Inside it was a large black sheet, larger than a double bedsheet, a large container of salt and two candlesticks with candles. She was careful to lay the sheet down on the floor without wrinkles or folds and then she took off her clothes and placed them in a pile in the corner of the room. Ange was a little embarrassed but was becoming far too tired to worry about her best friend’s strange behaviour. Dusty went into the bathroom and took a very quick but thorough shower and came back all clean but with damp hair.
The sheet had a very faint outline of a circle and a star in the centre of it and Dusty traced the outline in salt. She opened the container and allowed the salt to fall in a steady stream onto the sheet in a perfect circle. Just before the circle was completed, she beckoned Ange to step forward and only completed the circle once she was inside it. Then she drew the star-shape to complete the pentagram. Dusty told Ange to sit down in the middle of the star where there was a large clear patch, free of salt. Then Dusty placed the two candlesticks on either side of Ange and lit the candles. When Ange was comfortable, Dusty stepped out of the pentagram and muttered a lot of words that Ange didn’t recognise. After a short time, Ange didn’t notice that Dusty was speaking words she didn’t understand, she drifted into a very deep and restful sleep, still in the sitting position.
When Ange had dropped to sleep, Dusty picked up her tankbag again and removed a very sharp-looking knife. It would seem to be a ceremonial dagger except that the edge was glinting as it was moved. There was nothing ceremonial about the dagger; it was a weapon and an effective one at that. Dusty was still naked and she opened out the sheets that Ange had stripped from her bed only a few hours before. She folded them so that the majority of the sticky wet mess was on the inside and then sat upon the pile of bedding, she was still naked and she was exceptionally calm. She watched her friend recharge her batteries in a deep and enchanted sleep and she waited.
The clock on the bedside table that had been taken out to the top of the landing ticked and Dusty could see it from where she sat. The hands were crawling their way towards three a.m. and the Witching Hour. Dusty made herself ready. From the ceiling in one corner a dark patch spread. It looked very much like damp or mould, dark grey with patches of black. From that patch a figure appeared and dropped to the bedroom floor. Dusty recognised it at once.
“Impundulu, we meet again.”
The figure wore his seducing image but Dusty was not fooled by his Glamour. Her eyes were demon’s eyes and she had performed the correct rituals to enable her to see past his enchantment and she saw him in his true form, repulsive and grotesque.
“Dusty the demon hunter, what are you doing here? I do hope that you’ve come to offer me a threesome?” His words dripped honey and were meant to antagonise her but he tried only in a flippant manner because he realised that she was not going to fall into his traps designed to make her angry and mentally off-balance.
“I suppose I should have realised that it was you that had come for her. You are by far the most powerful Incubus and I should have guessed that only one so powerful as you could bewitch her and toy with her for so long without killing her.” Dusty played her own game and she was far better at it than Impundulu was. He did not realise that she was flattering him and making him preen and prance in his vanity. He did not realise that she had his scent on her from sitting on the bedsheets and therefore he was attracted to her by the smell. He also did not realise that she had stood for a reason and that reason was not to give him the full view of her trim and supple body but it was to entice him into the bathroom.
Impundulu followed Dusty without a glance at Ange and he sniffed the air as he went across the landing. He was entranced by her swaying hips as she walked slowly and seductively before him. When he had followed her through the bathroom door into the dark room, she pushed it closed and turned to face the Incubus. “Now, Impundulu; watch.” Dusty pulled the light cord and the fluorescent lights illuminated the bathroom. Impundulu did not understand for a moment and his demon eyes were dazzled by the bright light reflecting off the gleaming tiles and the mirror facing him... and the mirror behind him on the back of the bathroom door. He was caught between two mirrors and in them; he could see his image from the front and the back views. He could also see his Glamour image and his true image and he screeched in fury.
“You have tricked me you traitorous bitch! You have trapped me!”
“Yes I have and now, I intend to send you back to the hell-hole that spawned you.” She pushed the demon hard in the middle of what passed for a chest and he stumbled backwards towards the mirror on the bathroom door. As he passed through the glass and into the world beyond, his claw reached out and grabbed for Dusty. He could not get a proper grip on her because she had no clothes on but he had grasped for the hand that held the knife and he managed to get purchase on her fist and he desperately clung on, dragging her with him through the mirror and into his world.
He let her go as he landed on the ash floor, because she had twisted her wrist and the lethal blade had gashed his arm to the bone. As she landed gracefully, she instantly clothed herself in her usual black jeans, black boots, black t-shirt and black leather bike jacket. He was again furious when he realised that she was not a stranger to his world, she was used to the Astral Plane and knew very well how her powers of self-perception worked.
Instead of attacking her, Impundulu took to his heels and fled deeper into the ravaged lands that he called home, holding his arm and dripping black blood on the surface of the pathway.
She could see into the distance where Impundulu was heading and she was in no particular hurry to follow him there. Ange would be safe for a good few hours yet and so Dusty took a look around and got her bearings before making a move.
She saw the Ash Desert stretching out interminably to her left and she would rather have followed Impundulu through that harsh and unforgiving landscape than to the Wraith Mountains where he had taken off to.
Sighing, Dusty took to the air and moved upward. Impundulu was visible against the dark red of the ash road; he was a pale and bright thing against the background. She did not understand why he had decided to run rather than fly until she heard the caw of a massive vulture above her. Impundulu had set his familiar on her and it had brought some friends! Dusty looked above her and saw that the vulture was accompanied by hundreds, if not thousands of smaller birds. There was a variation of all shapes and sizes following her but as she watched, her fear melted away because the smaller birds were flying lower than the vulture and they were obscuring the vulture’s view of her. As soon as Dusty was certain that the vulture could not see her for the mass of birds between it and her, she slowed in her flight path and hovered for a while until the birds had all gone past.
To be on the safe side, Dusty dropped to the ground and changed the colour of her clothing to a more camouflaged red. Not only would the vulture not be able to spot her from a great distance, neither would Impundulu or any other demons.
As she walked, she had time to think on Impundulu and his motives, not to mention his familiar that Dusty had just avoided.
Impundulu was one of the more nasty Incubi of his genre. It was said that when he seduced a woman and she gave birth to one of his offspring, it would sooner or later, become a vampire. To most people that Dusty knew, that piece of mythology would have been laughed at but she knew it to be very true and had had the misfortune to meet up with more than a few of Impundulu’s wretched progeny. Fortunately, the legends of vampiric beings were also true and there were a number of ways to kill the vampire offspring. They seemed to be not as powerful as their sire nor as powerful as they could have been for though they were immortal, they could also be slain – and often were, sometimes accidentally.
The vulture familiar was a nasty piece of work though; it attacked and killed any lover of the one that the Incubus seduced whether by instruction from its master or for the sheer joy of it. Dusty knew that she’d have to watch out for that if she were to make it back to Ange in her
bedroom. If she didn’t make it back, she presumed that Ange would eventually wake up on her own, but that could take days – or she may never wake up, not without the proper incantations.
Ooh bad idea, giving herself bad thoughts in a bad place. Dusty focussed on her destination. The Wraith Mountains were dead ahead and she could still see Impundulu running towards them.
“Why is he running and not flying? It can’t be because of his familiar, it would protect him, wouldn’t it?” She said out loud, if for no other reason than just to break the deathly and ancient silence.
Dusty picked up her pace too and ran. Her Demon side took over on the Astral Plane and she was thankful for that. Her human lungs would not have coped well with the sulphurous air and the constant ash clouds wafting across her path. Sometimes the ash was so thick that she lost sight of Impundulu.
Dusty was gaining on the Incubus as he reached the foothills of the Wraith Mountains but she could still see him from time to time as he struggled over the loose rocks and boulders. Again Dusty wondered why on earth he wasn’t using his ability to fly.