Beguiled damsel book 5, p.7
Beguiled (Damsel Book 5), page 7
The door didn’t open.
“Who’s there?”
“Hannah de Peyser.”
That worked, the man actually bothering to open the door to look at her. He seemed fine enough, though in need of a shave. Then, he normally did.
“Hannah! I wasn’t expecting visitors. Come in… If… Ominay vex!” The man spun halfway around and cast a beam of light directly at her middle. She nearly stepped out of the way, but then realized that whatever it was, it hitting her was the best option. The rest of what was possible would, almost certainly, start a fight.
One with a lot of magic she didn't understand being involved and her being pummeled but unseen forces. Whatever the spell was supposed to do, it didn’t hurt. She had a golden glow over her middle, for about five seconds. That had tiny bits of glowing sparkles inside of it, before it faded. It turned almost pure white, first.
The man froze for a moment, then grinned.
“Sorry there, love. Just making sure you’re the real deal. I get people pretending to be others here, on occasion. You’ll be happy to know that you aren’t a demon, or possessed by one. The light would have turned pure black, if that happened. Come in. The place is a bit of a wreck, right now.”
That was true, but it wasn’t food wrappers and empty bottles of Scotch, as she would have suspected. The small, dingy room was filled with books, papers and in a few cases, scrolls. Legal note pads as well. There was a scent to the room, but it was far from the stale beer she would have figured it on being. It was rich. Like incense. Something woody. Sandalwood, most likely.
It was messy, but looked like some kind of mad occultists laboratory, or workshop, instead of the run-down pad of an aging bachelor who had let too much of his life pass by already.
The thoughts were a bit stinging. Especially since she couldn’t really claim to be doing any better than he was that way. She was younger, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t on a similar road as the man in front of her.
He was wearing a black sweater. A pullover, with a turtleneck on it. He was just thin enough to pull the look off, his thinning blond hair was combed, but a bit disheveled, at the moment. As if he’d been running his fingers through it, while sitting and reading.
She just stood there for a moment then shrugged.
“So, you tricked me into having powers?”
The man didn’t even bother going still. Then, he also didn’t lie to her.
“You worked that out? It wasn’t hard. I just cast a pain spell and a bit of light at you. You did the rest.”
She took a deep breath then.
“You got me to cast magic over there, tricking me into doing it? I need to be able to defend against that. If you can do it, then someone else could as well. It was a good scam, I have to admit. I didn’t even get it. I mean, there was that muttering you were doing, but… You kind of sold me on it.”
The man finally stopped, turned to face her and looked bemused, instead of worried that she might be upset with him.
“No. I mean, it was a con, sure, but not that one. You didn’t make it real using magic like that. I Dumbo-feathered you, that’s all.”
“Um, what?”
The man scowled a bit then.
“You know, the Disney cartoon? There’s this little elephant bloke, with these huge ears. His friend figures he could fly, if he’d just try, but he didn’t believe in himself. So his pal gave him this magic feather. Only, you know, it wasn’t magic at all. The power was always inside of him. That’s all I did. Gave you a reason to try doing more than you thought you could.”
She processed that for a moment, then twisted her lips to the left.
“Wait, I’ve always had superpowers?”
“Pretty much. Only, it’s different than that. You were learning to overcome the blocks that most people have going on, so I just got you to let go of part of the rest. You can probably do more than that, even. Maybe not. Anyway, levitate. Now. Don’t stop to think about it.” He waved at her feet for some reason.
She frowned, then focused, and lifted off into the air, by about three feet. The ceilings were decently close to her head then. That was low, for the world that she’d always lived in. About eight feet high. The man waved her down, after twenty seconds or so.
“Good. I figured that would be enough. Some people block themselves off, when they find out about things like this. They get the yips. That isn’t the Damsel way. I didn’t think it would be. Once you know something is real, you believe in it totally. Anyway, everyone warned me not to do it, since they figured you’d be butt hurt as soon as you found out. So, are you kicking my arse, or what? I’m betting on not, in case that makes a difference.” He didn’t seem scared. He did cross his fingers though, and ducked a bit, as if pretending to be hopeful. It was kind of charming, she had to admit. Not scared at all.
Then, he could probably take her in a fist fight.
She waved the words away, as she thought about it. Considering her options. Being a brat did come to mind, naturally. She was good at being entitled and selfish, after all. Not the best in the world at it, but Hannah hadn’t always been what she’d become. For a long time, she’d been something else. Not just a victim. A person who reveled a bit in the superiority her victim hood had imparted on her.
That was, in many ways, worse than just being weak.
“Nope. Though, really, I could have just given myself some powers, if it was important.”
The man gave her a look then and shook his head.
“No. You really couldn’t. I mean, yes, you could go into the Never and just proclaim yourself to be anything you wanted. Except that you, Hannah, won’t do that. You’re too smart for that. Plus, you fought for everything you have. You told me your secret. How doing that, making yourself powerful like that, would be cheating. So, we didn’t cheat. You just had to accept what you really are. A thing that almost no one ever really manages. Most don’t even try. Was there a trick involved? Yes. But even that was part of the learning, not you being handed yet another gift you hadn’t earned.”
She closed her eyes, and frowned.
“Ah. So, I’m not that entitled after all? Just gullible?”
That got a snort. It was derisive but playful.
“Not particularly. Anyone can be fooled. Especially by a friend. This time, I just hope that the betrayal for your own good can be counted that way? Trust me, if you want to tell me off, to go fuck myself, it won’t be the first time I’ve lost people for trying to help them.”
The words seemed heartfelt. Then again, the man was clearly good at acting.
“Oh, you sent Red Comrade to me the other day?”
“Yeah? He was looking for his sister, Freya. He got ahold of you? I know that there might be hard feelings there. I figure you as being a lot less petty than most would bother to believe.” He waited then, for her to share something more.
“We found her. Being tortured, by Red Menace I guess they used to date. I didn’t know that Gray was her brother. Then, I didn’t ask.”
The man went still then, and seemed angry.
“Menace was torturing her? I see… Any chance I can get you to tell me where he is right now?”
She shook her head.
“Locked up. I can’t say where, just in case you have a deal to try and break him out or something. He won’t be escaping too easily. I mean anything is possible, but… Yeah. The facility he’s in seems pretty secure.”
“How did that happen? He’s not a pussy, is he?” He grinned. “That means something different here. He’s a gentle kitten, right? I don’t mean wimp. Not that it doesn’t hold both ways. Did Superion X manage to take him? I always wondered how that would go, if they tangled.”
She shook her head a bit, and nearly didn’t tell him the real reason.
“I found him, and removed him to a cell. The High Command did the real work on it. He’s a friend of yours?”
“What? No. I mean, not anymore. We used to date, about a hundred years ago. Not literally. Maybe fifteen years ago? He’s a bastard. A lot of that is down to me, of course, isn’t it? I made him what he is now.”
“You gave him powers?”
There was a shrug. That and a guilty expression.
“Well, in that I arranged for him to be possessed by that demon in the first place? Yeah, I suppose I did.”
Chapter five
Hannah stopped breathing for a few seconds. It wasn’t exactly shock, of course. John Fawks had never, not even one time in her experience, claimed to be a good guy. Really, the man had hinted at the exact opposite almost every time they’d met. That meant him having helped people become possessed wasn’t exactly outside of what he might well have done.
Even on purpose.
She froze, not because she didn’t think he would have done that for real, or even due to thinking he had done precisely that. No, it was simply that in her entire life no one had ever said those words, in that order before and she had no clue how she was supposed to respond to them. The man hadn’t just vaguely dealt with demons, he was speaking about doing it in fairly clear terms.
She’d read some books that had covered the idea. None of them had been exactly suggesting it as a lifestyle choice. A thing that seemed to be showing on her face, at least the man gave her a look. One that read to her as defensive. Then, instead of saying there had been a good reason for it, he shook his head and switched over to something near anger.
“I know… It was stupid of me. The thing is, Damsel, back in the day I wasn’t the lovable cad who was mainly on the side of good and right that you know and love. I’d gotten deep into the shit when I was fifteen freaking years old. I’d wanted power, so played with the left-hand path, and ended up with my soul so tainted that no amount of good works could ever undo it. When I’d met Alan and Freya, her little brother Grayson and their pals, it wasn’t just about getting some strange off of their little collective farm project. I mean, I did that, to get them to trust me, but it hadn’t been the point of going there.”
She didn’t move for a bit, and started to shut down, not wanting to know the story. After all, it didn’t sound like it was going anywhere nice or good. Instead, even as she contemplated just leaving, teleporting away, she stayed. Fighting to be strong in the face of things that were outside of what she’d really been planning for that day.
“Okay. So… You, ah… You set all of them up with powers? As a lure?”
She wasn’t certain why she’d put it that way, but there was a sudden shift away from glaring and tightness in the man, into a charming, almost soulless, seeming grin.
“You see the lines, don’t you? That was the real plan, of course. I went in, talking a good game about communism, Marx and a people’s revolution, if a peaceful one, then let them know that I could, possibly, help them become more than they were. That I knew some secrets that the elites had hidden from them, that would let them become stronger, more capable of taking the fight to the establishment.” The man turned, walked across the small space, and repeated the pattern, agitated, about five or six times, before going on.
Finally, he shrugged, facing her again. His eyes were dark. Haunted by something she doubted would be inside her own understanding. Something more than just demons.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You get the con. I went in, let them suck my dick a few times, told them the pretty words they wanted to hear and pretended to let them badger me into setting them all up. It, not all of them did it, but out of the fifteen, eleven of them did. Most just wanted small things. I didn’t lie to them about it being demons, but I also didn’t say the words that openly. I went on about entities, and sharing purpose and life energy with them, in exchange for what they wanted. Low level things, mainly. Psychic powers, physical strength. The more powerful they wanted to be, the more it cost. I didn’t cover that part though, did I?”
She did her own pacing then, not going far at all, buying time to think about what was being said.
“You sold them, in exchange for your own soul?”
There was a sudden, almost painful seeming, snort then.
“What? No. Nothing ever works that way. I sold them for extra bits of power. Knowledge of magic and skill. Really, I led them down the path to destruction so I’d have some company, as much as anything. I knew what it would cost them, but remember, I’d turned it so it seemed like they wanted it. They practically begged me to help them. Instead of doing the work to become more, or realizing that power is overrated, I’d hinted at the easy path. Then, one night, we did it. I drew the sigils, chanted the names and set each of them up with a helper. A spirit that would live inside of them, experiencing what they did, in exchange for some help in certain ways.”
Hannah got the basic idea, she thought, but didn't get to ask about it. The man was on a roll, so barely stopped to take a breath, as if wanting to get the words out, before she could condemn him for what he’d done.
His hands spread in the air, then clutched, as if trying to grab hold of the point he wanted to make.
“That kind of thing… It doesn’t seem like much, at first. I could see it, since a demon being inside of a person isn’t a thing you miss, right? Still, these weren’t magickly inclined folks, in the main. A few had the gift, and saw what was happening, but they weren’t ready for their new friend, a guy who had literally been inside of them and the other way round, to betray them to evil. So, in five hours, all of them were standing there, mainly feeling foolish, as morning broke. Then, they realized that it had worked. All of them had new powers.”
He shrugged.
“So I was the hero of the hour. Most of them were fine with the new tricks. They slowly felt the pull of the demons inside of them, but didn't know what was happening. Except for one of them. Alan. He was… Glorious, really. He’d started big and good looking and inside a month was an unstoppable dreamboat. Muscles on muscles and a power that rivaled anyone in the world, as far as strength went. No one could beat him, or so we thought at the time. Only, there’s always a cost to that sort of thing, isn’t there? The little demons, the low powered ones, they just want a body, and experiences, as often as not. They aren’t even really all that bad, depending on who they’re inhabiting. Alan Kincaid though… He was infected with a lord of hell. Eduriel, the Fallen.”
Hannah didn’t know the name at all, but got that a lord was probably fairly powerful. She’d killed a Duke of Hell once, herself. It was considered a big deal.
“I see. Or, I mean, I probably don’t really, since the five books on the topic I’ve read don’t make me an expert, but…”
That got another grin. It didn’t seem happy at all. Misery poured from it, instead of what the man normally projected.
“You know more than most. Anyway, Freya, Roy, Nikki, they all had powers of different levels. Grayson, too. Nik… Now she was a real peach. It was her that let them know something was wrong. She could suddenly see ghosts, spirits and all that. She could tell what was inside of them, and told them about what they had to do, in order to survive. For most… Well, eating some extra ice cream, drinking booze or even beating some people, that wasn’t outside of what they were willing to do, was it? A few of them refused, and… Well, they didn't do well. Movies aside, you don’t really just have a priest cast that kind of thing out, do you? Not if you invite them in and bind the person to the darkness like we’d done. So, they broke up, going their own ways. There was a core group that stayed together. I wasn’t with them of course.”
Hannah nodded, feeling a bit mean about the idea.
“Right. You were there for a reason, so probably left shortly after you had that done, right? On to the next thing? No one has ever mentioned you being lazy.”
That got a laugh.
“Something like that, actually. Anyway, Freya and Grayson, they’re decently powerful and are pushed to extremes, violence and all that, on the regular. The thing is, they’re both good kids, and tried to fight it. Roy… He was always an asshole. Red Fortune, he styles himself? Low level precognitive. No real discipline in it either. The thing there is that Kincaid became a lot more than that. Not just powerful, but he went evil, inside the first days. It started with people missing from the farm. Not the possessed, but the others. One every few days. I was out of there then, since I had a heads up on the whole thing. He was draining souls. Killing them and taking their energy, for the thing inside of him.”
She winced then.
“A superpowered serial killer?”
“Pretty much. One that I’d made. I won’t lie to you, Hannah, I didn’t just make the one of that sort. For nearly fifteen years I pretty much just went around putting various demons in people. Some of them are more or less fine, demon possessed or not. More of them had their lives ruined. They hear voices and have urges to do dark, life destroying things. Drink, drugs, rape, attacking people from anger and all that. About, I’d guess it was nine, but that could be wrong, they’re full-on evil.” He shook his head then, looking at one of the books he had open on the table behind the sofa.
Eventually, he spoke again, into the quiet room.
“Most would have stopped after they realized what they were doing, right? I traveled, and worked with other people, instead. Pond on his hell island. Tokrov in Moscow, doing experiments in genetics on adults. I even worked with Hitoshi a few times. They did the upgrades and I provided the extra piece of power, using dark magic. Sure, I knew it was wrong, but… Truth be told, I didn't care for a very long time. After all, if people volunteered for it, then it wasn’t really me to blame for what they did, right? I handed them the weapons, but I didn’t make them use them.”
