Victoria's Demon Lover (13 page)

     She asked him,
“You took me to Shrewsbury.  And you were Jack.  Were you Marcus too?”

     He sighed.

     She was sorry
she couldn’t see his face.  “I tried to kiss you alive when you were killed in
that battle.  Jasper said you sent me back to my bed.  I woke up.  I know it
wasn’t a dream.  I still have the beautiful collar from the Roman orgy.”

     “Maggs.” His
voice was low and soft.  “You are going to have to try harder.”

     She paused, then
asked, “Try harder?  Why can’t you just tell me?”

     “Because, it is
not a matter of conveying information.  It cannot be told, it has to be
experienced.  You have to realize it.  I cannot do it for you.  Just like I
cannot eat for you, or sleep for you or piss for you.  You have to do it
yourself.”

     She thought
about this.  “Then why did you send me back home that time on the battlefield?”

     “You were going
the wrong way.  I just turned you around and pointed you in the right
direction.  I was helping you, Maggs.”

     “And now…”

     “And now you are
doing it wrong again.  I have to send you back again.”

     “But I thought
you needed my help.  Look at you.”

      “I am beyond
your help.  I will die here.  They won’t find me for months.  Until the spring
thaw.  Dogs will find my body.”

     “You don’t look
like you are dying,” she challenged him.

     “My liver is
torn. It will take this body three days to bleed to death.”

     Victoria sat up
straighter.  He spoke so matter-of-factly.  Like he didn’t care.  Or…  She
remembered what Jasper had said about Marcus. 
He is always here
, the
little monkey demon had said.   Maybe Torgal has been here dying many times,
over and over and over.  She felt a little chill up and down her spine and his
warmth was no longer enough to keep her from shivering.

     “And Michael
from Legal?  Were you pointing me in the right direction then?”

     “Mr. Brand had
committed a mortal sin.  I was sent to reap his soul.  It’s something I have to
do periodically.  I don’t have a choice.  I just arranged it so you would
benefit from that particular event.”

     This made
Victoria feel sick.  She put a hand over her stomach.  “You don’t have a choice
about dying here again, either?” she asked him.  She knew the answer.  “Nor
Marcus?”  She thought about Jack and her heart jumped.

     His hand reached
out and took her arm. “No Maggs.  Don’t.  It will only make it worse.  Don’t. 
That is not the way.”  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the lips.

     She sat up in
her bed again.  She was wearing the boots and the lambskin vest.  “No!”  She
shouted at the wall.  She tore off her vest and stomped over to the chalk
circle and glared at it.  “Jasper!”  Nothing appeared.  She looked at the
clock.  Nearly dawn.  The chalk circle had blurred a bit, like little feet had
smeared some of the lines. 
I will fix it tomorrow
, she promised
herself.

     Victoria put a
hand to her face.  She was supposed to take the kids to the zoo so Sharon could
finish unpacking.  So be it.  First the zoo.  Then…Shrewsbury.

The kids were
asleep.  That had been easy:  ten hours at the zoo and no sugar drinks.  Sharon
was tired as well.  She would be asleep soon in the downstairs bedroom. 
Victoria examined her shoes.  The only ones left were her office pumps.  She
wouldn’t need them anymore, but they could hardly be interesting to Jasper. 
She moved them around, deciding.  There was a faux alligator pair in a lurid
green that went with only one outfit, the one she wore in March so she wouldn’t
get pinched by the boys in the mailroom.

     She took those
out and set them by the chalk circle.  At midnight she called for him.

     “Jasper!”

     He appeared, but
he didn’t look glad to see her.  He only glanced at the green pumps. 

     “Jasper.  I need
you to take me to Shrewsbury.”

     “No.”

     She frowned and
pointed to the shoes.  “Alligator.  Not really, but they look like it.”

     “No.  He told me
no.”  Jasper turned around so she could see his little monkey butt was red,
like he had been spanked pretty hard.

     Victoria
narrowed her eyes.  “He beat you?”

     Jasper nodded. 
“I’m not taking you to Shrewsbury, and he told me to tell you that no one else
will either.  He said you need to look in the other direction.”

     “Other direction
than what?”

     Jasper
shrugged.  “That’s what he said.”

     “Who else?” she
thought out loud.  “The harpy.”

     “He clipped her
wings.”

     “There must be
someone else.  Hell must be overpopulated, and not everyone can be afraid of
him.”

     Jasper made a
wry face.  “You’d be surprised.”  He disappeared in a puff of chalk dust. 
Shrewsbury would have to wait.

     But Victoria did
not want to wait.  “Albert Magnus!” she said, and looked at her phone.  Her
phone said, “
That number is not available
.”

     Victoria
wondered at that.  Perhaps he had gotten to Mr. Magnus as well as Jasper and
the harpy.

     She picked up
her book instead and flipped to the hell-harrowing chapters.  She wasn’t trying
to go to Hell, but rather a suburb of Hell, where people relived their sins
over and over again.  She remembered the story of Sisyphus who was doomed to
push a stone up a hill and watch it roll back for all eternity.  How to get
there?  The book said you had to have a guide or you would be lost and wander
forever.  She would need a guide.  So far her guides had worked very well.  She
just needed a new one.

     She looked at
the names in the long column.  Some seemed familiar, like Beelzebub and
Mephistopheles.  Famous demons.  Others were only faint memory, like Nerulu and
Ba’al.

     She turned a
page.  She wanted an easy one like Jasper, not something big and scary and
smelling like a cesspit.  Her demon had appeared scary one time around
Hallowe’en.  She did not like it, and the sex was not good that night, though
it had, indeed, been unforgettable.

     This one: 
Marple.  How could a demon with such a name be a horrible?  She erased Jasper’s
chalk circle and drew another one, this time with Marple’s name inside.

     She lit a
different candle, lit different incense, and pointed at it.  “Marple.”

     There was the
expected flash, the smell of brimstone and an ugly fiend appeared in the
circle.  He was taller than she and spidery in his limbs.  He seemed to have an
extra joint in each thin arm and leg.  He was a shiny blue-black and had
several eyes in his tiny head.  He unfolded the limbs and a double pair of
insect wings, like a dragonfly.

     “Uh,” Victoria
lowered her arm, hoping he would stay in his chalk circle like he was supposed
to.

     “Shrewsbury is
it?” he asked her with a metallic clicking sound.

     She relaxed a
little.  Maybe he only looked scary.  “Yes.  Shrewsbury. But not just any
time.  It has to be…” she thought.  She didn’t know exactly when Jack and
Maggie lived there.  “I have to see a demon who is there.  All the time.”  She
hoped that was enough of an address.

     “What do you
have?”

     Victoria
realized he was talking about payment.  She pointed to the alligator shoes.

     Marple laughed
and it sounded like crickets chirping.  “I have no use for those.”

     “Even as trade
goods?”

     “No.

      “What would you
like?”

     “I see some
juicy children down below.”

     Victoria took a
step back.  “What?  No.”  She pointed at him and quickly checked her book for a
banishing spell.  Her last two summonings had ended in success.  She had not
needed to research a banishing spell.

     “What about the
German Shepard next door?  And there is a cat on the fence outside.”

     Victoria looked
at him with derision.  “No.  Those animals are loved as much as those
children.”  She pointed at him and said, “Get thee behind me…Marple.”

     He disappeared
and Victoria sank to her bed in relief.  She snuffed her candle and crunched
the tip of the incense.  She got up and smeared the chalk circle with her foot
for good measure.

     Shrewsbury would
have to wait another day.  She needed to talk to Mr. Magnus.

      But that night
she was awakened by something heavy pressing down on her.  She opened her
mouth, thinking she would be greeting her demon, but a hand covered it.

     Not her demon. 
But it was a demon.  He held her down and lifted her nightgown and then her
knees.  She kicked hard and twisted, trying to break his grip.   She could feel
his demonic cock against her inner thigh, waiting for her to be still enough
for him to thrust it in.  She would not be still.  She twisted and rolled and
bit the hand that was over her mouth.  The cock got closer and the tip burned
her as it pressed between the folds of her cleft.  She bucked her hips as hard
as she could and braced one toe on the foot board and pushed.  The demon cock
pulled back slightly, just enough for her to know it was completely out of
her.  She kicked again.  There was a flash of light in the room.  The demon
disappeared in a sulfur haze and she was free.  She lay there panting,
relieved.

     “Don’t do that
again.”  A man’s voice spoke from the shadows near her closet.

     She sat up and
touched her lamp.  It was Mr. Magnus.  She blew a sigh of relief.  “Thank God.”

     “I am not God,
but I will accept your thanks.”

     “How did you
know I needed help?”

     “I was told you
had summoned another demon, even after Jasper warned you not to.  I came as
soon as I could.  I had to drive all night.  Like I said, don’t do that again,
Victoria.”

     “Don’t summon
demons?”

     “Don’t summon
the ones you don’t know.  Marple sent a friend tonight.”

     “You mean a
‘feind’.”  Victoria arranged her nightgown around her knees and moved to the
side of the bed.

     Mr. Magnus
laughed.  She saw he had a long stick in his hand that he now tucked into his
sleeve.  “Yes.  You are funny.  And you have what my generation calls, ‘spunk’.
I can see why he loves you so much.”

     Victoria cocked
her head, “Who?”

     “Why, your
demon, of course.”

     This revelation
made Victoria’s cheek twitch.  “Demons can’t love,” she said softly.

     “You are
correct, and perhaps I should amend my statement.  He wasn’t always a demon. 
None of them were.  The man he
was
loves you.”

     This made a
little more sense.  Victoria felt good about being loved, and this explained
her demon’s persistence, but not his intent.  “Please tell me what is going on
here.  At first I wanted to stop the demonic visits.  Then I didn’t.  Then when
he stopped visiting I wanted to go to him.  Now he won’t let me.  Surely you
know what is going on.”

     “I do.”

     “Then tell me.”

     Mr. Magnus
pulled up her chair and moved the bits of underwear and her pink bra aside
before sitting in it.  “I can’t tell you in the same way that if you had asked
me, ‘Mr. Magnus, please teach me Japanese before I have to go to Tokyo next
week.’  I could tell you enough to say
please
and
thank you
and
where
is the restroom
, but you would be lost in conversation.”  He looked at her
kindly.  “Do you understand?  It’s not that it is forbidden, or that we don’t
want to help you.  It is just that it is impossible to be conveyed the way you
want it to be.”

     She nodded.  “He
had said the same thing, though he said it was more like he could not eat for
me when I’m hungry.”

     “But he could
hand you a sandwich, and that us what he has been doing.”

     She looked up
sharply.  “The sex visits?  Like handing me a sandwich?”

     “Well.  Yes.  At
first he came to you as a demon that looked like the demons in your fairy
stories.  Am I right?”

     She nodded.

     “Then slowly he
began to look more human.”

     “Yes.”

     “He had to
convince you that something supernatural was happening, that it was vitally
important, that you paid attention and that you were not insane.  Quite a
mission, if you ask me.  I am impressed with his work.”

     Victoria thought
about that. ”Why couldn’t he appear like the angel Gabriel and tell me, ‘Here
is an important message, Victoria.’?  Why the sex?”  She squirmed a little,
looking at her hands in her lap and remembering some of the explosive orgasms. 
Sometimes his, sometimes hers.