Chapter 25 #2
I wince. I’m not familiar with how the Collective works, but if Norval likes to poke around a lot and everyone knows that, it’s likely he never heard about this because someone went to the effort of keeping it secret. That doesn’t bode well for the promise Ian just made.
“I’m going to update the others, then I’ll head off,” Norval says. “Expect me to check in later tonight.” He pauses. “What’s the time difference between here and California, again?”
“Since when have you cared?” Connor asks. “Just wake me up like you always do. Try not to wake Kieran, though. He’s barely sleeping as it is.”
Norval nods and pops out without further ado.
As the mood shifts again, I glance around. Everyone’s tired, it’s been an emotionally draining afternoon, and some of us still need to update the Mannix team once they finish work. Plus, I need to find out what the fuck Gabe was thinking, planning a suicide mission and not even telling us.
“Maybe we should leave it here for today,” I suggest. “We might not have solid answers yet, but we made a lot of progress.” I think. Everyone seemed to learn new stuff, anyway.
“Just one thing,” Jill says. “It won’t take long. Con, before you said something about containing the demons. Do you mean with a circle?”
Connor shrugs. “Circles, probably, plural. It’s gotta be easier than trying to fight them all in a huge brawl. Why not do like our ancestors did, way back before the Collective and gatekeepers?”
I frown while they all mull that over. “But don’t you need to know the demon’s name to summon it?”
Marc scoffs. “Only for higher demons,” he declares, clearly offended that I’ve inadvertently lumped him in with ordinary demons. “Lesser demons have only surface names.”
I shake my head, not understanding. “Surface names?”
“Names they’ve chosen themselves,” Gabe explains to me. “Lesser demons can be summoned using their name, but they also risk being summoned in a general call for a demon of their species or skill set.”
What the... Blinking, I say, “So summoning a demon can be like putting a listing on Craigslist? ‘ISO black-heart demon with experience getting rid of work colleagues. Must bring own poison.’”
The humans in our group chuckle. Marc does not. “Not exactly,” Gabe says, grinning. “But you’re not far off. The summoner would code the circle and the summoning with their requirements, and then a demon that matches them would be summoned.”
“What if there’s more than one that matches?”
Gabe shrugs, and we look at a glowering Marc. He’s scary when he frowns like that and reminds me what he’s capable of. “Summoning is an abomination,” he declares.
“For the wrong reasons, absolutely,” Gabe agrees. “People shouldn’t be calling demons from the otherworld.”
That seems to mollify him a little, though he still sniffs disdainfully. “It’s rotational. If there are multiple demons who match the terms of the summoning, the one who hasn’t been summoned for the longest goes. We don’t know why or how that is.”
Okay, that kinda makes sense, if you don’t think about it too much. “But demons like you have to be summoned by name?” There was talk of this last week, when he first arrived, but I wasn’t paying attention.
“Yes. Not by the names we choose, or a diminutive name—the first time, anyway. Once a connection has been made, it can be any name. But the first time, it has to be the full name proclaimed at our becoming.”
He’s lost me, and I’m not the only one. “Becoming?” Jill asks.
Marc looks at us all like we’re too stupid to be breathing the same air as him. “Your Collective doesn’t know how higher demons become?” He rolls his eyes. “How do you even exist as a species?”
“We’d really love to learn,” I say a little too loudly, trying to cut off the snarky comments that are surely on the way.
He smirks. “Higher demons are not born as you humans are, the accidental result of copulation. We—”
“Wait, whoa, dude… you don’t have sex?” Ian blurts.
Connor sighs and closes his eyes. “Not the relevant point here, Ian.”
“Also incorrect,” Marc adds. “Of course we have sex. Often in ways that have never occurred to your simple human brain.”
“But you said—”
“I said we don’t reproduce that way. Higher demons don’t reproduce at all. We become. When the lesser demon we used to be has developed beyond what that body and brain can contain, it evolves. The moment of becoming is known to all when the world rings with the proclamation of our name.”
My jaw drops. “I…”
Gabe, looking only slightly less stunned than me, takes over. “So all higher demons evolved from some other kind of demon as… as a reward for learning more or doing more or something like that?” He glances at the boys. “Is this like that Pokémon thing you were both into when you were teenagers?”
Matt swallows hard. “It sounds a lot like it. We’re even going to fight them against each other.”
Marc’s eyes blaze. “It’s nothing like that.” He pauses. “Although it may be possible that the original creator had a demon contact.”
“And your name is just… yelled out by… who?” Ian asks.
“The world itself.” Marc spreads his hands. “The moment of becoming is unplanned and unanticipated.”
My mouth goes dry as a thought occurs to me. “But you said the world rings with the name. Everyone hears it. Yes?”
He nods. “Yes. Those with the intelligence to think know what it means.”
Heart beating faster in my ears, I ask, “Does that mean you know the names of other higher demons? Like Cato’s?”
Someone gasps, and I swing around to look at them all. “Could we summon Cato here and kill him? End this before it all begins?”