Chapter 25

Eislinn crawled on her hands and knees along the hedge of the Mt. Airy estate with her digital video camera tucked carefully into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. With her Fae glamour in place, she was unlikely to be seen if the pseudo-coven was full of human wanna-bes but on the off chance that one of them really was magic, she stuck to the shadows.
As she closed in on the bonfire, her eyes took in the black hooded robes of the participants, the black and red candles and the very naked young man who stood at the point of the inverted pentagram outlined with what was probably table salt. Her informant had been correct. Leading the ritual was golden boy and Philadelphia home-town hero Jason Whitbeck, now the star quarterback for an Ivy League university. Apparently he was bored while home on summer vacation.
She wiggled into a seated position amid the shrubs and lifted her camera. Her bosses at the local news were going to love this. With luck it would even go to the network feed and make the national reports. She only hoped the idiots didn't accidentally get it right and summon a real demon with their ridiculous chanting and - she sniffed the air - illegal incense. Good thing elves were more or less immune to marijuana. Otherwise she'd be getting one hell of a contact buzz, even from twenty yards away.
No, she was more worried about the possibility of a genuine demon popping up into that badly warded circle. Not the most predictable of creatures and definitely not something a bunch of drugged out and testosterone poisoned little rich boys ought to be fooling around with. Demons didn't really come from some human-defined hell, of course but they did hail from a number of decidedly unpleasant realities. Sometimes they decided they liked being in this dimension and made it a point to kill the witless fools who might have the power to send them home.
Whitbeck the quarterback lifted an ornate gold colored goblet into the air and the chant reached a crescendo. He sipped whatever probably illegal substance was in the cup, then tossed the dregs into the fire. Slivers of black smoke began to dance in the warm summer air above the center of the pentagram. Then they began to coalesce into a shape.
Oh fuck!
The morons had succeeded. Now she wouldn't be able to show the footage, even if they all managed to get out alive. One of the major rules non-humans agreed to when living in the mortal realm was not disclosing each other to the masses. It only made sense. If demons could exist, so could elves, along with vampires, werewolves, whatever. Expose one and everybody's cover would be blown. With a sigh she switched off her camera and moved up into a squat, in case she had to run.
The tendrils of mist twined together to form a shape that was roughly humanoid - at least it had two arms, two legs and one head. That was pretty much where its resemblance to a person ended. Long blood-red horns curled out of a forehead that elongated into a bovine snout. Puffs of smoke emerged from enlarged nostrils and curled up to veil a pair of fiery eyes, lit from within. One boy in the circle screamed and looked like he tried to break away but the ones on either side of him grabbed his wrists and held him in place, maintaining the integrity of the circle.
Whitbeck gave the creature an arrogant smirk. "Demon, I command thee - tell me thy name."
Eislinn rolled her eyes. Please. Like using archaic speech patterns made any difference to something that could rip you in half with its toes.
The demon laughed and the sound chilled even Eislinn's bones. Judging by a faint whiff of scent, at least one of the idiot boys had wet himself. Good, she thought waspishly. Maybe next time he'll stay home - if he lives.
The demon stared down the swaggering young man. "You really think you have the power to command me?"
"I summoned you," Jason declared. He set the cup down and picked up a wicked looking blade from the plastic milk crate they'd been using as an altar. "I can banish you as well. And while you are here, you must obey my commands."
The demon laughed again and this time even Eislinn had to squeeze her legs together. Leave it to these losers to have summoned exactly the wrong sort of demon. They were so toast. She tried to ease back into the bushes, thinking frantically about whom she could call for help. These boys deserved humiliation for this fiasco but they didn't all deserve to die. And while she could help, she doubted she could take this demon on all by herself.
Two names occurred to her but before she could pull her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans, things got worse.
"Tell you what, little man," the demon leered at Jason. "You let me out of this circle without a fight and I might let you live."
Even from her vantage point in the bushes, she could feel the demon's power reaching out, testing the circle. One thickly muscled arm reached out and she saw the two-inch long talons extend. Then a beatific grin came over that monstrous face. "Found it. Too late for you now, buddy boy. You're mine." He cast his gaze around the rest of the circle. "As for the rest of you, I'll give you a sporting head start. One, two three, run!" The final word boomed like thunder in the still night air.
Most of the crowd was smart enough to cut and run. A few hesitated but were pulled away by their friends. Jason, on the other hand, stood with his athame raised. She could see him tremble and rivulets of sweat dripped down his chest in the moonlight. He didn't move. Moron!
The demon waved his hand and the salt forming one point of the pentagram drifted away on a puff of wind. With a manic grin, the demon sauntered to the point and easily stepped out of the circle. Jason continued to stand his ground.
Crap. She wasn't much of a fighter but she couldn't sit here and let the kid die. And she couldn't let the demon loose on Philadelphia in general. She stood and set her camera under the bush then apported in her rapier - which she hadn't used in actual combat since the sixteenth century.
The demon sauntered up to Jason with its talons raised. "Time to say goodnight Gracie."
Hmmm, apparently this particular demon had been on Earth before. The kid wasn't old enough to get the reference. He stared in blank horror at the being which had broken his circle. Eislinn raised her rapier and stepped forward.
Before she could reach the circle, a shadow detached itself from ancient oak tree behind Whitbeck and inserted itself between the kid and the demon. The demon snarled and took a swing. So did the shadow - an even bigger shape and one that Eislinn recognized all too well.