*I'm back, Baby*
The boy woke up, as he always did, opening his eyes to see the protective circle, etched in deep blue lines on the ceiling above his bed.
His mother's hand was on his shoulder. The woman was tall, fierce in a way that many had a hard time describing. Her hair was fire-red. Her eyes had a ring of silver around the pupil, very close, very thin. She was dressed in boxers and a tank top, her breasts were sagging and flat from so many children, but she still looked regal as a queen.
"Wake up, Willem. It's time."
The boy yawned and rolled over.
"Willem, it's nearly midnight, and there's a new moon. We need to get this done tonight. Your birthday is in a few days, we will never get another chance."
"Mommy?" The boy whispered sleepily, rubbing his eyes with one small uncoordinated fist. "What are we doing?"
The woman gently kissed his tussled dark head. "I'm going to make you strong, sweetie. I'm going to make you a hero."
He rolled out of bed, pawing sleepily at his eyes. His faded Muppet Babies pajamas were worn at the knees and elbows, a few inches above his pale ankles.
"Come on, sweetie. I'll get you some Graham crackers and milk when we're done. It wont take very long at all."
"Kay Mommy." Willem murmured.
They went down to the kitchen, and Willem eyed the chaos boredly. Mommy was always drawing things on the floors and the walls. He had gotten in trouble at kindergarden for drawing some of them in his pictures. The principal had called Mommy, talking about what sounded like 'Satan war ship.'
Willem had asked Mommy if that was a new TV show, because it sounded awesome.
The dining room table had been shoved into the kitchen. A huge basic pentagram had been carved into the floor ages ago, but Mommy had outdone herself.
Normally the pentagram was in white, but she had filled in the carved lines with black this time. She had scrawled layers and layers of intricate runes with black and red and yellow and ochre colored chalk. Some blue and white runes were in the middle. Willem knew that white and blue were protective, and the other colors meant trouble.
"Be careful, sweetie-pie. Careful, don't smudge the chalk. I want you to sit in the middle."
"Can I have crackers, mommy?"
"In a minute, sweetie."
Willem picked his way through the chalk. He sat down on the small round pillow that Mommy had put at the center. He watched her with sleepy blinking eyes as she lit the multitude of candles. Normally the candles were white. He had seen her light yellow candles once or twice.
These candles were black.
She picked her way through, and put herself in the small bare crescent shape in front of her son.
"You are the fifth son of a fifth son, just as I am the fifth daughter of a fifth daughter. You will be more powerful than me, because you are born of a fifth daughter and a fifth son. One day, you will make all demons tremble."
Willem yawned.
"Just a few minutes longer, Willem. Then we can have some crackers, and go to bed."
She started to chant. When she chanted, her voice became low and unrecognizable, like the snarling of a beast.
Willem sniffled a little. The air was getting thick, and hard to breathe. His stomach hurt.
He felt... Hungry.
Mommy brought out a small mason jar, and he saw five pokey little lights buzzing around in it. Like fireflies. The lid of the mason jar had a pentagram drawn on it with red crayon. All of the flames on the candles went low. Nothing but tiny blue dots.
"Open wide, Willem."
Willem obeyed. His front top teeth were both missing. He gave her his crooked gap-toothed mouth to fill.
With her elongated two fingernails, first and middle, she scooped up an immolation mite. Her fingernails were painted with tiny pentagrams. To contain it. The creature was ugly as sin, so small and stupid that it could not disguise itself even to humans. Like an ugly mutated wasp, far too many legs, swollen with poison.
She placed the dazed mite on her sons tongue.
"Swallow, my sweet."
Willem started to cry. He swallowed it, but he whimpered with the pain. "Mommy! It hurts! It stung me!" He tried to get up.
"Stay in the circle, you little shit!" She bellowed. She grasped his jaw. Willem froze and opened his mouth when the second mite came. He writhed as it stung the inside of his mouth, and as his body was wracked with pain and a kind of savage pleasure that his young body had no idea how to handle.
Every hair on his body was standing on end. His pupils were so dilated, that the brown irises were nearly gone. Every muscle was stiff. His eyes were wide and starey with fear and pain.
The third mite came, dropped from his mommy's long scoop of a fingernail into his open mouth. Like a mother bird, depositing some worm.
He cried out. He had stings stippling his small pink tongue.
"Two more, my sweet. Two more."
Willem rose unsteadily, ready to totter out of the circle. His mother whispered a harsh word and suddenly invisible hands were clutching him from all sides, holding him still, wrenching his mouth open.
"Hold him, Izarys. Hold him till I'm done."
A rumble came from the naked air. The grip on her helpless son tightened till he squealed with pain.
He seized, unable to move from the spot, unable to close his mouth, tears streaming from his dilated eyes.
At the fourth mite, Willem nearly lost consciousness. His mother slapped his cheek to keep him awake.
"Stay awake, love. I have the antidote right here, but we need to finish the ritual, one more, one more."
Her son's face was swelling grotesquely.
She had to force the last mite in through his swollen lips. She started to chant as her son convulsed from the venom running hot and red through his veins. Steam rose from his pores. His flesh was swelling everywhere. His sweat was extremely inflammable.
She finished the chant, and suddenly the candle flames were back to normal. The light seemed normal. Sweat soaked her brow.
"That's enough Izarys."
Willem dropped to the floor. His heels drummed against the floor as he convulsed, smearing the chalk lines. He wasn't making any noise, he had stopped drawing breath.
She plunged an old-fashioned syringe, with two holes for the fingers, into the swollen inner tube of her young son's neck.
The skin on his eyelids and around his lips was pale lavender. His breathing eased right away, but it took a few minutes for the swelling to go down enough for him to open his eyes.
"Why?" Willem bleated. A helpless question, slurred by his swollen lips, and weak sobbing.
"You'll know when you're older." The red woman soothed.
--
When Willem woke up, his skin did not burn. He was not swollen up like an inner tube. His tongue was not blocking his entire mouth in a swollen pus-filled boil. He could open his eyes.
He was no longer five, but twenty-seven.
He was alone in bed.
Disoriented, he wondered if the events of the last few months had been nothing but a feverish dream.
Then the door opened and in the light from the bathroom down the hall, he saw the silhouette of a curly-haired head with small horns.
"I didn't mean to wake you." Isaac whispered.
Willem turned onto his back and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "You didn't. Bad dream."
Isaac closed the door behind him, and it was dark. Willem and the boy both had heightened senses, so Willem was still able to see his lithe naked form slip into bed.
Isaac burrowed under the sheets, and Willem could feel the warmth of his body before the younger man actually touched him. Isaac rested his head on Willem's chest, and cuddled in close.
Willem buried his cheek in Isaac's soft curly hair. The blunt point of one horn tapped against his cheekbone. They used the same shampoo, but Isaac had a smell all his own. Spicy.
"What was the dream about? If you don't mind?"
Willem brought his hand up and touched Isaac's cheek. The halfling gently sucked on the tips of his fingers.
"It was about when my mother fed me the mites."
"Did it hurt?"
Willem closed his eyes. "It hurt a lot."
"Why did she feed you the mites? You said that they were innocent."
Willem sighed. "It's how the vessel works. With every demon I eat, I become a stronger vessel. Immolation mites are about as weak as demons get. If she had just taken a human off the street, and fed them a mite, they would have died. Even with the antidote.
"She needed the ritual. I was stronger because my father was a fifth son, and I was a fifth son. The ritual strengthened me. Once I absorbed the energy of the five mites, I was a strong enough vessel to eat a small imp a few weeks later. After the imp, I was strong enough to eat another imp without getting horribly sick."
Isaac shivered a little. "I saw what it was like with the Dreamer, and in that parking garage in Iowa. It must have been horrible, early on."
Willem nodded, and then moved his fingers deeper into Isaac's mouth. He sucked. Willem could feel the halfling's cock against his hip. He could feel it twitch.
"It was. She was feeding me about once a month, and even being as careful as she was, I nearly died. More than once."
Isaac abruptly spit out his fingers. "Could you still die now? If there was a demon strong enough?"
Willem laughed. He turned onto his side and kissed Isaac full on the mouth. Isaac kissed back, his eyes still full of concern.
