Besieged

The problem was that I had just done this in front of a whole bunch of witnesses. They might not have understood right then that they were witnessing a Druid squaring off against a demon from hell, but they knew something was weird, because a man with two guns wasn’t even trying to face down a guy with a sword, and the guy with the sword talked funny.

“Sorry, everybody,” I said in my uncertain Texas drawl. “We’ll take this elsewhere and let you carry on with your evenin’.” To the demon I said, “Let’s move over by the door and talk, real nice.”

By moving the tip of Fragarach, I could give him a bit of a nudge in the right direction but not really force him to move. The enchantment was designed to prevent movement more than to push or pull people around. And the demon inside Stephen Blackmoore really did not want to cooperate.

His hands dropped to his guns and he attempted to pull them out, only to find that he couldn’t. He shook and trembled all over, trying to break free of the enchantment, perhaps even to escape his host and possess someone else, but he was well contained. His eyes turned the color of boiled lobsters as his frustration and rage grew; his mouth dropped open, and the sound that erupted from it wasn’t the sort of thing a healthy person ever makes: It was pitched low, as if he ate a bad burrito an hour ago, but it was unmistakably a battle cry filled with a berserker’s promise of doom.

The saloon fell silent as everyone turned to stare. The piano player even stopped his mad tinkling of the keys.

“This man ain’t well,” I said. “Don’t touch him, please, just give us some space. He knows he needs to do what I say, but he doesn’t want to. Sorry, y’all. We’ll get out of your way as soon as we can.”

Stephen Blackmoore kept trying to shuck his guns free. “They’re not coming loose. I made sure of it. So let’s go talk, all right? It’s the only way to be rid of me.”

That was as much for the crowd as for the demon. Satisfied that there wouldn’t be any gunfire, they murmured and some of them politely turned their backs to resume their games. The piano player took his cue and pounded the keys once more.

“Go on,” I told the demon. “Walk toward the door.” The red glow in the eyes faded and the tremors in the limbs subsided as the demon decided not to fight it anymore. He walked toward the door with clenched fists and I kept the sword pointed at him, asking people not to get between us. There was a table with a few down-at-the-heels miners chatting over drinks. I asked them if we could sit there and threw some uncashed chips at them as a naked bribe. One of them asked for more, but the other two told him not to be an asshole; they’d just come out ahead on what was otherwise a shit night.

I had him sit across from me, his back to the door, and Lucy came over to ask if we wanted drinks. I ordered two shots of rye, but neither of us had any intention of actually drinking.

It was time to use the other power of Fragarach: compelling the truth. “Let’s get to it, shall we? I’m asking the demon possessing this human right now: What is your name?”

At first the demon was amused and a low chuckle burbled forth from Blackmoore’s burned throat, but then “Mammon” escaped his lips, and the flaming eyes returned as the demon realized he didn’t have a choice about answering.

“I thought so. Stefano Pastore was a fool to summon you. But what I want to know is this: Who helped you escape the summoning circle and kill Pastore?”

Blackmoore’s face twisted into a nasty grin. Mammon was delighted to answer that question. “Some other fool entered the room shortly after I was summoned, because I bellowed. Pastore didn’t protect against my influence on others. I promised the man incredible wealth and all he had to do was kick a bit of salt aside for me. Pastore begged him not to do it, but he was helpless to stop him. The man broke the circle and I possessed him. Then I used him to break Pastore’s circle of protection and pay him properly for his arrogance. Who are you?”

“I’ll ask the questions. Did you keep your promise to the man you possessed?”

“Yes. He had a fine run at faro and acquired more money than he’d ever seen, before someone tried to stop me and guns came out. But I took four more souls before I left his body.”

That sounded like that first night, when Mr. Collins got thrown across the room.

“And you’ve been doing something similar to that every night since?”

Another smile from the demon. He approved of these questions. “Yes. This is my kind of town.”

“Well, not anymore. I need you to go back to hell.” He simply stared at me, and I realized I hadn’t asked him a question. “You may speak freely so long as it is in English.”

“You cannot send me back,” he spat.

“Sure I can.”

“You are no priest. You are not one of the host either.”

“That’s true enough. But your spiritual opposites are not the only ones with an interest in keeping demons from roaming around this plane.”

“This weapon you have used to bind me,” he said, sneering at it, “cannot do any lasting harm to me.”

That was also true. I didn’t have a nice set of arrows blessed by the Virgin Mary, like that time in Mesa when we had to go after the fallen angel. Fragarach could dispatch most lesser demons, who had only a tenuous grip on their manifestations here, but Mammon was one of the true badasses. How do you destroy a pure manifestation of greed?

“I never said I was going to stab you with it,” I told him. “It’s doing what it needs to do, which is keep you in place while I get hold of something or someone that can harm you. You’ve heard of Brighid, First among the Fae, who can cast Cold Fire?”

The confidence and condescension melted away. “Yes.”

“She’s a friend. So it’s your call: Go back to hell of your own free will, where you will remain powerful and wind up paying no price for this little spree of yours, or stick around and be torn apart on this plane. You’ll be scattered and weak for centuries, and your influence will wane—and actually, now that I think about it, that might be best for everyone but you. I probably shouldn’t give you a choice, but I did say it would be your call.”

Looking back on that now, I think that might have been one of my greatest cock-ups. What would this country—and, by extension, the whole world—look like now if greed had taken a backseat to other vices in 1850? So many implications I should have thought through. But I wasn’t prioritizing the long term right then. I just wanted Mammon out of there and the short-term threat to the earth neutralized so that I could get back to hiding in Argentina.

“What’s it going to be, Mammon? Go back whole, or get blown to pieces?”

He trembled and shook again and the red rage eyes returned, but he had to make a decision and answer. “I’ll go back.”

I awarded him a smile. “Thank you. Very cooperative. But I have to press you on the matter of when, because this isn’t my first negotiation with folks who like to hide behind nonspecifics. So, will you go back to hell when I open a portal to the plane?”

“Yes,” he said through a clenched jaw. “But I swear I will—”

“Shut up now,” I said, and Fragarach cut him off.