Free The Devil Dances by K.H. Koehler Page B

nice to finally meet you, my liege.”
    I knew I was speaking to no girl. “I wish I could say the same.”
    “Do they know?” Her eyes moved to the concerned faces of her family.
    “I haven’t showed them my pedigree, no.”
    “You should tell them.”
    “Don’t listen to it,” I told the men and women in the room with me. “The demon lies. The demon will always lie.”
    The thing inside Sarah laughed in a coarse, unnatural voice that reverberated around the room. “Really, Prince. That’s rather amusing, coming from the Prince of Lies.” She turned her head to glare at the others and some threw up the medieval sign of exorcism. “Of all the exorcists in the world, you bring
him
to me? Ask him why he uses no Bible. Ask him why he uses no prayers, why he calls on no gods. Ask him why he fears the station of the cross…!”
    “Look at me,” I said, and the demon stopped babbling and dutifully turned Sarah’s head in a frighteningly mechanical way to give me its full attention. There was resistance in its eyes, but I knew it could not resist me. “You will address
me
, not them.”
    “Fuck you, Prince. Fuck you and fuck your Whore of Babylon…!”
    I smiled demurely at its pathetic attempts to psyche me out. “I have dominion over your kind,” I reminded it. “My house has dominion over your house. I could rip you out anytime I want, fallen one, crush your miserable excuse for a soul in the palm of my hand.”
    “Why don’t you?”
    “I want to ask you something. Why Sarah? What do you want with her?”
    “I told you. Fuck you, Prince. Fuck your power. Go home and fuck your bitch. Fuck your bitch’s brother. That’s what you want, don’t you?”
    I didn’t say anything to that. The thing about demons is, you don’t get personal. You don’t give them anymore ammunition than you have to. The thing knew about Vivian and Josh? Fine, no big deal. The last thing you wanted to do was feel uncomfortable when dealing with demons. You never showed it fear—fear it could use. It could get a handhold on your soul that way. Lucky for me, I had no soul. Or, if I did, it was made of pretty foreign stuff.
    I felt a charge in the air as the thing inside Sarah tried to resist me—so
it
was afraid, as it well should be. It smiled to cover its discomfort. “I know you, Angel-breaker. I know what you desire. I know what you do at night.”
    “Don’t make me wash your mouth out with soap.”
    But it continued on, unperturbed. “You jerk yourself off, thinking about them. About Vivian and Josh. About them together. You are so weak, Man of Sin. Such a weak, needy Prince…”
    Childish tactics, a last ditch effort to unnerve me. I laughed at it.
    “You laugh? You burn with lust, Prince. You’d shove your dick down a hole in the ground, if you could…”
    “And so would the vast majority of men today. What’s your point?”
    The little girl hissed, seemed to rise up a few inches, and then spat in my face before dropping back down to her pillows. I ignored the phlegm racing down my cheek. I raised my hand and covered Sarah’s face. “Time to go.”
    I was barely touching her, but she started to scream as I began the process of extracting the offending spirit from her young, tortured body. It screamed in raw, soul-tearing spurts. It screamed like I was pounding nails into Sarah’s head.
    Sarah’s mother finally turned around and tried to rush to her daughter’s side, tears in her eyes and a hand clamped over her mouth, but John caught her around the middle, hugging his distraught wife against his body. “No, Mary,” John said. “Let him work.”
    “Fuck you, Tempter. Fuck you, Son of the Morning…” the demon babbled before segueing into other languages, Divine among them.
    I breathed in and I breathed out my raw power. I raised my hand a few inches and Sarah’s entire body jerked upward like a puppet on short strings.
    “Fuck you, Mammon. Fuck you, Devil, Prince of this World…”
    “Why