Demonic Designs (To Absolve the Fallen) (32 page)

She slammed her hand on her desk and yelled, “Goddamit,” as a sharp pain ripped through her lower arm.
 

Turning her head slowly, she saw that, as she expected, everyone in the room was staring at her.
 
She told them all to take a break before, she added with a smile, they all became as frustrated as she was.
 
When they were all gone, she laid her head down in front of her monitor and wept.

After a few minutes of crying, she sat up straight, held her head back and took a few deep breaths.
 
She dried her eyes with her sleeve and looked at the monitor.
 
To her surprise, there was a message on the screen.
 
It looked as if someone had sent her an instant message.
 

The box stated, “You are not alone.”

She blinked a couple times and typed the message, “Who are you?”

In an instant, there was a response.
 
“I am.”

“Well, that’s cryptic,” she said.
 
“How did you get this address?” she typed.

“I was born,” the message replied.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Elizabeth fumed.
 
“I don’t need you to tell me who you are.”

Her fingers began working quickly across the keyboard.
 
She was running searches throughout the compound’s database to find programs that would have allowed someone to find her personal IP address.
 
At the same time she was trying to trace the message back to its source.
 
The signal was being piggybacked through many different networks.
 
All of which were addresses that she had recently been to.
 
This was enough to give her cause for concern.
 
Some hacker had followed her, and now he probably intended to do something about her recent exploits.
 
Indeed, he would, unless she could trace
him
back to his computer and drop off a virus.
 
She knew that she had to be getting close, too.
 
What worried her was that there wasn’t any kind of security for her to crack.

She got to the end of her trek, and, as she examined the IP address in front of her, she cocked her head in astonishment.
 
It was her own.
 
She took a second look and leaned back in her chair.
 
Had he created some kind of looping software that would take any hacker back to her own computer instead of revealing his identity?
 
She’d never seen security like that before.
 
It baffled her.
 
Her computer was designed to circumnavigate every known firewall, yet something had bounced her back.

“Where are you?” she asked out loud, knowing that typing it would do no good.

Nevertheless, “With you,” appeared on the screen.

She spun her head around.
 
There were desks, other computers, a pile of miscellaneous hardware on a table, but no one other than her.
 
She apprehensively looked back to the computer.

“You bastards have bugged the mansion,” she reasoned in awe.

There was no reply.

***

“Thomas Kinsfield,” Abbie read to herself from her roster.
 
“I guess everything is in order.”

She was walking across campus.
 
She’d had to endure a half-day seminar for new professors.
 
As she listened to the blithering idiots talk about what education meant to them, she had wanted to stand up and explain that, in four hundred years, she had never heard so many professional people say so many stupid things consecutively.
 
Instead, she had done her best to ignore them as she added more and more sugar to her coffee for the purposes of consciousness.
 
She rolled her eyes as she reflected upon the wealth of knowledge the tenured professors had for recent inductees.
 

“Don’t tell the students that they’re wrong,” one fat man in glasses and sporting suspenders had droned.
 
“Instead, tell them that they are on the right track, but they’re not quite there.”

The dean of Student Services had told them, “Tomorrow will be the beginning of a new life for thousands of incoming freshmen.
 
We should all strive to make sure that it is a life of wonderment and self-imposed challenge.
 
Teach them to have a critical eye for the world.
 
Give them the tools they’ll need to make a difference.
 
Finally, help them feel at home in a world that will probably be very foreign to them.”

Everyone had clapped for that pompous blowhard who, incidentally, hadn’t done any teaching in fifteen years.
 
His speech was obviously canned, and he’d probably used the same exact one last year.
 
Abbie had stood and clapped with the sheep all around her.
 
And, as she did, she glanced at the clock on the wall.
 
Her eyes went wide when she realized that Matt and Alex would be getting to the campus at any moment.
 
Had that waste of time really taken four hours of her life?
 
Without any concern for the opinion of any of her “colleagues,” she picked up the stack of papers she had brought with her and, attracting stares from many people in the room, marched out of the banquet hall.

Now, she was walking briskly toward her office, and she could hear someone calling her name.
 
“For God’s sake,” she muttered to herself.

“Dr. Martin!” the voice repeated.

She slowed, but did not stop.
 
She could hear the huffing of some man, probably older and overweight (from the sounds of the panting), trying to catch up with her.
 
Her head turned slightly to see that, indeed, the chair of the Psychology Department was moving as quick as his stubby legs could carry him to keep up with her.

“Dr. Phillips,” she noted, “I really must take care of something.
 
May I speak with you at another time?”

“Ben,” he returned, patting the sweat off his head with a handkerchief.
 
“Call me Ben.”

“Ben,” she continued, not slowing her momentum, “I have to meet with a student, and I’m running late as it is.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “I noticed that you left the seminar in a hurry.”

“I can’t imagine,” Abbie said, exasperated, “that I missed much after the standing ovation.”

“No.
 
Of course not.”
 
He was lagging behind.
 
“I was just thinking that, in all the hustle and bustle, I hadn’t gotten a chance to formally introduce myself to you.”

She could feel the lust emanating from behind her.
 
She cocked an eyebrow in dull realization.
 
If he tries anything on me, I’ll put him in a coma for a week
, she thought to herself.
 
It wouldn’t be that bad
;
she entertained the thought,
I could make it look like he’d suffered a mild stroke
.
 
The doctors wouldn’t be able to explain the coma, but there wouldn’t be any brain damage.
 
And brain damage would be the least of his problems, if he kept hounding her.
 

Abbie finally stopped and turned to face him.
 
“A student is expecting me.”

“Oh, right.
 
Well, I should let you go take care of that.”

“Yeah,” she agreed and turned to walk away.

“If you have any questions about departmental policies, feel free to call on me,” he invited.

“Will do,” Abigail returned shortly.

As she moved toward her office, she couldn’t help but feel a little flattered that after four hundred years she still “had it,” but it was little consolation that sex, despite all of the emotional evolution humanity was supposed to have gone through and all of the civil rights women had obtained, was still the driving factor in relationships.
 
She smiled, considering that she might set a new record for
old maid
.

***

A man-sized pillar of flame shone brightly on a hill in Northern Ireland.
 
Despite the strength of the demon fueling it, the intensity of the pyre had decreased steadily over the last ten minutes.
 
Jeremiah had made quite sure that no one would be around for miles, just in case this didn’t go as he’d planned.
 
His power was waning; he didn’t know if the ritual was working, or if it was even possible after so many centuries.
 
He knew that he was fighting against something, but all of Metatron’s wards should have been overcome by now.

Without warning, he felt the ground open up, and a swarm of flies poured out of the crevice by the thousands.
 
The insects didn’t stop.
 
The swarm surrounded him, undaunted by the gradually diminishing flame.

“Behold your poison,” it buzzed in a very old, Arabic tongue all around him, still flowing from the opening in the earth.

Jeremiah could hardly maintain focus.
 
“Kemuel, you are released from Metatron’s bondage, but you will be in my service until I see fit to release you.”

“I do not take orders from you,” the plague concentrated its wrath upon Jeremiah.

“Then,” Jeremiah replied, becoming weak as the fire continued to die down around him, “you will not get the opportunity to enact your revenge upon your captor.”

Jeremiah could no longer see daylight, for everything around him was becoming increasingly blocked by flies.
 
The air around him was thick with black buzzing.
 
The torment swelled for an instant and then stopped.
 
In place of the swarm, there was an emaciated, balding man of middle-eastern descent.
 
He was, of course, completely naked.
 
His eyes were locked on Jeremiah.
 
His fists were clenching and releasing.

“Before I banish you to Hell forever, you will tell me why you have released me,” he spat at Jeremiah.

“Because,” Jeremiah said, regaining some of his composure, “there is still forgiveness for those who believe and repent.”

Jeremiah could hear the buzzing returning, and he could feel the hate and malice that this being had been locked up with so many years ago.
 
He had to move quickly, or he would lose his chance—and possibly his footing on Earth.
 
Tapping into his last reserve of strength, he burst back into flame.

“Follow me, Kemuel,” Jeremiah commanded in a booming voice, “into a new age—an age in which your Father may once again look upon you kindly, or feel the wrath of Heaven for your disobedience.”

The buzzing ceased, and only the human-looking individual, still consumed by rage and hatred, remained.

“What
is
the will of Heaven?” he asked, doubtful but intrigued.

Jeremiah, confident that his gamble paid off, returned to a less draining form.
 
Breath was hard to come by, but he still managed to say, “We shall defeat Metatron.”

“He was your master,” Kemuel contended.

“Not anymore.”

***

Alex and Matt walked across the same lawn that Abbie, only minutes before, had crossed.
 
Alex was apprehensive about this meeting.
 
It seemed that so much had been building up to this moment.
 
What would he say?
 
How could he possibly impress a woman who had, obviously, had so much influence in the prophet world for so long?
 
As he contemplated this, Alex noticed a beautiful blond-haired girl in a tight red turtle-neck and a knee-length black skirt.
 
Her hair was pulled back, and she carried three books in her left arm.
 
In her right hand, she had a piece of paper, and she looked confused as she studied it.