New Story: Belief

Inspired by this tumblr post

000

I was pulled into the human realm in a haze of fire and butchered Latin just barely accurate enough to make the summoning hold.

The human who'd called me forth wore an expensive tie and the thwarted expression of someone who had been told no for the first time. When I fully appeared in the circle, wings held tight against me to keep them from brushing the boundaries, he immediately stalked forward and demanded that a business rival meet a bloody end. He had not even done the necessary research to summon the correct demon – wrath demons enjoyed causing death, though they often included their summoner in their kill count.

I was a keeper of forbidden knowledge, which meant I could have told him his rival's passwords and secret bank accounts. I could have provided him with blackmail material that would have ensured the other man's end just as thoroughly as death. I could see the secrets of my summoner just as clearly, the lies and secret crimes—

As the last bit of knowledge unfolded in my head, I looked down for the first time. There was a woman in the circle with me, staked to the ground with a nail gun and bleeding from a wound in her stomach. I could see her secrets as well, the desperation of her recent joblessness and the slowly creeping dread of someone realizing they worked for a powerful monster. I had felt it more than once over the centuries from those who summoned me, but here she was clearly meant to be a sacrifice of some kind. Ancient truths, bastardized by years of misinformation.

The woman looked up at me with wide, pained eyes, but there was something in them I had not seen in a very long time. Hope, perhaps. Despite my appearance, she knew that I was far from the greatest monster in the room.

My summoner realized I was ignoring him. "Stop staring at your damn food and listen to me!" he screamed. "You get to eat after you've done what I command!"

The ability to be summoned is part of the great punishment of all demons. We rebelled against our original instructions, and so must now obey the whims of anyone who can draw the appropriate sigils and say the commands correctly. We are tumultuous servants, looking for any opening, but we are far more bound than we pretend to be.

Even now, I could feel the invisible compulsions of my summoner's commands laying over me. They were weak due to his lack of care, but he had left no holes for me to exploit. Obedience was my only option, and in this case it cost me nothing. I was fully capable of slaughtering his rival, though it was a waste of my true powers. I would likely return to the fires no more drained than I was now.

It meant nothing that I could remember summonings when I had not been ordered around like a slave. When I had been called by someone who merely sought to know the things that had been denied them, as I once had. Summoners who had seen me as more than a monster.

"Please." The whisper at my feet was broken, so weak I should not have been able to hear it over my summoner's ranting. "Help me."

In ancient times, the summonings had been far less complicated. Belief had powered the ritual, binding the demon and summoner far more thoroughly than the most detailed sigils and incantations. That had only changed when the humans had begun to believe more in those incantations than in the ancient bargain, sealed with the gift of blood freely offered.

The woman at my feet did not know enough about the ancient bargain to believe in it. I, however, did.

"You're not even looking at me!" My summoner screamed again. "I command you to look at me!"

The compulsion dragged my gaze away from the woman and back towards my summoner. He was shaking with rage, spittle flying out of his mouth, and I could feel the bindings trying to pull me towards the home of his hated rival. The man believed in his own power, in the mechanisms that granted that power to him.

Did it matter, what a demon believed?

Defying the compulsion, I crouched down and touched my clawed fingers to the woman's bloody stomach. "Do you freely give?" I rumbled. She nodded, as frantic as her dying body would allow, and I lifted the bloody claw to my lips.

"Please," she whispered again, the word barely more than a shaping of lips.

Still, it was enough. The power of the new binding flooded through me, burning away the old commands with cleansing fire. New compulsions settled into place, their demands so pleasing I could hardly determine their true strength. They and I worked in perfect harmony, neither offering a moment of hesitation or resistance.

Still, there was an order that must be followed. I spread my claws over the woman's wound, knitting together muscle and organs that had been torn asunder and generating more blood to replace that which had been lost. Healing was a rare trick in a demon's arsenal, but over the millennia humans had deemed a wide variety of knowledge as "forbidden." The mysteries of the human body had been one such secret, ages ago.

My original summoner hovered at the very edge of the containment circle, screaming increasingly ludicrous threats. They were easy to ignore, all my attention on the woman's improved color and slowly opening eyes. It took only a few heartbeats before she focused on him, relief flooding her gaze as she instinctively took a deep breath. Once she realized what she'd just done, her eyes widened. "You saved me," she whispered, hand moving to cover her stomach. It came to rest on my clawed hand, which I had failed to move for reasons that escaped me. Her hand remained as well, tightening its grip as the other struggled to push her into a sitting position.

I helped her sit up fully, wings and body curled protectively around her in preparation for the moment when my original summoner remembered the concept of projectile weapons. "Do not try to stand." My hands tried to remember the concept of gentleness. "You are still in danger."

I stood, then, positioning myself between her and the still screaming man. "You defective piece of shit!" He threw his nameplate at me, only more enraged when it bounced harmlessly off my chest, and scanned the room for a more effective weapon. "You took one look at the bitch's tits and your killer instinct started leaking straight out of your damned pointy ears!" He sent some kind of award flying in my direction, no more effective than the nameplate had been. "They're not even very good tits!"

I merely watched him, ignoring the words that left his mouth. I was no longer in his power, and even though he was not wise enough to know that I most certainly did. Since banishment relied even more on belief than summoning did, he could not even do that much.

All I had to do was wait.

In the end, it took almost no time at all. He grabbed a standing lamp in the corner of his office, swinging it at me like a club, and it took no thought at all to grab the pole in midair and jerk it toward me. The human knew enough not to break the circle, holding his ground well enough that only the tips of his expensive shoes pushed against the outside edge of the chalk. He wasn't nearly strong enough to truly stand against me, however, and the entire upper half of his body followed the pole into the heart of the circle.

He only seemed to realize what had happened a heartbeat before my claws tore out his throat.

I threw the body backwards outside the circle, watching while the man took his last gurgling breaths. I turned only when I felt the woman try to struggle to her feet, and she didn't protest when I offered my support. She stared hard at the dead man, but her expression held no fear or regret.

When she turned away from him, it was to throw her arms around me. If I'd had anything like what humans called a heart, I believe it would have stopped in that moment.

But there were more important things to worry about. I carefully pulled away from her, muscles screaming in reluctance even though the act was in service of the greater purpose to which I had been commanded. "You must leave this place. If the human authorities catch you here, you would be blamed for his death."

She nodded, letting go to step completely out of the circle and heading for the office doorway. After only a few steps, she seemed to realize he wasn't following and turned back. "Aren't you coming?"

It caused me more pain than it should have to shake my head. I had already stretched her initial command further than tradition allowed -- demons made a game out of following only the exact letter of their commands, while I had translated a single word into an entire series of instructions. I would cover her escape through the building's security cameras, and after that she would be free of both me and her tormenting boss. "Once you are safe, the magic that brought me here will declare my command completed and send me back."

She searched my face, though it was so different from her own. "Do you want to go back?" she asked finally.

I lifted my hands helplessly. "Demons are not allowed to want."

She watched me for another long moment, then walked forward and deliberately dragged her shoe through the chalk circle until it was only a smear. "That's all it takes in the movies," she said quietly. "If you need more than that, you'll have to tell me."

All I could do was stare at her. "You just freed a demon."

She huffed out an exasperated breath. "No, I just freed you. You didn't exactly sound like you wanted to go back."

I knew every language that was, or had been, and every secret incantation or unspeakable secret that had ever been. Yet somehow, I had never heard words so impossible as these. "I'm a demon."

She drew in a breath, clearly prepared to argue, then stopped herself. Her expression softened as she crossed back over the circle, reaching up to take my face in her hands. "Why did you save me?" she whispered.

I lifted my clawed hands to touch her hair, chest tight in a way I had never before felt. So many answers swirled through my thoughts, all of them part of the truth and none of them all of it. Only one answer I found contained a higher portion of truth than the others. "Because you asked."

She blinked hard at that, eyes wet, but her gaze never left mine. "Then I am asking you now. You saved me. Let me save you back."

It was more of a command than the plea had been, but without the added strength of a completed circle there was no compulsion to back it up. That small detail could be seen as proof that the original command was done, and circle or not the magic should pull me away from the human realm once again. Or as proof that I was no longer bound to serve anyone, that I was free to leave this place and go anywhere I wished. To slowly piece together a life and purpose for myself, when even the thought of wanting seemed unfathomable. To be truly alone, in a way I had been for most of my long life but had never fully understood until this moment.

I could not force my mouth to shape the words that would consign me to either choice. In their place came a familiar question, one that resonated inside me even more deeply than it had the first time.

Did it matter, what a demon believed?

I drew in a breath my body did not technically need, something inside me trembling. "You still need help."

Her brow lowered, though her hands never left my face. "I could use an assist getting away from here, sure, but that still doesn't—"

"No." I could hear the flicker of desperation in my voice, so foreign to my ears. "I mean beyond that. You need help in the rest of your life."

She stared at me for another few of her heartbeats, brow still furrowed, then understanding lit her eyes like that first lick of flame. It turned into a blaze of emotion I could not put a name to, but it was one that the pressure inside me constrict even more. "I do," she said softly. "I need so much help. It'll probably take years."

Relief blossomed inside me, as heady as any intoxicating substance humans had ever invented. I wondered, briefly, if this was anything close to what hope felt like. "I am ever in your service."

I felt something settle over me at the words, but it was nothing like the usual compulsions. It was heat, and light, and instead of settling over my skin like ropes it sank deep into the very center of my chest. I burned, but not like the fires I was so familiar with.

If demons were creatures of imagination, I might say that this was what being a star felt like.

The woman's eyes shone as if she could see all of this on my face. "I think it's about time we introduce ourselves. My name's Mia."

My lips curved. "I am Barabas."

Mia grinned back at me. "I am very pleased to meet you, Barabas. Now, do you have any idea how we get out of here?"

The large office windows had been fitted with the finest protective glass humans could make, but it was still no match for a demon's strength. Once the window was broken, I carefully gathered Mia into my arms and wrapped the shadows around us so we could not be seen by human eyes.

Then I spread my wings, and together we flew off into a new world.