The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1: The Demon Calumnius (15 page)

“I'm not here to disturb your work, Coradyll,” shouted Calumnius again.  “I only want to ask for your assistance.  This human you possess is seducing the man who is attached to the woman I have targeted.  It plays into my plan.  I want you to know I am not here to compete with you.  This would be good for both of us.”

“Then leave us about our business, Joyce Michaels and I,” he said to Calumnius, her eyes turning black for the time he was speaking.

No one saw the eyes, but David McGuire did poke Noah Wilkinson and direct his attention toward Joyce, who seemed to be posed and still, as if in a trance.  They walked toward her together with concern.

Doug heard their footsteps in the rubble and looked up at them, then turned in the direction of their interest.  He saw her too, staring blankly out into space.

“Joyce, are you all right?” asked Noah. “Joyce, Joyce, do you hear me?”

She seemed like a statue.  Abigail, only a few feet away, came over to see what was happening.

“What's wrong with her?” asked Doug.

“It could be some kind of stroke,” said David, “or I've heard of epilepsy, in a mild form, resulting in a momentary trance, though I've never seen it.  Her eyes are unbelievably dilated.”

Suddenly, Joyce moved, reaching for a shard of pottery as if nothing had happened.  It seemed to confuse her that everyone was looking at her.

“What is it?” asked Joyce. “What are you all looking at?  Is there a spider on my hat or something?”

“Joyce, you had some sort of episode,” said David. “I think you should go back to the hotel and be checked by a doctor.”

“I feel fine.  What kind of episode?” she asked, considering that a trip back to the hotel might not be so bad an idea.

“You blanked out, couldn't see or hear us talking to you,” said Doug.  Then he addressed the group. “I think she should go to the hospital.”

“Well, I suppose I shouldn't take any chances,” she said.  “So who wants to drive me?” she said, smiling sensuously.

Every man there had already been approached by her more than once; a few had succumbed to her already and did not want to deal with the embarrassment afterward.  No one made an offer.

“I have an extra set of tools you could bring back to the site,” she said.  “We have extra hands on the team now and could put them to use.”

“Is there a doctor available there?” asked Doug. “I'll find one somewhere.  Surely the hotel will be able to assist somehow.  They must have had guests that needed medical attention at some time.”

Doug did not actually feel good about going back to Mosul.  It was a place he hoped to never see again.  He did not feel good about taking this woman to her hotel room either.  But he was the one with the least educational background in this subject and was more expendable.  Everyone seemed very involved with their projects, and he hadn't actually found anything yet.  The two gay guys would be a better choice for this errand, he thought.  Only they couldn't drive a stick shift—not to mention it being a jeep.

“I'll be back as soon as possible,” he called to Abigail to put her mind at ease.  She waved back cheerfully, not seeming concerned about him going off alone with this woman.  He realized she was right, after all.  He was a big boy, no matter how aggressive she became, he surely could hold her off with all his military training.  It's not as though he could possibly be attracted to her.  If he felt anything at all toward her, it was aversion.

In the jeep on the way to Mosul, Joyce Michaels would not keep her hands off his penis.  He had a difficult time pushing her away since he had to shift with one hand and steer with the other.  In spite of polite refusals, in spite of warnings about Muslim retaliation for such public indecency, despite anger—the woman handled him until his body responded involuntarily.

“Just let it happen,” she whispered.  “We're both adults.  Don't tell me you don't need the release.  That little girl you're with is a virgin.  You can't be getting any.  Enjoy yourself.  You want it, and I want to give it.  Do it before we get to the town.  No one is around here in the barren desert.”

“You're going to make me crash the jeep,” he yelled angrily.  “And how would you know that Abigail is a virgin?  I don't know anything about that myself.  Stop it now!”

“No, you stop fighting it,” she said, threateningly. “Pull over and park the jeep.  It can be over in a minute if you cooperate.  I need it, too.  You have no idea.  Just let me do it, and it will be over.  No one need know.  No one.”

Doug pulled sharply to the side of the road, hoping to jolt her loose and shove her aside once both hands could be free of driving and shifting.  But instead, she somehow managed to open his pants with a flick to fully expose his penis. She immediately covered it with her immense mouth that took all of him in at once.  He’d never felt such intense suction.  Without meaning to, he fell back in ecstasy.  She had him where she wanted him.  With nonstop pumping with her throat she brought him to orgasm in seconds, but did not release him from her grip.

“God, forgive me,” he cried out.  “I am so sorry that I have sinned.  Please forgive me.”

The anger inside her at hearing those words sent her into a rage and also angered the demon inside her.  She chomped down on him hard, her teeth becoming much longer and sharper than possible for a normal human.  She severed his entire organ with one bite.  He bled profusely.  The pain and the shock were not even the most terrible part of what he endured.  He looked at her, and with his penis still in her mouth, her face turned into a huge, elongated monster face that held his organ in its throat while laughing.

Doug now knew what she really was, and he begged for God to save him, save his soul, and protect the others who didn't suspect her true nature.  He passed out against the back of the seat from both shock and loss of blood.  The demon grabbed Doug's exposed neck with sharp nails that had grown to the size of claws and ripped his flesh open from ear to ear with one stroke—showing the cruel and evil nature that demons truly are.

The demon Coradyll emerged from the woman, revealing his hairy, bulging, malformed body.  He stood upon the jeep, roaring and beating his chest.  The body of Joyce Matthews lay limp across the seat.  At some point while he used her body freely, she had choked to death.  The object which had caused her demise was still stuck deep in her throat.  The beast, realizing she was dead, ran off into the desert, leaving the jeep, her body, and Doug to sit in the hot Iraqi sun.

Hours passed.  The team at the dig site began to be concerned, but the two older members, David and Noah, assured them that she probably had been hospitalized and that Doug would have needed to stay until all the proper paperwork had been handled.

“No, something's wrong,” said Abigail.  “I feel that strongly, and I don't know why.”

She went to Jamal, who was watching from the camel tent.  It was as though he knew it, too, and was waiting for her to come to him.  He was very agitated.

“Something bad has happened,” whimpered Jamal, crying like a baby. “I don't know what to do.  It is Doug.  I knew he shouldn't have gone with that woman.  I became concerned when he went away with her, and one of the Bedouins told me a terrible thing.  He said that while they were taking their midday nap the other day, he saw her giving Al Fahl water from a bottle.  He thought that strange, but harmless, and he went back to sleep.”

“She wanted us to have one camel so that Doug would come without me,” Abigail surmised, wondering at how heinous a crime it was.  “She's evil—actually evil, Jamal.  I am so afraid for him now.”

Calumnius knew what had happened; he knew at the very instant, though he wasn't expecting it to turn out that way. 
Coradyll has done this thing.
  He crouched on the ground and thought hard about the demon that did this to spite him. 
There was no cooperation between demons.  Why had he even considered it possible?

An Iraqi police vehicle pulled up to the site, and two uniformed men walked together toward David and Noah.  Abigail and Jamal ran to meet them, but they were well behind the crowd that had gathered together by the time the two of them arrived at the scene.

“There has been an accident.  I must go with them to Mosul,” said David McGuire, “so please lock everything up, and take the vehicles back to the hotel.”  Then he looked at Abigail.  His eyes said it all.  She knew then that Doug was dead, just not how.  She collapsed as Jamal caught her before she hit the ground. 

The group decided to take her back to the hotel with them for the night.  Jamal understood that she could not drive a camel ten miles in the desert in her emotional condition.  He said that he would take the camels back home and give the bad news to his family.  They promised to take good care of her.

“I have to know what happened to him,” Abigail cried out in frustration. “Tell me, someone—please.”

“I'll tell you, honey,” said Brian with heartfelt sympathy, “but it's going to be hard, so we'll take it slowly.  I'll tell you on the way to the hotel.”

“Brian and Matt, since you don't drive, go in the jeep with me,” said Noah, taking over as second-in-command.  “Abigail, I think you should go with us, and Colin, you drive Debbie and Kim.  Let's all meet at the hotel in David's and my room because it is the largest, and we will decide how to handle this.”

Calumnius followed Abigail as he had been for months, but he no longer watched her for signs of weaknesses he could use against her.  He watched her in confusion.  Her sorrow was not filling him with glee—the glee he had felt at human deaths so many, many times.  He was feeling something he had never felt before—could it be caring?  But that was impossible.

He felt upset that Coradyll had cheated him.  Why had he even considered that a being such as a demon—like himself—could ever be dealt with at all, could be trusted, could be worked with as a partner.  He felt angry that another soul had received forgiveness from God and entered heaven.  Without being there, still he knew this because he had heard the description of the bodies by the police officers.  The demon was forced to leave since his host had died.  That was a failed encounter if ever he had envisioned one.  Doug had won that battle.  Now Calumnius felt ambiguous about his plans for Abigail.  Perhaps he could not win.  Those were the sum of his feelings, he told himself.  And then he looked at her.

Those sorrowful eyes filled with pain, tears rolling down her face.  And that memory came again, of the Son of God bleeding with sorrow for his precious human beings.  He could not take it any longer.  He felt sorrow, too.  It was love, then, that he felt, impossible or not.  He, after all, had once been a being of light and love, created in love no matter how many eons ago.  Somehow that ember of love had not died as it should have.  He had stayed too long on earth; he had watch humans too closely; he learned again how to feel love.  It had been working inside him for months, years, perhaps a hundred years—since the Maria Goretti incident.  Whenever he witnessed forgiveness in the eyes of humans—especially in the one called Jesus, he himself had started longing to be forgiven.  These feelings had been hiding beneath the surface of his awareness all this time.  His species alone were denied the possibility of returning to the love of God.  This was the ultimate cruelty—to be denied forgiveness, to be denied God.  He knew not where to turn.

He had been in a state of denial.  Through all of his failures to tempt Abigail into sin, he actually had been learning to admire her refusal to sin.  Through all of his frustration at God's protection and care for this mere human, he had been jealous that God loved her as he once had been loved—eons ago when he himself was an angel.  Through all his watching her, he had not been looking for weaknesses to use against her.  He had been admiring her.

A
t the hotel, all gathered in the bar, including David, who joined them there after the police business was over.  A meeting was required, and none of their rooms was large enough to hold the group of them comfortably.  A few of them needed a stiff drink as well.  David addressed Abigail, but so that all could hear as they sat around a large table together.

“The military is handling the funeral.  They will take him home, and they will contact you, Abigail, about arrangements since he listed you as next of kin.  Several officers, friends of his, will see to it that you get back home.  I'm sure you will want to go back to the Iraqi family and get your things, as well as say good-byes.  We can take you there if the military doesn't, as soon as you are up to it. 

“And there's one more detail I think you should know about the gruesome thing that happened—he did not do this thing willingly.  We know that he was viciously attacked.  She wouldn't have done that unless she had been very angry.  And she wouldn't have been angry if he had been cooperating.  This was my fault,” David sobbed. “We all knew there was something abnormal about her.  I shouldn't have sent him with her.”

“No, no,” said Noah, “none of us had any idea she was capable of something like that.  It's not your fault.”

“It's not any of your faults,” said Abigail. “I seriously think the woman was possessed.  I felt something very wrong about her, but I didn't really know until now.”

The group looked at each other, none of them believing in such things.  But they humored her because they did not want to upset her by arguing.  They had decided she would stay with Kim for the night, as she was a single woman with an extra bed in her room—the one which had been Joyce's.  Kim offered first because she did not want to be alone in there on this night, even though all the nights spent there with Joyce had held there own kind of creepiness as well.

“I really need to pray,” said Abigail before they were about to leave the bar for their own rooms. “Will you people pray with me?”

They reacted uncomfortably and were about to go through the motions with her out of courtesy, but Kim quickly spoke up.

“I will pray with you,” she said, taking Abigail's hand.

Abigail hugged her and comforted her to the astonishment of the rest of the crowd—that she cared for others in the midst of her enormous crisis.  The group of them joined hands whether they were sincere in their prayers or not, they were very sincere in their respect for Abigail.