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I had a small scratch on my arm from the barbed end of his tail, so I took a moment to wet my thumb and rub away the blood before I walked over to the demon and started cutting him apart.
His blood was what I was after, but also, he shouldn’t underestimate humans.
He stared at me incapable of movement or speech, shock and a bit of appreciation in his gaze for how neatly I’d turned the tables.
“That was the most amusing thing I’ve seen for a hundred years,” the demon stuck on the rock said, laughing seductively. “He underestimated you! What an excellent betrayal.” I ignored him as I continued my slicing. “Are you actually searching for a particular demon to kill? You’re wasting your time. None of them would remember killing a particular human. They’re all dull insipid, uninspiring creatures, other than yourself, but you aren’t entirely human, are you?”
I kept right on ignoring him until I had enough blood to write runes of containing around the rock where the first demon was already contained and still laughing like demons shouldn’t be capable of laughing. I’d use his runes as well when I summoned the great demon. Would it be enough? Probably not, but you had to live in the moment.
I wasn’t going to live long. You didn’t have to be a Harvard graduate to see that. I was already feeling dehydrated, and I hadn’t been here an hour. Not that time means much in the infernal dimension. I’d give killing Jazharad my best efforts, and then die killing demons. It was a fitting end for Mother Mercy’s finest assassin. I’d been expecting this kind of thing for a long time now. It was only strange that my lifestyle had taken so long to catch up to me.
I wrote two rows of containing runes around the stone table and then I started on the summoning. I’d done a lot of research on summoning demons after the Scholar had first told me his name.
“Wait. You don’t want to summon that demon. Miss human child, please reconsider. Also, if you’re going to summon him, release me first, or he’s going to eat me.”
I ignored him, but his words didn’t comfort me.
“Are you seriously mad enough to think that you can kill Jazharad? You are. Well, I can’t deny that madness has its own kind of charm. Surely you don’t want to die a virgin, and you are most certainly going to die if you continue with your noble, if slightly misguided, mission.”
“They left you here because you talk too much,” I said, nearing the halfway point of my last rune circle. The demon’s blood was almost used up, but there should be enough.
“Do you want to know my name? You can control me if you have my name, and then I can help you kill him. Doesn’t that sound like a grand plan?”
“It sounds like the plan of a hysterical incubus, but if you want to give me your name, I’m not going to stop you.”
He crouched on the table, watching me intently as I finished the last rune. He crowed when nothing happened. “See? Not enough power from you, and not enough blood from him. You can’t summon someone so mighty as the great Jazharad.”
I crouched on my heels and waited. I’d used the most certain summoning, which made it the most slow acting. It took time to get going, so I’d have to sit here and get dehydrated while the spell did its work. I’d put a lot of thought into this since the Scholar had… My chest constricted at the memory of him. This wasn’t the time to get distracted, but I hoped that he didn’t really miss me much. What if my dying for a lost cause hurt his feelings? I’d assumed that he didn’t have feelings for me other than possessiveness, but what if I was wrong? He’d gone to some lengths to get me my job back. What if that was an act of real and true love?
A volcano erupted, smoke billowing in the air, which may or may not have been triggered by my summoning spell.
The demon stopped looking cheerful. Instead, he studied me with a solidly unattractive frown. “And there you have it, me being the second demon today to underestimate you. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”
He vanished in a cloud of smoke as the volcanic ash rained down, obscuring everything.
A gust of wind spun me around and then the valley was gone, replaced by a small library, a demon sitting near a fireplace with his feet stretched out to the flames, a small volume of Voltaire in his elegant hands. The only thing out of place in the scene was the demon crouched to his left, holding a table stacked with books on his head. The demon from the stone table was here as a table, which was enough to make me realize that this wasn’t real, although what was real in the demon realm?
“Miss Morell, you summoned me,” he murmured, not looking up from his book. His voice was ordinary, slightly sleepy, but certainly not dangerous.
“Did I?” I looked around, but the room gave me no clues. We were in his world, and yes, I’d contained him with the other demon, but he’d trapped me with him, unless this was all just an illusion.
“What do you want? No need wasting more time than necessary.” There was something so normal about his voice, something that made me feel like I knew him.
“I want to kill you.”
He looked up, brow slightly raised. In his eyes, there was an infinity of pain and suffering, some of his, most of others. “Do you? How surprisingly ambitious of you. How will you manage that?”
I licked my lips. “There are a lot of books here. Perhaps you could die of paper-cuts.” Did I dare to try this here?
He shook his head, unamused. “You misunderstand your purpose in this play, little human. Your virgin blood will feed the portal on this side once my faithful and vigilant servants have secured one on the other. Kneel. Give me your life.” He didn’t even try, not with seduction, not with persuasion, he just gave me an order and I obeyed.
I cut my arm from my elbow to my wrist with my file, deep enough for the blood to flow freely. Was I really going to do this? I was breathing shallowly as my blood ran down my hand, pooling in my palm until it was full. I dipped my file in the blood and summoned the impossible fire that was as unnatural as I was.
I threw the file into the demon’s heart, but it wasn’t a sword with any weight, so it barely pierced him. He plucked it away, holding it with a look of scorn on his face when it imploded, fire curling around his hand like a serpent, leaving the scent of burning hair and flesh behind.
The demon wasn’t unaccustomed to burning, but he was certainly surprised as he stared at that fire eating away at him, and more surprised as he raised his head and stared at me.
I flung the rest of the blood in my hand at him, leaving a fine scattering across his chest. It bloomed up into eternal flames of heaven fire and infernal fyre that ate away at him in a way that gave me hope. Maybe I’d kill him before I died.
