Devon scowled as he stared at the three– No– Four demons. Catherine knelt in one circle. For the other two slots, Devon hadn’t bothered with summoning any demons. The carnivean took one spot. The waxy ruax took the other, forced into its place by Devon’s domination. He didn’t want to use the ruax, and hadn’t used any dominated demon for any previous treatments, because of the concentration it took to keep it sitting still. Concentration he could be using to watch Eva.
There wasn’t all that much to watch. At the end of her previous treatment, Eva had the beginnings of horns poking out of her forehead, right around her hairline. Two bumps on her back that might have been the sprouting of wings had manifested as well. As of right now, several minutes into the ritual, neither had changed much at all. Her hair, short though it was, still covered what might be horns. Nothing had poked through yet. Her back was utterly smooth without even the hint of budding bat wings.
Again, Devon wasn’t sure whether that was the machinations of Powers, something with the ritual involving Powers, or even Eva herself. For all Devon knew, Eva had been capable of sprouting horns and wings for months and simply hadn’t noticed. Just as Catherine hid them from view while masquerading as a human, Eva could be keeping them suppressed.
Which all cycled back into his conclusion that Eva wouldn’t become a proper demon until she thought of herself as such completely and thoroughly. An idea Devon had considered was that she had nubs of horns simply because she thought that her treatments should have some alteration to her physical features. Her teeth and tongue were definitely inhuman, but they were different. Something easily hid simply by not opening her mouth.
Her eyes would have been a different matter entirely. Devon had been expecting them to change and had even gone out of his way to get her contact lenses that she could use to hide said changes. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen how that played out. Her eyes had been plucked from her skull and eventually ended up replaced by the carnivean’s eyes.
All the more reason to try again on a less adventurous test subject. Though to be true to the original tests, he would have to use the original treatment circle. However, it would be far easier to keep a test subject contained for two years while he used the version developed with Catherine’s aid rather than the one he had started Eva out on several years ago.
Slowly, the ritual circle wound down. The light in the lines of the circle started to dim and peter off. None of the demons looked altered at all, not that the three of them should have changed.
The moment the ritual finished, Devon uttered a few words and banished the ruax back to Hell. It had served its purpose well enough over the past few months, but the strain on Devon’s mind while he was dominating it simply wasn’t worth the effort anymore. The only reason he had put up with it as long as he had was because he hadn’t been able to summon a replacement. That and the solitary confinement building offered breaks where he could release his domination and rest for a short time.
He considered banishing the carnivean as well.
Later. Its…
Instead, Devon stalked around the circle. Though his focus was on Eva, he paid a little attention to Catherine as the succubus got to her feet.
“I can’t tell the difference between now and before the ritual,” she whispered as she moved closer to Devon.
“Eva didn’t get stronger? More demonic?”
“I didn’t say that.” Catherine crossed her arms, curling her fingers over her elbows. “Would you notice the difference before and after dumping a glass of water into an ocean?”
Devon ran his fingers through his beard, making an idle note that he should shave or at least trim it one of these days; it was starting to get out of hand. In the center point of the ritual circle, Eva lolled around. Still conscious, which Devon found slightly surprising. Treatments usually made her pass out. It looked like a precarious thing though, as if she could topple over at any moment.
For a few moments, he just watched her struggle with herself. She slowly stabilized into a more lucid state. Her eyes grew sharper and the stubs of her limbs sprouted black blood to support her. It took several minutes, but she eventually clambered to her feet.
“Any changes?” Devon asked as soon as she looked steady enough.
Rather than answer, she moved one of her liquid hands to her forehead and started caressing it. Not the horns hidden in her hair, but just above her eyebrow like she had a headache. “A bit woozy,” she said, taking in a deep breath of air. “Did it finish properly? Or did you interrupt it.”
“No interruptions.”
“Oh good. I was a bit concerned that you had stopped it out of fear for my wellbeing. Glad I didn’t die again.”
Devon narrowed his eyes, glancing aside to Catherine only to receive a shrug. “That was a concern?”
