Page 67 of Demons & Damnation

“Since I became fed up of this life and wanted out.”

Balthazar stormed off, not sparing Azazel another glance. After a second or two, Azazel ran after him, falling into stride at his side as the two headed towards the empty pub.

“Is this going to be far enough away?” Azazel asked, eyeing up the old mansion behind the hedgerow.

“You have the same powers as me, Azazel,” Balthazar said, pressing the palm of his hand over the lock on the back door. “Figure it out yourself.”

The lock sprung open allowing the two demons inside the once thriving building. Balthazar took the lead, heading straight into the kitchen.

“Here will be fine,” he said, looking around the empty room. “More than enough room.”

Azazel frowned. “For what?”

Balthazar folded his arms across his chest and sighed, meeting his brother’s eye contact. “Let’s look at some cold, hard facts, shall we? Mildred is a ghost. That’s cool, we’ve met plenty of them before. But she’s a lot more ‘alive’ than she should be, right? And she still has access to her magick. How?”

“I’m guessing it’s something to do with that damn pendant hanging around her neck,” Azazel replied.

Balthazar nodded. “Exactly. We both know that ghosts aren’t normally anything special in the ether world. They’re nothing more than souls without a shell, an engine with no home. And witch ghosts need a physical body to aid their soul to manifest its magickal abilities into physical form, right?”

“Right. But she’s got no body. Her bones were laid to rest in the churchyard which is outside the Worthington estate. If the grave was inside the estate boundaries, you might be able to claim she’s drawing energy from her brittle old twigs but it’s not, so she can’t be.”

“Her coven,” Balthazar said. “The Helios Coven, maybe they have secrets we don’t know about? We know they were highly secretive and super powerful. Hence, they took it upon themselves to be judge and jury of this world and the ether world.”

“Maybe,” Azazel said, shrugging his shoulders. “When they had physical bodies, their power was greater than ours, but when the old hags finally gave up and died, they should be nothing more than a regular ghost.”

“Or maybe we have it wrong. She’s drawing energy and power from somewhere and she’s using it as if she were still physically here. We need to do some research.”

Azazel rolled his eyes. “I know exactly what that means. For fucks sake, Balthazar. It’s such an arse ache. Do you have to?”

Balthazar ignored his brother, closed his eyes, and relaxed his shoulders. He flexed his neck from side to side and took a deep breath. Summoning objects was not an easy task. Creating them was far easier compared to mentally locating them, handling them, opening a portal, and bringing them back. Even the mind of a demon could wane under the taxing complexities of magick.

Lucifer had a vast library in the cool depths of his basement. Spanning the size of Canada, Lucifer’s collection was a golden nugget of information that would never be found by anyone who didn’t need to know of its existence. Because the old devil himself suffered with a severe form of OCD, of course never admittedly, the library was a breeze to navigate through.

Like a Kindle Store category selection, Balthazar pictured himself in the library and moved through the different genres and sub-genres to find himself in the right area—History > Ancient History > Magick > Witches > Covens, Societies, and Groups.

The few hundred books assigned to this specific section were going to take a while to sift through, but he could work with that when he physically had a hold of them. The driftwood shelves they were on weren’t much bigger than a standard double bedroom so wouldn’t take too much manhandling either.

He imagined himself growing big enough to wrap his arms around the section of books he needed. The key point to making transportation work was detail which meant he couldn’t be too big or he wouldn’t be able to transport himself. He then said out loud, “Cogito, ergo sum.”

A silver speckled portal began to open in front of him, its yawning, dark abyss enticing him in. Balthazar dove through it, embracing the shelves of books he so desperately needed. Clinging on to his precious cargo as if his life depended on it, Balthazar repeated the same three words before launching himself back out of the portal.

The tiled kitchen floor absorbed the loud thud of his body hitting the floor and the clatter of books falling loose all around him. The portal closed behind him with a ‘pop’, as if someone had blown a bubble in their gum.

“Thanks for the help,” he said, looking up at Azazel.

“You looked like you were more than coping,” Azazel replied, bending down to pick up an old red book.

Balthazar jumped to his feet and looked at the heap of old books and encyclopaedias scattered everywhere. He couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of Lucifer seeing his precious texts out of order and not being treated like fine china. Balthazar would suffer a punishment worse than being stuck with his obstinate brother for two millennia if Lucifer could see this.

The two siblings fell into comfortable silence as they sifted through the books, speed reading with a single touch whatever they picked up to try and locate the information they needed.

After a dozen or so books, Balthazar came across an A5 sized hardback book with a dark blue cover, the threads between the spine and the front cover the only things keeping it intact. Its pages were yellow and crinkled with age, crinkling like a crisp packet as he flushed through them. It was more than delicate.

Turning it over, he very nearly didn’t even bother speed reading it until he spotted the tiniest of symbols on the back cover in the bottom left-hand corner. The tell-tale symbol of the pent-hexagram.

He frowned, his dark eyebrows furrowing together as he looked at the small book. Surely a group as powerful as The Helios Coven would warrant an entire encyclopaedia on its own, not this small, barely noticeable mere few hundred pages.

Placing his right index finger on each page, he absorbed every word within minutes, the words flooded his mind like a tsunami, speaking to him like an audible book on warp speed.

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