Ex-Communication

Thirty Now

ST. GEORGE COULD lift almost seven tons under perfect conditions. Fourteen thousand pounds. He was strong enough to pick up a car if he could balance it, and move a semitrailer when he had the right leverage. He could snap steel aircraft cables without breathing hard. His fingers could crush brick and concrete and pavement.

He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pulled.

The glistening red cords that held him weren’t much thicker than shoelaces. They had no knots or fasteners. The lines looped around his wrists and ankles, barely tight enough to touch his skin. Max and the demon had him strung up between a streetlight and the signpost for a Trader Joe’s on the north side of 3rd Street.

Smoke whistled out between his teeth. His eyes watered from the effort. His shoulders burned and his wrists screamed with pain but the thin lines didn’t budge. He took a few deep breaths and tensed his shoulders again.

“Flex and strain all you like, my dear little hero,” said the demon. Cairax’s legs raised a little too high and reached a little too far, like a huge spider. It stalked across the road to stand face-to-face with him. “These are blood ties. They cannot be broken.”

This close St. George could see the scaly texture of the demon’s skin. The burning blue eyes locked on his, each one the size of his palm, and dared him to look away. It felt like a staring contest with a rattlesnake. The slitted nostrils trembled as Cairax sucked in air and exhaled on the hero. The monster’s breath was hot. It reeked of disease and meat.

Max bent over the road with a dagger he’d pulled from his coat and put the final touches on the circle he’d scratched into the pavement. He straightened up to stretch his back. “Anyway,” he said, picking up as if there’d been no interruption, “breaking Josh out was the easiest part. It’s not like he needed much convincing, either. A bit of alchemy turned the cell wall to water vapor for a minute, he walked out, and the bars and mesh reformed behind him. No sign of anything being tampered with. I’m sure it drove Stealth crazy.”

St. George risked looking away from the demon’s eyes. “She knew he had outside help.”

“Because nothing else made sense in her little worldview,” said Max. “Your girlfriend has one big blind spot, George. She’s inflexible. She can’t think outside the box. The box she does think in is gigantic, I admit, but she can’t put her brain outside it even just for a moment.”

The sorcerer twisted at the hips, then leaned to either side and stretched his arms out. He bent over to scratch a few more Latin words along the edge of the circle. “After that it was just a matter of getting you alone out here, so Josh’s escape killed two birds with one stone. Thanks for letting me paint all those sigils and agreements on you, by the way. It saves us about an hour and a half.”

St. George tried to ignore him and looked at the demon. It gazed back at him with its saucer-like eyes. He was pretty sure it was smirking, but the forest of teeth made it hard to be sure.

“Josh,” he said, “you’ve got to fight this. I know you hate all of us because of what happened, you hate the world because of what happened to Meredith, but you can’t let—”

“You waste your final hour calling to your friend,” said Cairax. The demon reached up and tapped its fingers against the crown of horns. They made a noise like the crack of billiard balls. “His lonely mind was broken long before what was left of it accepted our offer. He submitted to dear Maxwell’s preparations, turned over his mortal form, and retreated to nonexistence with no resistance or second thoughts. Through me he found the end he has searched so long for.”

The demon twitched a finger and the red cords holding St. George pulled tighter. Not much. Just another half inch. He felt it in his joints.

He managed to glare back at the creature. “Next you’ll tell me your only weakness is wood,” he said. “Before you know it you’ll give your whole plan away.”

“Such bravado,” said Cairax. Its tongue darted out and snapped like a whip in front of St. George’s face. “You are a credit to your namesake after all, my little hero, but soon your soul shall be my plaything. We shall see how brave you are then.”

“Just try me.”

Its tooth-filled mouth twisted into another grin. Fangs and tusks pointed in every direction. The demon looked over its shoulder at Maxwell as he scratched more symbols inside the new circle.

“It’s easy to be brave when you’re ignorant,” said Max without looking up. “Believe me, if you had any idea what’s going to happen to you, you’d be wetting your pants right now.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Smoke streamed out of St. George’s nostrils. “Is that your excuse for siding with this thing? For betraying all of us? You’re scared of what it could do to you?”

Max shoved the dagger into his belt and walked up to the bound hero. Cairax moved out of his way with one step of its long legs. The move was graceful and unnatural all at once. “Yeah,” he snapped, “I am scared.”

“You used to be a hero.”

“I used to be a paperboy, too. So what?” He shook his head. “Let me tell you something, George. I know what Hell’s like. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. And you know what?” He waved his arm over his shoulder, back in the direction of the Big Wall. “I will sacrifice anything not to go through that again. You, Stealth, Barry, Danielle, my parents, every girl I ever loved, every single person in the Mount—Cairax can have all of your immortal souls as long as it means I don’t go to Hell.”

St. George took in a long, slow breath. “You’re a coward.”

“No,” Max shook his head, “I’m a realist. There’s only so many ways this can go down, and they all involve a lot of people dying. I just made the choice not to be one of them. Like I told Stealth, I chose to survive.”

“And that’s the way it is?”

“Yeah,” said Max. “That’s the way it is.”

“Then I don’t feel too bad about this.”

St. George exhaled hard, spraying fire down at the sorcerer. It was a good-sized cone, enough to cover the man from head to toe. The blast exploded over Max, and splashed out across the pavement. The flames lit up the street for a block in either direction. They burned for a few seconds and then sputtered out.

Cairax Murrain’s hand stretched out in front of the sorcerer. The fingers spread wide in front of Max’s face. A last few licks of fire danced on the knuckles and talons, like flies caught in a spiderweb. The demon closed its hand into a fist and the flames were crushed.

Max wasn’t even singed.

The demon snorted and pulled its impossibly long arm back. It strode halfway across the street and snatched up an ex through the barrier. It spun the dead thing in its claws, plucking off arms and legs and then the head.

“That was foolish,” said Max. “Even if Cairax wasn’t here, I’ve got two different fire wards on me.”

“Maybe I don’t give up as easily as you.”

“I didn’t give up,” said Max. “I made a deal.”

“Come on,” St. George said. “Do you think that thing’s going to hold up its side of the bargain? After everything you’ve told us about it? What’s going to stop it from killing you?”

“Well,” said the sorcerer, “one is the contract. I’ve offered it a lot of prime souls in exchange for its leniency. A bunch of heroes. And a deal’s a deal.”

St. George glared at him.

“Two is that I’m going to be a lot harder to kill in about twenty minutes or so.”

He wrinkled his brow at the sorcerer. “How so?”

Cairax Murrain picked up another ex, a dead woman, and tossed it from hand to hand. A chuckle slithered up out of the demon’s throat. It caught the ex and scissored the woman in half with its talons.

Max waved a hand at his chest. “Stealth was right. This isn’t much of a cheat. Jarvis was in pretty good shape, but in five or ten years I’ll just need another body. Unless I found a better one sooner than that. One that was strong, almost completely invulnerable, and would last a hundred years or so with no problem.”

He gestured at the circle and symbols he’d been scratching into the pavement, then looked the bound hero in the eye.

“That’s where you come into the deal, George.”