dress, and you look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Jackie spun around once. “And now what do you see?”

“A five-foot two-inch brunette with hair half way down her back, brown eyes,” he squinted, “or are they hazel?”

“But is it still me?”

“Sure? By the way, nice sweats.”

“So how did I do that?”

“Do what?”

“Stop it!” A dainty foot stomped. “You know what I mean. How can I be two different people?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think you are. You’re just a girl who likes matching outfits, and it doesn’t cost anything, so why not?”

“Yes, you do. Say it.” Jackie crossed her arms and waited petulantly.

“Oh, all right,” Frank sighed. He understood her point, but even this brief refusal to accept the obvious kept her with him a few more moments. “It was magic.”

“Correct. Give the man a cigar.” Jackie smiled and dropped back down onto the couch. “Now if that’s magic, can you accept that I might be a demon?”

Frank was silent for several seconds before answering. “I … I guess you might be slightly demonish, Jackie, but no, not a real demon, not you. You’re too nice. You didn’t even kill those creeps who were threatening our two lovebirds with rape and mayhem, and no court in the land would have blamed you. Hell, the police probably would have given you a medal. Instead, they all of them got off for their trouble — well, except for the one George belted — which is exactly what they’d wanted to do, just not quite as painfully as it actually transpired, and certainly not ending with being hauled off to jail for attempted rape, felony possession of big honking knives, assault, gang activity, and coercion later. I can’t manage to work up any sympathy for them. Smooth move, by the way, ‘persuading’ the cops that you knew Karate, and that they ‘didn’t need to see your ID.’ You stole that line from Star Wars, didn’t you?”

Jackie blushed. “Yes,” she admitted. “But what about angels?”

Frank gave a deep sigh and a grudging answer, “Well, I guess so, but they actually sound like creeps to me — what with picking on girls and all — and much badder citizens than you, so maybe they’re the real demons.”

“Angels who hunt demons, or demons who hunt me, what difference does it make? I’m not paranoid if there really are people out to get me.”

“All right already. You’ve made your point. Not that I have to accept it when it means you’ll want to leave.”

“Thank you, Frank. I’ll always appreciate your friendship. But then you understand why I need to leave.” Jackie stood to return to her old bedroom to finish picking out what to take with her but Frank grabbed her hand and pulled her back down onto the couch.

“No. I understand that you need help and we can help you. You remember help? It’s what friends do.” Suddenly there was a ravening beast slavering over him and he yelped as he rolled off the couch onto the floor.

When the beast didn’t follow he regained a bit of his composure. “Funny. Very funny. You’re shedding on the couch.”

By the time he had gotten to his feet, she was the blonde again. Before he could return to his seat she was in front of him, lifting him off his feet and holding him above her head with her left hand. “What can you do to stop an angel? I can lift you with just one hand. I can walk through walls. I can suck the life out of you without even trying.” She gently put him down and he slumped onto the couch as she began crying. “Damn it, whenever you’re near, I have to make a conscious effort not to hurt you. What can you do to help — against angels — angels who probably have enough power to make my puny abilities seem less than an ant’s?” She dropped down beside him, head in hands, sobbing by now. “Can’t you understand?” she managed to choke out, “you are my friend, my very best friend and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

His hand gently stroked her cheek and she jerked back as if bitten. “But I love you, and I will do whatever I can to help you and protect you.”

“It’s you.” She jumped to her feet and back away from him in shock and pain. “The pain. I thought it was the link with George and Julie, but it’s you. You … you … love me.” She gave out a cry of anguish, then turned and ran to her bedroom, locking the door behind her. Frank could hear her crying on the bed, but she wouldn’t respond to his pleas to open the door and talk to him. After an hour, he dejectedly went to bed himself.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Six:
All You Need is Love

It is necessary to have wished for death
in order to know how good it is to live.
― Alexandre Dumas Père

No matter what the bus companies say about how clean, well-lit, and safe their terminals are; they lie. They’re always in crummy locations, which ensures that the neighbors are lowlifes, so it’s hard to say whether the bus station brings down the tone of the neighborhood or the neighborhood brings down the tone of the bus station. This one had garbage overflowing the lone wastebasket, assorted newspaper sections scattered about on the benches and floor and, to show it was a high-class terminal, only two bums sleeping it off in opposing corners. A third of the lights were out and several more flickered as if trying to join their striking comrades. Other people had been in and out of the terminal, but at the moment, aside from a very bored ticket clerk, the only other people present were a young couple quietly, but fiercely, arguing over something in another corner.

It was after midnight and Jackie was sitting on a bench in the corner by the now closed newsstand, looking as prim and proper as she could in order to minimize the pickup attempts. However, she couldn’t help the fact that she was stunningly beautiful, so she’d already been propositioned five times in the half hour she had been waiting for a bus, any bus. She hadn’t noticed the hunger when she was back with her friends, but now it was back. The hunger was back and it was so strong that she worried that she might not be able to control it soon. If a bus failed to arrive shortly, Jackie was afraid she might accept the offer of the next man to wander over from one of the nearby bars and proposition her. From what she managed to pick from their muddled brains, they were foolishly looking for a slightly cleaner bathroom.

She hated leaving her friends, but was convinced it was best for them. She knew if she remained they would do their best to protect her, no matter how much their loving efforts to help pained her or put them at risk. If the angels failed to get them, Jackie was afraid she would harm them herself. When he had touched her check as they sat on the couch in the dorm earlier that evening, she had told him it was his love that was hurting her, but it had been more than that. She had felt her power welling up inside her, preparing itself to jump out and engulf her friend, preparing to consume his very essence.

Another few minutes and a bus would be arriving, according to the posted schedule, assuming it was on time. Jackie offered a silent prayer to whatever God or Demon King was responsible for her kind, “Please be on time. Please.”

She was so intent on her prayers she missed the tall, well-dressed man who sat next to her until he spoke. “Hungry?”

“Huh?” Jackie snapped back into awareness as she warily examined her new companion, wondering if he was going to try to pick her up too. She guessed he was in his early sixties, based on his flowing white hair, but his face was smooth and he looked to be in excellent shape under his winter coat.

“I asked if you were hungry.” His eyes flickered downward and when Jackie looked, he had an apple held out in his hand.

Jackie stared blankly at the proffered fruit for several moments before responding, hoping he would take the hint and leave her alone. “No, thank you.”

“The name’s Sam. Samuel Ngelaf. Or Father Sam, as some call me. Ngelaf is Middle Eastern, in case you’re wondering.” The apple was gone, but the hand was still there, waiting for her to shake it. Jackie tensed, afraid she might slip if she touched him. Finally, with a deep sigh, she hesitantly offered her hand and his hand engulfed hers, but his grip was remarkably gentle and warm. It felt… comforting. He smelled nice too, a grandfatherly mixture of mild pipe tobacco and the faintest whiff of bay rum. She could imagine him in a rocker by a fire, telling some child a story, acting out all the parts with warmth and good humor.

“Jackie … Jackie Renfrew.”

“I’m on my way to Coxsackie,” Father Sam continued affably. “It’s the next bus. How about you?”

The voice was so warm and friendly, Jackie felt compelled to respond. “I’m on that bus too.”

“Oh, good. It will be nice to have some company. Sometimes, when I make this run, I’m the only person on the bus besides the driver.”

Jackie said nothing.

“I’m on my way back from visiting family here. Normally, I live at the Jesuit monastery a couple of miles outside of town.”

Jackie remained silent.

“You’re running away, aren’t you, my child.” It was a statement rather than a question, as if he could read her mind.

“What?” Jackie’s shock was evident in her voice and face, but also by the way she drew in on herself. “What do you mean?”

“Why, exactly what I said. You seem to be running away from something, or someone.” He examined her face carefully. “No, make that both something and someone.”

She glared at him and started to say something….

…But he held his hand up to stop her before she denied his allegations. “Please, my child, no lies, and don’t say anything you’ll regret later. We both know my observations are factual. Of more importance is why and what to do about it. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Thank you for the offer … Father, was it?” Jackie looked for a sign to determine what to call him but neither a correction nor an acknowledgment was forthcoming, merely benign interest. “But I don’t think I can do that.”

The silence continued, growing and becoming uncomfortable. “Excuse me. I need to go to the bathroom,” Jackie blurted out as she jumped out of her seat and ran off. At the bathroom door she debated continuing on past it and into the street where she could try hitching a ride, but for some reason she decided she didn’t want to do anything that would end up causing her statements to Father Sam, or whoever he was, to be a lie.

With brownish black ooze covering a good portion of the floor and part of one wall, the bathroom was even worse than the waiting area, almost unbelievably rank and foul. It had an odor that seemed to reflect the worst of bleach and several bodily secretions. The stall doors were missing, the mirror had more graffiti than reflective surface, and Jackie was afraid to get close enough to the toilets to examine them more thoroughly. Rushing out the bathroom door and slamming it shut behind her, Jackie leaned against a nearby wall of lockers and feverishly sucked in the slightly fresher air of the waiting room. She shuddered, but it was as much in response to the unwelcome images of what the bathrooms in the local bars must be like, if these were any example of the local notions of hygiene, and if even drunks came here expecting them to be cleaner.

“Attention please. Adirondack Excursions bus number fifty-one from Montreal has arrived and is disembarking now. All passengers please report to the departure gate. Bus number fifty-one will be departing for Glens Falls, Saratoga, Albany and points south in ten minutes.” With a shrug of resignation Jackie moved to stand by the small counter beside the gate while several bedraggled people disembarked from the bus and straggled past to quickly disappear into the darkness.

“Still running, my child? Is there nothing you’ll let me do to help you?” Jackie jumped and then blushed in embarrassment because she hadn’t realized that the Father was standing in line behind her. He’d said he was taking this bus, so why she was surprised she couldn’t say.

“Please, Father. I’m doing what I must.”

“And what does he think about your decision?”

“He?” Jackie was perplexed.

“Isn’t there a boy involved?” Father Ngelaf asked with a conspiratorial smile and a wink.

“There was.” Jackie smiled unhappily, but she was technically accurate, having been born male.

“Not yourself, my child. I meant your… friend.”

Jackie’s carefully-schooled poker face slipped into obvious panic as she frantically wondered, “How did he know? What else does he know? Who is this guy?” She frantically reviewed her interactions with the strange cleric, trying to figure out what she might have said or done to expose herself. Almost as an afterthought she checked for magical auras and was blinded by the white glow surrounding the Father. What was he? Fearful of being this close to anyone with this much magical power, Jackie backed away. She stumbled into the counter, then blindly ran towards the door, but only made it another two steps before slamming head first into someone. They both fell to the ground and Jackie scrambled to get up, panicking even more when she felt hands grasping her and holding her so she could not stand or flee. In a flash of insight, she remembered that she was a magical creature herself and tried to float through the hands of the person holding her and out of the building, but found she couldn’t do that either.

Jackie was ready to scream in fear when she heard Father Sam say, “Be at ease, my child,” and a wave of serenity washed over her. “You have only yourself to fear.”

“And that’s more than enough,” she retorted angrily. Then, looking around, Jackie realized who was holding her. “What are you doing here, Frank?” she asked as she slowly untangled herself from her ex-roommate.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question?” Frank asked from his position beneath Jackie. “Oof!” Jackie’s hand accidentally pressed on his stomach as she tried again to stand up. Suddenly a large hand was under Jackie’s arm, gently but forcefully lifting her to her feet.

“Thanks.” She watched as the Father next offered Frank a hand, lifting him to his feet as easily as if he were a child’s balloon.

Frank grunted and nodded his thanks before rounding on Jackie. “Why are you running away? I thought we were your friends.”

“You are and that’s why I’m leaving, before you get hurt,” Jackie responded with a sigh, tears of frustration welling up. She realized she had been sighing a lot lately, crying a lot too. “We’ve talked about this….”

“And you were the only one who thought you should leave.” Frank was angry, and his voice held an edge of frustration and betrayal.

Jackie was panicking, and raised her voice to try and impress on him how important it was that she leave before someone got hurt. “And I’m the only one who knows how much you’re both at risk. I don’t want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you!”

“But you,” Frank said with some heat, “seem to be the only one who thinks you ought to run out on your friends because of it. Don’t we have a say in what we want to do?”

“Children?”

They both stopped talking and looked at Father Ngelaf questioningly.

“Excuse me, but this is a private conversation,” Frank said and took Jackie’s arm to lead her away.

“No, my son. No loud conversation occurring in the middle of a bus station is private and this one seems to meet both of those conditions,” he noted with a broad wave of his hand at their surroundings. “Why don’t we take a seat over here and discuss this. Maybe I can be of some help.”

When they didn’t move he came around and gently but firmly pushed them over to some benches near the building’s two vending machines. Not sure why, they both moved as he guided them to the seats without objecting.

“Now, my children,” he began, after they’d cleared the trash away enough to sit, “What seems to be the problem?”

Frank and Jackie looked questioningly at each other wondering what the other was thinking. Finally Jackie shrugged and looked down. Frank took a deep breath and began. “Father? Is that what we should call you?”

“Why don’t we avoid fancy titles? Call me Sam,” he offered and waited expectantly.

“Fine, Sam. I don’t think this is something you can help with.” Turning to Jackie he continued. “What do you think?”

“Yeah. I guess so. I don’t know. Oh, heck. Tell him. There’s something about him that makes me think maybe he can. It can’t hurt.”

Frank debated for more than a minute before offering his dubious response. “Okay … if you think so.” He glanced over that the Father. “But I’m pretty damn — er, darn — sure you’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me, my son. Start at the beginning and I promise not to interrupt until you’re done.”

True to his word, the cleric never opened his mouth once while Frank explained, initially alone, but shortly with asides from Jackie and finally with her doing most of the speaking while Frank listened. When they were finally done, they both sat cautiously watching and waiting — for laughter, condemnation, they knew not what.

“A fascinating tale.”

“But?” Jackie nodded her agreement with Frank’s anticipation of censure.

“No ‘buts’,” he said simply. “Just fascinating.”

“You believe it?”

“Most of it.”

“Ah ha!” They both said, glancing knowingly at each other. “What part don’t you believe?” Jackie added. “The existence of magic? Succubæ? That I used to be a man? What?”

“No, actually I believe all of that.” His benign smile was beginning to irk Jackie.

“You do? Right,” the sarcasm dripped from Frank’s words. “And I suppose you also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy?”

“Well, Santa Claus anyway. I’ve never met the Tooth Fairy.”

Frank stared back and forth at the two people before him, first at Jackie and then at the Father. Finally, he threw up his hands and glared at Jackie. “Where do you find these guys? He’s crazy as a bed bug.” Standing, he tugged at Jackie’s sleeve, trying to drag her back to the dorm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.” Jackie took Frank’s hand and gently pulled him back down onto the bench beside her. “I believe him. He’s got an aura of magic around him.”

“You noticed.” Sam’s smile grew even larger. “Let me introduce myself, but first, let me promise you that you have nothing to fear from me.”

When he was not interrupted he continued. “My full name is Samuel Adolphus Ngelaf these days, but many thousands of years ago I was known as Semangelaf.”

Jackie gasped and tried to cower back into the bench. A moment later, a confused Frank also gasped as her hand squeezed his painfully. Her eyes began fearfully darting about, looking for a way to escape from the angel assigned to kill demons like her while Frank, finally catching on, moved immediately to place himself between Jackie and the cleric.

“I see you’re better read than most, but please,” he raised a hand and Jackie flinched, waiting for lightening or something to engulf her, “I told you that you have nothing to fear from me and I meant it. Yes, you understand part of my rôle in the world, but please allow me to allay your friend’s suspicion and fear on your behalf.”

Jackie nodded in resignation, knowing she was merely postponing the inevitable and wondering if it was normal for angels to show such sadistic streaks.

“I am, in fact, an angel. I’m one of three assigned by our Master to destroy the demon spawn of Lilith, Mother of all demons.”

“Run!” Frank lunged toward him, or at least he tried. About three feet from the angel, Frank found himself slowing and before he had gone another foot he was stationary, floating in the air between Jackie and the angel.

“I must say I’m disappointed in your lack of trust. After all, I am a representative of your Creator and we angels are known for our honesty…. Well, most of us. May I suggest you listen to me as patiently as I did for you while you were telling your story?” Frank found himself floating back to his seat where Jackie grabbed him protectively.

“You have part of the story correct. Lilith was Adam’s first wife. She did leave him, and although she did return after listening to the entreaties of my brethren and I to return, she left again shortly thereafter, but that was her perfect right under the doctrine of free will. I think that she and Adam could have worked out their differences, given a little more patience, but they were both angry and — if you’ll pardon the observation — the most obnoxious pair of self-righteous jerks you were ever likely to meet, although I have to confess that Adam was the worst offender. Poorly-socialised, the two of them, which I suppose wasn’t entirely their fault, since there wasn’t any society to be part of at the time. If it had been up to me, I would have given Adam a slap upside the head, as they say, and paddled her little behind, but that’s all water under the bridge. She decided to pursue a career as the Mother of all Demons, who started making themselves a nuisance immediately, so Sanvi, Sansavani, and I were assigned to destroy the most egregious of her abominations, but you’ll notice, I’m sure, that the order didn’t include her, and she’s been around a lot longer that you have, my dear, roughly a million years or so, since true humanity emerged from the great web of life.” He nodded at Jackie. “Lilith is merely a sinner, albeit an immortal one, and may yet repent. She’s been granted an eternity — or as near to it as makes no matter — to do so, and quite frankly, when I see how she’s behaved toward you, I think our long wait may be nearly over. Well, relatively-speaking. After waiting for a million years or more, a few more millennia are no trouble at all, the blink of an eye, more or less.”

“Attention please,” the speaker suddenly crackled into life. “Last call for bus number fifty-one for Glens Falls, Saratoga, Albany and points south. Bus number fifty-one now departing.”

“As I was saying,” the angel continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “We were assigned to destroy all of Lilith’s demon children, but that does not include you, Jackie, nor even Lilith, despite her nasty temper.” Reading their expressions was easy. Jackie was incredulous while Frank was cautiously hopeful.

“I see I must explain further. I’ve always liked Aristotle. He was an amazing teacher with a nice sense of humor too. We’ll use his method. Okay, Jackie?”

She jerked as if bitten, but then nodded.

“When we first met, were you feeling, shall we say, ‘hungry?’”

Another nod.

“But I offered you an apple. May we assume it was not food you craved?”

“No. It wasn’t food,” she said with irritation.

“When you were back at your dorm, were you hungry then?”

Jackie considered carefully, before answering. “No. No, I wasn’t hungry.”

“Are you hungry now?”

“No, but I don’t see where this is going.”

“Have you, ah … taken nourishment since you were at the dorm?”

“No! I refuse to hurt other people because of what I’ve become.” Jackie was indignant. “Now what’s the point of these questions? I have a bus to catch.”

“No, you don’t!” Frank blurted the words out. He grabbed her hand. “I love you. You can’t leave.”

Jackie flinched, expecting a wave of pain, not a little shocked by the meaning of the words she had just heard from one of her best friends. An instant latter she realized that she was not feeling any pain and was even more confused.

“Confused, my child? Don’t be. Everything is as it should be. Not to be flippant, but as Pangloss said to Candide, ‘Dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles, tout est au mieux,’ everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds.”

Jackie thought furiously. She should be starving, but she wasn’t. She should be in pain, but she wasn’t. She should be getting the hell out of here before she hurt someone, but she wasn’t. She should be punching that damned angel in the face to get rid of his smug knowing smile, but she didn’t. There had to be a reason, an explanation. Was something different? Frank was present and there was a link. Could it be that she’d been feeding off him without realizing it? That must be it. She was sucking her best friend dry. Now she really had to get away, but before she could rise there was a hand on her shoulder, the angel’s.

“No, my child, you don’t quite have the answer yet, because you’re not thinking straight. There’s a lot of your mother in you.” He smiled. His hand gently pushed her back into a seated position despite her efforts. She even tried to become insubstantial but couldn’t accomplish even the most basic magical action.

“Let her go!” That was Frank, his hand over the angel’s hand trying to pry it away. Suddenly Jackie felt a wave of magic and wondered what the angel had done since she was still alive. Then she saw Frank’s hand returning to his lap as he sat quietly beside her. Only his eyes revealed his panic.

“That’s twice you’ve attempted to interfere with a duly-authorized representative of your Creator in the performance of his duties.” His voice was very stern. “I will not permit a third such attempt. Now you will sit quietly and avoid being stupid until I permit otherwise.”

Semangelaf turned his gaze back to Jackie, but before he continued she spoke with tears welling up. “Please. If you’re going to destroy me, do it already. Just leave Frank alone.”

“So close and yet so far,” he sighed. “I’ve told you both several times; I’m not here to destroy you. I’m not here to harm you in any way. I am here to enlighten you and offer you a new career choice, so to speak.”

“But that’s your job isn’t it, to destroy demons?”

“Yes, my child, but you are not a demon, only a succubus, for now, and not even a very bad one.” He waited while the thought percolated through Jackie’s confused and frightened brain.

“But that’s impossible. What else could I be? I’ve been drained of life by a demonic succubus and then become a similar demon who floats through walls, sees magical auras, and sucks the sexual energy out of men. Isn’t that the definition of a succubus? It’s certainly what Lilith said I was.”

“You’ve become, like me, and like Lilith, a creature of magic who floats through walls, sees magical auras, and has a duality of nature that you don’t seem to understand. You must choose the path you follow, whether it be away from the light and into darkness or toward the light. Should you choose the darkness, you can indeed live as a bad succubus, a vile creature who preys upon the sexual energy of others, the ultimate prick-teaser, something like Lilith on her very worst days. If you go that route, you’ll be the quintessential “one night stand’ who leaves her partners drained but never gives anything in return, leaving all their hopes unfulfilled, and their lives blighted. But it is a choice. Even Lilith is not just the Mother of Demons, she’s also the Mother of Dryads, Naiads, Nereids, and all the other guardian spirits of places and things all around the world. She also an entertainer of considerable skill; you’ve seen her dance, so you know well how alluring she can be, and how exciting. You might think of her as a Muse as well as a Siren. If she sometimes lures men to their deaths, she also inspires others to astonishing acts of creation and courage. Yes, she sucked you dry of manhood, in her psychic vampire persona, but she also filled you with immortality and psychic power, and gave you a chance at a destiny greater than you could possibly have imagined when you were swotting your exams and papers and scheming to become a tenured university scholar and professor. Who’s to say whether what she took was more valuable than she gave you in return? How narrow was your life before, and how broad can be your scope now? Before, you were existentially solitary, alone in all the world, but now you are truly loved by a courageous young man who would challenge an archangel for your sake, fight dragons if he ran into one, and most probably — from what I see of his heart — love you through eternity. From the plain fact that you just offered to submit to death, if only his life could be saved, I daresay you love him as much as he loves you. Look around you, Jackie, and count your many blessings; even Lilith isn’t all bad; most of the time she acts as an agent of transformation, and leaves open the possibility of unlimited spiritual growth. All things move unimpeded toward a single Purpose, as my friend Vishnu succinctly put it.”

“And I have a choice here?” Her cynical comment turned to a slight smile as she thought it funny that she was being flippant with an emissary of an all-knowing, all-powerful being. The smile was fleeting, however, changing to a look of wistful hopefulness until the angel nodded. “You mean I do have a choice?”

The angel nodded again. “Of course you do. Haven’t you been listening? We’re all of us born into a state of grace. We have to be chased out of it.”

“I don’t have to leave to make sure I don’t hurt my friends. I don’t have to spend eternity, or at least until one of you finds and destroys me, sucking men dry?”

A third nod, but this time he rolled his eyes. “Shall we reënact the Monty Python Complaints Department skit with the parrot now? Which character do you want to play? The parrot?”

“But what? How? I don’t understand. Please,” she beseeched him, “explain.”

“All beings, even our maker, even me, have a dual nature, and have free will. We all have the power to choose between good or evil, not just once, but every time we act. Just as, in every moment, I have the choice to be a cruel avenger and go around whacking people’s heads off with a flaming sword, or to be instead a kindly guardian who urges all sentient beings to embrace their better nature, your own choice lies between existing as a selfish succubus or as a generous spirit who spreads love and joy wherever she goes, a cupid, as it were. They’re two sides of exactly the same coin, the human capacity to love, in both a physical and a truly spiritual sense. That’s why the succubi are mostly tolerated, unless they get out of hand and start murdering people, which some do, because they have a purpose in the grander scheme of things, and may eventually evolve beyond their youthful indiscretions. The two words are actually related, albeit distantly, succuba, sub-cubare, to lie beneath, the traditional position assumed by almost every woman eventually….” He paused, with a twinkle in his eye. “Have you reached that point, daughter?”

She blushed and shook her head. “I’ve been afraid of what might happen.”

“And well you might be,” he said. “Very commendable, dear, and wise. Until you learn to control your … appetite, you’ll have to be very circumspect, although of course there’s no chance of pregnancy, more’s the pity. Cupid, on the other hand, is from cupere, the other side of desire, to long for, to wish for, since just as the female desires the act of sexual congress, so does the male, in a wonderful asymmetry of desire and behavior that causes them to come together, all things being equal and ideal, in reverence and love. You’ll find, my dear child, that ‘lying beneath’ to succumb, has considerable charms for you now, although of course other positions are possible, and very nice for a change. Helps keep love fresh and interesting, in my own opinion. Our Hindu brethren have a lovely book, the Kama Sutra, which you might want to check out thoroughly, eventually, since eternity is a long time to do the same old thing every time. But as I said, it’s not safe yet, and I’d have to advise marriage as well. It’s not mandatory, of course, but it helps to remind one that the mystery of human love is a holy sacrament, to be kept always close to your heart in reverence and humility.”

“I thought the Church was against sex, though ….”

“Au contraire! The Church, broadly speaking, is very much in favor of sex, within proper bounds. Without sex, there would be no human beings, only spirits, and we spirits are necessarily barren in the physical sense. Then too, there are many ‘Churches,’ and not much to choose from between them. None have all the answers, or even ask all the right questions, but all are at least a good start toward discovering what it means to be a decent human being, a gracious individual, and to do good in the world instead of harm it.”

“But how did Lilith have children, then? How does she?”

“You forget that she’s not really a demon, no more than you are, but a human being in spiritual form, Adam’s first wife from before the Fall, and thus immortal, as are you, since you were created in her image. She assumed a spiritual form through the intervention of an angel, much as you did through her own intervention, because the angel who gave her the gift, or rather passed along the secret of it, merely built upon what she was already capable of. Many forget that Lilith bore Adam’s first child, Cain, before the Fall, and the Fall changed the entire manner of human reproduction. Before the Fall, childbirth was painless, almost instantaneous, and hassle-free, and would have been so forever, if Adam hadn’t botched things up with Eve almost as badly as he had with Lilith.”

“What I meant to say is, can I have children? I really love Frank,” she admitted it to herself at last, “but I’d hate to deprive him of his chance for children of his own.”

“That’s an interesting question, but I don’t think I know the answer yet. I suspect that it may have something to do with how you develop in the next few years. Don’t give up hope, though; because these things have a way of working themselves out, and your concern for him is a very good sign, because it shows that you haven’t succumbed to Lilith’s inclination toward selfishness. Remember, Sarah had a child in her old age, and was still so attractive in her sixties that Abraham loaned her out to the harem of Pharaoh of Egypt, and then many years later ran the same game on Abim’elech, King of Gerar, when she was well into her nineties, so she may well have been a spirit of some sort. I never met her, so I wouldn’t be able to say. Then again, perhaps Lilith might help as well, since she clearly has the knack of it.”

“Loaned her out?” Jackie was horrified.

The angel was not. He shrugged. “Those were different times back then. Abraham was worried that the rulers might kill him to get their hands on Sarah, and as anointed Kings, it was their perfect right to do so, so he passed her off as his sister, and stayed alive, but Sarah spent considerable time in both harems. What she did there, deponent sayeth not.” He rolled his eyes comically, and Jackie laughed.

“It sounds as if Lilith wasn’t such an oddity in those times, doesn’t it?”

“No, not at all, especially among the upper classes, which Sarah seems to have been, since her name means ‘Princess,’ and they took such claims seriously back then. Since Lilith was the wife and/or paramour of Archangels at the time, her position was quite similar to royalty, and they cut their Royals a lot of slack.”

“So how did she get such a bad reputation?”

Now he seemed surprised. “What are they teaching in that college of yours, anyway? Of course she had a bad reputation; she was an independent woman in an era in which women didn’t have any right to be independent. As you can see from the story of Abraham and Sarah, the scandal wasn’t that she slept around, but that she did it on her own initiative. No one would have said a word if it had been her husband arranging her little trysts, since Abraham managed to extort substantial reparations from both Kings in a sort of ancient ‘badger game, thus proving himself a clever fellow, admirable by ancient standards, if not exactly the stuff romantic heroes are made of these days.’ ”

“How horrible!” she said.

“Well, yes, but it’s also a lesson to us all. Perfection is never demanded of us, only that we try to be better. Abraham and Sarah wound up doing very well for themselves, and for others, despite their history as venal pimp and his profligate whore, con artists and sexual blackmailers both. Even some of the people they harmed, or tried to harm, got on famously, like Hagar and Ishmael, who wound up building a great nation as well, the Arabs and their kin, who eventually founded the most successful religion in the world, Islam.”

“I thought Christianity was the largest world religion,” she said.

“Well, it depends on how you slice it.” He pursed his lips slightly. “The total population of people who call themselves Christians is somewhat larger than those who call themselves Muslims, but the ‘Ummah,’ the world community of Believers in Islam, is much more coherent, where Christianity as a generic appellation includes many groups who don’t actually recognize each other as Christian at all, and indeed many who are absolutely certain that most other groups of ‘so-called Christians’ are going straight to Hell as ‘unbelievers,’ more like a professional football league than a single religion, with many teams, each with their own fans, and no particular ‘loyalty’ to any sort of abstract Football Holy See. Bill Moyers tells a wonderful joke about that, by the way, although I think that it was Emo Phillips who created it.”

He looked at her as if he expected her to be interested, which she wasn’t, being caught up in mere survival, so he continued without telling the joke.

He sighed. “Then too, many who call themselves Christians don’t actually participate in anything like a community of fellow Christians, other, perhaps, to respond positively when people wish them ‘Merry Christmas.’ You, for example, were among the minority of Christians who attended church at all, perhaps four in every ten nominal ‘Christians,’ yet many of your fellows would now refuse to acknowledge that you could possibly be a ‘real’ Christian, due entirely to the circumstances of your transition to the ætheric realms. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Am I still a Christian?” she asked.

“Do you want to be?” He looked at her as if he was genuinely interested.

“Well, yes, I think so,” she said, trying not to be defensive.

“Then I’d say you are, although it makes no personal difference to me. Religions come and go over the years, and I’ve seen many — some better, some worse — during my time on Earth, and even before that elsewhere. I know for a fact that you try to be better than you perceive yourself to be, so I think you could fairly say that you’re a good Christian as well.”

“Why do I crave sexual contact with men, then, so much so that I feel like I’m starving for it?”

“Why not?” he asked. “Is there a handbook somewhere that defines ‘religious people’ as those who are immune from sexual cravings? Are they immune from the desire to sin at all? If so, how do we account for the very large numbers of ‘Christian’ ministers and priests — not to mention congregants — who live lives of wasteful luxury and sloth while there are millions in the world who are destitute and starving? And who’s to say that sexual desire is sinful in the first place? Human beings are designed to feel desire. Lack of it is a treatable disorder with a diagnostic code in the World Health Organization’s ICD and the US DSM.”

“But I’m a man!” she said in desperation.

“Really? You could’a fooled me, although that’s another treatable disorder, if you intend to pursue this line of thinking. Do butterflies go around moaning about being caterpillars at heart? Do adults complain that they’re really just babies trapped in grown-up bodies? What happened to you is neither unique nor unprecedented, albeit rare these days, in this particular manifestation, but you might as well complain about the cosmic injustice of being struck by lightning, or getting smacked by a falling piano while you were minding your own business walking down the sidewalk. Get over yourself; you’re still alive, if not technically breathing. Things change. Accidents happen, that’s all. You pick yourself up and move on.”

“But why do I want to elicit these sexual explosions of energy from men? Why do I want to eat them?”

“What, you think women have no desires? What do you think women really want? Do you suppose they fantasize about having a penis so they can have ‘real’ sex? News flash! Freud was an idiot. ‘Penis envy’ is a joke. Women want control of their lives; many want power, but the desire to have a dick isn’t all that common, and the vast majority of women think themselves very lucky indeed to have a womb, a vagina, and functional breasts instead. Used properly, they’re lots more fun, and much more useful. A penis, when contemplated seriously, is somewhat ludicrous, a definite disadvantage in many situations, and external testicles are so profoundly silly that many have seen in them proof positive of natural selection and evolution, since no one with any sense would have designed them in such a slapdash manner.”

“But….”

“But me no buts, daughter. You need to do a little research on normal sexual development in the female, either online or in a book, preferably both, since it’s nice to have an ‘Owner’s Manual’ handy for the body you’re living in these days. Normal women are more ‘narcissistic’ than men, because their brains are designed to connect more easily with other brains, so for a woman the interior feeling of another’s lustful gaze is much more intimate than it is for men, and they crave it on a level that men don’t usually experience. Likewise, part of sexual intimacy for a woman is an envelopment, at least in part, aside from the involvement of her breasts and larger sensorium, as when the vagina engulfs the penis, or a hand, and can be experienced as a type of hunger rather than an urge to poke, but normal women feel no more urge to have a penis than you ever imagined having a proboscis, like a mosquito, so you could eat ‘properly,’ by plunging your ‘mouth’ inside some living body and sucking out the blood. What you feel is what many women feel, perhaps writ somewhat larger, because you’re free of corporeal limitations, being a creature of pure spirit, and may thus be more focused and less diffuse, because your experiences aren’t mediated through mere flesh and bone, but you’re not unique by any means.”

Jackie thought hard about that for a while, and even looked up to see if the angel was losing patience, which he didn't seem to be doing at all. At last, she said, “Thank you,” she said, “for putting that into words. It makes sense to me now, when you put it that way, but why am I so driven?”

“Because you’re young, of course, and know no limits. You’re still exploring, as young people do, testing your powers as well as your vulnerabilities, but you have very few vulnerabilities, and are much stronger than the ordinary new succubus — I suspect because you participated in your own conversion, and thus drew in a considerable portion of the sexual power on a psychic level that you were losing on a physical level — and so, like men who are very big and strong, have the ability, and thus the temptation, to be a ‘bully.’ The dark side of female sexuality is the desire to control and devour the male, as some insects do, and as Lilith partly did to you, just as the dark side of male sexuality is to dominate, capere, to take, to capture, or to rape, the act of the satyr or incubus. Abraham felt that he had the right to ‘dispose’ of his wife’s sexual favors because — in the context of the times — he owned her, and she was barren — that is to say, ‘worthless,’ so he felt free to rape her by proxy when it served his own ends. Lilith, because she has incredible power, has the temptation to devour men entirely, as she did to you, but even then she gave you back more than she took, in my opinion, but without asking you if it seemed like a fair exchange, which is a form of rape, just as Abraham used, or allowed, powerful men to rape his wife in order to obtain money and more power. The cupid represents the other side of both dark impulses, which is why they’re usually depicted as innocent children, whatever they look like in life. Cupids are in it for the long haul, and encourage giving rather than taking, as you yourself have done with your friends Julie and George, with those two teenagers you encountered that night, and the doctor and his nurse, who are even now deeply in love, where first was — as so often in matters of the heart — hostility.”

“Cupid? But Cupid is supposed to be the Greek god of love, a small winged boy with a bow and arrow. How could I be Cupid? For that matter, if I’m Cupid why did I feel pain when George and Julie were together? and how do you know about them anyway?”

“Whoa. Slow down,” the angel laughed and his all-knowing smile seemed to glow. First, you have the potential to be a cupid, not the Cupid. It’s a convenient label to describe the attitude and function, not a specific physical form … although you may appear to others in that manner if you wish and it becomes your nature. I always thought the Romans were feeling a bit …shall we say … ‘light on their feet’ when they selected that particular form with which to immortalize Cupids, or maybe they just thought it would be unseemly to have half-naked girls flitting about with little bows and arrows — they tended toward prudishness in public morality, you know. Maybe it had something to do with the techniques their legionnaires used to relieve their ‘itches’ when on the march.” He shook his head, evidently bemused, and slightly off track.

“In any case, to ‘cut to the chase,’ as it were, you are what you think you are. You appear to others as you wish to be, or — if you allow it — you can appear as they wish it. Both options have their appropriate uses.” The angel went through a dozen body transformations, from young to old, male to female, tall to short, black to white, in a matter of moments. “It’s that duality I spoke of. You always have a choice. You might even choose to become a tutelary spirit, but it can be a lonely life, guarding sacred groves and the like in lonely splendor, and I wouldn’t recommend it for you. You’re what we call a ‘people person.’ You like people, you want to help them, as a rule, but certainly to be around them, even when you’re not being helpful. Your loneliness and heartache were the result of trauma, not inclination. If you think and act as an evil succubus you will eventually delight in wanton lust — the loveless pornography one buys furtively in shabby shops — and loathe the joy and caring intimacy of those in love. However, if you think and act as a virtuous cupid, you will find delight in true love of all sorts, and feel pain from any base or degrading sexual act, just as every kindly human being does. But both choices have their dark side and their light. A so-called cupid can cause incredible mischief and heart-ache through inspiring inappropriate love that does harm to those around the lovers, just as a succubus can transform the stultifying life of a stagnant male into vibrant creativity, allowing them to focus their ‘lust’ for life into art, into music, with the same passion many men reserve for their lover. Think back to when you were Jack, when you saw the ending of An Affair to Remember, the one with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant, were you disgusted by the ‘mawkish sentimentality’ of it, or were you charmed by the poignant romanticism of his love for her, a love that transcended her crippled body and saw the beauty of her soul?”

Jackie blushed, because she’d cried all through the last scene, from when the Cary Grant character gave Terry, the Deborah Kerr character, his mother’s shawl, to when she’d said “if you can paint, then I can walk. Anything can happen, don’t you think?” She’d been embarrassed about it, because ‘men don’t cry,’ but she had, and she was weeping again, just remembering that movie, the emotional catharsis of it as vivid as if she’d been Terry, longing for love but afraid of pity, suddenly confronted with the man she’d loved desperately, but had wanted to spare the burden of caring for a cripple.

The angel smiled… angelically. “You see, Jackie? Consider that what happened to you may not have been an accident, or even entirely Lilith’s ‘fault,’ and that there may be a higher purpose in even the tiniest incidents in a long life. It’s not truly a matter of nourishment — as Lilith usually describes it — that you crave, but the fulfilment of your inner nature. In fact, you no longer need any nourishment at all, either corporeal or spiritual, although it may take a while to convince your ætheric body of that.”

He smiled at her again, and Jackie felt …blessed, and truly looked at him for the first time, looked into his heart, and was astonished by the mingled joy and pain she found there. “You have a tough job, don’t you, Sam?” she said.

He grinned. “It has its good days, and its …not-so-good days, but the good days make up for the bad ones. This is turning out to be a good one, I hope. Beware of how you choose, though. Once you take too many steps down either path it will become more and more difficult to retrace your steps and take the other. Many — some days it seems like most — take the easy route, so familiar to their corporeal bodies, and succumb to greed and cruelty when freed of physical limits. I hope you’ll take the road less traveled. Watch that movie again, Jackie, and explore the world of real love as most women do, in your imagination. Read women’s literature, look at women’s movies, and talk to other women. You have a lifetime, many lifetimes, of ‘catching up’ to do.”

“But what about the pain I experienced? Why did love hurt me while lust made me feel full.”

“For the same reason a child likes roller coasters, Jackie, but would feel oppressed if asked to compose a romantic sonnet. The physical rush of sex hormones, œstrogen, testosterone, and adrenaline, can be very pleasurable, and it’s easy to experience and understand, but sooner or later most people graduate from adrenaline to dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, the ‘love drugs’ that signal the onset of pair-bonding and all forms of mature love, both between couples, and the deep love that exists between a mother and her child. Once you’ve experienced real love, the uncertainty of adrenaline, ‘just sex’ and ‘one-night stands’ begins to cloy, and will eventually disgust you, although one would hope that you always retain the ability to experience the deep desire that can make an active sexual life transformative, allowing you to live outside yourself for a few moments, and to experience the bliss of transcendence. Were that child to start with the ‘hard stuff,’ it would overwhelm him, or her, just as it did you, because you’re very young for an immortal spirit. I’m sure you’ve seen very young children make sour faces, or stick out their tongues, when the ‘mushy stuff’ starts, because it makes them feel uncomfortable, and they don’t like it. Lust is a weak precursor to love, a ‘quick fix,’ as it were, and is thus easier for someone just starting out in life to accept and understand, but the root meaning of ‘lust’ is not ‘sin,’ but ‘delight.’ There’s nothing wrong with delight, whether you receive or give it. The only sin is treating people, or anything, badly, of using them with reckless disregard for their ultimate welfare. Your sensorium has changed, and nerve endings that were once buried within flesh are now exposed, so you have to pay close attention to what your new ætherial body is really telling you.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything, thinking about everything he’d said.

“Look around you, Jackie. Look at Frank, who loves you desperately. Don’t be so sure that love hurts, when you haven’t examined exactly where love lies. We’re sitting here in a bus station, the boundary between everything you know and the beginning of a new land, where you’ll be alone, without a friend in the world, a stream you can either cross, or turn back to cross the threshold behind you that leads back to a radically-changed life in more familiar surroundings, the fond regard of those who love you, and what may well be the grand passion of your life. Choose wisely, because second chances are rare.”

Jackie thought about that for quite a while. “And here I am, wrestling with an angel….” she said, giving him a crooked grin.

The angel smiled. “There are many forms of struggle, Jackie. Good luck, my dear. I’d grant you the boon of freedom to make your own choices, except that you had it all along, but you do have my blessing, and my sincere best wishes for your future happiness, which is very much the same thing.” Suddenly the angel was gone.

Jackie turned to the man beside her and realised that, if she wanted to leave, the way lay clear before her. The bus was still boarding, and Frank was still asleep. Her own decision made, she settled in to wait.

Frank moved first. Shaking himself, as if coming out of a deep sleep, he turned to Jackie. “Let’s get out of here, sweetheart. I just don’t understand why you wanted to come here in the first place.” He stood and offered her his hand. Jackie was confused until she peeked into his mind and realized that he had no memory of Father Sam.

“Uh, okay. I guess we can go, because I’ve forgotten too.” They headed out of the depot hand in hand, but Frank carried her suitcase, and she let him do it.

“Wait here and I’ll get the car.” Frank left and Jackie glanced about. Just inside the depot were two people, the couple she had noted earlier, still arguing over something. Jackie concentrated for a moment and watched them silently stare at each other for a moment and then walk off hand in hand, smiling into each others’ eyes. Jackie hoped they would be happy together.

When Frank returned, she slipped into the car and then slid over to sit next to him. Taking his nearer hand from the wheel, she encouraged him to place it over her shoulder while she leaned her head against his chest. It felt good. Life was good. Love was good. She couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow brought them.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Seven:
Kindling

Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven’t the heart to poke poor Billy.
― Harry Graham
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, (1899)

 

“I got it! I got it! I’m real again!” Jackie Renfrew danced into the small, off campus apartment she shared with Frank Ahtram. Her purse dropped to the floor by the door and her shoes went flying in a low arc into the same fireplace which Frank had been procrastinating about checking for functionality, despite the andirons and gas log already installed. Seconds later dance music was playing loudly on her roommate’s stereo as she danced over to him and hugged him from behind.

“Congratulations,” Frank responded, albeit with a voice slightly muffled by the huge pile of architecture texts and three-dimensional structural dioramas surrounding his face as he bent down to make a minute adjustment to one of the model struts using a pair of Kelley forceps and a hypodermic loaded with cyanoacrylate glue. “Now please turn that down, I’m on a deadline; I have to finish my architectural model and I’m not even close to finished. Plus, Doctor DeBauck wants me to show him the finished cost analysis at the construction site this evening, around eleven o’clock for some God-awful reason.”

“But I want to celebrate,” Jackie said in a high-pitched, little girl voice and pouted briefly. She stood behind Frank, tapping out the rhythm on his head as she danced, but realized he was ignoring her. With a mischievous grin, she stopped tapping in favor of another method of obtaining his attention.

“Yeow! Don’t do that!” Frank shouted in surprise as he nearly fell backwards off his chair trying to jump back from the table. Jackie merely smiled back at him from her new position. She had become immaterial and floated up through the table, her neck now apparently connected to the table.

“Thanks for the forced work break,” Frank grumbled. “So…what are you so happy about?”

“I finally have legal identification, a new birth certificate as Jacquelyn Leigh Renfrew, a driver’s license, college transcripts, all the proof I need to get a credit card.”

“To get a credit card, you don’t even have to be human, just breathing.”

“My point exactly. Remember, I don’t have to breathe any more.”

Reminding Frank of Jackie’s recent death and subsequent reïncarnation as a supernatural wraith put a damper on his annoyance at being interrupted. Jack Renfrew had been his best friend and Jackie Renfrew was still his best friend — as well as live-in girlfriend and roommate for the past four months, but no sex yet, since Jackie was still afraid that she might hurt him until she gained more experience as a succubus/cupid who lived off the sexual and emotional feelings of humans. Then too, she’d talked to an angel, or so she’d claimed, and he’d convinced her that waiting until marriage might be the best idea. It’s hard to argue with angels, or at least it seemed to be so for Jackie.

“I’m sorry, Jackie,” he said as he righted the chair and hugged her even before she fully cleared the tabletop.

“Umm.” Jackie moaned sexily. “A hard man is good to find.”

Frank blinked twice and then started laughing. “First, that hard object you’re feeling is the tabletop. Second, where do you find lines like that?”

“The late late movies on cable television. They had a Mae West marathon last night. Do you like it? I’ve been dying to try it since I heard it.”

“Well, I appreciate the laugh. I can’t afford it, but I really need a break from this project.”

“What does Doctor DeBauck have you doing now?” Jackie asked with a gesture toward the project materials scattered over the table.

“You mean Doctor Debauched? I’ve got to find a better class of professor if I’m going to continue to be a research assistant.”

Jackie just nodded knowingly. Even though she wasn’t really a succubus, she still spent time at Calaca E., the night club where Lilith, the ur-succubus who’d initiated her change, worked. Many were the times that she had seen DeBauck there, trying to pick up another one of his infamous ‘one night stands, and she knew that Lilith didn’t like him, but she refused to say why, exactly.’

“I know he’s supposedly a genius,” Jackie said, “and seems to know just about everything about everything, but he’s still a creep. Given some of his private comments, he might even be crazy, at least from what I’ve heard. How did you end up having him for an advisor anyway?”

“Bad luck, I guess. He actually selected me. He said he had a minor in chemical engineering and thought we’d have a lot in common to talk about.” Frank rubbed his stubble covered chin. “Funny thing is, I don’t think we ever did discuss anything related to chemistry. Now he’s got me doing busy work, doing a cost analysis of that project he’s just completing down by the lake,” Frank righted his chair and sat down. Jackie immediately sat on his lap and squirmed enticingly, reminding Frank of exactly how well his ex-best guy friend had adapted to being female, albeit any female she wished to be. “Hey! No fair.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. She may only have been a woman for a few months, but she had teasing down pat. “That’s the one Doctor Long is still steamed about?” she asked.

Dr. Long was a full professor in the Humanities Department and Jackie’s advisor. In the last few months it had been the exceptional advisory meeting when he’d failed to make at least one, and often several angry comments about the house being built by DeBauck, since it blocked his view of the lake, and had somehow been built on what had been a protected area adjacent to œcologically-significant wetlands.

“Yup. That’s the one. There’s something wrong with the figures, though. It looks like it’s costing about twenty percent more than it should.”

“Well, given Debauched’s reputation, maybe he’s skimming money off the top on the project.”

“I don’t think so. If he is, it’s through a dummy company or something. The bills seem to match the charges. What I don’t understand is why so much concrete was needed. It’s more than twice the amount that should have been necessary for a building of that size.”

“Don’ ask me; I’m just a lowly Humanities major. I don’ know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no buildings.” Jackie offered her best imitation of the Black slave ‘Prissy’ in Gone With the Wind, and had transformed into her clone. It was in questionable taste, but they were alone.

Frank rolled his eyes. “Right. My barefoot and pregnant girlfriend.”

“Who’s pregnant?” she responded glumly, although she did raise one leg and wiggle her bare toes in tacit admission that he was at least partially correct. The topic of pregnancy kind of bummed her out though, since she was not now, nor ever would be, likely to have a child. Being dead puts one at a distinct disadvantage in the pregnancy department, since she didn’t ovulate, didn’t go through any of the physiological changes necessary to carry a child, and didn’t menstruate, which last wasn’t so bad, but it depressed her when she sensed the menses of her woman friends, and realized how far from being a real woman she really was.

“Aren’t you the one who has always helped me complete my architecture projects and checked my math?” Frank continued as if she hadn’t spoken, the twit. “Aren’t you the one who reads all those mystery novels?” He poked her in the ribs.

“Aren’t I the one who’s going to kick you if you don’t stop tickling me?” Jackie responded, and then vanished into thin air. The only reasonable response to his infuriating questions, which were depressingly logical, was to adjourn to her bedroom, at least for a while, and sulk.

Someone was banging on the door, loud, repetitive slams that rattled the door on its frame. An angry man yelled, “Open up. Open up this door right now!”

Jackie rolled out of bed, where she’d been reading one of her trashy romance novels — not having to sleep, or even being able to, left her a lot of free time — to the sounds of loud, persistent pounding and glanced at the bedside alarm clock; seven-eleven in the morning. Next she poked her head through the wall and checked the other bedroom for Frank’s blanketed form and thought, “At least Frank is safe at home. I wonder what time he got home last night.”

A moment’s concentration and she was magically dressed and ready to meet whoever was at the door. As soon as she unlocked the door two large men in cheap suits pushed into the apartment flashing badges.

“Is Frank Ahtram here?” The taller one asked as they both began suspiciously examining the room. The one in the brown suit walked over to the kitchen table, still covered with Frank’s project material, and began nosing about.

“Who wants to know?” These guys were rude, noisy and intruding into Jackie’s home. While she considered herself a law-abiding person, this smacked of abuse of authority.

“Don’t get wise, lady,” the one in the grey suit snapped. “We have a warrant.”

“Then you’ll show it to me, along with your badges again, and slowly so I can really read them.” Jackie stood her ground and grey-suit was surprised to be unable to push past her. Putting as much authority in her voice as she could she demanded, “And get away from that table! Now!”

Brown-suit jumped and actually stopped poking at the papers on the table for a moment. Grey-suit shrugged and presented the requested items as he rumbled, “You a lawyer or something?”

“Nope, just a citizen exercising her constitutional rights. You remember them, don’t you?” Jackie examined the badge first and then started on the papers. “Hey, I said leave the stuff on the table alone.”

“Read the warrant, lady.” Brown-suit continued flipping through the material on the table. “I’m just doin’ my job. Send your complaints to Internal Affairs.”

“Are you done reading yet?” Grey-suit was again trying to push past her, and it pissed her off, so she did something about it, and besides, he’d touched her first, and was being rough about it. He instantly backed off, and they both looked at the wet spot on the front of one of the pair of pants that came with his cheap two-pants suit.

“Officer Brown-Suit, I think this boorish behavior on the part of your colleague constitutes sexual harassment and assault, and I’d like to file a complaint. Could you please call a second evidence team, as well as Internal Affairs, to collect the evidence from your abusive companion and document the grounds for my complaint?”

Now both men were staring at the front of his grey pants.

“Oh, Jesus, Hamilton, what the fuck happened here?”

“I don’t know, Cecil. I was pushing past her to find our perp, and it just went off by itself.”

“I insist, Officer Cecil, whatever your last name is. We have a crime scene here, a culpable party, and evidence to be collected. You will call in an evidence team, and Internal Affairs, or I’ll do my very damnedest to see that neither of you collect your pensions. Now why don’t we all sit down like good boys and we’ll talk about this like civilized human beings.”

“I asked you if Frank Ahtram was here,” Hamilton said defensively, “when all this happened, and I didn’t do nothin’!”

“Yeah, he’s here,” a deep voice, hoarse from sleep, said from behind them.

Instantly, guns were out and pointing at the man standing by the bedroom door. He had a softball-sized contusion on the right side of his forehead that still was still oozing blood, but the bleary-eyed Frank was instantly wide-awake with his hands in the air.

“Frank Ahtram, you are under arrest for the murder of Sylvester DeBauck.”

Jackie watched in shock as the two detectives read Frank his rights, then waited — at her insistence — while he dressed and put some antibiotic on the blood still slowly seeping from the wound before handcuffing him. Then they called in a wagon to haul him off while they all sat and waited for the evidence team and the wagon. The wagon arrived first, and the cheap suit duo were separately pissed off, because some other officer was going to get credit for booking him, and one of them blamed the other while the other wasn’t sure who to blame, except it wasn’t himself.

Frank’s final words as they escorted him away were, “Call my Uncle Hank. He’s a sergeant at the thirteenth precinct.”

While they were waiting, she called to let Frank’s uncle know what was happening, and he promised to look into it, and told her to stop by as soon as she could.

Then she waited some more.

“May I please speak to Sergeant Ahtram?” Jackie’s voice quavered as she tried to hold back the tension and worry in her voice and she danced from foot to foot in her impatience.

“Over there.” The desk officer pointed to a room with a half dozen desks piled high with folders. At one was a hulking grey-haired man in tie and suspenders. Jackie’s high heels clicked loudly on the worn wooden floor, but the man didn’t look up as she approached, or as she stood wringing her hands beside his desk.

“Hello, Jackie. How are you?” He had a deep, rich voice that made you want to trust him. Jackie thought it was a good thing he was a cop because he would have made an absolutely fantastic con man.

“Huh? You know me?”

“You were at the family picnic.”

Jackie fought back the tears that had been threatening to overwhelm her since her arrival at the station house and thought furiously. “Of course! That must have been you I saw just before your cellphone went off. All I remember seeing was your back as you headed for your car.”

“Ah, I see we remember each other perfectly, then.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at her at last. Jackie felt she was under a microscope, but then he blinked and it was as if the examination was over and he was looking at a smiling friend. “Before you ask, I’ve got a photographic memory. It helps in my line of work.”

The chair moved back to an upright position. “From the way you’re wringing your hands, you’re worried. Have a seat and tell me exactly what’s been happening. I particularly want to hear your side of the arrest of Frank, and how the officers behaved.”

Jackie sat, but said nothing. Hank watched her lower lip trembling. Without another word, he reached into a drawer to pull out a box of tissues and gave her an encouraging smile. This was the final straw and the dam broke. Through sobs, Jackie explained how Frank had been arrested and how he had asked her to contact him.

He listened quietly without saying a word until she had wound down. “Before you get your hopes up, I need to tell you that this is not my case,” Hank gestured at the pile of folders threatening to topple off the corner of his desk, “and I have more than enough of my own.”

He raised a hand to stop Jackie before she interrupted him. “Let me finish, dear. I can, however, tell you that the detectives who have the case are Hamilton Handelson and his partner Cecil Parmenter.”

“I met them,” she blurted out before he could stop her.

“I’m sure you did. Now let me finish, dear.” He waited patiently as Jackie bit her lip, then nodded her acquiescence.

“Handelson is a big hulk of a man who favors grey suits?”

Jackie nodded.

“And Parmenter isn’t much shorter, but can’t stand still and usually can’t stop poking about. He favors brown suits.”

Jackie nodded again.

“Neither of them is very bright and neither is likely to dig once an arrest has been made. I’ve talked to Handelson, off the record, of course. They’ve got motive and opportunity, but they’re weak on method. Frank is in trouble, but it’s not an open and shut case, and Handlson may have botched the evidence collection, because the DA won’t dare put him on the stand, since a clever attorney could get the jury right on your side with one word about the ‘incident,’ so they’ve shot themselves in the foot, especially if Frank’s attorney introduces the complaint against both officers as evidence of bias. That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to worry about, because there always is, but it’s going to raise an element of uncertainty that will make the DA’s office much more cautious, and less anxious to go to trial.

Jackie took a deep, shuddering breath. She hadn’t realized she had been holding it until then and hoped that Sergeant Ahtram hadn’t noticed either, because she had no idea how long it had been since she breathed last and didn’t want the detective to realize she wasn’t human.

“The motive is apparently embezzlement,” he continued, apparently without noticing. “They found the books in your house and they don’t match the books at the site.”

“But Frank was going over them complaining that they didn’t make sense. That’s why they were there. DeBauck had asked him to check them.”

“A fact which no one else knew about, and Frank cannot prove, given DeBauck’s death.”

“But….”

Hank gently placed one of his huge hands over hers to stop her.

“You can explain until you’re blue in the face, but as his girlfriend, you’re not going to be considered a credible witness, although the DA will have to prove that Frank actually doctored the books, which will be difficult, one would think, unless he had been keeping the books all along. Anyway, the opportunity was supposedly when they were together at the construction site. Handelson and his partner found bloodstains there and it matches Frank’s blood type, which makes perfect sense, given the fact that Frank was clearly assaulted somewhere. DNA testing won’t be done unless your lawyer insists on it and you pay for it.”

“But….”

Again he gently hushed her.

“Let me get the good news out. Like I said, they’re weak on method. They tried to do dental comparisons to confirm DeBauck’s identity, but couldn’t, since DeBauck had never had any dental work done, so there were no records. There wasn’t much left but a few bits of bone and ash. This is unusual. Crematoria operate at temperatures above sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit and need special equipment to obtain those temperatures. Even more unusual is that there was only a blackened spot on the cement to indicate where the fire was. Nothing else was damaged. Thus, Hadelson and Parmenter have no idea how DeBauck was incinerated.

“The problem is that Frank’s minor is chemical engineering and they figure he must have the knowledge to pull it off. They’re expecting Forensics to come up with a method that they’ll have no trouble proving that Frank was aware of, and had access to equipment and materials that would have enabled him to accomplish the crime, but it’s all a real stretch.”

“But Frank couldn’t have done it. He just couldn’t have,” she said, “and wouldn’t they have to demonstrate the plausible existence of these putative means at the scene of the crime to make it stick? The DA could claim that DeBauck was incinerated by a Martian raygun, but without a visible flying saucer, it’s difficult to prove.”

“Nor do I believe he did it. I’ve known Frank from the day he was born, and he partly grew up in our home, so I know him like I’d know my own son, if I’d had one, and I need to be a fairly good judge of character in my job.” Hank sighed with a sound like a steam locomotive releasing pressure. “Let me lay it out straight for you. I told you that the evidence is a stretch, but DAs can do a lot to tilt the scale in the direction that gets them elected come November. One or more ‘jail-house informants’ may appear — after payment of a substantial bribe, in the form of a reduced sentence or dropped charges — who will swear on a stack of Bibles that Frank ‘confessed’ to his crime in a fit of either braggadocio or remorse — it doesn’t much matter which — and ‘eyewitnesses’ can be subtly manipulated into identifying Frank ‘behaving oddly’ at the scene of the crime. It’s not that difficult to persuade a witness that they saw the whole thing from start to finish, nor is it all that difficult to coerce a suspect into a false ‘confession,’ through browbeating, sleep-deprivation, and psychological — but perfectly legal — torture. It happens all the time, and people are executed every month, all across the country, on trumped-up evidence produced essentially as a reëlection campaign strategy for the prosecuting District Attorney. I can’t interfere, and I can’t ask a lot of questions with jeopardizing my ability to keep track of what’s going on. Similarly, I can’t investigate on my own without being investigated myself by Internal Affairs. Do you have any money saved up?”

Jackie shook her head.

“Too bad. I can lend you some, but Sarah, Frank’s Aunt, has been ill and the doctor bills have been a real drain. Can you get a couple of thousand dollars from a friend?”

“No, sir, I’m an orphan. The only people we’re close to are George Dombrowski and his fiancée Julie — and they’ve got most of their money invested in their wedding. It’s coming up in two months.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Credit cards? Stocks? Bonds? Annuities? Property? Inheritances?” Jackie just kept shaking her head no, looking more and more solemn and woebegone as he spoke.

“Then my best advice is useless. The idea that cops have this cozy relationship with private detectives and can get them to help for nothing is a myth, to say the least.” The big man gave another huge sigh. “I’ll see if I can scrounge up some money and get a private detective on the case. I know a few that are pretty good, but you’re going to have to help, a lot, or Frank may be spending quite a few years in jail.”

“Save the money. I’m afraid we’ll need it more for the lawyer, unless we’re foolish enough to use an overworked and underpaid public defender. If I do the grunt work, will you tell me what to do to investigate this myself?”

“Girl, that’s crazy. You know what they say about a man who acts as his own lawyer. It applies double to investigatory work.”

“It’s not going to get done any other way, and I have some resources that might surprise you. Will you?”

“Jackie, please don’t do this.”

“Will you?”

“Please….”

“Will you?” This time she leaned on him a little.

Yet another sigh; longer than the others. His response was barely louder than a whisper. “Yes, my dear. I’ll help you.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mister Ahtram.” Jackie threw herself at the older man and hugged him mightily.

“Whoa. That’s some hug you’ve got for a little slip of a girl,” Hank laughed as he carefully disengaged. “Come by our house this evening and we’ll see what we can do.”

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Eight:
Fuel for the Fire

These are the times that try men’s souls.
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, (1776)

“Would you like something with your tea?” Frank’s Aunt Sarah was an unfailingly friendly, matronly woman, with the puffy hair so common to those of her generation. Only the faint stress lines at the corners of her lips and the small ripples on the surface of the proffered teacup revealed her shaky hands and underlying illness.

“Now, Sarah, you know Jackie’s not here for tea and cookies,” Sergeant Ahtram rumbled from his cushioned chair.

“Yes, dear. You’ll talk in a moment.” Turning back to Jackie, she continued, “Would you prefer cream, sugar, or lemon?”

“Just one lump of sugar is fine. Thank you, Mrs. Ahtram.” Jackie could not help it. This woman was a throwback to a time long past, a gentler time, when courtesy and manners were important. Without thinking, she found herself sitting straighter; knees primly locked together, thoughts of slang forgotten. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Jackie could not help but like the older woman.

“Call me Sarah, dear,” Mrs. Athram suggested as she added sugar to the tea and placed it on a lace doily on the coffee table in front of them. Sitting back, Mrs. Athram folded her hands on her lap to prevent them from trembling and nodded to her husband.

“Okay. First, here’s some money.” Hank glanced surreptitiously toward Sarah and then down at the coffee table as his face reddened. “It’s not much, only five hundred dollars, but it may help.”

“Hank, Sarah, you know I can’t accept this.” She pushed the wad of money back across the table toward the embarrassed man. “And we don’t have time to argue if we’re going to help Frank.”

The ritualistic give and take continued until Jackie had almost decided that the next time he offered the money she’d have to use her mind control powers to force them to stop. They needed their money to pay for Sarah’s medical treatments, she knew from talking to Frank, because their insurance didn’t cover a lot of the experimental drugs and procedures being tried. She didn’t want to force the issue because she’d already leaned on him once, so further efforts to influence him ran the danger of arousing him sexually, which lust might well attach itself to her instead of his wife. Luckily, Sarah intervened before Jackie felt forced to act.

“Hank, dear, the girl doesn’t want the money. Put it away and help her to save Frank.”

Calaca E. was dead — both the bar and some of the people in it — but Jackie was usually there on weekends rather than on a Tuesday night. There were only two couples on the dance floor and another half dozen people at the bar. Music with an alternating Latin or rock beat blared through the tinny speakers instead of the live music to which she was accustomed. Regardless, Lilith was still on stage, gyrating to the music in the most amazing and erotic ways.

Jackie was at the same table by the stage where she’d been sitting on the night her life had changed, the night she’d first met Lilith. She was waiting for her to finish her last set of the night. If it weren’t for Lilith, Jackie would have still been male and alive, but she wouldn’t have the intense and wonderful relationship she had with Frank, nor would she have found her calling as a “cupid,” a bringer of love and creative desire. In that sense Lilith was her mother, more of a mother than her natural mother, who had died along with her father when Jackie was less than two years old. Of course, Jackie thought to herself, if Lilith were her mother, Jackie must be something of a disappointment to her for not following in her footsteps as a demon who thrived by absorbing the sexual energy of humans.

“Why do you enter my domain, timid minion of the Light?” Lilith scowled as she sat opposite Jackie.

“For information, Mommy dearest.”

“What information would I have for you? I neither know, nor care to know, anything of the path you’ve chosen.” The succubus smiled lasciviously and licked her lips in sexual enticement. “Now if you were to come join me, hunt with me, and wallow in the lust and depravity that humans do so well, I might be of more use.”

“Tempting offer, but no, thank you very much.” Jackie could not help but smile at the audacity of the woman. “I’d like information about someone who hangs out here a lot, a tall man, about six-foot even, one-hundred-eighty pounds, wavy black hair with grey streaks. His name is….”

“His name is Sylvester DeBauck and he is beyond the reach of your kind.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s dead, or so they say, and given his behavior, I feel quite certain he is now a plaything for some of my other children.”

“Oh?” Despite having met a succubus and an angel, despite being a supernatural being herself; Jackie was still a bit shaken at the implication that anything like Hell really existed. She shook herself as if to brush off the unpleasant thought and continued. “Anyway, what can you tell me about him?”

“I believe the question is, ‘Why should I tell you anything?’” Lilith slid back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, challenging her to give an acceptable answer.

“My boyfriend has been accused of his murder.”

“So?”

“You could help me prove him innocent.”

“You bore me, child. Given the typical sexist makeup of the judiciary in this state, the number of men sure to be empaneled on any probable jury, not to mention the upper echelons of the police department and the District Attorney’s Office, You yourself are capable of influencing any possible combination of judge, prosecuting attorney, or jury to do whatever you want them to do; stand on their heads and sing ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ if you’d like them to. This is a non-issue and you’re just being silly. Go away.” Lilith turned and gestured to one of the unattached men at the bar and within seconds he was seated next to her, staring raptly into the demon’s eyes.

“I don’t think I will,” she said, and played a little chord on the man’s heartstrings.

“What?” the man asked, interrupting their conversation.

“Hush, boy. Dream of me while I speak to my wayward daughter.” A sappy smile formed on the boy’s face at the same time as his eyes glazed over. Moments later there was a slight dribble of spittle on his chin.

“I don’t think I’ll leave. If you won’t help me, I might as well stick around and see what I can scare up, since I know he was a customer.”

“You would hunt in my domain?” Hackles raised and suddenly Lilith wasn’t a beautiful creature, but a thing of razor-sharp teeth and claws, — a thing of hell.

“No, of course not; I don’t ‘hunt’ at all, as you yourself so clearly pointed out. But won’t I cramp your style a bit? Isn’t it going to be hard to get your particular sort of ‘nourishment’ from these poor souls if I’m around turning their perfectly natural sexual arousal and lust into perfectly natural loving concern and individual respect? Your little hideaway could become known as the wedding capital of up-state New York. There’ll be tour buses bringing in happy couples asking for your blessing.”

“You think you can challenge my power?” The beauty was back, except for glowering red eyes. “Try me, little one.”

She looked into the man’s heart, and gave him another little nudge. “Be my guest, Mom. You have a victim. Feed. Isn’t it a nice change when your victim really loves you?” Jackie’s voice quavered but she sat back and tried to present more of an air of confidence then she actually felt.

Several seconds passed while Lilith examined her conquest, and then she laughed, surprisingly enough. “Go, boy. Back to your friends with wild tales of love and lust.” Turning back to Jackie she continued, “What do you want to know, Daughter?”

Jackie’s ploy had worked, but she really didn’t want to get into a contest with her mother that she’d almost certainly lose. “Tell me about DeBauck.”

“He was an egocentric pig, always trying to pick up women here at my club as if they were whores and then ‘stiff’ them in every possible way. He must have had some familiarity with our kind, as he was always smart enough to steer clear of me, and of my other daughters.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“You call me a liar?” The demon was plainly visible in the glowing red embers that had replaced her eyes.

Jackie flinched, but held her ground.

Suddenly, Lilith was laughing uproariously. “There may yet be hope for you, daughter. Consider this small bit of information to be a professional courtesy. Besides, sometimes the truth can be better than a lie. DeBauck, or Debauched as we liked to call him, was more animal than human, or, to be more precise, a satyr.”

“You mean like horns, hooves, and a hyperactive libido?”

“Yes, daughter mine, exactly that, but a libido so uncouth and raw that it made one gag, as you’d know if you’d met him.”

Lilith liked to remind her that she’d been responsible for creating her as a succubus and how easily she could slip back into that mode of existence if she wasn’t careful, but she had to admit — at least to herself — that she’d started the quarrel. And to be perfectly fair, it wasn’t as if Lilith had raped her, back when she was a man. She’d coöperated in her own ruination with pleasure, enthusiasm even, and had bragged about the pleasure she’d had in what she’d thought were ‘just dreams’. Debauchery only seems bad after you regret your acts, and even now she could see that her mother had a point. Who would she rather hear, if she were honest with herself, when she wanted to ‘kick back’ and listen to any of the discs in her extensive music collection? Janis Joplin, hard-driving drug addict, drunkard, and promiscuous ‘sinner,’ or Doris Day? Grace Slick, everybody’s ‘Bad Girl,’ or Josie and the Pussycats, who were certainly ‘family-friendly,’ but weren’t even a real band?

There was an old saying, ‘The Devil has all the best tunes,’ and even she had to admit that her mother’s biggest ‘sin,’ in many eyes, was that she wanted to live ‘like a man.’ She always had, and as far as Jackie could see, always would, and Jackie couldn’t exactly blame her.

“Mother mine, I find myself liking you, for all your faults, and I admire the stand you took for women. It must have been very difficult for you, back in those days, and I sympathize. There may be hope for us both, and I promise you here and now that I’ll try — in my fashion — to be a daughter you can be proud of, and will do my very best to love you.”

Clearly, Lilith was surprised, and more than a little suspicious.

“Go ahead, Mother. I have nothing to hide.” She sat still while she felt her mother rifle through her thoughts, which tickled, so she had to restrain her impulse to giggle.

When she was done, she was still suspicious, but who wouldn’t be after a million years of persecution? What she did, though, might have been a tiny crack in a long-standing wall. “I’ll grant you this, Daughter. I think you’re right to be suspicious of DeBauck. I don’t keep track of the movements of lesser beings, but the brutal death of a Satyr of his power, as it was described, should have raised a slight ‘ripple’ in the Æther, and I didn’t feel it. By itself, that means scarcely anything, because I might easily have failed to notice, if I were otherwise engaged at the time, but I didn’t notice that ripple, and that may be a clue. Do with it what you will.”

Looking at her, Jackie was torn. She’d resolved never to allow herself to be drawn back to the darkness that was the obverse of the coin of her own putative goodness. Jackie hated being reminded of how little difference there really was between a cupid and a succubus and how easily just a slight change in perspective could result in her feeding off lust rather than love, but the other side was true as well. She wondered if Lilith had ever loved Adam, and then supposed she must have, if she’d consented to bear his child, and then Sam, her angel, had actually told her that he had high hopes for her mother. Jackie decided then and there that she owed it to her to maintain her own hope, and to care for her as best she could.

Lilith had waited, almost as if she could follow Jackie’s thought process, but now continued. “Sylvester was a satyr, and satyrs tend toward a peculiarly masculine stupidity and complacence. Even amongst satyrs, Sylvester wouldn’t take home any prizes for intellect, so he’s not nearly as smart as you, daughter. Most of his so-called accomplishments were the result of rifling the thoughts, and sometimes the papers, of those around him, passing off their work as his own. Most importantly, he couldn’t seem to learn to avoid seeking to use my pond as his private fishing hole, so to speak, and liked to brag to the girls in the bar about all his imaginary accomplishments and friends. He even dropped hints that he knew a Phœnix, which is ludicrous, since there hasn’t been a single instance of a Phœnix for almost a thousand years, although they used to be much more common in medieval times. The day before he died, I’d warned him that I would send him straight to Hell if he didn’t discontinue his unwelcome forays here at Calaca E. It was terribly convenient of someone to relieve me of the nuisance of his unwanted presence. If you do find his killer, please let me know. I would so love to thank him, or her, personally for their service to me.”

Jackie looked at the self-satisfied smile on Lilith’s face and asked — jolted right back into suspicion of her mother’s motives by something in her voice — “Why should I believe you? Why should I believe that you didn’t kill him?”

She smiled, and then laughed, not nearly as unpleasantly as she might have. “You shouldn’t. After all, I am the primal demonic figure, of sorts, and haunt men’s nightmares as well as their dreams, although I can’t say that I’ve ever done anyone any real harm — unless the man deserved it, of course — and I would have gladly destroyed him without the slightest bit of the ‘remorse’ of which these foolish humans speak, since he richly deserved the true death for many reasons. But I’m also a lover,” her sardonic smile belied her words, “not a fighter, and it would have taken some preparation and effort — effort that I was pleased not to expend.”

Jackie stared at Lilith trying to decide if what she had said was true, or if her disreputable spiritual mother even knew what the truth was. After going around in circles while Lilith’s self-satisfied smile slowly grew into a satisfied grin, Jackie finally gave up. If this was going to work, she had to take her at face value. “Fine. If you didn’t kill him, do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“Certainly, but will you believe me if I tell you?” Lilith asked, and then added, “ ‘Family values,’ after all, begin at home, Daughter dear, and you show a remarkable lack of filial respect for an upholder of ‘virtue.’ How does it go…? ‘Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land….’ You might consider mending your own ways before throwing up your hands over mine. In the long run, you’re flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone, and ‘blood’ will always tell.” Then she laughed uproariously at her own wit.

Jackie growled in frustration and stalked off. Who ever said families were easy?

Jackie wondered if DeBauck had ordered the fog and drizzle in order to assure an appropriately dismal atmosphere for his funeral. She also wondered if he was somewhere in hell, laughing about the Christian rites of burial his remains were being given … or maybe it was painful for a demon. That cheery thought made the slick muddy hillside more bearable until she realized how uncharitable it was.

Chiding herself, she turned to Dr. Long and whispered, trying not to be sarcastic, “Nice service.”

When her mentor nodded, she continued, “Did you hear how he died?”

“No,” he whispered back.

“He was immolated.”

“That’s nice.”

“You didn’t like him much did you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Do you know who might have done it?”

“The list is quite long. I don’t think this is the time or place.”

Jackie actually agreed with him, but wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to find a possible alternative to Frank as number one candidate for murderer. “Let’s move to the entrance to that crypt. It will be drier and we can still watch the ceremony.”

“Actually, we could go back to my car and still watch, since there’s no one else here but the priest and the grave diggers. All of them would happily get about their jobs and leave more quickly in our absence.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

Jackie appeared to be wet and uncomfortable, although she was actually untouched by the foul weather, but remained that way rather than use her magic to change her image to one that was dry. Dr. Long was a bit absent-minded and distractible, but he was the smartest man she had ever met, as well as one of the most knowledgeable human beings in the world when it came to things supernatural. She always wondered how someone who knew so much about the occult could have so little ability to perceive it. It boggled her mind to imagine what he might have been able to accomplish with even a little bit of mystical power to complement his encyclopædic store of arcane knowledge.

“I think the priest was glad we left,” Dr. Long said. “See how quickly he finished once he didn’t feel any obligation to provide for our spiritual needs. He did the man a favor, you know, in providing even a graveside service, since there was no body to serve as a testimony to the promise of the Last Days, which is a requirement of Church doctrine.”

Jackie looked over at the grave site and saw that the man had indeed finished his service and was even now half-running across the graveyard toward the doorway that led to the sacristy. “I hope he doesn’t slip on the muddy grass,” Jackie commented absently as she unconsciously bit her lip in thought and tried to decide how best to proceed. “Look how quickly he’s leaving.” Finally, deciding to just ask away, she spoke. “Doctor Long?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“What was Doctor DeBauck like?”

“Let’s not speak ill of the dead. How’s your thesis research coming?”

“Fine, Doctor, but please. I’d really like to know.”

Professor Long sighed and brushed at his scruff of grey-white hair. “Must we?”

“Please, Doctor. It’s important to me.”

When he still hesitated, Jackie tried another tactic. “A few among the police officers investigating the case think that there was a supernatural aspect to his death. I’m working with a Sergeant at the thirteenth precinct, but I’d appreciate your help.”

“Why didn’t you say so, my dear. Congratulations. Is this your first consulting fee?”

Jackie nodded, a little uneasy at the implied lie, but then reasoned that saving money by being her own investigator was a sort of ‘payment.’

“May there be many, many more.”

“That’s why I need to know about him. Please tell me everything you can think of. You never know what can help.”

“Well, if you insist.” He brushed at his sparsely-covered pate again as he thought. “Well, as much as I disliked his political positions, his life style, and his cavalier attitude towards others, he seemed take particular pleasure in telling me about his exploits, as if I ought to admire or envy him, but he was yang to my yin, as it were, and embodied the worst of the so-called ‘masculine’ qualities without the slightest notion of any sense of complementarity nor realization that every full flower of yang contains within it the inevitability of its transformation into its opposite. He was the perpetual ‘bad boy,’ the ‘spoiled brat’ who goes through life lopping the heads off flowers and kicking random dogs. I can best describe him in those terms.”

Jackie nodded and smiled encouragement as the older man took a deep breath before continuing.

“He was an unrepentant reprobate, always chasing skirts and mercilessly teasing anyone who wasn’t as ‘lucky in love’ as him. For example, I would always know whenever he’d had sex the night before. Instead of calling me Ben, as usual, he would greet me with ‘Ben Long, now short,’ as puerile a bit of faux ‘wit’ as any schoolyard taunt.

Jackie tsked appropriately and he continued, totally oblivious, or totally unconcerned, of how much he was revealing of his personal life.

“He was vehemently opposed to the recently proposed expansion of the Department of Humanities and was quite vociferous, albeit surprisingly eloquent, in his opposition before the University Senate. As Department Chairman I’ve had my work cut out for me since, smoothing the ruffled feathers of some of the other members of the Humanities Department who were counting on a bit more room in their offices and a bigger library with access to better research facilities.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, you know about the house he was building by the lake, the one that blocked my view of it? I had always thought I was safe from such construction because the land between my house and the lake had been designated as wetlands and as such could never be built upon.

Jackie nodded helpfully.

“As usual for Sylvester, it wasn’t enough to build that monstrosity, he also had to gloat about how he had convinced the zoning board to ignore my objections and accept another, and larger, parcel of land he happened to own, and could be designated as wetlands, and how it served me right for not purchasing the land to insure it would not available for construction.

Jackie shook her head in resigned commiseration.

“Did you know that last night he even came by my house? He said he wanted to see exactly how poor the view would be once it was finished.”

“Wow!” Jackie could not help interrupting in surprise. “I knew he was a pain from some of the comments Frank had made, but I didn’t know he was that bad.”

“Have I ever met your boyfriend? If so, I don’t remember. How is he doing?”

“He’s in jail. The police arrested him for DeBauck’s death.”

“Oh my. Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know, Doctor Long, but I wouldn’t volunteer much if I were you. If you tell the police what you just told me, they might consider you a suspect too.”

“Oh my. Really?” He sounded almost excited to Jackie.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Nine:
Ignition

For every time She shouted ‘Fire!’
They only answered ‘Little Liar!’
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.
― Hilaire Belloc, Matilda, Cautionary Tales for Children, 1907

“Be quiet and don’t turn on your flashlight until I tell you,” Sergeant Ahtram instructed Jackie as he slipped out of his car and into the passenger seat of Jackie’s. Jackie had just pulled to the curb behind his car. They were both parked a block from the house where DeBauck had died and well away from any streetlights. “It’s not quite dark enough yet. While we’re waiting, let me finish bringing you up to date on what I found out.

Seeing the expression of hope on Jackie’s face, even in the dim twilight, he quickly raised a hand. “Before you get too excited, I don’t have much.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” The hopeful tone in her voice belied her words.

“I understand, but you must understand. This isn’t one of your mystery novels and we don’t have one of those master detectives out of a mystery novel to take a dozen obtuse clues and wrap them up in a solution in the last chapter. We’ve got you and me to dig and dig and hope for a break.” Hank realized he was lecturing and stuttered uncomfortably before continuing.

“I saw the autopsy results. The dental work was inconclusive, there were no bone breaks or fractures in DeBauck’s record, nor the ‘corpse’s,’ as far as they could tell at least, that could be used for identification, and you can’t do reliable DNA sampling from ash so the identification comes from the personal items found in the remains. DeBauck had this huge ugly ring with some mystical creature on it; half man half goat.”

“A satyr,” Jackie said.

“What’s that?”

“A male wood spirit, like a faun, but randier, and with a goat’s ears, tail, legs, and horns” Jackie explained. “It’s usually depicted with enormous erections and playing these wooden pan pipes like that guy Z-something plays on the late night music commercials. They were the original party animals and were known to be extremely sexually active. Some scholars of myths and magic have suggested that they might be a divergent form of incubus, also sexual predators of women.”

“Well, that’s more than I probably ever wanted to know about satyrs,” Hank responded ruefully. “Anyway, it’s not a conclusive identification, but it’s good enough that it will might stand up in court, despite being fairly indirect and circumstantial, unless DeBauck magically shows up.”

“Boy, that would be nice, Uncle Hank, but I guess we can probably rule out him being so obliging. Heck, from what I’ve heard about him, even if he were alive the bastard probably wouldn’t assist in his own mother’s defense … if he had a mother.”

“Whoa, girl. Whatever happens, you can’t let your emotions get in the way of good police work. It’s a sure way to mess up a case.”

“But this isn’t just any case. It’s Frank.”

“I know,” he sighed and they sat there silently for a while before Hank cleared his throat and continued in a voice so caring and compassionate that Jackie had to listen. “But you’ll be helping the prosecution instead of the defense if you let your emotions make you see things not really there and ignore things that really are there. To make this work, we’ve got to do it the right way, girl. You know that in your heart. Now I need you to use your mind to manage your emotions. I know you can do it. You’ve just got to convince yourself.”

Jackie swallowed hard and nodded her head, too afraid on Frank’s behalf to speak.

Seeing her agree, Sergeant Athram continued in his professional voice. “Anyway, DeBauck always seemed to have plenty of money, but I couldn’t tell how much, since all but one of his accounts seem to be located off-shore. In other news, for someone who was as universally disliked as him, I’m having real difficulty finding anyone who he’d screwed over.”

“But there must be dozens, maybe even hundreds….”

“You didn’t let me finish. I found a bunch of people he’d cheated, but very few are still alive besides Frank and Doctor Long; and some of his detractors were heavy hitters, people no one in their right mind would mess with. I guess he just had problems keeping friends.”

“What happened to them?”

“That’s a bit peculiar. It seems almost all of them were involved in fires. One died when his house burned down in a lightening storm. One died when a tanker truck crashed into his car and exploded. One fell in a vat of unspecified flammable liquid at a chemical plant that then proceeded to catch fire, although they never figured out what the guy was doing there in the first place. One supposedly committed suicide rather than go to jail for embezzlement by dousing himself with barbecue starter fluid in the bottom of his empty pool and having a smoke. I think you get the idea.”

Jackie nodded. “If he weren’t dead, he’d be right at the top of the list of suspects. Doesn’t that also suggest that, if he wanted to cover up his own escape, he’d use some sort of arson?”

“It does, but the DA is unlikely to look, because it’s way too expensive to do the investigation required to build such a case, especially because the suspect seems to be dead, so first they’d have to prove that he was alive. Trying to do that would completely blow away the case against Frank, so instead of a tidy crime of anger they’ve got spaghetti, and they hate prosecuting cases involving spaghetti, especially against people with tons of money, because they can blow a lot of public funds and then look like saps when they lose. They much prefer going after some sad sack like Frank, with no particular assets to draw on.” He frowned at the injustice of it all, then continued. “The other funny thing is that even his dog is missing.”

“His dog?”

“Yup. Some really ugly mixed breed. Say, that gives me an idea.” Hank glanced at the dashboard clock and swung open his door. “We’d better get going, but tomorrow I’ll check out the local animal shelters, vets, kennels, and pet transport companies. It’s a long shot, but maybe I’ll turn up a long lost relative that killed him for his money.”

The ground sloped gently down toward the house and then beyond to the lake. Luckily there was no moon, so they would be hard to see, but it also made it harder to walk — at least for Hank. To Jackie, the house was eerily aglow with psychic energy that spilled over into the surrounding grounds, but of course she couldn’t divulge this to Hank — and so they walked very slowly, at Hank’s pace, feeling the path before them prior to each step. Jackie found it very difficult to control her impatience, and only stopped herself from running ahead by remembering the Frank’s freedom was on the line, and Hank might help her prove his innocence, although the woods themselves furnished a lovely distraction, wild sarsaparilla, Solomon’s seal, Indian pipe, bunchberry, and goldthread were scattered through the undergrowth, with oaks and a few hickories towering overhead, the trees reaching toward the dark sky, which to Jackie’s new perception was glowing with millions of pure stars, all holding themselves aloof from what went on beneath them. Finally, they were at the house, or what had actually been built, much less grand than the elevations Frank had showed.

They hadn’t gone far before they encountered a flimsy black and yellow striped barrier of plastic tape stretched across the path, running from tree to tree off into the darkness on either side of the path. Every couple of feet it had black letters printed on a yellow section: CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS

“Go under the barricade tape,” Hank whispered as he bent at the waist and slipped under the tape before holding it up for Jackie, careful to use the back of his hand.

“Keep your flashlight aimed at the ground. We don’t want anyone to know we’re here,” Hank whispered. Jackie rolled her eyes, thankful for the darkness that hid her own impatience, then followed him up to the steps leading up to the front door, but neither one seemed willing to be the first to start up those steps.

Jackie furrowed her brow and squinted about her as if to see something just at the edge of sight. “Something doesn’t feel right about this,” she said.

“Yeah, crime scenes are always that way. You never quite get used to it, that feeling of wrongness. Although you’re right, this one feels wronger than most for some reason.”

His comment made Jackie briefly wonder if the police detective might not have some psychic talent. She knew why she was uncomfortable; the entire area was glowing with the dark aura of evil magic. With growing trepidation, she followed Hank around the side of the partially completed structure to the back door. There was a foundation and first floor, but the second floor and above was just framing. It looked like the living room was going to be a solid wall of windows and skylights facing out toward the lake and the moon.

“Shine your flashlight here.” Jackie shone her flashlight at the doorknob while Hank pulled out a gadget of some sort and inserted it into the lock, then twisted it slightly as he pulled a trigger repeatedly, click, click, click, until the device turned in the lock and the door opened. “Locksmith’s ‘bump’ gun. We’re not supposed to have these, but most detectives have one handy, just like a hold-out gun. It lets you poke around without busting down doors.” Seconds later they were inside.

“Use your flashlight just long enough to survey each room. Always point it downward and don’t touch anything. If you see anything, and I mean anything, unusual don’t move, and definitely don’t touch it; just call me. You don’t know how to preserve evidence and you could end up destroying the evidence needed to prove Frank’s innocence.”

Jackie wasn’t going to tell him, but it seemed that everything in the house was lit by the glowing darkness she’d seen from the yard. A flashlight was going to be superfluous for her. Still, while he was still in sight, she aimed it downward as if using it rather than have to explain her unusual abilities to the detective.

While Hank was slowly and methodically examining every inch of every room except the one Jackie was in, she turned off her flashlight and closed her eyes as she tried to determine where, if anywhere, was the source of the glowing darkness that spread across the floor and then crept up the walls like a sludge that was somehow buoyant, flowing against gravity. The evil radiance of darkness was so bright that it was hard to distinguish any differences, but slowly, gradually, as if her senses were adapting, she began to get a feeling, a impression of greater darkness in the basement that seemed to be the primary source, but there was another, second source of magic too, and it was outside; much smaller, and it seemed to move about almost at random, and it was an orange red instead of black.

“Jackie. Come here, but watch out for that pile of wood.” Hank called from the living room. He didn’t look up from his position kneeling by the fireplace as she approached. “What do you make of this?”

“It’s a fireplace with singe marks on the stone.”

He nodded, silent and unmoving; waiting for her to continue.

“But this is a new building. Not even new, but still being built. It’s still under construction. Would the construction workers have used it to burn rubbish or something? It doesn’t seem likely.”

“Not if they wanted to avoid getting docked pay to cover the cost of cleaning it, maybe even redoing the work entirely, if this DeBauck wanted to be a jerk about it, which he seems to have been.” Hank quickly flashed the light around the room, taking care to avoid the windows with the narrow beam of brilliant white. “We need to check the rest of the place, but there’s no sign of anyone squatting here, nor of entry damage that would suggest vandalism.”

“Ah, Hank? I think I should tell you that there’s something moving around outside the house.”

There was a gun in the detective’s hand before she could blink and a second later he had moved into a crouch against the wall after pushing her behind him.

“Hank. Relax. It’s not human and it doesn’t seem to want to come in.” The man continued scanning the yard from the edge of the open window frame, searching for whatever Jackie had seen move.

“Wha…?” Her words finally sunk in. “What do you mean, ‘not human?’”

“I think it’s a dog or something, silly,” but the levity in her voice was strained. Dogs didn’t usually have auras. “You didn’t let me finish my thought….”

Slowly, with a scowl, he stood up and put away his weapon. “Let’s check the basement,” he growled and turned abruptly on his heel.

There was only a rough construction ladder built from two-by-fours between the first floor and the basement. Hank insisted on going down first to check the area out and make sure it would be safe. While she waited, Jackie tried to get a better look at whatever was lurking outside. It was clearly magical in origin, but it kept itself just far enough away to prevent her from getting a good view.

“Come on down, if you must, but the stench is going to be really bad.”

“Be right there.” As her head moved below the level of the floor joists it hit her, a cloying, sweet smell, like a combination of roasted pork, charcoal and rancid garbage. “What is that smell?”

“Ask me after we’ve left and I’ll tell you. If I tell you now you’ll just foul the crime scene.” The detective was kneeling beside a dark stain on the concrete floor, staring at it intently. Hank reached out and gently rubbed a finger against the stain. A fine powder came away on his finger and there was a line in the powder where his finger had been.

“I have a friend who investigates fire scenes and we like to compare notes over a beer every now and then. You never know when some piece of information will be useful.” He looked around the room, puzzled for some reason.

“Anyway, I don’t know everything that he does, but I’ve never heard of something that could burn hot enough to cause cement to turn into powder. Have you? It would have to be something hot, very hot.”

“Somewhere between 1610 °C and 2230 °C,” Jackie promptly responded, “but heat alone wouldn’t do it.”

“Huh?” he looked up at her confused.

“What? You think a girl wouldn’t know facts like that?” Jackie was miffed.

“No. I don’t expect anyone to have facts like that at their fingertips unless he or she was in the profession or a trivia buff like me.”

“Oh.” Mollified and a bit chagrined to have been so touchy about it, Jackie explained. “I guess I’m sort of ‘in the profession,’ then, because I’ve been helping Frank study for his exams for years, and he’s a materials engineer. I guess some of it sticks with you, if you see it often enough.”

Hank looked a bit dubious.

“My bigger concern is that heat alone would not have turned cement, which is mostly sand or silica, plus a bit of lime, into powder. It would turn it into glass. There’s something else going on here.”

“I think you’re right,” he said as he stood. “Unless there’s something else you want to see, I think we should get out of here.”

“I’ll call Daren Brightman tomorrow.” Hank stood by Jackie’s car with his head hanging just inside the rolled down passenger window. “He’s the fire investigator I was talking about.”

“Good. Thank you, Hank. Oh, and I think I can guess what the odor was.” She touched the back of her hand to her lips and grimaced fetchingly. “I’m going to sit here a few moments more.”

“Are you going to be able to get home okay?”

“Yes, thank you, Hank.” Jackie smiled at the old fashioned concern in his voice and wondered what he would think if he knew what she really was. “I’ll be all right, really I will.”

Jackie waited until he’d gotten into his car and driven away before hurrying back to the partially-built house. Eschewing the door, she passed through the wall and squatted demurely before the fireplace.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she called. She could feel the presence. It was close, but it was hesitant. She needed something to entice it to come to her, something to make it feel safe and comfortable, but what would make it comfortable?

“Of course.” Jackie ran to the fireplace and tossed in a bunch of wood. Then, she searched for something to use as tinder, but the room was bare. In fact, the whole house was bare, except for the wood.

“Gotta start a fire.” Yanking off her blouse she stuffed it under the wood and considered how to do this. Speeding up the atoms ought to work, since the blouse was nylon, and had a low ignition point.

Soon there was a roaring fire and Jackie could feel the presence moving closer and closer. Suddenly, there was something else in the fire, something alive, something looking at her from the heart of the fire. “Zzz-ang-oo. Vvv-uzzz cold.”

It took her a moment to figure out that whatever was in the fire had just thanked her and told her it was cold. “You’re welcome, but what are you?”

“Zzz-al-man-der.”

“Oh, a Salamander. How nice. What are you doing here?”

“Vvv-ate vvv-or Mazzz-der.”

“You’re waiting for your Master? Who’s your Master?”

“Vvv-nix.”

“Phœnix? There’s a Phœnix around here? Damn, this town is getting too crowded with mystical creatures.”

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Ten:
Flame

The fourth part of the universe is entirely fire,
and is the source of the salutary and vital heat
which is found in the rest. From this we may conclude
that, as all parts of the world are sustained by heat,
the world itself also has such a great length of time
subsisted from the same cause….
― Marcus Tullius Cicero,
from The Tusculan Disputations,
(composed some time after the year 47 BCE)

 

“I saw Frank this afternoon. He’s hanging tough, but he looks gaunt,” Jackie told Sarah after she had thrown herself onto the Ahtram’s couch, frustration clear in her every word and action.

“There, there, dear. Everything will be all right.” Sarah’s arm was around Jackie, hugging her, holding her. “Hank will help you. Won’t you, Hank?”

“I’ll do the very best I can,” Hank agreed as he cleared the assorted knickknacks off the coffee table and spread out a bunch of papers from a thick folder. “This is what I’ve got so far. Let’s start with the autopsy.

“The autopsy is a bit weak, but then there wasn’t a lot left besides bits of bone and ash for the coroner’s to work with. Additionally, DeBauck had no broken bones or fillings that we know of. He was apparently a disgustingly healthy corpse. As a result, the determination of identity was based primarily on the discovery of an heirloom ring amongst the ashes, the location of the body at the construction site, and the chronology provided by his associates that placed both Frank and DeBauck there about the time of the murder, plus Frank’s wound, which argues for some sort of altercation, even if Frank can’t remember what happened, and Frank’s blood at the crime scene.”

“So they can’t really prove it’s DeBauck?” The smoldering hope in her eyes belied the calmness of her words.

“Forensics is usually better than that, but in this case the findings don’t really prove anything. That’s why they still have cops. A good lawyer could play with these findings, but in the end, the autopsy is unlikely to be a deciding factor. Motive, opportunity, and means are the real issues, so let’s move on to them. Did your friend check on the two sets of books?”

“Yes, but it’s not that helpful either,” Jackie answered. “The books weren’t ‘cooked’ as he called it, despite there being two sets of them. The problem seems to be the purchase of more concrete than the house should have needed or apparently contains. One set of books — the set Frank had at home — showed the excess concrete, but the other didn’t, so the ‘cooked’ books were in DeBauck’s control. He thinks someone got a kickback, but if it went to DeBauck, he couldn’t find it without comparing the books of the excavating company.”

“Difficult, but not impossible. I’ll start the paperwork tomorrow, but you’ll have to submit it instead of me. I’ll get you the name of a friendly judge. You’ll have to get him to authorize a subpoena. Then comes the fun part as the excavating company has its attorneys file show-cause orders ad nauseam.”

“My God, is this what you go through every day?”

“Yup. Exciting, ain’t it?” Hank responded with a rueful grin before continuing. “Considering what an unlikable person DeBauck was, it’s quite amazing how few people there are who seem to have a motive for wanting him dead. Most of them are dead instead.”

“Excuse me? You mentioned that before, but have you found out anything more?”

“Not much. In the short time I spent checking out DeBauck’s acquaintances I found twelve dead people. As I said last night, the really interesting thing is that all the deaths were somehow related to fire, but none of the fires seemed to have much in common, other than being hot. The folks I talk to tell me he has a ‘bad rep’ and no one — not even any of the folks I know on the fringe — is willing to work with or for him. He’s damn close to a pariah in this town.”

“That’s got to mean enemies. Doesn’t it?”

“No. It means he didn’t have many enemies at all. You can’t have serious enemies if people won’t do business with you, and if the few people unlucky enough to have done so are mysteriously dead, it tends to encourage people to stay away from you. Hell,” Hank snorted, “he couldn’t buy a cigarette from a bum. Hardly anyone would do business with him, above or below board, so most of his contractors were hired through shell companies, who were ticked off when they found out who they were really working for, but probably not ticked off enough to kill him. They just demanded an escrow bond before starting work. Even his credit cards had been revoked. Appearances to the contrary, he was broke, at least on paper, although there are supposedly off-shore accounts somewhere, and a record of payments overseas for no apparent reason, but there’s not much we can do about that at the local level. So it looks like all his ready money went into building that house, and the rest vanished into the Cayman Islands and other ‘banking privacy’ warehouses.”

“So who did he have as enemies?”

“Well, unfortunately it’s a very small list and Frank is still on the list, high on the list. He had motive; DeBauck was making his life hell and everyone knew it. He had opportunity; he admits he saw DeBauck at the construction site that night and he has no alibi to prove he left before DeBauck was killed. He even had means; there was an oxyacetylene torch at the site that could have gotten hot enough to burn the body, and the tank was empty.”

“Hank, that’s just plain silly. Even I know that it takes several hours in a specially-constructed retort to reduce a human body to ash, using an enormous amount of heat and fuel. Doing that with an oxyacetylene torch — essentially a point source of heat — would be about as practical as roasting a turkey with a book of matches. I don’t know exactly how long it would take, but I suspect several days and a truckload of replacement tanks.”

Hank blinked in surprise. “Good point. We’ll have to mention it to Frank’s attorney, but not yet, I think. If you give the DA’s office any warning, they’ll just work harder to come up with an alternative, since Frank’s their only suspect and they won’t be happy if they’re made to look like fools before they go to court. They’ve already spent a lot of money on building a case, so their reputation is on the line. If they think they have an air-tight case going in, maybe they won’t pull as many dirty tricks to bolster their case.”

“Oh, great,” Jackie said. “This is just so not CSI. At least they go after guilty people. All this ‘circumstantial evidence’ the DA supposedly has in hand might just as well point to ‘spontaneous human combustion,’ so maybe the ‘murderers’ are really cosmic rays or space aliens.” Jackie was almost in tears and Sarah gave her a gentle pat on the knee. Startled, she looked up into the older woman’s eyes and saw the love and concern. The tears stopped stillborn and a tentative smile appeared in their place. They hugged.

At last Jackie was ready to continue. “So who else do we have?”

“We have Doctor Long. He had motive, what with DeBauck being responsible for the university not agreeing to the expansion of the Humanities Department and the home construction. He had opportunity — being at home and alone at the time of the death. But means is a bit weak, unless he used the mystical arts,” Hank laughed sheepishly.

“There must be someone else. Isn’t there?”

“Well,” Hank gave a deep sigh. “Not that I can find. I can’t even find the guy the house was being built for.”

“You mean he wasn’t building it for himself? Do you have a name?”

“Sure.” Hank flipped through his papers. “Here it is. Ignátio Fénix. Funny thing is, he doesn’t seem to care about the construction delay this investigation is causing. He hasn’t answered any of the messages Handelson’s left.”

‘Fénix! Phœnix! The Salamander had said that a phœnix was the ‘master’ it was waiting for, and her mother had said something about a Phœnix being involved — if only to dismiss the notion that DeBauck could possibly know one — but if a Phœnix was involved with DeBauck, that would account for the burn marks on the concrete. Mom did mention that the guy wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box, so maybe the Phœnix offed his goto boy when he goofed up somehow.’ “Could he be a suspect? Or could this whole thing be a scam? Ignátio Fénix seems about as obviously phoney as ‘Primo Suspek,’ or ‘Ima Crook.’ If this Ignátio guy is out to scam people, though, the first rule of villainy is that dead men tell no tales.”

“I don’t think so. The guy lives somewhere in Mexico. There’s no evidence that he’s ever been in this country, let alone in this area, so opportunity is out. As to motive, why do something to delay the construction of your dream house?”

“He’s never been in this area? Then how could this be his dream house? And having no evidence that he’s here isn’t nearly the same thing as not being here. There are probably a thousand informal ‘tourists’ and ‘economic refugees’ within a mile of here. Any man wealthy enough to build that house on the lake shore is easily capable of bribing someone in Mexico — or anywhere south of the border or in the Caribbean — to create a false ID, or even a passport. He might not even exist. Anyone could show up and claim to be acting on his behalf, and all they’d need would be a piece of paper to wave around.”

“Who knows?” Hank said. “ The guy apparently has enough money that he can afford several houses.”

Jackie sat very still, concentrating as hard as she could. Something didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Well, tonight would be the full moon and that would help her powers. Maybe it would help her think too? Then again , when she thought too much, she began to sink into despair. “I think I need to go home now,” she said, trying not to lose control.

Sarah reached out to touch her arm. “Don’t worry dear, something will come up. I have total confidence in Frank’s innocence.”

“Thank you, Sarah. I’d better go now.” Jackie nearly tripped over her feet in her rush to leave before the tears started again.

“Why am I here? Why am I here?” Jackie kept mumbling as if by repetition it would become a mantra to relax her and keep her safe as she squatted by the still incomplete home’s fireplace. She had just started a roaring fire in hopes of luring back the Salamander so she’d have someone to talk to while she waited. She’d brought the lighter from home this time, and a little can of lighter fluid to speed up the fire. She remembered being in the Campfire Girls, but didn’t recall going on any camping trips to hone her woodcraft skills. The trick with the nylon blouse had been fun, sort of, but even on sale at Ross it had been ten ninety-nine, and she’d liked that blouse.

It would have been easier if she knew what she was waiting for, but she didn’t. There was just that gnawing feeling that the answer to her problems was here if she could just figure out what it was.

“Zzz-ang-oo. Vvv-uzzz cold. Zzz-ooo cold.”

“How’s it going? Still waiting for the master?”

“Eeh-zzz.”

“Any idea when he’ll come?”

“Zzz-oon?”

“You don’t sound very sure of yourself.”

“Not zzz-ure. Hhh-ope.”

“You know, it doesn’t sound like your master is a very nice person.”

“Not pur-zzzon. Vvv-nix. Mazzz-der izzz vvv-nix.”

“Well, it sounds like your Phœnix isn’t very nice.”

“No.”

Jackie thought for a moment. “Tell you what. If this Phœnix doesn’t come back, you can live with us. We have a fireplace you can use.”

“Zzz-ang-oo. Be nnn-ew mazzz-der?”

“How touching,” said a new and scornful voice behind her. Jackie jumped and turned to see a tall man standing in the shadows by the door. “We’ll deal with your treachery later, Salamander.”

Two quick steps and the man was standing over Jackie. “It … it’s you,” she managed to say before a flash came out of nowhere and caught her with some sort of psychic blast. She was unconscious before she struck the ground.

The room was about twelve feet by twelve feet and solid concrete. Even the roof was concrete. What was more unusual was the absence of any doors or windows. What was even more unusual — although Jackie found herself ruefully admitting that this sort of stuff was fast becoming commonplace — were the black candles surrounding an elaborately drawn pentagram. In one corner, shivering, cringing as far as possible from DeBauck himself, was the Salamander, and in the middle of the pentagram was her captor.

“Wh … where am I?” Jackie asked the man who had struck her. She made a special effort to appear dazed and confused.

“Where I want you, in the room I had built beneath my house.”

“Your house?”

“Not a great conversationalist, are you? Yes, this is my house,” the man responded as he sprinkled some powder onto the floor inside the pentagram. It flared up brightly for a moment, clearly showing the face of the man standing in the center of the room.

“You’re Ignátio Fénix?”

“At your service, sweet thing.”

“But you’re Sylvester DeBauck. And you’re alive.”

“Right on both counts. It’s a shame I can’t keep you for later.” He took the opportunity to leer at her. “I’ve always liked dumb blondes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Is it possible I’ve overestimated your dim intelligence? Do you expect me to spell it out for you, woman?” he sneered and made a lewd gesture. “Oh, what the hell?” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got time to kill. Where would you like me to start?”

Jackie slowly sat up and tucked her legs under her. Thinking a few moments before speaking, she asked, “Why Frank?”

“Tsk. Tsk. And I thought you would ask what I was doing first. Oh, well, your loss. The answer is ‘Why not?’”

“That’s it? ‘Why not?’ You set up your research assistant for your own murder and the reason is ‘why not?’”

“Would you prefer something deeper?” DeBauck asked as if it was the most hilarious of questions.

Jackie was getting really tired of that sneer.

“He was available and easily manipulated. What more reason should I need? You humans are so weak and unworthy.”

Jackie noticed that he had described her as human. She knew her mystic aura was less when she wasn’t tapping into her magic, but he should still have been able to see it, just as she could see his. Whatever the weakness, Jackie knew that she would need to take advantage of it if she could.

“What do you hope to gain here?” Jackie gestured to the pentagram.

“Ah, now that’s what I expected to be your first question although it should be obvious.” He tsked at her blank look, allowing contempt to twist his features, and then continued. “I’m about to be reborn.”

“But how’s that possible?” she asked.

“I,” Jackie could see him preening as he spoke, posing to present the most attractive profile, ‘am a Phœnix, an immortal being who is reborn in fiery glory every millennium.”

‘Sure, and I’m Queen Marie of Roumania,’ she thought, but carefully didn’t say. Jackie turned to the Salamander. It looked completely miserable, so Jackie began whistling and patting her lap in order to call it to her. If nothing else, it gave her a chance to look at something, anything, other than DeBauck, still busy gloating over his own genius.

“You disbelieve? You doubt my supernatural nature? Then see me in my true glory.” With that he shimmered and something else stood before her. It was still DeBauck, but it was something else also. It had the hoofed legs and pelt of a goat and two small horns on the head. The hair on its head looked the same as that on the legs and the ears were pointed.

“You’re a satyr?” Jackie was careful to sound disbelieving.

His already ruddy skin turned a deeper purplish red and the perpetual sneer became a vicious snarl. “I am a noble Phœnix, do you hear me? A Phœnix, not some common wood spirit, some frolicking billy goat! How dare you suggest anything to the contrary!”

Jackie refrained from mentioning that the Phœnix was reputed to be a bird, and he showed no signs of having feathers — other than the ones inside his head where most people kept their brains — but had to bite her tongue to restrain her natural tendency toward sarcasm, because the guy was clearly loony; dangerous, but loony, and she didn’t know how he’d managed to knock her out.

His rage was beginning to dissipate a bit. “I should destroy you for such blasphemy.” His face became calculating and an evil smile replaced the snarl. “But no, I must not forget. I have a special fate in store for you. You will be the thirteenth. The last oblation destined to ensure my glorious apotheosis.”

“Thirteenth? The thirteenth what? Corpse?”

“Ah, there is a glimmer of a brain in that pathetic human head of yours after all. Yes. You shall be the thirteenth sacrifice.”

“Of course, the twelve people who died by fire,” Jackie blurted out. Then her eyes grew wide as she realized that she might have given herself away by letting him realize that she knew things that she should not have known, things that might reveal her to be more than just another human to be sacrificed.

“What do you know of them?” He was instantly wary.

“I … ah, nothing in particular. I’m in the Humanities Department you know.” She ignored his derisive snort as she frantically searched for an explanation that he would believe. “I specialize in mythology. The Phœnix was reborn each millennium from the ashes of its own funeral pyre. Actually, it’s not exactly a millennium, but full moons approximately a thousand years apart. There’s nothing specific that I’ve ever read about thirteen sacrifices as a precursor, but thirteen is a mystic number associated with the moon, so it makes sense, and you’re the one who said that I’d be the thirteenth, not me. I suppose there’s a timing to the sacrifices that requires some esoteric knowledge? Secret ceremonies known only to you?” Belatedly, she resolved to flatter him as much as possible. He had that hungry look about him, and Jackie was a very shrewd judge of male character. Her mother had been right about him; he was almost as stupid as a box of rocks, not that she’d proved herself much smarter, after foolishly blabbing what should never have been said aloud. She began to think that her mother might have been right about the other thing as well; that she’d never done anyone any harm who didn’t deserve it.

“Very good,” he nodded, flattered by her subtle acknowledgement of his superiority. He smiled. “The Sacrificial Lamb must be offered at the rising of each full moon of the last year of the Lunar Millennium, which is almost upon us, the Culmination of the Mystic Prophecy of The Last Moon, the sacred day of Divine Fulfillment, the Sacred Culmination of the Ever-Ascending Cosmic Spiral of Rebirth. Know that your puny death shall assist me in my Ascendance into Glory!”

“But wait, you don’t have a funeral pyre!”

“Of course I do; that’s what the Salamander here is for,” he said, sneering as he looked at an expensive watch, a Ulysse Nardin Men’s Maxi Marine style, she noted, around twenty-five grand at discount, twice that retail, so at least he had enough taste to avoid the clichéd Men’s Rolex Submariner, or perhaps he had a fashion consultant who told him what to buy. “But enough idle chatter. It is time,” he said with grandiose condescension. With a wave of dismissal he turned to the Salamander. “I know you’re hungry. There’s your food.” He pointed to Jackie.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

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

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Part Three:
Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter Twelve:
Keep the Home Fires Burning

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
― Robert Frost, Death of the Hired Man, North of Boston, 1915

 

 

“Hi honey, I’m home,” Frank called as he kicked the apartment door shut with his foot. Dropping his grocery bags on the kitchen counter, he continued on into her bedroom. Not finding Jackie anywhere, he strolled back to the kitchen and checked for a note stuck on the refrigerator. He found one.

I’m at Hank and Sarah’s house. Back about 7 PM. Love, Jackie

“Damn. Dinner alone again,” Frank muttered. He was disappointed that Jackie wasn’t home waiting for him. Even though it had been only nine hours since he had last seen her, he missed her. “Grabbing a spoon, he pulled a quart of Wonton Soup out of one of his bags and slouched over to the couch. Television controller in hand, he started flicking through channels.

Jackie came wafting in at a quarter to eleven. Seeing her boyfriend asleep on the couch, she slipped her shoes off and tiptoed to her bedroom. Slipping into her sexiest peignoir, Jackie came up behind Frank and began tickling his nose with one of the fine silk cords that tied it at the waist. When he woke enough to groggily brush at the irritant, she couldn’t help herself. She began to giggle.

Realizing what was happening, he croaked out, “What time is it?”

“Almost eleven. I’m sorry, Honey, but Aunt Sarah had some friends over and we were talking. Oh, and Hank offered me a job. It’s just a consulting job, but it’s a start.”

“That’s wonderful. With both of us working, we’ll be able to afford that house down payment even sooner. Uh, it’s not another one of those serial killer investigations is it?” Frank asked, suddenly worried.

“Nope. Uncle Hank wrangled this one, but it’s with Robbery, not Homicide. Apparently, there’s been a rash of diamond thefts.”

“And they need a Humanities major? No slight intended, but I don’t understand the connection.”

“Good, because if you did, I’d have to punish you horribly.” Suddenly Jackie looked like a walking corpse with skin sloughing off in spots and one eyeball hanging loosely on her cheek from a slimy strand of optic nerve.

“That’s not going to work,” Frank replied laughing as he grabbed Jackie by the waist and hugged her close to him, despite her hideous appearance. “I know it’s still you under that gruesome glamour.” He sniffed suspiciously. “You could use a bath, though. The formaldehyde smell is a bit over the top.”

“Drat. Now I’ll have to think of something really bad.” But Jackie was smiling as she said it and was instantly her usual beautiful self. “Anyway, to answer your question, there are what they describe as ‘runes’ engraved on each safe and the owners swear that the safes, or vaults, some of them very modern, were locked, and were still locked after the thefts. Additionally, no alarms went off, either during the robberies or thereafter, and one of the safes had a continuous video and electronic status monitor installed which showed the jewels being locked into the safe, nothing happening all night long, and then the drawers the jewels had been locked in all night long were opened to reveal, dah-dum! Nothing. No jewels, no nothing, not even a ‘Thank you’ note. Finally, there was a faint aroma of some sort of unusual perfume.”

“So you’re going to consult on brands of perfume?” Frank asked and immediately raised his hands to protect himself from the battering he knew was to come from the throw pillow beside them. When it failed to materialize, he peeked through his fingers to see Jackie waiting for him to do exactly that. The first blow arrived before he could close his eyes again. By the third blow, they were laughing so hard they fell off the couch. Somehow, on the way down they ended up in each other’s arms, kissing and hugging for a few minutes before Jackie pulled away….”

“Sorry, Frank,” she sighed. “I’m starting to feel hungry, and that ain’t good. I’m getting better, though. That was two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, our longest make-out session yet. By my calculations, it will only be another hundred and fifty-five years before we can spend the night together.” She looked as if she might start to cry.

Frank shrugged and patted her hand lightly. “It’s okay, Jackie. I knew that our relationship would be difficult when I took it on. I love you, and I know that you love me, and that’s what counts for me, at least. Seriously now,” he said, changing the subject back to work, “what will you be doing? And I promise not to interrupt again.”

“Well, I kind of liked the interruption,” Jackie pouted, but propped herself up on an elbow and continued her explanation. A dark pink aureole kept peeking out from above the loose bodice of her peignoir with each breath.

“At least I won’t interrupt if you promise to stop that,” Frank reached out and tickled the offending piece of anatomy. “You’re making it hard to concentrate.”

With a half-smile, half-pout, Jackie covered herself and then continued. “Actually, they’ve already brought in a perfume expert to no avail. He claimed that it wasn’t a perfume at all, but only an odor — body odor maybe, or the remnants of whatever was used to etch the runes onto the steel sides of the safes.”

“I’m not interrupting here, but I can pretty well assure you that nothing that smells anything like the kinds of acids that would be needed to etch something on hardened steel would smell anything like a perfume.”

“It’s nice having an engineer for a boyfriend,” Jackie noted as she ruffled his hair. “I had come to that conclusion too. Apparently so have the police. They’ve assumed that these were a series of inside jobs since the only damage has been the markings.”

“I’ll bet Uncle Hank doesn’t share that view, does he?”

“Nope, and neither do I. Luckily, Saul Pearlmutter is Chairman of the City Council and owns the jewelry shop that experienced the largest losses from the robberies. He put pressure on the Chief of Police to come up with something creative to solve the robbery. The Chief, of course, turned to his best officer in the field….”

“Uncle Hank.”

“Exactly, despite the fact that his two top detectives, Mutt and Jeff, I think their names were, are now officially miffed. They’d lost a lot of credibility during the DeBauck investigation, or so it seems.”

“And Uncle Hank brought you in,” Frank added helpfully.

“Hey, you said no interruptions. Now I get to attack you again, but if I do I’ll never get to the best part of my news. What to do? What to do?” Jackie moaned playfully.

“One second, hon,” Frank said, interrupting her soliloquy before it really got started. Grabbing a pen from his pocket, he wrote on Jackie’s hand, “IOU 1 attack.” Then he signed it.

“Much better. I’m holding you to that,” Jackie said with a sultry look, then laughed and continued. “Anyway, Frank convinced them that I, with my arcane knowledge of mythology and the mystic arts, could decipher the ‘runes.’ or markings, whatever they are, in the ostensible hope of discovering some political group behind the ‘heist’ who felt compelled to brag about their feat in ancient Norse or whatever, and covertly to ascertain if there was magic involved. The best part that is the Chief is under so much pressure that you get a job too. He wants a professional engineer to examine the safes for any possible way of opening them.

“He is grasping at straws, isn’t he?”

“Yup. But he feels a tad guilty about your arrest, and his discomfort is our chance to work together. That’s the real good news,” Jackie bubbled with excitement.

“Whoa. Slow down, hon. I love the thought of working side by side with you, but I’d like a few details.”

“Last time I checked, your favorite was blonde, 36-22-35, five foot ten, and a hundred and twenty-two delectably perfect pounds.” Jackie posed saucily. “How’m I doin’?”

Frank laughed. “I’m not going to get too much more information out of you for a while, am I?”

“Nope.” Frank acceded to the inevitable, although when he could think again, he had to admit it was enjoyable, in a roughhouse sort of way.

“Thank God for Sunday church services or I’d never get any time to rest,” Frank chuckled to himself as he waited in the car for Jackie. It had been a hectic weekend, most of it spent by Jackie, comparing the crime scene pictures of the scratches to her reference texts, doing general research, more time than she would have liked spent on such necessities as preparing Frank’s meals, cleaning, and shopping, with very little allocated to interpersonal exploration, which was still difficult. Even after her encounter with the Salamander, she still found it difficult to control the lust and hunger that rose in her if she became too terribly excited, and didn’t want to take any chance of having Frank wind up as Françoise, her new girlfriend.

Jackie was usually ready before him, but not on Sunday mornings. This morning she was getting dressed in real clothes, as opposed to the illusions she often used when in a hurry. There was a solidity and comfort to real cloth, real textures, and real colors that she liked, because she could feel them on many levels, as if they had a sort of life of their own, made up of their combined physical reality and the creativity and emotions of the people who’d designed and made them.

When she cloaked herself in illusion, it didn’t feel all that different to her from nudity, since the manifested garments were inherently insubstantial, and all she had to do was wish and the clothes would melt into air, into thin air, but her budget couldn’t handle too many new outfits, especially the couture outfits she secretly coveted, because the vital energy that custom garments contained was almost intoxicating. She subscribed to Women’s Wear Daily now, as well as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vanity Fair, because the outfits they featured were delightful just to see, and she could hardly imagine what it must be like to actually wear such lovely things.

Just as he prepared to honk the car’s horn, Jackie scurried out and jumped into the passenger’s seat. He was already backing out of their assigned parking space before she had her seatbelt on.

“So explain to me again,” Frank asked as soon as they were on the main road. “What am I expected to do?”

“As I understand it, the Chief expects you to discover how the safes were opened using conventional — and by that I mean non-magical — means.”

“But you said that you and Hank are certain that it was a magic user,” Frank replied. “I’m confused.”

“Well, how do you think Hank feels?” she asked him. “Having a wife of thirty years who’s a Phœnix now — even though no one knows exactly what that might mean — and who now looks to be about seventeen years old, and having a sort-of niece-in-law who’s somewhere between a cupid and a succubus, as well as having to arrest an insane satyr with magical powers, who has to be kept locked up with magical ‘wards’ surreptitiously set and maintained by a college professor who looks a lot like Merlin the Magician wearing an expensive suit from Mayfair, may have forced your uncle to accept the existence of magic, but he’s an army of one on the police force, since everyone else seems grounded in a different reality.”

“Well, there is that,” he admitted.

“There were enough people on the force who were convinced that he’d murdered his wife and replaced her with his girlfriend,” she said, “that it had taken considerable … influence … to convince them that Sarah’s changes were due to ‘experimental genetic therapy,’ which also accounted for her changed fingerprints.” She didn’t add that she’d supplied the influence, because he was uncomfortable with the fact that her powers — whether used for good or ill — were primarily based upon love, sexuality, and desire. While she was technically chaste — at least in a physical sense — there were quite a few people who were subconsciously convinced of a contrary belief, which made life a little difficult when she happened to run into them. She’d have to ask her mother how to do that Vulcan mind trick that made men forget.

“I know, I know,” Frank said, “but it just seems weird.”

“Well,” she said, “it is weird, if by ‘weird’ you mean experiences outside of normal human perceptions and awareness. But just think of the problems it would cause if a lot of people started to really believe that this sort of stuff existed. Some people would use it as an excuse to burn anyone they didn’t like at the stake, while others would be sacrificing babies and virgins in their efforts to talk to Satan or something equally icky.”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “It seems to me that it’s no different, really, than knowing that your accountant knows a lot more about balancing your books than you do, or a doctor knows more about how to set a broken leg than the average mechanic.”

“It’s not the same thing at all, Frank. Imagine what would happen if people started Summoning really powerful demons to do their dirty work. Not only would no one be safe, but there’d be an enormous pressure on governments to ‘handle’ the problem, which they’d be ill-equipped to do, so they’d almost certainly do something stupid. You think stories about the excesses of the House Un-American Activities Committee are bad, just wait for the Federal Office of the Holy Inquisition. What’s the proper response to Demonic Possession, torture? hanging? burning at the stake? Ask yourself if you want Hell to incorporate itself, thereby acquiring legal personhood, free-speech rights, free-trade concessions, and every politician in the world, since they’ve got all the money. Lilith alone could probably outspend the entire Western Hemisphere without blinking an eye, and as you know wouldn’t have to spend a dime to gain control of every world government, since almost all of our politicians are male. — Remind me to be irritated about that. — Heck, my own powers aren’t entirely limited to men, because any woman who’s ever been attracted to women, however slightly, falls with the scope of my supernatural warrant card as well, so I might be a ‘voting’ block on my own, challenged only by other creatures of magic, and I have, to my best knowledge and belief, somewhere around two to three million sisters.”

His eyes widened as he started considering the implications. “Oh….”

“Exactly. You might also think about the fact that the great majority of ambassadors, judges, and politicians are men, especially in the higher reaches, so I myself might be Empress of the World with a little effort, although I suppose other supernatural beings might quibble over the title. Luckily, none of us seem to be all that interested in world conquest and global domination these days.”

“So my job is to both ‘solve’ the crime and simultaneously cover it up.” He didn’t sound happy at all.

“Don’t be glum, love.” Jackie offered him a gentle pat on the leg, taking care not to arouse her boyfriend before church. “Your real job will be to save humanity from uncontrolled magic let loose in the world. Figuring out how the crime could have been committed conventionally, however improbably — and then ‘proving’ that it was — will save countless lives and preserve Western Democracy. Superman couldn’t lift a heavier burden, and if you want, I’ll let you wear spandex tights and a cape, as long as you don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses.” She gave him a little wink that promised more than she could yet deliver, but he was keeping track, she knew. “Just about all of the paranormal creatures in the world are in complete agreement here. Nothing must be done to break the Compact and let humanity know of our existence.” The Compact was new to her as well, since Lilith, her spiritual mother in this form, had only deigned to tell her of it only a few weeks ago, but she didn’t mention it. It would only add to Frank’s resentment of Lilith, but they were stuck with her, despite her quirky moods.

“To give you an idea of how important this is, right after church, I have to go see Lilith.”

“Lilith? What does the queen bitch want? Don’t tell me she’s going to help?”

“Yes, dear, she is going to help. In her own way, she loves her children and doesn’t want them exposed.”

“Why would someone who’s spent the last million years thumbing her nose at God care about the Compact? In today’s world I’d bet more people would side with her and her succubi than with the forces of light.”

“Oh, that’s cold, dear, so terribly cynical — but probably true, because so many of the so-called virtuous are only in it for the money, and many people know it, but please remember that God likes her, even if you don’t. When we get married, she’ll be your mother-in-law, so please try to cultivate a little more respect, and I’ll try very hard to do the same, and you know how easily she manages to push my buttons, no matter how often I swear to myself that things will be different next time, that we’ll get along and everything will be fine. While I too doubt that Lilith cares much about the Compact, she doesn’t want her children publicly identified because of the three ‘S’s; remember Sanvi, Sansanvi and our friend Semangelaf?”

“Good point. If that happened, she’d quickly lose at least some of her more rambunctious children, wouldn’t she?” Pulling into a parking space and stopping the car, Frank added, redundantly, “We’re here.”

Jackie got out of the car, smoothed her dress, straightened her shoulders, hooked an arm around Frank’s and marched into the church with her man.

“I’m flattered,” Lilith said and smiled as she sat beside Jackie at Calaca E. Jackie had duplicated Lilith’s form and was even flirting with a couple of the barflies.

“Thank you, Mom.”

“Not that flattered,” Lilith laughed as she indolently waved a hand and wiped the memories of the two who’d heard that she was Jackie’s mother. A moment later, they wandered away, apparently forgetting that two beautiful twins were standing beside them. Moving to a table, they sat facing each other across it. “Get on with it. I’m feeling a bit peckish, and wish to dine in peace.”

“Hey, you asked me to come here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have disturbed you.”

“At least tone it down.”

“I thought I was ‘toning it down’ as you call it. You can barely see my aura.”

“I don’t need to see how ‘light’ you’ve become to feel it. Can’t you even put up a shield?”

“Sorry, Momma Lilith, I never learned about shields. I guess my upbringing has been woefully lacking in depth as well as substance.”

“Stop calling me Momma and I’ll show you, you little brat. It’s like this, watch what I do.” She seemed to implode in on herself although the outline of her body never changed. However, when Jackie examined Lilith’s aura, it appeared dim and ghostly, almost as if the real Lilith had disappeared and a normal human being was sitting across from her.

“Nice trick. Can you show me how to do it?”

“No. You should already know, since you were able to convince that fool satyr that you were mortal, or maybe he was already insane; it’s so hard to tell with satyrs. If you are too slow to learn from what I showed you, you’re just hopeless and helpless….”

“Gee thanks. I love you too, Mom.”

“…However,” she continued, as if Jackie hadn’t spoken,“ with your permission, I will do it to you, so you can observe from an easier perspective.”

“Why do I feel like I’m making a mistake here?”

“We won’t talk about anything you’re worried about until I am perfectly comfortable,” she said.

Jackie hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally made up her mind. “Do I have your promise that you will do nothing to hurt me or mine?”

She laughed, not entirely unpleasantly. “Oh, of course, Ms. Legal Eagle. Yes, if you trust any promise from the Queen Mother of All Demons. Shall we have a contract signed in blood? Oh! Wait! We don’t have a drop of blood between us, would lipstick do? You insult me, Daughter, with your constant doubts and puerile slurs. You ‘handled’ the satyr for me, and I promised that whoever did that would be rewarded, and I always keep my promises. Why do you think I left Eden? Not that it was nearly as wonderful as they make out — too hot and dry in the summer and too cold and dry in the winter, which was very dreary before the invention of lip balms and skin moisturizers, let me tell you — but it was home for a while, and there was always fresh water for bathing, which was a real luxury in those days, even when you had to break through the ice to get at it. That scrawny little male twit wanted to extort promises from me, that I, Lilith, Firstborn Woman of Mother Earth, would be a ‘good girl’ and behave ‘respectably,’ around that pathetic little volcano godling with his phallic fixations and his temper…. Feh! What an asshole! Samael, the Archangel of Death, was a much more attentive lover, and could care two figs for respectability. We had some good times, Sammy and I.” Her gaze went unfocused a little as she thought back. “We were together for almost seven thousand years, we two, and had millions of children, most of whom are still around, somewhere. Show me a longer, or happier, marriage, and you can argue with me about my choices in life.”

“Never mind, I’ll take the risk, Mommy dearest. You want something that only I can do, so I trust you, at least until I’ve accomplished what you wish done.”

“But of course. I respect your logic,” Lilith said with a smile on her lips, but with eyes colder than ice. Jackie knew it was a risk, but hoped a visit to Father Sam could help her undo any damage, just in case.

Lilith extended a finger and lightly touched Jackie’s forehead. Instantly, Jackie felt like she had shrunk to the size of a pea and was floating inside a huge shell.

“Now move your essence back to your head so you can hear and see better.”

Jackie was about to ask how when she felt herself floating upward. Thinking ‘Whoa!’ she stopped. Then she began moving again with another thought.

“Come, come. I don’t have all day.”

“Sorry.” Jackie settled in just behind her eyes and waited as Lilith glared. She had it figured out; she could run her ætheric body by remote control, as it were, exerting her will on it as if it were a puppet. It felt almost instinctive, as if she’d known all along, and had just now remembered it. “Uh, I thought you wanted to help.”

“Are you ready?”

“Sure. Can’t you tell?”

“Never mind. Go to the Convention.”

“Convention?”

“Yes, the Convention. And don’t repeat my words like a silly parrot,” Lilith growled. “Go to the Fay Convention. It starts in two days at Lamia Center.”

“Okay. Ignoring the fact that I want desperately to ask why ghosts, ghouls and other paranormal creatures need to wear funny hats and swing from chandeliers — or do they attend seminars on ‘How to be a Better Beast’ — how is that information going to help maintain the Compact?”

“Can you never learn to turn off the smart-alecky kibitzing and cynical quasi-jokes that were already tedious in ancient Mesopotamia? Figure it out! Learn to think for yourself! Go, before I’m bored enough to whip you into a better mood. I’ve told you what you need to know.” With that, she was gone, only to reappear by the bar, right between the two men she’d previously chased away. They both smiled like sidewalk drunks who'd just found a full pint of whiskey in the pocket of their overcoat.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Thirteen:
Chill, Dude

Whatever tortures might await in Hell,
the dreary perfection of Heaven would be worse.
― Anonymous

We may not doubt that society in Heaven
consists mainly of undesirable persons.
― Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks
(Sunday, March 1, 1903)

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
― John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book i, Line 254. (1667)

 

Southfield was one of the nicest parts of town. After the fire of 1894, the area had been rebuilt in variations of brick and steel, none more solidly than the First National Bank building. The Pearlmutter family bought the building when the bank went bust in 1932 and converted the building into a jewelry store. Rumors were that Grandpa Pearlmutter was the local robber baron, heavily involved with providing bootleg “hootch” to the local populace, although Saul Pearlmutter had sued the local newspaper into oblivion after they ran a history piece suggesting as much. Regardless, the Pearlmutter family knew the value of security and had routinely updated the bank’s systems with the newest and the best they could find.

“Wow,” Frank said. “This place has really good security….” He was looking up from yet another set of blueprints.

“I believe you, Frank. That’s the fourth time you’ve said it,” Jackie noted irritably. “I wish you’d stop praising the security here and find some gaps.” She was armed with the inventory of stolen gems, but couldn’t find anything in it that leapt out at her, other than that the caret weights all seemed to be on the high side. Nothing under ten carets had been touched, as if the ‘little’ stones were beneath the notice of the thieves, in spite of the fact that every major stone had been mapped and described so thoroughly that such stones were impossible to sell without cutting them into tiny pieces, which made about as much sense as stealing the Statue of Liberty and selling it as copper scrap.

“I will. I will. There’s always a gap. I’m just impressed with what’s here. It’s good enough that I could actually imagine it being perfect, except nothing’s ever perfect. Let’s check the vaults.”

Jackie gestured to one of the cops who led the way into the back of the store. Just beyond the show room was a well-appointed office and built into the wall between the office and the showroom, clear of any exterior walls, was the vault. It was huge, large enough for several people, and contained several interior vaults that made a second, or even third, layer of security.

The wall to the right had row after row of small drawers, each lined with velvet and filled with cut but unmounted jewels of various types and sizes. Above the drawers were rolls of chain made from various precious metals and a wide assortment of clasps, mostly of gold. Also in drawers along the right wall were a vast assortment of coins of various denominations and makes.

Along the left wall were safe deposit boxes left from when it had been a bank safe. Pearlmutter’s rented them out to clients, much as the bank had done in bygone days. The construction was hardened steel and cement in a sandwich with two inches of steel on the exterior and interior walls and eight inches of concrete between. The door was twelve inches thick, but only four inches of that was a hardened steel shell. The remainder was the locking mechanism, which slid six-inch metal bolts in and out of the frame. The whole thing was on a timing mechanism.

She asked one of the cops to bring in one of the owners, and while she was waiting, looked carefully at the contents of the drawers that seemed to be untouched, keeping her hands well away from anywhere the guards might object to.

The cop brought in a slight young man, bearded, and wearing a fur hat that looked like a squat cylinder with no brim, with a black overcoat buttoned right to the top and a black scarf that looked like silk tucked in around his neck, so there was no skin showing except that of his face and hands. He introduced himself as Eli Pearlmutter, but made no move to shake her hand, so Jackie figured that it must not be customary.

“Mister Pearlmutter, could you tell me why the smaller diamonds might have been left behind? It seems odd to me, because I’d think that the smaller ones would be easier to sell.”

“They would be, of course, but if the thief, or the intended recipient of the gems, were a collector, he wouldn’t have been interested in their monetary value, but in their rarity and quality. All the stolen diamonds were either noteworthy stones in their own right, or were contained in packets that also contained a remarkable gem. The few exceptions were a few packets that contained a large diamond, but one with little value because of internal flaws or defects in clarity or color. Those were left behind.”

“As if the thief had no concern with their real worth, then, or with ease of sale, but chose purely on the basis of rarity and collectability?” ‘Or as if they knew exactly the sort of thing they were looking for,’ she thought to herself, ‘but had no idea which one of that sort of thing it was.’

He considered the question for a moment before he answered, “Yes, exactly like that.”

“Thank you, I think that’s all,” she said.

During all this, Frank studied the maintenance record posted on the inside of the door. The last service call had been less than a year ago and that hadn’t been because of any problems with the safe. Instead, it had been required by the insurance carrier.

While Frank was examining the construction of the building and the safe, Jackie was looking for signs of magic. There were etched runes on the safe that looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place them, other than as Ogham, the tree alphabet of the Druids rather than the stone carvings of the Norse. Where the ancient Norse had used an alphabet meant to be chiseled into stone or planks of wood, the Celtic Druids had cut their lanky ‘tree’ alphabet symbols onto staves with knives. Checking with ætheric vision, she confirmed that there were additional runes and symbols written in something invisible to the human eye, which might explain why only the etched runes were mentioned in the police report. She made a copy to show to her mentor, Dr. Long. Examining the remainder of the building produced nothing of a supernatural nature.

Five hours later, the tired and discouraged pair grabbed a bite at a fast food restaurant and headed over to Sarah and Hank’s home.

“Jackie! Frank! Come on in. How have you been?” Sarah Athram asked as she escorted her nephew into the house.

“Hi, Sarah,” Jackie giggled as she gave the woman a huge hug and kiss. Sarah might be fifty years old chronologically, but tonight she looked like she was twenty-three and Jackie’s twin, evidently a recent manifestation of her growing power as a Risen Phœnix.

“I see you’ve learned another skill. You look beautiful,” Jackie cooed, “even if I do say so myself.”

“You like? I learned it at my group.”

“I like it a lot,” she enthused. “We can go shopping and pretend to be the Rosso Twins. We’ll have to practice giving out autographs with gracious impartiality. Do you want to be Camilla or Rebecca? Maybe we can get discounts on designer labels!” Her eyes grew big with shopping lust, not that she’d really try to trick anyone, but she did like new clothes and her small stipend as a doctoral candidate didn’t go very far.

Frank’s eyes goggled. He wasn’t used to twin Jackies.

Sarah laughed and pinched the bewildered man on the cheek before turning back to her friend. “You don’t mind? You know how uncomfortable it can get when two women are wearing the same dress at a party, let alone the same body.”

“Sarah, remember that I didn’t really grow up as a woman,” Jackie laughed too. “I’m a shapeshifting succubus, or cupid, I’m not sure there’s any real difference. I’ve never had a real body to call my own, because my appearance shifts quite naturally depending on who’s looking at me, unless I pay careful attention and concentrate. I only have a familiar ‘look’ because I’m with Frank so much, and this is how he likes me. My own definition of a really classy chassis is extremely flexible, so I have no proprietary interest in how I look at any given moment.” She shifted through a series of bodies and outfits in the space of a few seconds. “It might be awkward for people stuck in one dress and one body for an entire evening to look like one half of a sister act, but for me it’s a delightful novelty, and one that I can change as quick as I can blink.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, although I guess I should have figured it out when the same skill appeared for me. I know you want to talk business first, though, so Hank’s in the living room with Sal. I’ll be in as soon as I’ve finished the tea.” Sarah waved them on.

Hank stood and extended a hand as they entered, but before they could shake, a ball of flame shot out of the fireplace, striking Jackie in the chest and knocking her backward into Frank.

“Ow!” Frank quickly stuck his finger in his mouth and began sucking on it.

“Sal, Sal, turn it down,” a laughing Jackie pleaded. “You’re going to hurt someone.”

“Yeah, like me,” Frank grumped.

“Zzz-ree.” The Salamander dropped to the floor and turned into a large wolfhound. His front paws immediately left the ground and landed on Jackie’s shoulders, pushing her back into Frank a second time as he began to lick her face furiously. Jackie ruffled his head and had just convinced him to get down when Sarah returned with the tea.

“Oh Frank, you’re injured,” Sarah observed. “Here, let me see that.”

Putting the tea down on the coffee table and taking Frank’s hand, Sarah examined it. A blister was already forming. Positioning his hand so the blister was toward her, Sarah placed it against her chest. There was a brief, dull glow, mostly hidden by Sarah’s hands, and she released his hand. The blister was gone. Without another word, she sat on the couch and began the final preparations for tea.

Sitting herself, Jackie was unsurprised when Sal’s head ended up on her lap. Absently rubbing behind his ears, she asked, “How are you doing, Sal. Are Hank and Sarah treating you well?”

“Ye-zzz. Alll-vvvazzz a vvv-arm vvv-irrrre here.” His tail wagged happily.

“Good. You know you can come live with us as soon as we get a house. We’ll have a big warm fireplace for you then, we promise.” Jackie looked to Frank for support and he nodded his agreement. The Salamander had almost burnt down their apartment before anyone had realized that the fireplace there was a near-fake, suitable only for a gas log, really, with no real chimney to let out the heat, just an insulated vent pipe. Frank had been angry when he finally got around to checking, but no real harm had been done.

“Sure, Sal,” Frank added, although not quite as eagerly as Jackie, “I’ll design it just for you, pal. I promise.”

“Zzz-ank-zzz. Lo-vvv vvv-ooo.” The tail wagged harder.

“Okay, youngsters,” Hank Ahtram interrupted gruffly. “I believe we were going to talk about work first, then do the family thing.”

“Don’t worry, Hank dear,” Sarah spoke quietly, still concentrating on the tea. “You’ll be able to visit and I’m sure Sal will come by and warm our fireplace once in a while.”

Hank blushed and Frank and Jackie smiled knowingly. Finally, feeling that Hank had been sufficiently embarrassed, Jackie spoke up. “You’re right about there being a supernatural angle to the jewelry store robbery, Uncle Hank, but it’s still pretty early in the investigation.”

“So? Tell me what you’ve got. Remember, I need to keep the Chief happy so he can keep Pearlmutter happy.”

“Okay, but I repeat, it’s very early.”

Hank just waited impassively.

“First, there are a series of runes on the safe, both visible and those visible only on higher planes of reality….”

“What do you mean, ‘runes’?” Hank asked. You mean those scratches on the metal? There were more? No one at the Department thought that they were terribly significant, but there was some speculation that they may have been some sort of anchor system for whatever device was used to open the locking mechanisms, since the same shapes repeated themselves on different locks. You say there there were some that we couldn’t see? We scanned the entire surface with several wavelengths of ultraviolet light, mostly to see if there were any latent fingerprints available, but there weren’t.”

“ ‘Blacklight’ wouldn’t reveal these markings, Hank. They exist only on a separate plane of reality. That’s why I suspect that magic is involved somehow,” Jackie explained.

Hank started to object but Sarah calmly motioned for her husband to listen and her twin for the day continued. “I checked the runes, but there was no residual magic that I could see. That’s unusual. Most runes have a trace of magic inherent in the runes themselves. Just in case, I made a copy of the runes to give to Doctor Long. Maybe he’ll be able to help.” She thought about this for while before continuing, despite Hank’s visibly growing impatience.

“Except for the mezuzahs on each door post,” Jackie finally said, “which are very powerful from long use, there was really nothing else of a magical nature in the entire building except some very old traces. Maybe one or two of Pearlmutter’s customers were paranormal beings?”

“Can you tell who they were?” Hank asked. “Handelson is already checking the employee and customer lists, but he’s not likely to go back more than a year or so. Most paranormals apparently live a lot longer, but of course he can’t check for that because we don’t officially know anything about magic. It’s always possible one of them was unsatisfied with the service, I suppose, but this secrecy is driving me crazy.”

“The traces were faint, and I don‘t know them from personal knowledge, but I would if I saw them, of course.” Jackie paused as understanding struck her like a ton of bricks.

“Of course, the convention. That’s what she meant. She really was giving me good advice.”

“Convention?” Hank asked. “What convention and how’s it going to help solve this crime?”

“Lilith told me to go to the convention. I thought she was being her usual pain in the…well, you know where, but she wasn’t. If I go to the convention, I’ll get to meet most of the local paranormal population and a good portion of the world-wide paranormal population, all in one location and at one time. It’s the best chance I’m likely to ever get to match those magical traces to the people who left them. Then, maybe we can see if there is a dissatisfied customer involved.”

“Okay. That sounds reasonable,” Hank concurred. “When’s this convention? I hope it’s soon.”

“Well, that’s the rub.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know when or where the convention will be.”

“Oh great!” Hank groaned.

“I think I might be able to help, dear.”

“Huh? How can you help, Sarah?”

“My support group. You know I’ve been trying to get Jackie to join me at one of the group’s sessions and it’s meeting later this evening.” Turning to Jackie she asked, “Would you be able to come tonight?”

“Dear,” Hank interrupted. “I know you like Jackie and want to do more with her, but we agreed to business before pleasure.”

“Yes, dear, and this is actually both. Jackie needs to find out when and where this convention is and the best place to start looking is where a bunch of paranormal folks are hanging out, talking about how to fit in.”

Hank laughed. “I sit corrected, my dear. You are, as usual, absolutely right.” Turning to Frank, he continued. “How about the building? Have you figured out how it could be broken into by non-magical means?”

“Uncle Hank, slow down,” Frank laughed.

“You’re wasting your time, Frank,” Sarah observed, smiling lovingly at her husband. “I’ve been trying to get him to slow down for years.”

“I examined the building and I have some ideas, but I want to put together a diorama and play with it a bit before saying anything. In fact, if you don’t mind, I’d like to use your workshop to build it, since you have power tools.”

To Jackie’s perception, he spoke the words ‘power tools’ as if they represented holy objects, a fetish she’d never shared, she thought, even when she was a man, although her memories of that were very hazy, overlaid with memories of having been Jackie forever. Idly, she wondered whether her angel Sam had been right about her, which meant that her mother had acted as an angel of mercy, which made her brain hurt to think about. She shook herself to clear her head.

“Of course. Ladies, would you excuse us?” He was already standing and beckoning for Frank to follow.

“Let them go, dear. They’re not going to be fun to be around until they get this done.”

“Uh, true…wait! Uncle Hank, what about the aroma? Were you able to find out what it was?”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t know if it will help, but it was chicory. Does that mean anything to you? They use it in coffee in parts of the South, but that’s all I know.”

“Maybe. There’s an old English superstition that says chicory has the ability to make its possessor invisible, and to open locks.”

“Well, that would help with the video cameras I guess.” Hank was dubious. It was clear that he was uncomfortable with the thought of magic and magical creatures, despite living with a Phœnix, having a pet Salamander living in his fireplace, and having a succubus/cupid as a future daughter-in-law.

“Absolutely, Uncle Hank,” Frank interjected, “but would it also help with the infrared motion detector or bypass the alarms?”

“Good point.” Hank jumped on the idea. “How about that, Jackie? Could it?”

“How would I know? I’m just learning this stuff.”

“I can answer that, dear. Well, I can give you part of the answer.”

“Sarah? What do you know about this?”

“I know that the answer would depend on whether it was a human magic user or a paranormal creature. If it was a human magic user, the stronger the spell, the more effective it would be regardless of the device, but the stronger it would smell and the longer the smell would linger. It would also seem more acrid than fresh chicory. If it were a paranormal being, it would depend on whether shapeshifting is one of the being’s abilities. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t make any difference, but if it was, it would definitely enhance it.”

Everyone stared in amazement, especially Jackie. It had been less than a year ago that Sarah had become a Phœnix and she had yet to discover what a Phœnix did besides live long and get reborn in a fire.

“Your group?” Jackie finally asked.

“The group. I told you it could be of great help, but of course you young people always know better.”

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Fourteen:
Theurgic Therapy

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, (c. 60)

 

Dr. Merl Emrys’ office was in a quiet office building a block away from the downtown health center. The interior was eclectic and disordered. A skull lay atop a text on quantum physics. A model of the Mars Lander lay on its side next to a voodoo doll. A Disney figurine partially obscured a Picasso original. Off to one side of the room was an old wooden desk cluttered with folders and loose papers. The remainder of the room held a group of eight

ordinary folding chairs arranged in a circle.

“Doctor Emrys, I’d like to introduce you to my friend Jackie Renfrew. She’s the one I’ve been telling you about.”

“So you’re Jackie Renfrew,” the man said. He was tall and thin, wearing a bespoke suit that looked like it had been made in Savile Row. He had a neatly-trimmed goatee and long, flowing hair that was startlingly white, and a ‘received’ British accent. “Sarah’s told us quite a bit about you, but she didn’t tell us how pretty you are. You two could be twins.” His eyes twinkled with amusement.

“And I see you have a bit of the blarney in you, Doctor,” Jackie said, “since Sarah’s done herself up for my benefit,” but she smiled as she said it.

“Jackie was hoping to be allowed to sit in on tonight’s group session,” Sarah explained.

“If no one objects, certainly.” Dr. Emrys turned to the circle of empty chairs and asked, “Folks, we have a visitor, someone who would like to sit in one our session tonight. Now you know, that if anyone objects, it won‘t happen. How do you all say?”

“Who is she?” A tiny feminine voice asked. Jackie’s first assumption was that she was whispering, but after a moment’s consideration, Jackie decided that it sounded more like she was shouting from far away.

“What is she?” The second voice was a deep rumble, like rocks grinding against each other. Jackie looked again, but as far as she could tell, even using her magical perceptions, only the Doctor and Sarah were in the room with her.

“Jackie, would you answer their question please?” Sarah asked quietly, adding a nod of the head to indicate that it really was all right to answer.

“My name is Jackie Renfrew. I’m Sarah’s sort-of niece, since my steady guy is her nephew.”

“That’s not the ‘what’ I meant.” The deep voice said. Jackie thought it was coming from the side of the room with the chairs, but there was nothing there, nothing visible and no auras.

“Maybe not, but it’s the ‘what’ I’m going to answer.”

“Jackie?” Dr. Emrys asked.

“Yeah?”

Sarah gave her a worried look, so she guessed that she’d sounded a bit surly.

“A group is based on trust,” the Doctor explained. “Each person in the group trusts that the others will keep private any of the confidences revealed during our sessions. This trust goes both ways. You must trust us and we must trust you.”

Jackie was torn. On the one hand, she wanted to be admitted to the group for the information she felt she would need to solve her current problem. Additionally, she admitted to herself that it would be nice to have someone to talk to about her own change. However, the nature of her change, that she was designed to be a doxy, of sorts, was a matter of some sensitivity for her.

Before she could come to a conclusion, Sarah spoke. “Please give the group your trust, Jackie. I trust them.”

“Okay,” Jackie sighed in resignation. “The question was ‘What am I?’ The answer is, I’m somewhere uneasily between a Succubus and a Cupid, and some days I don’t know exactly which side I lean toward, but I want it to be the side of light and love … most days. I was created by Lilith, and she’s … difficult to get a handle on, or to reconcile with my own former assumptions about reality and justice in the world.”

“Thank you, Jackie,” Dr. Emrys said and gave her a comforting pat on the back and waved towards the folding chairs. “Please join the group.”

Turning, Jackie saw that all but three of the chairs in use. There was a huge black man with flowing white hair. He was so huge he would have made John Henry, the “steel drivin’ man,” look puny. “Welcome,” he rumbled. His was the voice that had asked, “What?”

To his right was a redheaded woman; so slight that you could see the top of the chair back behind her head. Her feet made it barely halfway to the floor. Jackie was betting she had been the one to ask, “Who?”

The third person was huge too, but compared to the black man, this pasty-skinned man seemed only normal sized. Where the others were well dressed, he wore a ragged and stained raincoat over worn pants and mismatched shoes. His long white hair was tied back in an unkempt ponytail and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least a week, although he seemed otherwise fit and athletic. Ignoring Jackie, he continued manipulating a clear white diamond the size of a coin, like a magician, flipping it over and over as it moved from finger to finger.

The next-to-last person wasn’t even human, and rather than sitting on the chair he was lying on it. It had scales and a snout that looked a lot like it could breathe fire, it was a small, silver-colored dragon. As Jackie watched, it hiccoughed and belched a puff of grey-black smoke, which answered her speculation. There was a tinkling sound and within the ringing Jackie thought she heard a child’s voice say, “Excuse me.”

The final person was a normal sized, or more accurately human-sized, black man with a huge belly that made one think of a Buddha. He just nodded and said nothing.

Sarah and Dr. Emrys took the next two seats, leaving the last one for Jackie. With a hundred questions yet wondering why she felt these sessions were going to be helpful, Jackie sat.

“As we have a new member today, I’d appreciate if everyone took a moment to introduce him, her, or itself and tell a little bit about him, her, or itself. I’ll start.

“My current name is Merl Emrys, although I’ve had many others. I am best known as a royal advisor and magician, but in reality I am a Muse. As such, I lead others to truth, creativity and self-understanding. I can utilize most of the skills I help my students learn — although I daresay I might have a bit of trouble with Jackie’s — and I feed on self-satisfaction and knowledge.

“Dross, would you introduce yourself next please?” Everyone turned to the white-haired giant.

“Name Dross Scoria. Am troll. Work with metals. Feed off energy in earth.”

“You mean like Vulcan?” Jackie asked innocently, only to have the troll jump to his feet, roar in anger and rush toward her.

His second step found his foot landing on air. He was floating, suspended in the air before her, but still struggling to swim toward me. That was when Jackie noticed that he had no hand below his left wrist.

“Dross,” Merl’s voice was quiet, but commanding. “Please stop. She doesn’t know.” Turning to Jackie, he continued. “Please apologize to him. I can only hold him so long and then one of you is likely to get hurt.”

“I apologize, Dross. I don’t know what I said, but I assure you I had no intention of insulting or hurting you in any way.”

Merl explained while the struggling slowly stopped. “The more technically accurate term is Titan, although ice giant, hobgoblin and dwarf have also been used for different clans. Vulcan was a peer of Dross’. Because of Vulcan, Dross was punished by the loss of a hand, which has made it impossible for him to work with metals.”

Aghast, Jackie turned back to Dross. “Dross, I really am sorry. I just didn’t know.” Dross turned his back to her and she could feel his mingled anger and anguish seething beneath the surface of his impassive stance.

“Don’t worry, Jackie,” Sarah assured her niece, patting my arm. “Dross will get over it. He’s really a very nice Titan.”

Beside Dross is Colleen O’Herlihey,” Dr. Emrys continued. “Sadly, she is among the last of a dying breed — a leprechaun.” Colleen was a beautiful, if tiny woman, about four feet in heels, yet perfectly formed, with flowing, fiery red hair, and green eyes, the color of grass.

“Amazin’ it is, too,” Colleen explained. “Normally, we survive on the emanations o’ moonlight on gold, but I were a sickly one. Me parents feared for me very survival. The luck o’ the Irish bein’ with me, I found I could survive off other than the emanations o’ gold. Woe be it for me fellows as they could not and have been slowly starvin’ to death since the world went off the gold standard and the price o’ gold went through the roof.”

“Couldn’t they too feed off whatever you’re feeding from?”

“Aye, were they not too proud to break from the old ways and learn from the likes o’ a ‘pervert’ like me.” She grinned and laughed.

“Moving on,” Dr. Emrys quickly intervened before Colleen could work herself into a bitter passion. “Next, we have Tris Magister, a man of many parts with a very long history behind him.”

The man scowled. “I’m a gambler and a thief, sometimes a spy and go-between, but I’m doing all right as a translator for people who need official forms and stuff, and I used to be the God of commerce, so I still get a quite a bit of action from Wall Street types. I don’t like to be tied down, though, so I usually sleep rough and keep moving.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something, Tris?” Emrys gently prompted.

“Oh, yeah. I’m a liar and a sorceror, not necessarily in that order, but Jeez, Emrys, we could sit here all night if we all listed our complete biographies.”

Dr. Emrys nodded, but said, “I think, in the circumstances, those last two items might be germane, Tris.” Then he looked toward the tiny dragon. “Dragon has no name, at least not one that can be spoken with a human tongue. He has graciously allowed us to give him a name pronounceable in a human tongue and so we now call him Tinelle.”

There was a tinkling sound in Jackie’s head that she somehow knew to be the dragon agreeing with Dr. Emrys.

“I was going to ask how he speaks if his language is so foreign to ours, but I think I see.” Another tinkling sound, but this time it translated as a giggle.

“Tinelle is actually here for medical help, not counseling, but since there are so few of his kind about, we’ve been exploring the memories of others to see if they can help. If no one in any of the groups I run can help, he’ll have to try the convention.”

“I doubt I can help, but I’m willing to try. What’s the problem?”

“Much like birds, dragons can’t chew food. They have a gizzard and swallow hard objects that grind their food up for them. Unfortunately, Tinelle doesn’t know what to put in his gizzard.”

“I gather stone is not an option?”

“It crumbles to dust before a single meal is finished.”

“Geez, what does a dragon eat?”

“Iron. Preferably iron with small traces of nickel and molybdenum.”

“You mean steel?”

“Uh, I hadn’t thought about it, but yes, it is steel. How did you know?”

“My … boyfriend’s an engineer,” Jackie said. “I help him study sometimes for his tests. You pick things up along the way. I know they use diamond bits and tools to work high-tensile steel, but corundum might be cheaper, and easier to come by, since you can buy corundum grindstones at almost any hardware store, and just break them up. The clear stones, of course, are much more valuable, because that’s what rubies and sapphires are, just colored clear corundum in large crystals, although they can grow them in a laboratory now, so they aren’t as pricey as they were a hundred years ago. Anyway, who’s this last gentleman?”

Emrys was amazed. “Wait a minute, Jackie. You may have just solved Tinelle’s problem, or at least given us a line on solving it. Do you have any idea how large they should be?”

Jackie blinked. “Not a clue. You’d have to ask my boyfriend, ’cause he’d know a lot more about it. I just know what I’ve picked up haphazardly, but materials science is one of his concentrations.” Then she thought of a possible hitch. “My boyfriend’s mortal, though, so we might have to be subtle about the questions.”

“But it’s very hard and durable?”

“Oh, yeah. Because it’s so hard, it weathers out of rocks as streams cut through deposits, so they used to collect the gritty bits from beaches as ‘black sand’ and the stones by sifting through the sand along the banks and bottom. You can find it in many places around the world, because it’s just aluminum oxide, but it’s almost as hard as diamond, a nine instead of a ten on the Mohs hardness scale.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that corundum can scratch almost anything except a diamond, which is Mohs ten. Impure varieties of it are called emery, like you use for filing your nails, or in sandpaper, but emery is softer than corundum proper.”

“Thank you so much, Jackie,” Dr. Emrys said. “It explains a lot, when I stop to think about it. Tinelle’s ancestors and relatives must have been able to find mineral deposits in the lands they inhabited that contained natural abrasives, but you say they’re common, and used in human industries, so that might explain why they often lived in caves as well; perhaps there were veins of this stuff deep underground that they could use without human interference.”

“Make sense to me. If it works, I’m glad to help, so no need to thank me at all, so who’s next?”

“The man beside Tinelle is Jumbe Mungu. It means Chief God in Bantu or Swahili, and he’s originally from Zanzibar, off the eastern coast of Africa. He used to be a lot bigger, but he’s running out of believers.”

A scowl briefly crossed Mungu’s face, but then he nodded politely to Jackie. Dr. Emrys rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“Very well, shall we begin? I believe last week Dross was just about to tell us what metal he was going to specialize in and why. Dross, would you continue please?”

“Dross work diamonds,” he said, challenging any one to question his decision.

“Diamonds be not metal, me boyo,” Colleen said.

With a roar, Dross was out of his seat and lunging at the leprechaun. Before anyone could react, he was crashing into the chair. As the noise of the chair flying across the room ended, it was replaced by high-pitched giggling. Colleen was perched on Jumbe’s shoulder.

“You’ll not be catching me that easy, me boyo,” Colleen giggled and jumped off his shoulder before Dross could grab her. Making a high arch as she flew through the air, Colleen looked like a ballerina as she lightly landed on Dr. Emrys’ desk.

Much faster than one would expect of someone as large as the titan, Dross charged the leprechaun again. He made it to about a foot from the African God and disappeared.

“Jumbe, please return Dross from wherever you’ve sent him,” Dr. Emrys requested. Before he had finished, Dross was back in his chair, shivering and looking like he’d seen an army of ghosts.

“Dross, dear,” Sarah said quietly. “I’m glad to hear that you’ve finally chosen and I’m sure you’ll do wonderful things with them, but I too would like to know why you chose diamonds.”

Dross was again out of his chair, this time charging at Sarah. I jumped in front of her, placing myself between my Aunt and a very angry troll. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do, maybe make him love me so that he wouldn’t hurt Sarah or me.

I was still debating as Dross rapidly closed the few feet between us. A ham-sized fist rose into the air above my head and then down to crush me. As I tried to force my talent into overdrive before my head was crushed, I was suddenly pushed forcefully to the side. Twisting as I fell, I saw Sarah had been the one to push me. She had stepped forward to stand calmly where I had been as the troll’s powerful arm continued to speed, ever faster, downward. Even before I could take a breath to scream, the hand struck Sarah with what had to be a killing blow — and passed through her.

Dross stumbled, falling into Sarah’s chair and then over it. He landed hard, but was up and lunging at Sarah before I could rise to my feet. Just a foot from the woman, the troll’s momentum stopped and he floated in the air again, arms still scrabbling madly to reach Sarah.

“Dross, I must ask you to act civilly.” Merl spoke quietly, but it was clear he expected Dross to listen. Unfortunately, the troll had a different opinion and continued to snarl and struggle as it tried to reach Sarah.

“Dross? Dross!” Merl’s words had absolutely no effect. It was as if the troll could not even hear him.

Finally, after watching the huge man struggle in vain, Jackie turned to Sarah and said, “We might as well go now. If we don’t, someone might get hurt.”

“Aye, lass,” Colleen agreed. “Once he gets like this ‘tis best to get far away from him ‘til he can calm down.”

“How long will that be?” Jackie asked.

“None can say. Hours, days, mayhap years. Why I once knew a troll….”

Dr. Emrys cleared his throat. “May we dispense with the tall tales for the moment, Colleen? I expect to see you all at the convention. Remember, mixing with others and learning more about yourselves is an important part of your therapy.”

“Dross, dear, please calm down and talk to me,” Sarah beseeched. Nothing happened.

Sarah was about to try again, when the air popped twice as Mungu and Tinelle disappeared. Colleen stayed just long enough to jump onto the troll’s head, give him a sloppy kiss and jump away before he could grab her. Standing in front of the troll, she gave him a big grin and tipped an imaginary hat at him. Then, she disappeared too. Taking Jackie’s arm, Sarah slowly led Jackie out of the office. They could still hear the troll’s snarls and growls from the street.

“This is going to be an interesting convention, isn’t it, Jackie?” Sarah said.

Jackie just nodded and bit her lip. She still didn’t know anything more about when the convention would be or where the convention would be held.

“Oh,” Sarah added as if reading Jackie’s mind, “Doctor Emrys says the convention will be held at Calaca E. He said it was customary for the eldest supernatural in the area to host it and Lilith, of course, is eldest of all, aside from the angels, of course, but they usually stay away, since they make some of us uncomfortable.”

Jackie sighed. ‘God, Lilith could be such a pain in the butt sometimes.’

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Fifteen:
An Unconventional Convention

Two’s company, three’s a crowd, and four make a vice ring.
― Thorne Smith, Turnabout (1930)

 

If you have never been to a convention, you should go, at least once, for the experience. Each one is different, yet each is the same. Always a different theme, sometimes different attendees, but never a dull moment. There is something about a convention that brings out the worst in some people. Usually, it is funny hats and alcoholic beverages with strange names. Sometimes there is a notable prank or two. Jackie was impressed to discover that supernatural conventions were no different.

You would think that folks who lived and breathed magic would actually try for something different — say, normalcy — at their convention, but no such luck. The self-imposed restraint required by the Compact required most of the participants to hide their magical abilities in order to live safely among the humans. The remaining creatures were able to use their magical abilities, but because they were not able to appear human, they had to stay hidden, so they were even more eager than the others to show off their skills. Of course, it didn’t help that the grand prize at the end of the conference was awarded to the creature that had demonstrated the most unique use of magic over the five days of the conference.

As far as the mortal world was concerned, Calaca E. was closed for remodeling. Instructions were that all convention-goers entering via the streets were to appear as construction workers. All others were given either a rooftop landing site or an underground entry. Jackie, of course, just flitted in in her incorporeal state, since parking was a bit of a problem on convention days, or so the invitation said when it arrived, exactly one day ahead of time.

She was just as glad, since being incorporeal meant that she got to choose her outfit after seeing how everyone else was dressed.

The interior of Calaca E. looked exactly the same, down to the faint aroma of vomit emanating from the men’s bathroom door in the hall behind the stage. If there were renovations, Jackie couldn’t see them. It wasn’t until you entered the door that said “Staff Only” on the other side of the bathroom that there was anything unusual. The door opened into a small storage room, cluttered with boxes, but when you turned to leave, there was a row of three buttons on the wall instead of a light switch.

There was a piece of paper covering the lowest of three buttons with a handwritten note saying “Convention, Middle Button.” Shuddering as she imagined what a demon like Lilith might have on the lowest level, Jackie pushed the middle button and felt a slight jerk and the pull of gravity was diminished for a moment. The storage room was evidently an elevator.

In a few seconds, there was a quiet “ding” and the back wall, boxes and all, disappeared, leaving a wide opening into a cavernous room. Cavernous was the right word, Jackie thought, as she examined the scene before her. The room was oval-shaped and easily large enough and high enough for a major league football game with plenty of room for the stands. Flames flickered from torches, set on sconces about ten feet up on the stone walls and circling the room like a series of wavering dots every three or four feet. Additional lighting came from the reflections of the torches off thousands, possibly millions, of jewels embedded in the arched, stalactite-filled ceiling, bringing the overall lighting to only slightly dimmer than one might expect at a hotel’s convention room, so the jewels must have been amplifying the light through magical means. The floors were stone, worn almost perfectly flat, as far as she could see, not quite like a dance floor, but nothing like the average concrete patio either. She could almost see her reflection in the polished stone. Not seeing a water source to explain the floors, Jackie could imagine Lilith sending slaves to march about for century after century until their continued tramping had created the smooth surface.

Chiding herself for thinking so poorly of her mother, Jackie moved on to the mingled humans and creatures wandering in small groups through a maze of tables laden with brochures and small items for sale, separated by cloth-covered dividers that could have been at any convention. With a sigh, Jackie stepped out of the elevator and started searching for Sarah, Lilith, or anyone else she knew.

“Jackie. Jackie!” Before she could completely turn, Jackie felt feet running up the side of her body and then a light tittering laugh at her right ear.

“Hello, Colleen,” Jackie replied with a smile. Something about the ebullient little leprechaun made it hard not to feel happy when she was around, and she really was “as light as a feather.” Jackie could barely feel the leprechaun on her shoulder. “How’s the Convention going?”

“There be several new Gods ye might be after wishing ta meet. The ogres be a bit crude. Avoid them I’d recommend, unless ye likes being propositioned in the most direct manner. Lilith be holdin’ court in the chapel at the far side o’ the hall and all be expected ta stop by and pay homage to her Majesty. Oh, and watch what ya eat and drink lest ye be feelin’ amorous. The witches ‘ve brewed an especially strong batch o’ love potion. Works on those like you an’ me too, it does.”

“Have you seen Sarah?”

“Aye, she be with Lilith.”

“Oh sh… shoot! I’d better get over there fast. She’s an innocent and there’s no telling what schemes Lilith might try out on her. Where did you say Lilith was holding court?”

Colleen pointed and Jackie headed off at as rapid a pace as she could manage through the crowds. About half way to the other side, Colleen saw someone she knew and jumped off Jackie’s shoulder with a wave and a giggle.

Lilith was in a smaller cavern, but only in the sense that the Pentagon is smaller than the Grand Canyon. The room was about the size of a basketball court. It looked the same as the main cavern, yet somehow felt more ominous. The far half of the room was taken up by a row of thirteen broad, flat steps leading up to a huge bejeweled throne upon which Lilith sat, looking down upon her court with regal hauteur. Heads bowed in homage, a pair of succubi stood, one on each side of each step, but they were in demonic form rather than that of human women. Standing about five feet from Lilith, chatting away as if it were the most natural thing imaginable, stood Sarah.

“Sarah! Are you okay? What lies has she been telling you?” Jackie called out as she ran toward the throne.

Sarah looked up and waved merrily, but Lilith snarled and waved a hand. Immediately, the two succubi on the lowest step jumped between Jackie and the throne. Also snarling, they crouched, claws extended, clearly blocking the way.

Surprised, Jackie skidded to a stop.

“What’s going on here?” she called out to Lilith.

An eyebrow raised just enough to be seen and then Lilith returned to her more familiar, cynical and contemptuous gaze. Finally, just before Jackie was about to ask again, Lilith waved a finger indolently and then said, “You enter my domain, publicly insult me with your vile slurs, and then expect to be treated as an equal? Play with your sisters. Best them and you might hold some interest for me. If not, perhaps I’ll destroy you.” With that she settled herself into a more comfortable position on the throne and waited.

“I didn’t come here to fight with anyone,” Jackie called out, primarily to Lilith, but also to the two succubi beginning to circle her cautiously.

Lilith sniffed in her general direction. “If so, you chose inappropriately hostile opening remarks, now didn’t you?”

To Jackie’s chagrin, Sarah nodded in seeming agreement, and then she had to look out for her two sisters, who were near to closing with her.

When the one on the left was nearly behind her, she lunged and Jackie jumped aside, which put her within reach of the second succubus, who almost playfully clawed at her arm before pushing her away with a hard shove.

The first turned to Lilith and with a curt but respectful bow asked, “Is this one truly worth our effort, Majesty?”

“Do you question me, Mary?”

“Of course not, Majesty. I merely sought enlightenment.” With that, the one called Mary turned and began a sinuous series of rapid jabs and feints, each designed to push Jackie further from the throne without seriously hurting her. Against her will, Jackie had to admire her skill, which looked like some sort of Chinese martial art, as stylized and graceful as the two women warriors in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. When Jackie was at least thirty feet further away from her goal, Mary stopped and looked back to Lilith for further direction.

“What do you hope to accomplish by this, Lilith?” Jackie called out.

“Why to teach you respect, my daughter.”

“For whom, Lilith? You, or for two lovely broads with the tiniest of chips on their shoulders? What’s the point?” Jackie asked and gestured toward vaguely toward Mary, since she didn’t know the other.

With a shriek, Mary lunged, only to fall through Jackie, who had become insubstantial and flowed… right through her, winding up on the other side of both of them, and far closer to the throne.

“My dear sisters, I’m becoming bored with this, and I’m a little irritable, having recently wrestled with Semangelaf over the meaning of life and duty.”

At the sound of his name, both of her sisters stopped short and looked around fearfully. “You lie!” said the one who wasn’t Mary.

“Nope. We had a nice chat down at the bus station when I was trying to leave town, and he convinced me that my proper place was right here. I have family obligations, it seems, so … Hi! My name is Jackie, and I’m very pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand.

Not-Mary narrowed her brows in suspicion and said, “Why?”

“Because however much our mother may delight in continuing squabbles to alleviate the tedium of a long life, I figure we owe each other some small courtesies. I apologize for any offense I’ve given, whether consciously or through inadvertent error. I’m an orphan, actually, and never had that much of a family life, although to be fair, my boyfriend’s uncle has been very nice to me recently, and his wife has been perfectly charming as well. But you’re my sisters, and likely, if you survive the attentions of the three angels, to outlive all my mortal relations, so we might be able to help one another along life’s highway. I might well be of some assistance to you along the way, since I managed to wrest from Semangelaf the secret of survival and long life, which I thought you might like to know. Believe it or not, I think that I might quite like you both, once we all got to know one another better. I’ve met Mary, so what’s your name, Sister?” Again she held out her hand.

“Her name is Jane,” said Mary, “and don’t turn to her for mercy. I’m merely waiting for her to tire herself out and admit that I am her better.”

“Never!” Jane screamed and lunged at Mary.

As the two struggled, Jackie watched for a moment before quietly walking up to them and gathering them both into her arms, which they seemed somehow unable to resist, and she kissed them both, one after another, with as much love as she could muster. Startled, they stopped fighting and stared at her in horror.

“All you need is love, Mary and Jane, dearest of sisters, my only sisters, actually, at least that I know of right now. All you need is love, and I love you both with all my heart, so I’ll tell you how to live forever, perfectly safe from the unpleasant attentions of Semangelaf and his pals. Every day, do something nice for someone, and try not to play anyone any nasty tricks; that’s the entire secret. Let this become your habit and the three angels will let you go your way in peace, and you’ll live a long and happy life.” Then she gave them both a friendly hug, kissed them both again, and then walked past them while they stood dumbfounded.

Then she strolled up to Lilith’s throne. She was actually surprised to make it without being attacked by someone else, but wasn’t going to complain. Stopping just one step below the throne, she asked with as much dignity as she could muster, “Are we done playing games, Mother? I apologize for my insensitive remarks. I was being belligerent and stupid, and my cutting remark sprang from my own insecurity.”

Lilith seemed to be ticked off, for some strange reason. “Of course not, youngster, as long as you continue your infantile rebellion, but having succeeded in today’s task I will offer a brief reprieve. Ask your question.”

“You mean questions,” she said. “I might have several….”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Lilith interrupted with an deprecatory wave.

“Or do I have to go all sweetness and light in the middle of your throne room?”

“Very good, Daughter,” Lilith smiled evilly, “a nasty threat following public insults. How many other large and small acts of mischief and discord can you initiate and still remain that which you think you are.”

The last was muttered sotto voce, but Jackie still heard it and finally understood. Lilith wanted a daughter like herself, not a cupid, and she was mad at her. Well, two could play that game. “And how many acts of good before you join me, dear mother? Should we all join hands in singing Campfire Girl songs together?” she asked sweetly. “Oh, Wo-he-lo, Oh, Wo-he-lo We raise our song to you, For we’ll ever be true in whatever we do, Oh, Wo-he-lo, we sing to you.” She had a lovely soprano voice, but it seemed to irritate her mother for some reason.

“Right, only one question it is, whelp. I suggest you make it a good one.” She sneered at her.

“Certainly, Mommy,” Jackie offered in her best little girl voice. It was one thing to be a representative of good, but there was nothing that said she couldn’t have some fun doing it. Besides, she really only had one question anyway. The rest would have been just efforts to get to know her mother a little better. The thought surprised her at first, but she quickly realized that it was true. As an orphan, she really didn’t care who her mother was, as long as she had one. It gave her a warm feeling of belonging that she had rarely felt before and it felt great.

“Stop that!” Lilith screamed in pain. Even Mary and Jane looked up at that, looking first to Lilith to see what they belatedly needed to do to protect their queen and then sheepishly at each other.

“Sorry, Mother,” Jackie replied, although nowhere as chagrined as would have been needed to satisfy Lilith. Moving on quickly, because Sarah looked as if she was getting ticked off at her antics as well, Jackie asked her question, “Who robbed Perlmutter’s Jewelry Store?”

“Not me,” she said airily, as insouciant as if she’d been asked to name Santa’s backup reindeer, “and I could hardly care less.”

“Look, Lilith, you’re one of the most powerful woman on Earth. You’re either involved in, or aware of, just about everything of significance that happens in this city. You must know.”

“I take no interest in gossip,” she said loftily, “unlike that money-grubbing little leprechaun whose company you’ve been seen in lately.” You couldn’t miss the disgust in her voice as she mentioned Colleen. “That’s why I told you to come to this convention. Even I am not omnipotent, but I strongly suspect that someone here does know. You just need to stop wasting my valuable time with blather and start interviewing conventioneers.”

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Sixteen:
Sufferage and Song

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
― Samuel Butler, Note-Books of Samuel Butler, 1912

 

With few decent choices except to take Lilith’s advice and mingle, Jackie quickly offered a fond farewell to the ‘Lair of the Succubi” as she was considering calling it if she ever wrote about her adventures, not that she had any plans of the sort, mind you. Of course, if she did, she would have to goose up the action, as the truth had been a bit less exciting than readers usually expect. Sarah stayed behind, resuming her conversation with Lilith, and Jackie felt oddly betrayed.

Colleen was by her side, though, as soon as she returned to the main convention area, dancing about, telling Jackie about everyone of note she’d encountered, and who they’d been talking to, who was doing what and where they were doing it, as well as not too subtly prodding Jackie to tell her what had gone on in Lilith’s private domain. Jackie let Colleen wheedle a bit, admiring the small woman’s skill, before telling all and realized that she was even calling it the lair when she described it to the leprechaun. She briefly wondered if there was any rule about writing about things supernatural before moving on to more important matters, like using Colleen’s skill at keeping track of current events to seek out potential jewel thieves.

Interestingly, no matter how much she discussed the issue with Colleen, it really came down to five candidates, the same five she had met at Merl’s office, which seemed suspiciously ‘convenient.’ With a sigh, Jackie decided to face the issue directly and asked Colleen, since she was in front of Jackie already.

“Colleen?”

“Aye, me cailín?” she responded with her usual, infectious smile at her play on words.

“I apologize, and I hope this doesn’t ruin our friendship, but I’ve got to ask you. Did you steal the diamonds from Pearlmutter’s Jewelry Store?”

“’Tis insulted I should be fer yer impertinence, but in the name of friendship, and in deference to your general thick wits, I’ll answer ye straight. Nay. T’was not I, nor did I influence anyone or anything in any way to obtain or otherwise involve myself with the diamonds stored or held for sale in that particular facility.”

“Whoa,” Jackie was slightly taken aback. “How very formal. I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with a djinn, or a lawyer. Am I to take that to mean no?”

“Aye, lass. Me people have a long history o’ dealin’ with humans and their demands for wishes in return for returnin’ our very own property. T’is hard for one such as I to give a simple answer, but that is what that were meant ta be — no.”

“Thank you, Colleen. I appreciate your candor and I won’t insult you by asking again.”

“Nay, lass. You was just doin’ as you must and ye desire more than just me word.

“But I’m not asking….”

“I know, lass. And for the courtesy of that trust alone, I shall tell thee a story, but first, know ye why I was in that group?”

“Not really, just what Merl told me in front of each of you.”

“Then ye know that I were a sickly one as a child, only surviving by learning at great expense to meself to gain nourishment from the emanations of diamonds. It be for this reason ye asked me, were it not?”

“Yes,” Jackie sighed, fearing the worst.

“What the good wizard told ye not, was that he discovered the reason for me problems with gold, an allergy, and were treatin’ me fer it. I now be cured and have exchanged most of me diamonds fer gold, as our tradition demands. There be but a paltry few dozens left, and by the worst of chances, they were on consignment at Pearlmutter’s. Me plan had been to use these last few diamonds to finance a wee trip back to the old country, a trip in moderate style — which indeed I feared might come near beggaring me — but I wanted to show up those left of me old friends who sneered at me in me time of infirmity. It seems that I’d bought diamonds low and held them long enough to sell them high, much higher than me fellow leprechauns who’d just hoarded gold, which as ye know is subject to the vagaries and fads of the money markets, where diamonds have a moderately steady market in both the industrial and jeweler’s markets.” She stopped to rub her hands together in glee before continuing, “So now I be one of the richest — and thus most powerful — leprechauns in the world and me plan was to stuff my new status — poor as it is — right up me old friends’ noses, whose pots of gold are sadly diminished in these parlous times, what with collapses in the gold market and the thieves and extortionists with their cursed wishes.” She shook her tiny fist in vicarious fury and stamped her tiny foot before bring herself under control with visible effort. “Sorry, lass. We be an excitable lot, we wee folk,” she grinned at her play on words, “and tend to fly off the handle, as’twere, but we mean no harm in it a’tall, no, we don’t.”

“It also means that I be as interested in finding the fiend who robbed that jewelry store as ye, dear lass. It, and me friendship fer ye, be why I been helping ye instead o’ offerin’ such pranks as be within me nature.” She paused, thinking. “So who be next, lass? Me thinks Jumbe be closest, but he and Merl be the ones with no call a’tall for needin’ them perishin’ diamonds.”

“True, but let’s talk to him anyway. Maybe he did it for someone else, someone who promised him more followers?”

“Yer mind works at odd angles, don’t it, lass? I like that,” Colleen approved heartily. With a gleeful, and surprisingly powerful, wallop on Jackie’s back, she scampered off. As soon as Jackie had caught her breath, she ran after the fast disappearing leprechaun. It took a few moments, but Colleen finally slowed down enough to walk beside Jackie and they held hands as the petite woman pointed out everything she knew about everyone and everything they passed — and it seemed like she knew an amazing amount.

They found Jumbe Mungu in the food court amongst the many carts and stands. He was a man alone in a sea of revelers as he slowly moved from garbage can to garbage can, emptying them into a push dumpster and sweeping up spills as some of the other supernaturals laughed and hooted at him as they passed. The sight was so pitiful that Jackie stopped short, almost yanking Colleen off her feet as she continued to approach the hapless God.

Tugging at Jackie’s arm to get her moving again, Colleen dragged her up to Jumbe and greeted him. “Hi, Jumbe. How are ye?”

“Fine thank you, lovely lady.” His deep and mellifluous voice sounded like several organs playing the music of the Gods in perfect harmony.

“Do you remember Jackie? She’s trying to solve a burglary. Would you be willing to help her?”

“Of course,” he replied with a dignified nod to the taller woman. “I would be honored to help in any way that I can.”

“Okay, Jackie. He’s all yours,” Colleen gestured and stepped back while Jumbe turned his eyes on Jackie, deep soulful eyes, eyes that held the sorrows of the world but refused to be dragged under. Jackie couldn’t help stare back into them, drowning in their dignity and strength.

“Hey! Ye had questions for the man, did you not?” Colleen asked with a well placed nudge in the ribs.

Jackie jerked and blinked. Before opening her eyes again, she made sure she wasn’t looking directly at Jumbe. “Uh, yes…sorry.”

Still distracted by those wonderful, understanding, eyes, Jackie had difficulty framing her first question and Colleen jumped in yet again. “Jumbe, me darlin’, would you please tell our young sleuth here everything you know about the recent diamond robbery at Pearlmuter’s?”

“Why certainly, Colleen. I know that there has been a robbery because you’ve just told me. Sadly, I am no longer strong enough to be omnipresent, even within so limited a domain as this convention, so I know nothing more about it.”

“Do you have any need or use for diamonds?”

He thought about the question for a moment before answering. “Well, as you know, one of the most effective short-term methods for obtaining believers would be to offer them valuables, but that could be anything, not just gold, and I am loathe to take that route despite my dire need. I would much prefer a smaller, more loyal group of followers, having tried that first route ages ago.”

“Wha…what happened?” Jackie finally collected herself enough to ask a question.

“Why, they saved the diamonds and other trinkets and piled them up in mounds and pretty arrangements in a cave. It worked well until the white hunters and missionaries came. The hunters killed all my priests, egged on by the missionaries, who enslaved most of my followers in the name of civilization, and between them either stole or extorted all the valuables that they had saved, including the diamonds, gold, silver, and other jewels.”

“Hey, garbage man, get back to work,” someone called from one of the booths. Jackie jerked her head in the direction of the sound but couldn’t tell who had spoken, but Colleen, apparently with better ears, disappeared and then reappeared with a pop in front of a stand run by a shriveled and gaunt man with straggling white hair and skin so pale he looked like icicles would freeze next to him. In fact, that was what he was selling, flaming spears of some pastry, frozen by his breath, flames and all. While Colleen took great pleasure in explaining to the man how he was directly related to “gluz,” the waste products of a harpy, Jumbe merely stood a bit straighter and politely asked Jackie if it would be alright if he worked while they spoke.

“That’s alright. I really don’t have any more questions anyway…except, maybe…if it’s not too rude, how many believers do you have now?

“Just one, my dear, an older gentleman, a scholar in fact. He lives and works in this city, at the university I think. I hope to meet him some day, before….”

“Before what?” Jackie asked, then her eyes bugged out and her hand went to her mouth in realization that the wonderful man standing before her, this being once known by thousands, perhaps millions, and revered as a God, would soon fade away into non-existence. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she gulped. There was no way that she was going to allow such a wonderful creature to expire. “Do you know his name by any chance?”

“Why yes, it is one of the few powers I still possess. I cannot tell you exactly where he lives or works, which is why we have never met, but his name is Long. Earnest Long.”

Jackie’s jaw dropped. “But I know Professor Long. He’s my advisor. As soon as the convention is over I’d be honored to introduce you.”

“That would be wonderful,” Jumbe rumbled and his smile seemed to light up the entire food court. Just ask Colleen when you want to find me. She always knows which shelter I’m staying at.”

Jackie nodded and turned away so he would not see the tears forming. How could anyone in such dire straits maintain such dignity, she wondered.

It wasn’t difficult to find Tris Magister, and Jackie almost found him on her own, because she was wondering what the crowd she saw gathered in one corner of the cavern was doing. After slipping above the crowd by going insubstantial and flying, she saw someone performing on a stage, while Colleen, flitting on ahead as usual, called out, “Well and away! Here be Tris in his natural habitat.” In fact, it was Tris, all cleaned up and looking very handsome indeed in a gold lamé toga with purple borders. He was playing on a seven-stringed lyre, accompanying himself as he chanted some sort of Greek epic in a Greek so ancient that Jackie could only pick up a few words in the general flow.

It was about the Atreides family, the story of Pelops and Hippodamia, and Pelops was competing in a chariot race against Hippodamia’s own father for the right to marry her.

Since it was a Greek story, treachery and deceit abounded, with Pelops suborning a servant of the King into sabotaging the King’s chariot by promising him the virginity of his bride-to-be. The King was killed in the race because the axle of his chariot broke, hurling the King onto the track, where he was trampled to death by the horses of Pelops and his body run over and dragged by Pelops’ chariot.

After the race, Pelops killed the servant, Myrtilus, whom the King had cursed in his dying breath, because he now wanted his promised night with the bride, and in dying was cursed in turn by Myrtilus, both Pelops and his descendants.

It was about this time that Jackie lost the thread of the story completely, although she vaguely remembered that it wound up with one of Pelops’ grandsons, Agammemnon, Helen, and the Trojan War.

He had a beautiful voice though, and coached such sweet and simple notes out of the lyre that Jackie wept to hear the story, even though she could understand only bits and snatches. Many in the crowd evidently understood perfectly, because they’d cry out heartfelt comments as the story progressed, “Infamy!” “Oh, treachery!” “Helen! I remember her!” and so on.

Colleen whispered in her ear, “Iphigenia didn’t die, you know. Artemis whisked her away to Colchis to be her Priestess there. She was a gutsy one, was Iphigenia.”

“What?” Jackie blurted out, only to be shushed by angry looks and hisses from those around her.

“Were they never after teaching you manners in this school of yours, Jackie dear?” Colleen whispered. “It was all a very long time ago, mind ye, t’ree t’ousand years plus a good bit toward four, but some of us knew the people in Tris’ tale very well indeed, and it was famously popular all around the Mediterranean for years and years after. The selfsame story even made it into the Bible, giving her a sex change along the way and calling her Isaac, seeing as how they didn’t pay much attention to colleens in them parts.

“What?” Jackie blurted out again, only to be shushed once more by even angrier looks and hisses that bordered on venomous from the entire audience.

“Jackie, me wee girl,” Colleen whispered. “Can I never take ye anywhere at’all without you bein’ after stirring up a commotion and a botheration?”

Jackie clamped her lips shut and concentrated on the multiplication tables. She was up to forty-seven times seventy-three and Tris was up to Orestes before she felt able to comment. “You did that on purpose!” she whispered accusingly.

“Moi?” said Colleen, as wide-eyed and innocent as a new-born baby.

Jackie rolled her eyes. She was the mythology expert, wasn’t she? Leprechauns were famous for their twisted sense of humor and mischief, and she’d seen it at the meeting, when Colleen had baited Dross into an even greater rage with her ‘innocent’ questions. “Never mind,” she said loudly. The audience was applauding and cheering by now, and Tris was taking his bows, as graceful and powerfully masculine as Ivan Vasiliev in his prime.

“Well, don’t dawdle, Jackie me girl. There he stands, as large as life and twice as natural. Go get him!” Colleen slapped her on the back and flitted restlessly away on her own errands.

Feeling hard done by and muttering to herself as she approached the stage, she opened her mouth to speak, “Excu….”

Tris raised one perfect eyebrow and said, “No.”

“Wha….”

“The idea is inconceivable. The whole affair smacks of slapdash amateurism. Ogham tree letters indeed! A master thief never leaves a trace, and is away with the goods long before anyone knows that anything has been stolen. Empty drawers indeed!”

He waved his hand and a scrap of black cloth appeared in them, which looked strangely familiar to Jackie as he waved it around in grand gestures. Then she realized… looked down at the front of her dress, and gasped. “That’s my…” she lowered her voice. “That’s mine! I paid seventy-eight dollars for that on sale!”

He feigned astonishment. “Really?” he looked at it carefully. “I could have got it for you… wholesale.” He bowed, fluttering her bra in the air like a handkerchief when….

…she squealed. It was back, inside her dress, and perfectly adjusted. “Stop that!” she said, gritting her teeth to keep herself from screaming.

“Who, me? What is it that you think I’ve done?” Evidently Colleen had only copied her look of innocence from Tris, because he did it much better.

“Nothing! Never mind!” she said.

She retreated as quickly as possible, followed only by his mocking laughter.

And here came Colleen flying back without a care in the world. “Did you have a nice chat, Jackie girl?”

“I did not! That insufferable…. That, that…. Man!”

Colleen laughed. “You’re lucky, me fine little lassie. Just a few seconds longer and he’d have your knickers right off and you thinking it was your own idea.”

Jackie just gaped in… indignation and then in… sudden awareness of what the little leprechaun had meant. She blushed without knowing it, which was a fine trick in itself.

Jackie decided to try Dross on her own, so she told Colleen that she was going to go talk to her mother, in which project Colleen was instantly uninterested.

He wasn’t difficult to find; all she had to do was look for the biggest hole in the crowd, and there was Dross at the center of it. This time she poured on the charm first. “Dross! How nice to see you!” Ths time she took a lesson from Tris and kept her powers fully-engaged, so she had his attention in many ways. “I was terribly interested in your history, because you’d been so cruelly betrayed by that vile creature Vulcan, and I clumsily failed to express myself with proper courtesy. Please do forgive me, Dross. You will, won’t you?”

Dross seemed more cheerful away from the group, because he grinned at her and said, “I sorry too, Jackie. Dross know you just stranger, not know Dross. Some of those group people like to tease Dross, make Dross mad.”

“Why would they do that, Dross? You seem perfectly nice to me.”

“They jealous of Dross, because Dross important once.”

“Really? How long ago?”

“About four and a half billion years ago Dross was King of all Trolls. Called Titans then. Made Solar System out of dust. Very big project.”

“You made the entire Solar System? That’s astonishing! How wonderful! So none of us would be here except for you.”

Dross smiled again. “True. Dross had good idea for asteroid belt. Not many stars have asteroid belt so close to good planets.”

Jackie was puzzled. “How is that important? I’m not very good at science stuff.”

Dross, on the other hand, was literally in his element. “When Earth form, very hot. Metal melt, iron melt, sink to center of molten planet, where hard to find. When metals rare, metalworkers hard to find.”

“Okay. That makes sense. But I still don’t understand.”

He smiled. “Dross had good plan, keep metal back. Save metal in asteroid belt. Almost all valuable metals on Earth surface come from metal asteroids Dross held back.”

“That’s amazing, Dross. I’ve heard of iron meteorites, like the one in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The Willamette Meteorite, I think it’s called. It was very impressive.”

“That one of Dross asteroids! I remember it! It used to be bigger, but pieces break off sometime. That piece from….” His brow furled into craggy crevasses. “Psyche! Scientist call 16 Psyche. Dross don’t know what number for.”

Jackie knew that one, for some reason. “I think it means that Psyche was the sixteenth asteroid to be discovered by Earth scientists.”

“That make sense. Good system, but Dross knew where Psyche was. It in heart.”

Jackie blinked. Dross had hidden depths. “I thought that the asteroid belt was filled with small things, though. I don’t understand how there could be enough there to supply the entire Earth with metals.”

“Asteroids look smaller than they are. Many asteroids spread out over huge space, looks like less than it is. Psyche almost hundred and sixty miles across, has thirty-seven quintillion pounds of iron, mixed in with many other metals, including nickel, gold, rubidium. Lots more. Enough iron to keep Earth busy for the next two or three million years. Lots more iron and metals in big asteroid belts beyond Uranus. That Dross idea too.”

Jackie knew about those too, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. “So much?” She was trying to imagine a chunk of iron that big, but couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

“There many asteroids bigger than that. Ceres mostly rock and ice, but maybe six hundred miles across. Smaller than Pluto. Pluto around fifteen hundred miles across. It mostly rock and ice too. Metal very rare, Have to make it inside stars, but most stars not big enough.” He grinned. “Lot of fun when they explode, though, like fireworks, only better.”

“Dross, you’ve lived such an amazing life. I can’t imagine what it must be like to see a star explode.”

He grinned, which might have been frightening before she’d taken the trouble to actually talk to him. “Want see star explode?”

She was instantly suspicious. “Here? That doesn’t sound like a very good idea.”

“Not here! Not even this galaxy. Dross can show you.”

She was puzzled. “How? Aren’t the galaxies awfully far away?”

“Not far. Take shortcut.”

She thought about that for a while. “Shortcut?”

“Shortcut. Dross know when iron forms, when star life end. Just before star explode.”

She narrowed her brows in puzzlement. She didn’t know very much about astronomy at all. Frank had never taken a course in it, and she’d never paid much attention. “Okay. I guess….”

Suddenly, Dross grabbed her hand and said, “Hurry! It’s happening now!” He jumped with her in a very strange direction, somehow different from all the usual directions, and there they were. They must have been very close, because the bright white star subtended quite an arc of sky against the black sky around it. Some ways off, another orangish star floated, a thin streamer of hot gas extending toward the white one. Suddenly, a brilliant white bubble of atomic fire appeared on one limb of the white star, expanding like a giant mushroom until it had folded itself completely around the star, but when it met itself on the other side of the star there was a tremendous convergence, almost like a lightning bolt that lanced a jet of hot gas off into space and at the same time the white star exploded out in all directions, with another jet piercing the star opposite the first, and then the expanding wall of brilliant gas blew past them, quickly expanding out into the void. The twin jets that still speared the diminished star that remained like a glowing cocktail toothpick in a brilliant olive had caught up their own columns of entrained gasses rushing outward from the poles of the explosion, the remnants even then rushing back toward the small body that remained… or did it? Jackie saw now that the star itself had been shot off at an angle, propelled into space as if by a cannon, evidently caused by some imbalance in the stupendous explosion that had just occurred, and was even then receding into the distance, leaving the original orangish donor star behind.

Jackie looked around her, wherever here might be, and saw a strange slowly swirling vortex of hot gas not too far away — or at least it didn’t look too far away — which was surrounded by stars and galaxies that were oddly distorted, as if they’d been stretched out slightly on the surface of a balloon. From the center of the disk stretched out two jets of bright gas, but on a totally different scale from the jets she’d seen from the exploding star.

Dross grinned and took her hand again, and in a sudden rush they went back the way they’d come, and were standing on the floor of the cavern again, although no one seemed to have noticed either their precipitous departure or rapid reappearance. “See! Lots of fun! Billions and billons of tons of iron and other elements.”

Jackie had a sudden flash of insight. “That’s why you like diamonds, isn’t it, Dross? because their inner fire reminds you of the violent fire of creation we just saw.”

Dross blushed, which was as strange a sight as Jackie had ever seen, a deeper black spreading slowly across his face, almost unnoticeable unless she looked carefully, and probably most people wouldn’t have noticed. “Pretty. Not like real thing, but Dross only one see that mostly.”

“I’m honored, Dross, that you showed me your real treasure. It was very beautiful.”

“Diamond come from carbon made in stars like that, though, last stage of star life before final surge of nickel and iron. Explosion make all the rest.”

“I understand, Dross. By creating gemstones, you hope to be able to capture a hint of that experience so that other people can share that incredible beauty.”

He nodded and took a large pebble out of his pocket with his one good hand. He showed it to her — it looked like a lump of translucent frosted glass — and then put it into his mouth, working it back and forth like chewing gum as his jaw moved. Then he spit it out into his palm, wiped it on his shirt, and handed it to her. It was a small sphere with perfect facets cut around it, polished to a perfect shine, a round diamond, like a very shiny glass marble.

She held it up to the light from the torches and saw that he’d managed to recreate the instant of ignition, with two opposing centers of enhanced brilliance at opposite ends of the sphere. “Dross, this is wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, and you’ve captured the moment I just saw almost perfectly, or the hint of it at least, without the violent explosion.” She tried to hand it back.

Dross shook his head and refused to take it. “It yours now. First woman Dross show how iron made. You keep. Remember Dross make star for you.”

“I’ll remember, Dross. I’ll remember your precious gift forever.” Spontaneously, she reached up to him and pulled his giant body down into a hug, which he returned with all the delicacy of a woman touching the wings of a butterfly.

“Dross remember you. You first woman never make fun of Dross, or think bad thoughts. Dross sorry he got mad, but never know anyone who not afraid, especially woman, or not cruel.”

Jackie thought about that. Her friend Colleen seemed mostly nice to her, but she could see that she had a streak of cruelty inside her as well. “I understand, Dross, and I promise that I will always be your friend. If you ever need anything, just ask. I suspect that you’ll be able to find me anywhere, or ask Lilith if I go missing.”

Dross nodded his agreement. “Dross never forget energy form.” He grinned. “You get lost, Dross find you!” With that, he wandered off as the assembled guests parted before him like the Red Sea in front of Moses.

Jackie went back the way she came, looking for Colleen.

They found Tinelle on stage. The tiny dragon was singing to an overflow audience and the song was almost unbelievably beautiful. Every listener, no matter where they sat or stood, regardless of whether they could even see her, heard the same incomprehensible but haunting lyrics. It was the most amazing thing Jackie had ever heard in a day and place where the amazing was commonplace. The song was sweet and sad, uplifting and yet wistful, all at the same time. It was a song that seemed somehow to honor the least of us and inspire the strong toward even more valiant efforts. It was — wonderful. Jackie was amazed to hear it in these surroundings.

Everyone in listening range had stopped what they were doing and were transfixed, still, and silent, barely breathing as each strained to catch every nuance of every lilting tone. Even once the last song was finished the silence continued, as if people were afraid that they would lose something precious if they made a sound. It was a good two minutes before the first clap and then it was like an avalanche, more and more until the ceiling of the convention cavern seemed to be rumbling in accompaniment to the applause. In fact, if one looked carefully, it seemed as if bits of the sky were falling. One landed several feet from Jackie and when she bent over to pick it up it glinted. From the brilliance of the reflected torch light, and the feel of it in Jackie’s hand, it seemed to be a small cut diamond.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Seventeen:
Diamonds are Forever

“Let us not be too particular. It is better to have
old second-hand diamonds than none at all.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator,
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar (1897)

 

Dr. Emrys’ office wasn’t any neater this visit than last. If anything, it was more cluttered, with the folding chairs pushed haphazardly against the walls and the elaborate pentagram filling almost the entire floor space. Emrys was behind his desk, when Jackie walked in, apparently oblivious to the repeated knocking and calls of his name before she’d wafted through the wood and glass door. She was actually surprised that she was permitted to do so, given Emrys’ reputation as the most powerful wizard in the world, but he must have been so engrossed in whatever he was reading that he forgot to set his wards. ‘It’s amazing some people are able to get out of bed in the morning,’ Jackie thought, ‘let alone live as long has he’s purported to have lived.’

She stood by his desk watching him. First, to make certain he was still breathing, but also because she was wondering if she could tell what so engrossed him. After all, she figured that her master’s degree in mythology should have counted for something. Alas, she quickly shook her head and sighed, completely bewildered by whatever it was that he was doing, which seemed to involve scribbling arcane symbols on bits of parchment and then setting them on fire using what looked a lot like a Santeria votive candle.

Amazingly, while her knocking had done nothing, her sigh was enough to distract him.

“Huh? Wha….” he pushed his glasses back up his nose and looked around. Seeing her, his face went from confusion to surprise before he quickly schooled it back into his normal neutral counselor’s look.

“Weren’t expecting to see me, Doc?” she said, raising an eyebrow to indicate that she’d caught him.

“Uh, umm, no, Miss Renfrew, I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He cleared this throat and surreptitiously brushed a hand through his flowing white hair and asked, “What can I do for you? Are you thinking of signing up for the group?”

Realizing now that she had no actual plan, now that she was here, so she wondered how to proceed. Should she spring it on him immediately, or play with him a bit? Each option had its benefits, but she finally decided to just lay it out and get it over with since it didn’t look much like she had the element of surprise despite her unorthodox entry.

“Not right this minute, actually. I wanted to ask you why you did it.”

“Did what, my dear?”

“Take the diamonds, of course.”

“Why would I take any diamonds? As you can see I’m quite well established here and diamonds are not a necessary part of any magical or mundane activities in which I am personally involved.”

“Why are you answering my questions with questions?”

“How else would a counselor counsel? Who would come back if I just told them what they wanted to know up front? For that matter, look at Cassandra. Why would you assume I would have any interest in repeating her mistake?”

“Okay, let’s assume I’m made it through the standard series of sessions.”

“Then you should already have answered your own question.”

“This is why there are so many murderous jokes about therapists, you know. I’m fairly certain I already know the answer. You took them for Lilith, I suspect using a main de gloire, called by the ignorant a ‘Hand of Glory,’ but known to the wise as mandragore, the Mandrake Root, which smells something like chicory on its own, although I’m not exactly certain how to construct such a thing. I suspect that real chicory may also have played an important part, since one of its mystic qualities is loosening locks and removing obstacles, so perhaps chicory plays a part in the preparation of the mandragore, which also grants invisibility. When combined with the presence of Ogham runes at the site, I naturally thought of the Druids. When I thought of the Druids, of course, whose magic tended toward the herbal, I thought instantly of you, Merl…. Lilith as much as admitted it when she did the same answering questions with questions and vague ‘Who, me?’ vaudeville routine you just went through. I just don’t know why you did it and what made you think Lilith would give them back afterwards.”

He raised one eyebrow and nodded, then smiled and said, “You’ve done well…,”.

Jackie interrupted him before he could finish his sentence. “Call me ‘grasshopper’ and I promise I’ll do my level best to get you locked back inside a rock with no visitors and no sun for at least as long as you’ve been alive. I can’t believe you’d trust Lilith, of all people.”

Emrys just sighed and made a small gesture. A chair rose into the air, unfolded and moved behind her. “Please humor an old man.” He gestured to the seat. “As I said, you’ve done well. I am most impressed and I will answer some of your questions, but first, a story.”

He settled a bit into his chair, and she assumed that meant that they were in for a long story. Well, she was in no particular hurry either, so Jackie took a seat in the middle of the air, since she didn’t have to put on a show to gull anyone into thinking she was human here, of all places,, and she didn’t want to sit on a prearranged chair out of general suspicion.

He raised one eyebrow, then shrugged. “Imagine that you’re an acquisitive creature who’s been alive for thousands of years, if all be told….”

“You’re cribbing from Yeats, by the way, so if this is meant to convince me that you’re not a thief, you’re going about it the wrong way.”

He looked irritated. “Who’s telling this story, me or you? Should I just shut up and let Ms. Know-It-All tell all?”

Chastened, slightly, Jackie said, “Okay. I’ll try to keep acerbic comments to a minimum.”

He smiled very faintly, a stiff upper lip twitch, then his face went back to bland superciliousness. “Yeats, of course, stole his line from me. In another life, I was called Taliesin, and was either the original creator of, or the inspiration for many of Yeats’ poems, so be careful before you level accusations of ‘theft’ against any of the Old Ones. They might not be quite as amused as I am.”

“Okay. I apologize. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”

“Always a good start, Daughter. Sincere repentance is good for the soul.” He smiled in fatherly benevolence and made a sign in the air, obviously some sort of benediction, but not a cross.

“Could we just get on with it?” she said, irritated, and not that sincere in her repentance after all. “And I’m not your daughter.”

He smiled, as if he’d just won a close call in a tennis match, and continued, “It’s an occupational habit. Think nothing of it.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hands, as if waving away a fly. “Now imagine that you’re an acquisitive creature who’s been alive for thousands of years, if all be told …. Now imagine that it’s much, much longer than that, and that if all be told in detail, continents have shifted slightly, the Dire Wolf has thrived and died after almost two million years of dominance, and the Irish Elk has flashed into existence and vanished in the mere space of four hundred thousand years or so. How much of the world’s wealth might have passed through your hands?” He raised one eyebrow to indicate permission to speak.

“I don’t know. A lot?”

“Essentially all of it, at one time or another, and certainly all the land it sprang from. There are a few things dredged up from sea floors which might be fairly claimed as ‘finder’s keepers,’ but you might be surprised by how little of that there is.”

“So you’re saying….”

“I thought I was telling this story,” he said, with some vexation.

“Sorry.” She tried to look contrite, without notable success.

“When Lilith left or was driven out of Eden — the story varies depending on who’s telling it — which was up in what’s now Persia….” He frowned in momentary concentration, “…or what they call Iran these days — it’s so difficult to keep track — she went south, just wandering until she ran out of ground to walk upon, on what’s now called the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. She liked the climate back then, since she thought that Eden was far too hot in the summer, either muggy or hot and dry, and the winters were miserable. She quite liked the diamonds as well, which were locally plentiful in the general area. You could just pick them off the ground, or on the sandy banks of streams, and if you wanted a bigger one, you could just waft up and down the buried cores of ancient volcanoes and find all you wanted.”

“So you’re saying….”

“Exactly, Grasshopper.” He smirked. “Lilith — quite properly, in my opinion — considers all of Africa below the river Congo, but including Lake Tanganyika and Zanzibar, her personal property by right of discovery and occupation, together with all the mineral and other wealth therein contained. The fact that many humans disagree is a matter of no interest to her whatsoever, nor to me, I might add.”

“Well, that seems simple enough,” she said. Anything else?

He seemed amused. “Of course. Guess who really discovered and claimed the Americas, well before the American Indians and other Johnny-Come-Latelys came along?”

“Let me guess …. Lilith?”

“Got it in one. Would you like to go onto Double Jeopardy?”

“Sure, why not? Lilith has what she considers legitimate claim to almost the entire world, except that area previously set aside by God as Eden, the exclusive domain of Mankind as a whole, from which he somehow managed to get evicted.”

“You are a clever girl, Jackie. There are a few minor exceptions, mostly satrapies set up by one or more of the Djinni, although many of these were her common-law husbands, so when they died — and so many of them have died — title reverted to her as surviving spouse. The big exceptions are places she didn’t like, for one reason or another. She hated Equatorial Africa and the Amazon Basin in South America, because they were hot and muggy, and isn’t fond of Southeast Asia and most of the South Seas for the same reason. She claims that the moisture makes her hair either frizz or become limp, depending on her current ‘look,’ but almost every place that one would really want to live, given their druthers, either is or was hers, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Holy Probate, Batman!” she enthused without enthusiasm.

He scowled at her, then set his lips in a thin grim line and went on despite her kibitzing. “The fact, of course, that the laws promulgated by every existing human government may contradict her claims are beside the point, in her opinion, because they were promulgated by interlopers and thieves, and obtained a pirate’s title only, that is, they can keep what they’ve stolen only as long as they themselves have their hands upon it. If Lilith wants her property back, all she has to do is ask for it, or take it. She tends to do the latter, because it saves argument, and Lilith, above all, is….”

“…a lover, not a fighter. Yeah, she mentioned the same thing to me, and I have to admit that I can see a certain justice in it. It seems fair enough to me,” she said. “So Lilith had a need for her property, you agreed with her that she had a rightful claim to it, and you helped her to get it back.”

“Essentially, yes, although she has many overlapping claims on most of the world, either by direct right, or through one of her many spouses over the years. Most of those arguments I’d stay out of, if I possibly could. You may be amused to note that through Samael, the Archangel of Death, her first spouse after Adam, and still in God’s good graces, she has a partial claim to the entire Roman Empire, but specifically the entirety of the land and buildings within the Vatican City and most of Rome. It was her home for a while, you know, some time in the middle of the Ninth Century, when she became Pope, and since the Pope’s election is for life, could fairly claim to be the only legitimate Pope even now. That’s another tiff I’d stay away from, as it would likely start a holy war. I suspect she’d win, of course, since the Holy See has no divisions, as Stalin famously said, but only a hundred or so Pontifical Swiss Guards. She tends to be careless of ‘collateral damage,’ though, and I’d just as soon not take sides if she ever made an issue of it. Then again, as Adam’s only surviving spouse, and since there was never a proper divorce, she has at least a partial prior claim to everything owned by humans descended from his bigamous association with Eve, anywhere on Earth, since she was never affected by the Fall, and thus never afflicted with mortality. That was all down to Eve and Adam, the sorriest pair of dolts that you could possibly imagine.”

“I’ll be damned. I’m an heiress.”

“Well, the first is still an open question,” he chuckled, “ but the second, yes, within strict limits, so you’ll understand that it’s not a matter of ‘trust,’ but justice, and I’ve always been on the side of justice.”

Jackie thought about that for a moment. “Okay. I guess I’m on your side there, and please don’t worry. I like my new Mom, taking all in all. I’m not interested in bumping her off for any putative share of whatever. I imagine I’d have to share with a lot of greedy demons, in any case.”

He smiled again. “I’m glad to hear it, although I wasn’t worried, in fact. She’s immensely powerful, and not likely to be overcome other than by a large consortium of archangels, and it would be difficult to get enough of them to agree to do it, because many of them remember her with fondness, either as lover or spouse, and there’s also one overriding fact: To wit that, for some reason of his own, God quite likes her.”

“Oh, I can understand it,” she said. “She’s got chutzpah, and God always seems to like the ones with chutzpah, even if they aren’t quite the sort one would trust alone with one’s spouse, or ask to guard one’s valuables.”

He thought about that for a while. “I believe you may have hit the nail on the head, as you say. Like tends to like, but God’s plans are often quite obscure, so I doubt that that’s quite all of it.”

“Maybe, who knows? We all muddle along as best we can. Can you tell me why she needs the diamonds?”

“I’m afraid not; it’s not my secret to tell, but I will say that I agree with her reasoning.”

“Good enough for me. Is there anything she can do for poor Colleen, she’s quite devastated by the loss of her diamonds, you know.”

“Poor Colleen?” He laughed quite pleasantly, shaking his head in rueful admiration. “That’s rich! Look at the inventory of the missing jewels and count them up. Try to figure out exactly who the so-called ‘owners of record’ are. Just guessing, I’d estimate Colleen’s pre-insurance loss from your mother’s informal reassertion of her claims at thirty million dollars, since she had possession of many of the finest stones, which were all that Lilith was interested in. As one of the last leprechauns left alive, she’s got enough stashed away to make Bill Gates look like a street bum begging for quarters by the entrance to the subway, and could certainly afford enough diamonds to fill a bathtub she could soak in, more like a swimming pool, even after the loss of one of her smaller stashes. Didn’t she tell you that they were insured? Didn’t she tell you the full value of her holdings at Pearlmutter’s? You have to realize, Jackie, that leprechauns tend to be almost as economical with the truth as they are with their coin.“

“No, she didn’t feel obligated to share that information with me,” she said darkly. “In fact, she left me the distinct impression of the exact opposite, although looking back, she didn’t exactly lie to me as much as she allowed me to form an erroneous opinion.”

”Don’t be hard on her, Jackie. As you observed, leprechauns don’t ever really lie, as such, but they’re very sharp dealers. Did you ever read any of the old Uncle Scrooge stories? He was modeled after a leprechaun that the series’ first author and artist ran into once, which is possibly why his stories have withstood the test of time. They’re much more realistic than many people realize. They’ve been reissued, you know, so you might want to pick one or more volumes, so you’ll have a little insight into your friend Colleen.”

“I have read one or two of the original stories, a very long time ago, when I was just a girl. That bathtub thing, though; is that why leprechauns all have a pot of gold in the stories?” she asked.

“It is indeed. Before bathtubs, most people bathed — if they bathed at all — in the same pot they used for rendering, laundry, and whatever other domestic processing formed a part of their daily lives. A separate bathing facility was an unbelievable luxury, and leprechauns typically live very frugally, despite their wealth. They like to climb into their pot and roll around in their gold, claiming that’s what makes them healthy and long-lived. They’re probably right, since they’re a type of Elemental, something like your Salamander, only they embody the spirit of money, which has a duality about it, just like fire, which can create as well as destroy. So gold, or any wealth, can serve the purposes of either greed or generosity, and it’s up to those who wield it to decide whether it’s used for good or evil.”

“That makes sense, I suppose, and if Uncle Scrooge was modeled after an elemental, that explains why he liked to go swimming in his money. I live and learn, Doctor Emrys, I live and learn.”

“Hot Damn!” she cursed. Jackie had just wafted back through Dr. Emrys’ door when something that looked like it belonged in one of those old stop-motion Jason and the Argonauts movies leapt from the middle of the air and tried to decapitate her with one swipe of the biggest sword she’d ever seen. Oddly enough, the sword shattered into about a million tinkling pieces as soon as it encountered the frosted glass window, which at least evened the odds a little, so she took a harder look while the thing drew back his diminished sword with a look of puzzlement on his face which suggested that he’d been at the back of the line when they started handing out the brains.

As far as demons went, he wasn’t bad, if you managed to ignore the über-Neanderthalish slope of his forehead that made him look like he’d used his former sword to whack off the top half of his own head. He was green, of course, with the requisite slobbering fangs, bloody claws, horns, oozing sores, and bad breath, so’s you couldn’t possibly mistake him for the romantic lead, but he was male, so Jackie kicked him hard in the balls on general principles, which had the interesting and simultaneous effect of causing him to double over in agony at the precise moment he simultaneously ejaculated, shouted something incoherent, and choked because all these separate events somehow came together in one mouth — well, some of it got into his eyes — so she kicked him again for making a mess on the carpet.

Someone cleared his throat behind her, so she whirled around to face a possible new threat when she saw that it was only Dr. Emrys. “Friend of yours?” she asked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the recumbent figure on the floor, by now unconscious and prostrate.

After looking at him carefully — which told her that he must have some very strange friends — he said, “No, but it seems that someone doesn’t like you very much, because he was summoned for this task. Pity.” He made a few passes with his hand, said a few incomprehensible words, and the creature dissolved into flame with a shriek, leaving a sulphurous stench behind.

“Did you have to kill him?” she asked, since she viewed the idea with distaste, despite his hostile assault.

He blinked. “No, of course not. He was Compelled, and had no choice in the matter. I just sent him back to Hell, which is his proper place, and re-baptized him in fire and blood at the same time, so he can’t be summoned again until someone figures out his new True Name, which usually only happens because this class of demon isn’t very bright, as a rule, so it’s fairly easy to trick them into telling you what their name is.” He smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, I slurred my speech a bit, so it’s fairly likely that he didn’t quite catch his new name, as concentrated as he was with his personal misery, which will be a very big surprise to whoever tries to summon him again, using what he’ll probably think is his True Name, because the rules of the game allow him to eat the summoner who doesn’t get it right, which will be instantly clear to him when he doesn’t feel the bond.” He smiled again, this time a little dangerously. “I’m not fond of cowards who set innocents into harm’s way by forcing them to attack people they don’t like while hiding behind the bushes. As the Lord High Executioner said in The Mikado, I’ve got a little list, they never will be missed.”

As she left Dr. Emrys’ office building, Jackie was more confused than ever. She was embarrassed as well, because she’d completely overlooked Dr. Emrys as a suspect during her first round of thinking, because he was a Doctor, and because he looked respectable. But even if Lilith was the one stealing diamonds, it didn’t seem at all likely that she would have summoned a demon to try and kill her. In her admittedly short acquaintance with her, it didn’t seem to be her mother’s style, so there must be more than one hand being played in this game. As she’d pointed out herself, Lilith was a lover, not a fighter, and she’d probably be amused to have been found out, since she felt that she ‘owned’ the diamonds in any case, which even made her statements during the convention … truish, even if not strictly true. It’s not exactly theft if you retrieve your own property, even by proxy, and even if she’d been standing right behind Dr. Emrys while he absconded with her mother’s jewels, she hadn’t seen him ‘steal’ anything, by the same logic, and neither had Dr. Emrys ‘stolen’ anything. She gritted her teeth, suddenly furious that the two of them had blithely told the truth, but not the whole truth, and had deceived her through verbal tricks as morally dishonest as the physical sleight of hand that Tris had used to taunt her. She felt like a fool, but with that poignant sense of hurt one felt when people that one had thought to have been friends turned out not to be. She’d gone into Merl’s office as a potential client, at his invitation, even though she’d also had a private agenda. Didn’t he have a professional duty of care? Wasn’t his trickery also a type of malpractice?

She pondered this for a while, then thought, ‘Okay, so leaving aside the fact that they’d conned me, and that my feelings were hurt, there are still two real questions: Why am I a particular target, and why “retrieve” these particular diamonds at this particular time?’

She didn’t think the two things were related, or if they were, the connection was obscure. From what she’d seen at the convention, Lilith had the ceilings covered in diamonds, and she tried working the sums in her head: The largest cavern was about two and a half to three acres in size, call it three, to make life simpler. An acre is 43,560 square feet so that’s 130,680 square feet in three of them, so 144 times that is 18,817,920, and if there were only one diamond per square inch — which seemed unlikely — that would be almost twenty million diamonds on the roof of that one cave, and ten times that seemed more likely. She tried to whistle in astonishment, but discovered that she’d forgotten how to whistle, and that really astonished her. How could she have forgotten how to whistle? Why? She shook her head to get the cobwebs out. One more damned mystery to figure out.

But it was no wonder Lilith didn’t have a crew out there picking up the diamonds that had fallen from the ceiling. She probably just had them swept out with the trash, which brought her to Jumbe Mungu. Could he have been tempted to pocket the diamonds in said trash? But what would it profit him? He only had one believer, her own faculty advisor, Professor Emeritus Long in the Department of Mythology, who didn’t seem the type to covet diamonds, and why bother stealing them when bunches of them were literally laying around on the ground. Then she wondered what it was that constituted ‘belief.’ She certainly believed in Jumbe’s existence, but did that count? Did Jumbe have ‘believers’ that he didn’t know about? Jumbe Mungu meant ‘Chief God’ in Swahili, if she remembered her survey course in African religions correctly, and the introduction during the group meeting had mentioned the same etymology, but had referred it to Bantu, the usual linguistic source cited for Swahili, but what did it take to be considered a ‘Chief’ among Gods? And why would Professor Long’s ‘belief’ count for more than hers? Because she wasn’t human? For that matter, everyone in that meeting believed that Jumbe existed, and none of them, as far as she knew, were human, but that hardly seemed fair. And then again, her angel Sam had told her that she was human, as was Lilith, and she didn’t suppose that he would lie. The whole situation was making her head hurt.

In any case, if Lilith went to the trouble to ‘recover’ those particular gems, there must have been one or more gems of special interest among them, but which ones, and why? She supposed that the easiest way to start would be to ask, not that she expected an answer, not from Lilith, but why not begin with simplicity?

When she got to her parking spot, and into her car, she turned the key and almost started out for La Calaca Extraordinaria, her mother’s business and usual hang-out, as far as she knew.

Then again, simplicity was vastly overrated, especially where Lilith was concerned. Jackie could see her point; after having been alive for more than a million years, she’d seen almost everything before, and hated being bored. People who didn’t do their ‘due diligence’ before wasting her time bored her almost immediately. She wasn’t one of those unctuous ‘self-help’ gurus who claim that ‘There are no stupid questions,’ as long as someone was paying for the stupid answers. With Lilith, the first stupid question was usually the last, and Jackie had the impression that Lilith was actually cutting her some slack, every once in a while, and regretted her own smart mouth, which tended to run off on its own whenever she was around Lilith, for some reason. So her first stop was her own desk, and her small collection of esoteric texts, plus access to several academic databases that might be handy. She smiled when she thought about it, because she really loved research, discovering stuff that people either didn’t know or didn’t realize was important in ways they hadn’t imagined.

She felt a rush of pleasure when she first approached what seemed like an impossible tangle of unrelated facts, just as she imagined Edmund Hillary must have felt when he saw a mountain that looked impossible to climb. After careful inspection, she’d eventually discover a ‘toehold’ that would let her stretch a little further, and so on until she’d mastered the raw data and turned it into a hypothesis, then perhaps a ‘law,’ an accurate and predictive description of the interrelatedness of some particular set of observations, and then a theory, if she was very lucky, or very thorough. The academic world had plenty of room for both.

First though, she might as well stop and see if Dr. Long was in his office. There’s little point in having an advisor if one didn’t take advantage of their years of experience from time to time. He might have a few ideas on the subject, even if she didn’t divulge everything she knew.

At the first likely intersection, she turned right, then swung around the block until she could retrace her way back to the campus, and as she drove, she went over what she knew already in her mind. First: diamonds were compressed carbon, and so related to carbon-based life, which was to say everything living. That seemed like a likely point, in occult terms at least, if not as a nutritious breakfast cereal. Second: The diamond suit in an ordinary deck of cards represented the original coins or pentacles suits, and thus the element Earth in esoteric philosophy. Third: diamonds, and all crystals, were symbols of Order, and potential focal points for meditation and magic. She wasn’t sure, but the extreme regularity of diamonds on an atomic level seemed more suited to High Magic, or Ceremonial Magic, than to the more free-flowing and amorphous cantrips and spells of ordinary divination and invocation.

She already knew, from her research for her recent paper, that most invocations of the higher orders of demons involved aspects of Ceremonial Magic as well as the basic invocation, since one had to be able to control the inimical creatures summoned forth as well as call them, unless one merely had a death wish. Her own recent encounter with a Demon outside Dr. Emrys’ office was a case in point. If she’d been human, she’d likely be dead right now, and the same fate would await every careless summoner. So it seemed at least possible that the jewels had been used to summon or control a demon, although she had no idea how or why. The trouble with that line of reasoning, though, was that she doubted that Lilith would have any trouble at all in kicking demon butt if she had a mind to do so, and certainly wouldn’t need human gimcracks and doohickies to do so, since she herself — and she had no illusions about their relative powers — could obviously handle minor demons on her own. Her Mom, she suspected, would be Hell on wheels.

“So there you have it, Doctor Long. I ran across the use of precious gems in relation to demonic summoning and possession during my research for my paper, and wanted to pursue the topic further in another direction, but couldn’t be sure whether I might have missed something or not, so of course my second thought was to ask you, since you have much more experience in the field.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m flattered that you thought of me, Jackie, but your précis seems very thorough, and your paper was first-rate work, I want to say, from start to finish. I’ve sent it round for review, and would be pleased to sponsor it for publication, if you’d be interested.”

“I’d be honored, of course, Doctor Long, but….”

He laughed. “Of course, Jackie, back to business. I was going to mention that I remember seeing a reference, I believe it was Aleister Crowley, and of course you know how unreliable he can be, but I recall reading a passage in one of his ‘Thelemite’ hodgepodges about trapping demons in the crystalline matrices of certain precious gems.”

“Like diamonds, for example?”

“Exactly. In fact, what’s usually called the light body in Theosophy and related systems is termed the diamond body in Vajrayāna Buddhism, which itself is popularly called the Diamond Vehicle. Then too, the Diamond Realm Mandala, the ‘Vajradhātu,’ almost precisely mirrors the interior structure of diamonds as revealed by modern x-ray crystallography, so we must imagine that either this is pure coïncidence, or that the ancient Tibetan sages had actually divined something of the true structure of the universe through pure contemplation of ultimate reality. For all his faults, Crowley was an avaricious reader and the plunderer of many very real occult traditions, so managed to squirrel away a few nuggets of valuable insights and information in the midst of his ego-driven self-aggrandisement. If the Theosophic and Thelemite Light Body, or Body of Light — the ætheric manifestation of the soul — is in fact related to the Diamond Body described in the ancient Tibetan texts, physical diamonds might be appropriate for achieving mastery over demons, or even phowa, a type of astral projection in which a dying person can direct his passage into a new body of his or her choice, thus transcending karma to some extent. I’d focus on the Tibetan texts, I think, since they developed this line of thinking further than any of the other schools of Buddhist thought that I’m aware of, and in fact use the process to this present day to ensure the continuance of the line of Dalai Lamas, who are all reïncarnations of Avalokitasvara, or Guānshìyīn Púsà, or Guānyīn, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.”

Jackie furrowed her brow in puzzlement. “But isn’t Guānyīn a woman?”

“Or a Goddess. Yes and no,” he said, with phlegmatic equanimity. “It’s a common misconception, especially among those for whom Buddhism is conjoined with preëxisting thealogies, or those for whom pure compassion seems most likely or prevalent among females. Guānyīn, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, transcends male and female, and can appear as either sex, although various Buddhist traditions may prefer one incarnation or another. The current Dalai Lama has even suggested that his next incarnation may be female, and occur outside Tibet, and one supposes that he would know.”

Jackie wasn’t familiar with this at all, since her own focus had been primarily directed toward European traditions, but it seemed like a promising lead, especially since this line of spiritual transmission seemed to place great store in diamonds, or their spiritual equivalents. ‘Back to the salt mines,’ she thought to herself, and headed for home as soon as she’d said her good-byes and left the office.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Eighteen:
Growing Pains

Withhold not correction from the child:
for if thou beatest him with the rod,
he shall not die.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod,
and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
― Proverbs 23:13-14

 

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? No, seriously, if God were all-powerful and all that shit, could he make angels so tiny that an infinite number of them could dance gracefully in an infinitesimal space without stepping on each other’s toes? And if they twirled, would the infinitely delicate fabric of all their tiny skirts billow out to follow that asymptotic curve known as the Witch of Agnesi? Parametrically, it would be: x = 2a tan θ, y = 2a cos² θ, or in Cartesian coördinates: y = 8a³ / x² + 4a². And could all those tiny dancing angels sing the calculus of infinitesimals as they danced in chorus? Were there no limits to their collective audacity? ‘We’re here! We’re here! We hear! We hear!’ Is reciprocity a divine attribute? Quid pro quo? Tit for tat? If life is but a dream, was she always dreaming?

Jackie woke with a start? Was she sleeping? Dreaming? How could sleep be triggered without blood in her veins and breath in her body? Was it only a habit, the boring repetition of an obsessive-compulsive tic? Did she have circadian rhythms? Was she a morning person? A night owl? Did it matter? Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast. But was it? She didn’t feel rested particularly, just the same. What time was it, anyway? She glanced over at the clock beside her bed, which glowed, although it hardly mattered, since whatever ‘light’ she used for vision didn’t follow normal rules, except it did, sort of. When she closed her eyes, she couldn’t exactly see, although she could still sense things going on around her, exactly how she didn’t know. And there! There something wasn’t right.

She flitted to where the disturbance was, and there was a man open before her, using a tool of some sort to lever the screen from an open window. A woman lay sleeping in the room, and the window was open for air. Jackie wasn’t outraged so much as ticked off, because this was her territory. She didn’t like his mind at all, so she fixed it for him, so that he dropped his pants, stepped out of them, and started masturbating frantically, ejaculating almost immediately, and then knelt under the window and began to lick up his own emission. Then she called the police, and told them she’d seen a prowler, told them where it was, and waited until the cruiser arrived, turned on its alley and takedown lights, and clearly videoed the man’s pale ass in the air as he kept licking, now frantic when he realized that he was now displayed. As the officer exited his vehicle, she left, content that the would-be rapist now had a different problem, fetishistic exhibitionism, which would have him in reparative therapy for a good long time, or until his aggressive impulses were gone. As an afterthought, she reached back and added a compulsion to brag about his past exploits, whatever they were, which ought to take care of justice as well, without requiring her to soil her own mind by dipping into his.

Looking around her, she could feel many thoughts and feelings in the air, but had a special sensitivity to thoughts and feelings of a sexual nature, and so saw something of her mother’s temptation. Within the radius of a mile, or more if she stretched a bit, there were more men masturbating than she could shake a stick at — she almost laughed at her ‘happy’ metaphor — and quite a few women. One didn’t have to tempt or seduce anyone at all, although she supposed that taking an active part would have its charms. There was more than enough sexual energy being thrown around to keep a dozen succubi replete with no effort at all.

When she thought about it, though, it didn’t seem like a very productive way to make a living, as a sort of mosquito tapping into a communal artery that was freely available, so she supposed that Lilith was engaged in a type of helpful commerce, because she added ‘value’ to the transaction by embellishing the rough act with dreams, the teasing seduction, the affirmation of prowess, and perhaps even the smash and grab that made off with the entire package in a transformative change. Or was it Lilith who’d drained him dry at all? Toward the end, when she’d become Lilith, at least in her mind, was it Lilith, or was it Jackie herself, who’d delighted in sucking down her own energy, and in watching herself die and be reborn? She knew that she was much more powerful than her sisters, at least the two she’d seen at the convention, Jane and Mary. Was it because she’d embraced her change, had wanted it before her encounter with Lilith, as her angel Sam had seemed to say?

Lilith, of course, had said nothing, but who was being the grownup here, Lilith — who’d left her free to make her own way in the world without any sort of coercion that she could see, and in fact seemed remarkably happy to see her sometimes, considering all in all — or herself, petulant, whiny, even churlish at times, sulking when her mother didn’t behave exactly as she wanted her to behave? If she had been her Mom, she would have smacked herself more than once, and felt perfectly justified. She’d been holding herself up as the paragon of virtue, and had mentally labeled her Mom as the ‘Bitch,’ but the only one of the two of them who’d really been acting like a bitch had been herself, injecting herself into what had evidently been a private conversation between her Mother and her friend Sarah, and jumping all over her Mom without bothering to find out what had been going on. Sarah was much older than she was, despite her apparent youth, and probably felt more comfortable with her Mother, a fellow ‘Oldie,’ — if not quite on the same scale — than Jackie did herself.

Then, thinking of her mother, she thought for some reason of Blake’s poem, The Tiger. Her angel Sam had been quite careful to refer to the Creator and the Maker, but her mother had dismissed ‘that pathetic little volcano godling’ as something contemptible, and she wasn’t at all sure any more that they referred to the same thing. Lilith was indeed a type of tiger, fierce and proud, and ‘What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ Could Lilith’s ‘pathetic godling’ have been her Creator, or was there some subtle difference? Sam had referred to ‘his friend Vishnu,’ but if Vishnu existed, why not Adi Parashakti, the Goddess, Divine Mother — to whom Lilith had also referred, at least indirectly — as the Supreme Being and ground of all reality. In the Upanishads, the Trinity, Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu, Lord Shiva, and all other Gods worship Her, and indeed without the power of Adi Shakti the Gods Themselves can neither move nor speak. Even the Three Supreme Gods, Trimurti, are as nothing without the Tridevi, their Consorts and Goddesses, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati, all of whom have multiple Aspects, and in fact Parvati, Goddess of Destruction, of preparing the way for making all things new again, is often depicted wearing a tiger’s skin, as is Kali, one of Parvati’s most terrible incarnations, and so subsume its essential nature. Was Kali, was Parvati? Were all these women Lilith? Or was Lilith them? What was she, herself, if not Lilith made new again, free of bondage?

And then she woke again, recursively. She’d been sleeping on the couch, one of her books lying open in her lap, papers and four- by six-inch note-cards scattered on every flat surface around her. They were covered with some small fraction of the Ten Thousand Names of God.

In the distance, she heard the police cruiser responding to her call.

“Hello, Mother,” Jackie said, when Lilith looked up from the bar where she was sitting, surrounded, as usual, by a small coterie of male admirers.

She frowned slightly and waved a negligent hand, causing the men’s eyes to unfocus and their faces to go slack. “Come to carp and criticize, as usual, dear? Or do you want something else?”

“No, Mother. I’ve come to offer my help, if I may, but I have no idea what that help might consist of, or even if it might be useful to you, but I owe you my….” She’d almost said ‘love,’ but stopped herself in time, “…gratitude and loyalty.”

Lilith smiled with no particular enthusiasm, but at least she wasn’t sneering. “How much have you guessed?”

“Not much,” she admitted, “but I suspect you have a powerful demon in captivity, ‘on ice,’ so to speak, trapped within the matrix of a large diamond, probably the large yellow diamond that ‘went missing’ recently.”

Lilith visibly preened, so pleased was she, her natural beauty becoming more radiant, so much so that every activity in her club came to a standstill, with every male staring at her, jaws slack, and spittle drooling from the mouths of several. “How clever of you, Daughter, but then blood will tell… eventually.” The last word dropped a bit, and she looked somewhat less sanguine, and most of the men shook themselves slightly, as if they had been dogs coming in out of the rain, and then tried to think of what they’d been doing before.

“I confess that I have no idea who it might be, however.”

“Not to worry, dear. There’s no reason you should, since he’s been absent from the world for more than twenty thousand years. He was a boring little twit to begin with, Mastiphal, one of many self-styled ‘Princes of Darkness over the ages.’ ” She rolled her eyes. “Spare me,” she sighed, “the pretensions of petty pretenders.”

“If you’ll pardon my ignorance, who’s Mastiphal.”

She smiled, “You mean, apart from a ‘metal’ band from Gdansk? Or was it Katowice? Poland, anyway, a dreary place, entirely appropriate for Mastiphal, who was a dreary fellow as an angel, and even less appealing as a demon, although the two words are completely interchangeable. Fancied himself the Demon of Slander and Lies, which I suppose are very grievous sins in Halacha, but they have tabloid celebrations of his domain at every supermarket checkout stand these days, along with candy and chewing gum. How are the mighty fallen….”

“But why do you need him, then?”

“Moi? Need? Not likely, but I thought he might spare me some trouble, and if he doesn’t agree, he can go right back into his little bottle.”

Jackie felt like rolling her eyes and making a ‘smart’ remark, but rather renewed her resolve to be better than she was, usually. “All right, then how might he be ‘handy,’ if that’s a better word.”

“Mastiphal’s one grounding in reality was that he hated Sansanvi, who’s gone rogue of late, and is killing innocents. If he undertakes to take rid me of Sansanvi, I’ll set him free, to save myself the trouble of more personal involvement.”

“But is this Mastiphal that powerful?”

She actually laughed. “You’ve been listening to Semangelaf, I see. Don’t be swayed by his puffed-up little masculine ego and self-aggrandizement. Those three little twerps were errand boys, back in the day, and haven’t much improved themselves, having started out as hit men who preyed upon women and children, for the most part.” She sneered in contempt. “I was married to an Archangel for two thousand years, remember, Samael, one of the seven Regents of the World. I was Empress of the Realm of Death, and as Mictecacihuatl reigned alone as Queen and Goddess of Mictláan, the Underworld, for another two thousand years. Mastiphal was, in very fact, one of the great Princes amongst the angels, although not nearly of Samael’s measure.” She smirked, then winked laciviously. “In more ways than one.” She smirked again, in slightly better humor. “He was Mosachiel, of course, the ‘Chosen One of God,’ before he changed his name. He thought it sounded too Jewish or something.” She was obviously unconcerned with his opinion.

Jackie didn’t know what to say. “Unh, what do you mean by ‘innocents’ and Sansanvi?”

“I mean the nasty little toad is killing people who haven’t done any particular harm, of course, including quite recently your sister Jane, who was too weak and unassuming to hurt a fly, which is of course an enticement for vicious thugs and cowards like Sansanvi.” She spat on the floor to underscore her disgust.

“He killed Jane?” Jackie was stunned, trying to reconcile her formerly-comfortable view of the world to an intrusive reality that seemed monstrous and vile. She could hardly believe it, ‘Jane?’ “But I knew Jane.”

“He did, seeking to curry favor from someone higher on this week’s totem pole, I suspect, although of course he didn’t consult me, since he undoubtedly worried that I’d snuff him out without the slightest hesitation. Bullies rarely confront the source of their fears.”

Jackie didn’t take long to make up her mind; she didn’t have that many relatives to spare, and she’d liked Jane, despite her quirks, and she’d promised her safety, trusting in Semangelaf’s lying words. “Could you teach me something about diamonds, Mother?”

She smiled in what appeared to be genuine pleasure. “Of course, Jackie. You have only to ask, but you already know most of the trick of it, since it’s almost the same as concealing your aura, but you do it to someone else, and stuff them elsewhere than behind their own eyes.” She rose from her stool and walked toward her, reaching up and plucking something from the air as she came toward her, which turned out to be the two apparently flawless deep blue cut diamonds she pressed into her palm. “Having two is better,” she said, “because you have two chances at the trick, and they usually feel smug after having escaped the first time, and so fall easily to a second try. If that one fails, flee like all Hell is after you, because it will be.”

Jackie stared at them. They felt almost heavy in her hand, about the weight of her keyring, including her car key, the clicker, the key to their apartment, a tiny Swiss Army knife with a tiny nail file and scissors, and a fancy decorative key fob, which happened to be a pretty brass rose that Frank had given her. “Unh, how much am I carrying around here?”

Lilith raised one perfect eyebrow. “Who cares? Around three ounces total, at a guess. It’s difficult to trap a relatively powerful spirit in anything much less than an ounce or so without a lot of practice, so these two have plenty of room to play around with.” She paused for a moment, then added, evidently amused by Jackie’s hesitation, “They’ve never been claimed by anyone, dear, and my hands are the only ones to ever touch them, aside from the diamond cutter, since I picked them up on the shores of a lovely riverbank in South Africa, and that was almost twenty thousand years ago, so you needn’t worry about being caught with them. Whatever anyone else might think about their value, they’re worth considerably less than your life. Now let me show you how it’s done….”

Jackie felt a little odd, as she was parking her car beneath their apartment building as if it were an ordinary day, as if nothing had changed, as if her head might not explode. She had ready-to-hand a matched pair of gems worth many millions of dollars, tucked away in a tiny extra-dimensional quasi-universal oubliette that followed her around like an invisible balloon on an cosmic string, another trick that Lilith had shared with her. She tried to think of them as life-preservers, which made it a little easier not to feel excited, and to consider them a ‘loan’ from her mother, not a gift, but it was difficult to take her mother’s casual perspective on them, having worked for a living for her entire adult life. When she’d worked as a waitress, there’d been times when a three-dollar tip had been the difference between the street and having a roof over her head, and here she was walking around with a outlandish fortune in her really-truly foxy pocket.

She walked over to the elevator, but didn’t press the call button. Instead, she extended her perceptions to ascertain her privacy, then flashed upstairs to the bathroom in her bedroom.

She could feel Frank and Hank in the living room, so flushed the toilet, purely for the sake of the familiar sound and warning, then walked out into the main room. “Hi, Sweetie. You too, Hank. What’s up? Made any progress on the method?” Frank’s diorama was plainly visible on the coffee table, so she imagined that they had.

Frank looked up. “I was wondering when you were going to wake up from your nap. And we have. It turns out that there are several spots in which ‘jumpers’ could possibly have been placed to bypass both the alarms and the video circuits, so we want to make a trip back to check them out. Want to come along?”

“Of course. Just let me grab my purse.”

At Pearlmutter’s, the same young man they’d worked with before was in a tizzy. It seemed that the thieves had had trouble unloading the stones, since they were ‘too hot to handle,’ and just the day before had shipped them back to Pearlmutter’s by special courier from Antwerp, along with a polite note apologizing for the mess. They’d just arrived, and the owners were going through the inventory list at that very moment.

“Well,” Jackie observed, “I was hoping that someone would drop a dime and let us know where they were, but never expected such quick service.”

Both Frank and Hank glared at her.

“What?” she said. “Did I break some obscure sleuthing rule? It must have been in the fine print, because I never noticed it.”

This time, only Frank glared, while Hank looked puzzled.

“Well, if you’re going to be snippy, I think I’ll go to lunch while you guys work. A carrot and raisin salad would be nice, I think.”

Both men groaned, and Frank said, “Cornmeal might be better for you.”He dug in his trouser pocket and handed her a coin. “Here’s a dime; I’ll give you a ring later.”

This time, she glared at him….

Once outside, she stepped into a shadow and went insubstantial, flitting back up to Pearlmutter’s offices where she arranged Frank’s props ready to be ‘discovered’ inside the walls, and then flitted back to the car. Lilith had been very amused by Jackie’s plan, and had arranged the temporal displacement on her own, since she saw having a ‘source’ in the police department as possibly useful, and Jackie had pointed out that the quondam owners of record were as safe a place to stash her gemstones as any, until and if she needed them again.

All in all, she thought, it was a good compromise. The local police had at least some bragging rights, since the crime was ‘solved’ and the jewels recovered. The Chief and the Mayor could both hold press conferences and subtly imply that they’d been ‘closing in’ on the culprits, and this was what had forced them to abandon their plans to sell them in Antwerp, a major center of the international diamond market. Lilith had her captive angel/demon back, and he had in fact agreed to seek out Sansanvi for retribution in exchange for his freedom. But most importantly, the Compact had been preserved intact, which Jackie felt privately was at least part of the reason Lilith had agreed to Jackie’s scheme, because Dr. Emrys had left a few too many clues behind that pointed to supernatural causes. Not that Lilith would ever admit to any part of a mistake. She decided not to tell Sarah that Emrys, alias Merlin, former Magician to King Arthur’s Court, quite possibly the most powerful Druid and Sorcerer on Earth, and her current group counsellor, had been involved in the diamond caper, because it was family business in the first place, and because it might be detrimental to her progress in her group, as well as that of all the others.

So now, all she had to worry about was how to maintain a loving relationship with a mortal man without either killing him or destroying his manhood, and of course staying out of the way of Sansanvi. She wasn’t too terribly worried about that, though. After all, with millions of Lilith’s children alive in the world, what were the odds against Sansanvi finding her?

“Oh, shit….” Jackie said calmly. It was three o’clock in the morning, and she hadn’t been dancing at all — worse luck — and there was a man in her bedroom who looked exactly like Sam, but didn’t have the same feel about him, and the look on his face was grim. “You’d be Sansanvi, then.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, then he grew more hostile, saying, “Die, Jezebel! Whore of Babylon!” and advanced towards her, hands outstretched ad menacing, unconsciously mimicking a thousand film clichés.

“Aren’t you mixing metaphors, Sannie? You don’t mind if I call you ‘Sannie,’ do you. It seems less formal, and a girl should never invite a man into her bedroom unless they’re on friendly terms, don’t you agree?” She did her mother’s trick of shielding her aura, shrinking her essence into a tiny point, which only momentarily confused him. “Of course, you weren’t invited, were you, Sannie? which makes you a Peeping Tom and home invader, all of which are crimes under New York State law for which you can be sentenced to serve a sentence of not less than six months nor more than…. Eeep!” His hands upon her ætheric body were cold, colder than ice, even as far away from it as she was, so she shed it, like shrugging out of a négligée, allowing it to drop away as she slipped his grasp and fled through the walls of the apartment and deep into the warm and welcoming Earth.

Sansanvi followed close at her heels, shouting incoherently, reaching toward her with fell purpose.

Jackie kept up a running commentary, absurdly pleased that she didn’t need to breathe, and so had plenty of time for gibes. “Jezebel was a proud Princess and Queen, Sannie, the daughter of the King of Tyre, whose only ‘sin’ was defying the treacherous Jehu, who came into Jezreel to murder her, but was too chicken-hearted of her royal sanctity to actually touch her, so had eunuchs do the dirty deed on his behalf, which makes perfect sense, since two eunuchs make ten times the man he was, the sniveling little coward.”

His eyes widened, a little crazed, actually. “Blasphemy! Jehu was annointed of the Lord!”

“What? By Elisha? Not hardly. Even Elisha, another pusillanimous oath-breaker and vicious pig, didn’t dare blaspheme to that extent, but rather had a servant perform the sacrilege, so as not to soil his own pasty little hands and thereby tempt the Lord. Elisha was a filthy little spy who did everything by proxy, sitting at the center of his little nest of assassins and saboteurs like a bloated spider in his web, even less of a man than you are, Sannie dear, who sees fit to sneak up on women in their chambres intimes to murder them, one more candy-ass failure in a long line of effete stumble-bums and utterly beneath contempt. I have to thank you, though, Sannie-boy, for allowing me to feel precisely the courage of Jezabel when she denounced Jehu as a lying traitor. Jezabel was, for all her imputed faults, a woman of valor, Eshet Chayil, plotted against by worms and slandered by pimps and murderers, and you, I see, are a lot like Jehu, can’t get it up without playing the bullyboy toward women. What’s the matter, ‘Little’ Sannie, did those big bad angels make you take it in the ass?”

By now, Sansanvi was in a perfect froth of rage, almost sputtering as he shouted, “Slander! Infamy! Die, you vicious bitch! Cunt!” and finally managed to grab her with his clammy hands, hands as cold and strait as death, and began to squeeze.

Chilled to the core, she reached down and out for warmth, that fiery warmth and love that lies beneath the waking world she’d touched when she’d rescued Sal from the sociopath DeBauck, his captor, then reached again, deeper, deep within the Source of Love that was the Salmander’s natural home, and hers, and began to swell with power. “Sannie, Sannie, Sannie, what am I going to do with you?” With a sudden surge, she washed over him, enveloped him within her ocean, surprising him with the sudden reversal of their rôles, drowning him, subsuming his pathetic essence within her primal feminine power, devouring him, squeezing him, wringing him out like a dishrag, reducing him to his primitive size, no longer puffed up with self-important rage but wilted small in fear and terror, less than a grain of sand, of dust, until he was itsy-bitsy enough to spit out into one of her diamonds, still floating within easy reach, in which strict durance she left him, rattling around within a reticule which pierced him through and through, a fine mesh of covalent atomic bonds. Those bonds, as it turned out, were more powerful than even an angel’s strength, at least on an atomic scale. On this pinhead, at least, there was only room for one to dance.

With a sigh, she created a new ætheric body for herself, then flitted over to her mother’s nightclub, La Calaca, a name she now realized was self-referential, representing herself in her pre-Columbian heyday as the Goddess Mictecacihuatl, Queen of Mictláan, the secret world beneath and beyond the world of life.

Lilith was sitting in her usual place at the bar, surrounded by her fawning coterie, and seemed surprised to see her, but then pleased. “Daughter mine! I see your new aura of power and delight in it. Have you come to increase it? I have many willing donors ready for you, as you can see.”

Jackie smiled, glad to see her mother’s smiling face after her struggle with the murderous angel, although she supposed — since angels and demons were the same class of creature — Sansanvi was a demon now. “No, Mother. I’m still a one-man woman, but I wanted to give you a present.” She reached up and took one of her diamonds from her foxy pocket and handed it over to her mom.

Her brows went up, and then she looked at and into it more carefully and smiled with something like joy. “My darling girl! What an utterly charming and thoughtful gift!” she said, then reached up into her own foxy pocket and brought out a velvet bag. “Although your offering is very generous, a girl should never be without a good supply of ‘prophylactics.’ Please keep at least two or three in your… purse at all times. You never know when you might need one.” She handed Jackie the bag, which was astonishingly heavy, and simultaneously tucked the diamond away in her luscious décolletage.

Jackie looked down at it suspiciously. “Is this what I think it is, Mother?”

She arched one eyebrow, perfectly, of course. “I have no idea,” she said. “Do you think it’s a five pound wheel of aged Wisconsin Cheddar? If so, I’m afraid that you’ll be very much disappointed.” She shook her head sadly.

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Mother!” she said, aggrieved.

“What? I can’t give my own daughter a little housewarming gift? You have people depending on you, dear, especially your delightful little Salamander, who needs a proper fireplace and a cheery blaze to feel his best, not that dinky little thing you’re keeping him in now, and he needs to be near you, not farmed out to your boyfriend’s distant relatives. If you’ll just think carefully about how big he is, you’ll realize that around ten feet wide and three deep will give him a few inches to stretch out and be comfortable, so of course you’ll have to have a spacious home to match or the whole architectural statement will be grossly disproportionate, a poor advertisement for Frank’s talent.”

“But….”

“But me no buts, dear. My mind is quite made up. I can’t have my own daughter running around in rags and tatters.”

“But Frank….”

“My very dear,” she shook her head sadly. “You’ll find, I think, that there are very few masculine quirks of which I am not well aware. You’ll soon discover that… Frank… has very good news waiting for you, once you get home.”

“But how….”

“Daughter,” she said with a sultry languor worthy of Greta Garbo, “do you imagine that I am not numbered among those ‘owners of record’ you prattled on about. Over half those stones were mine by modern legal title, as well as moral right, so legal counsel for LLT Holdings, Ltd, just happened to drop an appreciative note in the mail, the day before yesterday, I think….” she paused, considering, then nodded slightly, “…thanking your intended for his services. There is a small token of gratitude enclosed as well, a tiny bit more than the five percent finder’s fee usual in these matters of trust, which require a delicate sense of discretion and judgement. Mustn’t bind the mouths, you know, of the kine that tread the corn.”

“But how am I supposed to explain….”

Her glance turned instantly fierce and proud. “You’re not supposed to explain anything, dear. These trifles are yours, your sole property and trust, needed for your personal safety, and you’re a free woman, not a slave. In addition, inside that bag is another bag, much smaller, and it contains only one stone, a green diamond. Within that stone lies the sleeping soul of your sister Jane, awaiting rebirth. However much I may fault her taste, I think Jane would rather be your child than mine.”

Jackie began to weep, her tears flowing freely. “But you said she was dead! How….”

Lilith’s temper flared. “Of course she’s dead! Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? A naked soul isn’t alive again until it’s reïncarnated in a new body, either physical or ætheric.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. There’s so much that I still don’t understand….” She was still crying, grateful and ashamed.

“Then spend some little time puzzling it out,” she said scornfully, “before wasting my time. Now get out.”

She turned back toward her admirers, who noticeably brightened, basking in her perilous regard.

Jackie turned away to flee toward home, still weeping, but snatched up the velvet bag as she left, holding it closely to her bosom — as though it were Jane indeed — as she flew.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Nineteen:
The Best-Laid Plans

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism
and most of thought believe in providence.
― Honoré De Balzac.

 

Jackie cradled the stone in her palm. She was sitting in her new living room in front of a blazing fire, although it was the middle of summer and the air-conditioning was on, maintaining the delicate balance between Sal’s comfort and Frank’s. The sun through the window spilled through it, casting a fragmented greenish net of light across her hand and arm, reflecting green stars onto the walls and ceiling, occasionally spearing her eye with a brilliant flash. Inside the stone, she could feel the soul of her sister Jane, something of her feistiness, her vulnerability, the caring heart she’d had to hide beneath belligerence and anger. But all these things were part of her, just as her own sometimes belligerence and anger were part of her, but not all. She could love perhaps more easily than she could hate, but both were necessary. Without her fury, and her mocking tongue, Sansanvi might not have been so very angry, might have been more careful, and kept his distance, in which eventuality he might have been able to best her and she’d be dead. Without her love, she wouldn’t have had the power to resist, much less to emerge victorious. Perhaps her mother could have snatched her soul away from dissolution as well, and she and Jane might have shared space in the pouch she now had open before her, and there’d be two green diamonds, and someone else would be looking at them.

But this was now, and she was here, and she literally didn’t know what to do. Her mother hadn’t exactly made her feel that she’d be welcome back to her club until she did, but she didn’t know where to begin. She already knew that her books didn’t say much of anything about Cain’s birth other than the bare fact of it, nor how her mother had managed it, much less a few million demons, or angels, as it turned out; the boundary seemed somewhat more flexible than she’d been given to understand in Catechism Class. Of course, she took those memories with a grain of salt, because she remembered going to an all-girls school in great detail, but knew that the school must have been coëducational, because she’d attended back when she was Jack.

It was an odd feeling, because she knew who she really was, but also realized that her memories were an odd re-crystalization of a fluid sort of quantum reality, a re-projection of the holographic whole of her existence upon a different multi-dimensional screen, her intertwined worldlines encompassing all that she could have been or might become, the stodgy professor ensconced in an ivory tower, the ravening rival to her mother, acting out on her behalf her mother’s rage against the injustice of a male-dominated world by taking it apart, piece by piece, until it shattered into bits and tatters, waiting for a more auspicious act of Creation, the smirking Jack — She had a sudden flash of parallel memory, in which she saw herself, as Jack, putting money in her mother’s g-string that first night, her fingers straying a bit lower than they should have, and realized that what may have prompted Lilith’s nocturnal visitations just might have been her own actions — She flushed with belated shame.

‘Hoist with your own petard, aren’t you, Jackie dear. Remember that the next time you feel morally superior to anyone.’ From her new perspective, she saw that she couldn’t exactly blame Lilith for her sometimes hostile attitude, since she herself had been treating Lilith at least as shabbily as Lilith treated some men. And then she thought of her true self, the simple Jackie, sail set toward an unknown destination, a part of all she’d been and seen, and of those she’d met along the way.

Sailing, she realized, implied a wind, some purpose to fill the sails, and the same impulse that had driven her mother out of an arranged marriage and into the free world drove her, or at least she realized that now. She’d been depending on Lilith, however ungratefully, to do everything for her, so that she kept going back to her side, asking — demanding — another handout whenever things went wrong. It was time, she thought, to steer something of her own course, and she realized that she did know someone who’d been around back then — although she didn’t know how welcome she’d be on his doorstep, having just done one of his fellow angels a rather nasty turn — ‘her angel,’ Semangelaf. He’d said that he lived in a Jesuit monastery near Coxsackie, and Coxsackie wasn’t all that large.

A few minutes on the Internet yielded the Abbey of Piccolomini, with an address and a telephone number.

She stared at it a while, and then punched in the number. A man answered, so she said, “Hello, is Father Ngelaf there, please? This is Jackie Renfrew. We met quite some time ago.”

“Just a minute, please; I’ll see if he’s in his room.”

There was a longish wait before a familiar voice came on the line. “Jackie, how good to hear from you. To what do I owe the honor of your call?”

“Well, actually, I have a couple of questions, but first I’d like to say that I captured your friend Sansanvi when he tried to kill me, so I wanted to ask if you had any hard feelings about that.”

“You say he tried to kill you?” he asked, but his tone seemed dubious.

“He did indeed, and had previously murdered one of my close kin, another succubus, but not a terribly effective one. She certainly wouldn’t fit the scenario you outlined to me of an unrepentant murderess and menace to society, because she was very young and inexperienced.”

“This is a very serious accusation, Jackie. Do you have any proof?” He was starting to sound like a damned bureaucrat, covering up his corporate ass with weasel words and orchestrated ‘surprise.’

Jackie was getting irritated. “Well, other than that I have a dead sister and his sorry ass in jail, I suppose I don’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“You … captured an archangel?”

Now, she was officially ticked off. “Look, if we’re going to play Twenty Questions here, just forget I asked. I’ve got better things to do than make idle chit-chat with an angel who doesn’t seem to know whether I’m lying to him or not. Is this the same Semangelaf I talked to in the bus station? If so, how’d he get so stupid between then and now?”

“But you have to release him.” He seemed stuck on the issue, like the people still argued about who really won Florida, as if corrupt politicians and partisan judges didn’t exist, or had no power, as if there were an infallible referee somewhere with the power to ensure for absolutely-positively-certain that the ‘good guys’ always won. Get over it. Bad things happen. Nobody argues about whether Kitty Genovese really died because she was murdered by a criminal and no one who heard her scream bothered to help her. Oh, oh! Do-over! Give me a break.

Jackie tried once more to explain. “No, I don’t, and in very fact I’m never going to let him go. He killed a friend of mine, then he tried to kill me, so I have a very personal interest in dissuading him from further attempts. Not to worry, though; eventually plate tectonics will bring him to a subduction zone and he’ll be released, not more than five hundred and eighty million years from now by my rough calculation — well, unless someone who doesn’t like him, like me, for only one example, and I will be looking out for him, moves him in the interval, but even then surely within twelve billion years or so from now, when the Earth slowly spirals into the Sun during its red giant phase — by which time one hopes that he’ll repent himself of his rash actions and be a good boy thenceforward. I like to take the long view; it seems cheerier, somehow.” She smiled benignly, even though he couldn’t see her expression.

“But you can’t just lock up an archangel….”

She rolled her eyes. “I beg to differ, because I did, in very fact, just lock up a putative ‘angel,’ although I’m not at all sure about his current position in the hierarchy. Call me crazy, but I think having his ass whipped by an unarmed girl might lower his standing in the playoffs, and it seems to me that — having chosen a life of crime — he’s a fallen angel at best, perhaps a has-been angel, and quite possibly a mere demon when one looks at the issue calmly.”

“But…. How ever did you manage it?”

Jackie was instantly suspicious, so said, “Well, I started out with eye of newt and toe of frog, so it’s definitely a New California Fusion recipe, but I found it in Sunset Magazine, which I just adore for their architecture and landscaping ideas, although the recipes are great as well. It may have been in the October issue, for Halloween, you understand, but I could be wrong.” The way he was acting, he might take umbrage at her little trick, in which case she might eventually be very glad that he didn’t know exactly how it worked, and she had no plans to tell him.

“Why are you lying to me?” He tried to inject a stern tone of reprimand into his words, but it was difficult to carry this off over the telephone, so he merely sounded constipated.

“Why ever not?” she said with considerable insolence, and feeling just a bit more like a grown-up. She could hardly believe how much in awe of him she’d been before this revelatory conversation. “We’re already agreed on the fact that you suck at lie detection — in particular that you have difficulty distinguishing between patent truth and ludicrously unlikely fiction — and are generally an idiot, so let’s just say that I’ve politely declined to answer an intrusive question that you had no business asking using humorous deflection. In other words, it’s none of your damned business, Mister Nosey-Parker. You have your choice here; you can choose to be my friend or you can choose to take up with sociopaths and murderers, just because they happen to part their hair on the same side you do, but you can’t be both.”

There was a long pause before he said, “Fair enough. Could you please tell me how he tried to kill you? Is there any possibility you misunderstood?”

“I don’t think so, having seen countless horror films as a young girl. The only cliché he omitted, as far as I can recall, was ‘Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch.’ In simple fact he grabbed me with his hands — I was blithely alone in my boudoir in a state of déshabillé at the time — and attempted to squeeze the life out of me, having prefaced his naughty actions with the succinctly witty bon mot, ‘Die, bitch!’ Oh, and he called me a ‘cunt’ as well. It didn’t sound like an admiring compliment, especially when preceded by the B-word.” She paused, then added, “It also disproved the old theory that cold hands indicate a warm heart, because his hands were as cold as ice, and his heart was definitely on the chilly side as well.”

There was a long pause before he answered, and then he only said, “So you say his captivity is ensured over geologic time?”

“Pretty sure. I gave him to my mother, which seemed fair, since he was killing her children, and she’d already engaged another angel to destroy him. She was tickled pink to get him alive and kicking, but I somehow doubt that she’ll misplace him in a paroxysm of girlish enthusiasm.”

“I imagine,” he said drily. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me who that angel might be….”

“You imagine correctly. As I said, it’s really none of your damned business, since you’ve never declared your real position in this long-standing conflict. From my own observation and belief, I think that I’m on the side of the angels, as it were, and if you’ll pardon my presumption. Given the recent behavior of someone I’d believed to be an angel, I begin to question the terminology itself, and suspect that its only real meaning is as a method of ‘keeping track’ of where the players are positioned on the field, so I strongly suspect that my mother’s not quite the demon you’ve made out. I know that in the Bible the terms Daimon and Angelos are used more-or-less interchangeably, although Hebrew tends to favor one word, Malakh, ‘Messenger,’ since the Jewish tradition isn’t quite so focused on Manichæan black and white or good and evil, so we can presume that any differentiation between the terms is probably very late, a pious invention, as it were, meant to further a particular viewpoint. I also suspect — especially given my recent experience — that as you yourself implied when you talked about our ‘dual natures,’ an ‘angel’ can ‘fall’ at any time, and that the choice isn’t historical only, but continuing, which implies that ‘fallen angels’ can — as the song says — pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.”

He laughed briefly, and with no particular good humor. “There speaks a scholar. It’s true, although very rare. Once one has committed one’s heart to evil, our Maker may ‘harden’ that heart to make it possible to do evil without utterly destroying one’s soul, just as slaughterhouse workers become inured to the suffering and cruel deaths of animals. Roughly the same thing occurs when one commits to living a virtuous life, so it becomes simultaneously easier to perform good works and more difficult to imagine doing otherwise. I apologize. Is there anything I can do to restore your trust in my word?”

“I’m perfectly willing to be persuaded, because you did Frank and me a wonderful service when I was feeling mighty low, and I’m grateful, but I’m not a pushover; I demand reciprocity and honesty.”

“I agree. It’s a reasonable demand, and I’m sorry that I doubted you, but what you described is so very rare that it seemed, at first, impossible, nor did I believe that you alone could have defeated him. I was wrong, and not for the first time in a very long life. As you spoke, I tried to locate Sansanvi in the world, and he seems to have gone missing, which lends considerable credence to your story. I’ve also taken another look at your aura, which turns out to be easily perceptible, even from here, almost as noticeable as that of Lilith. As the current idiom goes, Grrl, you been ‘workin’ out.’ I’m personally convinced, and the likelihood of the two isolated facts — your story, and Sansanvi disappearing — occurring simultaneously through pure coïncidence are even more unlikely than the story itself. Ergo, Sansanvi succumbed to his baser nature and did in fact kill your friend and others, and tried to kill you. It follows then that whatever you did was part of an act of self-defence, and so carries no blame, and may perhaps even have been compassionate, because it seems likely that when you had him in your power, you might well have destroyed him, as would have been your right in common law. In fact, you spared his life, thus preserving the possibility of his eventual repentance and reconciliation to society-at-large.”

Jackie thought about that for a while, and realized that it was true. Sansanvi was drowning; she could have persuaded him to drown in very truth. “You’re right, but whatever I did wasn’t a conscious decision. When he was helpless, my anger vanished, and I had no desire to harm him, only to prevent him from harming me or anyone else.”

“You were not only justified, but required to stop the ‘Rodef,’ the one who pursues for the purpose of murder or rape, by any means necessary. In halacha, one is seen as ‘saving’ the murderer from the grievous sin of murder, even at the cost of his own life, since a sane person would rather die than kill an innocent human being. Since it was evidently within your power to prevent the murder without killing the pursuer, your obligation was to do exactly what you did. Case closed. You done good, Jacquelyn Leigh Renfrew.”

She rolled her eyes, which of course he couldn’t see. “Well, that’s certainly a load off my mind.” She tried not to sound sarcastic.

“Sweetie?” Jackie’s voice was soft but it was difficult for Frank not to notice, because she was sitting — and not quietly enough for Frank’s entire comfort — in his lap at the time. He was trying to watch something on the television. She was far less than rapt. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do after graduation.”

“I thought you already knew, Jackie. You were going to apply for an assistant professorship somewhere, and work toward a full professorship and tenure. I’m flexible.” He shrugged. “Engineers can find work almost anywhere.”

“You’re such a doll, Frank, but that’s exactly what I’m thinking about. When I made those plans, I was ‘Jack’ Renfrew, but the job prospects for PhDs are in the pits these days, and especially so for female PhDs. And if I figure out how to make babies, which angel Sam says is entirely possible — although he’s not sure how it works — I’d want to take time out to be a mother to our child, or children, depending on what we decide, which would take me right off the tenure track, with no telling how long it might take to get back.”

“But couldn’t you just influence the tenure committee somehow and get back on?”

Jackie flew into a rage almost literally, because she levitated right off his lap.“Right! Maybe if I give them all blowjobs they’ll be even happier. You think….”

Frank grabbed an ankle and drew her down again, “Hush, Sweetheart, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like you ‘influenced’ the police to accept the fact that Sarah had been changed by an experimental medical procedure, so they let Hank go back to work instead of arresting him on suspicion of murder.”

“Oh.” She brought her emotions under quick control, because she’d never told Frank the exact nature of the pressure she’d brought to bear upon his superiors, which had been somewhat less ‘impersonal’ than she’d made out. She knew that she’d had to do it, to preserve both the Compact and Hank’s job, not to mention freedom, but it wasn’t anything she was especially proud of. ‘Moving right along, then….’ “The problem is, though, that it wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of that sort of power to jump in line in front of other women with the same problems, or even men, and as time goes on I’m becoming less enthused about the security of a tenured faculty position at all, because I’m feeling both more secure personally and more adventurous, but also because I’ve seen all the tedium endured by Doctor Long, who complains endlessly about faculty politics and backbiting. That whole sordid episode with DeBauck was at least partially inspired by DeBauck’s hatred of Doctor Long, you know, because he could easily have found another ‘patsy’ for the crime — he’d already got away with twelve murders by then — but he had to put the house there to spite Doctor Long, and you came to his attention through me, because Doctor Long was my advisor, so hurting you hurt Doctor Long indirectly. I was trying to find a replacement ‘family’ in academia, I think,” she smiled, “ but I have a family now, two of them, actually, although one’s a bit more ‘difficult’ than the other, so I’d like to reset my goals to encompass more of my desires.”

“Okay.” He seemed cautious, for which Jackie couldn’t really blame him. He was amazingly open-minded about her supernatural nature, and strange family, considering the fact that he was a ‘reality-based’ engineer, but his mind was definitely susceptible to boggling. “So, what do you want to do?”

“I want… to design clothes.” She said the words a little like Milla Jovovich as Jean d’Arc in The Messenger had said ‘I have a message from God,’ a little hesitant, but certain none-the-less.

Frank was astonished. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. You’ve seen how many fashion magazines I subscribe to, because I absolutely love the human creativity and joy embodied in them, or at least the ones I like.” She thought about that for a second, then pursed her lips in a slight frown. “It’s kind of circular.”

“Well, yeah, but fashion?” He spoke the last word as others might say the word ‘slug.’

“I want to create,” she let her passion grow, “not read and talk about the things created by others, long ago. I don’t want to molder away in some academic ivory tower. I want to be out on the street, on the runway, I want people to see what I can do, what I can do for them. This is my power, Frank, can’t you see? I have a unique gift. I can see how people fit together, and I can also see how people’s clothes can be a part of them, enhance their individual beauty, in a way few others can do with as much certainty and skill.”

“But how can you throw away years of study….”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Because I’m not ‘throwing it away,’ Frank. Fashion is the new mythology! People want to wear shoes by Christian Louboutin because of the legend, the psychic aura that his shoes embody, just like the Marines are still singing about defeating the pirates of Tripoli. Myths are stronger than reality, because they’re rooted deeper in our brains than mere utility. Women will want to wear my clothes because I can truly connect them with their inner Guenevere, or subconscious Angelina Jolie. Whatever they want to be, I’ll know it, and know exactly how to bring out the inner strength and beauty they most desperately yearn to see in themselves.”

“But you still intend to finish your Doctorate, right?” He still sounded dubious.

“Of course, Frank. I’m not quite a fool.” She frowned slightly. “ Having an academic background in something very much like magic is something I can use to create my own legend, and the aura of magic will surround my collections, without ever going beyond the power of the human mind to create its own reality.”

“Oh, well then. That makes sense.” He seemed absurdly pleased with himself for some reason. “The degree is just a ticket to get you in the door. What counts is what you’ve really done, and done lately, for most real jobs.” He gave her a little cuddle. “Whatever makes you happy, I’m happy with, Sweetheart.” He smiled and went straight back to watching some weird show that featured clips of the New York Giants doing nothing in particular with various other teams as a pre-Superbowl retrospective, whatever the hell that was.

Jackie was standing outside the door of La Calaca, wondering whether she ought to go in. In the daylight, the genteel decay of the building was clearly visible, but there was also something about it that reminded her of Babylonian Ziggurats, or Mayan Temples, even though there were only two levels, perhaps because the walls seemed to lean inward slightly, and because the smaller top level was set back from the main mass of the building, leaving a narrow area — not a balcony, because there was no railing — around what looked almost like an altar. The broken windows on the top floor didn’t make it look so much derelict as weathered, open to the elements, which pervaded it. As she was watching, a bird flew in through the window; there’d been a sprig of grass, or something, in its beak, as if it were building a nest, and the normal sounds of the city — cars honking, the rush of wheels on pavement, engines reving, even sirens in the distance — were absent, as if this place were somehow displaced from where it seemed to be, surrounded by buildings, an entire city, and were standing free, alone on a vast plaza.

She took the bird for an omen, and walked in.

Her mother wasn’t there. When she asked the bartender where she was, he shrugged, as if it were none of his business, which she supposed it wasn’t.

Frustrated, she turned away, and wandered through the club, which seemed much larger on the inside than it seemed to be from the street. There were several large rooms in addition to the entry, where there were benches and a reception desk, the bar proper, which the main door from the entry opened into, and one on either side, separated from it only partially by wide pocket doors, which were open. On one side was what appeared to be a restaurant and banquet hall, with many tables and many chairs, empty, but available, presumably for the evening meal or for catered events. She didn’t remember noticing the restaurant on her first visit, but then she hadn’t been interested in much beyond a beer or two at the time. Maybe they closed the doors to keep down the noise. The other side featured the dance floor, which had another large hall opening off from it, the stage floor, both of which had dozens of small cocktail tables surrounding the main area, each with two or three chairs. On either side of the stage there were doors which opened, she knew from her first visit, on hallways lined with doors, at the end of which were respectively the men’s and women’s restrooms.

The women’s room was down the hallway to the left, so she idly wandered down and entered. It was much larger than the men’s room that she vaguely remembered from her first visit, and divided into two main rooms, the first, separated from the door by an anteroom, was devoted to three walls of mirrors, with a series of makeup tables and cushioned stools spaced along the perimeter, each with enough room between them that you could stand away from the table and see yourself in a full-length mirror. In a secluded alcove off this room were several chaises longues, and more mirrors on the walls, but the lighting was dim, so the mirrors didn’t reveal quite so much. On the other side of the main room was the entrance to the facilities, where there were a number of pretty washstands, and two rows of stalls on the other side, with at least twice as many stalls as she remembered from the men’s room, and at least ten times the total space available.

In this suite of rooms, there was nothing that catered to men, no urinals, no wide-screen television available to catch up on the latest scores, and everything was luxurious, designed to make one feel almost at home, as if everything one could possibly need was ready to hand, even a shower room at the end of each row of stalls, large white towels available on shelves beside each door, shampoo and soaps in baskets, lotions lined up in tiny bottles, each individually packaged, and benches near the door, where one could imagine freshening up after a long night of celebration, perhaps resting on one of the chaises, touching up one’s makeup and then sallying forth as beautiful as nature and artifice might make one.

Having no metabolism, and the ability to change her appearance in an instant, the various amenities were largely superfluous for her, of course, but the care taken here for the comfort of women in general made her feel honored, dispassionately cherished in a way she’d never experienced before.

It was a side of her mother that she hadn’t noticed, perhaps because it was purely dedicated to a purpose Jackie had as little real use for as did her mother, but which mortal women did require, for which her mother had generously — make that lavishly — provided.

Walking back toward the entry door, she saw around her none of the calculation she thought of when she imagined Lilith, no ‘What’s in it for me?’ All she saw, in fact, was… kindness, and compassion. ‘Even a child is known by his doings,’ she thought, ‘whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.’

When she walked out into the main bar, Lilith was still ‘out,’ so she sat down on a barstool to wait.

The bartender was a gorgeous hunk who could have made a good living posing for the covers of women’s romance novels. He had a nice square jaw, broad shoulders, and features so perfectly symmetrical that he could have been his own image in a mirror. He poured her a glass of lemonade with a powerful grace that somehow reminded her of a nicer Tom Cruise, for which he refused payment, explaining — in a Boston accent thick enough to spread on toast — that Lilith had told him that she had a gratis bar tab.

Smiling, she laid down a tip, the price of the drink plus a little extra. “I understand, so this is just for you. What’s your name?”

“Calvin, Ma’am.”

“Thank you, Calvin. Call me Jackie. ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel like my own grandmother.”

“Alright, Jackie. It’s a professional courtesy, ya know, nothin’ to do with age. If a ten-year-old girl walked in, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, but you’ll have to leave until you’re twenty-one years old in this state. Have a nice day.’ ”

Jackie laughed. “Really?”

He laughed too. “No, not really. If she was that young, I’d probably say ‘Miss,’ and I’d have to find someone to take care of her until we found a responsible relative. It doesn’t happen very often, but the neighborhood has quite a few ‘latch-key’ kids within a few blocks off the main drag, and sometimes they get scared. We usually have someone around who can take care of them, either one of the wait staff or someone from the kitchen or the back office. Sometimes, what they really want is a sandwich or something, so we try to keep a few bag lunches packed and on hand, some juice maybe, or milk, and some kind of fruit, plus a sandwich. Nobody goes away hungry.”

“So they’re not frightened of a place with skeletons on the walls?”

“Las calaveras? Of course not. Why would they be? La Calaca welcomes everyone, and everyone is happy in her land. El Día de los Muertos is a very big holiday, at least in this part of town, and we pass out plenty of candy skulls and pan de los muertos for the days before and after.” He grinned and added, “One big advantage of offering food to the dead is that they only eat the spiritual part of it, so living people can safely eat whatever they leave behind, and our ‘dead bread’ is very popular, because we bake a little calaverita inside, a silver dollar, so the dear departed can buy themselves a drink in the afterlife, and the living can spend whatever’s left. We hire some local teenagers to run a booth out in the parking lot, so the kids aren’t tempted to run in and get us in trouble about our licensing.”

“A silver dollar? Doesn’t that get expensive?”

“Not that much, actually. We run a special for the month afterward, dinner for two in the restaurant, plus one bottle of the house wine, for one silver dollar. We call it our 1850 celebration, and hand out prizes for the couple with the best 1850’s costume. It helps build good will in the neighborhood, and we usually wind up taking in more silver dollars than we pass out during the run-up to Thanksgiving and Christmas. While we don’t exactly make money off of it, when you count in the good will engendered in the neighborhood community, it’s a minor expense. This place is wicked profitable. Your… mom, is it? She’s wicked smart; everything she touches just turns to gold.”

“Yeah, she’s that,” Jackie said, feeling oddly proud.

“You look a lot like her. I noticed that the first night you were in here.”

“Yeah, well. She tries to keep it quiet, I think. You know how women are about their ages.”

“Okay. Mum’s the word, then.” He laughed at his own joke.

Jackie was tickled too, but managed to stop herself from laughing before she spit lemonade across the bar. “Exactly,” she managed to say, after swallowing her bit of drink to wherever it went. She hadn’t quite figured out how she could drink, and even eat, without any of the usual consequences.

One of the men sitting at the other end of bar raised his empty glass in mute supplication, and Calvin, who obviously had eyes in the back of his head, reached up for a new glass and poured a perfect beer, with just the right head, perfectly rising slightly above the rim without a single drip to mar the appearance of the glass before he turned around and walked down the bar to hand the man his beer.

He stayed to talk a while, and in the interim, one of the men sitting at the table behind her, seizing his opportunity, walked up behind her and said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

She turned around to face him, and was about to say, ‘No, thank you,’ when she caught a glimpse of something very sad behind his eyes. “Of course,” she said. “My name’s Jackie. What’s yours?”

“Tom. Tom Ackroyd. I don’t usually walk up to strangers, but you looked different than most women, for some reason.”

“I like to think so, Tom.” She smiled and laid one hand on his arm, which was all it took.

“No, really, it was almost as if I knew you.”

“We may have met….” She stared at him pointedly. “Tom Ackroyd… your wife passed away recently, didn’t she? I was so sorry to hear of your loss.” She took his big hand in both of her smaller ones.

His face worked for a while as he tried to control himself, but then a single tear trickled down from his right eye. He turned his head away, to hide himself from her, then mumbled, “Yes.”

“She loved you very much, you know.”

“Betty? Did you know her?”

“Not very well, Tom, but women talk…. You know how it is, don’t you, Tom? How women talk? It must have been very hard on you, and on your… daughter…. Ellen, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.” He was enthralled.

“Ellen is so very young. She needs both a father and a mother now, doesn’t she, Tom?”

“Yes, she does, but….”

She laid her finger on his lips, hushing him. “She needs a mother and a father both, Tom, and you have to make that happen, because you can’t raise her on your own. You realize that now, don’t you?”

“Yes, you’re right. I was just thinking that. I can’t possibly raise her by myself, but….”

Jackie stopped him with another touch of her hand to his lips. “But you can’t do what you planned to do, Tom, because Betty still loves you both, and she wants you both to be happy. You know that, don’t you, Tom? You can feel it.”

“She wants us to be happy,” he said, his lips twitching slightly, into a sad smile.

“And Betty wants to see her daughter grow up, and become a woman, because Ellen’s going to meet a wonderful man, and he’ll be the love of her life, just as you were for Betty, and Betty was for you. You can see that now, can’t you, Tom? You can see your beautiful daughter on your arm, and she’s dressed in a beautiful white gown as you walk down the aisle with her, toward the fine young man she’s chosen. Your heart swells with pride, Tom, and is full of love as you realize that your child, yours and Betty’s, is about to embark on a new life, and that soon there’ll be children, and then grandchildren, and on and on, an everlasting memorial to your love for Betty, and of Betty’s love for you. You want that, don’t you, Tom?”

He turned to face her. He was weeping openly now, his face desperate and contorted by the grief he’d tried to hide. “I do want it, Jackie, I can see it now.”

“Good, Tom.” She looked deep into his eyes. “I want to see it too. And there’s a woman in your office, a woman you’ve noticed, I think her name is Ruth. She’s a widow, isn’t she, Tom? She’s someone you could talk to and she’d understand everything, wouldn’t she?”

He seemed surprised. “Yes…. Yes, of course she would….”

“She’s noticed you too, Tom, and wanted to say something, but was afraid to intrude, afraid it was too soon, because she understands how fragile your emotions were after your great loss, because she experienced the same thing. In fact, you probably feel like you should approach her, and offer your sympathy, because only now can you fully understand how deeply her own loss affected her, and how strong and brave she must be to hold her head up high and soldier on.”

“She’s shown a lot of courage, that’s true.” He nodded.

“But you could help her, couldn’t you, Tom? Because you’re a man, still in the prime of life, and she’s a woman you could easily love, because you already admire her, and she’d love Ellen, because she never had children of her own, so it would be a second chance at happiness for you both, and for Ellen too, because Ellen is just at that age when she needs a mother, another woman she can talk to, and you know how women like to talk, don’t you, Tom? It would be such a relief if Ruth could help you to raise Ellen to be the wonderful woman she’s destined to become. Don’t you agree, Tom?”

“Yes, I do. I was just a little crazy for a while, that’s all. Once I thought about it, I realized how much I had to live for, and how many people depended on me still.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, Tom. Why don’t you give Ruth a call right now? She’ll be very glad to hear from you, I think. She’s been waiting for you to make the first move. You can use my phone, Tom. Her number is on speed-dial as number five. But before you do, you want to give me the gun you have in your waistband, because you don’t want to worry Ruth during your first real meeting.”

He blinked, and looked down. “Of course. Would you mind? I’d be very grateful.”

He handed her a snub-nose automatic, which she slipped into her purse so deftly that she might have practiced it. “Not at all, Tom. She’s a lucky woman.” she reached down towards his thigh. “In fact, you’re a little excited by the thought of seeing her, aren’t you?”

He blushed. “Yes, I am a little.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, Tom. That’s the one compliment a man can offer a woman that she knows can’t possibly be insincere.”

“It’s a little awkward, though. Everyone will see.”

She handed him her phone. She’d already dialed the number. “It’ll be fine, Tom. You’ll see. You’re a virile man, and you’re looking forward to seeing her. It’s perfectly natural.”

He held the phone up to his ear, listening….

As she watched Tom leave the bar, she said, “Hello, Mother.”

Her mother’s voice was right behind her ear, whispering, “That was masterfully done, Daughter. I’m proud of you.”

“Well, it saved a frightful mess, and possibly a visit from the police.” She turned, and handed her mother the gun. “Could you take care of this for me, please? I don’t want to carry it out. It has an unpleasant feel about it.”

Lilith took it, and beckoned Calvin with a small movement of her forefinger. He noticed and was standing before them within the second. “Would you please dispose of this, Calvin? The gentleman won’t be needing it, as it turns out.”

“Of course, Ma’am. Consider it done.” It vanished into his pocket.

“Thank you, dear. Please set down a two hundred dollar tip for yourself as well. Take it out of petty cash.”

“Thank you, Ma’am, but it’s no trouble.”

She smiled. “Neither is it for me, dear, and friendship is rarely its own reward in these venal times. There are always bills to pay, and pleasures to be indulged in.”

“As you wish, Ma’am.”

She dismissed him with another motion, then sighed. “It’s such a shame to see a great talent like yours go to waste, Jackie, dear. Why didn’t you feed from him? He was aroused almost to the point of pain. It would have been a kindness, really….”

“Mother, who can truly say that anything is ever wasted until it’s gone? I didn’t arouse him just to tease him, but to put him back in touch with his own lust for life, because living had lost its appeal.” She paused, considering what to say. “I suspect we’re on the same side, Mother, in the end, and certainly draw from the same well. After all, your own power, far greater than my own, created me, just as I am. Who’s to say what end was ultimately served? Did you ever hear the story of Sir Tristram and Lady Iseult? Or perhaps Vis and Rāmin would make the same point.”

“Yes, to both,” she said suspiciously.

“Well, then, you understand. Sometimes we can’t see the end of the story until it’s written. Even tangled tales have a way of working out, however little we know of where we’re going with it.” She quite deliberately changed the subject and her usual attitude of suspicion toward Lilith, her… benefactor, all in all, to whom she owed her respect, at least, and probably some level of fealty. “Now, look at all these lovely men; what say we sit and chat a bit, and if their days are sweetened by our presence, what’s the harm?” She smiled with impish good humor.

“Jackie emerged from the shade of the bar into bright sunshine, which made a nice metaphor, with a new set of keys on her ring, and a new appreciation of her mother’s shrewd business sense. Lilith had driven a hard bargain, and now owned a third interest in her fledgeling business, but would front the large storefronts on one side of the valet parking entry drive, the entirety of the empty warehouse behind it for her atelier, as well as twenty reserved parking spaces in the parking structure on the other side of the entry, with a commitment to share a portion of the valet costs, depending on what proportion of spaces were used by her staff, her future customers, and her. As she entered her car and then drove out onto the street, she had a new appreciation for the whole area, because her mother owned it, lock, stock, and barrel, and kept it vacant to minimize noise and parking complaints.”

“We’ll see about that, she thought.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The closer it got to the the New York Spring/Summer Fashion Week, the crazier it became. She had one secret shortcut that made a world of difference on the front end, because she could imagine herself into her creations using a dozen imaginary models in the blink of an eye, which made the initial photography for her collection very quick indeed. It still took time to convert those photographs into patterns, then woven and/or dyed materials and sewn fabric though, and to find real models for the showings and pre-screenings, and she was running out of time, which was why she was sitting on a barstool talking to her mother just then. “Mary would be of great help to me, Mother, if you could contact her on my behalf, or tell me how she can be contacted.”

“And why exactly should I do that, Daughter? So you can convert her to your twisted way of thinking?” Lilith, as always, danced on the edge of paranoid hostility.

Of course, Lilith really did have enemies, as Jackie well knew, so she cut her mother some slack. “Not at all, Mother, I’d like to give her career a boost by introducing her to the pleasures of having thousands of men lusting after her at once. As a Supermodel — and I have every expectation that she will be, because she has a natural grace that’s simply wonderful to see. She’ll be able to fascinate legions of virile young men — not, of course, that she could possibly compete with you — and with her extraordinary martial arts skills may be able to parlay her career into film, which of course would increase the number and enthusiasm of her fans. I noticed her potential right away, when I first saw her at the Convention.”

Lilith’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do you intend to set her up as a rival to my power?”

Jackie couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. “Of course not, Mother, as I said. In fact, I’d be honored if you found time to model some of my creations. I’ve seen you dance, and you have a power and presence on the stage that I could only dream about. I hesitated to ask, but if you’d consent, I’d be glad to feature you as our chief model and spokeswoman. It could only help with our first showings.”

She smiled at the compliment. “I’ll think about it, Daughter dear. It’s been quite a while since I was a public figure — other than in my local area of influence here — but upstate New York is hardly the center of civilization these days, even though my needs are very modest. Perhaps it’s time I ventured farther afield….”

“I’d be very grateful. In fact, if we could recruit any of the better-behaved and graceful among my sisters, it would be a great help. I plan on presenting forty-two runs and exits, so having a corps de ballet of sorts would minimize changes and ensure an impressive finale.”

“Do you have any particular preferences?”

“I’d like women who are very accomplished at shapeshifting and holding a form despite very strong emotions and desires from the crowds around them. Other than that, no, as long as they can project the proper attitudes and movements of a professional model and take direction. I’ll be paying high scale and furnishing references, if any among my sisters wish to pursue a career in the field.”

Lilith considered for only a moment before she said, “There are quite a few who come readily to mind and two who may be able to immediately help you to establish yourself as well, since two of your sisters already work in the industry, and have achieved a certain amount of fame.”

Jackie scowled and almost whined, “Mother, I’d hate to take advantage of anyone, and I haven’t budgeted for top model rates, so I don’t want any arms twisted on my behalf.”

“Nonsense, dear. That’s what mothers are for.” She smiled with that aura of smug parental superiority that a million-odd years of experience tends to enhance.

Jackie rolled her eyes again — this time in resignation — and said, “Thank you, Mother, I’ll just trot over now and see how the new realizations are coming along.” What she really wanted to do, of course, was to remove herself from her mother’s presence, since she tended toward overbearing at those many times she wasn’t being charming.

“What an excellent idea! I’ll come with you and see how you’re getting along.” In the blink of an eye, she’d suppressed the attention of everyone in the room and changed her outfit into an Chère Adeline creation from last year’s collection, a delicately simple white belted linen shift inspired by fin du XIXe siècle French fashions, which were in turn inspired by the classical Greek peplos for women. On her, of course, it looked absolutely fabulous.

It was just a short walk out the front door of La Calaca and then out to the sidewalk and a few steps down to the entry to the storefront boutique and fitting rooms. The atelier was in the warehouse behind the row of storefronts and had its own parking lot, employee entrance, and loading dock for deliveries, but Jackie had budgeted for a door cut through the brick wall at the rear of the fitting and display salon to connect directly to the interior of her atelier. This section of town being what it was, she’d hired separate guard coverage to protect her employees — women from the neighborhood, for the most part — from predatory attacks during their time in the immediate area, and their vehicles, if any, while they were inside. She’d made arrangements for a food truck to stop by during the lunch break, so the increased level of amenities made the area more attractive as well, so she had people walking over from the few businesses in the area for a quick lunch.

It had been surprisingly expensive, because she needed an engineering report, an architect’s plan, permits, conditional use licenses, and the new door had to be supported with iron framing for seismic safety, but it meant that she could move stock directly into the shop without worrying about the weather. It also made tours more impressive, because you could walk through the reception area, back into what she was calling the lounge, with fitting rooms and a staging area toward the back for private showings, and then continue down a short hallway to a massive iron double door, which opened in turn into another reception area in the remodeled warehouse building, adjoined by two executive offices, the drafting room, and another set of double doors that led to where the women worked, bathed in bright light from skylights high above the floor, aided by modern halogen lighting that guaranteed true ‘daylight’ color appearance, no matter what the sky looked like.

The two women walked past a large CAM laser cutting table with large racks of shelving behind it, now piled high with bolts of fabric, most of it custom-dyed and printed, although there were quite a few off-the-shelf fabrics as well, including raw muslin, jute, colored silks, woolen materials, and fiber batting. Off to the side, closed cabinets held findings, notions, sewing and embroidery thread, as well as reels of ribbon, elastics, and various reïnforcing materials.

Just beyond, the sewing and tailoring workspaces were mostly in use, with commercial sewing machines, sergers, blindstichers, and one section devoted to hand-fitting and tailoring, with an assortment of dressmaker’s dummies, ironing boards, free-standing mirrors, and smaller cutting tables ready for use.

As they approached, Lilith said, “So soon?”

Jackie stopped, still far enough removed from the work-floor to ensure privacy, and said, “I’ve already tested my designs as manifested ætheric constructs, so I took off patterns and am having a few samples of each run off in three of the basic sizes.”

“Surely not prêt-à-porter!”

Jackie was scandalized. “Of course not, Mother, but neither entirely bespoke. One needs outfits to model, or the final customer has nothing from which to request alterations and changes, nor does one have anything that might be called a collection. Potential owners of my designs will typically need to have something available to touch and feel, and to see in motion on a model, before their imaginations can take it from there, or everyone would be a fashion designer and we could skip the runway showings entirely. I have to have enough outfits to stage impressive runway shows as well as fashion ‘trunk shows’ and other semi-private showings. On the other hand, I do expect eventually to create prêt-à-porter collections inspired by some of my unique designs, because that’s where the real money is. The list of haute couture houses changes almost every year, and there are essentially none whose prêt-à-porter collections don’t help to fund their high-end lines, because the super-rich are becoming fewer every year, and the not-so-rich are being squeezed from above and below as more of the necessities of daily life are falling into fewer and fewer hands.”

“Yet this is the way of the world, is it not?” Having been a Queen, Lilith didn’t seem existentially bothered by social inequality, even dire poverty.

Jackie wasn’t quite so sanguine, having never been numbered among the ‘upper classes,’ although she did note that her mother seemed to feel the responsibility of noblesse oblige, so wasn’t really an appropriate target for her egalitarian ire. “True, the natural tendency of great wealth is to accumulate more wealth, because life is very loosely a zero-sum game and people are greedy, but a healthy ecosystem demands a nourishing environment, fat mice, and fat deer, so that the fat cats, and even lions, can survive, so it’s important to kill a few lions from time to time.”

Lilith looked at her with deep suspicion. “And perhaps it’s time for the lions to take charge again. Allowing the rabble free rein rarely leads to good results. This was my country before the American Indians came along. Perhaps I should take it back. Unlike many of the later inhabitants, I neither signed treaties nor ceded sovereignty. By natural right and force of arms, these continents are my demesne, to do with as I please.”

“Mother, I neither quarrel with your claim nor deny your right. It seems like it might be troublesome to enforce, however, and as you said, you’re a lover, not a fighter. Looking at the issue from another angle, though, it seems to me that it’s not the government itself at the root of the problem, but a series of petty merchants and traders who’ve arrogated to themselves self-styled ‘rights’ in respect to the diminishment of your own sovereignty, as if they owed no fealty to their overlord nor respect and obligation to your true subjects in their historic rights.”

That intrigued her. “How so?”

“True nobility always implied a duty toward one’s feudal charges as well as to one’s feudal lords. The ancient sovereigns who were ordained by Divine Right were required to be just, and charged to impose a Divine Order upon the world. Part of that Divine Prerogative was the right to impose taxes on particular classes, but especially the merchant and other classes of non-workers, because they most depend upon a stable state to safeguard their property and livelihoods. The soulless officials and factotums possible under the rule of ‘The People’ or ‘The Revolution’ — much less avaricious Mercantilism — are capable of any tyranny, any excess, because they know neither limits nor shame. The King of France had internal limits as well as external ones, since he had at least to appear to be regal lest he call his House into question, and any subject had the right to directly petition the King for redress in the name of his Divine obligations. Robespierre, on the other hand, was free to impose the Reign of Terror because he had no limitations at all, except those imposed by his own apparatus of State oppression, which led directly to his own death on the guillotine a year after he started down that path.”

Lilith sniffed with exaggerated contempt. “I remember him; a nasty little man.” She smiled. “He was very surprised to find an unpleasant afterlife waiting for him on the other side of the scaffold.”

That surprised her. It was all very well to have a mother who was a Goddess at one time or another, but an entirely different kettle of fish to brush up against the theology and doctrines of her youth. It raised the figurative hair on the back of her figurative neck. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Mother, is Hell a real place? You’ve talked about it before, but your position as the Queen and Goddess of the Aztec and Mayan Underworld, Mictláan, seems slightly contradictory.”

“Not at all, Dear. We all of us make our own reality. You know of Jumbe Mungu and his unfortunate plight; well, it’s a species of solipsism. What we believe creates what we believe in, while what we disbelieve fades over time. The Aztecs believed in a happy afterlife for everyone, so that’s what they got, with Gods and Goddesses to match. Part of my own power is the strength of my believers, although my modern-day worship has been secularised to a considerable extent, so I live a partly-secular existence these days, but I’ve been thousands of Goddesses over the years, some more powerful than others, and will undoubtedly become thousands more, because the core of my power is human love and feminine sexuality, and that seems unlikely to ever go completely out of style. Robespierre believed in a literal Heaven and Hell, for all his ‘Enlightenment’ pretensions, and people who believe in Hell generally go there, with all that implies.”

Jackie was so startled by this casual comment that she asked, “But why would anyone who truly believes in literal damnation commit sins worthy of being sent there?”

She laughed. “Because believing in such things is inherently unkind, even cruel. It’s a sort of Catch-22, as Joseph Heller once said about another impossible conundrum. The darkness at the heart of the Heaven/Hell dichotomy is the pleasure one derives from consigning people one doesn’t really care for — and whom one fondly believes to be one’s moral ‘inferiors’ — to torture and damnation. Heaven, as usually conceived, is thus the embodiment of Pride, Avarice, Gluttony, and Sloth, so anyone who wants or expects to go there must surely be guilty of at least three or four mortal sins, and then add in the murderous rage inherent in wishing people into Hell, which introduces Anger, quite possibly Envy, perhaps even a kinky sort of sadistic Lust, into the noisome morass which comprises the Heaven/Hell Weltanshauung and you have the Seven Deadly Sins in a nutshell. To a Believer, Hell’s the only possible destination, once things have been carefully explained. Things become much clearer after death, so by and large the recently departed sort themselves out into appropriate categories without much fuss, no matter what their expectations had been in life…. And then again, quite a few very decent people choose Hell for altruistic reasons. Jesus, we note, made sure to head straight to Hell, since Hell is where all the real work lies waiting.”

“But the Harrowing of Hell was a one-time thing, wasn’t it?”

“Really? Where’s the justice in that? What does one say to the latecomers? ‘Sorry, you just missed him. Tough luck?’ In fact, why not let’s eliminate poverty and despair throughout the world forever by picking out one guy lying in a gutter somewhere and giving him five bucks for a hot meal and a nickel for one of Lucy van Pelt’s psychiatric sessions?” She made a sour face. “Magical thinking is everywhere these days, isn’t it? Saves caring about real people and real lives.”

Jackie blinked. “And the Aztecs?”

She smiled benignly. “They, and their Mayan ancestors, although described as ‘bloodthirsty and cruel’ by the same vicious Spaniards who tortured, slaughtered, and enslaved them, had a much more humane view of the afterlife than did the Spanish. In the Aztec/Mayan worldview, everyone was equal, and shared the same fate, which wasn’t at all unpleasant, as long as people remembered them and offered appropriate sacrifices. Since the sacrifices are still going on, everyone is still happy in Mictláan, and I am still Queen and Goddess of that particular Afterlife.”

“But….”

“But what?” Lilith looked blandly curious.

Jackie thought about all the ways this conversation could possibly go and instantly decided to change the subject. “Oh, I was just thinking about my collection. I think the time is right for a return to at least some ‘maxi’ lengths in dresses, gowns, and outerwear, because it’s distinctively feminine but without the ‘goods on display’ appearance so evident in the recent past….” Then she added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with flaunting one’s assets on occasion, of course.”

Lilith arched a brow. “Indeed not, Daughter, but there’s a time and place for everything. I do agree that long and sleek will be ‘in’ this year.” She started walking towards where the women were working. “Now let’s see your collection.”

After showing Lilith the outfits she had ready, Jackie started to introduce her workers, but quickly found that not only did every woman there know ‘La Patrona’ by sight, but that her mother knew each and every one of them by name, knew enough about them to ask after their children and husbands or boyfriends, and, when presented with any pause or hesitation in their voices, quickly wormed out of them exactly what sort of problem they were facing, whether a rent payment, family illness, or troubles with the law, and solved it, either by telling them quietly to contact her firm of lawyers, writing a check, or giving them a number to call, telling them to say that Madame Lilith had asked the person on the other end of the line to take care of it. It was an astonishing performance, and Jackie belatedly realized that her little lecture on the meaning of ‘nobility’ had been wasted on Lilith, because she embodied true noblesse — make that regal obligation — and for the first time imagined that life as the subject of such a Sovereign as her mother had been — and in some ways still was — would very likely have been very much better than most of the alternatives. Suddenly, she felt deeply ashamed of every uncharitable thought she’d ever harbored about her. “Thank you for helping them,” she said.

Lilith seemed surprised. “What? You’re giving them a paycheck, aren’t you? We all do what we can using the tools with which we’re most familiar. These are modern times, and perhaps your ideas are simply another method of achieving the same ends. No matter what either of us can do personally, the world is larger than both of us put together.”

“I see the truth of that now, Mother, but had thought at first that only I knew what ought to be done.” She hesitated, fully-conscious of the bitter irony involved, and then added, “I apologize.”

She offered a brief bright smile. “You’re still young; that’s excuse enough, but you’re still learning, something many give up on shortly after memorizing their alphabet and multiplication tables. But I’m learning from you as well, as much as it pains me to say it. It had simply never occurred to me that keeping all these buildings and shops vacant for my convenience was contributing to the overall poverty I tried to alleviate on an individual basis.”

“Thank you for noticing, Mother. That’s one of the reasons I leased one of the empty storefronts to a fabric, sewing notions, and supplies shop. It allows me to concentrate on my designs while the shop owner concentrates on keeping track of what I need and use. Plus, the shop is a recruitment aid, because the neighborhood women who now shop there are often quite skilled, so it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. One of the fringe benefits I offer to my employees is the freedom to use their sewing machines and the other facilities here after hours for their own projects, which generates extra household income for them in manners limited only by their own imaginations, and generates extra revenue for the fabric shop as well, since the women are able to buy their supplies locally. That’s something I learned from you, Mother, seeing your own interactions with your employees, like Calvin, for example. He’s fantastically loyal, but you offer him loyalty as well, and kindness, and more than that the chance to be part of an enterprise that pays attention to the people around them, a job that he can take personal pride in performing, as part of a ‘band of sworn brothers,’ so to speak, which is rare in these days of management by the fluctuations of the bottom line.”

“It’s all a matter of perspective, Daughter. I do pay attention to the ‘bottom line,’ as you say, since I have a responsibility to my retainers to run a profitable business in whose success they can share, but I measure my personal success over generations rather than the end of the next quarter, so have the advantage of taking the very long view.”

“How do you handle their knowledge of you over many decades, though? Don’t they start noticing that you’re not getting any older at some point?”

“I usually just ‘retire,’ and have a shape-shifted ‘younger cousin’ come in to take over, or sometimes I just bequeath the business to the employees, or whatever subset of them seem to have the inclination and ability to operate the place for the longer haul.”

Jackie was just getting ready to ask another question when her mother suddenly looked up toward the skylights and froze the women where they worked and pointed her finger toward the nearest opening, saying, “Zalambur! Get down here this instant!”

There was a scream from on high as what can only be described as a particularly loathsome demon came drifting down from the ceiling, writhing and twisting in fury, but evidently helpless to resist.

When he lay before them, still struggling, she said, “Be still, pathetic worm! What are you doing here?”

His struggles turned to grovelling and he whined like a dog that’s just been kicked. “Forgive me, Kali! Great Queen of Zemargad! Rider on the Storm! Winged Messenger of Death! I didn’t know that this was your domain!”

“Liar! The Earth itself is my domain, and all that lies beneath and above, all within the crystalline Lunar Sphere itself!” She lashed his back with fire and he screamed.

“Mercy! O Great Goddess! O Fierce Spirit of Myriad Names and Many Shapes, have mercy upon your miserable slave!” he wailed a great ululation of agony and despair.

His shrieks were hurting Jackie’s ears. “You know this fellow?”

“I do.” Lilith was calm and spoke in measured tones, despite the racket he was making. “He’s Zalambur, the patron of dishonest merchants and one of the seven sons of Iblīs, not by me, for which I thank my lucky stars.”

“What’s he doing here? Neither of us is dishonest that I know of.”

“Spying, of course, and my guess is that someone hazarded his soul to bargain for his intervention.”

Jackie’s mind was boggled. “That works?”

“Of course. A certain low class of demons use them like poker chips in their pathetic little boy-games of political intrigue and oneupmanship.” She sneered at Zalumbar, who did his sorry best to appear contrite.

“But what are you going to do? Kill him?”

Lilith stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “No, of course not; this is his wretched job, but he’s lost this particular round to me.” She turned to address the demon. “Listen to me, Zalambur, craven cur that you are, despite your miserable failure, I will allow you to succeed at the exact terms of your assigned task, so you get the soul of whoever sent you, because that seems only fair, but I see that his contract with you didn’t specify the order of delivery and payment, which was very careless of him, so you aren’t actually required to yield up the information you’ve gathered here until after his death, when you have his soul in hand, which will give you an added bonus in bragging rights for tricking him into a worthless bargain, despite that fact that you were taken in your treachery, and so lose standing in the contest. Do you understand?”

“Yes, O Radiant Queen! Your Mercy is renowned throughout the Worlds!”

She smiled in a particularly unfriendly way. “It is, isn’t it? Hear this, Zalambur, before telling my secrets your listener must die the true death, and if you — or any of your minions or peers — dare to trespass upon any of my domains of interest from this moment on, the usual conditions apply, so be very careful in future. You can enquire at my law firm for a current list, as you should have done prior to your foolish undertaking.”

“You’re the Paragon of Lucidity and Kindness, O Great Goddess! I am unworthy of your Divine Forbearance, much less than the dust beneath your Holy Feet!”

She was bored already. “Yes, yes. You’re Dismissed! Get out!” She sped him on his way with another quick blast of flame, so he shrieked again as he translated into ætherial form and then it was over. The women started working again and the familiar chatter and rhythmic hum of the machines rose again as if it had never stopped.

“Now,” Lilith observed calmly, “after seeing your designs and observing the level of interest taken by at least one of your competitors, I think that I should take on the position of modiste, première d’atelier de couture in our little enterprise, to offer my protection from unfair competition and perhaps the benefit of my long experience in the fashion industry.”

Jackie tried to protest. “But….”

“There’s no need to thank me, dear. I’m part of the management in any case, and an owner, so of course my labor is gratis, an investment in the firm.”

“But do you…?”

“My dear child,” she rolled her lovely eyes with exaggerated ennui, “I am the First Woman of the World. I invented both weaving and sewing, as well as every other distaff art, and have spun and sewn and woven as an occupation for many more thousands of years than you could possibly imagine. There are examples of my embroidery hanging in many of the great museums of Europe and even China. I don’t foresee the slightest bit of trouble, and it will free you from having to attend to the mundane details. You’ll find that I invented multitasking as well, so it won’t affect any of my other projects.” She glanced at Jackie in a sort of respectful regard. “You’ve attracted strong interest from your competitors, Daughter, which does me honor, but setting a spy in our midst was disrespectful. I’m bound to guard both you, my daughter, and our mutual interests from any interference, although you yourself are formidable.” She gave the word the French pronunciation. “Is there anything you might need in addition to my handling of the needle crafts?”

Jackie didn’t have to reflect upon this question, because she been thinking about it for a long time. “Actually, there is. I’d like to have Jumbe Mungu, if you can spare him.”

“Whatever for?” She seemed puzzled. “Surely you don’t intend to present a men’s wear collection in addition to women’s wear?”

“No, not this season at least. I’d like to feature him as the lead singer in a World-Rock Fusion band, which will form the core sound for our video advertising. He has a unique and beautiful voice that would guarantee instant recognition, and I want to buy some advance exposure to ensure it. If I have it timed right, he’ll be right at the crest of the avant garde by the start of the New York Season, so he’ll still be edgy and not at all clichéd for the showings.”

Lilith thought about this for only a second before she laughed with real glee. “You minx! You’re going to make him into a Rock and Roll God, aren’t you?”

She smiled modestly. “Well, I did have some thoughts along those lines. Doctor Long seems a rather precarious lifeline, and I’d like to ensure that he’s around for a good long time, if only to serve as an annoying example of change and impermanence for your ‘pathetic little volcano godling’ a while longer.”

Lilith let fly a delightful peal of laughter like those which must have graced the hills and riverbanks of Eden, as free and untroubled as the song of birds. “Daughter, there are times, more often than I’d at first suspected, when you’re simply delightful! You’re a girl after my own heart’s desire, as clever and feisty and as bold as brass.”

Jackie grinned like a girl waking up on Christmas morning. “You’ve got my vote for Mother of the Year.”

As easily as if they’d rehearsed it, they linked arms and walked back toward the offices and the door to the boutique together, side by side, and Lilith started singing ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ a cappella, from the Broadway play, Happy Hunting. Jackie knew all the words for some reason, and took the soprano part.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty:
Far Above Rubies

T’nu lah mip’ri yadeiha vihal’luha vash’arim ma’aseha
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her own works praise her in the gates.
― Proverbs 31:31

 

“Crap!” Jackie was quickly becoming nostalgic for the madcap exhilaration of the academic world, because the tedium of order-taking and talking to skittish customers was taking its toll on her sanity. She’d just spent the best part of an hour arguing with a yammering wholesaler who insisted that — because he’d pre-sold more than his contractual allocation of what she’d chosen to produce — she was obligated to meet his commitments as if she’d made them. In the end, she’d turned him over to one of her mother’s many law firms, but had been strangely reluctant to close the connection, because she knew that there was already a call on hold, sure to be another idiot on another fool’s errand. She stared at the phone, furious, before she thumbed off the connection and the next call came in. “What?” she snarled.

“Jackie?” Frank seemed surprised.

“Frank! I’m so sorry! I thought it was another of those darned wholesalers complaining about the way the Earth persists in circling about the Sun instead of revolving around him!” Now she was mortified as well as generally pissed off. She wished in vain for a headache, so she could blame something other than her own short temper.

As usual, Frank was calm and reasonable. “Why don’t you hire a secretary, Sweetheart? You don’t have to do everything yourself, do you?”

Jackie gave the phone a baleful look. For a man so very clever, Frank could be irritatingly clueless at times. “I don’t do everything on my own. I’ve got twenty-six women working for me already!”

“Then at least one of them is doing the wrong job, because what you need is someone to keep track of your orders so that you can keep track of your creative art. Instead, you’re doing scutwork because you’re afraid to delegate responsibility.”

“Scutwork!” Her voice rose into the stratosphere, as shrill as an angry hawk. “ How dare you! Keeping track of my delivery chain is vital to the health of my business!”

“Indeed,” he said drily, “and so is taking out the trash, as witness the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which started in overflowing bins of cotton scraps and thread, but that doesn’t mean that you should be doing it.”

Jackie was about to say something really angry and cutting when she stopped herself. She looked up through the skylight fifty feet above her head, trying to drown her anger in cerulean blue, and said, “I’m sorry, Honey. I’m starting to sound a lot like my mother, aren’t I?”

Frank had that reasonable tone in his voice again. “I wasn’t going to point it out, and no offense meant, but the fruit didn’t fall far from the tree. Look, your entire career up to this point has been based on the humanities professorial norm, which is a one-man show — if you’ll pardon the sexist expression — with at most a grad student or two for clerical tasks. In Engineering, we expect to be working with large teams of people every day, with many levels of responsibility and authority. None of us think of ourselves like Paul Bunyan and Babe, his Big Blue Ox, who dug the Grand Canyon by accidentally dragging an axe behind him on a hot day. No one builds a bridge, or a building, alone. Most projects involve hundreds of people, sometimes thousands, so one of the skill sets we train in is how to manage large projects, and that means managing people. You’ve seen how much help your mom has been, but she’s no more a ‘team player’ than you are, really.”

“But you hate my mother!” For some reason, Jackie started crying.

Frank lowered his voice half an octave, a more intimate register which rumbled Jackie’s composure even more than it did the air. “No, I don’t, Sweetheart, not really. We just got off on the wrong foot because she killed my best friend and then changed him into a girl, which was a little weird at first, but you’re still my best friend…. And old Jack would have been totally weirded out if I’d kissed him, so she did us both a favor, really, even if she didn’t necessarily mean to at the time.”

Jackie thought about that with mild surprise. “She did do that, didn’t she? I forget sometimes. Cognitive disequilibrium, one supposes.”

“Say what?” Frank was an engineer. ‘Touchy-feely’ words weren’t a usual part of his vocabulary.

“It’s a psychological term of art for the unsettling feeling you have when you encounter two seemingly irreconcilable ‘facts.’ It’s like when someone you hate asks you for a favor, and for some reason — perhaps simple courtesy — you do it, so you’re conflicted; is the person hateful or not? If the person were truly hateful, should you have helped them? You’re confused. There are two ways to resolve the confusion, both of which involve introducing a new element of belief; either that the person you did the favor for isn’t quite as hateful as he seemed to be at first, or that the fact that he asked you for a favor proves that he’s even more hateful than you’d imagined. We try to justify our actions in retrospect, at least to ourselves. It’s one of the things that makes human societies possible, and keeps us from collapsing into a mush of nothing special. We either blend or separate from each other depending on our beliefs, and our beliefs change according to how we feel about each other.”

Frank wasn’t really sure of what she’d said, but was willing to guess. “Okay, well, that pretty much covers it for me. Jack was more or less miserable most of the time, and so was I, but we’ve both changed. Neither one of us had any luck in our personal lives before we ran into Lilith, and were sort of ‘marking time’ and waiting for our real lives to begin, but now… You….” He paused, and Jackie could hear his emotions in his voice as he tried to control himself, then managed to say, “You’re so often filled with joy and light that sometimes… that sometimes it almost hurts to look at you, because my heart overflows with love, and then I think of how close I’ve come to losing you, first when you died, and then when you tried to run away, and then when it looked like they were going to frame me for DeBauck’s ‘murder,’ even though he was still alive… and… and I thought that I might never see you again….” Frank’s voice was still strained, as if he were trying not to cry, but wasn’t succeeding very well.

Jackie’s heart turned toward his in an instant, her own troubles forgotten, because Frank was at the center and pivot point of her world, and she flashed to his side, taking him in her arms as she saw the tears streaming down his face, and her own heart almost broke with love. “I know, Frank. Almost always, I’m so profoundly grateful for everything she’s done for us both, especially for giving me you, but she can drive me crazy too. She’s like a force of nature, a lightning bolt, or a waterfall, beautiful from a safe distance, which is usually far away, but Heaven help you if you wind up on the wrong side of her power.” She held him close, because he was her treasure in the world. “I’ll never leave you, Frank. I love you with all my heart; you’re everything to me. And just so you know, I’ve already got plans ready to bust you out of prison, so you never have to worry about that again. Nobody’s gonna put my man in jail if they expect to keep him there.”

“Jackie and Frank, the new Bonnie and Clyde,” Frank quipped, straightening a little and returning her embrace, tears forgotten. “Their daring prison break began a six-state dragnet and prompted pitched gun battles all across Upstate New York and New England. News at Six.” He laughed. “No, thank you, Jackie. I’ll just do my best to stay out of jail and avoid working for psychotic killers, which I fondly hope to do in future by having prospective employers over to dinner, where my very talented wife will scan their helpless brains for any trace of mania or homicide. My biggest mistake in that whole fiasco was not turning to you immediately when I first got creepy vibes off that DeBauck guy. I should have trusted my gut instincts, and then trusted you, but was lured into folly by the extra money DeBauck was paying over grad student scale.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Frank! It was that low-budget Batman and Robin team in cheap suits. Debauck may have pointed them in your direction, but it was those two idiots who put you in the slammer!”

“Jackie,” he said in a soothing tone, petting her hair as he crooned into her ear, his breath tickling the delicate tissue of her ætherial body, “it’s not even the two cop’s fault, really. DeBauck deliberately set out to frame me. He succeeded is all. I don’t even blame those two idiots, as you call them. Most murders are simple, because it’s mostly stupid people who kill people, so the police don’t usually spend a lot of time looking for complicated international conspiracies. You figured it out right away, because you’ve got more brains than an army of Mutt and Jeffs, but I can’t blame Mutt and Jeff for not being geniuses. It’s an engineering maxim: By definition, exactly half of humanity is dumber than the other half, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we run into them. The only real question is exactly how much more stupid they really are.”

“Doesn’t that little bon mot presume that engineers inhabit the upper end of the bell curve exclusively?” Jackie asked suspciously.

“Of course. We can’t help it if it’s true.” He leaned back a little and faked polishing his nails on his shirt, then mimed admiring them, but grinned to let her know that he didn’t take himself all that seriously.

He sounded a little smug, too, which Jackie supposed he had a right to be, even if he was being a little over the top. “And where does that leave me?” she said dangerously.

“Sitting in the catbird seat, Sweetheart. You’re not only smart as a whip, you’ve got feminine intuition, which is even better. There isn’t anything you couldn’t do. It was you, not me, who remembered the key facts about the specific heat of a human body which proved that the fairy-tale the prosecutor attorney and the cops dreamed up about a single tank of acetylene being enough to turn his putative body into ashes was so much hogwash, so I felt much better about the whole thing right away, even though I was still in jail. You, not the cops, were the one who tracked down DeBauck and cornered him in his secret hideaway, a room so cleverly concealed that they needed to demolish the concrete floor to get him out when he had his mental breakdown after tangling with you. You were the one who rescued Sal from his murderous clutches, because no one else knew that he was being held in cruel slavery. You’re the one who knew exactly how to save my aunt’s life, even though it was ‘impossible,’ because she was already dead. As an engineer, I knew that she was dead, that no doctor in the world could have saved her, and even then couldn’t have helped her with her terminal disease, which would have killed her within a few months in any case, but you knew just where you could lay your hands on a miracle. Nancy Drew had nothing on you, Jackie, except maybe the hot little roadster, and we could get you one of those.” He paused for a second. “I see you in a Jag. An XK convertible, I think, in fire-engine red.”

“Frank! We can’t afford a car like that!” She felt faint at the thought, both because such cars were impossibly expensive and because the thought of driving one made her go weak at the knees. She had just the right outfit in mind already….

“Au contraire, mon cherie amour. With what I got from my share of the recovery fee, I could buy you half a dozen, even after having paid cash for our little custom pied-à-terre here in the suburbs, so you can match your outfits to your ride, as we say in the ‘hood.’ As a fashionista extraordinaire, your image demands a little pizazz, enough to turn heads as you zoom by the paparazzi with a negligent wave of your lovely hand.”

“Frank, I’m not a celebrity yet, you know.”

“But you are, dear, and will be even more famous in the months and years to come. You’re not embarking on a career in accounting, hiding in a dreary office somewhere, but one where you’ll be mingling with the inhabitants of People magazine and Paris Match and have cameras following your every move. Soon, the supermarket tabloids will be running phoney stories about rock and roll heartthrobs with your name tattooed above their hearts. You’ll need a black Jag for the inevitable faux tragedies — to show respect for their pain.”

Jackie sputtered, “You …. You ….”

“Dashing young engineer? Island of respectable stability in a precarious world of scandal, sleaze, and unfounded rumors? Dangerously sexy man with a shady past? All of the above?”

Jackie couldn’t help herself; he was maddening at times, but awfully cute, so she smiled and said, “All of the above.”

“Good. Now, are you going to make something wonderful for dinner, or should your secret paramour work his fingers to the bone over a hot microwave and make his own hearty repast?”

“Would you mind, Honey? Or I could flit out and pick something up in a flash. Does anything sound tempting? Pizza? Grinders? Softshell crabs? There’s that nice little Italian roadhouse right off the highway, and they’ll do anything on their menu as takeout for me. The chef there likes me because I speak Italian.” She hadn’t actually known Italian when she first saw the man, but he’d had a vision of his daughter when he’d first seen her, the daughter he’d lost, along with his wife, in childbirth over thirty years ago, and all his hopes and plans for her had come flooding into her brain, along with Neopolitan Italian, in the instant he saw her. They’d been friends ever since, and he had a girlfriend now; the two of them were talking about marriage. ‘It is not good that the man should be alone,’ was Jackie’s motto, and matchmaking came more naturally than breathing to her, so she didn’t actually know many bachelors, or at least very few she’d known for any length of time.

“Hmmmm. That Gnocchi in Gorgonzola Sauce he makes sounds nice. We had them there once, and they’re not even on the menu, so he’ll particularly like making them for you.”

Frank still surprised her, sometimes, with his occasional insights. “Okay. Let’s do that, then. It’s just a few miles away, and they don’t take long to make, so I’ll probably be back in half an hour, an hour tops.”

“I’ll be waiting, Sweetheart.”

“See you then. Oh, and Frank?”

“What?”

“Take a little shower,” she purred, her voice low and throaty. Sultry, she had down pat. It was a gift, and they were up to twenty-six minutes and thirty seconds. Frank was a very happy guy these days, and was just a bit more than an hour away from being even happier.

The runway shows had been a huge success, and tremendously exciting, but now she’d been plunged into the pit of customer service, even with her mother’s help, and it was no fun at all; she’d been featured as a prime example of young talent on the rising New York fashion scene with an eight-page spread in Vogue, and she’d had smaller appearances in all the major English-language fashion press, WWD, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vanity Fair, W, Look, Schön!, even a mention or two in the French press, including Vogue Paris and Purple, although her target audience was out of the latter’s usual demographic. A few of the articles had focused on the more trendy prêt-à-porter line, but usually mentioned the couture line as well, so she was doing well in both areas, and had quite a few actresses lined up for the Oscars. She’d had great success with Jumbe Mungu as well, since the public had already been exposed to many varieties of Botswanan music through the moderately successful HBO series, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which had been very popular among many women, at least, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to encompass an eclectic mixture of the rhythms and sounds of Botswana and Zanzibar with electric guitars and fireworks.

He was looking better already, quite a bit heftier, much more handsome, and had a penthouse apartment and a recording studio in Greenwich Village now, plus a three album deal and a huge fan club. He was busy writing songs for his second album, and already had two singles in the iTunes Top Ten. Lilith had been right; Jackie had made him into a Rock God, and every download was a small act of devotion, every concert a communal worship service.

Her mother…. Lilith was a wonder, amazingly quick with a needle, capable of laying down neat rows of hand-stitching so quickly and so precisely that it looked almost as if it had been done by machine, except machines couldn’t duplicate her work. She had a following of her own, mostly in France, spurred on by much larger articles in Purple and the French fashion and popular presses, since the French were endlessly fascinated by a talented modiste who owned a saloon and was an exotic dancer by night. They especially liked her when it turned out that she spoke fluent Parisian French and had an impeccable French pedigree — all false, of course, since most of the women — and some of the men — on her fictitious ‘family tree’ were various aspects of Lilith herself. She’d come out as her mother as well, which was a benefit for Jackie too, despite her being a American upstart, because her official pedigree was now half French, so even Jackie had been interviewed for a couple of articles, both of which laid heavy stress on how important her French heritage had been for her during her childhood and as a young adult, and of course how having a ‘scandalous’ mother had influenced her childhood. Jackie spoke fluent French now as well, with just a trace of a français québécois de la Vieille-Capitale vocabulary and accent, although she could as easily produce Valois. The more people she interacted with, the more came pouring in, their lives, their hopes, everything that made them happy and human, and their languages were part of that. From the women she worked with had come several dialects of Spanish, Tagalog, Greek, and Turkish, as well as Hebrew and several varieties of Arabic. Sometimes she wondered how her brain could encompass everything, but finally understood how her mother kept track of birthdays and children and lives. They were two halves of the same thing, her mother and she, two peas in a pod, and she’d stopped resisting the idea. She might be only one of a million daughters, but her ancestry was something she was proud of now, daughter to the first woman, the first embodiment of feminine spiritual power, one of the first Goddesses on this Earth, floating along in this little corner of the Universe. Some days, she felt like a Queen. Her mother approved.

Some days, she felt like a perfect bitch. Her mother approved of that as well. “What do you mean, you ‘lost’ my consignment, Mister Mahish. How is it possible to ‘lose’ a shipment for which we have a complete tracking history and a certified receipt?”

His voice sounded tinny over the line, “Well, you have to understand that….”

“No, Mister Khayaal Mahish, I don’t have to understand anything other than your certified check or wire transfer by the end of the coming week. If you like, I’ll transfer you to our esteemed modiste and bookkeeper and you can try explaining your problems to her….”

The man was frightened, to say the least. “No! No, no! I now see that it was an error on our part. The consignment was wrongly entered in the ledger. No need to trouble her at all, now that I understand the problem.”

“I see. We’ll be expecting your transfer of funds by wire then. Tomorrow will be fine.” She thumbed off the phone without further discussion. Frank had been right; delegating these tasks had been an enormous time-saver, even when someone tried to bypass the formal channels, since just the hint of Lilith’s involvement tended to concentrate the minds of her vendors wonderfully, something like the prospect of imminent hanging according to Doctor Samuel Johnson.

To clear her head, she walked out to the shop floor, which was very busy now, the sewing floor just another island of activity among many. As expected, her couture line didn’t make very much money, even after three New York Fashion Weeks, but her prêt-à-porter lines were selling like hotcakes, and had a very good reputation in women’s boutiques and shops all around the developed world.

She had all the fabrics cut under her personal supervision, or that of Lilith, so she wasn’t at the mercy of a jobber tempted to shave the seam allowances to make a penny a garment more. They were shipped overseas for the actual sewing, but she’d created a non-profit organization which helped the women in local communities set up their own small sewing factories, so the women took home more of the price paid per finished garment in wages, rather than having some man take the lion’s share and then dole out pennies to the actual workers.

They’d had a favorable article in the Wall Street Journal about that, as well as an outraged editorial bemoaning the incipient death of capitalism, because the scheme bypassed a lot of wealthy middlemen and was creating small-scale capitalists in their thousands, most — but not all — of them women, which the editor evidently thought was some sort of covert socialism.

While she was thinking, she remembered to send a voicemail to their part-time accountant, “Hi, Marianna, Khayaal Mahish is supposed to send payment in full by wire transfer, within a day or two. If he doesn’t come through, please hold his feet to the fire. He’s already tried to spin me a beautiful web of lies, so don’t trust him any farther than you can shoot him.”

It was three o’clock in the morning, and the sewing floor was empty, but Jackie had an idea for a new treatment of the bodice for one of her huipil-style ethnic blouses in her World Collection in prêt-à-porter, melding the classic Central American cut with African fabrics, so she was playing with real fabric for a change. Sometimes the physical texture of the goods suggested an overall context for the finished garment, so manifested fabrics and designs sometimes didn’t turn out exactly as she’d planned when it came time to cut and sew.

Besides, it was fun cutting freehand with the laser cutter; she felt a little like Darth Vader with his light saber, and then sewing the pieces together gave her an excellent feel for how quickly the piece would come together in manufacturing.

Frank had gone to sleep hours ago, and once he was out, it almost took an explosion to wake him up until his habitual wake-up alarm in the morning, seven o’clock sharp, when his eyes would pop open and he’d roll out of bed and run into the bathroom to take care of business and then shower, so she didn’t feel at all guilty about leaving, and she’d wanted to try out different outfits and body types in hopes of some interesting ideas anyway, but putting them together the old-fashioned way had its own charm.

Once she had several variations ready, she took them into her studio. It was set up just off the main door between the atelier and her boutique, so that it was handy both to the workshop and the sales floor.

She kept her digital photography equipment there, as well as the professional lighting set-up, because sometimes she took pictures of her customers wearing her creations, so that they could take them home and think about them. Not everyone was in a position to say, ‘I’ll tke one of each,’ so having what amounted to a personalized catalogue was an excellent selling tool, a sort of high-end ‘wish book’ by means of which the woman could visualize herself in different social situations, or even bring out the photographs to show her friends, asking their advice and simultaneously creating yet another sales opportunity, since at least some of her friends might think to themselves, ‘You know, that dress, or something very like it, would look great on me!’.

She also had an automatic timer set up on one of her large-format digital cameras, so she could quickly cycle through multiple outfits and poses, holding each just long enough for the flash and ‘click’ before changing for the next shot. She could go through a hundred shots in just a few minutes and then bring them up on a portrait-oriented monitor — in actuality a high-def wide-screen television monitor mounted sideways — so she could judge each outfit very quickly, often deleting the image and retaking the shot with subtle variations of either the outfit or her current body. But the huipils were real, so it took more time between shots to physically swap outfits, get set up for the shot, and then set the timer for a few shots in succession.

As she was posing, Jackie felt an odd presentiment of impending trouble that built over several shots. The last time she’d felt the same peculiar curvature of events around her, Sansanvi had showed up and tried to kill her, so she paid close attention to her surroundings as she worked. This time, she saw the disturbance in the air before he appeared, but it wasn’t Sansanvi, although he looked enough like him to have been hatched from the same egg. Putting her lightning wits to work, she figured it must be Sanvi, except this angel was carrying a honking great steel sword that looked just offhand like it was embellished with gold and platinum. It had an otherworldly sheen that told her that it was probably ensorcelled as well as being preternaturally sharp.

The angel carrying it, however, was just the opposite, as stupid and dull as his friend Sansanvi had been. He opened the conversation with an angelic bit of repartee, “Die, Jezebel! Whore of Babylon!” even as he lunged towards her with sword raised awkwardly overhead. Even Jackie could tell that he had about as much skill with the thing as the average monkey.

“Jesus Christ!” she said calmly. “Are you guys all complete idiots? What do you do, pick up your lines from Central Casting along with the wings and halo?” Jackie was being facetious, actually, because he had neither wings nor halo, although the eerie perfection of his skin and body seemed otherwise about as angelic as the stereotypes one saw in paintings and on greeting cards. For some reason, one rarely saw depictions of angels with acne, or ugly noses, although to be perfectly fair they rarely showed faces so twisted and distorted by hate either. “For your information, Queen Jezebel was born in Tyre — part of Phoenicia, what they now call Lebanon — and was married to Ahab, King of Israel at the time. Babylon was roughly five hundred miles away from everything, and —News Flash! — they didn’t have helicopters back then, so there were very few Babylonians dropping by for tea, ‘working girls’ or not. You really need to learn how stick to the point if you ever expect to win any arguments.”

“Sophistry! Vile creature of Satan, you shall die by my hand!” He lunged at her, waving his surrogate dick at her like Errol Flynn as Captain Peter Blood, but not nearly so gallant nor at all swashbuckling.

She danced away, choosing to vacate her studio in favor of the vault she’d had installed next door, right after her mother had discovered a demonic spy in the rafters. While it might not be much of a hindrance to supernatural spies and saboteurs, it had the advantage of steel and concrete framing which put a crimp in Sanvi’s slashing sword technique, and got him out of the room with the valuable cameras and electronic gadgets. He followed her of course, but she noticed that it took him a second or two to handle dematerializing the sword and then re-manifesting it inside the vault. He kept swinging, but now kept running into the reïnforced concrete walls and steel security cabinets, raising showers of sparks and buckets of irritating noise as he flailed back and forth, trying to cut her in half, one way or another. What he lacked in swordsmanship and finesse he made up for in a boyish enthusiasm for mayhem, so he was making a lot of noise and causing a lot of damage as he stumbled around like a drunken Sancho Panza. He didn’t even come close to connecting, of course, but the effort kept him busy while she taunted him. “See what I mean? Non sequiturs and false assumptions go unchallenged by the mush that passes for your brain. A Junior Girl Scout could fox you silly in any serious debate, so I can only deduce that you’ve spent your long and worthless life picking fights with children, or perhaps taking candy from babies.”

With a wordless shriek of fury, he laid about him with his vorpal blade, and from the accelerations she observed, and the ringing rebounds when he cut into a wall instead, she saw that it had real weight, so wasn’t just an ætheric construct, which gave her the beginnings of an idea.

She wafted away from the path of the sword again and observed, “There are few things more contemptible than a cowardly thug, you know, but in a million years you simply must have run into someone who more epitomized a candy-ass milquetoast than you; I’m all ears. Come on, you little twerp, you can tell me. Who’s more wimpy than you are?”

He redoubled his efforts, but didn’t seem to be getting tired, so it looked as if he were trying to wear her down, the more fool he.

“Of course, if there’s nobody who’s more of a pathetic pantywaist than you are, just tell me who’s your Daddy? You’ve simply got be somebody’s bitch, don’t you, Sannie?. I can just see those luscious lips of yours wrapped around somebody’s cock. Tell me, Sannie, does he make you swallow? If you sucked him off really good, Sannie, maybe he’d offer to beat up girls for you. Wouldn’t that just make you feel precious?

By now, Sanvi was both livid and incoherent with fury and rage, swinging his sword from side to side like a scythe, which might have done some good if Jackie had been confined to the room, but of course she wasn’t, so Sanvi was taking bigger chunks out of her vault and cabinets, but better these than anything more valuable, and she had insurance, though trying to explain the damage might be difficult. ‘Stupid burglar? Explosion maybe?’ she thought. ‘Maybe.’ Or maybe she’d dun Semangelaf for the tab, since they were part of the same sorry outfit.

“Coward! Stand still and meet your doom!” he cried, still stupid, but not out of breath, unfortunately, so he could still talk.

“Aren’t villains supposed to taunt their helpless victims with something a little stronger than schoolyard bluster? Face it, Sannie — I hope you don’t mind me calling you ‘Sannie,’ but ‘Sanvi’ sounds entirely too grown-up for a wimpy little pansy like you. I have to admit that I called your friend Sansanvi the same thing, but he’s not using the name these days, so I’m pretty sure he won’t mind sharing…. Then again, fuck him if he can’t take a joke, since he’s in no position to complain…. You’d make a lousy Bond villain, you know. They were always able to think of something clever and witty to say, but it’s hard to get good help in this degenerate era, and of course you’d know all about degeneracy. I blame the No Child Left Behind Act, which dumbed down our schools to the point that high school graduates are barely fit to run the pictographic cash registers in the fast food joints, much less hold up their end in sparkling repartee.” She thought for another moment, taking care to look visibly puzzled as he thrashed his sword around the room, as if it could possibly be effective for anything but putting gouges in the walls and slicing steel file cabinets in two. “I’ve got it! You could shout ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ and then plug your ears so you couldn’t hear my scathing reply. That’d fix me good, wouldn’t it? I’m sure you’d feel much more clever if you managed to get the last word in somehow.”

“Cunt! Bitch! Cunt! Bitch!” He was desperate to kill her now, but even less coherent and even more vulgar.

“Okay, that really tears it, I’m sick of trying to talk sense to a puerile pissant and nithing. I’d call you a prick, but you neither deserve the name nor have one, do you, fairy-boy? You’ve got that wonky big sword, doubtless a Freudian over-compensation for your total lack of dick, and all I have is this itty-bitty nail file.” She manifested a faux file and waggled it at him girlishly, just to taunt him a bit more. “Do you think that’s enough of an advantage that you could risk being cut to pieces by a girl? All the other angels will laugh at you if you lose, you know. Would it help if I closed my eyes?”

“Cunt! Bitch!” At least he was talking less, if just as puerile, but he was still slicing jagged holes in her files and concrete walls and floor.

Well, she was bored with this in any case. She kicked him a good one in his gut and then rammed her ætheric nail file up his nose, just to get his attention. Now he was really mad, so she called out, “Run, run run, as fast as you twirl; you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Girl!” and took off in the same direction she’d travelled with Dross, as quick as thought, and for her that was very quick indeed.

He followed, of course, still cursing, still slashing and swinging with his Crusader Rabbit sword, but it took him several seconds to extricate it from the vault, and a stern chase is always a long chase, so she figured he had no real chance of catching her, since she knew where she was going, while he did not.

She burst out into the same space she’d visited with Dross, but there was only one star before her, the orangish giant, a little more distant now, having been given a kick of acceleration by the violent explosion of its small companion, which had also stripped away a good chunk of its atmosphere, now evidently part of the bright billowing clouds left over from the outer layers of the former dwarf star, now coruscating out into the void, and the jets from the first stages of the explosion, which were still streaming in opposite directions at high velocity, pointing back to empty space, the void left behind by the cooling remnant of the original diamond sun which itself was hurtling off on a trajectory which would eventually take it out into the intergalactic void. It was quite pretty, actually, and she wished that she had a little more time to linger, or a camera, but here came Sanvi, still on her trail, still foolishly wiggling his little boy-toy stick back and forth.

She instantly turned toward the enormous spiral disk she’d noticed before and plunged into its gravity well, noticing too that the angel/demon had trouble making the turn at the speed they were traveling. She smiled and plunged like a comet into the vast and swirling cloud circling around a central core which glowed with a strange blue light. When she judged the time was right, she suddenly shifted to the side and started back the way she’d come, but Sanvi flashed by her, struggling to keep control of his magic sword as he tried to turn and follow her back through the gap between the infalling spiral of bright gas and the eerie light of the inner structure. Cherenkov radiation, she thought they called it, although she wasn't completely sure. She'd have to ask Frank about it sometime, preferably sometime in the distant future when they could laugh about it.

“I’ll kill you, you evil bitch!” he screamed as he flashed past her, struggling to force the sword back the way he’d come, but the pitch of his ætheric voice was already dropping.

Jackie watched as he dropped below her, slower and slower, his face turning bluish and his mouth working as he hurled slow curses toward her to no avail. At last he slowed to some limiting value where time dilation and the speed of light appeared to balance what she knew was a continuous plunge toward the event horizon and singularity beneath him, apparently stopped, his face frozen in a rictus of purple hate, the sword in his hand still pointing straight down even as he looked up, and Jackie flashed back the way she’d come, reappearing in her ruined vault just seconds after she’d left.

Unfortunately, the vault wasn’t empty.

The room was full of angels, but not in a good way. Luckily, they were all armed with swords — much like the one she’d just seen being flushed down a galactic toilet — so the general mêlée that followed her sudden reappearance was notable mostly for how many ways seven murderous angels could get in each other’s way, every one of them grabbing and slashing at her, but with so little coördination that she was saved seven times in a row through the interpolations of other angel’s swords, or grasping hands, or fool heads, in the separate paths of seven nearly simultaneous killing blows.

And that was just the start; things quickly became much more confused, accompanied by a confused cacophony of angelic curses, imprecations, and vulgarities, all very similar to the first two angels who'd attacked her. It might as well have been a script.

Not having a sword in hand herself, and unsure what she would have done with it if she had, never having had the foresight to join the Society for Creative Anachronism and take up Medieval fencing styles as a hobby, she did the first thing that came to mind, which was to bug out, since it had worked well enough before.

Of course, before was one angel at a time, and now she had seven pursuers to juggle. She knew better than to try zig-zagging, because she was afraid that one of them might see the problem of inertia and figure out some form of coöperative solution to increase their cohesion and effectiveness as a unit, perhaps by sending out flanking outliers to limit her range of movement, creating a larger net in which to scoop her up. Of course, she might be able to even the odds a little if she managed to scoop up even a few of them in the net that had so neatly snared Sanvi, so she began a much wider curving turn toward the singularity, slowing slightly to make it easier for them to follow while still wagging their swords around, which of course excited them as they seemed to be catching up with her.

This time around, she sought out a few nebulæ along the way, to give the impression that she was trying to hide among the clouds of gas and dust, thereby making her final dash down toward the event horizon through the thickest of the clouds of in-falling matter seem more familiar and innocuous. Sometimes she astonished even herself with her ability to keep on thinking in extremis. ‘They say,’ she mused, ‘that even if the heart stops beating, the brain lives on for another six minutes or more, so at least one has a little time to gather one’s thoughts.’ This seemed comforting, for some reason.

And then…. And then she was plunging through the whirling clouds of gas, gauging her distance from the point of no return by the velocity of it whipping by in its spiral of decay. ‘Wait for it….’ She slowed slightly, so that they sped up, desperate to lay their hands upon her, and then she went partially corporeal, swept up in the jet stream of gases, then broke free again by disincorporating and heading back out toward open space, a heavy job more difficult this time because she’d cut her margin of error so closely, but evidently enough, because she was quickly out into open space and there were only three angels nipping at her heels now, and only one of them had managed to keep his sword — the last in the lure of angry angels she’d been trolling behind her — the rest presumably having gone down into the dark unknown, along with at least a few of their erstwhile wielders.

She wheeled around to face them, determined to kill them all, or die trying. She was getting sick and tired of running, and couldn’t return to Earth in any case with angels on her trail, lest they harm Frank, or any that she loved.

Their three faces shone bright with bloodlust and fury as they flew toward her, with what they thought of as victory now in sight, two with hands stretched out to throttle her, one with sword held high in parody of real angels, perfectly posed and poised to cleave her limb from limb.

As grim as Death, Jackie prepared herself for the fight of her life, but growing more confident the closer they came, now settled in her mind on victory, no matter what the cost.

“Jackie?”

A voice rumbled softly from behind her, as deep and rich as melted chocolate. It was Dross! “Run, Dross! Run! Save yourself!” she screamed, and flung herself at the nearest angel, the one with the sword, now even more desperate to overcome this unexpected complication, a helpful Troll to defend against the onslaught of three angels bent upon spurious vengeance. Except the one with a sword suddenly didn’t have a sword anymore, because it had instantly exploded into a million sparkling droplets of molten steel and then she closed with him, grappling for control as she surrounded him with her real power, no longer afraid of it, nor of herself, dipping deep into the Well of Cosmic Fire for power, choking out his life until he quailed away from her, or tried to, and then she took hold of him in her sharp claws, digging in, drawing up his spiritual essence like harsh wine through ten straws plunged into the arteries of his being, feeding on his strength, adding it to her own, sucking him dry until the empty ætheric shell of him turned to virtual dust and drifted off into space. Then she took another one in hand as well, the nearest, and dispatched him with brisk efficiency, growing stronger by the second until his dust joined the first, and then turned to the last, who was locked in combat with Dross, but Dross was holding his own at least, although wounded by the brutal savagery of the angel’s murderous rage, even without the sword. Once Jackie took hold of him though, the life force quickly left him and the twisted angel sparkled first into a twinkling shape of ætherial soulstuff, which then puffed out into space like the seeds of a dandelion, as promptly dissipated as the vapor of a warm breath on a frosty day. Jackie looked around to be sure that none of the other angels had made it back from the singularity, and she felt better than fine, her ætheric body newly forged in the heat of combat, her soul perfected by mortal struggle. She turned back to her friend Dross, reaching out to help or comfort him.

Dross didn’t look so good. In fact, he seemed to be wilting slightly even as Jackie looked over his damaged body. “Hang on, Dross! I’m going to find you some help!” she yelled, hoping to reassure him, but Dross was already unconscious and bleeding, as she swept him up in her arms, thick drops of whatever sable ichor made up his blood beading up into droplets and gobbets of coal-black liquid that followed them as Jackie instantly fled back toward Earth.

Jackie manifested wings to catch the ionic wind of plasma that spilled out from the massive singularity at the center of the galaxy she found herself in, speeding back through the dimensions toward Earth with Dross held loosely in her arms, or as much of him as would fit within the span of her grasp as she simultaneously willed him back to strength and life. Jackie was surprised to notice that his inky blood was still following closely behind them as they twisted through the echoing corridors of the Multiverse, as closely as if magnetized, but didn’t stop to wonder about it; she was on a mission.

After what seemed like an eternity, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, she was lying with Dross on the floor of her own living room, in front of the blazing fire in the hearth, and calling, “Sal! Sal! Quickly! I need your help! My friend Dross was very badly hurt in trying to help me, and he’s a very good man. Please help him!”

Sal looked out of the fire and began to move forward. “Ooooold! Droozzz! Zzzooh ooold!”

“That’s right, Sal, he’s an old, old friend, and he’s very dear to me. Can you help him?”

“Yazzz! Droozz ooold vuuhn,” Sal crooned, and wrapped himself around Dross as if he were Sal’s old, old friend as well. The conflagration this time was almost instantaneous, rocketing through the blazing rainbow until the brilliant colors grew too strange to comprehend, somehow burning themselves directly into the brain without any need for eyes to see what was happening, until the shadow of Dross within the flames burst into even brighter fire, brighter than a thousand suns, as bright as the very fires of Creation.

And then… Dross laughed, the flames somehow burning brighter still as a tongue of laughing fire leapt from his mouth and he sat up, still burning comfortably, now petting Sal as if he were a big pussycat, and Sal was purring.

Jackie was astonished. “Dross? Are you all right?”

“Dross fine, Jackie. Better than all right. Dross perfect now.” Slowly, the fiery outline of Dross within the flames cooled, and he started going through the spectrum of heat in reverse, ultraviolet, blue-white, then white, then rapidly down through yellow, orange, and red, quickly running down through orangish grey to black again, but Dross was changed. As his outline became clearer, still surrounded by Salamandric fire, it became obvious that he was petting Sal with a hand he hadn’t had before, that whatever Sal had done had cured him of his deformity, and that Dross was whole.

As the glare diminished, though, the outline of Dross within the flames took on a decided difference from what he was before, and Jackie started to worry about the amount of fabric she had on hand, because Dross was going to need a new outfit, and it was absolutely certain that Jackie didn’t have anything that the new Dross could squeeze into.

But then again, the new Dross didn’t seem to care one way or another, so that was the way Frank found them when he wandered out from his bedroom in his undershorts, blinking once in mild surprise at the sight of the three of them — Jackie still winged and clawed in her primal form as a Succubus, a fifteen-foot-tall naked Goddess with angelic wings of her own in the living room, and Sal still burning brightly on the broad stone hearth — before he said, “Oh, hi, Jackie, Ma’am, Sal. Would anyone like coffee? Perhaps tea?”

Jackie felt like laughing… or something. Frank was, in her opinion, the ideal man, as steady and unperturbable as Jupiter circling the Sun, as regular and studied in his habits and courtesy as a masculine Miss Manners. She shifted back to her more familiar form. “I don’t know, Frank, although I don’t feel the need for anything.” She turned to Dross, or whoever he was right now. “Dross, would you like something to drink, anything to eat? Are you feeling up to breakfast?”

“I’m fine, Jackie, thank you very much. I’m back to my original form and identity now, as Tiamat, Goddess of the primordial Chaos, the Ummu-Hubur

who formed the Universe before anything that is now existed, Creatrix of the Big Bang, or more precisely the vasty Fertile Continuum from whence myriad Big Bangs form like bubbles in champagne. I’m necessarily self-sufficient, although I have to admit that I’m a little surprised to find myself recreated back to my own Beginning, and so filled with power. It’s been long ages since I was worshipped, so I find it difficult to account for my present state, although of course your friend the Salamander, and your own love, helped to heal me.”

Frank smiled. “She has a profound effect on people, doesn’t she? I take it you weren’t always so… imposing?”

“As a matter of fact, no. I seem to have been healed of both physical infirmity and loss of memory.”

“Don’t forget that you helped to save me as well, dear friend,” Jackie said. “I have no idea how you managed to show up where and when you did, but I know that it must have been you that destroyed the one sword. I don’t know how I could have handled that, since the only way I knew then to combat angels involves very close combat. Any sort of magical edged weapon makes that tactic problematic.”

“Oh, that was simple enough. I remember telling you that I can sense energy patterns, and I felt the disappearance from the perceivable Universe of several bits of my metallic asteroids in quick succession, a long way from where and when I’d seen them last, so I was drawn by simple curiosity to investigate. As I drew closer, I recognized your energy-signature as well, so my curiosity became more urgent. When I saw that you were in trouble, I had to intervene, so my natural instinct was to take control of the iron in that sword, one of the few powers that remained to me.” She smiled and shrugged. “You know the rest of the story, of course, and I’m very glad of your own part in my rescue from my own imperfect attempt to rescue you.”

“Hey, what goes around, comes around,” Jackie said modestly. “We’re all doing what we can.”

“Indeed. Perhaps I could show you how to disrupt metallic and covalent bonds, and so disintegrate any metallic weapon, which is all I really did. Do you think that would help you in any future confrontation?”

Jackie nodded eagerly. “I’m sure it would. Is it difficult?”

“Not particularly.” The information was inside Jackie’s brain even as she spoke, by way of demonstration. “No more in any case than the subtle manipulation of ætheric energies which allowed you to destroy them, although perhaps less obvious to your perception.”

Frank was looking alarmed. “Destroy? Weapon? Were you attacked, Jackie? By who, and why?”

Jackie was a bit chagrinned to have this revealed so precipitously, but saw no particular remedy for it but honesty. “Well, I had to fight off several aggressive angels, including both Sansanvi and Sanvi, who’d taken it into their heads to commence hostilities against all of Lilith’s children for some reason, including me.” After she’d said it, she had to amend her speech. “Perhaps especially me, now that I think about it. As it turned out, it didn’t really amount to much of a threat, although they did manage to kill one of my youngest and most inexperienced sisters, Jane, of whom I think I’ve spoken.”

“Did they explain themselves? Why on Earth were they hostile to you?” Frank was getting excited, not that Jackie could blame him, really, but it was disconcerting, not the way she normally thought of him at all. Frank was… Frank.

“I’m not exactly sure, Frank, and please believe me when I say that’d I’d be glad to tell you if I did know. I’ve asked Semangelaf, and he has no explanation either, although he agrees that my response was both necessary and appropriate.”

“What do you mean by ‘necessary and appropriate’?” he asked suspiciously.

“Well, I seem to have destroyed them, or close to it. The trouble with immortal enemies is that they really never quit until they’re effectively stopped.”

“So you killed them? You killed an angel? Two angels?”

“Ummm…. In the first place, I didn’t exactly kill them, exactly, but I put them into situations from which they’re very unlikely to extricate themselves in the foreseeable future, sort of like jail, but as near forever as I could manage.”

“So, what’s the second place?” he said with a fierce look on his face that would have done credit to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“There were nine of them,” she said rather quietly.

“So you put a fucking baseball team of angels into jail?” By now, her imperturbable rock seemed to be getting seriously angry.

“Well, yes, more or less…”

“But why?” Now, he was shouting, and in front of a guest!

“I told you,” she shouted back at him, “that they were hostile; is that so hard to understand? Who knows why guys are murderously angry toward women? I don’t understand it, that’s for sure, except that they may be cowards who’re simply afraid to pick fights with other guys. The first one, Sansanvi, tried to strangle me. The next eight used swords, evidently having taken a lesson in overkill from the fate of the first.”

“Swords! For Christ’s sakes, Jackie! When were you planning on telling me all this?”

“Wait just a damned minute, Frank! My last little encounter happened just a few minutes ago, and I had to help my friend here before I trotted off to make my report to you like a ‘good little girl.’ She was wounded very badly, perhaps mortally, in helping me to fight off my assailants, so I had to ask Sal to help me to heal her before farting around with thank you notes and the precise etiquette of handling assault with deadly weapons by multiple assailants, so I’m just ever so terribly sorry that you didn’t get your engraved notification in plenty of time to RSVP.” She scowled at him in real anger. “I don’t recall you asking for my permission before you managed to get attacked by a crazy Satyr and then framed for murder, or did I miss that part? Sometimes, things just happen! Sometimes, I just have to deal with it!”

Frank looked shocked. “But….”

Dross, or Tiamat, whatever she was calling herself now, said, “Children!” in a voice like thunder.

Jackie was taken slightly aback, although she could see how she’d developed a reputation as a hard-assed Goddess back in the day. Frank was shaken too, with the added chagrin of having staged a ‘scene’ in front of a guest in their home.

“Frank,” the ancient Goddess said quietly, “Jackie is not now and never will be a shrinking violet. She’s a powerful being with powerful enemies, and is quite strong enough to take care of herself, mostly. From time to time she may need a little help, but you have to realize that she can’t be a stay-at-home housewife. It’s not her natural rôle in life.” Then she turned to Jackie and said, “Jackie, you’ll have to cut Frank a little slack as well, because thus far he’s been an ordinary mortal suddenly plunged into daily contact with the realms of the supernatural, and doing fairly well with it so far.” She smiled to include them both. “Now, one of the advantages of being a Goddess again, especially the primal Creatrix of the Infinite Multiverse, is that I can fix things up for both of you.” She waved her right hand casually toward Frank and lightning sprang from it, enveloping his body and Frank suddenly swelled, growing taller and more muscular, even his bone structure thickening slightly, until he looked like a hero from the fantasies of Robert Ervin Howard, the pulp fiction writer from the Thirties who gave the world (and Arnold Schwarzenegger) the character of Conan the Barbarian, big, but not musclebound at all, sleek instead with an almost feline grace and power like that of a panther, exactly the sort of man almost any woman would like to have by her side in a dark alley, or in a dark corner for that matter.

Jackie gasped, suddenly aware of his masculinity in a way she’d never felt before. “Oh, Frank! You’re…. beautiful!”

Tiamat smiled benignly. “He’s also immortal now, and pretty much a match in power for you, Jackie. That’s important for a man, and his new appearance marks him as an übermensch of sorts, an alpha male to whom other men will unconsciously defer.” Then she grinned laciviously. “You may have to watch out for predatory women as well, Jackie, but in any case he’ll rise quickly to the top of his profession, or any profession he takes up in the future, since he’ll have ample time to experiment with different careers. Ayn Rand would be panting for him, but luckily she’s dead.” Then she clicked her heels three times and disappeared.

Neither Frank nor Jackie noticed, their attentions being otherwise fully — and more intimately — engaged.

 

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

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-One:
The Gazelle

Extolled above women be Yael
― Judges 5:23

“In Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows
that it has to be smarter than the lions
or it will die. In Africa, a lion wakes up
and knows that it has to outwit the gazelles
or it will starve. Whether you’re a lion
or a gazelle, when the sun comes up,
you’d better start thinking.”
 — African Proverb

 

Much later, Frank was fast asleep — some things never change, even for immortals — and Jackie decided to go down to her atelier to see what could be done with the mess the angels had left behind them. She didn’t feel like spending any more time than necessary, so just flitted in. Looking the situation over, she decided it wasn’t as bad as she thought it might have been, since most of the damage was accidental, not deliberate, more like a tornado than vandalism. Things were broken, but as often as not merely walls and furniture instead of valuable records, so she wasn’t terribly worried. She’d have to get a structural engineer in to look at the walls and framework carefully, but it would probably be fairly simple. Maybe Frank could help; she’d have to ask him. She started taking pictures of the damage using one of her hand-held cameras, and decided not to ask Frank after all, somewhere between shots, since the extent of the damage would be sure to scare him.

She looked around and said to herself, ‘Oh, well. I can hire a few more of the local men to sort it out at least, so some good will come of this.’ Then she went out to find her purse and took out her cellphone. She flicked through the list to find Semangelaf’s listing and opened it. It rang, a voice answered. She said, “I’d like to speak to Father Semangelaf, please. Tell him it’s Jackie Renfrew, and it’s very important.”

It took a few minutes before he answered, “Hello, Jackie. Is there some emergency?”

“Not at the moment, but I just had a visit from Sanvi and then some of his angelic pals. They seemed upset.”

“What did he… they… do?”

“Other than trashing my place of business and trying to kill me, not much, but you might want to investigate to see who’s agitating your friends, if you have any left.”

There was a long pause. “I take it that Sanvi is no longer your concern?”

“I’m actually not sure. The last I saw him, he was trying to pull his sword out of a galaxy-sized black hole, and was caught in a time dilation as he fell past the event horizon, so I’m not exactly sure when it might enter his head to come home, if ever. I never took the math classes that Frank did, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure that either classical physics or quantum mechanics addresses the issue of supernatural beings in regions of infinite tidal stress, nor what would happen if he entered the singularity on the other side of the event horizon. Most of the other seven were eventually chucked down the same hole with similar swords, so at least they’re handy if I ever figure out how to get them out, or what to do with them. If he does come back on his own, or if any of the others do without a drastic change of heart, I suppose I ought to warn you that they’d go the way of Sansanvi in any case, but I might be tempted toward more drastic measures if they, or any like them, show up again, since he and his pals destroyed a lot of my business records and a fair chunk of my building. You don’t happen to know if he carried malpractice insurance, do you?”

“His sword?” Father Sam was sounding dazed again, as if his ability to adapt to changing situations were compromised by severe stress. Jackie supposed that this wasn’t surprising, since his background was absolutist and strictly hierarchical; without a rudder to steer him, he tended to drift off course.

“Well, he was trying to chop me up with it at the time. He and his former friends made a hell of a mess, if you’ll pardon the reference, but I think they’re lost to you as angels, at very least. Feel free to come by my shop and take a look if you don’t believe me, but I think I’m going to go back home and curl up to the fire with a good book right now.”

“I apologize on his behalf, Jackie, and I will look into this. One angel turning toward the dark side is very troubling, two is… something else entirely, and nine, if I heard you rightly, is far too many by half.”

“Yeah, well, see ya ’round, Father Sam.” She took a last look around at the shambles the angels had left behind and then flitted back home, where Sal at least was very glad to see her. Frank was still sleeping, and she didn’t have the heart to wake him after all his… efforts. She smiled at the thought of him; at least some good had come out of all this. She thought of Dross, now healed and powerful, then of Frank, whose life had been changed almost as much as her own, all down to what might have been tragedy, and then Sal leapt into her lap and nuzzled her. She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his fiery essence, and began to cry.

Lilith was very much less than pleased when she discovered the aftermath of the night’s events and appeared in Jackie’s living room about six o’clock the next morning, where Jackie was reading the latest issue of WWD online after recovering her composure with Sal — in dog form now — for company. Frank was still asleep.

“I’m very glad to see you, Daughter.” She sat down on the couch on the other side of Sal, reaching out to pet him with one hand. “Hello, Sal. How do you like your new home with my daughter?”

Sal wagged his tail, but said nothing.

Jackie gave him a pat as well. “It’s okay, Sal. This is Lilith, my Mom, and she likes you.”

“Zzz-ang-oo,” he said.

“I hope you’re warm here. It’s been a very long time since I met a Salamander, but I well remember how much your people loved fires.”

“Ooo knoowh Zzzalamanderr?,” he looked at her hopefully.

“Not recently, I’m afraid, but if I do hear of one, I’ll see if I can introduce you.”

“Zzz-ang-oo,” he said, but he looked a little disappointed.

“Don’t worry, Sal,” Lilith said kindly. “I have contacts all over the Earth. If there are any others of your people still living in this world, I’ll find them eventually. The Middle East Convention is coming up in Istanbul just a few months from now, and Salamanders used to be fairly common in Persia.”

Sal wagged his tail twice and then seemed to go to sleep, moving his head only slightly to lean against Jackie’s leg, evidently content to let someone else worry about the details of his love life, a facility Jackie envied, since her own life was so complex, and she still didn’t know why the angels had her in their sights, since none of those she’d seen seemed all that capable of coherent thought.

“There were giants in the Earth in those days,” Lilith said, looking at Sal somewhat wistfully. “Sometimes I regret the Compact and all the secrecy it brought with it. The world has become a drab and dreary place since it was put into effect. In the youth of this world, the very air once sparkled with magic and possibilities, and fantastic adventures lay around every bend in the road.”

“Well, it looks like someone’s nostalgic for the golden olden days,” Jackie said, gazing at her with no little fond regard. “I wish I’d known you then.”

Lilith looked at her with some amusement. “But you wouldn’t be you, then, would you? It sounds like someone’s nostalgic for something that never existed. We’re each of us a product of our times. You’re from an age in which the notion of innate human rights and dignity, of mutual courtesy and kindness without ulterior motive or coercion, indeed the notion of ‘humanity’ as a kind of whole, was part of the air you breathed. I’m from an era in which might very definitely made right, and the tribe — a sort of exoskeleton which supported the self only as an almost insignificant part of the larger group — was all there was. Think of a population made up exclusively of roving gangs of two-year-olds and almost every mystery of human history becomes transparent.” She paused for a long moment, looking at her, then added sadly, “I wish I’d first known you now.”

“Mother,” Jackie said, reaching out….

“But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Lilith ‘moved on’ as inexorably and abruptly as a waterfall over the edge of a precipice. “From the state of the vault and studio, I had a moment’s qualm until I reached out to find your aura still brilliant on the ætherial plane. That makes a gaggle of your special ‘friends,’ the angels, and two demons who’ve attacked you, an interesting pattern, to say the least.”

“Two demons?”

“I think we can fairly count Zalambur as an attack — although his contract didn’t include any sort of mayhem — his spying was simply more subtle than those of the two crêtins, and I now think may have been more about reconnoitering the physical layout than getting an early look at your fashion designs. Sansanvi, Sanvi, and their little pack of thugs were escalations, but surely also a response to the failure of the first crude assassination attempt in Merlin’s antechamber, which was definitely demonic, but ordered by someone else. It may have been meant to test your defenses before a more concerted assault, or was simply the first in a series in which more and greater resources were committed. You have a powerful enemy, Daughter, one with fingers in two realms, which unfortunately doesn’t narrow the field of suspects overmuch.”

“But why would I have enemies?”

Lilith looked at her with some of her habitual irritation. “Because you’re my daughter, of course, and because I’ve taken a special interest in you. Whoever it is must have seen you as a tempting target, since you’re so very young, but our opponent obviously underestimated you, because you’re much more powerful than you look, as Sansanvi and Sanvi have discovered to their personal cost, as well as a squad of their friends.”

Jackie was taken aback. “But why would some personal grudge against you affect their attitude toward me?”

Her irritation was by now very plain. “Because you’re dealing with an insanely powerful two-year-old, of course. Don’t you ever listen? You have a better toy, or a pretty ribbon, and to a petulant spirit that’s more than enough reason to wish you dead, dead, dead. Perhaps one of them dropped their lollipop on the ground and now it’s all dirty; how the Hell would I know? Read the Bible sometime, and then think of it being played out on the set of Romper Room, but with knives and swords instead of building blocks and rubber balls, with a cast of characters who would have frightened the Addams Family half to death, with exactly zero ‘adult’ supervision, because almost everyone with any real power was and is a homicidal megalomaniac. In those benighted times there were no kind-hearted women trained to understand and guide children toward their ‘better selves’ while looking very pretty for the camera, so the ‘kind and gentle’ option has rarely been possible through most of history, and the world is half worn out from the lingering echoes of ancient enmities.” By the end of her impassioned rant, she looked more sick and tired than angry, but was still proud and unbending.

Jackie was finally beginning to understand the reality of her mother’s early life, but didn’t think her mother realized where she was coming from either. “Look, I’m sorry, Mom. I’m very new to all this; most of my memories are fuzzy confabulations with no objective connection to reality other than that they present a plausible ‘backstory’ for the life I’m living now. I remember being a fabulous jump rope champion and having a wicked skill with jacks, but for the life of me I couldn’t even begin to actually do either. I know that I look like a grown woman, but I’m not, because almost everything I think I know I also know is false. Other than the lies I’ve learned by heart, I’m essentially an amnesiac, so give me a break, okay? I’ll try not to be a jerk, but sometimes I’m really just ignorant, not really mad at all.”

Lilith looked at her, really looked, and said, “I’m sorry, Jackie. I’ve been remiss, but you should know that what happened to you is very odd. Believe it or not, I’ve had very little experience with women like you, and none so intimate. Please forgive me, and allow me to help you.”

Jackie stared at her suspiciously. “What do you mean, ‘help’ me?”

“I can connect you to the worldline you now inhabit, so that the skills you remember are real, without doing violence to your curiously mixed heritage. What you remember, as far as I can tell, is simply part of the worldline that brought you into being as you are now, so none of it’s a ‘lie,’ or not exactly; it’s simply not as real as it could be, because your soul is something of a pastiche, loosely stitched together from two separate lives, so your memories feel like déjà vu instead of true remembrance. I can tidy up the needlework, if you please, and weave the threads of those two lives together more thoroughly. To use your example, I can give you ‘jacks’ without removing ‘baseball.’ Would you like that?”

Put that way, what Lilith proposed sounded very strange, but no stranger than her own reality. She could feel the muscle memory of a fastball pitch, now that Lilith had mentioned baseball, so knew that there ought to be a memory there, except there wasn’t. She could remember playing jacks, but couldn’t possibly imagine what it felt like to do what she remembered. Taking a leap of faith, she answered, “Yes,” and was suddenly plunged into the metaphysical reality of her body, her real body, and her real past, without losing the dim memories of the other Jack, the one she’d left behind. Her real memories came flooding in like a torrent, as if a dam had burst from somewhere deep inside her, releasing the feelings and sensations that had always been there so they could rush into the empty places prepared for them and settle, filling them to the very brim, then overflowing into joy, the warm familiarity of them as precious as bright sunshine after a night of freezing rain, and then she fainted, briefly surprised by the knowledge that she remembered what fainting felt like, even though she’d never done it before.

Jackie woke to the sound of music, Lilith crooning what Jackie somehow understood to be an Ursprache lullaby last sung, as far as she knew, much more than two hundred thousand years ago, though how she knew that she had no clue. She felt different — other than the fact that she was lying sprawled on the couch — and when she looked up she saw Lilith looking down at her, because her head was on her lap, and Lilith was smoothing the hair on her head with one hand while the other cradled her shoulder, partially supporting her as she sang. It was an entirely new perspective, but Jackie didn’t particularly want to change it.

Lilith, of course, wasn’t quite as sentimental as Jackie seemed to be. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Different… happy… connected….” She made no effort to rise. “And I know that I can play a mean game of jacks now. What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“But how was that possible?”

She raised one imperious eyebrow — Jackie may have changed, but Lilith hadn’t, or at least not much. “The answer will come to you directly. I’ll leave you the fun of figuring it out.”

Jackie thought for a moment puzzling out her new feelings and sensations. “I have a real body now.”

“Yes and no,” her mother said, “but definitely much more real than before, because now you have the physical memory of having grown up in a body very similar to that one, so know the workings of it intimately. It’s still an ætheric manifestation, but just a hair’s breadth away from reality, so it will take a bit more effort to change it — a survival skill I encourage you to practice assiduously — but with a bit more effort than that you can make it as real and functional as you want it to be for as long as you need it.”

Understanding dawned as she explored her new awareness. “It means that I can carry a child to term.”

Lilith smiled briefly, a quick tension in her lips, an uplift of the corners of her mouth, but then it was gone. “Trust you to ‘cut to the chase,’ as the modern saying goes. It means exactly that, although unsettled times are not the best milieu. You’ll find, however, that being pregnant creates an instinctive state of hypervigilance that can make ‘interesting times’ more survivable.”

“Perhaps, but I’d want to do my best to avoid risk, I think. I’ll have to think about it carefully, and then talk it over with Frank.”

Lilith nodded, a bit reluctantly. “You don’t necessarily have to take the long path, however, although it makes for better integration with the soul, as you can now testify.”

“Then I’ll have to do my best to ensure a boring period of utter calm.” She rose gracefully from the couch and strode to the fireplace, staring into the flames as Sal used this excuse to follow her, leaping toward the blaze and transforming back into his real form in mid-air, gliding into the glowing oak fire bed as smoothly as if it had been a limpid pool of water. She smiled, then she turned back to her mother. “We know that Sansanvi attacked at least Jane among your other children. Do you know of any others?”

“Several, but those particular assaults targeted either random individuals not part of my own line or retinue, or else they failed. The only successful attack on those near to me was that which felled Jane. As far as I know, all of these outrages were perpetrated by Sansanvi, until these latest assaults by Sanvi and a gang of his fellow thugs.”

“Since we’ve had Sansanvi in hand, so to speak, and Sanvi is lost to the Universe, why don’t we think about the former first, then? I think he must have been ‘encouraged’ in his assault, so it would seem logical for there have been meetings somewhere at which both Sansanvi and Sanvi were coöpted by person or persons unknown. After Sansanvi’s failure, Sanvi’s only precaution was to carry a sword, but he had no obvious skill in the martial arts, which tells me that whomever was pulling Sanvi’s strings was careless of his resources, so may either have many ‘troops’ in reserve or is so confident of his ability to replace them at need that the loss of one or two doesn’t concern him, so callous as well as cavalier.”

Lilith arched a brow. “And what, exactly, does this tell us that we don’t already know? As I’ve already pointed out, that describes most of the guests at the last Convention.”

“Not much of anything just yet, but I’m pretty sure that the answer is buried in excess data, and having a psychological profile of the entity behind this couldn’t hurt. I think we can assume that the initial attacks were ‘dry runs’ against victims who weren’t well-enough ‘connected’ to provoke a fatal response, so we’re dealing with a strategist, but one who relies upon improvisation as well, perhaps impatient of what he would think of as ‘over-planning,’ and someone supremely confident of his ability to hide his own presence behind the scenes, so arrogant, perhaps even contemptuous of those he feels are beneath him.”

“Why are you assuming that it’s a ‘he?’ ”

“Because both Sansanvi and Sanvi used almost identical misogynistic hate speech, which would seem to imply some sort of indoctrination, and I don’t think most women would gravitate toward exactly that pattern of attitudes. It’s the sort of crude contempt that tends to arise in all-male environments, like armies or prisons, and the overall approach of the ‘criminal mastermind’ behind all this feels somehow masculine to me, although I may be grasping at straws. Of the people I know best at the convention, there were many capable of mischief, like Colleen, for example, but she wouldn’t spend much time at it, because an elaborate revenge would bore her, and she likes the victims of her pranks to remain among the living, so she can have a little laugh at their expense. Emrys might be capable of intricate planning, but he doesn’t seem likely to put his own ass on the line, as it were, by chancing a lengthy feud, nor would he involve anyone other than himself, because he wouldn’t trust anyone to be as clever as he is. He doesn’t seem to dislike females as a class, either, and the crude vulgarities used by the ‘henchmen’ seem impossible to fit into his upper-class patterns of speech and thought.”

Lilith looked intrigued, evidently having never encountered the equivalent of a detective novel sleuth: a Sherlock Holmes or a Hercule Poirot, much less a serious academic researcher. Not even the fictional Jules Maigret could out-think Jackie in teasing out coherent clues from disconnected hints. “Go on. I’m fascinated.”

“I’d like to contact Semangelaf. I think he’s been isolated from the other two of the original ‘Gang of Three’ for quite some time, and it would be interesting to know why. I think that I can trust him enough to tell me straight if he’s heard of anything recently suspicious that might involve those two. He’s aware of the ‘absence’ of both of the two now gone missing, because I told him about them, and he knows that I was responsible. His response — to the first, at least — was that I had an obligation to ‘save’ the ‘rodef’ from his own sin at any cost, even his own life, which I imagine means more to you than it did to me, and he didn’t seem either surprised or terribly upset with me when I told him about the second of his former pals, whom I suspect is dead, or as near to it as an ‘immortal’ spirit can be. I had the impression that he approved of my actions, although he had a stick up his butt about it for a while, at least in regard to Sansanvi.”

Lilith laughed at that. “What a delightful phrase! And how perfectly apt in his case!”

“Well, sorry. I know it’s not very ladylike, but even girl orphans tend to run toward the rough and tumble, if slightly more subtle than the boys.”

“No, no, it’s perfect. I was something of a hoyden myself, in today’s context something of a ‘biker chick,’ but it was always my ride once I’d finally achieved the power needed to free myself from external domination.”

Jackie had a thought, but carefully repressed it before saying, “Speaking of rides, wanna go for one?”

Lilith looked at her curiously before saying, “Whyever not, but where?”

Taking Lilith’s hand, Jackie said, “Second star to the right, then straight on till morning,” and flashed back along a now familiar path, offsetting the angle slightly so she could see herself as she arrived, followed closely by Sanvi and his fatal choice of sword.

The two women followed after, unseen by any of them as ur-Jackie and her pursuer rushed past, swooping through the turn to chase them as while Jackie pointed out tactical points of interest. “This is where I knew my plan would work, since he had difficulty moving the sword onto a different vector. Ahead of us is the central black hole of this galaxy, but don’t get too close. I read an article about them in one of Frank’s Scientific American magazines and recognized it from an ‘artist’s conception’ accompanying the text. It’s an object that doesn’t obey the normal rules of physics and has collapsed under its own weight through ‘degenerate matter’ into what they call a ‘singularity,’ an area of the Universe so dense and heavy that even light can’t escape, so I’d suggest we keep our distance. The fatal point of all this is that time slows to a standstill as one comes near, while acceleration speeds one toward the event horizon at speeds approaching that of light, so that even if Sanvi could escape, it would take a very long time for him to do it.”

They both watched as her former self side-stepped the pursuing Sanvi, and then stopped to watch him falling toward and through the belt of Cherenkov radiation, vainly trying to lift the sword against the ever-increasing gravitational acceleration imposed by the curvature of space itself. “He might have been able to save himself, even at this point, except that he wouldn’t let go of the stupid sword,” Jackie said.

“I don’t imagine that the owner was happy about the loss,” Lilith said dryly. “That was Cortana, originally known as Durendal, one of the great treasures of antiquity, which narrows the list of suspects enormously.”

“Durendal?”

“An enchanted sword originally forged by Weyland the Smith, Völundr, to whom I was once married. It was made of what they used to call ‘Star Metal,’ meteoric nickel-iron, a much stronger alloy than anything commonly available in the Sixth Century. I have no idea how a lesser angel got hold of it, other than that someone must have given it to him. From the looks of the vault and your studio, Sanvi was using it like a fly swatter, which was just as well for you, because any more powerful being, especially one actually skilled in the use of arms might have been able to do you harm.”

“I’m sorry to have destroyed the sword, Mother, if it held any memories for you.”

Lilith looked askance at her. “Memories? It was just a thing and I’ve left many things behind, dear. Völundr, as was not uncommon in those violent times, began our wedded life by abducting and then raping me repeatedly, after which fait accompli my putative father, King Niðhad of Nerike, agreed to the ‘marriage’ because I was pregnant by the time he heard of it, and Völundr had managed to kill my two brothers, the King’s heirs, in a particularly gruesome manner, so that baby was a lot more valuable than I was, and had to be ‘legitimate,’ of course. Völundr had been extremely angry with the King because dear old Dad had hamstrung him — crippled him by cutting the five tendons behind each knee so he could barely drag himself along on crutches — and then imprisoned him on the island of Sævarstöð as a slave, to ensure that his skills as an ironsmith and armorer were available only to him, so I can understand his vicious hatred, but I personally have no fond memories of either man. The destruction of that particular sword saved your life, which was a far better use than it had ever been put to before.”

Jackie was shocked, but began to see exactly why her mother had ‘anger issues.’ “I’m so sorry, Mother. I had no idea.”

“Daughter, if that had been the extent of my problems over the years, I’d count myself very lucky indeed. Living, however you go about it, is a struggle, and the most important thing is to keep on struggling until you win, and you can win, with just a tiny bit of brains and luck.”

“But I don’t understand why you didn’t just re-manifest a new body in another location? Why did you have to stay in such a terrible situation?”

“Because, Dear, being immortal isn’t the same as being an immortal spirit. I was stuck in one perfect body for hundreds of thousands of years, evolving as humanity evolved, forever young, forever healthy, forever beautiful, so I’ve pretty much lived the lives I was stuck with in the context of the times. I could be hurt, but I couldn’t be killed, so I’ve healed from many, many injuries over the years, both serious damage and minor.”

“But how did you take on new identities.”

“Through trickery, mostly. They didn’t have death certificates or picture IDs in those days, so it was mainly just a matter of showing up in town and buying a shop if I had the money. If I didn’t have any money, then I’d work as a servant, or prostitute, or Temple priestess — all pretty much the same job in those times — and keep an ear to the ground until I found a way to make money, or stumble across someone’s life that I could just slip into, whether they’d died on a journey, succumbed to an illness, or whatever. If anyone said that I didn’t look quite the same as the woman who lived there before, I’d claim to be her sister, or the man’s second wife, or whatever. Being able to read minds made the whole operation easier, of course. Sometimes, I’d run across someone dead or dying from far away, and simply complete their journey for them.”

“I still don’t understand, though. If you were a normal woman, why were the three angels sent to kill your demonic children?”

“I really prefer to call them ‘spirit children,’ since so many shared the supernatural essence of their fathers, and were of course immortal on both sides of the family, but it was mostly to punish me, and partly an attempt to coerce me to return. In the very early days, until the human population had grown over thousands of years, there weren’t enough human men outside the immediate neighborhood of Eve and Adam’s to make a home with, so the only households where a single woman might find shelter and protection were those of the Djinni and other supernatural beings who were active in the world in those days, long before the Compact. I might have been immortal, but I could still be very hungry and very cold, and because of those three baby-killers I sought out the most powerful protectors I could find.”

“So that’s how you wound up with Samael?”

“Yes. My first real home away from Eden was with Samael, the extremely powerful Angel of Death, and our children were many and varied. Some of them weren’t very nice, but some were very nice indeed, just like any real family, but those three stooges didn’t dare come near him, so it was only when one of our children wandered off that they felt brave enough to kidnap and murder them. The ‘demon’ thing was all about me though, a ‘rebellious’ and relatively independent woman, the stuff that male nightmares of the time were made of, obviously ‘possessed’ by some sort of ‘evil spirit.’ As you ought to know, however, it actually didn’t start out as a term of vilification, but rather referred simply to a lesser divinity or supernatural being whose nature lay somewhere between the Gods and human beings, just as we might say ‘diva,’ Goddess, for a woman of outstanding beauty, talent, and imposing presence in the performing arts.” She smiled. “A rather accurate description of me in any age, but especially so after Eve and Adam got themselves tossed out on their asses in the snow. But because the daimon thing was all about me, it naturally took on scandalous and evil connotations very quickly. I’m not surprised. There are still a boatload of vile names reserved more-or-less exclusively for women, termagant, harridan, whore, shrew, harlot, crone, strumpet, hag, virago, doxy, trull — the list goes on and on, and all of them have been applied to me — but any word which refers to females will take on nasty overtones in much of male discourse. Try to think of the word ‘woman’ or ‘girl’ in almost any sentence that couldn’t be — and often is — spun into contempt with just a slight shift in tone or emphasis.”

Jackie couldn’t think of anything to say. She recognized it as a feminist critique — she hadn’t been an idiot, even as a man — but it didn’t have all that much reality for her, because she’d never really experienced being impinged upon by male rules, or male infringements on her privacy or sense of self-worth, having been dropped as an adult into a sheltered academic environment with non-discrimination policies and committees to ensure fairness lurking around every corner. She’d sprung ‘fully-formed,’ as a woman into her world, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, ever-virgin, with no real women friends, no real history to draw upon, except the fictive memories of her faux life before…. “So are Samael and his ilk what the quote you mentioned earlier, ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown’ refers to?”

“Yes and no. Yes, it’s meant to distinguish ordinary humans from those who were not, and partly metaphorical, but it’s also merely descriptive from the human point of view. The earliest humans were fairly short for the most part, averaging about four to maybe five feet high. The Djinni, and the Angels, were closer to the ideal size of modern humans, the ‘natural’ height and weight we grow to with decent nutrition and medical care. Adam and I were both ‘normal’ in size, about six feet tall in his case, two inches less in mine, but Eve was a good four inches shorter than I was — doubtless to make a political point — and once they began trying to make a living outside of Eden and social inequality grew more pronounced every new generation became a tiny bit more badly nourished on average, and a little bit shorter. The ‘giants’ the passage describes averaged around six feet tall, maybe a bit taller, but not tall enough to make a decent basketball player today, and the ‘mighty men of reknown’ were what strong men looked like before steroids and designer drugs pumped up athletes until they look like the Michelin Tire Man. The angels as a rule were nicely fit, but not grotesque. Samael was — and is — beautiful in a way that humans rarely approach, with an adamantine masculinity that was both enticing and exciting.” She sighed. “I’ll have to introduce you to him sometime. He might give you second thoughts about your tiresome particularity.”

Jackie couldn’t help but be amused by Lilith’s current fixation. Here they were lingering in the midst of stupendous immensity, at an interior edge of the Universe, with in-falling matter being destroyed by the gigaton, converted into great jets of charged particles streaming out into the void, with no one around within billions of miles, and Lilith was giving her dating advice. Next, she’d probably suggest a nice doctor she just happened to know. “I’m sure that he’s very nice, Mother, but I’m happy with Frank, and he’s looking very fit these days.” Her mother’s description of Samael more-or-less fit in, though, with Jackie’s cursory experience of the two who’d tried to kill her, and a slightly longer acquaintance with Semangelaf. They were all three of them good-looking guys, but none of them did anything for her at all, although she supposed that Samael’s ‘bad boy’ job lent him a certain piquancy in her mother’s appraisal of him. “What about the wings, though? They usually show them that way, but that particular detail rarely shows up in the stories.”

“They were mostly an artistic convention, and a late invention, a shameless imitation of Babylonian and Egyptian portrayals of the Gods and Goddesses designed to ensure that it was easy to tell the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’ in an illiterate society using pictures, like the black and white hats on cinematic cowboys. The angels had bird wings, as a rule, while the demons usually had bat wings. Other than that, they were manifestations, so almost any creature capable of manifesting a body could add wings… although they make it very difficult to fit a coat or bodice.”

Jackie laughed, astonished and amused by her mother’s unrelenting practicality, despite having gone where no man had gone before, despite the cosmic fireworks going on right before their eyes. She gestured toward the maelstrom before them. “So, do you think that it’s an effective prison? It’s certainly a spectacular memorial, if nothing else.”

“It is indeed, Daughter. If molecular bonds are sufficient to keep an angel confined in a diamond, the pressure of degenerate matter is surely overkill. I fully expect this particular durance to outlast the Universe. Ask me again in a few billion years and I might update my opinion.”

“Good. I was particularly offended by his disrespectful language, and can’t help but think that it’s richly deserved, and ‘degenerate matter’ sounds so appropriate for the both of them.”

Lilith smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? I’ve never heard of a black hole being used for the purpose before, but in a long life, we’ll all undoubtedly see many surprises.”

“Do you have any idea who could be behind this, Mother? It would be nice to put a name and face to this amorphous being.”

“Surprisingly enough, I don’t have an immediate suspect, but as I said, whoever it was had possession of the sword and I suspect that we can trace it, since it was enspelled by Merlin, and we know where to find him. I summoned Zalambur to force him to reveal the full details of his contract, but it turns out that he was gulled. The blood with which it was signed turned out to be that of a chicken, long since dead — so he’s now a laughingstock among his fellows — and that trail leads nowhere. Likewise, I prevailed upon Merlin to reveal the True Name of the demon who attacked you as well, but he too was the victim of a confidence trick, and so that trail too led to nowhere, and I rebaptized the stupid thing with an even better trick than Merlin’s, because his new name is one he can’t pronounce, nor can anyone other than a Harpy, all of whom are extinct as far as I know — although the reappearance of Tiamat suggests that nothing is certain in a tumultuous Universe — so he should be safe enough, all things considered. I even interrogated Sansanvi at great length, but his mind — if I could possibly dignify it with the name — has been corrupted to the point that he’s utterly incapable of coherent thought, and he has no memory of whoever did it to him. If he were human, I’d suspect that his symptoms were typical results of having suffered severe lesions to his hippocampus and frontal cortex, but of course the spiritual analogues to these are not well understood. In any case, his value as a witness is severely compromised.”

“Well, Sanvi was acting exactly the same as Sansanvi, right down to the monolog, so my first guess would be that the same problems would turn up if we could still question him, which we can’t.”

“No matter. In the first place, I agree that little or no purpose would have been served, and in the second, an angel with an enchanted blade is rather difficult to subdue, since it’s very hazardous to grapple with him. You did very well to defeat him at all, and I doubt that I could have done very much better myself, although I could surely have escaped unharmed, just as you did, especially against such a puny opponent as Sanvi.”

“That was more or less my reasoning. I captured Sansanvi by trapping him within my power, but it seemed suicidal to try the same tactic when my target had a deadly weapon in hand.”

“Exactly. Very wise of you. But the fact that he was carrying that particular weapon is telling, since he’d have no ready access to an ancient blade of worth without some sort of collusion or conspiracy, which means that either an angelic Prince or God was undoubtedly involved, since it’s survived far longer than its normal lifetime would allow, even with Merlin’s thaumaturgic intervention, because an ensorcelled weapon like that is a magnet for adventurers of all sorts, so it will likely have changed hands many times, and the last owner was either powerful enough to wrest it from the then apex of a line of them, or had been powerful enough to keep it safe from the same general line of thieves and vagabonds. Samael had an enchanted sword, but it wasn’t that one, nor do I think that anyone would be fool enough to tangle with him. Even Gods and angels can die, so all fall under Samael’s dominion.”

Jackie was puzzled. “Not a Goddess then?”

“Not impossible, but rare. Straight swords tend to be phallic symbols, so most Goddesses carry a bow, a fatal shield, or a scimitar or other curved blade, something reminiscent of the Moon, or sometimes a spear, like Athena or the Valkyries. The few examples of Goddesses with straight swords tend to be handmaidens to masculine power, such as Dike or Justicia, the Greek and Roman feminine personifications of an overwhelmingly masculine judicial authority.”

“The other seven angels all carried swords as well, so I suppose the same problems arise about where they came from, and I was able to dispose of all but one of the swords with the same trick as I’d used with Sanvi. My friend Dross helped me with the last remaining sword, so I was able to destroy the last three angels — those who hadn’t been sucked down to join Sanvi — on my own.” She thought about that for a moment. “Unfortunately, I didn’t save them for interrogation, but it doesn’t sound like it would have done much good anyway.”

Lilith looked puzzled. “Dross helped you? Why would he do that?”

“What can I say? He likes me, and taught me the trick of making swords explode, since he knows all about metals of all sorts, so I won’t be caught with my pants down again. I’ll teach you, if you like; it’s quite simple once you’ve seen how it’s done.”

“But how did you destroy the angels without capturing them?”

She looked a little embarrassed, but not very much. “I sucked them dry. It turns out that angels — at least those three angels — thought of themselves as ‘manly,’ which was enough of a weakness to let me grab hold of them. If we hang out here for a bit, they’ll be along directly, so you can see it for yourself.”

Lilith looked at her with what seemed like pride. “I thought your aura had seemed more powerful! You fed upon three angels?”

“More like devoured them, and sucked the marrow from their bones, because there was nothing left but dust once I was through with them.”

“Oh, my. You are a big girl now, Jackie.” Her eyes were shining. “I wouldn’t mind tarrying for a while at all, if I could see the last of those two cowards receive their just deserts. You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

“Not at all. We can always catch up to where and when we left. That’s another trick Dross showed me.”

“Why don’t we, then?” she said, then, oddly, with no particular show, she took Jackie’s hand and placed the diamond Jackie’d used to trap Sansanvi in it.

“Before we go, I thought that you might want to take care of this. With their addled brains,” she said, “ I suspect that it would be a kindness for both of them. Would you like to send Sansanvi, his fellow thug, after Sanvi for company?”

Jackie looked at it, then nodded. “I would, and I agree; it would be a kindness to slow their thoughts to match their long sentence.” She hurled it down into the galactic gyre and followed it with her eyes for a while, then turned back toward Lilith, her spiritual mother, flying close to her side, and said, I think it’s off this way….” She led the way to where and when her encounter with the pursuing angels had come to its conclusion and they stood aside incorporeally to observe as an ur-Jackie led the gang of angels into the same trap that had caught Sansanvi, and then turned to face down the three ravening angels who escaped the trap, saw ur-Dross arrive and destroy the sword, watched how prettily it flowered into brilliant sparks, and how ruthlessly that earlier Jackie had embraced her essential nature as a Succubus, had faced them naked and unafraid, and had destroyed them all. Then they saw her gather up the wounded Dross and wing through space and time to save her friend’s life, and how the Salamander had transformed Dross into the primal Goddess that she’d always been once upon a time. It didn’t seem to take as long watching everything transpire as it had seemed to take when it happened, but strong emotions tend to slow down one’s perceptions of duration. Jackie made them leave once Tiamat had left the scene, unwilling to have her mother as an invisible observer of her intimate relations with Frank, however dispassionate or proud.

“So Dross was Tiamat!” Lilith said as they flitted back toward the bar, or the boutique, in that general direction anyway. “Imagine that! I’d never met her, and I can see why now.”

“True. If she was really involved in the creation of the Universe, she would have been a little before anyone’s time on Earth. Even Dross seems to predate the formation of the Solar System, which boggled my mind at least. I have the impression that the whole pantheon thing is solipsistic in any case, judging from Jumbe and Dross at least, and even you told me once that you’d been many Goddesses over the ages. It seems to me that people create the Gods and Goddesses as much as the Gods and Goddesses create people, since it’s their belief that gives divinity its power.”

“Of course they do, dear,” Lilith said dismissively. “Haven’t you noticed the increase in your own power since you became a celebrity? Your friend Jumbe Mungu is looking much better since your own exploitation of popular notoriety on his behalf, so I thought you realized it more explicitly than you seem to now.”

“I didn’t, not really, because it seems to work contrary to ‘common sense,’ spilling down the timeline by contagion, affecting both past and future, just as my own transformation has ‘side-stepped’ the original progress of my life, and melded my personal history with the history of the woman, and the girl, I was in another timeline from the one I’d formerly inhabited.”

“Exactly! It’s a paradox, in its original meaning, something contrary to what was always true, but is no longer really true, having been replaced by a new orthodoxy, a new reality that we all agree upon, even if it was ludicrous fantasy five minutes before. When I first became a Goddess, it changed my past, all my pasts, and infected them with divinity by contagion. Just wait a bit and it will happen to you; you’ll see. In a very long life, everything is possible. Look how well Frank has done for himself, just through knowing you and sticking by you when things got dicey.” She gave her a suggestive glance. “A thousand years from now, or perhaps two hundred years ago, they’ll unearth an ancient temple dedicated to his service as the First Architect, or something, and you’ll have a nice bedtime story to tell Jane as she’s falling asleep.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“Moi? My dear, you cut me to the quick! I was, after all, the Oracle at Delphi for many years, a strange and drunken gig in which one prophesies from one’s perch upon a tripod suspended above a crevice leaking poisonous subterranean gasses into the atmosphere. It helps a lot to be immortal in a job like that, because the priestesses went through a number of Oracles every year who succumbed to the gas, and fell down on the job. Eventually, the Priests of Apollo took over the Temple and replaced the worship of Gaia and her female descendants with that of Apollo, by claiming that he’d slain am enormous snake or dragon there, and that the gasses emanated from the monster’s decaying body, which was laughable, of course, but people rarely laugh about religion. Before that, the post was held in turn by Sibyl — who gave her name to countless Sibyls after, so that ‘Sibyl’ is now synonymous with prophetess in the ancient tradition — then Themis and Phoebe, the last two both Titanesses, daughters of Gaia, the Goddesses who ruled before the Olympians overthrew their brothers, the Titans, but Goddesses tend to be more durable, or at least more adaptable, than Gods, so they lingered as respectable Deities for thousands of years after their rowdy brothers were imprisoned in Tartarus or wandered off, depending on who’s telling the story, the curse of coöperative solipsism.”

Jackie looked hard at her with growing comprehension. “Wait a minute! You’re the Goddess of Death yourself! When you spoke of Samael as having dominion over all, you were talking about yourself as well, weren’t you?”

Lilith looked just slightly startled, but then said, “Well, it’s complicated….”

“Oh great!” Jackie flew into a perfect rage. “Not only am I the world’s second greatest ball-buster, a girl who can suck the hard out of a basalt boulder, I seem to be the daughter of Death himself as well! If Frank ever leaves me — and who wouldn’t, with a family tree like mine? — I can see my future dates will have to be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or something worse!”

Lilith didn’t move, but somehow invisibly grabbed Jackie by the throat and shook her, just the once, but hard. “Jackie,” she said kindly. “These childish histrionics do yourself an injustice. You yourself have dominion over all aspects of love and lust, not just one or two. It’s true that you, and I, can feed off any sort of sexual or emotional energy, but we create it as well, because we represent the relentless process of life itself, which is the mirror image of the equally-inevitable process of death. Every living thing on Earth, in all the worlds that circle all the stars in this or any other galaxy, feeds off death and creates life. The life-giving rays of our Sun are the waste products of its rotting body, that solar entity in turn is the condensed and fertilized remains of other suns that lived in glory and died in spectacular cataclysms, and ultimately of Creation itself, the paradoxical and explosive state of zero entropy, the ultimate crystal from which we’re all of us running down, our clock springs slowly unwinding on the way to the ultimate death of the starry Universe. Even protons decay, and there is nothing that is impervious to death, which is a kindness always. Plants take that solar energy and turn it into their bodies, and those bodies feed other bodies, all of them in turn eaten by other bodies in an endless pavane of death and decay that sustains a standing wave of life, a seiche of volition, extending into all that’s left of the finite future.”

“But….”

“But nothing, Jackie dear. You boast of being a cupid, a spirit whose particular task and skill it is to promote love between individuals, but the natural order of these things leads from love to marriage, and then to the baby with the baby carriage, as the old song goes. On whom or what does that baby feed and thrive but living creatures, living flesh? How many lives will be snuffed out to perpetuate that single life? How many bright and hopeful calves turned into meat to allow a breeding cow to be robbed of the milk meant for the bloody corpses of her offspring?

It’s not for nothing that orgasm, le petit mort, is called the little death, the life-kindling death of thought that makes us careless of incredible risks, even our own survival, if only they end in sexual congress and the possibility of life engendered from our union. The fact is, Daughter, that we all embody our opposites, and well you know it, having recently embraced your own ability to murder with the very same hands that have kindled a deep and abiding love between two wounded people, that may yet cradle a child to your breasts to take life and nourishment from your own willing body.”

“But I had to….”

“Exactly, Jackie, daughter, child, to be alive, but especially to be a mother, is to be capable of murder, to encompass any action that might keep your baby safe from deadly peril or death, that would ensure your own survival, lest your child perish for want of a mother’s care, or even to preserve the life or safety of someone you see as somehow ‘worthy’ over another someone who doesn’t seem quite as deserving, the rodef, as your friend the angel said. You throw up your hands, dismayed at my ferocity, but the only real difference between us is that I have seen my children murdered before my eyes and am as pragmatic about death as I am about life, and determined to surmount all obstacles that might impair my own survival, or the survival of my many children.” She looked her up and down, but with some small measure of compassion. “And you, Jackie, you… have not had the same experiences. You fought fiercely for your own life; now think about how ruthless you could be if those angels had murdered your own children, or even tried to kill them.”

Jackie had an angry retort in her mouth before she even stopped to think. “But you don’t…,” she started to say, and then suddenly stopped as the force of intelligence behind her words evaporated. She couldn’t even remember what it was she’d started to say, because it was her anger talking, and because she felt stupid after finally hearing what her mother had just said. “I don’t know what I’m saying, Mother,” she said, after a long pause that Lilith didn’t try to fill. “I’d go crazy, I think, with grief and rage. I’m sorry I’m such an ass sometimes.”

“It comes with being young, Jackie. Believe me when I tell you that I’d envy you your youth, were it not for the fact that I’d have to relinquish many hard-won skills and lessons. Your heart is still relatively light, where mine is often heavy with many thousands of years of grief and rage, as you put it.”

“Mother….” Jackie began.

“Still and all,” she noted complacently, “there’s much to be said for the satisfaction of watching so many of my enemies come to grief, and especially so when I didn’t have to lift a finger to accomplish it, for which boon I’m in your debt, Jackie.”

“Yeah, well. I suppose it’s a little different from waking up on Mother’s Day to breakfast in bed and a pink rose.”

Lilith laughed. “I would’t know. I’d given up making babies the old-fashioned way before the modern holiday was invented by Anna Jarvis and taken over by commercial interests, and a pink rose doesn’t make nearly the statement that Attis made.”

Jackie understood, of course, and smiled. “True, but it saves having to launder the pillow case.”

“That it does, dear.” She grinned mischievously. “But true devotion requires real self-sacrifice. A five-dollar rose, however sweetly presented, is just a rose, unless it means much more then just a rose. Attis, and the priests of Cybele who followed, on the other hand, were demonstrably committed.”

It was two fifty-four in the wee small hours and Jackie was duplicating some of the photographs lost to the angels, sending off digital copies to an off-site secure storage outfit as she worked, having learned one lesson, at least, when it suddenly struck her that she’d already almost forgotten another lesson, the peculiar slantwise method Dross had shown her to skip through space and time to almost anywhere she could imagine. She hadn’t had time to think about all the implications at the time, but now realized, in a sudden flash of insight, that it might represent the key to their problem. If she could stand aside from her own timeline, as she and her mother had done when they followed her encounter with the angels, she couldn’t see any reason that she couldn’t follow the angels backwards and find out where they came from to begin with.

In fact, she was just about to do just that when she managed to think about the consequences if she followed the trail right back to something bigger then she could handle on her own. She’d been lucky twice with variations of a single trick, but it might be pushing her luck to try the same trick three times in a row. She tried to think about what her mother might do, and the first thing that came to mind was to make a plan. ‘Jackie, my girl, now you’re getting smart,’ she thought to herself.

“So, Mother, what do you think?”

“It seems reasonable to me, although this slantwise travel is new to me as well. Never get too smug, Jackie dear. There’s always a hard lesson lurking round one corner or another. The problem is we rarely know which one.”

“That, plus we don’t know who to trust. There seem to be a passel of angels involved, for whatever reason, but not, I think, all of them. The whole operation is too disjointed, as if whoever’s in charge is either scatter-brained or is working levers from such a distance that his control of the operation is sloppy and inept.”

She shrugged. “As I said, it seems plausible, the way you put it, but it seems like a strange way to do things.”

“Strange to think about, maybe, but a lot of large projects wind up being run that way. Frank says that overall project management is one of the most difficult things to manage, especially as the scope of the project grows, and requires special skills. Not everyone has those skills. In a clandestine project, such as this must be, Frank says that organization usually goes all to hell in a handbasket rather quickly.”

Lilith thought about that for a second before she said, “I think this one must be run by men, or males anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if what you say is true, and it certainly seems to be, it’s not the way women tend to do things.”

“How so?” Jackie was honestly curious, never having thought about there being any difference.

“Because men like to create linear hierarchies in which every decision has to work its way up and down a chain of command, so if a guy runs out of assigned things to do, he’ll stand around doing nothing until someone in authority comes along and tells him what to do next. Women tend to agree on an overall goal, and then everyone works more or less independently toward that goal. If a woman runs out of things to do, she’ll look around and find another task that doesn’t seem to have been done, and either start doing that on her own or check with someone — not necessarily anyone ‘in charge’ — to see if the task is being done by someone else and if it isn’t then just do it in a more-or-less self-directed manner. ”

“Like a beehive!” Jackie exclaimed. “In the social insects, all of which center around a queen, the hive or nest acts almost like a brain, with chemical signaling going on that tells everyone the sorts of tasks that are available, and the individual bees just pick up on those cues whenever they have nothing to do otherwise. Everyone stays busy, but there’s no central authority, really, just chemicals that communicate the needs and moods of the hive as a whole.”

“I suppose. Why would it matter, though? A conspiracy is a conspiracy, as far as I know. Why would the organisation matter when it comes to rooting it out?”

“Because it gives me an idea. How many of my sisters use cellphones?”

“Practically all of them, I think, except perhaps the oldest. I’ve never seen the need for one, but then I’ve never been particularly chatty. It probably comes from being created in a world in which there was no one around to talk with.” She paused, then added, “Well, at least anyone actually worth listening to.”

“Can’t be helped. I’ve known a lot of guys like that myself. Anyway, I’m guessing that someone pays the bills for all these phones, or has contact information, possibly one of your lawyer’s offices. I’d like you to have them set up what they call a self-healing peer-to-peer network based on Facebook and Twitter for all my systers, and anyone else who might be supportive.”

Lilith looked puzzled. “What’s that?”

“Don’t worry about it. Those that know about it will use it, and we don’t need everyone, just a lot.”

“Alright, but what is this supposed to do?”

“It’s what they call ‘social media’ these days, but it’s essentially a loosely-connected network of people with common interests, and those have been around forever. These networks are just electronic instead of person-to-person or sent through the mail. We’re going use them to spread misinformation, like an old-fashioned whisper campaign, but lots quicker.”

Lilith smiled. “Whispers I understand. So this twitter facebook thing is like whispering rumors and lies?”

“Yes, but performed at the speed of light over telephone and computer networks, so you can start a rumor in Brooklyn and have it show up in Hongkong a few seconds later.”

Her smile turned into smug calculation. “Show me how to use one of these new things.”

Jackie pulled out her phone and thumbed it on, then accessed the tweets on a comparative religions channel she followed. “Here’s an example, as an introduction, an announcement from someone at Harvard Divinity School of a lecture series on medieval monastic manuscripts starting on the seventeenth. As you can see, the texts are very short by design, because they’re meant to be read on a cellphone screen, and typed in with your thumbs. In fact, there’s a hundred and forty character limit on the length, a bit more than thirty words on average, though you won’t find too many opportunities to use a word like ‘incomprehensibilities,’ so the medium encourages brevity and abbreviations, like using the characters ‘B4’ instead of ‘before,’ or ‘IDK’ for ‘I don’t know.’ Users can pick and choose what sort of tweets they see by means of ‘following’ particular topics or people, and can further select by means of what they call ‘hashtags,’ which are keywords added to the message preceded by a pound sign or octothorpe. So if you’re fascinated by all things related to Lady Gaga, an entertainer, you can search for the #ladygaga hashtag. If you’re worried about human trafficking for prostitution, you can look for the #humantrafficking hashtag, and so on. It’s sort of like wandering through an enormous cocktail party, during which one overhears snippets of conversations depending on one’s interests, so a scientist and an opera singer might attend exactly the same party, yet overhear and remember wildly different conversations, depending on whatever one paid attention to as one wandered around.”

“I presume that this ‘cocktail party’ will have claque as well as propaganda, whining sycophants and pompous know-it-alls.”

“You have it in a nutshell. There are companies paid to keep an eye on Twitter, and also to inject comments into the discussion on behalf of the people paying their salaries, the claquers you mentioned. Because the medium can be used anonymously, or under multiple pseudonyms, it attracts what they call ‘trolls’ of various sorts, your list covered most of them, except trolls with axes to grind, thieves, and beggars with their hands out.”

Lilith shrugged, unfascinated by mere details. “So what are we going to do with your modern fifth column? I still can’t see how it’s going to help us to discover the identity of the group behind these two-bit thugs they keep sending.”

“I thought that the most enticing bait would be a rumor that you’re off to foreign parts, leaving me in charge of the shop and the bar. I believe you mentioned that the Middle Eastern Convention was coming up, so that might be a good excuse.”

“Why me? Why not you off on vacation?”

“Because I think I’m far the more tempting target. Thus far, their emissaries have disappeared, so they don’t know what the situation is like on the ground, nor exactly how they were defeated, so they seem more likely to be convinced that you helped me than imagine that I could have done this on my own. They’re probably afraid of confronting you directly, so it seems more immediately profitable to have you lurking somewhere as backup for me than viceversa. If they thought I were going somewhere, they’d just follow me.”

“Leaving you as the sacrificial lamb?”

“Not exactly,” Jackie said. “In the first place, I'm more powerful than they can possibly expect, and become more dangerous with each attack on me, just as you do, by taking the life force of my assailants. In the second, I fondly hope that you'll help me to arrange a clever ambush. I’m not suicidal, but too many innocents will be harmed if they grow too desperate, since they've already killed just for practice, so it seems worth the risk — which I think is very slight — if we have a good chance of catching them with their pants down.”

Lilith nodded, then said, “Agreed. I'd like to enlist the help of Merlin as well. He's been a good friend over the years, and is powerful in his own right.”

“Okay. There's always room for one more. I think we should contact Semangelaf as well, since he may have some insight about their original orders which could explain how they might have been so easily ‘twisted’ toward evil.”

Lilith frowned. “I'll let you handle that, dear. I have no particular desire to see him, even without his churlish accomplices.”

“None-the-less, I think we both should talk to him,” Jackie said.

“You don’t actually believe that Semangelaf himself had anything to do with it, do you?” Lilith asked her, with more uncertainty than Jackie had ever seen her display.

Jackie gave the matter some thought. “No,” she said. “He was much too surprised and incredulous for it to have been an act, because he sounded stupid, and he normally takes pains to appear wise. You know how guys are…. Plus, I think he’s like Emrys/Merlin, a loner who doesn’t play well with others. Heading any sort of organization would be distasteful for him, and being a part of one nauseating, especially one whose purpose was murder. I get the impression that he sits alone in a little cell in his monastery contemplating his navel, or whatever it is monastics do.”

“Indeed.”

“In the end, he approved of my actions, and he didn’t seem to have a clue about either’s involvement, but it stretches credulity to imagine that two of the assassins just happened to be minor angels with a particular axe to grind against you, Mother. I think that they were chosen because their putative ‘mission’ was to destroy your demonic children, so it was easy to subvert them into murder, although I don't know anything about the others.”

“Well, I recognized only a few of them, but those were minor angels of about the same status as the three ‘messenger boys,’ and I imagine the others were as well, since I know most of the truly powerful. The fact that I don't know them can probably be relied on, at least as far as it goes to indicate non-celebrity, at least in the Americas and non-tropical regions. I met Maui once, and of course Pele, but stayed away from the tropics for the most part, so there are many in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and tropical Africa whom I don't know.”

Jackie shook her head, wondering to herself what it must be like to have memories stretching back so far, and felt compeled to ask, “You must have known an awful lot of people over the years, Mother, and know where an awful lot of figurative ‘bodies’ are buried. Would it be a violation of the Compact if I were to ‘discover’ previously ‘unknown’ documents that might shed some light on some historical mysteries? I wouldn't even need to take credit, since I'm not actively involved in the academic world any more, but I can't help wishing to leave behind some record for future researchers.”

She looked at her and half reached out, almost as she had when Jackie had fainted, but then shook herself slightly and said, “I don't see why not. I take it you're referring to incunabula, Wiegendrucke, and other documentary evidence more than archæological sites.”

“Yes. Ancient sites are being discovered all the time these days, with the aid of satellite imaging from space, but ancient documents are as often as not looted and snipped into attractive bits for sale to ‘collectors’ who destroy the parts they can't sell, and of course leave all provenance that might put them into jail behind.”

“Like the utterly charming and eponymous Arsinoë by that dear young girl murdered by Marc Antony on the very steps of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, for example, the works of Pythagoras the Samian, the poems of Sappho of Lesbos, Mani's Arzhang, Aristotle's second book of Poetics, about comedy, things like that?”

Jackie felt a surge of excitement that she tried to control. “Yes, things like that.”

Lilith laughed. “I might have copies of a few of them. There were many opportunities to squirrel them away over the years, and so many were going to burn when that idiot Julius Cæsar set fire to the Royal Library in Alexandria, that it didn't seem right not to rescue a few.” She paused for a little bit, then added, “Of course, with this new ‘slantwise’ travel trick you learned from your friend Dross, you must realize that you could do the same thing yourself, since the physical location of many writings was either known at the time of their destruction or can be inferred.”

Jackie's eyes went wide.

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Two:
Before the Dawn

A painter should begin every canvas
with a wash of black,
because all things in nature are dark
except where exposed by the light.
― Leonardo da Vinci

 

Jackie’s cell phone rang while she was driving into town to check up on progress for the Spring and Summer Collections at her atelier, so she pressed the button on the steering wheel to pick up. “Hello, she said to the air, Jacquelyn Leigh here. How can I help you?”

A woman’s voice said, “Unh… Jackie?”

“That’s me!” she said brightly. “This is Ruth, isn’t it?”

“Unh… Yes, it is, but how did you know?”

“I wish I could say that it was magic, but I can see your caller ID name on the heads-up display. Do you need anything? How are things going with you and Tom?”

She hesitated. “You’re the one who told Tom to call me?”

“That’s me. We met in my mother’s nightclub, and he chatted me up, nothing serious, of course, but he was lonely, a bit despondent after the untimely death of his wife, I think, and was trying to reach out for any kind of anchor point. We soon sorted it out, though. I believe he wanted to see you. Did everything turn out right?”

“Oh! It did. I don’t know what you said to him but he came right over to my apartment and just spilled out all his feelings, the sadness he’d felt since Elizabeth died, and how overwhelmed he felt with a young daughter to raise, and how he thought that I might understand, because of my own… loss. And then ….” She faltered.

“It went well, then?” Jackie laughed quietly, an intimate understanding between two women. “I thought it might. Tom really admires you, you know.”

“Oh! Yes! Very much so. He made me feel like a schoolgirl again, almost, and we just fell into bed together. It was just like we’d been waiting for each other to say the first word. Well, anyway, we’re getting married, and we both wanted to invite you, because you brought us together.”

“Of course I’ll come. When’s the happy day?”

“Soon. Quite soon, actually.” She giggled. “It turns out that Tom is quite the handsome rake, and I’m pregnant now, which is a miracle in itself, because I’d been told that I could never have children… until I met Tom, so now I’ll have two, one ready-made, so to speak, his daughter Ellen, and one of our own. Ellen’s just over the moon about it, and I had an ultrasound, of course, because of my age, so we all know that it’s a girl, and perfectly healthy, and I… we… wanted to know if you’d mind terribly if we named her after you?”

“I’d be honored, Ruth, of course, and you simply must let me do something for you in return. Do you have a gown?”

“Well, no. I just thought….”

“You’ll have to come down to the shop, then, and we’ll get you fitted out in style. I promise you, you’ll love it, and I’ll run up a gown for Ellen as well. Is she a bridesmaid or a flower girl?”

“Unh… I hadn’t thought….”

“No matter. We’ll let her decide. Tom will know where it is, since it’s just next door to La Calaca, so my mother and I share the valet parking staff. Don’t be put off by the neighborhood, though; it’s what we delicately say is ‘in the process of revitalization,’ and the people in the area are simply wonderful. In fact, many of my staff are women from the neighborhood, and very talented seamstresses.”

“You’re that Jacquelyn Leigh?”

Jackie laughed. “I don’t know which one you mean. The bank-robber? The cattle baroness?”

“The one with the eight-page spread in this month’s Vanity Fair! The woman who’s designing Princess What’sername’s gown for the Cannes film festival! And last month they had a feature about you in Harper’s Bazaar. Oh, my God! Tom thought….”

“Don’t tell me. He thought he’d met the proverbial ‘hooker with a heart of gold?’ Well, you know men and their fantasies. My mother runs a saloon, among other things, and when I drop in for a visit, I sometimes wait at the bar.” She laughed in delight. “How deliciously funny. I certainly hope he thought that I’d be way more than he could afford.”

“I hope you’re not offended. Tom said….”

“I think he may have been confused. I did notice that he became visibly… excited… while he was talking to me, but I assure you that we were talking about you, and how much he admired you. But offended? Of course not. He’s a sweet man, and very sincere, as I’m sure you know, but perhaps a bit inexperienced in such matters. It’s an honest-enough trade, though, and certainly doesn’t shock me. Fashion designers in general walk a fine line somewhere between exotic and erotic, between making a woman feel confident and strong and making her feel beautiful and sexually alluring, so at least part of my business is providing the tools whereby a woman might entice a man, so it would be hypocritical to deny that my creations are designed with both feminine and masculine desire in mind. I can’t recall, for example, anyone ever telling me that any of my outfits would be perfect for weeding their garden, or for mucking out the stables, not even cleaning the refrigerator.”

She laughed. “No, I don’t imagine you would. At least none of the designs they showed in Vanity Fair seemed appropriate for that sort of thing.”

Jackie laughed. “Believe me, the Vogue spread was much less subtle. Perhaps for the next Spring and Summer line; I might be able to do a Garden of Eden tie-in with a haut couture gardening outfit or two. The trade journalists always love to feature a little quirk that seems shocking or bizarre. In any case, please feel free to call at any time and we can arrange a showing of designs I think you might like, and of course have one of our fitters take your measurements.”

“Oh, can’t I just tell you what size I take?”

“I’m afraid not. Couture is custom made and fitted, so we’ll need very exacting measurements, plus one or more fittings to ensure that the gown will conform exactly to your body, not the average set of measurements of a thousand women of about your bra size and weight. In your case, of course, we’ll have to choose a style with a little… flexibility… in the waistline, perhaps an empire waist, if you think that style might suit you, but there are many options, and I’d have to take a good look at you….”

She seemed flustered. “Oh! Oh, no! It’s too much! I didn’t call to ask any favors….”

“Not at all, Ruth. You brought me luck that day, because it was that very day that I signed the lease on my boutique and workshop. I don’t think it’s any sort of coïncidence that an act of kindness led to something good, and you simply must allow me to thank you by making your special day as memorable as possible.”

“Well….” She was wavering, and tempted.

Jackie took her hesitation as whole-hearted agreement, having learned the art of the close by heart during her adventures in the business world. “Oh, good. You won’t be sorry, I promise you. Love, true love, is a miracle, you know, and it changes everything, so why not your gown?”

“I….”

“It’s settled, then,” she said brightly. “Are you busy right now? I know it’s Saturday, and you probably have shopping to do, but would you mind dropping by today? You could look over some of my designs and we could talk about how you see yourself, so I could get an idea about how best to flatter you and reflect your own attitude toward life.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Don’t bother with any makeup or special outfits, because I have plenty of stock on hand, so we can play with that as well, to get you in the proper mood. In fact, it’s early enough for lunch — have you eaten?”

“No, I….”

“That’s perfect, then. Can I count on you for twelve thirty, then? That’ll give you an hour, then we can have a little nosh and talk for a bit before we go look at gowns.”

There was a long silence before she said, “Yes! I’ll do it! Jackie, I’m not usually spontaneous at all, but you seem to bring out the daredevil in me.”

Jackie laughed. “Good! Life is too short for sitting around. Ruth, let’s go for a ride!”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She sounded excited, almost as if she were seventeen and going to Disney World for the first time.

“I’ll call ahead and have a table waiting. When you get to La Calaca, just tell the valet that you’re with me and he’ll direct you.”

“I feel so wicked, Jackie, like I’d fallen into the set of Roman Holiday! Like I was free to be and do anything I please.”

“But you are, my dear. Didn’t anyone tell you? Something must have gone seriously amiss; they’re supposed to hand you your crown princess tiara right along with the results of the pregnancy test.”

They both laughed, as easy and familiar with each other as if they’d gone to school with each other.

They were alone in the banquet/dining room, with a table set just for the two of them, when Ruth said, “I can’t believe you grew up with all this! It must have been so exciting being around this as a young girl.”

“It would have been, but it didn’t happen that way,” she said simply. “I grew up in Saint Mary’s Home for Girls in Manhattan, run by the New York branch of the Sisters of Charity.”

“My God, Jackie! How did that happen?”

Jackie smiled. “Not through planning, I can assure you. Through a horrendous experience crossing the border, I was separated from my mother at a very early age, too young to remember her, actually. I grew up thinking that both my parents were dead, But then, around eighteen months ago, and entirely through accident, I happened to come here with some friends and my mother instantly recognised me. I didn’t believe it at first, and then I was angry, so our relationship was… difficult… for the first few months. I thought that she was a heartless monster, while she had difficulty fully realizing that I was still alive, since she’d thought that I had died. But we’ve reconciled — more or less — and usually get along quite well now.”

“Do you know what happened? How you were separated?”

“I don’t, but she’s not really very comfortable talking about her past. I gather that there were some very hard times in the early days, so I don’t press her for answers. You know what Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’ As good advice, or perhaps consolation, that sounds appropriate for both of us. We’re both alive and well after all our troubles, both strong women, and have a lot of years ahead of us to explore our odd relationship. I’m convinced that I’m her daughter, and that’s good enough for me, although she petitioned the court to both acknowledge and claim her maternity, so I have a piece of paper to wave around if anyone ever questions it, which I doubt would ever happen. In fact, if you ever see her, you’ll see why. I’m told that we look like sisters, which I sincerely hope means that she looks very young, not the opposite. Good genes, I guess.” She mimed knocking on the table. “Knock on wood,” she said, and smiled.

“You called?” Lilith had walked up behind them.

Jackie turned to look at her. “Hi, Mom. This is Ruth, Tom’s fiancée.”

“And just in time, I see,” Lilith said, eying her very visible ‘bump,’ but then she smiled. “I’m glad to see that it all turned out well for you.”

Ruth seemed startled. “You know about Tom and I?”

“Of course, dear. He’s a valued customer of my little establishment — though he hasn’t been in lately, but I can see that he’s been… busy… in other ways.” She glanced again at Ruth’s midriff with a little smile. “I’d caught the tail end of his conversation with my daughter here when she sent him running off to you. I was very proud of how well she managed it. She’s a woman of many parts, my little girl is. If this fashionista thing ever runs its course, she’ll make a great therapist or counselor, or a bartender for that matter — I’m not sure there’s much difference some days — and perhaps a matchmaker as well. She has the gift of seeing into people’s deepest hearts.”

“Mo-o-om!” Jackie looked and sounded deeply aggrieved.

Lilith paid no mind. “Now, now, dear. Don’t be modest. It’s true.” She turned to Ruth. “I understand she’s doing your gown. You won’t be sorry. That’s part of her gift as well. She’ll make you look like your own dream of yourself, your deepest fantasy of the woman you want to be. She knows what women know, that a woman’s garments can be her holy vestments and sacred regalia — like a matador’s traje de luces, the suit of lights that symbolizes his personal devotion to an ancient code of honor and courage — that a woman’s wedding gown is the outward symbol of the inward sanctity of her essential rôle in the future of humanity, the solemn consecration of her body to the service of life itself.”

“Mother!” Her voice rose sharply. “You’ll scare her.”

Lilith gazed intently into Ruth’s eyes, who neither glanced aside nor turned away. “No, Jackie, I won’t. Ruth knows exactly what I mean. We two are older, and perhaps more wise in our age even than you. We both know well the hazards pregnancy entails for a woman past the first bloom of youth.” She reached out to take Ruth’s hand in hers. “I may not have quite my daughter’s skill at peering into hearts and souls, but I do have my own gifts; I’m something of a seer, and I promise you that all will be well with you and with your daughter. She’ll be a shining star, a bright light in a sometimes dark and dreary world. Her many accomplishments and eventual fame will make both you and Tom very proud. If you wish it, there will be a second child as well, a son, who will be both healthy and strong. Tom is a good and loyal man who will love you always and never give you cause to doubt him. Long life to you both, and always happiness. I look forward to working on your gown.” With that, she turned away, pausing only to add, “I’m Lilith del Rio. Please feel free to call upon me at need.” And then she walked straight out through a door at the back of the hall, as suddenly determined and imperious as any Queen.

She left something of a vacuum behind, an absence of her presence that was almost palpable. Jackie, who was by now somewhat inured to her ways, recovered first. “That, believe it or not, was my Mom at her most cordial and unassuming. Her last remark was one of which you should take careful note, however, because she’s given you a place among her retainers, the rough equivalent of the Order of the British Empire in the local area, and to some extent better security than a US Passport almost anywhere in the world.”

Ruth looked at her in puzzlement. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean that if you ever find yourself in any sort of serious difficulty, call here first. Someone will be along to help you as soon as possible, which can be very quick indeed.”

“But why on Earth would she do anything for me?”

“It’s difficult to explain to anyone not steeped in Old World traditions, but she’s the major landowner and employer in this part of town, La Patrona, in the local parlance, and as such the residents both expect and receive special attention and regard for their welfare.”

“What? Like Marlon Brando in The Godfather?”

“Nothing quite so grand or dangerous, and certainly no signet ring to kneel before and kiss, as if she were the Pope or something, but the criminals depicted in the movies were more or less modeled after the same old-fashioned notions of mutual obligation and respect she follows in her daily life. For you, it’s more like having been a member of one of the larger sororities, like Alpha Delta Pi, the Adelphians. If you want someone ‘taken for a ride,’ you’ll have to arrange that on your own, but if you ever get really ill, or find yourself in any situation in which you don’t know which way to turn, she, or more likely one of her lawyers, will find a way to help you if you ask for her assistance. A doctor specializing in the disease will be found, influential people will be contacted, and the path before you made easier, because a ‘sorority sister’ will know someone, a favor will be called in, or something you never thought of will be possible, and there will be someone available who can stand by you.”

She blinked. “But why would she do that? I’ve never done anything for her.”

Jackie shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Probably the most important is that I took an interest in you and Tom, so she may well regard you as a ‘friend of the family,’ or something like it. Possibly because she took a liking to you as well; she doesn’t read people’s futures as a rule — not for fun anyway — so it’s clear that she took an interest in you too.” Jackie smiled at her. “Maybe she just felt like it. You’re having lunch in her restaurant, and perhaps she just thought that you looked interesting.” She shrugged, content to let it remain a mystery. “It’s been known to happen. She’s an extremely well-connected woman, and doesn’t hesitate to help her friends, those she’s taken a liking to, if she becomes aware of any difficulty in their lives. If she can smooth the way, or knows someone who can — and she almost always does — she’ll do it without a moment’s hesitation.”

Ruth still seemed puzzled, but said, “Okay. I feel a bit like I’ve crossed the border into Old Mexico or something, but I guess I’m actually in a sort of transplanted Mexico, in some ways at least. I’ve never been in this part of town before, except to drive through on the main street, so I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that things are different here.”

“Not quite Mexico,” Jackie said, “but perhaps a peculiarly American combination of two cultures, one from Meso-America, and a US culture that blends many cultures into one. Most large cities in the USA have a ‘Chinatown,’ for example; many have an Italian or Irish quarter as well, and New York City has areas in which you’d swear that you were somewhere in an Eastern European Jewish Schtetl from a hundred years ago, but it’s all part of the American melting pot.”

“True. I was in California years ago, traveling up the coast from LA, and we ran into a sort of Danish town named Solvang. Then, when we got to San Francisco, we wound up in what looked almost like Russia, with Russian-language signs on the shops and Orthodox churches with those onion-shaped domes, like you see in tourist pictures of Moscow.”

“Cool!” Jackie had always wanted to visit California, ever since seeing lots of Perry Mason and The Streets of San Francisco reruns on TV in the orphanage. Jackie had wanted to watch Beverly Hills, 90210, and Baywatch, but the Sisters hadn’t approved of either show, so it was rare when the girls had managed to catch many modern shows at all. The Sisters had never had cable either, so the TV in the social hall was dependent on an ordinary set of ‘rabbit ears’ on top of the TV, which they never managed to get aimed well enough to get more than a slightly snowy picture. Jackie hadn’t cared, since that was all she knew, and the difficulty seeing just made California seem more mysterious, like the cloudy future seen in a crystal ball. “What was California like? Do people really run around nude on all the beaches, like they say?”

Ruth laughed. “Not that we saw, but the beaches were spectacular in other ways. The waves seemed so much bigger than they on our coast. We went to one beach that I had to leave within a few minutes, because you could feel the surf crashing on the sand so powerfully that it made the sand shake, and it was so noisy that it scared me.”

Jackie could hardly imagine what it must have been like, but set the thought aside. “Enough worrying about the larger world, what would you like to eat?”

“Just a salad, I think, if you’ll be taking measurements, and maybe a glass of tea?”

“Sounds good to me. Wait here for a bit, and I’ll go get the two of us spinach salads and a nice glass tea.”

After lunch, they both walked back to the empty kitchen to bus their own dishes, and then Jackie gave Ruth the nickel tour, starting with the ladies room. Ruth was suitably impressed. What really impressed her, though, was how big the place was.

“From the outside,” she enthused, “this place looks barely big enough to be a hole-in-the-wall bar, but once you walk in it’s ritzy enough to be one of those trendy nightclubs in Greenwich Village. I’m surprised they don’t have buses bringing tourists in just for the décor.”

“Yeah, what you see from the front façade is mostly the entry and the first bit of the bar, and the barfront is deliberately ‘staged’ architecturally to give the impression that it’s the front of a separate building, but the place actually extends partially across the back of what looks like the two separate buildings on either side. My mother explained it to me once as a form of marketing; it invites people in because it looks quiet and unassuming. If it were too imposing, a lot of the local people might feel as if they wouldn’t be welcome, but if it were too small, it wouldn’t attract enough of a crowd to make it profitable. The whole place is carefully-designed to look just a little shabby and unkempt as well, just to make sure that everyone feels welcome to walk in just as they are, without having to ‘dress up’ or put on any sort of false front. We do have valet off-street parking, so people feel safe leaving their cars, but there’s no one at the door making sure that you’re pretty enough, or rich enough, to be allowed past a ‘velvet rope’ nor is there a team of bouncers waiting before you get in.”

As they walked past the stage, Ruth asked, “What sort of shows do they put on here? The stage is large enough for a rock band, or a modest dance recital.”

Jackie smiled at Ruth’s choice of words. “Well, my mother’s an amazing dancer; you ought to see her show some weekend evening. She’ll make you feel powerful and proud to be a woman; I’ll guarantee it, but I can also guarantee that many of the men in the audience will have a slightly different reaction.” She winked and smiled knowingly. “There’s something sensual and primal about her dances, as if they could have been performed in ancient Egypt, or Babylon.” She gestured toward the sliding wall that currently separated the stage floor from the dance hall. “The room next door has a dance floor, and the wall between them can be opened up to make one huge space, so it’s a nice dance club as well, for either a live band or a deejay. It’s very popular with the college crowd, at least the trendy set, but manages to attract the locals as well.”

“I can well understand that at least. When you look at the astounding realism of the decorations, it’s just astounding. It looks almost like a museum display.”

“They are nice, aren’t they? They required quite a bit of time spent researching in Mexico, deep in the Inca and Aztec homelands, to fully capture their otherworldly spirit.” She pointed to one of the many representations of La Calalca, the skeletal spirit of rebirth and joy, at least one of which appeared on the wall of every room. “That’s ‘La Catrina,’ the Aztec Goddess Mictecacihuatl, Mistress of the Afterlife, but you’ll notice that she’s happy, because all the dead are happy in the ancient belief, since death is just a way station on the soul’s spiritual journey toward rebirth. The Greeks knew her as Persephone, the consort of Hades, the Goddess of Spring and Making All Things New Again, a central figure in the Eleusinian Mysteries, along with her mother Demeter, Goddess of the Earth, Agriculture, Harvest, and Forests, everything living, in fact, that draws life from the Sun, the in-dwelling Spirit of the Divine, in Jewish terms the Shekhinah, the Presence of God in Creation, the Sabbath Queen and Bride, Shabbat Hamalka.”

“Really? But….”

“Sometimes, Ruth, when looking at spiritual reality, you have to squinch up your eyes a bit and look askance, like trying to see the faintest stars in a dark sky. God has never abandoned any of Her children, and is manifest to all, or as much of Her as we can understand, each in our own manner. ‘In the very beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the dark waters, fluttering Her wings like a mother bird protects her chicks from the fiery heat of the desert with a cooling breeze.’ How much more have we fragile creatures needed protection from the deadly atomic fires of our Sun, whose fierce radiation would destroy all life, even at this distance, would strip away from Earth the very air we breathe, were it not safely tamed by the invisible wings of the electromagnetic field that cradles us secure, the gift of Promethea, first Titan, first Goddess among the Gods, who gave us fire, but safely controlled — the Sun’s fire transformed by photosynthesis into leaves and food and twigs and wood, eventually into coal, into oil and natural gas — by secreting a molten core of iron beneath us that generates a gentle magnetic field, our true compass pointing toward the origin of life, the miraculous little island worlds of calm shelter drifting safe within the deadly maelstroms of poisonous gas and radiation that comprise the Universe at large.”

Ruth was looking a little overwhelmed. “Uhmmm….”

Jackie laughed. “Did I ever tell you that I have a PhD in Comparative Religions and Mythologies? Sometime I slip into my lecture hall mode.”

“Well, it seems to have escaped Tom’s notice,” she glanced at Jackie’s figure with shrewd appraisal, “but I can easily understand why. Men are easily stunned by a lady with a ‘classy chassis.’ I can see how you could keep a seminar focused, though, even without ‘visual aids.’ Just listening to you it all seemed so real, and fascinating, almost as if you’d seen it all in person. Of course, I’ve seen some of the Hubble images, so those pictures came readily to mind when you talked about the violence of the Universe out there.” She waved one hand vaguely toward the sky above them, or where the sky would be if they were outside.

Jackie smiled. “ ‘The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself,’ all the stuff that dreams are made of, as Sam Spade once said in The Maltese Falcon.”

Ruth laughed. “Did he really say all that?”

“Well, the last part, anyway. The introduction undoubtedly slipped his mind. He was a man of few words.”

Ruth raised one eyebrow. “So the hard-boiled private dick was a philosopher. Who knew?”

Jackie grinned, caught out in her joke, but willing to go one more round as they walked out the door of the bar, across the drive, and then turned right toward the entry to her boutique. “I think anyone who truly faces death becomes a philosopher eventually, because life is a game played in deadly earnest, and you have to keep your hole card in mind.”

Showing off her boutique and the designs took a while, of course, since Ruth wanted to see everything, not just the gowns, so it was dark by the time they were finishing up. Ruth had phoned Tom so he wouldn’t worry, and they’d had a light supper delivered from the restaurant, which was fully-staffed in the late afternoon and evenings.

Jackie brought out her pièce de résistance — among her wedding gowns at least — the one she’d been saving for last. “I think you’ll especially like this one, Ruth. It’s my personal ace in the hole for pregnant brides.” Jackie was holding up a delicately creamy white silk gown with empire waist, the skirts silk tulle net over satin, with an embroidered satin sleeveless bodice featuring tiny crystal beading highlighting the pattern of the embroidery. “There are optional sleeves available in any length,” she said, “if you prefer a more demure look, a detachable chapel train if you want one, and the skirts themselves can be adjusted to any length desired. I think you’d look fabulous in it just as it is.” They were both standing in front of a large floor-to-ceiling mirror in the fitting room, and Jackie had the gown draped in front of Ruth, who was in a slip and her underwear. Jackie was right, of course, the subtle gradations of very slightly creamy white were perfect against Ruth’s light olive skin, green eyes, and jet-black hair with soft curls. As she moved slightly, the glint of the lights on the crystals sparkled randomly, which seemed to amplify and define the curves of her bosom and waist with an almost hypnotic allure.

Ruth was captivated by her own reflection. “I can hardly believe it’s me,” she said. “I’m so beautiful.”

“No more beautiful, I think, than Tom already knows.” Jackie adjusted the drape of the skirt slightly on one side. “I think I’d like to flare the skirt a few inches more at the bottom, but that’s the only change I’d make, unless you’d like a bit more coverage over your décolletage, of course.”

“No, you’re right. A little more flare would help to minimize my hips a bit, but the rest is perfect.” She spun slightly to see more of the sides.

“Would you like to fold out the three-way mirrors and take a better look?” Jackie asked. “In fact, why don’t we put you into the dress and take a proper look?”

She was hesitant. “I…. It looks so expensive….”

Jackie shook her head and laid a hand on her arm. “Ruth, it’s my treat, and I can well afford it, since I made it, so all it really costs is the price of the fabric and findings. This isn’t like me going out and buying you a dress off the rack from Saks Fifth Avenue. You’re getting the work of my own two hands, not the money from my pocketbook. If one of your woman friends wanted to make your wedding cake, would you refuse because a similar cake might be quite expensive if you went out and purchased it from a caterer?”

She looked doubtful. “Well, no, I suppose not….”

Jackie grinned and said, “It’s settled then. You do your job, which is to be as happy as possible on your special day, and I’ll do mine, making the gown as lovely as possible, something you can pass down to your daughter, perhaps, and treasure as a keepsake and memory.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve talked me into it.”

“Good! Let’s get you suited up, then. Just let me get my tape, chalk, and pincushion.” She went to the desk at the far end of the fitting room and picked up a little bucket of the tools of her trade, then walked back and helped Ruth into the gown. “Two people would be easier, but we’ll have to make do with just me, I’m afraid.” As she’d expected, the gown was a little loose, so she quickly pinched the fabric to the proper fit and made her marks, then pinned it for the tryout.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, “I’ll have you step up on the dais so I can judge the hem properly.” Jackie helped her to gather up the skirts of the dress to make it easier to climb the broad steps to the dais, which was fairly large in diameter and had two sturdy handrails at both sides of the stair and across the rear of the platform, the better to accomodate gowns with full skirts and crinolines, and simultaneously to ensure the safety of brides who weren’t used to not being able to see their own feet. “Watch your step up there, Ruth.”

“I’m fine, Jackie. I still ski sometimes, during the season, so I have a pretty good sense of balance and a head for heights.”

“I thought you looked fit,” Jackie said. “That’s good. Clothes always hang better on a good frame.” She quickly pinned up the hem slightly at the rear, since Ruth didn’t need much extra cloth for her derrière.

Ruth said, from above her head, “Jackie, this dress is just too wonderful for words.”

“Thank you, Ruth. I aim to please, as Terra Naomi once said.”

“Well, you haven’t missed the mark yet that I can see.”

“So, Ruth, are you committed to the dress? Would you like to see more?”

“Oh no,” she said laughing. “This one is completely amazing enough for me. I just love it. My only problem is poor Tom. After seeing your clothes, I may become addicted to them. We’ll have to get a bigger apartment, with more closets.”

“A girl can never have too many closets,” Jackie said. “I have to have a warehouse to hold all mine.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. The ones here in the shop are just the current models. I have archives of all my past work as well. There’s a warehouse right behind the shop where I have my atelier and climate-controlled storage for all my fashions from past seasons.”

Ruth laughed with delight. “I’m so glad to hear that you have a ‘back of the closet’ too. Tom teases me about the things I have in mine.”

“Don’t tell me, you still have your outfit for almost every special occasion, indeed, almost everything that holds a memory, because you can’t bear to see it gone.”

“That’s me,” she said. “Those outfits mark every important occasion in my life; the thought of tossing them into a donation bag makes me ill.”

“I understand completely, Ruth, and envy you. Growing up, I never really had anything to call my own, because the Sisters would ‘encourage’ us to give the clothes and toys we’d ‘outgrown,’ to the younger children. I always felt like I was just renting stuff that I’d have to give back when the rental period was over. I’ve talked to hundreds of women who have favorite childhood dolls proudly displayed on a shelf somewhere, or the baby clothes their mothers had saved for them, or some sweet souvenir of a precious moment in their lives. Whatever it is, I ain’t got it, because all my ‘stuff’ went to someone else as soon as I’d turned my back for a moment. The only things I had for my very own were a cheap plastic rosary and a small collection of holy cards which I threw away the minute they tossed me out on the street at age eighteen, the very day I magically became an adult.”

“I’m so sorry, Jackie.”

Jackie could feel the waves of sympathy and dismay emanating from Ruth and shook them off, suddenly feeling like she’d become her own mother. “It’s okay, Ruth. You know what they say, the best way to ensure that your children turn into either drunken bums or wildly successful adults is to give them a miserable childhood. I was lucky, because sometimes the kids do both.”

“They may say that, Jackie, but it’s not a good recommendation for essential poverty and neglect. Children need love and security, and it’s obvious that the place you were incarcerated in wasn’t the sort of situation you’d wish on an enemy, much less a friend.”

“Well, to be perfectly fair, as a ‘foundling,’ I was a ‘difficult placement,’ or they would have tried to adopt me out almost immediately, but their hands were tied, I think, because of uncertainty about who I was and where my parents were, if any. By the time they’d gone through all the legal steps necessary to have a court order me released for adoption, I’d missed the ‘magic window’ of cuteness that most prospective adoptive parents are looking for, and was by then a sullen young girl of seven. But I had three square meals a day, a good education, and caregivers who were at least not directly abusive, just dispassionate, for the most part, and trying to take the ‘wider view of things,’ making up in piety what they lacked in the impulse toward motherhood. It could easily have been much worse. Many young girls in my position are targets of abuse by predators, so I count myself fairly lucky, taking all in all.”

“Well, it makes me feel like I’m the lucky one just hearing about it. I had two parents who loved me dearly, a husband who loved me without measure, and now another man who’s given me the child I’d been denied, twice now, and another to come if your mother’s prediction is accurate. I feel like that old song by Sylvia Sammons, the blind singer, ‘What more can life bring?’ It’s strange, because I didn’t feel that way for a while, but then it all changed again, and everything was all right.”

Jackie gave her a smile and a wink. “I’d never bet against my mother, although she did imply that you had a choice about the boy. I know what you mean, though. Frank told me, not so very long ago, that before we two met, we’d both lived pretty solitary lives. I think he said ‘miserable,’ actually. But our falling in love was all tied up with meeting my mother, as if there were loose threads in both our lives, and then they started weaving themselves together into something much more wonderful than I’d ever imagined was possible. Without my strange history, Frank and I would never have met, and I’d be a different woman. My mother even remarked on it one day, ‘We’re each of us a product of our lives,’ she said, when I expressed regret about our complicated past, and I had eventually to agree. Wishing to change one’s past is something like a suicidal ideation, because our pasts are an integral part of who we really are, the collection of experiences and skills and decisions that describe our real selves. As my mother wisely observed, without my experiences, I wouldn’t be me.”

Ruth thought about that for a while before she nodded and agreed. “I suppose you’re right. Years ago, I talked to a Zen monk about the notion of reïncarnation, and he told me that it really doesn’t matter; it’s just as way of looking at things as part of a continuous process. In the final analysis, he said, there’s no difference between saying that when you die, your ‘soul’ will be reborn in another body, but you’ll have no memory of any former life, and saying that when you die, another baby will be born, and life itself goes on. There’s a midrash that says that every Jew who ever lived, and every Jew who will will live in the future, stood at Mount Sinai and received the Covenant from God, even converts to Judaism, and many Jews believe that this may refer to reïncarnation, or at least the existence of an eternal soul. Others, of course, believe that it’s a metaphor for something else entirely. Judaism has never much gone in for dogma, and actually encourages us to argue even with God, or at least what we conceive of as God, because we each have a different experience of the Divine, and who’s to say which merely human perception of the Infinite is the real version, since we can only see a tiny part, and even that imperfectly. There’s a saying about that, ‘Two Jews, three opinions,’ although of course sometimes it’s four.” Her eyes sparkled with good humor as she smiled. “On the other hand,” she began to say, before they both burst into spontaneous laughter.

Since Jackie had already given Ruth a tour of the bar and restaurant, she was easily persuaded to show her the atelier as well, starting with the massive iron fire door she’d had constructed to join the warehouse building to the building of which the boutique formed a largish portion. It gave the impression of local antiquity, at least a hundred years or more, although in fact it had been created to order by an artisanal foundry in the neighborhood. Both buildings were old, so Jackie didn’t want a jarring contrast between them at their interface, and the door itself was a focal point of the back showroom and cutting studio, a beautiful work of the ironsmith’s art, with a welded and hammered stylized cherry tree surrounded by an ornate frame with exquisite detail and leafy flourishes, surmounted by the original name, The Kirschbaum Building, from when buildings had names instead of postal numbers, inset into its own subframe, and with the date of the building’s erection proudly displayed beneath the roots of the tree, as well as the name of the architect on the lefthand side, and the name of the ironsmith on the right, as well as the actual date of the door’s creation in smaller lettering. It had been a slight extravagance, but had been written up in one of the regional architectural journals as a model of sensitive restoral of an historic building, so it all worked out in terms of publicity. Besides that, it was pretty, with the ironwork acid-stained to an almost jet black and polished to a fine shine.

They were out on the shop floor and Jackie was explaining how the cutting table worked when there was a noise of breaking glass from the back of the atelier, from a corner that the lights didn’t touch, and the figure of a man emerged from the darkness. He was carrying a bloody machete, clothed in bloody overalls, and wearing a white hockey mask, like a macabre goalie. Suddenly, he lunged towards them.

Ruth screamed.

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Three:
World Enough and Time

They had behind them, to my mind,
the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams,
of phrases spoken in nightmares….
 ― Joseph Conrad,The Heart of Darkness (1902)

 

Jackie immediately took Ruth’s arm and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Ruth, this is just a childish prank by a stupid man. He didn’t really mean to frighten a pregnant woman; he’s just clueless, as usual.” Then she turned to the menacing figure and said calmly, “Tris, you owe this lady an apology; she’s an innocent who has no part in whatever puerile grudge you harbor against either my mother or myself. Allow me to introduce Ruth Bernstein, my friend Tom Ackroyd’s lovely fiancée. Ruth looked at him, still fearful, but somewhat reassured by Jackie’s calm demeanor.

To his credit, he whipped off his mask instantly, but lacked either the sang froid or savoir faire to either conceal his astonishment or make the appropriate apology to Ruth. “How did you know it was me?” Then his outrage came to the fore. “Stupid?! How dare you!”

“Tris, Tris, Tris,” Jackie tched three times, “you left far too many sloppy clues, of course, almost as sloppy as your grammar. You’re obviously past your prime, having failed to match wits with real women lately, and this is a violation of the Compact.”

“What!?” he sputtered, a bad sign. “It’s only a simple crime!”

“Not, I’m afraid,” a distinctly masculine voice spoke from the dark shadows of the doorway to the fashion storage vaults, and then a tall, sombre, man walked out wearing a simple black business suit, but with a black shirt and white clerical collar that belied his powerful physique, “not when you’ve entered a building very well-protected by a state-of-the-art burglar alarm system with what might seem to be murderous intent, and have been caught on hidden video up to your nasty little tricks. You didn’t trip the alarm, of course — a master thief like you wouldn’t be so silly — but you didn’t bother to make sure that it hadn’t been tripped already.”

“Ruth Bernstein,” Jackie made the introductions, “this is Father Sam Ngelaf, a Roman Catholic Priest, but he used to be an Orthodox Rabbi, and I think is either undergoing a crisis of faith even as we speak or will be in a few moments, so may well be a Rabbi again quite soon. In any case, when I knew you’d be coming by, I asked him to drop in, because I knew that he’d have unique insights in helping you and Tom with planning your coming nuptials.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” Ruth said, visibly relieved to find a helpful man nearby, especially one so visibly fit and unperturbed. “We’ve been having trouble finding someone local who was willing to officiate at an interfaith ceremony!”

“I thought you might,” he said. “The pathetic fellow with the dangling… mask… is Tris Magister, a petty thief and con man, so don’t worry about him at all; the police are already on their way.”

“Pathetic? Petty? Police!?” Tris scoffed. “They can’t touch me! I haven’t committed any crime yet.”

“I’m afraid, Tris, that my lovely daughter may have used the term ‘police’ in the poetic sense, but you’ve used the term ‘crime’ rather loosely as well, so I’m sure you’ll forgive us any legal imprecision.” Lilith stepped out from behind the same doorway Jackie and Ruth had used to enter the warehouse space.

“Lilith!” His composure slipped to the point that he blanched a deathly grey. “But you were gone! I saw you leave the building!”

“I’m so terribly sorry, Tris,” Lilith said smiling, surprisingly pleasant, for her at least, “if you had that impression, but there’s no fool like an old fool, is there? I’ve a bone to pick with you,” she said even more pleasantly, almost beaming in friendly bonhomie.

“Ruth,” Jackie intervened with no particular hurry, “why don’t you let Father Sam, or Rabbi Samuel — whatever he’s calling himself these days — take you through to my vaults so you can start looking over my wedding collections for some ideas about your bridesmaids and the decorations? My mother and I will wait with Tris for the authorities to come dispose of him, but we’ll both be in directly.”

“Are you sure? Will you two be alright?” she asked.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Lilith said. “Tris will be no trouble at all, now he’s caught fair and square. He’s always been a bit of a cowardly custard, all talk and no action, if you know what I mean. He has a lovely tenor, though, and will make a nice addition to the prison choir. You two run along and we’ll be fine for just a minute or two.” They both waved gaily as Sam ushered her through the door that led toward Jackie’s vaults. When he shut the door, they turned as one to Hermes.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Hermes,” Jackie said, “what with murdering innocent angels and other mischief. You do realize that you’ll have to be punished.”

He laughed, a cynical snarl of a laugh, but a fairly good attempt at making light of them both. “I’d like to see you try, a failed Goddess and a upstart Cupid! Pathetic, the pair of you.”

Jackie said, “I’m afraid you’re laboring under a misapprehension, quite literally, because I’ve apprehended you, Hermes.” She sank her ætheric claws into his soul, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she did so.

He grunted, “Hnnnh!” but couldn’t speak. He began to struggle, but the more he exerted himself the more energy he fed to Jackie, so his struggles were useless, although Jackie was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying them. He tasted… aged, with an acerbic piquancy that offset the complex flavor of his essence, almost like a very strong brie. His hatred of her, and of her mother, was pungent enough almost to bring tears to her eyes, but the sheer power of his ancient soul made up for it, like an undiluted cask-strength single malt whiskey, the spirits of which can bring a flush of heat to the skin, as well as a burn to the throat, even as it begins the process of intoxication.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Jackie said, mocking his efforts to speak or escape. “Cat got your tongue? No, really, it was simple to discover your childish schemes almost as soon as I took a few moments to think about the problem. I constructed what they call a psychological profile in the detective business, a little précis of your personality: arrogant — I almost had you there already — improvisational, contemptuous of excessive planning, misogynistic, ruthless…. Well, I won’t bore you with the tedious details. In the end, it was a very short list of suspects, and your name led the list, because you’d had a childish need to flaunt your pathetic ‘charms’ to me in particular, and dick-wagging is rarely an appropriate method of endearing yourself to women. Once I knew that it was you, it was trivial to track you down, so your little brainwashing Stalag is toast now, and all the inmates and their jailers safely grasped in my capacious hands.” She loosened her grip slightly, but he was so weak by now that his struggles were still futile. Jackie began to feel a bit like a cat with a mouse, fascinated by her prey, despite a certain distaste for her own cruelty.

“What my daughter is trying to say, dear, quite delicately, is that she’s the greatest Succubus raised in this millennium, quite possibly in this age of the world — excepting me, of course — and that she has you by the balls.”

“But she’s just a stupid cupid!” he managed to gasp out, writhing in agony.

“And who else but a cupid is capable of taming the fiercest and most rapacious lust?” Lilith asked reasonably. “Who else can insinuate herself into the proudest heart and lay it low? What’s more tender and humble than mere love, and yet so powerful that one might die of it?” Lilith sneered at him. “We’re both cupids, you silly twit, it’s just that some of us are a bit more saccharine about it than others. I’ve tried to cure her of it, but she will persist. I consider myself lucky that she doesn’t dot the ‘i’ in her name with a tiny heart.”

Jackie smiled, because she’d had an almost irresistible impulse to do just that when she’d first started signing her new name, but had restrained herself, even then, thinking of her future in academia. “And I’m afraid you won’t be singing tenor in the choir for a good long time, Hermes,” Jackie added, “because I have other plans for you.”

“You can’t! My followers! It’s a violation of….”

“…The Compact?” Jackie asked sweetly. “You’re not protected by the Compact, Hermes, because you’ve flouted its strictures and flagrantly violated even its spirit, so in fact your name is somewhat prophetic, in a way, a mere rock by the side of the road, your own pathetic monument to yourself. I’d suggest that you take time — and you’ll have beaucoup leisure to meditate, if you could, at length — to think upon my sister Jane, who was murdered by one of your proxies, but it would be a waste of breath, since your memory will be going the way of your potency in just a second, so let’s just consider this little taunt a last little bit of ‘gotcha!’ from the world’s most vicious ‘ball-busting’ bitch.” She tightened her grip, letting him feel her claws again for just a second. “Oh, and you might spend a few seconds ruing the fact that your utter failure to excuse yourself to Ruth has exposed you to the full measure of my wrath without the slightest temptation toward mercy, so let your last regret be that you didn’t try to talk your way out of this, you silver-tongued devil, you.” She gripped him more firmly then, so he struggled, gasping, vainly twisting in her grasp as she toyed with him before her power pierced through his heart and soul, before she ripped away every vestige of arrogance, of pride, of happiness, of desire, of whatever masculine power he possessed, taking it for her own, and then paused to let him feel his own final despair before she destroyed whatever memory and sense of self were left behind.

When she held his naked soul in her hand, she reached up with the other and then inserted that tiny speck — oh, so delicately — into a random diamond she’d plucked from the air. “Now we have a matched set, Mother, the puppets and their puppet-master — we could make a necklace, perhaps a tiara — and Jane has her full measure of vengeance. I’m not sure what to do with them all, though. I could send him to join Sanvi and Sansanvi, perhaps, since I don’t think this particular soul is worth saving, but what would that make me? I’m not at all sorry about Sanvi, nor even Sansanvi, but those situations were more or less forced upon me, and in the end I did what I had to do to survive. This would be much more like revenge, or at least an execution. I have a sort of inchoate feeling that I ought to try to salvage the larger group of angels he’d subverted, but I’m not sure where to begin, since they weren’t exactly innocent victims, but rather predisposed to hatred and violence. He just took a group of ‘rotten apples’ and deliberately set out to exacerbate their antisocial attitudes and behaviors. I suppose it might be possible to try to undo their specific conditioning, but what would be the point? I’m not sure it’s really possible to rehabilitate a mind so deliberately twisted into murderous sadism, if they had a taste for it to begin with.”

“Why don’t you let me handle it, dear? I’ve had both the high justice and the low for so long that the mantle rests more easily on my shoulders. I’ll sort them out, and see if any are worth saving, but please don’t think that your hand wasn’t forced by Hermes, since he would have attempted to kill you, or someone, until he succeeded.”

“It’s alright by me, Mother. I’ll be glad to be rid of them.” She smiled grimly. “Although not necessarily in the same sense that Henry II wished to be rid of that troublesome priest.” She took a largish handful of diamonds from her foxy pocket and handed them over.

Lilith took them carelessly. “Think nothing of it, dear. I’ll handle the matter with dispatch and all due consideration, but I have to say, quite frankly, that I admire how busy you’ve been.”

“Thank you, Mother. I won’t trouble you to account for any of them.”

“I understand, dear. They’re already forgotten. I’ll send a few more diamonds by courier, to replace these, and perhaps a few more besides, since you seem to be going through them rapidly, not that I blame you in the slightest. Would that you burned them by the bushel basket if you could but give me a handful of these tinned crêtins in return.”

Jackie nodded in acknowledgement, then took out Jane’s green diamond and gazed at it, by now a habit whenever she was feeling contemplative or morose. “I think it’s time, Mother. I really think Jane would prefer being an only child, especially a first child.” She cradled the stone in the palm of her hand, feeling its warmth, the faint whisper of Jane that radiated from the core of it.

“I miss her too,” Lilith said. “It would be nice to hear the patter of tiny feet around the house, especially if I don’t have to change the diapers.” She smiled.

Jackie put the stone away and laughed. “We’ll make Frank do it. He’s working at home these days.”

“It’s your choice, dear. Shall we go in? We still have a wedding to plan.”

“We shall, and Mother….”

“Yes?”

“Give the poor schmuck a break, will you? He’s been in love with you for at least ten thousand years.”

“Who?” Lilith asked haughtily.

“Rāmin, Tristram, Sam, the guy whose fancy sword you instantly recognized after nearly a millennium.”

“Well, I have a very good memory!” she said defensively.

“So do I, Mother, so don’t tick me off.” Jackie had her admonitory glare down pat, since she’d learned it from her mother, and was now returning it.

Her mother was immune. “Well, I might talk to him, just to say hello.”

“You do that, Mother. As you yourself so recently admitted, we’re all of us cupids. We can reward as easily as we can punish. You’ve seen my dark side; so please show just a little more of your alternate profile. You’re quite beautiful, you know, and I’m sure that beauty extends far below the surface. Don’t let his agony of devotion to what he saw as his ancient duty blind you to the present reality of his love. Isn’t a thousand years of penitence enough?”

“We’ll see…,” she said as primly as Carrie Nation marching her stately way toward a hatchetation, but taller.

Jackie rolled her eyes.

“Oh, hello, Jackie,” he said, then went a little pale when he saw that Lilith had followed her into the room. “I… unh, I was just explaining that I’d be glad to perform the service at any venue of their choice, and that they were free to write their own vows, of course, but that the rules of my order — although tolerant of interfaith marriage per se — couldn’t countenance open displays of religious… unh… symbolism… of… unh….”

“Hi, Father Sam,” Jackie said cheerily, blithely ignoring his discomfiture. “I was sure you two could work things out somehow. I don’t suppose you need any introduction to my mother, since I believe you know each other very well.”

Lilith snorted. “In his dreams, perhaps.”

Ruth was still wandering through the racks of outfits from last season, having moved beyond wedding regalia of various sorts and on into seasonal items, oohing and ahing from time to time when she saw something that tickled her fancy, but was otherwise oblivious to their entry, completely focused on a self-paced private showing — or viewing, at least — of Jackie’s entire collection for the past three seasons, including some that never made it to the runway.

“Now, Mother. Be nice,” Jackie said. “We’re here helping to plan a joyous celebration for Ruth and her fiancée, not to rehash old misunderstandings. Let bygones be bygones, as the saying goes….”

“Bygones!” Lilith restrained herself to a quiet shriek, if not entirely sotto voce. “After what he….”

“Now, Mother,” she began…

…when Semangelaf interrupted, “Lilith, leave the girl alone. She’s only trying to help.” Then he turned toward Jackie. “Jackie, you’re meddling in the personal lives of your elders, which is unbecoming at any age. Please credit us with the wisdom to handle our own private affairs and….”

“Oh, please!” Jackie scoffed. “As if! That’s why you’ve both managed a perfect snit for years now. As my mother so very wisely pointed out not so very long ago, I grew up with Mister Rogers and his neighborhood, with Sesame Street, and bookstores with more space devoted to pop-psychology ‘self-help’ books than to science, religion, and/or history combined. Introspection is our collective hobby these days; even hard-hearted businessmen are studying The Art of War and The Book of Five Rings to get in touch with their ‘inner oriental philosopher and warrior.’ You grew up when figurative two-year-olds with knives made every important decision, not that we don’t have legislatures filled to the brim with more than enough of our own. Get over yourselves! Your tragic hero schtick is so last week, Sam, and you, Mother, have carried on the ‘woman scorned’ drama queen act long past its shelf life.”

Lilith was furious by then, and said, “Jackie! Just….”

Jackie whirled toward her. “Shut up, Mom! Just listen!” Then she twisted her head back toward Sam, while her mother was only temporarily at a loss. “Sam, it’s time to grow a pair. I’m only going to do this once, so start talking now.”

Father Sam only hesitated for the barest moment before he said, all in a rush, “Lilith, my dearest love and heart’s desire, I’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years, but never having mustered the courage to defy conventions, to set aside my own sworn duty and act on my own to ensure your happiness was the stupidest. ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.’ ” He reached for her and, throwing caution to the winds, pulled her into his arms.

She screamed, but it sounded less like a protest than the howl of a Bengal tigress in heat, and then she had her own arms around him, kissing him, her hands clawing at his clothes, pulling out his shirttails, popping the buttons off his shirt by the simple expedient of ripping open the placket with both hands as she lay suspended in his arms, then shredding the sleeves with her nails as he carried her out the door.

“Well, Jackie,” Ruth observed dryly. “ I don’t know all that much about Catholicism, but it looked to me like there’s his vow of perpetual celibacy shot all to Hell and gone. I guess we can have the chuppah after all.”

Jackie took her time talking Ruth through the various options she had available. Despite having faced down a marauding gang of angels armed with deadly swords, and even a minor God, the thought of catching her mother in flagrante somewhere out in the workshop terrified her. Ruth, of course, had to go and ruin it.

“What do you suppose they’re doing out there?” she asked. “Do you think they just left and went off somewhere? Or are they still here?”

Jackie closed her eyes. “I so don’t want to know, Ruth.”

Ruth looked at her with shrewd appraisal. “Let me guess, you and your mother have never had ‘the talk’, then?”

Jackie was mortified. “Oddly enough, the subject hasn’t come up. I was raised by nuns, Ruth, so I’ve had zero dispassionate advice other than the very generic state-mandated sex-education class, combined with the repeated exhortation not to even think about applying my new knowledge in any practical way or I’d go straight to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect Two Hundred Dollars. It’s not as if I’m stupid, Ruth. I’ve read more books about it than you can shake a stick at, so I know how everything is supposed to work, and I’ve been practicing with Frank — he’s my boyfriend/fiancée — but I haven’t exactly done it yet.”

“What do you mean by ‘practicing,’ exactly,” she asked with a certain skepticism.

Jackie hesitated only for a moment, because she had nothing to hide about this, at least. “Well, we ‘pet…’ a little. maybe a lot, and I’ve been pleasing him orally, but I have a… condition, a sort of medical condition, that might make actual sex dangerous, so we’ve stopped short of… that.”

Ruth looked puzzled. “A ‘condition?’ Do you mind my asking what sort?”

“I do, actually. I really can’t talk about it.” ‘Right,’ Jackie thought to herself, ‘Like I’m going to tell her that I’m actually a succubus and I worry about sucking the masculinity out of my boyfriend if I got carried away.’ The stronger she got, the more she worried. She’d just killed a Godling that way, essentially, and a whole bunch of angels, so it wasn’t as if it weren’t possible, and she knew that a lot of women got ‘carried away’ when they had an orgasm, so for all she knew she could wipe out every guy within a mile with just a little slip-up in her self-control, since she did know that she could do exactly that if she thought about it really hard. She wasn’t at all sure that keeping their souls safe from harm even counted, even in the larger scheme of things, although she suposed that a clever lawyer could argue that they weren’t really dead, since the possibility of rebirth existed for them, at least theoretically, or at least it might have existed until she’d delivered up those very souls to her mother’s tender mercies. Her existence as a supernatural being was in any case sort of outside human law entirely, since there was little possibility of bringing a being who could flit off through the center of the Earth at the drop of a hat to justice with any likelihood of success, short of juridicial homicide. It was sort of like living inside a video game, a first-person shooter. She could lose ‘points’ if she killed an innocent bystander, but could only be vanquished, not judged. She had a twinge of belated sympathy for Hermes, who’d grown up — or been created — in a climate of impunity, which might at least explain — if not excuse — his sociopathic lack of empathy, and easily account for his casual inhumanity toward the people he interacted with.

“You look pensive,” Ruth said.

“What? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about everything. I’ve been infertile too, which added an entire layer of complication, but recently I’ve learned of a… procedure that might help with that, so I’ve been thinking about it.” ‘With Frank immortal now,’ she thought, ‘he was surely safer than he had been before, and Dross… Tiamat… had surely had that in mind when she’d transmogrified him, although “transubstantiation” might be the more appropriate term, now that I think about it.’ She smiled to herself. ‘I’ll have to find a few good recipes for ambrosia and nectar.’

“So your… imperfect chastity… isn’t a Catholic thing?”

“No, not really. It’s complicated, probably too complicated to explain. Call it a very long engagement. I know people find it hard to understand, since Frank and I live together, in a house we bought together, but we have separate bedrooms, so we hover somewhere between roommates and lovers.” She grinned, then laughed. “As I said, it’s complicated.”

“He’s not gay, is he?”

“Frank? No, not nohow. He’s straight as an arrow, just… patient with me and with my problems.”

“Well, I can understand how infertility affects most women, having been there, if you ever want to talk about it. We grow up thinking of pregnancy as a possibility at least, or even a danger in some situations, so to have that snatched away can strike at the very heart of your sense of femininity and worth. Since girlhood, I’d known that I had a womb meant to carry a baby, so learning belatedly that it was all a sham was a heavy blow. I felt like I’d let down my husband, and my family as well. I spent years grieving for that loss, and every month my period was a new betrayal, so much so that I lost all interest in sex for months at a time, but Jacob — my husband — understood, and loved me anyway.” A single tear trickled down from her right eye, although both eyes were brimming as she looked up toward the ceiling high above them until she was able to quell the lingering impulse to tears.

‘There’s no perfect happiness in the world,’ Jackie thought to herself before she said, “I can’t say that I truly understand, because my losses have all been virtual, unremembered and, in the case of my mother at least, untrue; she was simply misplaced, like ‘Ernest’ in that play. I do sympathize, though. I haven’t had a period in several years, like an early menopause, so I’ve been spared that monthly reminder at least, but it’s still there like a ghost, the memory of it I mean. You know, if there’s one thing doctors can’t cure, it’s a condition.” She smiled and sang a few bars of ‘Spanish Rose’ from Bye Bye, Birdie, her big second act solo from her high school Senior play.

“You played Rose Alvarez?”

She grinned. “I did. I was pretty good, too. I was always bold as brass. The Sisters all despaired of me, but I still remember all my numbers, and most of my lines…. Probably all of them, if I thought about them for a while.”

“I can see you in the role. It suits you, except I can’t imagine you pining over any ‘Albert’ for eight years, nor pinning your hopes on marriage as the solution to everything, including your sense of identity and self-worth. I think that the schools must get special rates on that play, though; my own high school did it too, although it was awfully dated in its cultural attitudes and references, even then, but I was never theatrical, so I only went to see it with my parents, to show support for the school.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “But how did you handle the men’s roles in the play? I thought you went to an all-girl’s school.”

“We had girls play all the boy’s parts, of course; everyone thought it was a scream, especially on the ‘One Last Kiss’ number, although I think the girl who played Conrad turned out to be a lesbian. She sure played the role of Conrad Birdie well, though, lots better than the girl who played Albert — my ‘male’ romantic lead — who was much more awkward, despite trying really hard. You’re right about it being dated, though. We printed a glossary in the program to explain who Ed Sullivan and Lamont Cranston were, stuff like that. I wonder if that play had anything to do with my desire to become a teacher, the song I mean, my first act solo, ‘An English Teacher,’ or maybe it was just a desire to be out in front of an audience again. I suppose my current career isn’t all that different, now that I think of it.” She grinned again. “There’s no business like show business, eh?”

Ruth laughed, just a little. “I suppose not,” she said.

Jackie could tell she’d never been stage-struck, bitten by the drama queen bug as she herself had been, swanning around for months with dreams of Broadway glory to come, inevitably, just as soon as her performance in her high school play was brought to the attention of the theatre critic for the New York Times. Oh, well.

Lilith had a definite glow about her when she finally returned smiling through the doorway from the shop floor, followed closely by Semangelaf, who looked, if anything, more macho than he had before, with a thin sheen of perspiration over his face — as if he’d been working out — and a sort of strut, like a rooster on parade before his hens. The whole scene made Jackie a little crazy.

Ruth didn’t help at all. “Y’all have fun?” she asked, as she might have asked a fellow football fan, ‘Did you enjoy the game?’

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Sam, it’s awfully late. Would you mind seeing Ruth safely home? I hate to think of her driving back alone at this time of night.”

“Oh, no! I wouldn’t think of it,” Ruth protested. “How will you get home again, Sam?”

Sam looked over at Lilith, who nodded, before saying, “It’s no trouble at all, Ruth. I’ll just catch a cab back here, and we can go from there. I can even call ahead and arrange to have one meet me, if you’ll give me your address.”

“Well, okay, if you’re sure it’s no trouble. It is awfully late.”

“It’s no trouble at all, Ruth,” Lilith said. “You’ll be perfectly safe with Sam at your side. In his youth, he was quite the bruiser, and he hasn’t gone to flab, the way many men do, so he’s amazingly… fit for a man of his age.” She smiled with just that naughty quirk of her lips that let Ruth — and everyone with eyes to see — know that she meant more by her comment than just the state of his taut abs and bulging… biceps.

Jackie rolled her eyes again. “Well, that’s settled then. Will Tom be worried about you?”

“Not at all.” She dismissed the notion out of hand. “I told him that I might be late, and if he’d been worried, he would have called. I may call him on the ride back home, just to let him know he has to move over to his side of the bed. Or, I might leave him lay; I’m sure I can persuade him to shift about a bit with a little motivation.” She wriggled her hips suggestively.

It was obviously contagious, and Jackie steeled herself not to roll her eyes yet again, lest she seem prudish. “Great,” she said, and then watched as her mother gave Sam a deep soul kiss goodbye, and wriggled her own ass a little as she whispered into his ear, evidently encouraging him to come back soon, to judge from the shit-eating grin on Sam’s face when they pried themselves apart.

Jackie had to admit that Sam was a handsome guy — looked at objectively — and could probably make a living as a men’s fashion model with just a little more attention to his grooming and clothing. Even now, he had a rough-hewn beauty about him that he could easily parlay into a book cover model for the woman’s romance market. He’d look awfully good in tight Levi’s and a cowboy hat, flannel shirt optional. “See you soon, both of you,” she said. “Drive safely.”

Sam looked at her with a pained expression on his face, which Jackie supposed was understandable. Taking all in all, she guessed that his ‘gig’ for the past millennium or so had been as a guardian angel, since that’s how they’d met. Thinking about that, she suddenly realized that he’d been taking care of her, probably because she was one of Lilith’s children, and the figurative hair rose on the back of her figurative neck as she became aware of wheels within wheels, all in the middle of the air, and spinning around her, invisible until just now, and she was almost overcome by vertigo as she saw those wheels cycling through the deeps of time, whirling, turning, everything all linked together in an endless chain of relationships and causation.

Kissing and goodbyes done, the door shut behind Ruth and her protector as they left, Lilith turned back towards her and said, “Spooky, isn’t it?”

Jackie was taken aback by the depth of her mother’s perception, although she supposed she shouldn’t be. Lilith had, after all, really ‘seen it all’ for hundreds of thousands of years before Jackie was even born. “I suppose it is,” she said. “It sure seems that way to me, at least.”

“There’s more fun to come, of course.” Lilith seemed oddly resigned, as if she were in her oracular mode. “Don’t worry.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Hermes is a messenger, and a messenger implies a sender. I expect said sender to show up very soon.”

“What? Who?” Jackie felt panicky. They’d just survived one attack, would there be another so soon?

“Vishnu once said, ‘All things move unimpeded toward a single Purpose,’ and I suppose he ought to know.”

“You knew Vishnu?” Jackie was astonished, a feeling she often experienced when talking to her mother, and even more of late, now that she seemed more inclined toward — what was for her at least a tiny start in the general direction of — ‘chattiness.’

Lilith had supercilious down pat, of course. “I suppose I must have, since I was Lakshmi and his consort at the time, although at the same time Durga and my own mother. You think our relationship has been difficult, just wait until you give birth to yourself and are your own husband’s mother-in-law as well as being your son-in-law’s wife! There I was, stuck in resenting myself as an interfering old bitch at the same time I despised myself as ungrateful young idiot who’d married far beneath her. Vishnu wasn’t nearly good enough — in my motherly opinion — to be the God I loved with all my heart inside my other body. It’s a good thing I’ve always had a great sense of humor.” She smiled, which was both disconcerting and a little frightening.

Jackie, on the other hand, had developed a sudden skill at irritated adolescence, so rolled her eyes and almost stamped her feet. “Mother! It just surprised me, because Semangelaf knew Vishnu as well, and mentioned it the first time we met.”

“He did? Must’ve been after my time….” She paused, then added, “Either that or I wasn’t paying attention.”

“But how can that be? Lakshmi is still worshipped; but if you’re Lakshmi, where is she?”

“Right here, of course. Lakshmi has many forms; I’m just one of them, or she’s one of mine.” She flowed quickly through an endless series of manifestations; as Devi in her universal form as Shakti, as Bhudevi and Sridevi, as Prakriti; as Vidya, as Manushri, Chakrika, Kamalika, Lalima, Kalyani, Nandika, Rujula, Vaishnavi, Narayani, Bhargavi, Radha, Chanchala, Bhumi Devi, Jalaja, Madhavi, Sujata, Shreya, Prakrti, Maya, Aiswarya, and Jaganmaatha; as Mary, Queen of Heaven; as Venus and Aphrodite; as Cybele, Demeter, and Hera; as Hecate; as Isis and Nut; as countless more, Goddesses, angels, saints, and every incarnation of feminine power. Are they truly names, or only sobriquets? “ ›Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis; das Unzulängliche, hier wird’s Ereignis; das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist es getan; das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan.‹  « L’éphémère n’est rien qu’une image ; l’inaccessible ici, n’est plus hors d’atteinte ; l’indescriptible ici, est accompli ; l’éternel féminin nous entraîne vers les sommets. »  ‘Everything transitory is only an illusion; what could not be achieved here comes to pass; what no one could describe is here accomplished; the eternal feminine draws us toward the heights.’ It’s all in the attitude, Jackie, just as it will be for you eventually.”

She started to say, “But….” Then she thought it through, since all the clues were there. Just as she was the result of several worldlines merging, why not more? Syncretism is a characteristic of every human religion — explicitly so in the various forms of Hinduism, implicitly in many, many more — would it be such a stretch to imagine other worldlines touching? She’d just lived through one example, during which both she had her mother had observed herself ‘from the outside, looking in upon her latest struggles with the angels,’ as had once been famously observed of Timothy Leary, who himself could be observed through the wonders of modern technology living a snippet of his life in retrospect on the Web.

Even in ancient times, people had made their Gods and Goddesses live through passion plays, the mysteries, oracles, daily rituals, incantations, ceremonies, and the endless panoply of human religion. Exactly when does holiness cross the border between waking dream and pervasive reality? Or is the transition so gradual that one barely notices the moment between wishing and believing?

Most modern humans watched people and things on screens big and small, doing things either interactively or passively, as mere observers, but always as participants, their brains engaged as if their experience involved another reality, as if they were watching some version of real life transpire. Every year, iconic films formed part of real life for many, like It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Wizard of Oz. Would it be too much to invest them with some kind of reality? Many children thought that they were real; even adults can’t enjoy them without investing them with at least some reality. If human beings were solipsistically creating that reality, might they, in some future age, become so confused with each other that they overlapped and melded into one? Would there be some in some overlapping timeline a movie called It’s a Wonderful Wizard of Life in which Dorothy and Toto rescue Zuzu’s petals by throwing a bucket of water on the evil green Henry Potter and save the Building and Loan?

Amongst the Aztecs, and their present-day descendants, Tonantzin, ‘Our Revered Mother,’ referred indifferently to any Goddess, including her mother, to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, whose epithet and starry cloak of blue belonged to many Goddesses, all around the world. Was there only one reality? Were there many realities? Was there one Truth revealed to some small portion of humanity, or were there glimpses of an overriding truth contained in the hopes and yearnings of every single human heart and mind?

“Tat tvam asi,” Lilith said. “Thou art that. Be at peace, because you are my designated heir.”

And just then there was a twisting movement in the air before them, a horrid squirming like a nest of transparent snakes through which walked three gigantic figures, figures Jackie instantly recognized as three of the Olympian Gods, Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus. Without preamble, Zeus raised his right hand, which held a crackling thunderbolt, ablaze with electrical fire, and hurled it directly toward them as Lilith calmly stepped in front of her, taking the full impact of the supernal lightning, and her body instantly exploded into a sparkling haze of soul stuff as the lightning crashed through her and Jackie screamed in horror, thrown backward and to the floor by the power of the divine thunderbolt’s blast.

Compounding that horror, she was suddenly inundated by thousands of past lives, millions of experiences flooding into her soul as she became her mother in all her incarnations, too many to count; every human experience of the feminine in life; every awestruck husband standing helpless as his wife gave birth; every swain struck dumb by the beauty of his beloved, the magical curve of her waist and hip promising paradise; the mother he drew milk and life from; the crone who washed his dying body, preparing him for death; the frantic cries of every mother giving birth in mortal anguish, pleading for her own mother to come and comfort her; the dawning awareness of her own desirability and sexual power as a young woman watched her suitor humble himself to plead his case. She was Lilith now, and Lakshmi, and Shakti, the eternal and omnipotent Feminine Power at the very heart of the Universe, the dark energy that drove the galaxies apart, that caused the first explosion that brought the Universe into being. She was Tiamat, the Eternal Void, and the whole world was growing dark.

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Four:
That Witching Time of Night

 

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft,
mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst,
blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.
 ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886)

Who battles with monsters must guard
against becoming monstrous;
if you stare too long into an abyss,
the abyss just might look back.
 ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

 

The first thing She noticed was that She wasn’t breathing, and Her eyes were staring, fixed and unfocused as male voices above and around Her boasted in archaic Greek about their own prowess in killing both Her and Her mother with a single blow. One laughed — She thought it was Ares — and said in rough translation, “Shall we rape her putrid body as a final insult?” Other voices joined in with crude comments and She felt their hands upon Her ætheric body, but gave no sign of life, drawing in the power of millions of Her worshipers throughout Latin America and billions throughout the world, manifesting the hidden essence of the Ewigweibliche, which is always patient and wise, aware of Herself as the Empyrean, the Ultimate Ground and Foundation of the world, the Heavenly Fire. As Shakti, the primordial cosmic energy that moves the universes, She was the source of every action, and could see the complex network of intersecting desires that brought these three to this place and time, only the proximate nexus of the myriad more circumspect intellects acting behind these boasting thugs to encourage and manipulate them. When She was ready, She withdrew Herself from all of them and they collapsed to whatever ground or floor was closest as they lost all power of movement, thought, or speech; hundreds of Gods, of great Powers and Principalities, of Thrones laid low, as bereft of sense and will as rag dolls stuffed with sawdust, and then the work began.

Without fear, without anger, free from passion, She passed through each mind, inspecting, judging, and let their individual karma decide their paths, some to rebirth, some to oblivion, but all to different roads than those upon which they’d trod theretofore.

At last, She returned to the atelier, where the three Gods still lay sleeping. She woke them, but left them lying where they were, scattered about Her own body, their garments in disarray, as were Her own.

“Now I am become Death,” She said, “the destroyer of worlds. Even without Lilith’s help, all here will die, and pass into the shadows, because you arrayed yourselves against Me. The demonic hosts fear Me, and fly from Me; even the ranks of angels quail before Me, and dissolve into that final oblivion at the touch of My hand, but in your hubris, you dared to raise your hands against Me. For you, My naughty children, there lies a different path from any you would have chosen, if you still had a choice, for each of you will pass the next ten thousand incarnations as dryads, or hamadryads, nymphs of the trees who love the Sun. In caring for them, you will learn to care, and until you learn to care without stint, and without measure, you’ll remain bound forever to the trees, one after another, until the last tree in the last wood on Earth perishes.” With a wave of Her hand She transformed them, clothed them modestly, and sent them each to their appointed places on the wide Earth.

Then She summoned Hecate, Eris, and Aphrodite, all Aspects of Herself, saying, “There are vacancies on Olympus which you must fill however you will, for Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus are no longer with us, having been required for service elsewhere.”

Eris said, “What the fuck? How dare you speak to us so haughtily? Where are they really?”

The other two Goddesses didn’t look any happier.

She glared at them, but they seemed to be as immune to Her glare as Lilith had been. “Okay, have it your own damned way! Here you go!” And then She rolled back time.

The first thing She noticed was that She wasn’t breathing, and Her eyes were staring, fixed and unfocused as male voices above and around Her boasted in archaic Greek about their own prowess in killing both Her and Her mother with a single blow. One laughed, She thought it was Ares, and said in rough translation, “Shall we rape her putrid body as a final insult?” Other voices joined in with crude comments and She felt their hands upon Her ætheric body, but gave no sign of life, drawing in the power of millions of Her current worshipers throughout Latin America and billions throughout the world, manifesting the hidden essence of the Ewigweibliche, which is always patient and wise, aware of Herself as the Empyrean, the Ultimate Ground and Foundation of the world, the Heavenly Fire. As Shakti, the primordial cosmic energy that moves the universes, She was the source of every action, and could see the complex network of intersecting desires that brought these three to this place and time, only the proximate nexus of the myriad more circumspect intellects acting behind these boasting thugs to encourage and manipulate them. When She was ready, She struck, reaching up from the floor with Her talons to rip the hearts from their bodies, thick ichor flying as She tore them limb from limb with terrible force, even as they screamed in vain for mercy, the golden liquid dripping like aromatic honey from the mangled gobbets of divine flesh and bone that soon littered the studio. And then She plunged Her gory hands through the fragile bones of their skulls, straining through the grey pudding of their Godly brains until She had their souls in hand, popping them with exquisite cruelty into their own individual diamonds, each plucked from the air above Her head, and then tossed carelessly back into a small red velvet bag.

When the three of them were history, She traced back the web of lies and deceit that that trailed like cobwebs from their shattered skulls onto ætheric pathways that led, one by one, to their co-conspirators and henchmen, and then to the puppetmasters behind them all, the arcane cartel of evil angels, twisted Gods, whoremongers, slavers, and supernatural druglords behind the brutal machinations of their dupes and underlings, the three Olympian Gods.

Each one was added to her cache of souls, their vital essences ripped shrieking from the shredded remnants of their formerly immortal bodies, which lay mute witness to the carnage by now scattered to the four corners of the world, hundreds of Gods, of great Powers and Principalities, of Thrones laid low, as bereft of sense and will as rag dolls stuffed with sawdust, and then the real work began.

One by one, each was either embodied and endowed with a new karma — enforced by a portion of Herself buried deep at the base of their spines — or destroyed. The three Olympians she reserved for last, embodied them in the form of harmless dryads, nymphs of the deep woods, and left them sleeping in the midst of the carnage in the warehouse. Then She summoned Hecate, Eris, and Aphrodite, all Aspects of Herself, saying, “Look around you. Get the picture? As you’ll notice, Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus are no longer among the living, nor are many of their fellows, all around the world, which list includes Hermes, who has gone down to oblivion, having sipped the healing waters of the river Lethe. The three nymphæ you see here embody what remains of their souls, and all three have a doom upon them to serve as dryads for ten thousand dryad lifetimes, which as you know, might be very nearly forever. Would you like to join them?”

Eris spoke first, not so belligerently as she had the first time around, “Who are you?”

“You can call Me Gaia, your mother, in fact, but I’m much older than that. I’m that part of you that gives you life and power. You could also call Me Death. Do you wish to defy Me?”

“No, Mother,” Hecate said, and the others nodded their instant assent and submission, recognizing both the mangled corpses of the Gods and overwhelming power when they saw it.

“Since it’s your Olympian Pantheon, it’s up to you how you fill any vacancies. I can give you another Zeus, if you want one, and any of the others, but you’ll have to come up with suitable candidates for elevation to Olympus. Or you could do it on your own; I presume that ambrosia and nektar are still available. I personally think the world has had enough of war Gods, and thunder Gods — much of a muchness, as far as I can tell — but boys will be boys, and they seem to like having them lying about. You, Hecate, Deep Soul of All the World, Guardian of Every Gateway, used to be the boss of things, as I recall, and I wouldn’t mind a bit if you took over again. This is, after all, an age of women’s liberation. But as I say, it’s entirely up to you.”

The three Goddesses looked at one another for a moment, then came to a tacit understanding. Hecate spoke for all of them, “We’d like to think about it, and thank you for your mercy and consideration.”

She smiled. “A wise choice. Independence is always a good start, and there’s nothing like Death to make new beginnings easier. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Hecate spoke again, “I think we’ll be fine on our own, Mother. As you say, ambrosia and nektar can supply any lack, if we discover an unforeseen need, and there are plenty of Heroes in the world.”

She smiled again, proud of them, and said, “Go then with my blessing. I’ve always loved you, you know.”

Eris approached Her first, reaching out her arms, and She returned her embrace with love, filling her heart with love, and letting love change her nature slightly, although She liked her feistiness, so tacitly made her much stronger, strong enough to rival the Ares that was, without his grotesque bulging muscles, so she was still lithe and beautiful. “We’re sorry for what Apollo did to your oracle, Mother,” she said.

She smiled. “Change is the way of my world, dear, and he’s done a fairly good job since then, and an excellent work for all humanity as leader of the Muses. Think nothing of it.” She smiled again, then added, “And besides, bisexual men are just so hot.” She licked Her lips, warmed through just thinking about Apollo and Hyacinth, and the dozens, the hundreds of other young men he’d bedded over the long years.

All three Goddesses giggled at the sudden change in tone, then laughed out loud, which changed the overall mood entirely, so Hecate and Aphrodite rushed toward her together and hugged her close.

“It’s been ages, Mother,” Hecate said.

“I’ve been around,” She said. You just haven’t noticed. You have to look sharp, but you can see Me outside your window, or look out over Me as you gaze down from radiant Olympus, and I’ve always been there for you. If you concentrate, you can feel Me coiled at the very center of your being.

Then She spoke to Aphrodite, “My shining one, eldest of the Olympian Gods and Goddesses, bright dawn illuminating the world, your cruel husband is dead and you are free of him now, free to seek your own destiny. Use your freedom wisely.” And then she gave her a very fond embrace, and kissed her deeply. “My special blessing and love to you, Daughter, who are so very close to My own heart’s truest desire, which is love always.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’ve dreamed of this day for long ages of the world,” she said, still clasping Her tight, her eyes closed, her head resting on Her bosom.

“I know, Dear, and I’m very glad that I finally found the opportunity to free you. When he overreached himself at last and rose up against Me with his fellows, he offended your aunt the Lady Themis, Revered Titaness, Honored Guardian of the Divine Order, and so his hubris opened the door to his own downfall.” She kissed her again. “And now, my dear children, I have things to do, so if you might take your leave of me, I can get to doing them.”

Hecate spoke first, as was her right. “Of course, Mother. It was very nice to see you, and you’re always welcome on Olympus now, whatever your reception may have been before.”

“Thank you, Hecate. I have a parting gift for you.” She handed her a thunderbolt, especially prepared to fit her hand. “You never know when it might be handy, and your new subjects are used to seeing it as a badge of office. It has this special virtue, that whenever you imagine the feel of it in your hand, it will instantly appear, so in casting it, you’ll never throw it away for more than an instant, and no other hand can hold it.”

“Thank you, Mother Gaia. You do me honor,” Hecate bowed in respect and gratitude, knowing that the thunderbolt would be of immense worth in solidifying her claim to the throne of Zeus, not least because it was a visible sign of Gaia’s favor, and the formal bestowal of arms that gave her a warrior’s status.

“An honor richly deserved and too long in abeyance, considering your former glory,” She said, and turned then to Eris. “Eris, I have a gift of equal worth for you.” She handed her an object in a crescent-shaped sheath. “This is the very sickle that castrated Uranus and indirectly saved all your lives. It too has a special virtue, although it appears to be only common flint, that it will cleave through anything you slash with it as if it were fog or smoke, from cobwebs to immortal flesh to tempered steel or ceramic, all will yield with equal ease, and the weapon itself is indestructible. Wielding it takes as little effort as waving a feather or a willow wand, but it will leave terrible destruction in its wake, whether held in the hand or thrown like a discus. Keep it sheathed as you see it now, until you want to use it. In fact, you needn’t carry it at all, unless you want to make a point. Like Hecate’s thunderbolt, it will come to you instantly when you call it to mind, and it will accept no other mistress.”

“Mother!” Eris protested. “This is a weapon of enormous worth! I’m humbled by your generosity.”

“My dear one,” She said oracularly, “ you’ll soon have great need of it, but you will triumph over your enemies, and none who survive the encounter — or even hear about it — will ever dare to face you after.” Finally, She turned to Aphrodite. “Daughter, for you the most subtle gift and weapon of all; a simple mirror of ancient speculum metal, but it has three virtues: First, that objects reflected in it reveal their true natures, so you can use it to peer into hearts and minds, piercing through even the subtlest counterfeits in either word or deed; Second, that it has, like the Ægis, the power to stun anyone other than yourself — or anything — looking directly at the speculum surface, but only temporarily — an hour or two at most for Gods, or the equivalent in days for human beings — so you needn’t worry about turning people to stone; Third, that every time you gaze at your own reflection, your beauty will, for the period of roughly one day, increase ten-fold. You’ll appear so fair that all who look at you will love you desperately, and be utterly incapable of harming you, or even thinking to harm you through either action or inaction. Like the other gifts, it will know when your hand wants it, and will tolerate no other.”

Aphrodite grinned and laughed, very prettily of course. “It’s perfect, Mother, just what I’ve always wanted.”

She smiled and said, “Well, it’s a lot better than Mace, or even a machine gun, when it comes to that, but it will save you quite a bit of money on cosmetics as well, not to mention the time and effort spent applying it, so it’s a frugal gift, perfect for a girl with a busy… social schedule, and will help you to choose suitable companions.”

Then, as if only an afterthought, She enhanced the physical strength and psychic auras of all three Goddesses, the better to intimidate their fellow Olympians, leaving them in an excellent position to impose their collective will if assent wasn’t freely given. “Off you go then, girls. I’ve work to do.”

With that they bowed again, this time in love and respect, but each of them was already calculating her own best tactics in the inevitable struggle for power which would ensue as soon as the deaths of the three Gods became known, and then they vanished as one, already coördinating their efforts perfectly. She had every confidence that they would prevail, and Aphrodite’s new mirror would make plots against the three very difficult to conceal. She would be an equal partner in the new triumvirate, not least because the other two would be forever in love with her, unless She erred in Her estimation of Her daughter’s wits, which was of course impossible. Power was nice to have, but strategy and good intelligence would also be required to carry the day. Aphrodite would make a perfect spy, and their ménage à trois would be proof against masculine seductions.

When they left She started tidying the warehouse space — She felt oddly domestic after Her recent activities. She could just imagine the ‘To Do’ list: (A) Overthrow the Gods; (B) Foment a feminist revolution; (C) Do the washing up — wishing the bodies into instant oblivion and removing the stains of ichor from the floor and walls. Luckily, they’d been in the anteroom to the vaults, an area without much furniture and no carpets, just industrial vinyl, so cleanup wasn’t difficult. Ichor stained so if it got on the rugs.

While She was at it, she repaired the damages to the photo studio and data vault, then flitted off to take care of a few serious climate problems in the Amazon. She had a world to run, after all, but had a nagging feeling that She’d forgotten something. It would come to Her, She was sure.

Feeling a little light-headed, Jackie looked around her, confused by more memories than she could cope with right then. She’d just killed three of the ancient Greek Gods, but her memories after that were fuzzy, although she could remember hugging Aphrodite, then kissing her, which had been… exciting, in a very strange way. She was in the vault, which had been a shambles, last she looked, yet here it was as neat and fresh as if her violent encounters with the angels had never happened. She felt a sort of vertigo, somehow the opposite of déjà vu, and she knew that this should have been a familiar place, a commonplace of her daily life, but it felt odd, as if she were encountering it for the first time. Was there such a thing as jamais vu?

She wandered out onto the shop floor, where new false memories flooded through her brain. The large laser cutting table was covered with random bolts of cloth, all of them unwound into a tangled pile of fabrics, velvets and corduroys mostly, but silks as well, and blushed as she vaguely remembered having sex with Father Sam, lots of sex, violent sex, and she’d been the one doing most of it. She could smell the scent of sex in the air, and it was mostly her, although she could see stains of what must be semen on some of her cloth. Jesus! What the fuck happened here last night? Or was it tonight? Her head was spinning again when — speak of the Devil — who should pop in but Father Sam?

He said, “Lilith!” and swept her into his arms again, and that’s when things became really confusing. She’d read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying as a girl, of course, purely for research purposes, but hadn’t been able to imagine what a ‘zipless fuck’ might have felt like before, except that it was wonderful, and suddenly she was flying, and Sam was on top of her, then inside her, as easy and natural as if he belonged there, and they were screwing like there was no tomorrow, and she was already coming, screaming, and Sam was shouting something in ancient Hittite, and she knew exactly what he meant. She could smell him, feel his weight on top of her, and he was still inside her, still moving, and that old familiar feeling was building again, a little tickle that was starting deep inside her, and she could feel it rushing toward her like a train. She was on rails, and could no more stop it coming than she could stop the sun from shining, and she was concentrating on coaxing it to the forefront of her sensorium until it overwhelmed her, and he was moving between her legs, his heat and the motion between her legs, and then suddenly she exploded again, a wave of sensations flooding through her belly in a series of powerful contractions, a wave of heat spreading across her stomach and breasts, and a breathless pause in the progress of time, before she started breathing again.

“Uhm… Sam?” she said from under him, trying to unclench her nails from where they were digging into his back, afraid that she’d hurt him, or even drawn blood, and feeling more than a little awkward, because he was still inside her and still hard, still moving slowly, gently caressing her with his hands as his… thing soothed her from the inside out.

He smiled down at her, his eyes wide and filled with love, giving her a little wriggle with his hips that did amazing things deep inside her. “Yes, my darling girl?”

She almost regretted having to say this, because what he was doing to her felt so very nice, exquisitely fine, actually, “I’m not Lilith.”

She’d never realized how quickly such an enormous erection could shrink, so rapidly that the walls of her vagina were left slightly behind, closing slowly, the barn door swinging shut long after the horses had been and gone, and she could feel the slight stickiness of her nether lips on him as he pulled himself out of her as frantically if her pussy was a bear trap just now snapping tight.

“What the Hell?” he bellowed, scrambling off the cutting table and fumbling for his clothes, which were somehow scattered randomly around them, as if they’d been involved in a laundry explosion. Her clothes were mingled with his, but toward the outer edge of the general chaos, and she was utterly and completely naked, her legs still splayed wide as he tried not to look at her and still find his clothes, which he was trying to put back on his body as rapidly as possible.

She was surprised that she wasn’t more discomfited, but she wasn’t at all, she realized, because she remembered being married, taking lovers, thousand of them over the long years, although she couldn’t recall a situation exactly like this one. She suddenly realized that she was married still, that she had hundreds of husbands even now, perhaps thousands, and was going about Her daily lives with them even as she lay there on the cutting table, by now careless of her state of déshabilleé through long familiarity with the comfortable rhythms of married life. She stretched her arms out in languorous luxury, feeling more at ease with herself than she ever had before, satisfied, if not completely satiated, having just experienced what she might think of as a ‘quickie.’ although she couldn’t actually remember having a ‘longie….’ in this body recently, although she was still a little hazy about what had happened. “Don’t worry, Sam,” she said. “While you were out….”

He bellowed again, incoherently, wordlessly, before he managed to shout, “While I was out!” he practically screamed. “What the Hell just happened here!?”

This Sam was much more excitable than the one she remembered, but then again she remembered years and years of experiences with him, some good, some bad, before their recent quarrel. ‘Well…. Quarrel didn’t exactly describe their most recent falling out,’ she thought to herself. ‘Feud, really. if not quite as deadly as the Hatfield and McCoy variety. No one had been killed, actually, at least not that she remembered.’

“Now, Sam, darling, don’t get your feathers all ruffled up. We can fix this.” She tried to soothe his wounded feelings and ego by reaching out to take his hand, but he snatched it back as if he’d just been burned.

He tried to control himself, but was obviously getting angry. “Jackie, would you please tell me what the Hell just happened here?”

“Now, Sam,” she said soothingly. “Don’t get so excited. It’s a simple misunderstanding, that’s all, and certainly not the first time. Remember the love potion?” She giggled. “Now that was a contretemps to beat this one all hollow.” She grinned. “Although it had somewhat similar results, as I recall.” She looked around them. “We were outside then, right out on the deck of that pretty boat of yours, and the servants were scandalized, although the movements of that heaving deck as your boat plunged through the waves, even as your cock plunged inside of me, taking my maidenhead as thoroughly as you’ve just done now, and the sun beating down on our naked bodies as you did your very best to pound me right through the rolling wooden boards added a certain piquancy, a delicious novelty, to our first coupling. We’ve had much more privacy here. Remember how embarrassed we were when the sailors all started cheering? Well, at least we were embarrassed by the time we actually stopped what we were doing at the time and noticed.” She looked at him with the easy familiarity of long and intimate acquaintance.

He stared at her, still confused. “Jackie…? Lilith…? What’s happening here?”

“I was trying to tell you, Sam.” She pouted just a little, a tiny moue of adorable frustration. “While you were out being the gallant gentleman, escorting Ruth home safely, and I trust she did get home safely, Sam….”

“Yes, yes, of course she did,” he said impatiently. “Tom was waiting up for her, but thanked me very politely for escorting her home, since it was so very late by then, early in the morning….” He caught himself being distracted and forced himself to be calm again when he said, “Would you please finish the story. We were just at the point where you, Jackie, the sexual innocent, until recently a virgin, was explaining how she knew all about things that happened a thousand years before she was even born, and doesn’t seem at all upset about cuckolding her fiancée.”

“I beg your pardon, Sam, but it was you who cuckolded my financée, when it comes to that. I was an innocent bystander, at first, although I have to admit that I reciprocated….” She laughed at her pun. “…that I participated with a certain enthusiasm, once you’d made your point.”

“Whatever.” He gritted his teeth. “Would you please finish explaining what just happened here.”

“I was trying to explain, before you so rudely interjected….” She couldn’t help but laugh again. “I was just getting warmed up….” This time, she fell into paroxysms of merriment and laughter, and simply laughed until she finally ran out of steam. She sighed heavily, then gathered her scattered thoughts again. “Anyway,” she said, calm at last, “while you were out squiring Ruth around, Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus dropped by to kill us, Lilith and I…. or was it Jackie and I? In any case, Zeus tossed one of those dreadful noisy thunderbolts of his at us, so I, or was it… In any case, Lilith was killed, except she wasn’t, because she’d taken the precaution of designating me as her heir, so of course all her lives and memories simply flowed into mine, or I flowed into hers… I’m still a little hazy about this part, and they were raping me, or at least raping my body, because I’d sort of stepped aside while they were busy, so I killed them, twice, actually. The first time didn’t seem quite satisfying enough, and Hecate wasn’t impressed at all, so I had to do it over.” She paused, thinking back on it. “Hecate and the girls were right, of course. The second time around was much more satisfying.”

“The girls?” Sam asked, reasonably enough.

“Sam, you’re never going to hear the end of this story if you keep interrupting,” she said unreasonably. “Hecate, Eris, and Aphrodite, of course, the three Goddesses I’d chosen to take the place of the three Gods I’d just executed.”

“Murdered, you mean!” he said sullenly.

“No, Sam,” she glared at him with her customary and haughty contempt. “Executed. Haven’t you been listening? They’d just murdered me, attempted to murder Jackie, my designated heir, and therefore a Princess Royal, and were in the process of raping her unconscious body when my fell vengeance overtook the three of them and laid them low. As the rightful Queen and Monarch of the Americas and beyond, I hold the high justice of this world, and they were guilty of high treason, deacide, murder, and rape, all capital offences, for which they paid the price they should have reckoned with, had they still the brain cells they were born with. I don’t mind piddling around with angels, since they’re harmless enough, but one doesn’t imprison Gods unless one has a death wish, which I do not, and they evidently did. Olympus has a new ruler now upon the Throne, an older and wiser ruler than Zeus ever was, and First among the many he overthrew to gain the throne. It’s a fair enough point to score, and was both the fulfillment of dharma and the logical implication of their karma, along with several hundred co-conspirators and facilitators.”

“Hundreds!” he expostulated.

“Sam,” she said with only moderate kindness, “You’ve always placed too much faith in Gods and Kings and Princes. You’re well on your way toward forsaking your bold declaration and intent, and loosing your precarious hold upon your own happiness. Will you hold your tongue, or will you leave My Presence forsworn?”

“Forsworn?” He was taken aback, dismayed by the notion.

“Shall I recite the words of your oath? Have you forgotten them so soon?”

“I….”

“You swore, not quite as formally as I would have liked, but before two adult witnesses, to act upon your own to ensure my happiness. I can tell you now that after a very good start, you’re beginning to falter in your duty.”

“But you tricked me!” He seemed incongruously outraged.

“No, Sam, I did not. As the Eldest amongst the Elders, my claim upon your feudal loyalty was and always will be senior to any other. My tolerance of your failures, and of your often tiresome infatuations with men and with their dicks, was out of kindness and forbearance, not any relinquishment of my rightful claims upon your oath, nor upon your person. So now we come to the sticking point, dear Tristan, sweet Rāmin, are you my liege man or not? Choose wisely, but choose now.”

“I just wish for once you’d given me a little bit of warning, Mother, before plunging me into these little surprises.” Jackie was grousing, as usual, after being re-manifested in a new body, having been extremely uncomfortable sharing her body with her Mother, and not particularly interested in having it back either, although she didn’t exactly begrudge her mother having the temporary use of it, what with her own having been destroyed by Zeus when she’d courageously saved Jackie’s life at the expense of her own.

“And how, exactly, does one warn someone about what it feels like to have your head invaded by an army of strangers, although in fairness, they’re also a little bit like family. I offered to let you keep your old body, after all.”

“No, thank you, Mother.” Jackie scowled. “Although I never imagined stringing these particular words together in my life, I believe bodies are like toothbrushes, and should never be shared, especially after you’ve used it to ‘entertain’ your damned boyfriend!”

“Hardly damned, Dear, if perhaps a little less sanctimonious than he was for so many tedious years, and it certainly wasn’t my intention. Sam came up with that idea all on his own.” Lilith couldn’t help but smile, remembering.

“I know that, Mother! I was there! It was kind of hard to ignore that particular notion….” Then she blushed as she realized that ‘hard’ could have two meanings.

“Well, you didn’t have to pay attention. And besides, how many times in life do you suppose you’ll have the opportunity to have a man go down on his knees and swear eternal fealty to you as his sovereign and master? You have to learn to take these things in stride, Jackie, if you ever expect to make it past your first thousand years or so and remain truly sane.” She smiled again, remembering again. “And make-up sex always has a certain piquancy to it, as I’m sure you’ll agree, having been there, eavesdropping, as it were. Don’t worry so much about it. In years to come, we’ll laugh about this, I’m sure. And if not this lifetime, then the very next at most. You’ll feel much more mellow by then.”

Privately, Jackie wondered if her mother was, in fact, completely sane. “If you say so, Mother,” she said sourly, and rolled her eyes.

Lilith ‘tsked’ just once. “Jackie, my dearest daughter, instead of always moping about feeling glum, try looking on the bright side. You’re alive, and came very close to the opposite state, which has very little to recommend it, all in all. With all your new memories, you now know exactly how to achieve pregnancy as an ætheric being, something that’s very difficult to explain without personal experience. Isn’t that one of the things you so desperately wanted to learn? Not to mention learning how to control your appetites in even the most intimate situations, a skill you’d also been very interested in mastering, and to top it all, you’ve had the heady experience of killing Gods and angels in their hundreds, a distinction shared by only a very few of the truly elect. Really, Jackie, you’re being almost as stodgy as poor Sam, who’s been beaten down by centuries of unwilling service to cruel and brutal masters, despite his loving heart. You really ought to feel on top of the world, mistress of all you survey, and so anointed with the chrism of power and prestige that none will dare to raise their hands against you for a thousand years or more.”

“Well….”

“And remember, dear, that protection will extend to your entire household, so your babies….” Lilith gazed at her for a moment with her peculiar oracular stare…. “Three of them, I think, two girls and a boy, who will be free to play outside without a troop of supernatural bodyguards kept within an arm’s length or two. In our current society, under the chaotic Compact, it’s a very good thing to be feared, and you will be feared as my heir — a reciprocal arrangement, by the way — every bit as much as I am. Even I, already feared by almost everyone who doesn’t love me well, have bought ourselves a little more protection when we not only vanquished Zeus and two others of the Olympian Gods, but extirpated them and all their fellow conspirators from all the worlds, leaving a gaping vacuum and horrific warning that will be noticed for a very long time to come. When one is theoretically immortal, any evidence of the contrary possibility attracts considerable interest. Even the new trio of ruling Goddesses on Olympus — as fearsome as they are now in their own persons — will lounge with especial ease in the comfort of our warm regard, because they will be widely known as our particular friends and avatars, and of course this web of mutual regard and coöperative protection extends both ways, especially because females tend to be better at recognizing and maintaining these reciprocal relationships, while males often overlook or ignore them. And don’t forget that you alone resurrected Tiamat, the most ancient of us, the first descent of Woman into time, now risen from Her long sleep.”

Jackie felt a little uncomfortable talking about all this, because her mother seemed to see causation in things that appeared like random happenstance to Jackie, or pure dumb luck. “Well, I had help from Sal.”

“True, but who knew exactly how Sal worked until you figured it out scientifically? That silly satyr was going about things in the traditional way and was all set to fail, but you figured it all out in just a few seconds, or so it seems in retrospect, and dead bang, Bob’s your uncle, it’s all done and you could package and sell it in the shops.”

“Mother! I’m not going to turn Sal into a ‘fountain of youth’ for profit! I asked a special favor for a friend exactly twice, each time when they appeared to be at death’s door and it seemed the only way to save their lives. I don’t want to impose on Sal’s sweet nature, because I don’t know how doing this affects him. He doesn’t seem to be harmed by it, but I don’t know enough about it right now, and I won’t risk his health or safety on a whim.”

Lilith looked at her as if she were an idiot. “Jackie, I was speaking metaphorically, a type of jest meant to highlight the fact that you solved a puzzle that’s occupied brilliant scholars, erudite students of the arcane arts, and charlatans of all stripes and colors for the last six thousand years in the blink of an eye. Men have devoted their lives to this quest, Jackie; criminals have murdered for it; and all have failed. I suspect, but can’t quite prove, not having your academic skills, that the reason Sal hasn’t been able to find any of his fellow salamanders for so many years is that idiots like Debauck have been killing them or cutting them up, either looking for the secret jewel or sigil hidden inside them, or torturing them, as Debauck did, trying to force the poor salamanders to perform like trained seals.”

“But that couldn’t possibly work!” Jackie protested, scandalized.

“Of course it wouldn’t, Jackie, as you so cleverly demonstrated, but you saw how monomaniacal Debauck was. I’ve no reason to suspect that many of the others who’ve devoted their lives to this quest are all that much smarter, more generous, or possess a greater inclination toward loving kindness. The quest for eternal life tends to attract assholes, if you’ll pardon the vulgarity. How do you think they’d react if you told them that the ‘secret’ was to turn themselves into really nice guys. Turning lead into gold would be lots easier. And murdering a baker’s dozen of innocent victims might seem worth a shot to many of these sorts if turning into Pollyanna were the only alternative.”

The appearance of the skylights high above her head had turned from pits of inky darkness above the artificial light to the pale gray-blue light of dawn by the time Jackie felt brave enough to go home. She was delaying the inevitable, she knew, but kept finding things that seemed desperately to need doing — gathering up and rewinding the bolts of fabric scattered over the cutting table; sweeping the already spotless floor; working on ideas for several new designs she wanted to explore for the next season’s lines — it wasn’t until she started making decorative arrangements of the pins in a red cloth pincushion that she admitted to herself that she was avoiding seeing Frank, because she knew she’d have to tell him what had happened.

She looked around the interior of the warehouse, remembering how it was when she’d first started, a bare concrete floor, cracked and stained for the most part, the dusty red brick walls, a few high windows, and one wall of rolling doors that opened onto the loading dock, a building that had once meant nothing to anyone, other than as a covered loading dock where drunks could stand or sleep out of the rain, as a perch for birds, and as a canvas for graffiti artists. But now it gave employment to nearly three dozen women and men, furnished a ready market for several small businesses that had sprung up almost overnight to service the main enterprise, and had even turned a small profit for her mother’s bar and restaurant, because many of the women ate lunch there. Whatever else she’d done in life, what she’d done here was good.

She went to the control panel by the main door, turned off the main lights, leaving only the half-light illumination of the night circuits, then grabbed her purse, turned on the alarm, and had flitted away before it started beeping.

Frank wasn’t up when she got home, but soon would be, judging from the clock in the kitchen. She put on the coffee, went out to the living room, sat down on the couch and watched the fire until Sal hopped out and laid his doggy head on her lap, turning over slightly, to encourage her to scratch his tummy, the which she did gladly, since it gave her something to do with her hands while she waited. In her mind, she was running through all the things she wanted to say, but what she was really afraid of was that Frank might say, ‘Goodbye.’

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Five:
Heavenly Fire

There is in every true woman’s heart,
a spark of heavenly fire,
which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity,
but which kindles up and beams and blazes
in the dark hour of adversity.
 ― Washington Irving,
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
(1819-1820)

 

She heard Frank’s shower go on first, and then Frank’s voice singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morningwith great enthusiasm and only one misstep, from the sound of it when he’d dropped the soap or something, because he’ suddenly said, “Damn!” paused for a moment, then started up exactly where he’d left off. She wished that she felt similarly cheerful, but you play the cards you have in hand, not the ones you’d wanted.

Soon enough he rushed out through the door and headed toward the kitchen, saying,“Hi, Sweetheart! Coffee smells great! Did you have a good night at the shop?” with a big grin on his face and purpose in his steps. “Coffee!” he enthused as he almost jogged toward the kitchen door.

He was halfway through the kitchen door when Jackie finally said, “Hi, Frank.” Unfortunately, her words sounded just about like she felt.

Instantly, he turned around and rushed toward her. “What’s the matter, Sweetie? What happened? Has your mother…?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that, Honey.”

“Well, what is it then? If you’re feeling like you sound, you feel terrible.” He held out his arms to pick her up, but she shrank back instinctively as his hands approached her.

“Okay,” he said, observant as always. “Now I’m worried. Do you want to talk about it now? Or should I wait until you feel better?”

“Now, I think. It’s really, really complicated,”

“Well,” he said calmly, “Why don’t you start at the beginning, then, and go on until we come to the end, by which time we will have covered everything.” He went to sit in one of the end chairs, and made a production of it, fluffing up the seat cushion, turning the chair itself so it faced toward her, conspicuously giving her both space and time to gather her thoughts. He made a show of patting his empty shirt pocket — usually filled with a case of multi-colored pens and pencils in a ‘pocket protector’ case. “Should I take notes?”

Jackie couldn’t help but laugh, a little nervously, but her mood had definitely lightened. Frank was, and had been throughout her strange experiences, her rock. She felt comforted by his presence, even if she didn’t want him to touch her right this minute. “No,” she said. “I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”

“I’m ready, then, and on your side no matter what, Jackie.”

With that reassurance, Jackie began her story. “There were a number of serious attacks on us tonight, although I don’t believe any of us are now in any danger.”

“A number?”

She scowled in remembrance. “Well, two, but the second involved several bad actors. The first was by Tris Magister, whom I think I told you about, since I saw him at the Convention, and he was a client of Doctor Emrys.”

“I remember. What did he do?”

“He came at me when I was with Ruth Bernstein, the woman I told you about who’s naming her firstborn after me.” She smiled, briefly. “I’m doing her wedding gown. Anyway, Tris was disguised as the undead maniac from the Friday the 13th movie franchise, and came at us with a bloody big knife. It didn’t amount to much, in the end, although it was clear that he’d meant to kill me, if I’d been alone, but both my mother and Father Sam were there, and with too many witnesses he was caught fair and square.”

“So what did you do with this Tris fellow?”

“I stuck him inside a diamond, the same as I’d done with the angels, so he’s out of the way for a good long time.”

“Was that necessary, loosely speaking?”

“Oh, yes. Tris is… was a formidable opponent, and the humiliation of being thwarted by a mere woman would have stuck in his craw, so he would have brooded and plotted against me until he’d either succeeded in harming me — or those I love — or I took stronger measures. By taking those measures now, I’ve saved myself and the world further grief, since he’d done enough damage already.”

“He’d already harmed others?”

“He had. He was the brains and evil genius behind the angelic attacks on many, including Jane, my sister, who was killed by his puppet proxy, Sansanvi.”

“So he’d harmed others as well? Anyone I know?”

“Surprisingly enough, both Sansanvi and Sanvi, although I’d never met them before he’d messed with their minds, as well as several dozens of angels besides, who were subverted and essentially destroyed through his ‘brainwashing’ techniques, so I’d count them among his victims as well, even though they weren’t exactly innocent bystanders.”

“Brainwashing?”

“Sort of. He’d replicated the Stanford Experiment using angels as both victims and guards, but carried it to extremes, because he’d intended to harm the participants as a clever way of escaping personal responsibility. With Zimbardo, the problem had been inadvertently built into the experimental design, and he stopped the experiment after his girlfriend told him that he was being a jerk and called him to account.”

“I’ve never heard of it, of course, so I’ll trust your judgement, but can you tell me briefly how it worked?”

“It was simple enough; the Navy and the Marines couldn’t figure why their prisoners and military guards just couldn’t get along and play together like good little boys, so they funded an experiment in which they hired ‘random’ college students, randomly assigned them as either ‘Guards’ or ‘Prisoners,’ and then had the ‘Guards’ try to keep the ‘Prisoners’ in line.”

“Don’t tell me… the Guards turned into sadistic assholes and the Prisoners were traumatized..”

“Well, not all the Guards, but a full third of them went on to display what seemed to be pure sadistic behavior, and the rest either kind of liked it or just went along, including Zimbardo himself.”

“So his girlfriend put a stop to it?”

“She did. She pointed out that Zimbardo and his Guards had created appallingly inhumane conditions for the Prisoners, but she was the only person to object on moral grounds out of many people who’d been toured through, including the so-called ‘ethics’ panel who’d approved the study to begin with. It was shut down almost immediately, and is still very controversial. Since then, it’s been discovered that advertising for a prison experiment attracts the crazies in droves, so the experiment turned out to have been badly-designed to begin with, since the statistical universe was heavily skewed to include more of certain personality types than exist in the actual population, not random people at all, but the most controversial part of it was actually that it put the actual prison guard population in a ‘delicate’ position, since the same self-selection process might well apply to those who choose the profession in reality, which makes many people uncomfortable if they think too long about the implications.”

“Well, I could have told them that to begin with. What kind of man, or woman, would want to spend their entire adult working lifetime keeping people from being free? Sane people want to do something with their lives, to build something, not tear things down or put people into cages.”

“I guess you’re smarter than the experimenters, then, or perhaps they were simply naïf. In the end, he had to be hit over the head with the actual results of his experiment before he realized what was happening. In any case, Tris went at it deliberately, seeking out angels created with vengeance in mind, and pushing them over the edge toward the Dark Side of the Force. I believe that he may well have inflicted terrible damage to their minds as well, since my mother reported finding the ætheric equivalent of ‘lesions’ in the area of the hippocampus and frontal cortex, thereby lowering normal social inhibitions.”

“Could he really do that? It seems spooky.”

“Fairly easily, if he’d taken them by surprise. My own powers include the ability to raise or lower libido, for example — among many other things — so I’m quite sure that someone as ruthless as Tris was could do the same with some combination of the negative emotions and traits that fell under his realm of authority, greed, narcissism, ruthlessness, deception, dishonesty, grandiloquence… the list goes on. I know that he liked to hurt and humiliate people, because he managed to pickpocket my brassiere while I was talking to him at the Convention.”

“What!?” Frank almost roared, more angry than Jackie had ever seen him. “It’s a lucky thing he’s locked up then, since otherwise I’d have to break his nose for him.”

“I know, Frank, but I wasn’t actually harmed, and at the time I was trying to solve the diamond thefts, which were more important to your uncle than whether some puerile crêtin got his jollies by the godly equivalent of snapping my bra strap.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time, though?”

“Because I’m an adult, Frank, and fully capable of handling the problem on my own, as I’ve quite recently demonstrated.” She caressed his arm and added, “At the time, you were fully mortal, and no match for him on that particular battlefield, although I know that you could outthink him in a New York minute.”

“But why that trait, in particular?”

She laughed. “Because it’s one of the things I most admire about you, of course, and most of the Old Gods haven’t bothered to keep up with modern science or technology, so they’re not most of them all that far removed from being ignorant barbarians, for all their physical and/or spiritual powers. Tris was caught by a novel use of a perfectly ordinary burglar alarm, thus proving his violation of the Compact, in spite of his vaunted skill as a master thief, and with spiritual powers, being caught wrong-footed can be fatal. Having been publicly revealed as an idiot, his aura was diminished, so he was child’s play to gather up and stuff into a crystal.”

“Child’s play?” He seemed skeptical.

“Almost literally. Almost any succubus could have taken him, because his overweening masculine ego was deeply involved, and he’d been humiliated. I simply pushed him deeper into further humiliations until his ego deserted him.”

“Like Aikido, then, using an opponent’s strength against them?”

“Exactly like that!” She smiled, remembering. “The more he struggled to extricate himself from my power, the deeper he entangled himself in it until he couldn’t struggle any more.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“I’m a dangerous woman, Sweetie.” She smiled and tickled him behind his ear. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“I had, actually, almost from the start. Father Sam was afraid of you, although he did a fine job of convincing himself to the contrary.”

Jackie looked at him in growing suspicion. “Do you remember what happened in the bus station now?”

“I do, although it was a little hazy at first. I remember trying to pick a fight with ‘Father Sam,’ and I remember you telling him that he could kill you, if only he’d leave me unharmed. ‘Father Sam’ was being a bit of an asshole at the time.”

Jackie laughed delightedly, snuggling into his chest. “He can be. He swallowed an early precursor to Baden Powell’s Scouting for Boys, and he’s been a little constipated ever since. My mother’s working on him, though, and I expect she’ll loosen him up soon enough.”

Frank rolled his eyes, then shut them tight with a pained grimace on his face. “I refuse to visualize all the images those words call to mind.”

She laughed again. “My mother has a powerful effect on men; she….” She broke off, remembering her part in her mother’s apotheosis and investiture as Semangelaf’s feudal sovereign.

Frank gazed at her in shrewd appraisal. “One of those awkward memories, I see.”

She didn’t hesitate before she said, “Yes. It’s sort of what Freud called a ‘primal scene,’ but far more personal and overwhelming. It’s something I could easily have lived without, and yet, it’s part and parcel of a series of changes in me that allowed me to survive and defeat my attackers, so it turns out that I could easily have died without as well. It’s complicated….”

“I imagine.” Frank furrowed his brow in thought. “So Tris, evidently the seducer of sociopaths, who ran a forcible reëducation clinic and prison camp for angels, is now a prisoner? Is there any irony there?”

“Probably, but without any jailers, so the situation isn’t precisely similar,” she said, and then stopped, unsure of what ought to come next.

There was a long pause before Frank finally broke an uncomfortable silence by saying, “I take it then that the next attack — or attacks — were not so easily handled.”

She winced, because he was exactly right. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’m afraid so, but I’ve got your back, Sweetheart. I was your best friend for many years, and I love you now more than ever. I won’t ever let you down.” He had a peculiar expression on his face, one which Jackie had never seen, mingled love and sorrow.

Jackie looked at him in horror, suddenly realizing…, “You know!” she said.

“Jackie….”

“You know!” She burst into tears, horrified because….

“Jackie, I know it’s a staple of conventional ‘wisdom’ that engineers are totally clueless nerds, but I at least am neither clueless nor a nerd, or at least not much of one. The sort of men who want to humiliate and degrade women follow a very limited playbook, because they’re cruel and hateful dickheads filled with a depraved contempt for — and often fear of — women in particular. Paradoxically, many — perhaps most — are weak and ineffectual otherwise, because long experience in bullying has convinced them that women are safer targets than other men — who might be physically capable of hurting them — whom they quite often cower before as craven curs. I can surmise from your general affect and hesitation the general nature of your assault and injuries, and deeply sympathize, but would never judge you culpable in any way for anything that happened to you during or after their barbarous attack.” He paused to take her hands, just looking into her eyes. “When I look at you, when you look at me, there’s nothing but pure love between us, you have my word.” He opened his arms for her, and she fell into them, sobbing in grief for all that had happened to her, and in gratitude for the generous love of this good man.

Finally, she said, “As it turns out, there were powers behind Tris with an axe to grind, and their primary targets were my mother and me.”

“I can well understand it,” he said softly, petting her hair with one hand while he held her with the other. “As you pointed out, you’re a dangerous woman. The two of you together are far more than twice as dangerous. Lilith was never ambitious, I think, so was content to sit quietly in a little corner of the world, essentially minding her own business, but you set out to take the world by storm, drawing the attention of… someone… who felt threatened.”

Jackie nodded. “Tris was actually Hermes Trismegistus, one of the ancient Greek Gods, although relatively minor. With him gone missing, his Olympian bosses showed up in the form of Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus.”

“I get it. Never send a boy to do a ‘man’s’ job. They decided to ‘teach you both a lesson.’ I reckon it didn’t work.”

“No, not at all.” She was hesitant, not knowing what to say next.

“Which doesn’t surprise me, because I know that they were sadly mistaken in their arrogant assumptions, because I am lots smarter than they were, and I use the past tense advisedly, because I’m personally convinced that they would have been better off jumping into an industrial paper shredder than attacking you in any way. Now, you will let me help you with this, because I love you, and wish you nothing but good. I’m very angry that they touched you against your will, that they very deliberately set out to kill or hurt you, and if they were still around I’d be very interested in tearing them into tiny little pieces, but exactly what they touched and exactly how they hurt you are a matter of complete indifference to me, only that they hurt you badly, and I’m filled with nothing but love for you, and suffused with loathing and contempt for the vicious cowards who tried to harm you. I sincerely hope that they rot in Hell, but I suspect that that wouldn’t be nearly as bad as what you’ve already done to them.” He paused for breath after this impassioned speech, then said, “You did do something to them, didn’t you?” and looked over the bridge of his nose so owlishly that she burst into a paroxysm of nervous laughter, and then started crying again.

“I did, Sweetheart, but….”

“Richly deserved, I’m sure. Please don’t trouble your head about it, whatever it was, and please don’t think that I think any less of you for what you did, or what was done to you, whatever the particulars might be. In a long life — and I’m given to understand by your friend Tiamat that we will have a very long life together — things happen. If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen with a sympathetic ear; if not, I’m here to keep on loving you no matter what.”

“But you don’t know what happened, Frank. Not really. They….”

“Jackie….” Frank interrupted her. “I have exactly zero interest in ‘finding out what happened,’ and you don’t have to explain yourself or make any excuses.’ You’re an innocent in this, and I know that. That’s all I need to know. If you need to talk about anything, I’m here for you, but I will never interrogate you, nor display any prurient interest in your ordeal or any detail thereof. The only important thing to me is that you’re safe right now, and that we love each other.”

Jackie thought about it for a while before she realized exactly what he was saying, that he didn’t claim ownership of her private thoughts or experiences; that she was an autonomous adult, and didn’t need to make excuses — to him at least. “Thank you, Frank,” she said. “I do have news I ought to share, though. My mother has made me her heir, which evidently means a little more in the supernatural realm that it does in the mundane world. During the assault on both of us, she placed herself in harm’s way to save me, and she was killed by the thunderbolt of Zeus. Somehow, when her… her body… was destroyed, when all this happened, I was inundated by a overwhelming cascade of all the memories of her life — and of all her prior and related lives — and it established a link between us that was startling in its intensity and power.” She paused again, then said, “One of the things I learned from her memories is how I can have a baby, so I wanted to tell you that I’m ready to start trying, if you’d like, and her other gift was the ability to control my hunger, so there’s no longer any reason to call a halt to anything we might get up to, in bed or out of it.”

He was flummoxed for a moment. “Lilith is dead?” he asked. “I’m very sorry. I know how much she meant to you.”

“As if! I re-manifested us both into new ætheric bodies from memory, after sharing my brain with her for longer than was really comfortable — for many reasons — so she’s still with us, reborn as good as new and as constantly annoying and sometimes wonderful as always. It’s the reason we can have babies, though, so I can’t complain too much, although many of her experiences and memories were… difficult… to incorporate into my own. Then again, I created her new body, so I suppose you could say that I’m her mother now, which sounds almost as strange to me as it probably does to you.”

Frank gave a sharp bark of laughter. “How perfect. You know how women always say that they’re afraid of becoming their mothers? Well….”

“I know. It feels a little odd. I just hope she doesn’t demand an allowance and a car.” She smiled. “On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered what the dance of the seven veils was really like, I can perform it perfectly now.” She waggled her eyebrows at him in a sort of feminine parody of Groucho Marx in his character as an unrepentant reprobate. “So if you’ve got the money, Honey, I’ve got the time.” She grinned.

“Great! If I ever want to retire, you can take over your mother’s gig as an exotic dancer.” He thought for a second. “Will I have to wear one of those big fur hats and dress in flashy outfits?”

“I don’t think so, Sweetheart. It’s not that sort of bar.”

“Too bad,” he mused. “I always thought that I looked good in purple.” He’d managed to say this with a straight face, but broke into laughter as soon as Jackie looked closely at him, her eyebrows slightly narrowed.

“Trust me,” she said, frowning. “It’s definitely not your color. In fact, as a professional fashion designer and consultant, I’m of the opinion what you have on right now clashes with your inner nature.”

He was obviously puzzled, since Jackie had never given him fashion advice before. “And what would my ‘inner nature’ be, exactly?”

Jackie demonstrated by disincorporating both their outfits as she leapt into his arms, and he automatically caught her in midair. ‘Hot damn, but he was strong!’ “Naked, of course.” And then she kissed him.

Frank very wisely said nothing, but returned her kiss with fervent passion as he held her cradled in his arms.

“Oh, Frank! I love you so!” she cried, and then she settled in to hold him close, as close as she could manage, drawing comfort from his strength and from the heady scent of him, filled with the spicy fragrance of masculine power and drive. ‘This is right for me,’ she thought. ‘This man is perfect for me, the true partner of my soul, my beloved, my other half.’

“And I love you, Jackie,” he said, whispering, kissing her hair, so that his warm breath swept through the individual strands, gently suffusing them with the heat of his body, the tangible presence of his love manifested in his embrace, in his words, and in his gentle strength, which held her to his heart with no hint of awkwardness or effort.

“Frank, let’s get married….” She was whispering into his ear. “I want to be your wife right now, to be the mother of your children.”

He smiled and said, “There was never any doubt of that, Jackie. Will you marry me? Should I set you down and go down on one knee, my princess bride?”

She shook her head. “No, Frank, I’d rather be in your arms right now than anywhere else in the world. I’d rather remember this spontaneous embrace than any clichéd set piece with candles and flowers, much less billboards or skywriting airplanes. You’re my man, not a supplicant, and I’m yours because we belong together, both strong and proud, partners in life forever. I take you right now, Frank, as my husband for all eternity, and give myself to you as your wife and the future mother of your children.”

“And I take you, Jackie, as my wedded wife, and plight thee my troth and body as your husband forever.”

Jackie smiled just like the cat that ate the canary and added, “I suppose we’ll have to have a ceremony to please your aunt and uncle, and probably the civil authorities, but that will just be a procedural recognition of the troth we plighted just now, which undertaking is the true covenant that binds us. I refuse to acknowledge that any higher power is needed to join us, nor would I submit to anyone or anything which sought to separate us, because we’re destined for each other, beyond the reach of powers and principalities, because perfect love drives out all fear, puts to flight every hesitation, and utterly rejects any appeal to external authority. Our union is blessed of our own volition and by our own solemn affirmation, because we’ve recognized each other as true life mates, and the only sacrament I need is the precious gift of your love. My own true love is all that I can possibly offer in return.”

Frank kissed her with infinite tenderness and care, saying, “That sounds good enough for me, Jackie, although I don’t have your way with words. I’d only add that you’ve had my heart from the first day I followed you when you tried to leave, and caught up to you in the bus station. I knew then that I would never leave you, and that we’d never be apart, Semangelaf and all his pestering conditions and cautions be damned.”

And as he carried her through the door into their bedroom, Jackie laughed, a deep and throaty woman’s laugh. “We have another spare bedroom now, my darling. Shall we see about filling them up?”

Frank laughed in turn. “First things first, my dear…,” and tossed her lightly to the bed, then followed closely after.

‘Now let the great work of alchemy begin,’ Jackie thought to herself, ‘the magnum opus, the creation of the philosopher’s stone, that priceless entity capable of transmuting base metals into gold, bestowing immortality upon creatures of mere flesh, the cintamani, the jewel that lies within the lotus, the pearl of great price which embodies the entry of Dharma into the Universe.’ As Frank moved within her, she moved through him, selecting just the right sparks of life, those which best embodied his essence, and then manifested her own, the pure heritage of the first woman in the world undamaged by time and loss, the pristine precipitation of eternity into time, and brought them together, once, twice, then chose souls for them — taking care that they were both compatible and complementary — and then she was finished with her working, even as she placed them at the beginning of their journey, just beginning their stately progress down her fallopian tubes toward her womb, where they would implant and grow for the next thirty-eight weeks or so. Only then did she allow herself her pleasure, and climaxed, a paroxysm made more precious by marking the conception of her twins.

All through the night she watched him breathing, feeling a peculiar sort of envy at this signifier of metabolism, the inner fire of physical life, supplanted in her case by the deeper fires of creation. How long had it been, she thought, since she’d last breathed for herself, and not for dissimulation. People noticed if you never took a breath, so she went through the motions without need, as an elaborated courtesy and disguise, and had to take special care to ensure that her manifested womb was properly supplied with all it needed to nourish her developing embryos when they implanted themselves five days (or so) from last night, at which memory she smiled, the first of many such encounters, she hoped, though not her first memory, which now included a multitude of men and an infinite variety of couplings, both good and bad, not to mention her mother’s latest adventure with Semangelaf, in which she’d been both observer and participant, her viewpoint shifting back and forth with dizzying fluidity and speed. She was a little disappointed that Frank — the man she’d been ‘saving herself’ for — hadn’t been her first memory, but not enough to wish herself dead, which was the only likely alternative.

She hadn’t studied him sleeping for a while though, and noticed that he no longer had any tendency to snore since Tiamat had taken hold of him. It made sense, since perfection is inherent in immortality. As an immortal, Frank embodied an ideal archetype, the epitome of his genetic and ancient cultural heritage — wherever the Ahtrams came from originally — ancient Mesopotamia or Ariana, in all probability, since the name was still common in Turkey, Pakistan and elsewhere in Central Asia, parts of which were formerly the North West Frontier Province of India under the British Raj, but Jackie’s best guess would be Mesopotamia, since he now appeared to be a recognizable avatar of Marduk, the Sun God of Babylon — as Jackie’s own memories seemed to verify — the patron of water, plants, and magic, which she supposed would be the ancient equivalent of engineering. Funny how things worked out.

Frank’s eyes fluttered open, and if he were unnerved by finding his wife staring at him, he made no sign other than to smile and say, “Having trouble sleeping?”

Jackie laughed. “As if, you big nut. You know I don’t sleep. I couldn’t resist staying with you, though, when you dropped off.”

He arched one perfect brow. “Oh, yeah? Lookin’ for some nookie?”

She grinned. “Not particularly, but nookie is always on the menu, Dearest.”

He reached for her and drew her close, saying softly, “What are the words? ‘With my body, I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’ Something like that; I left out the ring part because I didn’t think to bring one. Shall we go shopping?”

Jackie clapped her hands together twice and gave him a huge smile. “Oh, goodie. I know just the jeweler.”

“Not Perlmutter’s, I hope.” Frank rolled his eyes. “I’d feel guilty, after staging our elaborate charade around the ‘borrowed’ diamonds thing.”

“Well,” she frowned slightly, “they do carry the widest selection here in town, unless you want to go down to New York. I suppose we could have breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She smiled again, but impishly, daring him with a sidelong glance.

“Tiffany’s it is, then,” he said, then grinned. “You were always a hopeless romantic, you know.”

She thought about that for a moment; it was a stretch, remembering her former life amongst so many. “I suppose I was. Certainly I was never motivated by greed or lust for power.”

Frank snorted. “Not at all. You could have gone to the B-school, or taken up the law — the modern routes to power and wealth — but instead you chose to study what are essentially fairy tales, however real they turned out to have been in retrospect, and set out to follow the dream of Rose ‘Rosie’ Alvarez in Bye Bye Birdie, and actually became the equivalent of her English Teacher with a fairytale twist.”

She pouted prettily, just for effect, and said, “Well, an English teacher really is someone, you know.” Unfortunately, your last name isn’t Peterson, and Ahtram doesn’t fit into the scansion.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t, but then I’d never fit into that particular role, since I’ve always supported and admired you, and was never a ‘mama’s boy’ like he was. He treated Rosie very shabbily, I think, not that you’re anything like Rosie — well, until she breaks out of the Sixties model of ‘proper femininity’ in the Spanish Rosie scene. She let herself be a doormat for far too long, I think. Albert didn’t deserve her.”

Jackie stared at him, halfway amazed to hear him say this, since her head was still swimming in thousands of years of inherited experience of misogyny, and at the same time relieved that Frank was so much a man of this age, in which women were valued as individuals by so many younger men, and in which the injustice of a woman waiting for a man to finish dithering around and make up his mind to grow up struck even men as odd. There were thousands of Hollywood films depicting exactly the opposite notion, and the women of Sex and the City were still a little avant garde. “Remind me to let you know, Dear, exactly how much of a treasure you really are.”

“That good, hunh?” he preened, puffing out his chest — which Jackie had to admit was very … attractive, not to mention his impeccable washboard abs, fetchingly displayed peeking out from under the rumpled sheets — obviously understanding her compliment as referring to his sexual prowess.

“Hold on, Tiger!” she smiled. “I was referring to your wonderful mind, not that you’re lacking in more earthly charms. Your spontaneous defense of Rosie just made me think how lucky we are to be living in an age of relative enlightenment, in which men see women as equal partners in life, as opposed to the ‘little women’ who keep their homes in order.”

“Don’t be too hard on past generations, Jackie” Frank said gently. “I think men and women have always made accommodations for each other. Don’t forget that before home freezers and industrial food and material goods production, someone had to perform all the time-consuming tasks of food preparation, making clothes, and ensuring that the pigs stayed out of the kitchen. It was usually women, because most outside labor was brutally hard, and even men didn’t hold up well under the burden of it. Both men and women tended to die young, worn out by the struggle of living. No one got a free ride, with the possible exception of a few members of the upper (formerly warrior) classes who skimmed off most of the cream by right of conquest, a politically-correct synonym for strong-arm theft.” He paused, then said, “And don’t forget that, for all his faults, Rosie loved Albert, and when he finally realized that he loved her, but had been… distracted by his musical career, but then he almost lost her. In fact, you could also say that it was when his whole life came crashing down around him that he finally discovered the depth of his love for her, because she was all that mattered to him, in the end.”

Jackie was confused by his last words. “But you said he wasn’t good enough for her …”

“Oh, he wasn’t good enough at all,” he said quietly, “but she wanted him. Few men, I think, deserve the love that women give them, including me. As an engineer, however, trained to observe and evaluate the tiniest detail, I’m profoundly grateful that you’ve chosen to overlook my many faults.”

Jackie’s heart melted. “Oh, Frank, I love you so!”

“See, there you go.” He smiled, stroking the curve of her waist and hip with one hand, his other trapped between them. “What did I ever do to deserve you? Have I ever told you exactly how beautiful this curve is?”

She didn’t know what to say. “Unh…”

“There’s a perfectly logical explanation, of course. In men, at least, that precise feminine curve is hardwired into our brains, so most men are instinctively attracted to almost anything that duplicates that curve. It can be anything, a guitar, the profile of rolling hills and valleys, even an assemblage of metal; sculpt that particular curve into it and men — perhaps every human being, male or female — will find it beautiful in almost exactly the same measure as it approximates a woman’s curves. ”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. It was an engineer who discovered this principle, of course, a Dutchman named Niko (Nikolaas) Tinbergen.” He looked very pleased with himself. “The Dutch are great engineers, you know, having engineered half their country out of the ocean. Anyway, he reëngineered a seagull’s beak and discovered that seagull chicks are hardwired to peck at long slender things with high contrast, so a thin dowel with black and white stripes on the end is much more attractive to them than real seagull mother with food. They go crazy when they see it, like a crack addict with a rock of freebase cocaine, or a tobacco junkie a cigarette for that matter, the delivery system for freebased nicotine. Shared the Nobel Prize with Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch.”

Jackie still wasn’t sure if he was being serious or if this was an elaborate shaggy dog story. “Unh, right. Is that why women tend to find a nice square jaw on a man attractive, or well-defined muscles?”

“Not exactly, but the same general principle applies, I think. In populations of wild horses, mares tend to be attracted to the most muscular and strong stallions, but horses are designed to run away from danger, and the dangers to horses typically come from predators like wolves and lions, so the issues are complex, but mating with big powerful stallions up the chances for big powerful colts who can run away more successfully than those of lesser stallions. In humans, the dangers quite often come from other humans, so I suspect that the ability to fight comes into play on a different level.”

“But you said both men and women find the same things attractive. How does that….”

“Oh, they do, but they usually do different things with the same attraction, except in the case of lesbians and gay men, of course. If you look through most women’s magazines, you’ll see page after page of beautiful women, while the pictures of men are relatively rare. The opposite holds true for most men’s magazines, except for racy stuff. The market for nude men is relatively limited amongst women, nowhere near the number of male subscribers to magazines featuring nude women, but both sexes have a strong interest in the members of their own sex as well, not usually in a sexual sense. Look at football; the most avid fans tend to be men, and there are sports magazines for men in bewildering array, most of which focus primarily on male sports, but sports are for men what fashion tends to be for women.”

Jackie thought about that for a bit before she said, “Okay, I can see your point, but why does this have to be hard-wired?”

“Because it’s existed forever, as far as we can tell from the evidence we find preserved. Birds compete to create the most beautiful songs, or weave the most enticing bowers, because intelligence is very important for a small animal that almost everything would like to eat, so female birds are attracted to beautiful songs. Animals ‘show off’ to each other in many ways. We find decorative items placed in burials as far back as the Neanderthals. Infant humans have the ability to tell the difference between eyes that are looking at them and eyes which are looking away, or which are closed, in other words, whether the one doing the looking is interested in them or not. Baby chimpanzees can do the same. In humans, fitness is an important measure of whether one’s babies will survive. In women, the waist to hip ratio is an important measure of overall health, as well as an indication of the width of the pelvic arch, which often translates into an easier birth.”

She smiled craftily and said, “How interesting! Tel me more. What would you say my hips translate into?”

He seemed flustered to have the conversation steered so quickly away from theory and into practicality. “Why, that you would make a good mother, of course. With hips like that….”

She squealed with pleasure, then said, “Lucky me, then. That’s awfully good to know!”

“Well, of course, since you have control over your appearance, you’d naturally gravitate toward the most attractive….” Then he stopped, then started again, “Unh, what did you just say?”

Wide-eyed, in perfect innocence, she said, “I said that’s good to know.”

“And why in particular is that ‘good to know,’ pray tell me.”

“Because it will come in handy in about eight and a half months.”

He looked at her with growing suspicion. “Eight and a half months? Is there something magical about eight and one half months?”

“Well, yes, it is rather magical, actually. It’s the time required to carry a baby to term.”

He looked bewildered. “I thought that was nine months.”

“It’s a common misconception, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s difficult to say what goes on inside a biological woman’s body, so they rather arbitrarily pick the onset of the last menstruation as the official ‘start’ of a normal pregnancy, but actual conception starts around mid-cycle, so it works out to around thirty-eight weeks, eight and a half months in terms of the actual date of conception, although by some definitions pregnancy doesn’t actually begin until implantation in the lining of the uterus, about four to five days after the actual union of the sperm and the egg.”

“And this is apropos of…?”

“Did you know the forty percent of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned? ” she said, changing the subject slightly. “In the developing world, of course, the figures are much higher.”

“Why exactly are you telling me this, Jackie?” He frowned.

“Why, just that there’s science behind every magical thing, and that every miracle can be examined in such fine detail that it seems commonplace, even boring.”

It took him a minute to work that through. “I get the impression that I’m being very subtly scolded, Jackie.”

“Not at all, Sweetheart. You’ll need to take care of yourself now, is all.”

“Take care of myself?”

“Well, yes. I’m not worried about me, of course, but expectant fathers sometimes go crazy, so you’ll need to eat right, and have plenty of rest.”

“Are you telling me you’re pregnant, Jackie?”

She smiled very prettily, she thought. “Exactly! So much for the ‘glow’ theory… or maybe that comes later. It’s my first time, at least in this body, so I really have no clue.”

“This body?”

“I told you that I’d remanifested myself, Frank.” She gave him a moderately peeved look. “After what happened, I didn’t want to keep the old one, so I started fresh.”

“But you’re pregnant!”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Now she was getting irritated.

Frank’s voice rose into an angry shout. “How the Hell can you be pregnant and just swap bodies like they were negligées?”

“Duh! Because I’m an immortal spiritual being is how. All my bodies are the product of my indomitable will acting upon the subtle fabric of reality. Give me some credit, Frank. I know what I’m doing. How could I possibly keep our children safe if I were limited to one body?”

“Wait a minute! Children?! Is that a rhetorical ploy or when were you going to tell me?”

“I was just getting to it,” she said scathingly, “before I was so rudely interrupted. We have two, a boy for you and a girl for me”

“Oh, swell! And when were you going to tell me?”

“Again, I was telling you before you started acting like a jerk!”

“Well! I….”

“Hang on a minute, Mister Know-it-all!” she interrupted whatever it was he was going to say, “If you’d like to become an instant expert, how’d you like to carry them for the next eight and a half months. I can easily arrange that for you, Dear, just say the word.” Then she added, “Or almost any word,” and glared at him again.

And then the doorbell rang.

They looked at each other and Frank said, “What the Hell?” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s just after five in the morning!”

“I’ll get it,” Jackie said.

Frank said, “No, I’ll get it!” with a stubborn clench of his jaw and an irritated look on his face. “I may be the junior partner in this marriage, but I’ll be damned if I let my wife answer the door because I’m too scared to face whatever’s out there.” He opened the bedroom door and started through.

Jackie made as if to follow.

“Jackie, you stay here! I don’t need my wife to hold my damned hand for me!” Then he slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.

Jackie blinked, and waited, unwilling to push him further. Belatedly, she saw that she may have been a little high-handed.

A few minutes elapsed, and then Frank came storming back in, grinding his teeth together and his face as grim as death, throwing the door back so forcefully that it crashed against the wall and the doorknob put a hole in the plaster to one side of the doorway. “You’re going to have to deal with this one after all, Jackie, and it had better be good.” He bit out his words as if they tasted terrible. “There’s a blue man out in the living room who claims that he’s your husband!”

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah

Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Six:
I Love a Parade

Na jayate mriyate va kadacin
nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah sasvato ’yam purano
na hanyate hanyamane sarire.

The soul is never born, nor dies at any time.
Soul has not, does not, and will not come into being,
Soul is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval.
Soul is not slain when the body is slain.
 ― Sri Krishna,
Bhagwat Gita: 2:20

 

As she walked into the living room, she saw that blue wasn’t exactly an accurate description, but the man’s skin was so translucent that she could see the bluish color of whatever circulated as blood in his veins through the surface, as if he were lit from within by an infinite ocean of light. He radiated peace and tranquility as he stood there gazing into the fireplace, as if he had all the time in the world, and Sal was nowhere to be seen.

“May I help you?” she said, and the man turned toward her, his face coming into focus as he calmly faced her. She rolled her eyes. ‘Damn! She had been married to him, sixteen thousand, one hundred and nine times married, to be precise — first when she was Radha — first Goddess and Shakti — when he was still a cowherd, then when she was Lakshmi in a multitude of bodies — and then again as Sita, when he was Rama. At least that time she hadn’t been quite so scattered.’ “Hello, dear,” she said. “What brings you out calling?”

“Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamy aham.”

“English, please. We have an audience.”

By this time, Frank had followed her into the living room and was standing right behind her, glowering with his arms crossed, the epitome of angry territorial male. “Yeah. You lost me right after ‘Yada yada,’ which I’m presuming didn’t lead into a sitcom joke, because nobody’s laughing.”

The strange man said, serenely enough, but with a hint of a sneer playing about his lips, “I said, more or less, that I’ve manifested in this age because your… wife has unwisely altered the cosmic order and caused a decline in the observance of religious duty.”

Frank went from territorial to threatening in the blink of an eye. “Look here, buddy, you may be hot stuff back in whatever podunk town you came from, but you’ll use a more civil tone in our home or you’re out in the street on your candy blue ass in a New York minute. Whatever my wife has done — or not done — is her damned business and none of yours.”

The blue man bristled and started to say, “I am charged with….”

…when Jackie interrupted. “Indeed. Frank is much more powerful than he looks, because he predates you by many ages of the world, and I of course am the source of all your power, so it would behoove you to be more polite. You appear to assume that I didn’t know what I was doing, and that you have any power to change my mind.”

“But this is madness!” the blue man cried indignantly. “You’ve destroyed the very foundations of human society!”

“Not ‘the foundation,’ but ‘a foundation,’ in my opinion, and mine is the one that counts,” she said casually, as offhand as if they were talking about the color of the drapes. “You’re perfectly welcome to kibbitz, but the hand is mine to play, because I’m the eldest of all, now that my mother is also my daughter, and I have the power, and thus the right to act as seems proper and fit to me. It’s complicated, I know, but the complaint line forms on the right, and the office is currently unstaffed. Perhaps I’ll set up a self-directed customer service hotline with many touchtone options available, but then again, as the Queen of Hell, that might be taken as a cruel joke.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a pretty smile at all, more like that of a tigress looking at a tethered calf.

“But you’ve subverted public order! In Afghanistan, a gang of lawless women have stoned their tribal rulers to death! Housewives in India are refusing to prepare home-cooked meals for their husbands! Women in China have murdered their husbands to make room for a girl child in the family!”

“And your point is what, exactly?” she asked pleasantly.

“But ten thousand years of World culture is simply fading away!”

“Ask me if I care,” she said, with one disdainful eyebrow raised. “Ask me if I care about the tribal elders, all male, all ignorant jerks with their collective heads shoved so far up their up their own asses that they could tell you what they were eating before they put it in their mouths and not much besides; or the salarymen who’ll now be eating at the vending machine or going out to lunch and supporting their local economies; or the husbands who tried to pressure their wives into killing their girl children so he could have a boy child to ‘carry on his name.’ Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke. Just fuck their sorry asses and the mangey horses they rode in on.”

“Uhm, Jackie,” Frank interrupted. “Who the Hell is this putz, and why was he calling you his wife?”

She spared him an angry glance. “He’s confused me with my mother, Frank, which is easy to do, since we’re essentially twins now, but even there he’s thousands of years behind the times. We’ve both moved on, my mother and I, while he represents a quaint notion of a tidy social order that was already antiquated when it was first promulgated five thousand years ago or more. You can think of him as a boy we once dated in high school, but he has nothing to do with our adult lives.”

“So when he called you his ‘wife’ he was… exaggerating?”

“As I said, Frank, it’s complicated, but no, we were never actually married. When I inherited all my mother’s memories after she died, on the other hand, I inherited her own memories of her marriage to him, and to Rama, another avatar of the same underlying God, and many others, including the archangel of Death, Samael. We have no special relationship, though, because I inherited memories of all her marriages and dalliances over the years, which is much more than I ever wanted to know about my mother.”

“So why’s he here then?”

“I imagine because he’s upset, although he likes to think of himself as being above petty emotions. In the end, though, he’s the guardian and defender of the status quo as he conceives it, and so becomes irritated — as you’ve just seen him — whenever something rocks his little toy boat. You probably know him as the guy those people who dance around the airport dressed in saffron-colored robes and singing are supposedly begging for.”

“The Hare Krishna people? He’s that guy?”

“The same. He goes by Rama too, as I said.”

“Damn! I was stuck in a layover at Buffalo Niagara International once while they were singing their little ditty, over and over and over again. I had the damned thing memorized after the fifteenth ugly chorus. It was worse than Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall sung by the entire first grade class at my old grammar school, and they didn’t even know how to sing a proper roundel, so they couldn’t achieve the interesting point and counterpoint one hears as a simple melody interweaves with itself. ‘Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.’ What is that, three separate words? I thought I’d go mad with the cymbals and incense and the little off-key organ they were playing.”

“Excuse me!” The blue man was obviously upset. “Those are my devotees you’re talking about!”

“So?” Frank said rhetorically. “They were bad at it — the devotee business — making fools of themselves for the most part, handing out ten cent carnations to people and then demanding five dollars in return so they’d leave you alone. That’s not a religion; that’s a thinly-disguised ‘protection’ racket. I’m all for religious music, mind you; who can listen to a Gregorian Choir without feeling a little moved by the beauty that a bunch of men can create with their unaided voices, but those guys practice! They’ve had their music composed by talented musicians.” He thought for a moment, then added, “My favorite religious song, though, has got to be Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, although I like Jeff Buckley’s version of it better than Cohen himself. K.D. Lang does a really beautiful performance of it as well.” He glared at the blue man in a sort of irritated pity. “You really ought to pick up the CD, or download it from iTunes sometime. Maybe you could persuade your quondam ‘devotees’ to change their tune. I suppose the scam wouldn’t work as well if people actually wanted to listen to the racket they’re making, though.” He laughed, a short sharp sort of bitter laugh. “Having an actual audience would cut down on access to the people passing by as rapidly as possible, though, so I suppose it’s actually a brilliant bit of social engineering, not that I approve all that much of that sort of greedy discipline.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted!” the blue man said huffily.

“Really?” Frank asked blandly. “Why bother coming at all then? Any fool could have predicted the chilly reception you’re presently enjoying. If you’d been polite and called ahead, perhaps we could have shown you the local sights, taken you out for lunch, perhaps even arranged a little trip up to Niagara Falls, if you were as intimate a friend to my wife as you’d claimed to be. But she assures me that you were not, and that your actual acquaintance, if any, was with her mother, who has loads of friends like that by all report, not that I have anything against her. She can be a little overwhelming at times, but she has a good heart, I think, and she’s always welcome here. You, on the other hand, have merely been tiresome, and it’s still very early in the morning, too early for polite people to come calling, so at the risk of seeming rude, if you have anything to say, please say it now and then leave.” He smiled without rancor, but also without any good humor at all.

“But I’m the Lord Krishna!” he expostulated, with eloquent gestures of his perfect hands.

“So?” Frank shrugged. “I seem to be the Lord Marduk the Wise, amongst other names and titles, according to my new memories, Tamer of the Primordial Dragon, Saviour of Babylon, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, since I appear to know lots more about ancient Mesopotamia than I used to know. It’s an odd feeling, but I have no doubt that I’ll cope. If you expect me to be impressed by you, though, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Gods and Goddesses are a dime a dozen around here, so you have to at least be able to sing a little song, or perhaps play the piano, if you’d like a round of polite applause.” He turned to Jackie and said, “Do you think we ought to have a piano, Sweetheart? I designed a music room off the north façade with plenty of floor space for at least a baby grand, and I think it would be fun to sit around of an evening playing and singing old songs together with the children, more fun than watching television, anyway.”

Jackie cooed with pleasure. “Oh! That’s a perfectly lovely idea, Frank. You’re lots more clever than I am about making formal plans, but I’m all for it. I’d wondered what that room was for….”

“Well, I’ve never enjoyed designing ‘entertainment’ rooms in which the only entertainment allowed for was a huge flat-screen video monitor, so I looked back to a slightly earlier era when I was drafting my plans.” He smiled at the memory of it. It had been a part of his Master’s Thesis, and had been very well received. “I got an ‘A-plus’ on it too. It turned out that the guy who took over as my faculty advisor after DeBauck went screwy was a fan of old architecture, and simply loved the fact that I’d remembered to provide the northern light, because it allows the owner to open the drapes for good even light without fading the piano, the sheet music, or the artwork on the walls. It turns out that those old architects knew a lot about eco-friendly design from the standpoint of people without access to any of the modern technological crutches: forced-air central heating, air-conditioning, and electric lights. Solariums, sun porches, and insulated cisterns for hot and cold water were just part of their architectural armamentarium. Add in modern insulation and you’ve got a five-star energy rating without hardly trying. Plus, there were such a lot of spare materials left over after the legal dust from DeBauck’s spiteful folly had settled that I was able to bid on them and cop a recycling award for my own project as well, which was some small measure of justice, and personally quite satisfying as well.” He smiled again, quite cheerful despite the early hour, their argument, and their uninvited guest.

“But what about my problem?” Krishna whined. He pointed toward Jackie with a nasty sneer on his face and said, “That bitch….”

Like a shot, Frank turned to the little blue man and casually punched him in the nose, knocking him to the floor, where he flopped like a rag doll, arms and legs all akimbo. “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your mouth while you’re a guest in our home,” he said without any particular rancor, looking down at him as he lay sprawled on the carpet, some sort of blue ichor beginning to drip from his nose. “I’ll expect you to clean up after yourself if you bleed on our carpet as well, so you’d better conjure up a handkerchief if you can. There are tissues on the end table if you can’t.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled nasally, holding his hand to his nose as he turned over toward the table, fumbling for the box of tissues, “I was angry.”

“Well,” Frank said with some sympathy, “No hard feelings. My wife can be a little high-handed at times. It’s a habit she’s inherited from her mother, I think, not that I have anything against either of them for their sometime resentment of male authority figures. I shudder to think what life would have been like for me if I’d grown up female in what’s still largely a man’s world. I suspect that I’d be very angry most of the time, but then I’m not nearly as nice as she is either.” He leaned down to help the blue man up to his feet, which he accepted readily enough.

“Jackie?” Frank turned to his wife, who was just standing there watching this strange masculine dance of oneupmanship and a certain courtly protocol with what seemed like astonishment. “Do you have any idea what this fellow is complaining about?”

“Well,” Jackie said, feeling a bit guilty, like Lucille Ball in the old I Love Lucy television shows, “I may have had something to do with it, having caused a tiny little revolution in the nature of divinity, so a lot of guys like Krishna here may be slightly out of a job. On the bright side, though, stodgy old Semangelaf will probably be changing for the better, so my mother will be happy.”

“A revolution?” Frank asked mildly.

“We-e-e-el, Lilith had been ranting on about her ‘pathetic little thunder God’ and all his ilk, so I was already a little ticked off, and when the granddaddy of all thunder Gods barged into my atelier and killed my mother — in the process of trying his damnedest to kill me — and then all her memories of him swept through my discombobulated mind, I kind of went ballistic.

Frank raised on eyebrow and asked, “Which means…?”

“Well, you have to understand that he’d just blasted my mother into oblivion with one of his thunderbolts, and then raped my unconscious body, after letting his ‘homies’ have me first, so I was both outraged and very angry, so when I finally recovered enough strength to fight back, I sort of wiped them out, Zeus and his cronies all.”

Frank thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. So what? I’m glad you did, Jackie. If I’d been there, I would have helped you. You done good, as the saying goes.”

“But you don’t quite understand, Frank; I obliterated Zeus and his little gang of thugs using my most powerful current aspect — that of Succubus — by devouring their masculinity, both past and future, and he’s the original Proto-Indo-European dewos, from which come the entire concept of masculine deity, the very word, ‘devine,’ itself the Old Persion daiva, which we know now as demon, all the same word at heart, all based upon a masculine God of Light, from Proto-Indo-European dyeu, to shine, which includes my mother’s ‘pathetic volcano God,’ so it’s all unraveling, the whole tottering edifice of patriarchal religion. Ares is dead as well, the God of war, and Hephæstus, the God of artifice, of recklessly twisting and bashing and bending the Earth to suit human purposes. They’re all dead, sucked dry, their powers vested in me and in my various Avatars, so all their works are slowly fading, including Mister Blue-Blood here, the specifically Indus Valley version of the same tradition.” She turned toward the little blue man, “Sorry, Krishna-Rama, but you’re fading. I thought you’d looked a little pale, and I think you’re shrinking as well. So you’re probably headed back toward being a pastoral cowherd spirit, something like a faun, but a little more domesticated. Sic transit gloria mundi, eh? Take two aspirin and call us in the morning if you still feel a little under the weather.”

Krishna glared at her, but said nothing, squirming a little as he grew smaller, looking less like a man and more like a young boy every instant. It was difficult to be mad at him, because he was looking cuter by the second, not blue at all, but rather boyish and full of wonder, deeply tanned by a life spent in the fields.

Jackie thought for a moment and manifested a simple wooden flute, handing it to him and saying, “I think it’s time you ran along home now, isn’t it? Here’s a little present for you, but your mother will be missing you, won’t she?”

“Nah!” he scoffed. “I’m a big boy now. She lets me take care of our cattle all on my own.” He beamed with pride.

“Well, this little pipe will help you pass the time, and the cows will like it too, because they’ll know that you’re nearby, guarding them from harm.” She ruffled his hair and he grinned, evidently quite accustomed to women doting on him. “Now wait a moment, I have an old friend here to meet you.”

She turned toward the blazing fireplace and said, “Sal? Come on out, please, I have an old friend here to meet you.”

Sal rose up from the burning bed of coals and said, “Yezzz?”

She smiled and said, “Why don't you take on one of your other forms, Sri Garuda? Either Garuda or Hanuman, I think, would be nice.”

At that, Sal shifted through a bewildering variety of forms, eagle, ape, amalgams of both, or either, and winged angel, embodiment of elemental fire, finally leaping forth from the heart of the fire as a young Hanuman, Krishna's traditional friend and charioteer, holding out his hand to the young boy. “Hello, old friend. Do you need my help again?”

“Garuda!” he cried in real joy. “It's been ages since I've seen you! Have you been living here all this time?”

“Not all of it.” He smiled and clapped him on the back into a friendly hug. “Part of it I spent enslaved to an evil demon named Debauck, but our Lady Lakshmi here — the fountainhead and source of all true knowledge, science, and wisdom — rescued me from my prison and restored me to my former glory.”

Jackie smiled at them both and said, “Garuda, Sal, I mean to send Krishna back in time a good long way, and wanted to ask if you'd like to accompany him on his journey, as you have so many times before.” She winked at them both and said, “I'm sure there are many young cow maidens who'd love to meet you both.”

He brightened up noticeably at the thought. “Can I come back to visit, though? It's so peaceful and pleasant that I like it here.”

“Of course you can, Sweetie. We'll keep the home fires burning, just for you, but you'll have lots of new adventures to tell us about every time you return, and I'll expect you to introduce your wife, just as soon as you find her, and you will.” She nodded at him sagely, smiling that same mysterious smile that prophets often do.

He grinned and said, “I'll do it, then. Krishna and I were always good pals, but I think I'd like to skip all the wars he got us into.”

She patted both their heads, then hugged them to her bosom. “I don't think you'll have much trouble there. I've done my best to make it a little more peaceful back home.”

“Oh, good!” he said, and then Garuda/Hanuman grabbed Krishna around the neck in a mock wrestling move and they scuffled for a bit — still smiling — before they both turned and said in chorus, “See’ya, Lady!” With that, they vanished into time.

“Well,” she said, turning to Frank again, “that went well, all in all.”

Frank looked a little doubtful. “Uhm, Jackie, so am I included in the general wreck?”

“Oh, no, Frank! You’re from an entirely different tradition, long before the Indo-European God-King revolution, the Sacred Consort and Hero of the Mother Goddess, Her Eternal Lover and Tanist all in one. Tiamat was very careful to base you in a mythos with a little more staying power.”

“You make it sound as if she foresaw your encounter with Zeus, and your reaction to it, before it happened.”

Jackie blinked in surprise, then said, “Well, of course she did. What’s the point of being the Creatrix of the Universe without the ability to see what lies ahead and gently guide it back on course from time to time, or to change paths slightly in order to avoid catastrophe?”

“So you’re arguing for a sort of deism?”

“Not at all, more like a form of coöperative solipsism, since we’re all part of the reality we’re creating.”

“How can you create reality, Jackie? Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction in terms?”

“Not to me, since I’m looking at it from experience — the sum total of the inherited personal histories of the millions of women who’ve contributed their memories and decisions over time to mine. From that viewpoint, the strong anthropic principle applies, and we act collectively to create our own social and physical reality. Based on that treasury of feminine wisdom, the current situation seemed grossly suboptimal, so I decided to change it slightly, being slightly iconoclastic by nature.”

“I still don’t understand exactly what you mean, Jackie.”

“Well, you know how that German guy, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, ‘Gott ist tot’ ? — ‘God is dead,’ in ordinary discourse — What he meant by that was that we humans had coöpted God, forced Him to bend to our will, to satisfy our own petty desires for wealth and prestige, to excuse our selfishness and greed, to slake our collective lust for revenge, and to act out our personal hatreds on our behalf. In the process, we’d killed the real God that Nietzsche felt lay behind the cruel masks and martial costumes that we hung upon Him. The problem for Nietzsche was that the benevolent God that he imagined to be real was founded upon sand, because the ancient Gods that he was based upon were all those things and more, the childish imaginings of savages who believed that the perfect man was the perfect killer, the Superman who vanquished every foe, raped their women, and distributed the spoils of his many slaughters to a favored few. Well, that particular God deserved to die, but wouldn’t stay dead. No matter how many Gospels proclaimed a God of Love — the God that Nietzsche thought we’d killed — the old reptilian realities of his origin — our basest and most barbaric desires — kept bubbling up like fetid swamp gas from a mire.” She made a sour face, then said, “Since he refused to die by means of philosophic discourse, and neither public ennui nor secular hijacking seemed effective, I killed him more efficiently by going both backwards and forwards in time, as it were, and murdering him — or more precisely murdering the possibility of divinity in anything like the Western God — when he was either a little bitty boy or an old and doddering man. Since he’s been dead forever, he doesn’t have any believers to resurrect him in the present or the future, so I imagine that he’ll stay dead this time.”

Frank thought about this for a second. “So you changed our entire timeline?”

“Loosely speaking, yes. The technical details are rather complex, since the changes had necessarily to extend through an infinite multiplicity of parallel timelines — not to mention the issue of countable versus uncountable infinities and mirror-symmetric Calibi-Yau manifolds — but in layman’s terms, ‘entire’ is close enough.”

Frank’s jaw dropped slightly as his eyes widened in surprise. “Uhm… what you said .”

Jackie reached up to gently stroke his brow, saying, “The Muse Urania, mistress of the starry heavens, is one of my many avatars, and the Patroness of all things mathematical, among many other things. Since my recent apotheosis, I seem to be a bit more of a science and mathematics nerd than I ever was before.” She rolled her eyes for effect. “Who knew? I obviously harbor unplumbed depths.”

He arched one bushy brow at her and said, “Unplumbed depths? Is that a challenge?” The hint of lechery that played on his lips was not entirely unwelcome, but….

“I’m afraid not, dear heart,” she said as she caressed one of his thighs and smiled. “I have to drive in to work, since I’m receiving a new shipment of silks and custom prints for my Spring collection this morning. My staff will be there already, so I can’t just flit in like a butterfly. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave…’ and so on.”

“Well, we’ll have to see about these depths sometime very soon then; I do love a challenge.”

“And I love meeting them. Duty calls, though. I have a payroll to meet, and quite a few more people than I’d ever imagined being part of my possible future depending on me.” She rolled her eyes in resignation. “Capitalism isn’t nearly as much fun as it’s cracked up to be.”

Later that night, Frank apologized for his anger from that morning. “I’m sorry, Sweetheart. A lot of things just swept over me at once. I guess I just hadn’t been thinking about parenthood, and then that Krishna kid burst in claiming to be your husband and I just lost it for a few moments.”

“It’s okay, dearest. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that, when you were still getting used to the baggage that comes with immortality. I have to apologize as well, since my decision to become pregnant was spur of the moment. I should have discussed it with you first.”

He thought about that only for an instant before he said, “No, that choice is never a man’s decision in any way. When a man has sexual congress with a woman, he’s partaking in a sort of sacrament the possible outcome of which is always a child, whether he realizes it or not. If he chooses to dance, he has to be prepared to pay the piper, not that it’s any sort of burden, at least for me. I wanted to have a child with you, but every prospective father is taking a chance on imponderable outcomes, the worst of which is no pregnancy at all, and the thought of pregnancy, that I might engender a child in you, lent a special excitement to our every joining. I suspect that most men feel the same. I knew a fellow in my degree program whose marriage almost foundered on their failure to conceive after almost three years of trying, so I know how perilous these waters are.”

Jackie felt a wave of compassion sweep over her. “Do you keep in touch with this man? I can fix that, you know.”

Frank blinked, surprised almost against his will. “I hadn’t thought of that. The last I heard, they were considering adopting a child, but you know how long that takes. Can you really?”

She gazed owlishly into his eyes. “Well, I’m sort of involved in all aspects of love, not just sex, you know.” She petted his shoulder, stroking the surface structure of his firm deltoid and triceps muscles, which were just as perfect as the rest of him.

He smiled, having some notion of her thoughts. “I’ll get in touch with him, and tell him about a project that I think he’d be interested in, or something like that. I suspect I can get him and his wife over for dinner, and you can work your magic on them both. No matter what they’ve been told by doctors, miracles happen, and I’m sure you can use the opportunity to spice up their marriage as well, which they both surely deserve after so much heartache and struggle.”

Jackie’s heart almost burst with pride and love for the generous man who’d accepted, even embraced, her strange history. He continued to astonish her with a kind of masculine compassion and sportsmanship that seemed completely natural, the natural product on an innate sense of personal integrity and honor that she hadn’t noticed in many men. He was a little like Semangelaf, she supposed, but not stogy at all, and she really liked the way he laughed, open and honestly unfraid. “You do that, dear, and in the meanwhile, we can work on your own aspects and powers, since you could probably do the job of your own if the underlying fault lies in your friend.”

He blinked again in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Well, your sphere of influence includes magic, air, earth, and fertility, the first three at least very useful to an engineer, and the last a handy bonus.” She arched one brow at him, saying, “You must be very careful not to let any woman sit on your lap, you know, until you have your powers under control. As it is, you could knock up a hundred virgins without twitching a muscle or laying a finger on them. I don’t doubt that you had something to do with my ‘spontaneous’ need to have a child by you…. Besides the obvious, of course.” She waggled her brows slightly, focusing his attention on her eyes.

He looked directly into the eyes in question, thus encouraging her belief in her own seductive powers, and said, “Well, I’d like to think that I had something to do with your decision, but I think love does that to people as well. Making babies is one of those portions of the human repertoire that seems innate.”

“Did you know that semen is addictive to women?”

He blinked at the non-sequitur. “You’re joking, right?”

“Not at all. The majority of the components of semen aren’t spermatazoa at all, but rather a witches brew of potent mood-elevating compounds: endorphins, estrone, prolactin, oxytocin, and serotonin, plus two very specific ‘female’ hormones — follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. The first spurs egg maturation in the ovary. The second is involved in triggering ovulation. There’s also a bit of thyrotropin-releasing hormone, which probably helps to ensure a successful start to a pregnancy for women with hypothyroidism. All the rest is there to make us very happy.”

Frank looked a little uncomfortable. “Unh… isn’t this some sort of trade secret or something? I feel like someone just passed me the secret plans to the Martian Spy Ray or something. It makes me….”

Jackie smiled brightly, then said, “… a human being, Frank, other than the immortality thing. The fact is that people are designed for each other, and have reached accommodations with one another for so many millions of years that we fit together so nicely that — when everything goes right — it feels like old shoes feel good when you put them on.”

“Unh….”

“Don’t you see, Frank? Women who regularly have ‘unprotected’ sex with men are very unlikely to be depressed, even if they’re slightly worried about an ‘unplanned’ pregnancy. They’re also far less likely to attempt suicide or indulge in other self-destructive activities. In other words, men are designed to be almost irresistible to women, and to make them happy. That’s why we’ve put up with you all these millions of years, despite your many faults.” She grinned to indicate that the last remark, at least, really was a joke. “But it works the other way around as well. We’re designed to please men,” here she caressed his hip, moving suggestively toward his groin, “…in oh, so many ways. Just as men need women, women need men — mostly, but even the exceptions fit into a larger social scheme that makes ‘maiden aunts’ and bachelor uncles available as family suppport groups, artists, free spirits, and all the rest of the people it takes to create a thriving culture.”

“Well, it certainly explains why the ‘rhythm’ method of birth control fails so often,” he observed dryly.

“Exactly. I don’t know exactly when women discovered that they were unlikely to become pregnant away from the middle of their cycles, but it must have been a very long time ago, because men have managed to evolve a biologic strategy to circumvent that particular strategy by triggering ovulation during the sexual act itself.”

“I’ll be damned. So using condoms makes one miserable in the long run, and doing without….”

“Don’t get too smug, Mister. Do you want to know how they discovered this fascinating fact?”

“Of course, in the spirit of scientific enquiry of course.”

“It’s even better than your story about the seagulls. You know how women are supposed to synchronize their menstrual periods when they live in close proximity?”

“I’d heard of it, it’s supposed to be some sort of female pheromone or something.”

“Close, but no cigar. It’s nothing to do with the women at all, at least not directly, because — oddly enough — menstrual synchrony is completely absent in groups of lesbians.”

“So what is it, then?”

“It’s the sperm. In any large group of women who aren’t lesbians, it’s almost certain that at least some of them are having unprotected sex with men because — as we now know — unprotected sex with potent men is addictive. It turns out that the mere smell of sperm is influential enough to trigger ovulation and general horniness in heterosexual women, but not in the vast majority of lesbians, even when the odor is so faint that the women themselves can’t detect it, so one woman having sex with men makes most other women horny, so they have sex, hopefully — from the man’s point of view — expose themselves to sperm, and the entrainment of their sexual encounters entrains their menstrual cycles almost through accident, at least until one or more of them fall pregnant.”

“Not just the men, surely,” Frank objected. “If, as you say, unprotected sex makes women feel better about themselves, and unprotected sex makes babies more likely, the species as a whole is enormously advantaged over the sort of species in which celibacy paid dividends. If men have evolved addictive sperm, women have likewise evolved vaginal tissues and nasal linings exquisitely sensitive to the substances contained in that sperm, so might fairly be described as programmed for addiction. It seems to me that there’s a mutual accommodation there, no more surprising — all in all — than the fact that women prefer men who pay attention to their pleasure as well as their own, but far more certain, since it requires no actual effort, even from insensitive clods.”

“Maybe. It seems reasonable anyway, but it also

suggests that the most effective cologne for men might be a little jizz behind the ear.” She laughed at the image, remembering a certain film.

Frank remembered it too, but said, “Might make applying it more interesting than shaking a bottle of Old Spice as well.” He smiled, and at that they both laughed.

An hour or so later, Frank added, “Apropos of nothing in particular, I’m sorry too about poking that kid. He made me mad when he uttered a scurrilous and offensive remark about you, and I just hit him out of angry reflex.”

She patted his trim behind with a certain sense of casual possession. “Not to worry, dearest. He’s good as new now, and you have my permission to defend me or my honor any time you like. He was out of line, and well he knew it, no matter how outraged he was by my ‘highhanded’ actions.” She gave him a little look to remind him of his own remark. “The fact of those actions ought to have given him all the clues he needed to guess that the lay of the land had changed while his attention lay elsewhere.”

“I was surprised, though, by how little force it took to bloody his nose for him. I just took a little poke at him to teach him a little respect for his betters, but all of a sudden he was flat on the floor. Last time I was in any sort of physical altercation, there was a lot more flailing and much less blood.”

“But the situation has changed since then, Sweetie. You can’t begin to compare yourself to what you were before your transubstantiation, because deathless ichor flows through your veins now, not blood as such, and you were thereby made immortal, just like me, but without the accompanying loss of physicality. I’m not exactly sure, but I think you could’ve ‘whipped’ even Zeus right now, and without special training or practice.”

“Really? What makes you say that? I feel healthier, but haven’t noticed any superpowers. I can’t crawl up walls, for example, or run so fast that I’m just a blur to passers-by, so I’m pretty sure that I’m neither Spiderman or the Flash.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you actually tried to do either of those things?”

“Well, no, but it stands to reason ….”

“Reason has little to do with it, Sweetheart. It’s a matter of faith and inner certainty. Taking on an Aspect or Avatar is an affirmation of one’s essential self and purpose, not a random ‘power’ from a grab bag of comic book ‘tricks.’ ” She looked carefully at him, her eyes becoming slightly unfocused as she concentrated on other planes of existence. “I think that Tiamat chose very carefully, since as Marduk you were the builder of Eridu, one of the many ‘first’ cities in the world, although of course I… or rather Tiamat, had countless Avatars to choose from, having been present at the Beginning, and a part of everything since. Since her primary Aspect is water, you might say that she embodies all of life, or at least cellular life.”

“Do you think they knew each other?”

Jackie blushed, since she remembered their ‘knowledge’ of each other intimately, “Yes, they were married — so to speak — for quite some time, but it was troubled — as were so many God and Goddess relationships in antiquity — and they became enemies for a time, sort of like a very bad divorce, at least for public propaganda. If in fact she chose that ‘essence’ of immortality for you, the public reports of their enmity were obviously either exaggerated or more temporary than reported.”

“What exactly was reported?”

“Well, they supposedly fought an epic battle in which Tiamat was killed, but reports of her death seem to have been exaggerated. It’s difficult to kill a Goddess, since her believers will have resurrected her in any case.”

“So, no hard feelings, then?”

“No, no,” she said, “they do but jest, murder in jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ the world.”

“Why do I have the impression you’ve misquoted that speech? Hamlet, isn’t it?”

“True, I took liberties.”

“Don’t you always?”

In answer, she only smiled.

The interior of St. Hildegard’s Church held the faint odor of aged wood and incense; it was dark, despite the fractured light filtered through the rows of tall stained glass windows on either side of the nave, the large rose window depicting the meeting of Jeanne d’Arc and Our Lady, Queen of All the Angels, at Orléans over the choir and organ loft toward the rear, and the tripartite colored representation of the Our Lady in her Aspect of Abundance, twin Cornucopias flanking Her Presence like the horns of the Moon at the front of the chancel, spilling out Her Blessings on the gathered crowd.

Although there was electric lighting, it had been installed in the Thirties, so by modern standards was on the quaint side of barely adequate. The church itself was built in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, and presented from the outside a curious melange of Medieval and Art Deco in red brick.

Standing at the pulpit to the left of the altar, three women in sacerdotal vestments were speaking in chorus with considerable conviction, “And so my children, I leave you this day with a quote from Iphigenia: ‘Listen to the words of our Great Mother Isis, Queen of Heaven; She who of old was also called among us Artemis, Astarte, Athene, Arianrhod, Aphrodite, Bride, Bronwen, Ceres, Cerridwen, Danu, Dana, Demeter, and by countless other names: Let My worship be within the heart that rejoices, for all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.’ ” With a final benediction, they closed the service with all due pageantry as their parishioners quietly began to gather together their belongings, replace hymnals either in the racks built into the pews or into their purses or into carrying cases for those with personalized copies, which quite a few did, especially the elders, many of whom preferred the large type edition.

Hanging back a little from the general exodus, Jackie and Frank wandered over to the Shrine of the Son in the transept — the necessary complement to the Shrine of the Daughter opposite. — Frank lit a candle and then folded a bill small enough to insert into the Bounty Box placed discreetly off to one side, then reached out to take her hand. “It’s little enough,” he said, “for all we’ve been given.”

Jackie, heavily pregnant by now, murmured, “Doesn’t it feel a little self-referential, offering devotion to yourself?”

“Not really,” he said. “You yourself explained that we are part and parcel of a solipsistic Ouroboros, both creators of and participants in the world we’ve made for ourselves. In honoring my avatar I dedicate myself to being the best man that I can be, the man I dreamt of becoming when I was just a boy. All such dreams are self-reverential, you know, a younger self creating the future self he means to become, fully-engaged in a continuous process of becoming, powered by his own dreams.”

“Why, Frank, you’ve turned into a poet!” Jackie said softly as she pressed her cheek against his chest, listening to and hearing the deep and everlasting rhythm of his beating heart.

 

 

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is —
no man knows what a ministering angel she is —
until he has gone with her
through the fiery trials of this world.
 ― Washington Irving,
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
(1819-1820)

 

The End of a Beginning

 

 

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

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah