Blinking, Eva ran her tongue over the tops of her teeth, feeling the mountains and valleys that now made up her teeth. Her tongue didn’t get cut. Even pressing it down into the sharp blades kept it whole and hearty. Clamping her mouth shut, she found her top and bottom teeth fit in neatly with each other. The triangular teeth interlocked. A smooth wall had replaced the slightly bumpy teeth that she used to have.
“How did I miss that?”
Devon shrugged. “I barely noticed and I was looking for oddities. Perhaps if you smiled more.” He waved a tentacle before Eva could complain. “We should head down and prepare for Catherine’s ritual. If we’re going to do it, best to get it started as soon as possible. I don’t want to be stuck outside all night.”
Eva sighed, but nodded and followed him out of the room. Arachne kept herself positioned close by.
They made it all the way to the bottom of the building before running into a certain carnivean. The shorter demon blocked the way out of the cell block with her hands on her hips and a glare leveled at Devon.
“This ritual was not in our agreement.”
“So you say every day,” Devon said, brushing past her without apparent concern on his face. His heart rate betrayed his nervousness.
“Last time, the Great King forced me. Not this time. I’m not going to do it.”
Devon paused, turning slightly to frown in her direction. “You will and I’ll tell you why. First, we have another demon we can use if need be,” he said, contradicting his earlier statement about not using her at all. “Second, I still have something you want. If you think that there was only the one loophole in our agreement, you’re fooling yourself.”
Qrycx opened her mouth, but Devon held up his tentacle. The same tentacle that Qrycx had hanging off the top of her head. She glared at it almost harder than she had been glaring at Devon.
“Third, you know what we have been pulling out of Hell lately. I don’t know what is going on down there. You don’t know either. But complain and I’ll banish you to figure it out for yourself.”
Without a second glance, Devon pushed past Qrycx and moved outside.
Eva gave the carnivean a sorry shrug as she moved on, but didn’t really feel bad for the demon. It wasn’t like she was losing anything. Catherine might have helped to create the ritual circle, but Devon wouldn’t have let anything happen to his precious research subject. Catherine couldn’t have changed it to kill them or drain them of their demonicness, if that was a thing. And Qrycx didn’t have anything better to do.
Qrycx didn’t respond save to shy away from Eva. That might have something to do with her newfound power—power that Eva didn’t actually feel herself, having to take Catherine’s word for it. Of course, it might also have something to do with Arachne hovering over Eva’s shoulder, glaring at the carnivean.
Arachne had killed Qrycx twice, after all.
Despite her protests, Qrycx followed along a short distance away from Eva as they made their way back to the ritual circle.
“Eva,” Catherine snapped as they approached. She stood right in the middle of one of the donor spots of the circle. “Remove those scraps of cloth and take a seat here.”
With a slight roll of her eyes, Eva proceeded to do as Catherine instructed. As she did so, Catherine went around getting both Arachne and Qrycx into position. Devon hovered about, checking the entire ritual circle.
As soon as everything was in place, Catherine sat down in the center point and Devon stepped out of the circle to stand just at the edge. “Everything ready?”
“If you didn’t find any problems,” Catherine said. As soon as Devon shook his head, she nodded her head. “Then get on with it.”
Devon glared for just a moment before kneeling down and placing his hands at the edge of the circle.
Almost immediately, Eva felt a tingle around her throat. A trickle of blood ran from major veins in her neck out towards a single point just at the nape of her neck. She quickly grabbed her hair and pulled it around her shoulders just as the blood sprayed out into the air as a fine mist.
The pain that she had been somewhat apprehensive about was nowhere to be seen.
Catherine, unfortunately, couldn’t say the same. There was a brief silence as the blood gathered overhead before Catherine started grinding her teeth. Another few seconds and she started screaming.
Eva couldn’t say for how long Catherine screamed. Sitting in one spot with nothing to do for hours while the ritual progressed had a way of messing with her sense of time.
All she knew was that at some point, Catherine’s screams stopped. She was still sitting upright. She was still awake.
And she started laughing.
Uncomfortable Attentions
“Welcome. To some of you, this will be a welcome back. To others, an initial greeting.
“This year, we will be making history with our students and among other schools around the country. We will be blah blah blah.”
