The Fee

The warlock chalked out the last lines of the pentagram on the floor. Stepping back, he threw a pinch of the green powder from the little box in his hand into the middle of the design and carefully added a drop of blood. A puff of red flame arose, followed by a wisp of smoke.

“What are you doing?” the demon asked. It still squatted, spiky and skeletal, on the other side of the pentagram and leered at the warlock. Its needle-like teeth clicked and grinned. “What was the point of that exercise?”

“It’s to protect me from you,” said the warlock. He opened the ancient grimoire and rustled the parchment pages. The front and back covers were bound in leather made from the hide of beasts that dwelt on the rocky plains of Hell.

“Then you shouldn’t have summoned me,” said the demon, laughing. It casually broke off one of the spikes growing on its body and tossed it across the pentagram. The spike vanished with a flash and left a smouldering patch on the floor, breaking the design. “See?”

The warlock carefully chalked the pentagram back in. “It’s not that I doubt you,” he said. “It’s just that one has to take precautions.”

“I know,” said the demon. “We demons are so notoriously tricky, aren’t we?” It spread its wings wide enough to shadow the room for an instant, and its eyes flashed fire. The warlock took an involuntary step back. “It’s one of those stories that are so pervasive everyone believes it without question.”

“You aren’t tricky, then?” The warlock composed himself and opened his grimoire again.

“Think about it,” said the demon. “If we were always so tricky, would you magicians and witches always have been summoning us through the ages? Surely you’ve discovered we can serve you well?”

“Let’s get to work, shall we?” For the next hour the warlock read out the correct incantations and the demon replied at the appropriate places. Finally the warlock burned a twist of dried herbs in the brazier and shut the grimoire. “That does it,” he said.

“Not quite,” said the demon. “We haven’t settled the question of my fee.”

“I have already pledged my soul,” said the warlock, quietly.

“Souls aren’t worth anything,” the demon said. “Souls abide in the billions on the blasted plains of Hell. For the work you require me to do, I need a more tangible fee.”

“You mean,” said the warlock, “that your master requires a more tangible fee?”

“No – I do. I am independent in these things. My master has other needs than mine.”

“What would you have me pay, then?”

“The essence of human pain,” said the demon, leaning forward. “I want the distilled essence of the agony your race has inflicted on itself since the beginning of time. I want the screams of the human sacrifices as obsidian knives tore out their beating hearts. I need the pleas of the widow burned on her husband’s funeral pyre. I want the despair of the thousands of naked humans stuffed into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. I require the agony of the thousands incinerated in the firestorm that destroyed Dresden. I want the horror of the Iraqi father whose child was killed before his eyes as collateral damage. All this and more, bring to me. That, warlock, is my fee.”

“It will be difficult,” said the warlock.

“It shouldn’t be,” said the demon. “Pain is what your race specialises in. After all,” it said, grinning with its needle teeth, “you’ve created pain yourself, and will do more. Think of what you ask of me, warlock, of what I have to give; and then think if what I ask is excessive.”

The warlock shut his eyes and breathed deeply. “It can’t be done,” he said. “How can I harness pain?”

“You don’t have to,” said the demon, laughing. With one leap it cleared the pentagram and stalked out into the night.

The warlock leaned his head against the wall as the screaming began.