Goetic Justice 2

He ate like it was going out of style, wanting to taste every last drop of the soup before the wonderful sensation subsided. When the final spoonful had been swallowed, Nahash released her hold on his mind, Ryan snapping out of his trance-like state. He blinked to clear his eyes, glancing up at the Seirim as she smiled down at him, an unearthly glow slowly fading from her golden eyes.

"You never disappoint," he chuckled.

***

The armored truck bounced along the city street, the SWAT team that was seated in the cramped interior checking their submachine guns and adjusting their helmets as they neared their target. The half a dozen police officers were clad in matching black body armor, their uniforms beneath the tactical vests and protective padding a shade of dark blue. They wore balaclavas and ballistic goggles beneath their helmets, all the better to conceal their identities should things go awry. The patches and lettering that would have denoted their police department were absent, but that wouldn't be noticeable to a bystander. As long as nobody inspected them too closely, they would look like any other armed response unit.

The call had come through from the Grand Lodge, there was a priority target that needed to be dealt with quickly and quietly. There were Freemasons in every branch of the city's police department, the commissioner included, and it was a trivial task to orchestrate this kind of operation. Any non-Mason officers in the area had been called away, and their counterparts in the emergency services had been tipped off. They wouldn't respond to any calls from this block until the raid had concluded, it was on lockdown.

They would get in fast, take out the target, and then falsify the paperwork. The records would show that one Ryan Cutter had called in a false police report claiming to have hostages and that he had opened fire on the officers when they had stormed his apartment, intending to commit suicide by cop. One of the officers had a weapon ready to plant, a handgun with the serial marks filed off, untraceable. The paramedics would arrive too late to save him, it had already been decided.

"The target has a familiar," one of them said, raising his voice over the sound of the engine. "Mike, did you prepare the vessel?"

The officer that he was referring to brandished a brass container, roughly the size of a coffee mug, designed to serve as a vessel that would contain a demonic entity while being as compact as possible. Like a Genie in a lamp, the demon could be commanded into it using the correct seals and wards.

"The seal of Solomon is ready," Mike replied, "I'll take care of it. Just make sure your wards are visible, we don't know how much energy this thing has loaded up with. The Grand Master said it was a Satyr, and there isn't much info on them. Near as we can tell, they've not been sighted for hundreds of years."

"Do we have backup?" another of the masked men asked.

"Halphas is seeing us to our destination," Mike replied, "and if the familiar gives us too much trouble we have Haures on standby."

"Is that necessary?" one of the others asked. "We're in an armored truck, and nobody knows we're coming. I don't want to be anywhere near Haures if shit hits the fan."

Mike shrugged his shoulders, bouncing in his seat as the van went over a pothole.

"They don't want any fuckups on this one, this guy is apparently a big deal. He's already summoned one demon, we can't be sure that he hasn't done it again. There are plenty of lesser demons who could have tipped him off. Speaking of which, where the fuck is Malphas?"

A terrible stench of sulfur filled the truck, and their eyes were drawn to a shape in the middle of the floor. It was as if all of the shadows in the compartment had coalesced into a single point, blacker than black, creating a darkness from which a writhing shape emerged. It was twisted and formless, seen with the mind as much as with one's eyes as if it was projecting an image directly into their brains like a hologram. Their breath crystallized as the temperature in the truck plummeted, the air thick with acrid fumes as the shape became solid, manifesting in the form of a small and unassuming crow.

The little bird hopped up onto Mike's lap, flapping its wings as they watched it. It opened its beak and began to speak in the voice of a man, hoarse and guttural.

"I have done as bidden," the demon croaked. "The mind of thy enemy is clear of suspicion. He knoweth not that you approach, he knoweth not of thy secret order, nor has he taken any measures to shield himself from magickal threats. I cannot see into the mind of the Seirim, her powers cloud my vision."

Malphas had the power to see into the minds of his master's enemies, able to relay their thoughts and desires. It was an incredibly useful tool that made being taken by surprise almost impossible. If the target had set up an ambush or knew that they were coming, the team would be warned well in advance. The Seirim was an enigma it seemed, but it was unlikely to take any actions without the approval of its master.

"Your work is complete Malphas," Mike said, "return to the magician who summoned you and complete your contract."

The demon bowed its tiny head, and then it was gone as abruptly as it had appeared.

"We're coming up on the apartment block, two minutes," the driver called out from the cab.

"Alright, lock and load people," another of the masked men ordered. "Let's do this by the book."

There was a chorus of clicks and clatters as the team loaded their weapons and chambered rounds, checking safeties and affixing silencers. They were all equipped with H&K UMPs besides Mike, who was sporting a pump action shotgun. The submachine guns were accurate and incredibly quiet with a suppressor, even in the close confines of an apartment block the sound wouldn't carry too far. They could kick out six hundred rounds of nine-millimeter parabellum per minute on full-auto, with a thirty round magazine, enough to turn Cutter into Swiss cheese and to obliterate whatever physical form his familiar had taken.

That was the problem with manifesting in the flesh. A soul was invulnerable to damage, but most demons would succumb to a shotgun blast to the face just as well as any human. Once they smoked the thing, it should be weak enough that they could seal it inside the brass vessel. Assuming that the entity wasn't jacked up on energy of course.

The truck pulled up and came to a stop, the SWAT team piling out of the back with their weapons shouldered. They were in the parking lot of a fairly average apartment block, deserted save for a handful of shitty cars and one old lady who was pushing a walker on the other side of the street. The sun had set, and the stars were just peeking out through the cloud layer. The building was tall and made from ugly concrete, it looked like a miserable place to live. This Cutter guy had used Orobas to land himself a high paying job, why had he not moved out?

Their target was on the eighth floor, and the building had no elevator. Fantastic. Mike took point and waved the team forward, the SWAT team making for the stairwell.

***

Ryan opened his eyes groggily, rubbing them as he sat up and got his bearings. Nahash was sitting next to him on the couch, her massive frame cushioning him with its soft flesh and downy wool. He looked around the room, night had fallen, and the streaming service that they had been watching on the television had paused their show at some point. Everything was dark besides the pale glow from the screen, casting them in deep shadows. He must have fallen asleep.

"Nahash, did you put me to sleep?" he grumbled. He leaned his weight on her as he felt her long arm curl around his shoulder. Her original task when she had been assigned to him by Orobas had been to help him sleep, and whether by association or through her insidious magick, he always seemed to get drowsy whenever they were sat together for long enough. It was like her fleece was laced with sleeping powder.

She curled her fingers around his head and guided his face into her chest, pressing it into the soft wool, her bare breasts scarcely an inch beneath his chin. They hung free, large and heavy enough that they would have snapped the spine of a mortal woman, but Nahash carried them easily on her massive frame. Besides, her weight was...wrong. She should be far heavier than she actually was, judging by her immense size. It was as if her body wasn't entirely solid, or like she was able to modulate it through magickal means, the weighty globes held aloft as if by some invisible force. These were certainly physical manifestations, their mass such that he would have needed two arms to lift one, her supple flesh deforming and yielding wonderfully beneath his hands like putty when he kneaded them.

She was so warm and inviting, her skin as smooth as glass and as soft as velvet where it wasn't covered in her white fur. He took the liberty of wrapping an arm around her waist, letting his fingers sink deep into the plump flesh of her hip as he breathed in her earthy scent, the delicate strands of her wool tickling his nose. She smelled a little like wet soil, bringing to mind images of droplets of dew clinging to blades of grass and the sprawling forests that she called her home.

They would be headed off to bed soon, and Seirim were creatures that reveled in earthly pleasures. In the weeks that they had been together, they had made love every night, usually more than once. Tonight would be no exception. He looked forward to sharing a bed with her again from the moment that he was forced to leave her side each morning.

"No," she replied, her voice low and husky. "I've not needed to ease you into sleep for some time. It seems that your troubled mind has been calmed."

Ryan heard a knock at the door, the hollow sound echoing through the apartment. He rose to a sitting position, looking up at Nahash in confusion.

"Who can that be? Did you order a pizza or any takeout?"

Nahash had taken to ordering random items from the various fast food menus that were still scattered about, a relic from his battle with depression. She wanted to taste the largest variety of food possible as if making up for lost time. After spending centuries imprisoned in the soup of formless thought and emotion that was the demonic realm, he could understand her desire to make the most of having a sense of taste.

She shook her head.

"No, I didn't order anything. Stay here, I'll see who it is."

Nahash rose from her seat on the couch, morphing before Ryan's very eyes as she crossed the room. She was able to take the form of a lanky, platinum blonde that she called Natasha when she had to appear before humans other than Ryan. He still wasn't quite sure if she was actually able to change her physical manifestation, or if she just influenced people's senses so that they perceived her differently. Based on what he knew about how her powers functioned, the latter was perhaps more likely.

He watched as her white wool gave way to flowing, curly hair. Her massive frame shrank down to a more modest six feet, the Seirim's exaggerated figure narrowing and slimming. Even as Natasha she was still a beast of a woman. She looked like a Russian or perhaps a Scandinavian supermodel with a perm. This was after his pleas for her to make her disguise a little less conspicuous, as nobody would have believed that someone like him could land someone like her. She had been even taller and more endowed before she had reluctantly agreed to his demands.

As she neared the door, casual clothes grew around her, a pair of worn jeans and a loose fitting t-shirt covering her nude body. Another of Ryan's suggestions.

From his seat on the couch, he watched her open the door across the open-plan apartment. Almost as soon as it had swung ajar, there was a sound like a stick snapping, muted but loud enough that he heard it across the room. There were two more cracks, and Nahash took a couple of stumbling steps backwards. Sensing that something was very wrong, Ryan rose to his feet, his blood running cold as she turned towards him. Nahash was holding her belly, and as she pulled her hands awa,y he saw a dark streak of crimson staining her clothing. She looked up at him in confusion.

"Ryan...?"

Before the plea had even left her lips, a dark figure pushed through the door and entered the apartment. Ryan had seen enough movies to know that the long, black barrel that he was pointing at her head was some kind of shotgun. The man was clad in what looked like a police uniform, with the black body armor and helmet that identified him as SWAT or some kind of special forces soldier.

Everything seemed to be running in slow motion, like time had been slowed to a crawl. Without breaking stride, the intruder pulled the trigger, a sound like a jackhammer ringing out through the apartment. If Nahash had been a human, the shot would have exploded her head like a melon. Instead, she fell sideways, knocked off her feet by the blast. Halfway through her fall, she seemed to burst, her corporeal body melting into what looked like a cloud of dark ink that had been poured into a glass of water. The smear of black gas spread through the air like a stain on white linen, slowing until it seemed to hang there, frozen.

Ryan watched in horror as a red casing bounced out of the gun's receiver to clatter to the wood floor, two more men wearing matching uniforms pushing through the door. They were also armed, and they pointed what looked like submachine guns at him, shouldered and ready to fire.

It was all happening so quickly. Naught but a couple of seconds had passed since the first shot, and even as he tried to react, his body moved like he was underwater. His synapses were firing faster than this body could react to the commands. The men's faces were featureless, obscured by opaque goggles and ski masks, their movements precise and rehearsed. In another second he would be dead, and he wouldn't even know why...

He braced himself for the pain, but then something moved in his peripheral vision. The cloud of dark ink that had been Nahash shifted, springing back to life, moving across the room so quickly that he could scarcely process it.

The dark stain on reality put itself between Ryan and his assailants, coalescing into a solid shape as more muted gunshots rang out. Ryan flinched away, but the wall of shifting smoke seemed to have absorbed the bullets.

It took shape, as if all of the shadows in the room were coming together to form a vaguely humanoid silhouette. The lights flickered, the television screen hissing with static. Ryan realized that he was standing above the chalk summoning circle that was still drawn onto the floor beneath the couch. It was the one spot in the apartment where all of the magickal energy was concentrated. The circle acted as a bridge between worlds, drawing ambient energy towards it like a magnet, a conduit that would give a demon enough energy to manifest.

The figure sprouted horns, rising to eight or nine feet, white wool growing from the black sludge. Nahash now stood before Ryan in her Seirim form, her back to him as she faced off against the intruders, hunched like a beast ready to pounce. She wasn't dead? Could a demon be destroyed by a mortal weapon like a gun? There was no blood on her white fur, and she didn't seem to be injured.

She was exuding an aura of menace, the temperature in the room plummeting such that Ryan could see his own breath condensating in white puffs. She glanced back at him, her amber eyes burning like hot coals, her usually soft features twisted into a savage snarl. He wanted to ask her if she was hurt, if she was going to be okay. He wanted to express his relief, but he was being assailed by so many powerful emotions in such quick succession that he couldn't muster as much as a word. Fear, loss, relief. His brain was being turned to mush.

"She's juiced up," one of the men called out, his voice muffled by his mask. "Get the seal!"

More men piled into the small apartment, six in all, their weapons aimed at Nahash. They didn't seem remotely perturbed by the presence of a giant demon goat standing right in front of them. Who were these people?

A glint caught his eye, and he noticed that they were wearing matching pendants around their necks on the outside of their clothing. He recognized the symbols that were etched onto them, it was a Pentagonal Figure of Solomon, a ward designed to shield the wearer from demonic attack. Those wouldn't work very well against a Seirim. While the ward might give a lesser demon pause for thought, without knowing that entity's personal sigil and having it engraved on the other side of the pendant, it wouldn't do them a lot of good. Nahash shared her sigil with Azazel, a powerful Watcher who could not be compelled by such tricks and trinkets.

Nahash moved to attack, lunging towards the men, but the one holding the shotgun brandished some kind of badge. It was made from brass, decorated with a figure that resembled a rough pyramid, ringed by arcane runes and incantations. The Secret Seal of Solomon, a ward designed to compel a demonic entity into a brass vessel, trapping it as King Solomon was said to have done in his day.

Ryan had studied these tools and had even used some of them during his attempts at summoning. Were these men here for Nahash?

The Seirim shuddered as if some invisible force had overtaken her, stopped in her tracks. The man withdrew a small, brass bottle from his pocket as he let the shotgun hang from a strap about his chest. The container was about the size of a soda can or a coffee cup. He began to recite incantations under his breath in a language that Ryan couldn't understand, perhaps Hebrew or Aramaic, rhythmic and trance-like. Nahash's form flickered, becoming less solid as if he could see right through her. He knew this ritual, they were attempting to confine her to the vessel!

He had to act quickly, he might only have seconds left to intervene before her spirit was contained and she was sealed forever. They could close the vessel with a lead cap and drop it into the ocean for all he knew, she would never be able to free herself. But what could he do against a squad of armed men? Only Nahash's massive body was shielding him from the hail of bullets that would no doubt spell his demise.

Beginning to panic, he looked around the room, trying to find some kind of tool or weapon that was close enough to reach. He had to distract the man who was reciting the incantation. If his concentration was broken even for a moment, then it might give Nahash time to break free. The other men were slowly inching around her flickering form in an attempt to get a shot at him. She was still fighting against the spell, struggling as if she was battling physical restraints.

All that was in reach was the couch and the remote for the TV.

A spark of inspiration came to him, and he picked up the remote, inching backwards to put the couch between him and the armed goons. One of the first things that he had bought since landing his new job was a modern media center with a large flat-screen and a powerful surround sound system. The TV was still on, and he cranked the volume up to max, hitting play on the movie that they had been watching earlier.

Immediately the floor began to shake as an action scene resumed, the powerful sound system blasting the noise of a car chase, clashing metal and revving engines drowning out the incantation. The SWAT team likely had hearing protection on, but the distraction was enough to interrupt the spell, Nahash taking advantage of their momentary lapse in concentration.

She charged the man wielding the brazen ward, knocking it from his gloved hands. As soon as she moved there was a hail of gunfire, bullets whizzing through the air as the noise overpowered even the sound of the film that was coming through the speakers. They were firing their weapons on full auto, the projectiles digging holes in the far wall and destroying the furniture. Glasses in the kitchen shattered along with the windows, a container of milk that had been sitting on the table exploding as a bullet tore through it. The television sparked and went dark as a stray round hit it, the microwave exploded into a cloud of smoke and the cabinets splintered, books on his shelf erupting into plumes of shredded paper.