NOVEL SIMPLE v2 CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR: In which three friends discuss ramifications but fail to agree on the correct course of action.
“White phosphorous, to reach the temperatures needed to disable regeneration,” said Cassandra, sounding as if she was discussing options for a new car. “I modified this HK416 for the custom flechette rounds. The phosphorous is massively illegal, of course, a war crime on the battlefield… but only against humans, technically.” She gave Una a sidelong glance.
She’s grouchy and quiet as a clam. Unless you get her talking about weapons, Una noted. Out loud, she said, “All incredibly impressive, Cass. But that wasn’t my question.” She pulled Susan’s suit jacket around the shreds of her OSA windbreaker as best she could; in her demonic form, the gray twill was too tight across her shoulders. “I wanted to know why, not how.”
Susan, who’d arrived not long after Cassandra’s destructive intervention, continued poking at the smoldering remains of the Mesembrine, clad only in her white blouse and gray slacks, despite the chill of twilight. Cassandra frowned at Una.
“What. Why didn’t I just let two demons dissolve and burn each other to death? Good question.” The hunter had reverted to her usual brusque tone and posture, and glared at Una as if she were obnoxious for asking.
The Mesembrine had melted into a puddle of steaming, stinking ooze, and the air above the body still rippled with heat. Una shivered; what remained of her partly dissolved clothes was soaking wet, and her flesh bore dark scars where the acidic slime had eaten away at her skin.
For whatever reason, the burns weren’t painful, but Una hoped they’d fade before long, or with a nudge from the nanobots that laced her flesh. The Mesembrine’s aura of misery had faded, leaving only a vague sense of sadness and loss; the darkening air felt empty and cold.
“What I’m wondering, Cassandra… is why you’re here at all?” Una pointed a taloned finger at the rangy hunter. “Last we spoke, you told me you couldn’t be part of whatever we were doing, and that you wish you’d killed me when we first met.”
Cassandra looked faintly uncomfortable, and her gaze shifted from Una back to Susan, who was whistling nonchalantly as she studied the remains of the fallen demon—but in a way that made it clear she was definitely listening to the conversation.
“I… may have taken a surveillance assignment. At the behest of Monsignor Albert.” She shrugged. “He pays well, and you know I’ve freelanced for the Church before.”
Una raised an eyebrow, feeling a smile tug at her lips despite herself. “You’re stalking us for money. That’s cute.”
The hunter scowled. “I stalked a demon. A beast from Hell that killed at least one human, possibly—”
“Two!” Susan called over. “There’s another jawbone here in the muck. Looks a lot older, though, and it has a couple of gold teeth.” She held up a dripping object and squinted at it in the fading light. “I should probably leave this for NYPD forensics… but it’s hard to resist the urge to poke at a kind of demon that’s barely documented. Cassie, how did you know what kind of weapon to use?”
Cassandra shrugged, unable to keep a faint glimmer of pride out of her nonchalance. “I felt the aura from almost a half-klick out, knew I had to get range on it. Approached through the treetops, but wasn’t in time to get in position before you freed yourself, Una. It’s a slimy type… burning usually works on those.”
The demon hunter paused. “I thought you were done for, absorbed or whatever. But I was still going to… you know. Avenge your death.”
Una blinked. “Avenge me? That’s very sweet of you, in a tough warrior girl kind of way.”
The hunter snorted and shook her head. “Don’t mistake my meaning. It’s a matter of principle, and if you and that thing had both perished here today…” She hesitated slightly. “Well, it would resolve some problems.”
Una’s face darkened. “Nice. You consider me a problem that needs solving?” She turned away from Cassandra and crossed over to Susan, who was scrolling through a long document on her tablet.
Cassandra grimaced. “You already know my concerns.”
“My concerns are twofold right now,” said the succubus, her tone growing heated again. “First, I didn’t ask Ludovic or you to spy on me. Second, you sliced this… being into pieces just as I was—” Una clenched her fists, her elongated talons digging into her palms. “I think I was reaching it, somehow.”
The demon hunter scoffed. “It was eating you, Una. It might have dazed and absorbed you again if I hadn’t intervened. That thing ate a homeless man earlier, probably that missing jogger, too. You’re making a rookie mistake: thinking that demons—well, this sort of demon, at least—are anything like people.”
“It was lonely and in pain, Cass.” Una turned away, feeling hot tears threatening again. “When that… face surfaced, there was such terrible grief. Such isolation and ages of suffering. But now it’s gone.”
Una felt a warm hand on her shoulder and an arm slip around her waist. Susan pulled her close and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “The name that came to mind when you recognized it. Qeteb, right?”
Una nodded silently, feeling her throat tighten—though she couldn’t remember why or what the name had meant to her, or her past selves.
Susan continued, stepping back from Una and running one thumb along the tablet. “Here’s the thing—there are more records about that demon, although the connection between it and Mesembrines has always been tenuous. Until now!” Despite Una’s gloomy countenance, her girlfriend had the spark of a scholar on the verge of a breakthrough. “But get this—Qeteb was known as a major demon of destruction, but also called Qeteb… the Divided!”
The other two women stared at Susan blankly, then turned their heads towards the puddle of ooze, which still smoked in the rapidly darkening air.
“Are you saying that there are more of these things around?” Cassandra frowned, shifting her weight cautiously. “And they’re all part of one of the greater, named demons?”
Susan slapped her forehead. “Don’t get all antsy, soldier girl. Mesembrines have never been reported in groups, but the way they’re referred to suggests there’s more than one. Possibly because humans have destroyed them before, maybe in the same way Cassandra just did—only for them to appear again later.”
She turned to smirk at Cassandra with a toss of her raven hair, and Una recalled how easily intimate the interactions between these two had been in recent months. “Your little Geneva-Convention-violating firework show wasn’t exactly an exorcism, but… it would hardly be surprising if only part of Qeteb lost physical form here today. The rest of its divided self…” The scholar ended with a shrug.
Una twisted her lips. “So the face I saw was just a fragment of the original demon I once—I meant, who Yael once knew?” She looked from Susan to Cassandra, but they were both looking at her with similar startled expressions.
“Dearest Una… your tail. Are you doing that? Or is it…” Una looked down at where Susan pointed. She’d scarcely noticed it, but her tail had wound itself around her, and the bulbous tip now rolled across her chest like a cat seeking affection. “Is it… sucking up that stuff?” Susan leaned closer once more, peering.
Una hadn’t cleaned the strange, black slime off her breasts and sternum; unlike the rest of the Mesembrine’s body, the stuff was cool and congealing rather than acidic. In the fading light, it seemed to siphon off into her tail.
Una felt a strange shudder run up her spine as her body absorbed the last of the viscous black substance. She felt much as she did when she absorbed the energies of human release and desire—the same sensation of fullness and a quenching of thirst and need. This time, the sensation was also deeply alien, with an odd, metallic tang.
“Una? What’s going on? Are you—” Susan and Cassandra stepped back from Una, staring at something she couldn’t discern. She felt strange, cold pulses of power flow into her—maybe this feeling was the vast, numinous pain of lost souls, or the shadow of death. Like the Mesembrine itself, the essence of the demon was an endpoint, a termination of purpose and will—but instead of annihilation, it seemed to Una to be a doorway into… what, exactly?
“It doesn’t matter,” she heard herself say—but the detached, hollow tone of the voice emanating from her mouth sounded nothing like her. Una looked at the two figures nearby: a human and a something nearly human, both open-mouthed, their faces pale, as if struck dumb by some supernatural power. Una blinked; her body warmed again, returning to its familiar feeling of self.
Susan let out a gasp, then reached for Una. “Your eyes went… all inky black for a moment. No sclera.”
The succubus stepped backwards, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Cassandra had drawn a blade. “Don’t touch me right now, Suze,” said Una, smiling weakly. “I think I might have… absorbed some of the Mesembrine’s power… like I did with Nezz.”
As if thinking the same thought, all three women shifted their gazes to look at Una’s tail. The tip shone with a pulsating color—not the green light of the essence she’d milked from Nezz, but a strange, roiling darkness that flickered with pinpricks of color, like far-off lights. Una bit her lip, watching it for a moment, then took a deep breath and glanced back at her friends.
Cassandra lowered her blade and let out a stream of curses under her breath. Susan held out the tablet at arm’s length and took a picture of Una’s tail, then tilted her head at the image. “It does look similar, if memory serves. I want to get you back downtown for some tests.”
“Tests!?” Cassandra’s bark of laughter was derisive. “I can’t believe… can’t believe I let this happen again. You’re sucking up power like a goddamn vacuum, and no one knows what that could lead to! The last demon seed you absorbed let you control minds, so you swore not to use it. What will it be this time? The power to bring misery and depression to anyone who crosses your path? To suck out a person’s will to live, and leave them a suicidal husk!?”
Una pulled Susan’s jacket as tightly as she could around her frame, trying to still her tail as it whipped agitatedly behind her. Her face crumpled into a grimace.
“Hold on,” Susan said in a level tone. “You can’t go straight to worst-case scenarios, Cass. That’s why I want to look into it. And you can’t just… just blame Una for things she hasn’t done, that she’s held back from using after we all agreed it was too dangerous. We need to take measured steps here, not just act on fear or reflex. Do we understand each other?”
Cassandra turned her head and spat, and Susan let out a soft gasp of surprise. The demon hunter turned her glare back to Susan and pointed her long knife at the scholar. Susan took a step back, but Cassandra’s posture was less aggressive than her expression suggested.
“Sunghi. You think I trust you with this kind of power? You altered your own mother to make her more open-minded. And that was after you… regenerated in front of our eyes. I don’t know what you’re becoming either.” The corners of Cassandra’s eyes glistened, as if with tears, though the half-light obscured them.
Una stepped between the two of them, stepping close enough to Cassandra that the tip of the hunter’s blade hovered against her breastbone. Una kept her hands at her sides, but flexed her fingers. Cassandra’s breath caught, and her eyes widened, as if expecting Una to lunge for her, but holding herself steady.
“Leave Susan out of this,” she said in a low, calm voice, meeting Cassandra’s gaze. “And make up your damn mind, you wishy-washy bitch.”
Cassandra’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. “What—what do you mean?”
Una rolled her eyes, her chest pressing forward into the knife with a sting of pain. “Isn’t it obvious? If you want to kill me, take your shot. If you don’t want any part of what’s happening to me and Susan, then get the fuck out of here. Don’t stalk us, don’t interfere, and don’t yell at us about what we should be doing.”
The demon hunter’s lip curled back, and her grip tightened on the hilt of her blade, its polished black finish gleaming dully in the low light. For a moment, Una thought Cassandra might press the blade forward into her chest. “You don’t have any idea what I’m going through, what I have to deal with,” she snarled.
Una groaned in frustration, feeling her eyes well up with hot tears of fury. “I don’t. But I can’t care at this point, Cass. Deal with your own shit and stop hiding behind threats and warnings. Until then… stay the hell away from us.” Una felt the rush of her pulse echoing in her ears, as if the cold emptiness that had suffused her minutes before had left a vacuum behind to be suffused with pent-up frustration. She wanted to slap Cassandra, to scream at her, to push her to the ground and fight or fuck or die.
The succubus suddenly became aware of Susan’s hand on her arm, tugging her backwards gently. Una stepped away from Cassandra, noting that her breathing was shallow and rapid—just like the demon hunter’s.
Cassandra sheathed her blade in a quick motion, then turned and walked away into the trees. Within seconds, she was invisible, save for the sound of branches and leaves crunching beneath her boots. The silence of Central Park in twilight enveloped Una and Susan once more, along with the lingering odors of blood and burned flesh.
After a moment, Una spoke again. “Susan. I saw what happened to you when the Mesembrine’s aura overcame you. I don’t want any of this… new essence to affect you. Cassandra’s right, in a way. I should leave, go somewhere by myself until I can be sure that… that I haven’t turned into a walking suicide bomb.” She swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat.
Susan reached up and grabbed Una by the neck with one hand, pulling her downwards. Una was surprised by the strength of Susan’s grip; her girlfriend had grown stronger. With Susan’s lips inches from her own, Una felt her knees buckle slightly. Susan’s eyes flashed as she locked gazes with her lover, and Una saw flecks of golden light shining in their depths.
“Don’t. Even. Think about it, love.” Susan’s words were a whisper, but Una felt them in her core. “You and I have chosen each other, and we remain bound to that choice. Neither death nor fear can separate us.”
Una exhaled slowly, but before she could respond, Susan brought their lips together in a long kiss that Una felt in her toes. When they parted, Susan spoke again. “Agent Miller’s in charge here, rookie. I’m calling in the cleanup crew, and then I’m taking you back for further observation. Is that clear, Belmont?”
Una blinked, then nodded slowly. Susan smiled and gave her lover a quick peck on the cheek. “Excellent. Let’s get out of the cold and get you some new clothes, okay?”
