The Demons of King Solomon Read online

  “Pryss and Jicala are a legitimate part of my character’s storyline. We’ve been water-bonded in-game long before I met you,” he said. She hadn’t noticed when he’d stopped typing, but he now stood right next to her. She scrubbed the pan a little harder, not quite flinching when he reached for her wrist. He caught her look and turned away with a sound of disgust. “If you’re going to be a pussy about it,” he muttered. A moment later, he was right back at his machine, adjusting his ponytail as he slipped the headset over his ear. Heat washed over her face and arms as she tried to understand what she’d said or done wrong. She hadn’t meant to pull away—he had to know that.

  “Maybe I can read over your shoulder while you guys do your thing?” she ventured. A little precariously, she balanced the spaghetti pot over the other dishes crowding the drying rack, waiting to gauge his reaction.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” he snapped. Before she could frame an answer, he bent to his screen and started typing. It was only text and pixels, but still, she felt a stab of jealousy. She told herself she was being stupid. Her romance novels were just as steamy, and none of that was cheating. They’d discussed this before.

  Maybe if she hadn’t flinched? But he’d surprised her.

  “Is it okay if I take the laptop?” she asked. “I’ll go play in our room and give you a little privacy.”

  Eyes intent on the scrolling letters in his chat box, Hunter didn’t even answer. She dried her pruny fingers on a dishcloth, then took the laptop anyway. As she closed the door to their bedroom, she heard the sound of his zipper.

  Just words on a screen.

  The acid reflux burning at the back of her throat tasted like surrender.

  ***

  The demon was waiting exactly as she’d left it, huddled in upon itself in the circle of summoning. The spirit-stone that she’d spent the better part of two weeks searching for in-game lay on the bricks beside it, its pearlescent surface blackened and all its magic spent. She’d had a feeling it was a one-use item, although none of her Google searches on the game had been able to definitively confirm this suspicion. If any players but her had managed to activate a spirit-stone before, none of them had written about the experience.

  Lazy bastards, she thought, though mostly she was picturing Hunter slouched in front of his gaming rig, one hand down his cargo shorts. It’s not cheating, she reminded herself, and focused on the wealth of imagery she had in front of her.

  Slender and flawless, her purple-skinned avatar sat crossed-legged across from the demon’s summoning circle. With the laptop perched on her belly, Rashida spread her fingers over the keys, ready to bring her alter-ego back to life. Then she halted. This was stupid. There wasn’t even anybody on the other end. Hunter was right about that. Whimsy was supposed to be an interactive game, with all of the characters and even monsters played by other users, but the game’s population had seriously declined. A lot of characters were nothing but empty pixels—bots, at best, repetitive and stilted in their dialogue.

  She tabbed out, careful not to close Whimsy completely. The laptop was loaded with games, but all of them were first-person shooters or player versus player arena types, and she really wasn’t into any of those. On the nightstand, a solitary paperback with a cracked spine beckoned with its dog-eared pages. But she’d read that story so often she could recite the next line before she finished turning the page. Briefly, she poked around on YouTube, but nothing grabbed her attention. She wanted a good story. All the other books were out in the living room with Hunter and his guild.

  Pushing the laptop aside, she heaved off the bed and opened the door just a crack. Except for the spectral blue flicker of his screen, the rest of the apartment was dark. Beyond the expansive barrier of his twenty-nine inch monitor, she couldn’t see anything but the top of Hunter’s head, but she knew that hitchy pattern to his breathing. She was loath to intrude upon his role-play—it was obviously going good on his end.

  I bet he won’t even notice me if I walk out there.

  That thought made her retreat instantly into their room. The sour sting at the back of her throat blossomed into the pain of heartburn. Stupid red sauce. But she knew it was more than that, and it had been building. They were both gamers and spent most of their free time behind a screen. While they’d been in the same guild, that hadn’t felt like distance, but now… now they were spinning away into separate orbits.

  Maybe she could talk to Hunter about the ERP and how he was excluding her—but not tonight. He’d be pissed as hell if she interrupted.

  After coffee tomorrow, she thought. He’ll be in his best mood after coffee.

  Softly closing the door, Rashida reclaimed the laptop and dropped onto the bed. The mattress sagged in the middle—neither she nor Hunter were tiny individuals—and it took a lot of fluffing the pillows to make herself comfortable. Grabbing her earbuds off the nightstand, she opened the tab for Whimsy again and tried to sink into the scene before her—the underground chamber, the flicker of candleshine against rough-hewn walls, the steady drip of moisture from the haunted lake above. She flexed her fingers.

  “By what name shall I call you?” she typed. And in the realm of Whimsy, where all things were possible, her character Avila spoke the words in a bubble of purple text that matched her magic-infused elven skin.

  The demon’s head snapped up, a cascade of black hair sweeping stiffly away from unexpectedly human features. He was both beautiful and terrible, with red, slitted eyes and golden horns and a mouth pursed for kissing. “You who have summoned me hence should know the answer to that question.” No sound issued through the system to give life to his voice—Whimsy was free to play and voice actors were an expense the developers refused to indulge—but Rashida had imagination enough to hear him through the text. Deep notes, velvety and resonant. Nothing at all like Hunter’s.

  “Nevertheless, I demand that you confirm,” she typed. She made Avila stand and pace throughout the chamber, ever careful not to cross the boundaries of the circle. With all the steps of the spell already enacted, she didn’t know what could possibly go wrong at this point, but it still felt right to use caution. She didn’t want to have to hunt down another spirit-stone to start all over again. Fingers swift upon the keyboard, she entered the code that made her character haughtily toss long waves of emerald hair. She loved that emote. “I am the one who wields the power here. You must give me answer.”

  Did the image of the demon smile, then? Perhaps it did, and perhaps that, too, was her gift of imagination. She was so immersed, she could almost feel the damp of the underground chamber clinging to her skin. The steady drip-drip grew louder in her earbuds along with the subtle crackle of the candle flames.

  “I am called Marchosias, lady, and I am at your service now and for however long you may wish.” On the screen, the image of the demon bowed, deep enough that the tattered ends of his wings swept the rough stones of the floor.

  “You do me obeisance, as is proper, demon-spawn,” she wrote. “But what am I to do with you?” Avila halted awkwardly in her circuit, nearly face-planting into a wall as Rashida fumbled with the track pad. Movement was so much easier with the mouse on her desktop. Quickly, she got the character back on track, but her immersion was broken. Piping words through her fur-clad digital proxy, Rashida made fun of herself, knowing Hunter would do the same if he saw her trying to roleplay with the AI. “Here am I, talking with a being that is mere illusion.” She made Avila do the hair-flip emote again, though this time she felt it ironic. “You are not present in this chamber any more than I am, so what could you possibly do for me, demon Marchosias?”

  Unexpectedly, the figure at the center of the circle threw his head back and laughed. It was different from the laugh emotes that she’d seen on similarly built characters—and she thought she’d seen them all. “You think I’m a program,” he wrote. The words hung white-on-black in his demon-cursive chat bubble.

  “Your not?” she asked, surprised enough th
at she didn’t catch the typo until after hitting ENTER. Immediately, her ears burned—she hated gaffes like that—so she quickly corrected herself, typing, <<*you’re. stupid fingers>>

  His response was just as swift.

  <>

  Her fingers stilled upon the keys and she read that short missive several times over. The carroted brackets indicated that what he said was out of character—in roleplay terms, OOC—and the simple fact that he knew when to use those brackets made her believe that there was a real person on the other side of the screen. But she could hardly credit her good fortune. She’d been playing Whimsy for months, ever since they’d kicked her from Hunter’s guild, and in all that time she’d run into only six or seven other people that she’d been certain were players in real-time. Each of those had been cliquish as hell, intent upon their own business, and unwilling to stop for more than a few moments to interact.

  Character briefly forgotten, she left Avila to stand staring at the demon across the binding magic of the circle. The avatar was placid. Her own heart hammered.

  <> she asked.

  <>

  <> she wrote, adding <>

  <> he admitted.

  <>

  His character did a saucy little half-turn—another gesture Rashida hadn’t realized was available in the game. She was so looking for these commands later. Avila needed them in her life. Then the demon repeated his bow from earlier, deep and courtly.

  <>

  <> she typed, and a smile teased her lips in the real world. Beyond the bedroom door, Hunter’s chair creaked noisily as he shifted position. Rashida could hear that and other, subtler noises even through her earbuds. She cranked the volume. The ambient sounds of the ritual chamber, plus occasional strands of haunting music, helped everything else around her disappear.

  The laptop was regrettably tiny, and she had to bring the screen closer to better study the details of his avatar. The developers of Whimsy had put a lot of effort into character design, and their demons were no exception. The shading was perfect, every muscle visible beneath his gleaming, tawny skin. He had a well-developed six pack and even a little belly button. A light dusting of hair darkened his chest and, even on the lower resolution of the laptop, it was possible to see each individual strand decorating his pectorals.

  <> she said.

  <> he replied and hit the command that made his character preen. That one, she knew—it was the hair-flip on Avila, but varied between the races. For the demon, the character ran one hand through his hair, puffing out his chest. He finished by flexing his wings. Uplit by the screen in the narrow bedroom, Rashida’s smile broadened to a delighted grin.

  <> she wrote.

  They typed like that well into the early hours of the morning, chatting out of character and comparing everything they liked and didn’t like about the game. Shortly after three, she had to log off—she couldn’t keep her eyes open. He resumed his character of Marchosias long enough to bid her farewell. He made the avatar bow and reach for her hand from inside the circle, but Avila hadn’t released him yet, so a magic force-field crackled to keep them apart. Staying in character, he emoted around the limitation, having Marchosias mime the act of kissing from a distance so that closer contact became both a tease and a promise. The language he used was lush and archaic, and inspired a guilty little thrill that traveled through her to settle, clenching pleasantly, in her pelvis.

  Closing out of Whimsy, she powered down the laptop and scooched over to her side of the bed. Images of the tawny-skinned demon and his emerald-haired mistress chased her into sleep, and she dreamed vividly of Avila and Marchosias. When Hunter finally stumbled from the living room, the dreams changed and turned sour. She felt she was awake beside him as a winged wolf-thing nosed open the door to the bedroom. On a lashing serpent’s tail, it slithered to the foot of the mattress. Its breath was fire, and she jolted awake when it called her by name.

  If not for the nightmare, she would never have seen the time. Hunter had stayed up gaming without her until nearly seven-thirty.

  ***

  The next day, she swore she would confront him. She got up around noon and started cleaning everything. As she rehearsed how she would start and finish the needed conversation, the chores helped soothe her. In between unpleasant thoughts of fights past and present, scintillating dream-memories flashed like precious gems—vivid snippets of the demon’s muscled torso, the grand sweep of his wings, and Avila’s fur-trimmed jerkin sliding noiselessly to the stones. When fragments of the nightmare threatened to intrude, she shoved them firmly to the back of her mind. The fire-breathing wolf-thing was probably some screwed-up manifestation of her anger at Hunter anyway.

  Her boyfriend didn’t drag himself awake until after three, and when he did, he was starving. Naked except his boxers, he headed straight for the kitchen, frowning when he saw nothing on the stove.

  “Where’s breakfast?” he asked.

  She put the Lysol wipes aside, sticky residue clinging to her fingers. She wiped them on her pants. “I was waiting until you got up,” she said.

  “Well,” he huffed. “I’m up.”

  She reached to open the cupboards. Half a box of pancake mix sat behind loose packets of ramen and instant oatmeal. They really needed to get groceries. “Did you want anything in particular? The eggs are all gone.”

  “What the hell?” he demanded. “Didn’t we just buy two dozen?” He shoved his head into the refrigerator, searching. The cabbagy stink of rotting take-out wafted around him.

  “That was last week,” she reminded, framing the correction gently, knowing he didn’t like her contradictions. But he slammed the door to the fridge so hard, three of her decorative magnets clattered to the floor. The biggest of them shattered—a lavish dahlia painted by her mother. He kicked half the pieces under the fridge as he pushed out of the kitchen. He didn’t stop to retrieve them.

  Dropping into his gaming chair, he double-tapped an icon and the opening fanfare for Blasteroid played. In that moment, she realized she hated that music. “I bet you ate already,” he called. Straining to reach the broken pieces underneath the fridge, she pretended not to hear him. With the whir of the motor so close to her ears, it was easy. She pushed back onto hands and knees, grabbing the counter as she pulled herself upright. The shattered pieces of dahlia crumbled against her skin, little flecks of red paint and white plaster sticking among the creases of her palm. She didn’t think there was a way to fix it.

  “Of course she ate,” he muttered. “Bitch always eats.” The milk from her cold cereal curdled in her belly, and she surprised herself by reaching up and slamming the doors to the cupboards.

  Hunter looked up, as shocked as she was by her sudden fury.

  “We’ve got oatmeal,” she said, voice loud and flat. She barely recognized it. “It’s instant. I’m going for groceries.”

  “You’re not taking my car.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  He blinked. The headset coiled around his ear like an alien parasite. She could hear the other guildies buzzing through the wires like little flies, each demanding some explanation. Hunter waved a hand to shush them, as if any of them could see the stupid gesture.

  “It’s over a mile,” he said.

  “I don’t care.”

  And she didn’t.

  ***

  The Oklahoma heat crushed against her like a hard, hot hand. She was soaked and stinking by the time she got back home, hair frizzed in every possible direction. But her head felt clearer. This was not working.

  It was a liberating revelation. Some of it was her fault, surely. She was terrible at making her point when things went wrong, she got so emotional. And maybe if she’d realized the problems sooner, she could have worked harder to fix them. S
he’d rushed too fast into the relationship. Maybe Hunter felt as trapped as she did.

  And maybe he doesn’t give a shit so long as he’s getting something, she thought bitterly.

  The grocery bags cut into her hands as she shouldered through the door. Hunter hunkered over his keyboard, fingers urgently tapping commands as explosions blazed across his monitor. He didn’t move to help her, and she didn’t ask, just swept into the little kitchen and started shoving things into the refrigerator. Milk, bread, eggs, a block of cheese, and a pack of chocolate-covered donuts. Fuck him and his cracks about her weight. She was going to eat them all and it would be glorious.

  She dug out a spare mouse for the laptop and shut herself in the bedroom. If Hunter noticed, he said nothing. Fine by her. Whimsy beckoned.

  Marchosias stood in the circle exactly as she’d left him, golden skin gleaming in the light of eternal candles.

  <> she typed, afraid that he’d simply left his computer logged in. It would suck if he was away from the keyboard—she really needed the escape. A slow bead of sweat crawled the back of her scalp as the seconds dragged. She stared fixedly at the screen, willing him to be there. Finally, his character wiggled his fingers in greeting.

  <> he joked.

  She loosed a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. More damp trickled on her forehead, and she scrubbed furiously, drying her fingers on the comforter.

  <> she typed. <>

  <> The demon avatar surged forward but was stopped by the energy of the magical barrier. A cascade of blue and silver light shimmered between their characters, distorting his features.

  <>

  <> he typed. Was that pleading? If it was, she liked it. Some of the unpleasantness with Hunter faded as she considered how far she could push this.