Rebecca flinched under her covers and groggily sat up in her bed. She looked from one side of her bedroom to the other, trying to figure out what woke her up. Then a dull thump echoed from the wall that she shared with Elizabeth. It must have been something like that. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Rebecca pushed back her warm blanket and stood up. Her pajamas were a well-worn white t-shirt and tiny blue cotton shorts with a drawstring that she let hang loose rather than tie. Halfway to the door, Rebecca paused to stretch and rub her eyes again. She left her room and opened the door to her sister's.
Elizabeth's lights were on and she was standing in the middle of her room, wild-eyed. Her blonde hair was disheveled from sleep and she was wearing only a white bra and her own cotton pajama shorts. A stapler, textbook, and backpack were lying randomly on the floor, and apparently the source of the dents to the wall. From the clothes on the bed, Rebecca guessed that Elizabeth had been in the middle of getting dressed when she started freaking out.
“Eliz-” Rebecca began, and then stopped as her sister spun to face her. Elizabeth's blue eyes were hard and her small breasts swelled against her bra as she took fast breaths. She looked like she had just finished a sprint, or like she was working herself into a proper fury.
“He's gone. Temmer's gone,” Elizabeth spat. Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she continued. “Daniel did it. Temmer! Come here! Temmer!”
The walls rattled as Rebecca heard her parents' rush over from their room. They crowded the doorway behind Rebecca, both talking at once.
“Elizabeth what's-”
“Honey, are you-”
“-bad dream-”
“-feeling sick-”
“Shut up!” Elizabeth shrieked. Rebecca's eyes widened as she saw her sister's finger twitch. There was no trail of light this time, but Elizabeth was obviously drawing her sigil. Rebecca instinctively dove to the floor as Elizabeth twisted the symbol into whatever spell she was using and then flicked it at their parents. There were two heavy thumps as the adults fell to the floor like puppets with their strings cut. Rebecca grunted in pain as her father's shoulder landed across her thighs.
“Hey!” Rebecca screamed from the floor, fear giving her more force. Elizabeth froze and Rebecca continued, growing more frightened, “What did you do?! What-”
“Nothing!” Elizabeth held up her hands defensively, suddenly much quieter. “They're just asleep. They'll be okay.”
Rebecca struggled out from her father's limp form and realized that he was breathing peacefully. She stood up and massaged the pain from her legs. Elizabeth still stood in the middle of the room, her hands at her sides, looking lost now that Rebecca had cut through her anger. Rebecca walked over and guided Elizabeth to her bed. The sisters sat down, with Rebecca keeping an arm across Elizabeth's bare shoulders. Any other time it would have been awkward but right now Rebecca felt like the big sister, offering comfort.
“What happened to the- to Temmer?” Rebecca asked quietly.
Elizabeth stared down at her knees. “He's gone. I can't feel him draining my magic. Daniel must have got him.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “The competition started at midnight. I should've known Daniel would try something. I thought he'd be too careful.”
Rebecca said nothing. She had not realized that Elizabeth was so attached to her demons. Miss M's lecture was fresh in Rebecca's mind and she still thought of them all as monsters. The fact that they could be enslaved did not make them any less scary, and Rebecca doubted she could ever feel affection for one. Rebecca slid off the edge of the bed and stood in front of her sister. Encouragingly, she said, “It's Saturday. No school, no lessons with Miss M. Let's get dressed and then we can think about what to do for the competition.”
Elizabeth looked up with a glint in her eyes that Rebecca did not like. The elder sister smiled and said, “I like that plan. But I want to let Daniel know I got his message. Ourmenaten.”
Rebecca squeaked and jumped half a foot into the air. The thick carpet under her bare feet was suddenly soaked with water. Rebecca dove back onto Elizabeth's bed as more water bubbled up from the carpet. In seconds, a large puddle of water had collected in front of the bed. The water did not diffuse into the surrounding carpet like it should have; instead, it clumped together in a shallow dome like a single droplet on a countertop. More water swelled up, vertically this time, and began to take a definitive form. The figure was humanoid, only five feet tall but very broad and with an impossibly narrow waist. Impossibly narrow for a human, anyway. The figure was composed entirely of water, from its stocky legs to its massive arms. It did not have a head, exactly, but a wide dome rose up in its middle, connecting one shoulder to the other.
“My djinni, a water golem,” Elizabeth said for Rebecca's benefit. Then the older girl addressed the hulking mass of water. “Go say hi to Daniel for me. Kill him if you can, scare him if you can't.”
The creature paused to make sure Elizabeth was done with her orders. Then it slowly tipped forward in a bow. As it bowed, the water that composed its body began to boil and great clouds of steam rose to the ceiling. In seconds, the huge djinni was gone and only the thick cloud remained. The vapor moved in a single mass, rushing out through Elizabeth's doorway over the sleeping adults. When the golem was gone, Rebecca let out a breath she was not aware that she had been holding. She wondered what would have happened if she had breathed in part of that demon. Elizabeth stood up and Rebecca did so a moment later. The carpet, Rebecca noticed, was perfectly dry. Elizabeth stooped and pulled off her pajama shorts so that she was only wearing her bra and panties. Rebecca found her voice as Elizabeth pulled clothes off of her mattress.
“Was- Don't you think that was kind of much?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.
“Hmm?” Elizabeth looked up from pulling on her jeans. Understanding lit her eyes and she flashed a smile at her little sister, looking more like her usual self. “Oh, don't worry. Daniel's gonna be at home. He's too warded there. There's no way Naten can kill him.”
“Uh, what if he's not at home?” Rebecca asked. Sure, it was early, but that was no guarantee that Daniel was not up and about.
“Well,” Elizabeth shrugged. “Then it'll take Naten longer to find him. So I guess Daniel will have some warning.”
Rebecca winced but there was nothing she could do now.
Daniel flinched under his covers and groggily sat up in his bed. There was a persistent ringing in his ears that was quickly growing louder. It was one of his wards. It had no defensive properties but it alerted him to demonic essence nearby. Either something small was close or something strong was approaching. Most likely it was one of Elizabeth's demons. Asariel had returned last night to report that she had consumed a ghoul at the house that Daniel had sent her to. It was a stroke of luck that the demon was there, and Daniel considered it a decisive first step towards winning the competition.
“Asariel,” Daniel called tiredly, rubbing his eyes. White smoke bloomed in midair, quickly shrinking into the familiar form of Daniel's 7-year-old cousin. The succubus was still wearing Nellie's shape and had even copied her blue nightgown, although this version was so transparent that it belonged in a lingerie store.
“About time you called me to your bed,” Asariel said with a cheeky grin, sitting cross-legged on the mattress in front of Daniel. Her tiny slit was a thin line below her sheer nightie. She tweaked one of her nipples through the fabric. “I've been so bored, playing by myself.”
Soon Daniel was going to have to insist that the djinni take a different form. It was too unsettling seeing his little cousin acting so promiscuous. But there were more important things to worry about right now. Daniel cleared his throat and asked, “Can you tell if a demon's nearby?”
Asariel continued to pinch her flat nipple but she cocked her head as if listening for something. She frowned and then her tiny pink tongue darted out from her lips, tasting the air like a snake. She was put out enough to stop molesting herself for a few seconds as her forehead wrinkled in concentration. Finally, she shrugged and focused back on Daniel. “There's something coming. It's really big but its essence is spread out thin, so I can't tell how powerful it really is.”
“Probably not very,” Daniel mused. “Not if she was keeping a ghoul too. Definitely not stronger than you.”
Asariel was not paying attention. She had just noticed Daniel's fading morning wood and was surreptitiously pulling back the blanket to better see it tenting his pants. As a succubus, she was drawn to all forms of arousal. Even if she hated her master, she could not help but be interested in his erection. His sigil was still a part of her too, slowly eroding her independence and drawing her closer to his will.
“Hey, listen,” Daniel said, pulling the blanket back over himself self-consciously. The djinni looked up at him in annoyance. She still had a long way to go before she stopped hating this one. Daniel continued, “We're going to go outside and deal with this thing.”
“Yeah, that's not a good idea,” Asariel sat back on the bed, crossing her arms over her flat chest. “We don't know what it is. How about I take you somewhere nice and safe until it goes away?”
“We're not running away,” Daniel said, pivoting to swing his legs over the side of the bed so that he could stand up. “My family's here. And I have a lot of wards, plus yours. This is the best place, if it comes to a fight.”
“Says the one who won't be doing the fighting,” Asariel muttered, too quietly to hear. Daniel got dressed in jeans and a t-shirt but the demon elected to remain in her wispy nightgown. Together, the two of them walked out of the bedroom.
“Make sure my family stays asleep for this,” Daniel said to the diminutive figure in front of him as they walked down the stairs. Asariel did not answer but white smoke wafted out from her nightie, spiraling back up the stairs and disappearing into Robby's room and the master bedroom. The succubus was uneasy as she continued to puzzle out the approaching demonic essence. She decided it must be some kind of djinni. It was clearly more powerful than a ghoul, although it could be a host of ghouls traveling together. While it might be an ifrit, those higher level demons were not usually as subtle as this. Of course, narrowing the demon down to a djinni was not very helpful. As the most diverse class of demons, some djinn were rats nibbling at her feet while others could crush her even if they were at half-strength. Asariel had not survived the centuries by being eager for conflict, but there was no other choice if her master ordered her to fight.
Daniel opened the front door and closed it behind Asariel when she walked outside. Together, they stepped out onto the cement path that split Daniel's front lawn in half. Daniel began checking his wards and they all seemed to be intact. The warning in his ears was constant now but not much louder than before. It was impossible to know whether the enemy demon was here yet. Anything more powerful than a ghoul could not achieve true invisibility but a djinni might take the shape of an animal to get close before attacking. Although that did not explain why Asariel was having such difficulty locating it.
The succubus whipped her small head upward without warning. “The cloud!”
Daniel looked in the direction of Asariel's gaze. The rising sun illuminated the sky well but it was several seconds before he noticed what the djinni was talking about. At first it looked like a cloud was growing, then like something was passing through the cloud. But instead Daniel realized that there was actually a second cloud, much lower and smaller than the one he was focusing on. It moved swiftly, ignoring the gentle breeze that ruffled the leaves on the trees. When it was two hundred feet away, Daniel estimated that it was twice the size of his house, but it looked like it was getting bigger.
“Water elemental,” Asariel said softly without taking her eyes off of the cloud. Daniel had never seen such a serious look on his cousin's face. “Golem or nickar, probably. Maybe a slewin, but I doubt it.”
“Slewin?” Daniel asked, still looking up. He had never heard of that kind of demon. The cloud was 100 feet away now and blocked his view of the sky beyond it.
“A breed of ifrit. Very rare,” Asariel said tersely. “They develop an affinity for water instead of fire like most ifrit. This one doesn't feel that strong, but we'll know soon.”
“How?”
“Because we'll be dead,” Asariel said in an old, tired voice that did not match her prepubescent body.
Daniel cleared his throat, which was suddenly dry. No acolyte could summon an ifrit. You needed the power and experience of a full voodoo priest to attempt it. Even then, most priests would not risk summoning an ifrit if a djinni could do the job. Golems and nickars were both djinn and probably within Asariel's capabilities to destroy. Nickars tended to appear as serpents, although they could become pure water just like water golems.
The cloud enveloped the area around the house, turning the world gray. Daniel and Asariel stood unharmed in the middle of an invisible dome that stretched higher than the roof of the house and wider than the property line. The air literally crackled with magic as the demon pressed against the wards surrounding the house. The fact that the wards produced an audible noise was evidence of how hard the demon was pushing against them.
“Don't attack unless it breaks through, or I tell you,” Daniel said to the diminutive demon at his side. He felt a bit of pride and intellectual curiosity creep into his mind. This was the first time he was seeing his wards in action and it was empowering to know that they were effective. The first ward acted as a mere wall. The fireworks would begin if the demon managed to break through to the next one.
Asariel yawned. She must have decided that the demon was not a real threat after all, if it was struggling with Daniel's wards. Her own wards were on the house itself, and they would provide an additional layer of protection if the two of them needed to retreat inside. Asariel sat down on the grass and then laid out on her back. Her nightgown dissolved into a few wisps of smoke that quickly dissipated into nothing. Daniel spared a disapproving glance at his little cousin sprawled out naked on the lawn, but the fog around them was so thick that no neighbor would see her even if one was awake this early.
To Daniel's magically attuned senses, it sounded like a gunshot had suddenly gone off, although there was no actual sound. That was a sign that the demon had broken through the first ward. For a second nothing happened. Then, in an instant, the entire magical dome was awash with fire. There was no way to see the demon fog behind the blinding blaze. Daniel shut his eyes. There was a deep, bone-shuddering thumping sound, as if a bomb had gone off underwater. Magics of hurting, unraveling, and burning spun outward from Daniel's ward, seeking to destroy the attacker. It consumed a huge amount of the magic that Daniel had stored in his wards, and it would take Daniel a month to stockpile that much magic in his defenses again. Daniel opened his eyes. The sky was clear and there was no sign of the demon fog or anything else unusual.
“Well, that was flashy,” Asariel's sarcastic, childish voice cut through Daniel's pride. The tiny girl stood up again and brushed morning dew from her flat ass before pointing towards the street. “You know it's still there, right?”
Daniel looked in the direction that the djinni was pointing. There was a large puddle on the street, about the size of a car. As Daniel watched, the water seemed to be attempting to pull itself together. The water congealed into a vaguely human shape, although parts of it kept sliding away and had to be reformed. Daniel had no experience with elementals but it looked like this one was seriously hurt. The demon approached the boundary again and raised one of its thick arms. It brought down the arm with enough force to shatter stone but there was a flash of fire as it connected with Daniel's weakened ward. The demon's arm boiled away as the ward lashed out with destructive magic. The demon paused and Daniel was not sure if it was deciding how to attack or deciding to flee.
“Breakfast time,” Asariel said in a sing-song voice.
“I- what?” Daniel said stupidly as he watched the girl's bare ass sashay towards the boundary. “No, stop, you can't.”
Asariel froze as Daniel's command compelled her to go no further. She turned back to look at him with a condescending expression that had no place on his cousin's sweet face. “I'm sorry,” she said bitingly. “Did you want the first nibble?”
“You're not going to eat it,” Daniel said. “Or kill it.”
“Why?”
A fair question, but not one that Daniel wanted to answer. The demon had not even gotten past his second ward, and with Asariel at his side Daniel had never been truly worried about his own safety. It was also different seeing this humanoid demon instead of a faceless cloud. Although, granted, the demon was also faceless in this form. Really, it had just looked so pathetic beating an arm against his ward that Daniel had been unexpectedly moved by pity. There was not much to be gained by killing something he had obviously defeated.
“Come on,” Daniel turned and walked back to his front door. Asariel waited a moment until his sigil warmed warningly in her essence. The small succubus cast one last look over her shoulder at the deformed demon and then followed her master inside. The water demon stared at the house for a few seconds and then began to dissolve into steam. The cloud that left Daniel's house was substantially smaller than the one that had arrived.
“That's enough,” Miss M said. A ring of fire hung in the air in front of her face, showing an image of Daniel's house, and the retreating cloud, in its center. When the woman spoke, the fire and the image vanished.
A small, dark-skinned boy sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Miss M's chair. The boy was bald and wore a simple white tunic. His eyes were black pools, lacking any whites or irises. Most ifrit took the form of an apex predator, since they appreciated the intimidation and no longer had as much freedom to change shape as they did when they were djinn. However, Molechnifidon found it amusing to appear as a weak, human child.
Miss M stood up from her chair. The ifrit flickered: one moment it was sitting and the next it was standing. Miss M walked to the window and looked out at the street. She did not own or rent this house. The family that lived here had a spare room and when Miss M had come to this city, she had simply moved in with them. Being a voodoo priest tended to facilitate that kind of thing. For years she had stayed in hotels but that tended to be too easy to track, even if she changed the names on the credit cards that she used. So now she was off the grid, and so far it seemed to have worked.
Though there had been no noise, Molechnifidon was suddenly beside Miss M's arm. He looked impassively at the street with her for a few seconds. When he spoke his voice was appropriately childlike but it seemed to echo in her head. “What do you think of your candidates?”
“I don't know yet,” Miss M said. “Daniel is being surprisingly aggressive. I didn't think that was in his nature.”
“Not so aggressive; the golem lives,” Molechnifidon said. Even viewing the scene remotely, the ifrit had no difficulty divining the nature of the demon.
“Yes, I didn't expect that,” Miss M mused. “So maybe it would be better to just say he is being surprising.”
“Do you want me to test them, Mistress?”
“Not yet. The competition only just started. I'd like to see what else my children come up with.” Miss M made the gesture of dismissal and Molechnifidon vanished like the flame of a snuffed candle.