Goetic Justice

He could almost see it in his mind's eye, the silhouettes of Seirim dancing beneath the cold stars, framed against a burning fire that rose high into the night air. He could hear the twang of ancient string instruments and the beating of drums as the pace and intensity of the melody quickened, unable to discern if it was his imagination or if she was projecting these images and emotions into his mind.

It was beautiful and strange, at once distinctly alien, yet distinctly familiar. It was as if the music awoke some ancient memory in him, a long-buried fragment of his ancestral past. Had his own forebears joined these spirits in their frenzied dance?

The haunting, placating song hastened still, climbing towards a crescendo. The figures that he saw in his mind danced faster and faster as they waved their arms and stamped their cloven feet on the dusty ground. There was a climax of dissonance, the instruments that he half heard and half imagined going silent, the rhythmic chant slowly fading into nothing.

He opened his eyes as if waking from a trance, and he felt like a great deal of time had passed. How long had she been singing, and how long had he lay here and listened to her?

"That was...lovely. Thank you."

"I am glad to sing again," she muttered, "no mortal has heard my voice in five thousand years."

"What 'was' that? I've never heard anything like it before."

"A Sumerian song. I doubt that there are any records of it that survive, that's about as far back as your historical records go."

"I saw...images in my head, Seirim dancing around a giant fire. Were you doing that?"

"In part," she replied, "but music itself is a kind of magick. It can influence emotion and mood much in the same way that I can."

"Yeah, I suppose that's true enough."

"Will you sleep now?"

He nodded, relaxing into her fluffy ruff.

"You can use your powers on me now."

"Are you sure?" Nahash asked, surprised by his change in attitude.

"Yeah, go for it."

Maybe it was because he understood her a little better, or because she had earned some of his trust, but as the waves of relaxing euphoria washed over, him he realized that he no longer feared her.

***

When Ryan awoke, Nahash was gone. He sat up in bed and yawned as he stretched his arms above his head. He was a little disappointed that he hadn't woken up in her arms, but she was a demon, after all. Being here at all must consume some kind of resource or energy required for her to manifest a physical body. He rubbed his eyes, swinging his legs out from under the sheets and hopping out of bed, swearing that he had never felt so rested in his life.

He had slept through the whole night, his mind completely blank of dreams or nightmares, he felt completely refreshed and totally energized. It was like he had been woken from some futuristic rejuvenation booth from a sci-fi movie. It was kind of frustrating to consider that such rest was always available to him, but his own schedule and hangups kept it out of reach. If he were to wake up feeling like this every morning, he could conquer the damned world.

After making his way to the kitchen, he decided that he'd make eggs and bacon today rather than subsisting on stale cereal. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, so they said.

He got to work with the frying pan, morning sunlight streaming in between the blinds that covered his windows, and before long he was sitting down to a meal of fried eggs on toast and some crispy bacon. He took a bite of a strip, pleased with his handiwork. To think that a good night's sleep could influence his mood and outlook so dramatically...

He heard his cellphone ring, and he rose from his seat, interrupting his breakfast to search for the device. He found it beside his computer and swiped to answer the call, holding it up to his ear.

"Hello? Who is it?"

"Hello," a man's voice on the other end said, "is this Ryan Cutter?"

"It is, what can I do for you?"

"I'm pleased to inform you that you've won the West Shore Plaza raffle and that you're now the proud owner of a factory-fresh Honda Accord, sponsored by Bedlam Auto Dealership."

Finally, the car was on its way. Ryan did his best to feign surprise.

"Wow! I didn't think that anyone really won these things! That's great news."

"It's waiting for you in the parking lot of the plaza. You can come pick it up right away, then it's just a matter of signing a few more forms, and you can drive it away today!"

"I'll be down some time around midday," he replied, "thanks again!"

He hung up and returned to his breakfast, breaking one of his fried eggs open with his fork and watching the yolk ooze forth to soak his toast. Sunny side up, an apt metaphor for the way that he was feeling. If things continued along this path, then he'd be able to turn his life around for sure.

***

Ryan pulled his new car into the apartment complex parking lot, he had his own space, but he had never needed to use it before. He set the handbrake, then stepped out to admire his ride. A car like this might have been worth thirty or forty thousand dollars new, it had a five-year warranty and a full tank of gas, it was something that he would never have been able to afford without saving for years. Orobas had done a stellar job, and now he could travel, the range in which he could commute for work had just expanded by miles.

He locked the car with a beep from the remote on his key chain and made his way back to his apartment, that new car smell lingering in his clothing. When he arrived he was greeted by the smell of sulfur, Nahash must be waiting for him. As he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw that he had been right, she was waiting for him on the couch with her long legs crossed.

"I trust that the vehicle is satisfactory?"

"Oh yeah, my compliments to your boss, he really delivered."

"Your mood is positive, hopeful," she said as she scrutinized him with her amber eyes. "Your sleep was adequate?"

"That's an understatement," he laughed, shrugging off his jacket and draping it over a coat rack by the door. "I don't think I've slept that soundly since I was an infant, I woke up feeling like a new man. I tell you, if you could bottle whatever it is that you do and sell it as a medicine, you'd be a millionaire overnight."

"The next step is the job interview, you have arranged this?"

"Yes, I'll be driving there in two days. I have a face-to-face with the head of their IT department scheduled." He hesitated for a moment as he leaned on the kitchen counter and started to prepare a fresh pot of coffee. "I've been meaning to ask about that, can Orobas see into the future and let me know if I'll land the position or not? Are you guys going to help me out in some way?"

"Magick can be subtle, Ryan. If I had informed you about exactly what would happen when you went to the mall, you might have done something to change the future, or you might have behaved differently in a way that caused you to unknowingly sabotage yourself. You lack prescience, and so you live only in the moment, as if a fog obscures your vision. Live in the moment, Ryan, and let Orobas lead you. He has given you no cause to doubt him."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I'll just trust that it will work out."

He set the machine going, and then walked over to join Nahash on the couch, the giant demon shuffling aside to give him space.

"It's kind of nice having you waiting for me when I get back home," he said. "Reminds me of...well, I miss that. Maybe I should get a dog or something, I don't know if my landlord allows pets."

"I am merely here to ensure that you perform the tasks that are required of you," she replied as if it was a matter of fact.

"Uh-huh. Well, I was thinking about what you were saying last night as I drove back, about the Seirim and the dancing and all that junk."

"Yes?"

"I was wondering why you're forbidden from acting the way that you used to, dancing around fires and singing for people, that kind of thing?"

She considered for a moment, scratching her furry chin with her claw-like nails.

"It is not that I am forbidden, but that it is not within the scope of my mission here. I obey my master, I do no more and no less than he asks of me, for that is my contract with him. Were someone to summon Orobas and request the revelry of the Seirim, we would of course oblige, though that isn't likely. Few alive would possess the knowledge to ask such a thing, and fewer still would have the desire to summon us. We were spirits of the wilderness, embodiments of the mysteries of nature, the unknowns of the unexplored wilds. Mortals no longer fear the forests, they no longer wonder what lurks beyond the mountains and what secrets the deserts hold. Men have traversed every inch of this planet and mapped it down to every blade of grass."

"You make it sound like you're useless, like you've lost all purpose," Ryan said as she looked down at him with her horizontal pupils. "But that's not the case. Sure the demographic that used to worship you no longer exists, but that doesn't make your skills any less impressive."

"Why would somebody go to the trouble of summoning a demon, taking out a contract with him, and using it to summon Seirim?" Nahash asked, waving her hands dismissively. "If one should desire carnality and revelry, there are far more suitable options, ways to acquire women and pleasures beyond anything that we can provide."

"Was that...part of what you used to do then? Carnality?" Ryan asked, his cheeks beginning to flush.

"Yes, we embodied not only the mysteries of nature, but also its hidden passions and secret desires. We were the shadow that lurked in men's psyche, lust and reckless abandon made manifest. We lured mortals with our song and dance, tempted them with wine, offered them the pleasures that they so often denied themselves. Some gave themselves to us in ritual, some let the wild overcome them and joined us in our dance, others we took for ourselves when the frenzy overcame us."

"Sounds a little, uh...belligerent."

"Nature is red in tooth and claw, men harbor dark desires that they will scarcely admit even to themselves, and the forest can swallow a person no different from the jaws of a beast. As I have tried to explain to you Ryan, good and evil are relative, we each must perform the roles that are given to us."

They had wild, crazy sex with mortals then, that's what she was telling him. His mind raced at the prospect. If she could put him to sleep with her magic, then what else was she capable of? What form did the revelry and carnality that she described take? The more comfortable he became around her, the less her animal features stood out to him, they had even started to blend with her more familiar figure in ways that he found quite alluring.

It had been weeks since he had been with a woman, after enjoying a fairly consistent sex life with Becky for the last three years it was like torture. If he asked...would she be forced to oblige? No, he couldn't think that way. She was a person with her own desires and goals, he couldn't coerce her into doing something like that, it would be wrong. She had been so kind to him so far, and he sensed that it was as much her natural inclination as it was an order from Orobas. He didn't want to sully their burgeoning friendship.

He realized that she was probably reading his emotional state like a book, and quickly changed the topic of conversation.

"So if you somehow regained worshipers, what would happen? Would that make you...come back to life or something?"

"I am a spirit, I was never alive," she clarified. "Though it is true that the Seirim required only the worship and belief of a handful of nomadic tribes to sustain us, as we are not powerful gods, the chances of enough people giving us their faith in the modern era are next to nothing. In such a case, we could manifest in the forests and hills again, no longer bound by summoning circles and the whims of our masters."

She seemed to falter, as if she had inadvertently said something wrong.

"Not to say that we do not owe everything to the demons that bind us and share with us their vital essence, without which we would have faded from existence entirely. Myth and faith are dying in this world, more and more you mortals value the material sciences, you reject the supernatural and the religious as fanciful and quaint. Your new god is technology, and why should it not be? It performs its wonders daily, plain for all to see, and demands no sacrifice or offerings in exchange. But we starve, Ryan. Even the greater demons and the almighty gods feel their power waning as of late."

Her elongated face was oddly expressive, her ovine eyes flashing with sorrow and regret, giving him the impression that her whole world might be on the cusp of petering out into nothing. Entire nations had been built on religions and myths in the past, but now the world was increasingly moving towards rationalism. Besides a few massive religions such as Hinduism or Catholicism, there wasn't much prayer and faith to go around. People no longer whispered about forest spirits, superstition was reserved for unlucky numbers and black cats, and demon worship was confined to a few solitary internet forums as far as he knew.

An idea was beginning to form, however, a plan. Perhaps there was something that he could do for her in return.

"I must leave now," Nahash said as she rose to her feet abruptly, "I will return tonight to help you sleep."

"Oh, do you have to go? Okay then, I'll see you later."

"I sense that you are disappointed," she replied as she turned to look down at him. "My master must expend energy to send me here, and there is a cost incurred by manifesting in the physical world for long periods of time. To use your terminology, my battery becomes drained, and I must return to the source in order to replenish it."

"I understand, but answer me this before you go. How much belief would it take to make you independent, and would Orobas release you from his service if that became the case?"

She cocked her head at him, probably wondering what was going through his mind.

"The tribesmen numbered in the hundreds, it did not take much more than that to sustain us, and I doubt that my master would be inconvenienced by the loss of a handful of Seirim. Why do you ask?"

"Just curious is all."

She gave him another sideways glance, then vanished.

***

The sun was low in the sky, the clouds painted deep shades of pink and orange as Ryan peered through the blinds. He wanted to go to bed early tonight. Resting was just an excuse at this point, he found himself watching the clock, counting down the minutes until he could share a bed with Nahash again.

Maybe it was the way she made him feel with her plush body and her ability to relax him, or maybe he was just lonely and enjoyed her company, he couldn't put his finger on exactly why it was that he so anticipated the sunset now.

As he watched the streets below, the lamps turned on, their orange glow illuminating the sidewalks and the facades of the city's buildings as what few pedestrians remained went about their routine. It was another chilly autumn night, and the pavement was littered with colorful leaves. They would have to huddle close together beneath the heavy blankets for warmth, just the way he wanted it. All he had to do was decide to go to bed, and Orobas would send her, his powers of prescience sensing that Ryan required her services.

He waited a few minutes longer, watching as the last solitary rays of sunlight dipped beneath the horizon, and then he resolved to get into bed. As if on cue, the smell of sulfur filled the air, and once again Nahash took form inside the bounds of the chalk summoning circle that still remained on the floor beneath the couch. She could not stray far from it, or her connection to whatever astral realm or alternate dimension that she hailed from would wither and die, dissipating her physical body along with it. Fortunately, the apartment was small and pokey enough that she had the run of it, he wasn't quite sure what her range was under normal circumstances.

The shifting mass of shadows took shape amidst the billowing fumes, and Nahash stood tall, blinking her eyes at him as her twisted horns brushed the ceiling.

"I have returned."

"Welcome back," he announced, doing his best to look like he hadn't been waiting around for the last couple of hours.

"Shall we proceed?"

"Oh, sure," he said as he led her over to the bedroom.

Before long they were wrapped up in the sheets, heavy blankets weighing them down as Ryan awkwardly shuffled into her embrace. She curled her long arms around him and pulled him tight against her body, her warmth and softness welcoming him once again. He felt giddy, his excitement probably counterproductive as he gleefully pushed his face into her feathery wool, feeling its delicate texture on is cheeks and smelling its familiar scent. Her gentle hands found their usual places, her clawed fingers delving into his hair to stroke his scalp and the other resting on his back to press him close.

Her heartbeat, the steady rise and fall of her copious bust, the smoothness of her skin as it pressed against his. It was like heaven, drowsiness already overcoming him as their bodies warmed the bed.

"I am glad to make you happy Ryan, but you must keep in mind that I cannot remain with you forever. Once the contract is completed I must return to my master's side, I must wean you off these comforts before my departure becomes too jarring."

"I know..." Ryan replied, exhaling into her fluffy ruff. "I don't want to replace one problem with another. I'll have to get back on the horse eventually, start dating again. But this really helps."

"I...enjoy it also," she replied, her voice low and breathy. He felt a chill run down his spine, he didn't hear her express her own feelings or opinions very often, and he was surprised to hear her reciprocate. At least that was the way that it sounded. "I can read your emotions, remember? I know what this means to you, and that is why it cannot continue forever. Such attachment between a mortal and a spirit is fated to end tragically."

His face burned, what exactly did she sense in him? His own emotions were not always clear-cut, did she know something that he didn't? He shuddered as she ran her claws through his hair, his body tensing at her touch and then relaxing as he melted into her voluptuous body. He ran his hand from her flared hips to the small of her back, his fingers resting in the dimple of her spine as he struggled to get his arm around her, it was like trying to hug an oil barrel. Her chin rested on his head, her mammoth breasts unavoidable as they pressed against his shirt, he could feel her yielding flesh through the thin fabric as she shifted to get comfortable and they bumped into him.

"What kind of attachment do you mean?" Ryan asked a little sheepishly. "We humans don't always know what we want, you know. Emotions can be obtuse."

"You desire me, Ryan, as a man desires a woman. It would bring me great pleasure to indulge you, would it not interfere with my task."

He felt her warm breath in his hair, and she nuzzled, rubbing her nose against it and drawing him closer. He felt an overwhelming urge to turn his face up and kiss her, but he resisted it, catching his impulse in the nick of time. His heart hammered in his chest, and he satisfied himself with rubbing his cheek in her silky fur instead. What the hell was he thinking? Was it just because he had been starved of affection for so long? Sexual frustration? Some kind of demonic pheromone that was seeping into his brain like an insidious toxin?

"W-Why would it interfere? I mean we could just...we're already in bed together. What am I even saying? This is..."