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  "What the hell's wrong?" Martin demanded, yanking his arm away.

  "They were conjuring something. It had nowhere else to go," Simon shouted.

  "So?"

  "We summoned the kesilim. They summoned it.”

  “You're saying…"

  Before the last of his sentence escaped his lips a cylinder of flame shot up out of the cauldron. It was a swirling pillar of orange blaze, and it blossomed into a cloud that burst through the air above the pot.

  Simon dove beneath the platform, seizing the book and pressing it protectively against his body.

  The man cursed as Simon pulled him down. The flame continued to waver, dancing, tendrils of it lashing out.

  Hurriedly Simon peeled open the brittle pages of the grimoire, his long fingers running over the symbols and incantations.

  "It's gonna burn the fucking place down," the man shouted.

  "I will do something," Simon said.

  He eased from beneath the platform, the book open in front of him. Raising the baculum, he traced a symbol in the air and murmured the soft syllables of a forgotten tongue.

  For a moment the flame stabilized, shimmering as if it might be about to retreat back into the nothingness within the cauldron. Simon was guardedly prepared to let his shoulders sag with relief, but then, in a burst of force, the flame billowed anew, became a whole new cloud of orange, as if someone had thrown gasoline onto a Bunsen burner.

  He wanted to vomit. Not only was he facing a power he might not be able to contain, he was letting his employer see him shudder and fumble around in an attempt to prevent the man's house from being burned to the ground.

  Simon's initial glee at the kesilim functioning on their own had begun to fade as he'd wondered what was going to happen.

  This blasted demon had to be dealt with. It deftly thrust an orange tentacle in Simon's direction. Without moving, he voiced a quick protection spell which diverted the flame before it could consume him or damage the book. That worked, but he couldn't keep that up all night.

  It would want something. If he couldn't provide something to appease it, the demon might take the house down—and destroy him and his employer in the process.

  He gritted his teeth. Through most of his efforts, he had managed to avoid situations like this. He had provided small sacrifices and had taken great care to be in control of his summonings.

  When your summonings started summoning, however... As the flame shimmered again, prepared to lash out once more, he began to mumble a new spell, one hand slipping beneath the folds of his coat as he spoke. Sweat poured from his brow, and he could feel it dripping from his armpits.

  Carefully, he moved in a semicircle around the platform, mumbling protection spells.

  The flame hesitated, still dancing, but in a smaller area, around the cauldron. It was waiting, wondering what he might do.

  "Who are you?" he asked. If he were to receive a response, even a lie, that would indicate a willingness to bargain. Then, by Enki, lord of magicians, he might stand some chance to turn this around.

  The words filled his mind even though no audible sound reached his ears.

  I am Girra.

  He had read the name in ancient texts. Was that truly this being's name or merely a name it was using, a name it knew he would recognize as the spirit of the flames?

  "What can I offer you?" he asked.

  There was no reply, but an image of Heaven fluttered through his thoughts. He couldn't tell if it was an errant notion of his, or something suggested by the spirit.

  "I can't give you the girl right now," he said. "There are obstacles. Later maybe."

  He waited, straining to pick up whatever message might be offered. When the awareness settled over him, he had to fight panic. This was the kind of thing he'd always been so careful to avoid, but this had come out of something beyond his own doing.

  He nodded, letting his hand slide slowly down into his inside coat pocket. He had picked up the ornamental dagger in a shop in Europe, rumor holding that it had once belonged to an Egyptian necromancer.

  It was golden, though he'd never had it appraised for its true composition. He was also unsure of the true nature of the jewels in the handle. Perhaps they were real, or perhaps it was decorated and designed to look the way one would expect an authentic dagger to look.

  Regardless, the blade was sharp and would serve his purpose. With fresh sweat pouring from his brow, he gripped the dagger handle in his right hand and held the left hand up, displaying it for the flame.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Martin called from behind him.

  "What I must. Be ready to help me if I need it."

  He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he slipped the blade down the side of his pinkie, letting the cutting edge rest at the base of the finger.

  Then, tensing his muscles, he forced it to the side, cutting through the fleshy web of skin and grinding the blade through muscle, then bone.

  He felt his strength ebbing as the blood began to flow, and his brain began to spin. For a moment he thought he would faint, but he forced himself to remain standing, commanded his mind to peer through the black haze that was trying to settle over him.

  As the finger tore free, he let the knife clatter to the floor and used the belt of his jacket as a tourniquet, wrapping it around his hand in an effort to stem the spurting. Still staggering and shuddering with the shock that was sweeping over him, he held the bloody member over his head and hurled it into the flame.

  That blazed brightly for a moment, roaring as if it might be ready to consume the entire house, but then it was gone, as if it were being sucked back into the cauldron.

  Dropping back to the floor, Simon forced himself to hold onto the makeshift tourniquet. A moment later he felt his employer's hands at his back, supporting him.

  “That was a demon?"

  “Of sorts."

  "It would have killed us?"

  "Yes. I appeased it."

  "Dammit, it could have screwed up everything. It could have killed the little girl."

  “But it didn't. It served its purpose."

  "These blasted things of yours are out of control.”

  “No," said Simon. "They are merely gaining strength. All is well."

  “The hell it is."

  Simon's head rolled back against the man's sleeve. He was pale as death. "Martin, please. I'm very tired. Could we talk about this in the morning?"

  Chapter 17

  A neighbor found Jake Tanner's body early the next morning. Gabrielle learned about it when Katrina spoke to a friend at the newspaper. She almost broke down, but Katrina seated her at the kitchen table and put a cup of coffee into her hands.

  She didn't cry, couldn't cry in the wake of everything that had happened, but remorse and guilt seized her.

  "It's my fault," Gab said. "He only got involved because of me."

  "It's not your fault," Katrina said. "No way. Besides, he was stabbed. The police are checking into the possibility that it could have been some crazy fan."

  "It wasn't," Gabrielle said. "It was those same damned things that are attacking Heaven. They went after him so he wouldn't be able to help me."

  She did cry, not sobbing but not fighting the tears. Katrina tore a paper towel from the roll by the refrigerator and gave it to her. The paper was rough, but it absorbed the moisture when Gab dabbed her cheeks.

  "What am I going to do, Kat? They're driving me crazy. They're killing my daughter, and there's nothing I can do to prevent that. I can't call a cop and say 'Hey, officer, my daughter is under attack by demons.’”

  "Kesilim and lezim," Danube said walking into the room. "Jokesters."

  "That was not very funny last night."

  "To them it was," he said, pouring a cup of coffee for himself. He winced when he tasted it.

  "Well, whatever they are, how do we stop them? They killed Jake. They'll kill us, won't they?"

  Danube took a seat. "We have to figure out why they’ve
chosen you. They are powerful, but somehow I suspect they did not come for your daughter without some impetus. She was not experimenting with a ouija or making any other effort to open herself to spiritual attack."

  "No. She's not old enough to know about things like that, and you said yourself it couldn't be Dave.”

  “Who does that leave?"

  "There's no one else."

  Katrina put a hand on Gab's arm. "What about Martin? You said when you broke up with him he was possessive."

  "That's why I broke up with him, but I don't think he's crazy enough to do something like this. He’s a businessman. How could he get involved in something like this?"

  "You broke up. He was possessive, but he never called again, never tried to make up?"

  Gabrielle had to nod in agreement.

  "He's the only boyfriend you've had since Dave, except for Tanner and he's been effectively ruled out." Gabrielle looked at Danube to see his reaction. "I know nothing of him," he said.

  "He's in his fifties. I did some bookkeeping for him. He took a fancy to me, and we went out for a while. But it was too soon after Dave, and he wanted to know every move I made. He bought me presents for a while, but he was always accusing me of slipping around, seeing someone else. I wasn't that interested in dating at that point, not in seeing more than one man, I mean. I got enough of it all pretty quickly and told him we should break off. He wasn't as polished as I'd first thought. The attraction of his being gallant and mature faded."

  Danube took another swallow of the coffee, wincing again. "His reaction?" he asked.

  "He was mad. Not so mad as to hit me or anything, but angry."

  "Did he scream?"

  "Was very gruff, but nothing more. I left and never saw him anymore.”

  “This was when?"

  "A few months back."

  "You did bookkeeping for him. He is older. Am I to assume he has money?"

  "He was well off. He was in real estate, that sort of thing. He had investments."

  "The kind of disposable income that would allow him to hire someone," Danube observed.

  "That's absurd."

  "Had he traveled?"

  "He and his wife used to travel," Gabrielle said.

  "In what we might call the East?"

  "Some, I think."

  "To places where he might be exposed to things which might make him a believer? Once a believer, such a man might be willing to take steps to achieve what he perceived as a source of power."

  "I don't know," Gabrielle said.

  She didn't want to think about Martin, yet she felt anger rising. She had asked him to get out of her life when it had become clear she would not fall in love with him. Perhaps he had loved her, but his kind of love was really a consuming desire to own, to possess; and she didn't want to belong to anyone.

  He had no right to pry into her world, to terrorize her daughter through some bizarre game. She could not imagine Martin—he of the three-piece suits and shirts with button-down collars—donning a black robe and kneeling in a pentagram to conjure demons. Yet, if he was driven by some mad sense of revenge, driven to find some crazy way of sending demons after her daughter, she would kill him.

  She recalled his kisses, his touch, and the memory of them made her shudder. She closed her eyes, wanting to spit in his face if he was responsible for all this—Heaven's torment, Jake's death, Rev. Marley's death—just because he didn't want to lose? It couldn't be that he loved her, his feeling was sick, twisted.

  "Did you ever have any indication he had an interest in the occult?" Danube was asking.

  Gabrielle did not want to think about days with Martin, but she searched her memory, trying to think of what he had talked about, what interests he had mentioned. Usually caught up in his business dealings, he had only gone to movies because she had suggested them. And he'd never talked about books, music—only about his deals, his plans for developments, how he hired men to accomplish his plans.

  "He's a contractor," she said. "A planner who hires other people to—"

  "Execute his ideas," Danube finished. "For that at which he is not skilled, he finds someone who is.”

  “Exactly."

  "He desires to strike at you, yet he cannot do that without being arrested. He searches for some method that will allow you to be tormented without his being implicated. Perhaps he speaks to someone. This person makes a suggestion, and it clicks for him. Using his contacts, he locates one who can fulfill his wishes."

  "You mean he hired a wizard?"

  "A wizard, mage, there are many names."

  "A Satanist?"

  "Not necessarily. But ultimately, based on what we have seen, he is summoning forces of evil. He or she.”

  “Can you stop him?"

  "I don't know how powerful he is."

  "The forces of good aren't stronger than those of evil?"

  "It is not as simple as that. We live in a fallen world, a world separated from its Creator by disobedience and corruption."

  "My child is innocent. She has never harmed anyone. She's never hated anyone."

  "But she lives in a realm where evil is at play, ready to use anyone and everyone as a pawn for the sheer thrill of it. The kesilim and lezim are seeking the excitement of existence. They have been banished into a realm of suffering. Being conjured here gives them a chance to run rampant. Last night's events are evidence. They were seeing how far they could go, and when I reminded them of their limitations they backed down. That may not happen next time."

  "I just want this to be over," Gabrielle said, clenching her fists and closing her eyes tightly.

  "It will have to end some way," Danube said. "I suggest we charge it head-on."

  "How so?"

  "I will seek out Martin, question him. Perhaps I will be able to learn how he is causing this—if he is the culprit."

  "He has to be." Gab was shaking now. "I want to fight. I want to make them leave my daughter alone."

  "We will fight, once I know what steps need to be taken."

  She drew in a long breath, filling her lungs and then expelling air in an attempt to calm herself. She wouldn't tolerate this. It was senseless torture.

  "I'll get the address of Martin's office," she said.

  Danube waited at the table until she returned with the slip of paper from the yellow note pad Katrina had provided.

  He folded it and put it into his pocket. "I will be back soon," he said.

  ~*~

  Heaven sat up in bed, sipping the juice Katrina had poured. She was pale, and the dark circles under her eyes almost made her look like an old woman. Gabrielle had to reach deep inside herself to manage a smile.

  "How are you feeling, sweetheart?" she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "Like I had a bad dream."

  She had been sleeping since they had brought her to Katrina's. There had been no trace of fever during the night, and while she had tossed about some, she had not awakened, being too depleted to rouse.

  “We had a rough time of it," Gab said. "It's going to be all right now."

  "Why don't they go away and leave us alone?" Heaven asked.

  "I don't know, baby."

  Just days ago it had seemed things were finally getting on track. Now everything was in a shambles. Her home was gone, and there was no end in sight. Not unless Danube could find some way to make Martin go away.

  Somehow she couldn't picture it being that simple. Not if he'd gone to this much trouble. She couldn't understand that kind of obsession, couldn't understand how someone could want to punish her so badly he would want to hurt Heaven.

  Martin was wealthy, attractive, and no doubt able to find other women. There was no reason for him to want to hold her except a desire to manipulate and control everything around him. When you met people, they were on their best behavior, smiles and best manners. You couldn’t tell what lurked beneath the surface

  She had run into Martin at a dinner party thrown by one of the firm's clients. He
had been wearing a charcoal gray suit and had seemed debonair.

  In contrast to Dave, he had seemed striking. Dave's opposite, not an unsure youngster, he had seemed to have his own corner chiseled in the world. That had appealed. In starting over, she didn't want to repeat what had occurred with Dave.

  She had read that some people follow the same patterns, becoming involved in the same types of bad relationships over and over. She had been trying to strike out in a different direction but had still managed to find someone who was bad for her. What an uncanny knack she had.

  Not only was it causing pain for her daughter, but it had cost Jake his life, his only crime–caring for her, wanting to help. Leaving her daughter's bedside when the child fell asleep, Gab went into the bathroom. Her own eyes had even darker circles, and her hair was in tangles. Was she somehow cursed, destined to bring pain to those around her?

  No, she wouldn't let herself think that way. She turned on the faucet, running warm water to splash on her face. That was what Martin wanted. To tear her down, to make her feel this way. She would not give in.

  He had done bad things, and they had caused pain. She could not accept the responsibility for someone else's evil. Besides, she had other things to think about. Calling the landlord, explaining it all, as well as she could. The fire department was speculating about lightning. She wouldn't argue with their findings. It wasn't an act of God, but it was something beyond human control.

  ~*~

  Althea settled into a tub of hot water. Her muscles ached now that adrenaline had ebbed from them. She had been so tense during the previous night that she had pains from head to toe, and she was reminded once again that her youth was passing.

  Gently, she let her head sink beneath the water, warm suds soaking her hair and easing the throbbing in her skull. She was not completely comfortable, being alone, but she tried not to think about potential harm while she sought to relax. She hoped the forces of darkness were temporarily appeased.

  Yet she knew that probably was not the case. She was living in a nightmare world, one in which people found new ways to hurt each other—or recycled old ways. This was all out of the dark ages. Someone with her training was not supposed to believe devils caused madness, yet what else could explain what she had witnessed?