010.037

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Devon stalked around the prison courtyard, staring at the ritual circle drawn out where there had once been a basketball court. Eva’s treatment circle. Likely the very final one. He doubted that it was truly necessary. Taking a sample of her blood and examining it with a few spells, Devon had found nothing human about her. He couldn’t be sure if it had been her actions during the ritual—which he hadn’t seen with his own eyes—or if Void had interfered after pulling her down to Hell. Or perhaps it was merely some sort of metastasis. In the time since the last treatment, Eva’s body could have cannibalized itself in a benign or even beneficial manner. The whole reason for the delay had been because her body hadn’t been stable at the appointed time for her treatment.

However, this was his project. Though it had encountered a great number of bumps along the road, he intended to see it through.

If Eva didn’t require this final treatment, then it would harm her no more than Catherine had been harmed by her own experiments. Not that Devon was particularly concerned for Eva’s well-being.

Devon glanced to the side. A young boy sat in a wheelchair, arms and legs atrophied to the point where they were little more than skin stretched over his bones. Devon didn’t know exactly what was wrong with the boy. Some disease that kept his body from properly processing food and nutrients. He didn’t know the boy’s name. Frankly, he didn’t want to know. His biggest failure in Eva was becoming far too personable with her. Though he thought of her as a test subject, that had merely been a title he had attached to the person.

This boy was nothing but a test subject.

Truly, Devon didn’t know if he would survive. His health, despite his emaciation, was better than that of the other subject Devon had brought in not so long ago. Not by much. The treatment, especially the first treatment, was harsh. Eva had come though alright as a stroke of luck; hale and hearty, her only problem was that she had run away from home—police tended to worry more over healthy people than those already on Death’s doorstep. An easily remedied problem by simply ordering her to attend school and to not raise suspicion much.

So he already had a potential new subject lined up. Since tying up the mess with the Powers, summoning demons was once again possible. He was free to summon entirely new demons with no relation to or even knowledge of Eva. Or anyone around Brakket for that matter.

But first, Eva.

Devon scowled as he stared at the three– No– Four demons. Catherine knelt in one circle. For the other two slots, Devon hadn’t bothered with summoning any demons. The carnivean took one spot. The waxy ruax took the other, forced into its place by Devon’s domination. He didn’t want to use the ruax, and hadn’t used any dominated demon for any previous treatments, because of the concentration it took to keep it sitting still. Concentration he could be using to watch Eva.

There wasn’t all that much to watch. At the end of her previous treatment, Eva had the beginnings of horns poking out of her forehead, right around her hairline. Two bumps on her back that might have been the sprouting of wings had manifested as well. As of right now, several minutes into the ritual, neither had changed much at all. Her hair, short though it was, still covered what might be horns. Nothing had poked through yet. Her back was utterly smooth without even the hint of budding bat wings.

Again, Devon wasn’t sure whether that was the machinations of Powers, something with the ritual involving Powers, or even Eva herself. For all Devon knew, Eva had been capable of sprouting horns and wings for months and simply hadn’t noticed. Just as Catherine hid them from view while masquerading as a human, Eva could be keeping them suppressed.

Which all cycled back into his conclusion that Eva wouldn’t become a proper demon until she thought of herself as such completely and thoroughly. An idea Devon had considered was that she had nubs of horns simply because she thought that her treatments should have some alteration to her physical features. Her teeth and tongue were definitely inhuman, but they were different. Something easily hid simply by not opening her mouth.

Her eyes would have been a different matter entirely. Devon had been expecting them to change and had even gone out of his way to get her contact lenses that she could use to hide said changes. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen how that played out. Her eyes had been plucked from her skull and eventually ended up replaced by the carnivean’s eyes.

All the more reason to try again on a less adventurous test subject. Though to be true to the original tests, he would have to use the original treatment circle. However, it would be far easier to keep a test subject contained for two years while he used the version developed with Catherine’s aid rather than the one he had started Eva out on several years ago.

Slowly, the ritual circle wound down. The light in the lines of the circle started to dim and peter off. None of the demons looked altered at all, not that the three of them should have changed.

The moment the ritual finished, Devon uttered a few words and banished the ruax back to Hell. It had served its purpose well enough over the past few months, but the strain on Devon’s mind while he was dominating it simply wasn’t worth the effort anymore. The only reason he had put up with it as long as he had was because he hadn’t been able to summon a replacement. That and the solitary confinement building offered breaks where he could release his domination and rest for a short time.

He considered banishing the carnivean as well.

Later. Its… dismissal from his services would need a bit of care due to their contract.

Instead, Devon stalked around the circle. Though his focus was on Eva, he paid a little attention to Catherine as the succubus got to her feet.

“I can’t tell the difference between now and before the ritual,” she whispered as she moved closer to Devon.

“Eva didn’t get stronger? More demonic?”

“I didn’t say that.” Catherine crossed her arms, curling her fingers over her elbows. “Would you notice the difference before and after dumping a glass of water into an ocean?”

Devon ran his fingers through his beard, making an idle note that he should shave or at least trim it one of these days; it was starting to get out of hand. In the center point of the ritual circle, Eva lolled around. Still conscious, which Devon found slightly surprising. Treatments usually made her pass out. It looked like a precarious thing though, as if she could topple over at any moment.

For a few moments, he just watched her struggle with herself. She slowly stabilized into a more lucid state. Her eyes grew sharper and the stubs of her limbs sprouted black blood to support her. It took several minutes, but she eventually clambered to her feet.

“Any changes?” Devon asked as soon as she looked steady enough.

Rather than answer, she moved one of her liquid hands to her forehead and started caressing it. Not the horns hidden in her hair, but just above her eyebrow like she had a headache. “A bit woozy,” she said, taking in a deep breath of air. “Did it finish properly? Or did you interrupt it.”

“No interruptions.”

“Oh good. I was a bit concerned that you had stopped it out of fear for my wellbeing. Glad I didn’t die again.”

Devon narrowed his eyes, glancing aside to Catherine only to receive a shrug. “That was a concern?”

“Had I passed out fully, yes.” Eva shook her head and pulled her hand away from her head. Somehow, she managed to avoid leaving a big streak of blood running down her face. “Still no natural wings,” she said with a halfhearted glance behind her back. “Or tail or horns, for that matter.”

“Feel any different?”

“Not particularly,” she said, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. “Aside from the headache. That will probably go away on its own, right?”

“Probably,” Devon grumbled. His earlier theory looked like it was right. For a moment, he considered asking her if she could try to grow wings and such, but eventually shook his head. “Blood,” he said simply. There were still a few tests to do before he completely signed off his research.

Eva held out her arm. A narrow cylinder stretched out of her wrist, roughly the same size as a vial. With her other hand, she plucked it off and tossed it to Devon. “Break it open if you want liquid blood.” Her arm had no evidence that anything had come from it, returning to the slowly churning black liquid that it had been since her return from Hell.

It was a neat trick, but… “I prefer blood untouched by your blood magics.”

“Not a single drop of my blood is ‘untouched’ right now. Nor will it be for the foreseeable future. You’ll just have to make that work.”

Devon grumbled under his breath, but pocketed the false vial anyway. He had expected something like that. The way she used her blood as limbs meant that there wasn’t much in her that couldn’t be used.

“So when is my next treatment? Three months? Or another long delay?”

“Next treatment?” Devon curled his lips back into a sarcastic smile. “What next treatment? You’re done. Congratulations. You’re a demon, Eva.”

“What– But– That can’t– I don’t even have horns,” she finally said after sputtering for a minute. For emphasis, she waved her hand around just above her head.

“I can see the obvious, girl. I expect they’ll grow in over time—perhaps all at once far off into the future.”

“I don’t feel like a demon. I’m just… me. Shouldn’t there be some big… I don’t know. Something.”

“What. Want a birthday party?” Devon snorted. “I don’t do parties. Ask the succubus. She’ll be happy to oblige.”

Eva blinked and glanced towards Catherine, who blinked and glanced towards Devon. Both spoke at the same time.

“What?” “What.”

“Perhaps not a birthday party, but I expected you to be ecstatic over Eva. Aren’t you wanting to use her in your own treatments?”

A certain hunger lit up in Catherine’s eyes as she slowly nodded her head. Looking back to Eva, she said, “That is a good point. Perhaps later, however. After everything, I think I’ve earned a few days rest. Besides, I might have to devise something special for Eva. Yes,” she said, starting to walk away. “Something special indeed.” She snatched up her cell phone from where it lay on a chair just outside the treatment circle.

Devon turned, not quite to follow her—she was heading back towards the women’s ward building. He only stopped when Eva called out to him.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“Back to my building,” he grumbled. “I’m not abandoning you. Not just yet. If you have any problems, I’d like to know about them before I get too invested into another test subject,” he said as he wrapped his hands around the boy’s wheelchair handles.

Eva, who had hand outstretched from when she had called to him, let it drop to her side as Devon started wheeling the boy away. She stayed right in the center of the circle, just standing there. Even the carnivean passing by to follow after Devon didn’t cause any reaction in her.

He turned once, then twice until he reached the iron door to his cell block. He had to step around the wheelchair to open the door before returning back to the other side to push it through. Annoying, but his newest test subject couldn’t run away so long as it was bound to a wheelchair.

All the while, he considered Eva’s situation. Plans ran through his mind, possibilities and variables as well. Had he missed anything important? Was there a need to do another treatment? Some of his questions would be answered after he finished examining Eva’s blood, but for the moment, he couldn’t think up any reason to speak with her again barring sudden problematic developments in her physiology.

“Is that what’s going to happen to me? Are my arms and legs going to be like that?”

Devon blinked. It took him a moment to realize where the noise was coming from. The boy. His test subject. “No,” he said. Immediately, he regretted his words. If, as he had all but confirmed with Eva, the transformation was at least partially mental, he shouldn’t be coloring its expectations with absolutes. He probably shouldn’t be speaking to it at all, but he had already broken that rule. “Or rather, probably not.

“But who knows. Demons come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and… materials.”

— — —

Brakket City wasn’t the sort of place that normally drew much attention. It was hardly qualified for its name. Brakket Town was even too big. Located in the middle of nowhere Montana with a population rivaling the most rural of farming communities, it had but one attraction to entice people to visit. Brakket Magical Academy. Brakket Academy or simply Brakket for short.

For the school was the city.

Though given a scholarship that covered many necessities of school life, the students also brought in outside funds. Some things simply weren’t covered by the school. The students acted as a lifeline. Their outside money didn’t allow the city to thrive, it wasn’t enough for that, but it gave the city an intravenous drip while the school administrators worked out a proper revitalization plan.

That plan had probably almost succeeded. With the publicity Brakket had received from the tournament between magical schools, they could have avoided scholarships the following year. Tourism would have grown. Especially from mundane humans expecting to see something supernatural.

Eva leaned back, sitting on a chair in the middle of her domain at the center of Brakket City. A very abandoned city. With the ‘attacks’ and twelve deaths, including four mundane humans, people were giving the city a wide berth. It probably wouldn’t last. Anderson didn’t seem the type to give up. Not with how much he had invested into the school in the first place.

However, the city was silent for the moment.

A silence Eva enjoyed.

There were no necromancers kidnapping, dissecting, and torturing her. No nuns patrolled the streets, looking like they wanted to take her out behind a barn and put her out of her misery. Zombie-like demons weren’t chasing after her and absurdly powerful demons weren’t making everyone’s lives miserable. Demon hunters stayed away, too afraid to enter after so many of their kind had met their end within the city limits. The tournament—a surprisingly less annoying event when stacked up with everything else that had happened—was still going on, just not around Brakket.

Of course, the Powers that be were leaving the city alone as well.

Eva was surprised about that last one. She kept expecting Void to whisper something to her. Maybe promises of power, maybe offhanded insults. Maybe just a quick question about how her day was going.

Her mind remained utterly silent to outside influences.

So Eva leaned back in her chair and stared at the stars with a tall obelisk glowing bright red at her back. She could live out at the prison. Devon and Catherine were both there. But she didn’t really want to. Devon wasn’t a good conversationalist. In fact, with how he had simply walked away from her after her final treatment, she figured that he would be far less willing to entertain her than ever before. Catherine might be more willing to talk, but it would probably revolve around rituals or games.

Eva still didn’t understand the latter and she had been involved with quite enough rituals for a few lifetimes. If Catherine needed help, she would be willing, otherwise Eva intended to stay far away from that branch of magic.

Without any company she wanted at the prison, there was no reason to stay. Her domain could provide anything she wanted at a thought. So long as it was on Earth, she would abuse it to the maximum extent possible.

In order to further that abuse, Eva had started pouring magic into the obelisk once again. She doubted that there would be another sudden explosion of Hell merging with Earth. In pouring magic into the obelisk, she could feel her domain slowly expanding. Her island along with it.

It served two purposes. First, it let her control her surroundings farther out. Eva held no doubts that the current peace would last only as long as other people let it. If she controlled the entire city, it wouldn’t matter how many demon hunters got brave enough to show up or how many necromancers decided that her eyes would make great reagents. Once they stepped on her domain, she would be free to deal with them as she saw fit.

Secondly, Eva could entirely revitalize Brakket City on her own. Obviously, Brakket wasn’t the most ideal of locations for her to attach her domain. She would have preferred Florida, some larger city with plenty of distractions. Until she figured out how to move it, Brakket would have to work. She would make it work. People would be free to live anywhere within her domain. She could build buildings, create food, and so on and so forth. Eva might be a little sneaky about it; food appearing on people’s tables might freak them out. It wouldn’t be much trouble to create a store that endlessly resupplied itself with a variety of products—clothing, food, tools, and anything else she could think of—managed by a construct of her design. She wouldn’t even need it to be permanent. Just something to get people back into town. From there, she could hire real people.

The peace wouldn’t last. Nothing could remain copacetic indefinitely. Eva was counting on it not lasting. She needed bloodstones until her heart healed and for that, she needed people. While she could leave and head to Chicago, Detroit, or anywhere else she was likely to find valid targets for bloodstone creation, she was hesitant to leave.

Arachne would be back. One day, Arachne would be back. The first place she would check for Eva would be in her domain.

Until then, Eva lay back in her chair and counted the stars. She could wait. Arachne would be back. She would wait right here.

END

>>Author’s Notes 010<<

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