Eve Morton

I’ve been saving some of my favourites for last.

Seventy-Two Demons is one of my absolute favourites. It’s a weird western-slash-demon hunting story featuring queer characters. It involves my weird knowledge of demonology and the lesser key of Soloman.

And if I’m lucky, it may be the first of many stories set in the same world.

I initially wrote it for the weird western anthology called A Fistful of Demons. That was during my postpartum writing time, and now that years have passed, and I’ve definitely fought some more demons, I want to dive back into this world.

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Seventy-Two Demons

By Eve Morton

“Don’t move.”

Tobias took in a sharp breath as the gun pressed into the center of his back. A man hovered close to his ear, the bristles of his facial hair like small spikes against his thin skin. The man was at least six feet tall, smelling of cattle and leather. A cowboy, maybe. This far into Deseret, it was hard to tell who belonged to what anymore. 

“I’m not moving,” Tobias said. The man had been silent for three whole breaths. It seemed like a lifetime. “What do you want? I have no money.”

“You have black hands,” he said. 

Tobias dropped the keys he’d clasped in his palm. They fell against the dirt outside the printing press office owned by his employer, Bertrand Button. Tobias didn’t bother to pick up the keys; he only flipped over his palms to display the ink stains that were almost always there. “I do,” he said. “So what?”

“You’re a devil, aren’t ya?” the man said, voice gruff and serious. But not insane, Tobias noted. This stranger wasn’t a preacher shouting about the end of days or like the men who came to the press to print their new religious pamphlets, branching out from the Bible and The Book of Mormon, coming up with their own golden plates and revelations. This man didn’t have that high strung trill to his voice that said he spoke to God. He seemed rather pedestrian. If not for the gun, anyway.

“A printer’s devil,” he added. “You work here. Yeah? You know how to run the machines?”

“I’m an apprentice. I can run whatever you like.”

“Good. Let me inside.” The gun pressed firmer into his back. “Now. I don’t have a lot of time.”

Tobias let out another breath. He kicked the keys on the ground, knocking them back to the man. No way was he bending over to pick them up. No way was he doing what this man told him to do. “That lets you in.”

“You do it. I can’t run these things.”

“You can’t read, you mean.”

“Shut up and let me in.”

Tobias now understood he had the upper hand. No gun or other weapon and barely twenty, but he could read and write. This man just had a gun and a different kind of desperation to his tone. He needed to get inside for whatever reason, and Tobias was his only way to enter and then make sense of what he found on the other side of the door. 

The man huffed but soon bent over and grabbed the keys, found the largest one, and stuck it in the door. Tobias caught glimpses of him, even with the pistol still poised against him. Darker skin and hair, yet with blue eyes. A scar across an eyebrow, so no bushy hair grew in the place. Maybe thirty, maybe younger. Hard to tell with so much sun and wear against his face and clothing. He seemed to be utterly covered in dust.

“Open it.” The man gestured with the gun at the keys in the knob. He glanced behind them both, at the empty Deseret town square. The press office was positioned close enough to the Rockies that the man had probably had his fair share of crossovers with the undead or the indigenous who patrolled the area from the mountains to the Mississippi. So he didn’t want to bother with keys, only weapons and commands. “Open it, now.”

“There are no undead here,” Tobias said as he unlocked the door. “You can put your gun away.”

“Not yet.”

They stepped inside. Tobias went about undoing all that he’d done before leaving that night: lighting a lamp, placing the keys down on the wooden table, and then flicking on the press. It was a large industrial model, made in the early 1800s by Friedrich Keonig, and then expanded upon by Bertrand Button, Tobias’s current boss. While most models now were capable of printing at least a thousand pages an hour, Button’s could do twice that. He could also handle illustrations and complex drawings others had not yet mastered, and so, it had been Tobias’s dream to work for the man. The machine still thrilled him, even as it hummed to life as he was under duress. He regarded his last job, still half-finished, in the tray at the bottom. It was pornography, and the lurid title made him blush until he remembered the man holding him hostage couldn’t read.  

“It’ll take at least ten minutes to warm up,” Tobias said. “And I have to clear the other job first.”

“That’s okay.” The man closed the door and thrust one of the large shovels through the two handles, a makeshift lock. A kid with rickets could get through it, but the man seemed satisfied. When he looked into his eyes, something ran through Tobias’s veins like lightning. A shock. Attraction.

“You are aware that this place does not have money, correct?” Tobias said, fussing with the printing press and moving the previous job to the work bench. “My boss handles those transactions at the bank, and I’m kept out of it. We don’t print money, either. Joseph Smith tried that, and it didn’t work, anyway.”

“I know. Don’t want money.”

“What is it that you want?” Tobias asked. The man’s gun was still aimed at him, or at least adjacent to him—more toward the small window above the press—but Tobias was growing more and more bold. “I think it’s best that we consider ourselves on the same side now that we’re both here, going against the rules in some way.”

“The only rules are the ones that come to you.”

“Ah, spoken like a man who has either never had a revelation in his entire life, or has had nothing but. Which is it?” Tobias met the man’s gaze now without flinching. The printing press’s power gave him the confidence he needed. He wasn’t just a scrawny kid with a Mormon family that had dragged him halfway across the country to this strange place where everyone spoke of milk and honey while hating everyone who was an outsider. He could print the words of God here. Or the words of the devil. Or the pornography that men smuggled in. He could print whatever he wanted, and even though it turned his hands black and people whispered that he was a devil, it didn’t matter. He could print. He could read and write.

The man didn’t answer him. He looked through Tobias, even as he stood tall and proud, and then the stranger stepped around him. He scrambled in the direction of the small window of the printing press office, his deep blue eyes fixed on something in horror.

“How on God’s green earth did you follow me here?” he said, low and terrifying. He grasped his weapon and fired at the glass. A burst of sparks and flame, then acrid smoke, filled the room.

Tobias jumped back and shielded his face. The man ran to the front door of the printing press, snapping the shovel’s handle he’d used as a makeshift barrier. He ran out into the night, his boots kicking up dirt and rocks, and fired again. 

The printing press steamed on and on. 

Tobias brushed glass out of his clothing. He looked at the now broken window, wondering how he would explain this to Bertrand, and a pair of red eyes stared back at him. An owl, or what seemed to be at first blush an owl, perched on the empty windowsill. Its red eyes stared at Tobias. It opened its beak, but instead of hooting it let out a ghastly cry that sounded like six women being murdered at once. 

“What on—”

Another shot, another plume of acrid smoke. The owl-creature flew deeper into the printing office. Its wings were small, white and black, but its legs were nearly the size of a crane’s. Tobias stared in open-mouthed awe. The owl didn’t actually fly—it had stretched its wings and Tobias’s mind filled in the blanks—but it had stepped over the window ledge with its long legs. It walked over to the press, its beak open and screaming like a demon. Tobias could only watch as it pecked at the pornographic pamphlet’s keys still stuck in the printing press. It cracked several in a single stroke.

Tobias snapped out of it. “No! Don’t touch that! Don’t—”

Another shot, now from behind Tobias. This one hit the owl-creature. It stopped pecking; feathers flew off in a fury; and blood, black and viscous, stained its front as it fell over the remaining area of the printing press. 

“I hit it, yeah?” The man stepped inside, the lines on his face much deeper. “It’s dead, yeah? Or not moving at least?”

“I. Uh. I think so?”

“Good.” The man eyed the creature, satisfied. Then he picked up the broken shovel. “Sorry about this. I’ll bury it.”

“What is it?”

“A demon,” he said. “Stolas. A prince. See his crown?”

“I don’t understand.” Tobias looked from the man to the creature, which did have a plume of feathers shaped in a crown around its head, but the words made no sense. “Is this a dream? A nightmare?”

“Close.” The man almost smiled. It was half-hidden by his beard and more scar tissue. “But no. This is real. Welcome to hell, devil.”

“I’m just an apprentice,” Tobias said feebly. “And my name’s Tobias. Toby. My family calls me Toby.”

“Toby. I’m Paul Beckett. Most people call me Beck.” He extended a hand, which Tobias shook right away. Ink from the printing press got on Beck’s hand, while the black blood from the creature spread from Beck back to him. Beck looked at his hand with a wry smile after they disconnected. 

“I’m a demon hunter,” he added as he dragged the carcass of the Stolas out the printing press doors. “And you’re now on my side.”

*

Tobias cleaned the printing press of the creature’s blood the best he could. Many of the keys that had been part of the shoot-out were damaged, not just from the stray bullets or the creature’s pecks, but from the viscous fluid. Mixed with the ink, it became a near acid. He would have to destroy much of what he’d just made for the independent contract he’d tried to pick up off-the-books. 

Shoot, more bad luck. With a sigh, Tobias grabbed the hellbox from the workbench where many of the other broken parts of the printing press—and the rarely used illustrations and symbols—were kept. He was in the middle of writing down what letters he’d need to replace when Beck came back inside. 

“That should be good,” he said. “They don’t get up for a while after they’ve been shot with salt and sawdust.”

“That’s what made the cloud?” Tobias asked skeptically. “Salt and sawdust?”

“And birdshot, too. Can’t be too careful.” Beck smiled, revealing a small gap between his front teeth. He regarded the box on the workbench in front of Tobias. He dove into it without asking, pushing aside the letters Tobias had just put in.

“Watch it,” Tobias chastised. “I need to organize this.”

“What is it?”

“Hellbox,” he said.

Beck raised an eyebrow at him.

“No, seriously. This is a hellbox. It’s where spare parts go.”

“Of course. The words really are spells.” Beck threw the pieces down in disgust. A handful of phrases clung together, something Bertrand had started to do to make the printing process easier. Any type of common expression—such as the “and it came to pass” which appeared over two-thousand times in The Book of Mormon—was given its own line rather than individual letters. It was easier to render a page, not to mention the sound all those letters made at once was deeply satisfying to Tobias–but he had to admit that Beck was sort of right. The way so many of the words now hung together, disembodied and out of context, made the whole thing look like a bucket full of spells. 

“What is it that you want?” Tobias asked. The press was warmed up, running as smooth as he could hope for. “I won’t be able to print anything with a p or a q, since those were damaged by that… thing. The w was as well, but we can flip an m over. Not perfect, but it works.”

“I… I need something you printed a while ago.”

“We don’t always keep finalized copies. But I do have records of some, especially if it was a specialty order. My boss likes to keep samples for clients. What was it?” Tobias reached for one of the many ledgers. He waited for Beck to say something, but he only stared at the press. He seemed enchanted, utterly in awe. 

“It’s a fine machine,” Tobias said. “It’s the best in the country, too. I’ve seen others. Bertrand Button, my boss, he added many augmentations to Koenig’s device, which was built on Gutenberg’s model. Bertrand is truly changing the way books are made. I’m proud to work for him.”

“He made the demons on this thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“That demon, Prince Stolas.” Beck looked over his shoulder. Tobias realized he hadn’t been marveling at the press, but watching the now broken window for more creatures that may crawl through. “He was written about in a book called The Lesser Key of Solomon. Mr. Button printed it.”

“Let me see.” Tobias quickly found the book in the records. A large shipment had been printed nearly four months ago for someone named G. Faust. “Hmm.”

“What?”

“I found it. But whoever ordered this gave us a fake name. I didn’t write this record, either, so he must have given his false information to Bertrand.”

“Or, dear Bertrand didn’t write it down properly.” 

Tobias nodded slowly. It was hard to imagine Bertrand, a small and bookish man, not understanding this name as an obvious reference to Goethe’s work called Faust about a pact with the devil. “What is this book you want? You said demons are in it?”

“The Lesser Key of Solomon. It’s made up of a lot of different parts, but the one I’m particularly after is the section where it names seventy-two demons. Stolas is number thirty-six, from what I recall. And I suspect that Bertrand printing the book granted them all some kind of passageway to this world.”

“I doubt that.”

“Why?” Beck looked over his shoulder again, lifting his asymmetrical brows in a challenge. “You saw what I saw, did you not? That thing was real. It’s blood is on your black hands. Why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t think you’re lying, I think you’re like the others around here.”

Beck remained silent. A challenge grew in the thick air between them.

Tobias continued. “Driven wild with belief. Whether it’s in the revelations that come down from angels or the demons that you blame for misfortune, it doesn’t matter. You believe.”

“And you don’t?”

Tobias shrugged. “I’m just here because my parents moved here, following yet another person who had the answer to my sister’s sickness. Then the rest of the world made it so it’s now impossible to leave, even though my sister is dead and there is no such thing as those golden plates. Besides, I like the machine. One day, if I keep working here and doing what I’m supposed to, it will be mine.”

“It’s enchanted. Wicked.” Beck bent his leg back like he was preparing to kick the press.

Tobias held his breath until Beck’s foot came down and merely drew an X in the black soot, and probable blood, that remained. 

The blood from a demon. The demon that Tobias saw. How could he not believe what he’d seen with his own eyes? How could he deny the evidence in the record book—a G. Faust, a name for the devil—ordering a book on demonology? “I think,” he said, though he was not entirely sure anymore if Beck was listening, “I mean… When I print pornography on that machine, it doesn’t come true. Why would a demon book be any different?”

Beck let out a low chuckle. “Well, that porn was bad.”

“I thought you couldn’t read?”

“I know the best words.” Beck winked.

Tobias’s stomach quaked. His off-the-record work was a gay pornographic tale, a side job from the local saloon owner who knew Tobias was quiet and also liked to read about two boys in bed together. Mr. Horton was like him in his desires, and though there was a thirty-year gap between them, they got along. Not like that—Tobias had only the fantasies which he rendered on the press—but they knew one another were of the same type. Was this strange man like them, too? The thought brought him delight. It also brought him so much pain.

“Besides,” Beck said, “you told me Bertrand took that order. For the demonology book.”

“Yes. So?”

“He’s the magic one, I reckon. He’s the one that made this machine, so he’s the one that could also turn its magic off. So even if you did print up your lovely wild tales, it’s after hours. And trust me, you don’t want that swill coming to life anyway.” Beck gave Tobias another playful wink. “Yeah, I reckon Bertrand’s the magic one. You’re just the lowly apprentice, like you say.”

“So why don’t you hold him up?” Tobias snapped. “Because I’m tired and hungry and I honestly just want this day to end.” He slammed the record book shut and shoved it back on the shelf. He walked past Beck to the press and flicked off one of the machine parts. His hand missed the typical lever, however, and touched the underside. A part of the machine moved away, revealing a removable bonus plate. “What the…”

“Stay back.” Beck grasped Tobias’s shoulder and brought out his gun.

Tobias jerked away and stammered, “The plate may have slipped in the initial fight. It should be easy to fix.” Yet when he touched it, the plate was cold when it should have been hot. It wasn’t actually part of the machine, it was a separate piece inside the other. He quirked a brow. This was completely uncharted territory, not how a press should work at all. He grabbed the plate, lifted it up, turned it over, and revealed a star carved on the center.

“Damnit.” Beck held out his gun, but there was nothing to shoot. No demon crawled out from the plate, the earth didn’t open up and swallow them whole. It was just a star that Beck continued to curse and point his shaky gun at.

“What is it?” Tobias said. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s a Drude’s foot. Another demon sign. Your boss is the magic one. And this press is enchanted. My guess is,” he eyed the machine, “anything set on this plate comes to life. Anything set on the normal ones is normal.”

“No.” When Tobias stared at the symbol, the hair on his arms rose with an frisson of electricity. It was like something out of a fairy tale, a myth from his grandmother’s house, or even those damn golden plates that had dictated so much of his life so far. He didn’t believe in the Angel Moroni anymore, but maybe he should. Maybe it was people, like his mother and father, who’d messed up his life and not heaven or hell or anything in between. Just people. Just his dead sister. Just Bertrand, who was starting to become more than a kind old man who gave him his dream job, but a waking nightmare. 

“I… I don’t. What is…”

Beck slapped a hand over Tobias’s back. Strong, firm, and reassuring. “Like I said before. Welcome to being a demon hunter.”

“I’m an apprentice.”

“Sure,” Beck said with a laugh. “You can learn from me. Now, we need to find those seals in that book.”

“What?”

“Seals. Sort of like symbols, like when people cross themselves.” He crossed himself for demonstration, as if it was something Tobias had never heard of before. “They’re written down, though. In that book. I need those seals. You can’t really kill a demon, but you can seal him away somewhere else.”

“What?” Tobias repeated, his voice cracking. “You mean that Stolas, that thing, wasn’t dead when you buried him? But you shot him. You—”

“Not entirely dead.” Beck shrugged. “We have to seal it from a panel in that large book. Then I need the rest of those damn seals to get the rest of the damn demon population under control. And then there’s Cassie. My sister, Cassie.” 

“Your sister?”

Beck nodded and his face drained of color. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a watch that had been engraved with a similar star-marking to that of the printing press. When he noticed Tobias staring, he explained, “That one on your boss’s machine conjures demons, this one protects from them. It all depends on intention, I suppose. You’ll learn. For now, though. We have to print.”

“Print what?”

“Those seals. I don’t know. You did the job, didn’t you? Not you-you, but there’s a record. I know it’s come through here. So where are the seals?”

Tobias touched his forehead, running his hand over his hair and no doubt leaving a black mark as he went. He had no idea what was going on. Even as Beck explained it to him several times over, it did no good. He kept looking at his watch. And then outside at the broken window, as if expecting that savage owl creature to come back at any moment.

“And not to rush you even more,” Beck said, his voice now thin and reedy with fear. “But the reason I came here was not to give you a lesson on the occult. We can do that later, if you want to be like me. But my baby sister is in labor with one of these things, and I need to get whatever it is out of her.”

Tobias opened his mouth, but when he knew it would only be “what?” again, he shut it up tight. A woman having a demon baby? Why not! He shook his head, and in that process, spotted the hellbox on the workbench. 

“There,” he said, suddenly remembering. “If we printed the seals—which would be like illustrations in this book, I think—we  couldn’t have used them again. So they’re probably all in there.”

“Yes, illustrations. Like this.” Beck took a finger and dipped it in a fountain of ink on the work bench. He drew many intersecting lines, followed by more turns. It wasn’t like the star symbol on the press or on his watch, but more like a hieroglyphic, an ideographic language like Chinese or Japanese.

A faint memory of something similar came to Tobias. “Definitely in that box, then,” he said. “I know I saw something like that.”

“Good.” Beck grabbed the box and finding no room on the workbench, dumped it on the floor of the printing room.

It didn’t matter anymore about keeping things neat. The window was gone. There would be black blood everywhere. And if Bertrand truly had been dabbling in the occult and making demo books for the devil, then he was bound to have many other enemies who could have done this. He may not even know it was me. The thought was doubtful, but it kept him searching. It kept him hoping that maybe, this time, he’d be on the right side of things.

“This.” Beck grabbed a strange pattern from the floor. He held up his watch, which had a mirror inside of it and reversed the seal to the proper way. Beck closed his eyes as if accessing something from memory before he nodded. “This is for the Stolas. I will be right back.”

“What are you—”

“Keep looking, Toby,” he said, and his tone left no room for argument. “Find all the designs that look like that. We need seventy-one more. If we’re lucky.”

Tobias returned to searching, finding three more sigils before the night ripped with another set of horrible screams. The Stolas. Only the Stolas. Like so many women dying in a brutal fire. He shuddered and located more and more strange seals. He was in the process of counting almost fifty by the time Beck returned.

Black blood marked his cheeks. A feather was in his pocket, deliberately added there from the creature’s crown. A trophy. “It’s sealed underground now. Not gonna harm anyone unless they undo that nightmare symbol. Ain’t no one gonna do that by accident.”

“But on purpose?” Tobias asked.

Beck didn’t answer. He got on his hands and knees with Tobias as they combed through the remaining hellbox. In the end, they only held fifty-nine of the seventy-two seals in their command. 

“Of course we’re missing thirteen.” Beck shook his head. Then with startlingly swift movements, he gathered everything they had into a small bag he grabbed from the workbench and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’m sure there’s something for Cassie in here. Come on. We should go.”

Tobias had shut off the press during the search, so he only grabbed his keys before he left. He locked up the office, though he didn’t think it would do any good. Three hours had passed since his shift had ended. He looked out at the street, now past midnight. No one was around. His parents were probably asleep long before he was supposed to return home. 

No one would miss me, Tobias thought suddenly. I could just go. How far could I get before dawn? How far could I get alone—and then, with this man?

“You coming?” Beck asked. He was at the corner of the main road, looking to the outskirts where many of the villagers lived. Was his sister a Mormon? Or maybe she was just passing through. Hard to tell anymore. About anyone.

“You don’t need me, do you?”

“No, but I have ya. And I’d hate to see you get in trouble. Now come on. Unless you don’t believe me?” 

Beck’s smile was a challenge. And Tobias, though he was scared more than he’d ever been in his twenty short years, stepped forward and followed the stranger into the Deseret night.

*

The screams that came from the wooden house, only a touch bigger than a Navajo hogan, were louder than the screams of the dying Stolas. Tobias’s stomach wrenched, pushing bile clear up to his tightening throat. 

Beck’s lips curled under his thick beard, his blue eyes became a sullen gray, and he crossed himself the moment he knocked on the door. The gun hung at his waist, and he clutched it without pulling it out.  

A young, tired woman with a face made red from exertion answered the door. She was indigenous, with brown skin and long black braids at her side. She shook her head, answering a silent question that Beck had asked with his eyes. 

Then she set her dark eyes on Tobias. She looked at his hands, and whispered, “Devil” under her breath.

“He’s good,” Beck said. “He gave me the seals. We’re coming in. Making an end to this.”

“Keep her alive,” the woman said, and crossed herself. “Please.”

“Do my best, Sara.”

The woman, Sara, wore a cross around her neck and clutched it tightly. Framed images of honeybees and the hive that represented the Deseret state hung on the wall of the small house. A woman with blonde hair smiled in one image. She was alone, without a husband, Tobias noted. Another image of Sara and —who Tobias presumed was Cassie was also framed and hung. There were only shoes for small feet at the front door. This place was only big enough for two, two women. For a couple. 

Tobias was filled with hope that a life like he wanted was possible, but it all faded to dread once again as he witnessed the same blonde woman from the images in a bed. She was strapped down with rope, her wrists red and smarting from her bindings. Her stomach was large, as if a pumpkin were hidden underneath a pale nightgown, and her legs were similarly bound and bloody. Liquid marked with green fluid tinged the bed sheets. She locked her sunken eyes on Beck as he entered the room. 

She smiled at her brother, but in another blink of the eye, she snarled, cursing him as the devil’s spawn.

“I missed you too, Cassie.” He held up the bag of seals. “Let’s get this demon out of you.”

Sara appeared in the doorway behind Tobias. She held her hands in front of her chest, still holding onto the cross. Tobias looked from her to Cassie, understanding deep down that they were lovers, but he also regarded the display with some lingering suspicion. This woman was in labor. Not with a demon. Just labor.

“Wait,” Tobias said. “How do we know this is a demon? What if…”

“She was double-dipping?” Beck said, his crudeness not making even a flinch appear on Sara’s face. Beck shook his head. “She was not pregnant three days ago when I arrived.”

“And we don’t see men, other than Beck. I’m always with her, too,” Sara added. “When she woke up, she was sick. I saw the child move. It had horns. It’s a demon.”

Tobias looked at her stomach. The swell seemed larger than before. Beck lifted up the fabric, revealing her pale skin, and sure enough, two horns pressed against the already distended belly. A demon was inside of her. Tobias swallowed down a retch. 

“But what one, what one?” Beck picked through several seals before he held one up to the mirror on his watch. “We know it’s not the Stolas, so that rules that out. And the three that I got rid of didn’t have horns.”

“How many do?”

“A lot more than I want to admit. Sara?” Beck looked to the other woman in the room.

She was crying, her tears matching her girlfriend’s on the bed. She wiped her hands over her eyes and met his gaze.

“Get the book. Give it to Toby here. He’ll tell me which ones have horns and which ones I can skip.”

Sara returned a moment later with a large tome. The Lesser Key of Solomon was printed in gold writing on the front and bore Bertrand Button’s name on the copyright information page, along with the date and location where it was printed. The heavy paper was familiar, though, and so was the magical feeling that radiated off the work. Just like the sigil on the plate. Just like the magic that now flowed everywhere around him. As Tobias balanced the book on his lap, Cassie continued to flail and rage against her bindings. Sara stared at her as long as she could before turning away in horror and sadness 

Tobias read, read, read, while Beck sorted, sorted, and sorted as fast as they could.

“Botis,” Tobias shouted out one demon’s name. He held the book up and pointed to the symbol as Beck dug it out. He held each one from his small pile over Cassie’s stomach, hoping that some sort of reaction would occur.

Nothing did. They worked through six more, discarding the seals that didn’t fit the description, and then found four more.

“Hurry,” Sara said. “I don’t think we can wait much longer.”

Cassie let out a loud vocal boom. Tobias hoped it meant success, that they’d found what they needed, but she was merely crying out as more green-tinged liquid came out from between her legs. Sara slipped down, using a sheet to protect her girlfriend’s modesty while he and Beck continued to hold up seals to her stomach, to hopefully anger the demon enough to give them clues as to who he was.

“This isn’t working,” Beck said. He cursed heavily. “We’re almost out of seals. What if it’s one of the missing thirteen?”

“No. We’re almost through.” Tobias grabbed the bag from Beck. “Let me do it.”

Beck let the bag go. He rose and paced the room while exchanging worried looks with Cassie and Sara. Tobias tried not to be fazed by the yelling and tension, by the smell of sulfur and blood in the room. He focused on his task, one that was so much like a puzzle, so much like what he was truly good at, and soon reached the end of the list of seventy-two demons. 

“That’s it.” Beck threw his hands in the air. “She’s dead. She’s—”

“What if it’s not horns?” Tobias asked. “What if it’s a crown, like the Stolas?”

Beck considered this for a moment before he shook his head. “Stolas can’t be in two places.”

“Right. But do you realize how many I passed up that had crowns? Tons. More than the ones that had horns.” Tobias grabbed a handful of seals on Beck’s side of the bed. He held up one that Beck had discarded. “Gremory.”

Cassie roared. 

“Gremory,” Tobias said again. He held the seal at a different angle so it matched the one in the book. He read the description again, appearing to young women, especially maidens. This was the right one. “She’s obviously a virgin. Gremory could get inside of her easily. See?”

Tobias held the seal over her belly. The horns—which were now just two of many prongs in a crown—pushed the skin of her abdomen out by several inches. Cassie screamed in pain. Tobias didn’t understand how it didn’t burst through her. He didn’t know how the hell they were going to get it out of her without killing her.

But he had the right seal now. He gave it to Beck. “Use it! I don’t know what else to do.”

Beck grabbed the seal along with Tobias’s hands, holding them tightly. He stared intently into his eyes, as if he wanted to… kiss him—or maybe it was just another projection of Tobias’s. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He moved from the bedside to the back of the room, using Sara’s body as a shield for some sort of privacy on Cassie’s behalf. He watched with a swollen lip from biting it so much as Beck took out a lighter. He heated up the seal from the printing press and then, with a mumbled apology to his sister, he pressed it into her round belly.

She let out the loudest scream Tobias had ever heard. Blood gushed from between her legs. A sudden breath exhaled from Cassie, one that no longer seemed strangled in her throat. She cried out with relief. She cried out with pain once again. 

Sara fell back onto the floor as if shoved. A dark creature in the slender shape of a woman with a crown and bloody viscera covering everything else, ran from the room. It darted between doors, and then burst in a shatter of glass out a window.

“My dear.” Sara sprang to her feet. Her legs were slashed by the demon’s claws, yet she ran to her love as if unmarked.

Cassie was pale, her belly branded, but alive. She would surely need stitches or something to help with blood loss, but she was strong enough to hold onto Sara as she breathed in and out. The two of them hummed. 

Beck darted from the room. He left behind the bag and the lighter and only carried his gun. Tobias wanted to follow, to be a hero, but he stayed on the chair in the corner of the room. He balled his still-black fists together and then opened them to examine his palms. One, two, three gunshots sounded in the distance. They were loud, yet so much quieter than all the screaming of the night.

Five minutes passed. Cassie’s breathing was normal, as was Sara’s sobbing. They hugged and kissed and still hummed a prayer, barely noticing Tobias was still in the room. Another five minutes passed. The smell of sulfur was replaced by salt and sawdust. 

Tobias braved getting up from the chair. 

“Dear,” Sara reached out to Tobias, “bring us water. Bandages. It’s all in the kitchen.”

Tobias left both women and easily found the kitchen. A window was broken. He looked outside, past the dead grass and the well. The night was filled with stars upon stars. No demons, but no demon hunter Beck, either. He gathered what the women needed and brought it to them. Sara clutched his face, kissing his forehead, and even Cassie gave him a weak squeeze.

“Where’s Beckett?” she asked. “My hero.”

“Your brother—” 

“He’s not my brother. Just a man.”

“We’re all brothers and sisters in Deseret,” Sara said. She dabbed water on her girlfriend’s head, kissed her again.

Tobias said nothing. He waited. 

And when he heard the crunch of footsteps, smelled the faint scent of leather and cattle, and felt the heat of a man against his back, this time he wasn’t afraid. 

“Don’t move,” Beck said. He stepped beside Tobias, an arm around his waist, and smiled. His blue eyes were wide with pride, and though black blood marked one cheek, he was victorious. He glanced from the women back to Tobias. “I just want to remember this day, this night. Where the seals have all been used for their intended purpose.”

“Except for the last thirteen,” Tobias added a moment later, once the embrace and the merry-making had passed. “You still need to find those.”

“And capture the other demons,” Beck said. “And that’s a we, not a me, problem, by the way. If you’re up for it, that is. I take it now that you do believe?”

“Oh, in something.” Tobias looked around the room, filled with the items of his Latter Day past and the demon paraphernalia of his hopeful future. “I definitely believe in something now.”

“Good enough for me,” Beck said. This time, when he put an arm around Tobias, he also kissed him on the mouth.

THE END