His name was in the phone book.
Stupid ass, I thought, as I saw the phone number. I tapped it, memorizing it, then closed the book.
“Thanks,” I said to the store clerk. “Not many people have the white pages anymore.”
The store clerk took the book and tossed it onto the floor. “I use it to stand on to get to the top of the cigarette thing,” she said, pointing to the cigarette dispenser behind her.
“Ah,” I said, and walked out of the store. Bennett was standing by the car, waiting for me.
“Find what you’re looking for?”
“I got his number but no address.”
Bennett pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open. “Here.”
“Can’t they trace that?”
He shrugged.
I called the number, and it rang four times before someone answered, “Hello?”
His voice. It was him. By all the gods it was him. I got goose pimples across the skin of my arms. I paused before I spoke, assuming an accent, “‘allo? I yam callink about the apart-ment?”
“What apartment?”
“The one that is for rent, ja?”
“You got the wrong number.”
“This is eight-four–”
He had hung up. I looked up at Bennett. “It’s him.”
“Let’s go, then.”
As we drove, I was silent. How would I do this? Long and slow, or fast and quick? Would I give him a melodramatic soliloquy before I made his eyes bleed? Would I show him my true form and say this is what I became before I used his guts for a necklace and a belt? Would I flay him alive, or draw and quarter him?
No. No, I had a better idea.
We got to the apartment house, and Bennett said, “So what are we going to do?”
I got out of the car. “We’re going to pay a visit.” I saw that there was a ramp and a set of four stairs. I took the stairs. I made the assumption he was on the ground floor. I saw his name on a speaker doorbell and rang it.
“Yeah?”
“Delivery,” I said, my voice an octave higher.
He paused. “I didn’t order nothin’.”
“It’s got your name on it, man.”
I waited. I heard the click of a lock, and the door opened. A very tired-looking woman in just a robe stood there.
Crap, I thought. “You Cris?” I asked.
“No,” she said and yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth. “Gimme the package.”
I turned to Bennett. He shoved past her and we stepped into the foyer. “Hey!” she cried – and I could see an open door to a ground floor apartment. Bennett grabbed her, covering her mouth, and frog-marched her back into the apartment, with me following.
I kicked the door shut with my foot. At the same time, I drew a rune on the floor, one that wouldn’t let the door open except when I dismissed the rune. I looked around at the apartment, and my eye was caught by the bare-chested man sitting in the wheelchair. “What was –” He stared at me. “Who are you?”
Bennett released the girl, throwing her toward the couch. She bounced onto it.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember me. I’m hurt. But then, I look a little different now than I did then. Then, I was this scrawny, thin, easily bruised kid.” I walked over to him and punched him hard in the side. He grunted, but didn’t double over. “Do you remember me now?”
The girl started to get up, “Hey, what’re you think–”
“Sit down and shut up, bitch,” Bennett snarled.
“Go back to bed, baby,” said Mousey. “I’ll take care of these snots.”
“He hit you!”
“He still hits like a girl,” Mousey said, looking at me, his eyes fiery with rage. “Faggot.”
I stepped back, glancing at Bennett. “If you please?”
Bennett stepped forward and slammed a punch in the same spot I did. This time he doubled over.
“Let’s see. If I remember, you tipped over my desk with me in it.”
Bennett, with one hand, tipped over the wheelchair to its side. “Like that?” Bennett said.
I grinned. “Yes, just like that.” The bedroom door opened and the girl, dressed now, came out. I looked up at her and commanded, “Stay in that room and don’t come out until I tell you.”
She stood stock still for half a second, went back into the bedroom. Mousey, in the meantime, was trying to push himself or pull himself out of the chair, I wasn’t quite sure.
“Straighten him out,” I said, and Bennett easily picked him and the chair up, sitting him up straight. Mousey glared at me. “Oh, and he hit me in the face with a book.”
Bennett drove his fist into Mousey’s face. Blood flowed from his nose and he grunted at the impact. “Fuck!” he yelled.
“And that was just the start. Oh, I remember, Mousey. I remember every hurt you caused me. I survived them, let’s see if you do.”
“Fuck you,” he spat.
I went to sit down on the couch, tucking my feet under me to get ready for the show.
Bennett beat him. I had seen him street fight before, but to watch him beat him at my command, it was worth every second.
When Mousey’s face was covered in blood, all his own, and Bennett had been splashed with it as well, I decided that was enough. I wanted Mousey conscious for what was to happen next.
I got up, and said, “Move the couch to the side there.” We both moved the couch while Mousey struggled to say something, but couldn’t because of all the blood. He spat at me instead. Bennett slapped him with a brutal backhand.
I went to the small kitchen and found a big container of salt in the cabinet. I poured it onto the floor, making a large circle with an open end. I put symbols at the four quarters, the four symbols of a certain daemon I had summoned once before; though this time, I knew the right symbols.
“Move him into the circle,” I said, and Bennett picked him up, laying him inside the big circle of salt.
“Duh fuck,” Mousey gritted out.
I poured a circle around Bennett, and another beside the first, then closed the first circle. I began the incantation, the one that Grimalkin gave me in my head at that moment in time, the one I knew was right and true.
“I do summon, stir, and call thee up, Belial, King of Hell! By my will I command thee into my presence!”
He appeared, fading into existence, inside the large circle, just like the last time: a white bald man with a huge python wrapped around him. “We meet again, mage,” he said, and didn’t sound too happy about it, this time.
“My apologies for summoning you the last time and the results thereof,” I said, acting concerned. “Were you injured?”
“I was banished,” he snarled. “Yet you summon me again, mage. For what purpose?”
I motioned to Mousey. “I make an offering to your august presence, King Belial. This man, body and soul.”
Belial bent down, and easily lifted Mousey by the hair. He yelped. “The body is broken.”
“Yet its soul is intact.”
Belial licked Mousey’s face, and the snake stuck its tongue out, into Mousey’s ear. Mousey tried to bat the snake away but it hissed at him. “Yes, its soul tastes well.”
“Do you accept my offering, as a beginning of an apology to thee, King Belial?”
Belial dropped Mousey, and he fell to the floor. The snake moved fast, wrapping itself around Mousey. “I accept,” Belial said. “We shall work together, mage.”
“Go,” I ordered. “Begone until I have need of thee again.”
Belial touched the edge of the circle and smiled. “Someday, mage, I shall have your soul as well.” And then he and Mousey disappeared in a puff of light.
I waited and then raised my arms, setting the salt on fire. It burned off, into the air, smelling now of saltpeter.
“Move the couch back,” I said.
“We’re not going to trash the place?” Bennett asked, moving the couch.
“Nah.”
“What about the girl?”
I went to the bedroom and opened the door. She looked up at me, her purse in her arms. “Can I go now?”
“In a moment, dear,” I said, and walked in. “You will not see us. You will not remember us. You will leave for an hour and come back and you will look for…Cris.”
She nodded and got up. I dashed back to the apartment door, getting there before she did, and erased the rune I had drawn with my foot. She walked right past Bennett, right past me, to the door and threw it open. She walked out, determined and with purpose.
I looked at Bennett. “I can wear the robes now,” I said.
I was the Great Arch Mage now.
((A missing thread from my original Grimaulkin novel.))