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He snorted. “No. The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights story took a lot of liberties with the lore. Look—full-blood djinns are powerful. They could take out whole ancient armies. But you are not full-blooded. That human blood in you, darlin’, well… It’s gummin’ up your works. You taste to me like you got some gifts, so you ain’t empty-handed, but you’re not going to be kickin’ anybody’s ass anytime soon.”
“Anything else you found out?” Murtagh asked as I was thinking through this.
I was busy being relieved. She wasn’t dangerous. I could work with this; I’d just keep a watchful eye on her. She could at least give us more than any human woman could.
“Sure did,” the demon said. “You’re not gonna like the next part. Wanna have a sit?” he gestured at the bed.
There was a noise of breath getting sucked in through teeth, and we looked in the direction of the shadow. “Ooh. It must be bad if he’s having you take a seat,” the shadow warned.
“It’s the reason I came down,” admitted Samael, sitting down himself. “Look, everybody’s heard Seraphus had a daughter out there he’s been searchin’ high and low for the last so many years. Luckily nobody’s dumb enough to take up the bounty on his kid’s head and cause the end of the world as we know it. The rumor on the ground is?—”
“Seraphus?” I asked, my eyes feeling like they were going to bulge out of my head and roll across the floor.
Seraphus had nothing on the boogeyman on the wall. We didn’t have things that went bump in the night back on Daconia. We had Seraphus.
The witch-king of legends was so frightening, and so evil, that even most djinns were scared to shit by him.
“Seraphus is here? In this realm?” Murtagh asked, clarifying.
“Oh, sure. Has been for a millennia, just sort of biding time. Creating, slowly but surely, her,” he gestured to Zazie, who was tilting her head with confusion. “Probably came here the same way you did—called by witches. Hell, she’s living proof of his existence.” He pointed his black-fingernailed index in the direction of Zazie, who stared at him with rapt attention, but not horror.
Murtagh and I slowly turned our heads towards the female.
How could something so beautiful have the blood of the most evil creature in the universe inside of her?
“How it happened, I don’t know,” Samael said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I do know that it takes a lot of power to take over this realm. It’s protected. If he had a power-boost and a lot of help, though, he might take it on. At least try. A power boost to go for Godhood. And The Maker wouldn’t like that. He’d send down angels. Then the demons rise. Huge war, scorch-the-earth style. And then we’re looking at the End of Days.”
We just blinked at him. It felt like the room was getting both darker and hotter. Either way, I felt very uncomfortable.
“The only way to get that sort of power boost is an old spell that takes a human sacrifice. Now, that won’t do for him, because he wants to quadruple his power permanently, impossible with a human. That spell would barely raise his powers and wouldn’t for long, since humans aren’t immortal. And he only has one shot at making this sacrifice. So he’d need that sacrifice to be as close to his own blood as possible with just enough human in there for the spell to work, but not so close, or else his body would reject her when he consumed her.” He shrugged and added offhandedly, “It’s actually pretty brilliant. Psychopathic and horrible, you know. But shows he’s thinking outside of the box.”
“Wait… like… he wants to eat me?” Zazie clarified, looking at Samael like he was just a nutty hobo telling scary stories on a street corner.
“Yes. And you better hope he doesn’t.” He groaned and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and seized it between his teeth. “Although you’re in luck. This is not his realm, and there are forces at stake that don’t want him to win. So you might just get lucky.”
“Don’t smoke in another person’s house, Sam,” the witch suddenly snatched the cigarette out of the demon’s mouth before he lit it. “That’s rude as hell.”
His expression at her was murderous. “Excuse me,” he told her crisply. “I’m talkin’ End of Days over here! Power this realm can’t handle without bustin’ the order of things all up! You need to start using your ears, girl.”
The witch waved her hands at him as if shooing him away. “Oh, shush. I read the tarot this morning and it said nothing except to talk about good luck comin’, and you read it right along with me!”
Samael glared at her for another moment but then looked at Zazie dead-on. “Now, I’m just gonna say,” Samael said, putting the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. “I could get rid of your dragon problem, your djinn problem, and any other problems that you might have for the price of?—”
“Samael,” the witch said in a warning tone.
“One soul. She may not be a whole lot human, darlin’, but she’s got a soul, and she can do what she wants with it,” he finished, and then justified immediately, smoothing down the front of his black, button-down shirt, “she has that smell of being overwhelmed and frightened, and it’s making me salivate. So sue me. Sides—it would be a fix.”
“Can’t you just do it without the soul-taking?” Zazie demanded, looking incredulous. “You don’t want this guy to eat me either, right?”
Samael shrugged. “Unfortunately, that’s not how my powers work.”
Zazie passed me a very alienated expression that I would have found hard to duplicate. It was emblematic of someone who was at their breaking point mentally right before someone made an offer for her soul.
I realized she was back to trembling, and so I drew her close to my body as if to warm her.
“Well, I’m just saying, there is an easy solution. But if that’s not for you,” Samael continued as if we were the ones being foolish. “Then ya’ll would do best getting her out of this realm. Preferably back to your own.”
“It’s going to take ages to find what we need,” Murtagh growled.
