Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

incantation for raising the demon almost two hundred years ago in the Temple of the Seal.”
    “Oh,” Joshua said, “so that’s why they call it that. I thought it had something to do with one of the barky sea animals.”
    “I had to become an acolyte and study with the priests there for years before I was allowed access to the seal, but what is a few years against immortality. I was given immortality, but only so long as the demon walks the earth. And as long as he is on earth he must be fed, Joshua. That’s the curse that goes with being this destroyer’s master. He must be fed.”
    “I don’t understand, he feeds on your will?”
    “No, he feeds on human beings. It is only my will that keeps him in check, or it was until I was able to build the iron room and put golden symbols on the wall that would hold the demon. I’ve been able to keep him in the fortress I made him build for twenty years now, and it has been some respite. Until then he was with me every minute, everywhere I went.”
    “Didn’t that attract enemies to you?”
    “No. Unless he is in his eating form, I am the only one who can see Catch. In his noneating form he’s small, the size of a child, and he can do little harm (except for being incredibly irritating). When he feeds, however, he’s fully ten cubits tall, and he can tear a man in half with the swipe of his claw. No, enemies are not a problem, Joshua. Why do you think there are no guards at the fortress? In those years before the girls came to live there, some bandits attacked. What happened to them is legend now in Kabul, and no one has tried since. The problem is that if my will were to fail, he would be set loose again on the world as he was in the time of Solomon. I don’t know what could stop him.”
    “And you can’t send him back to hell?” Joshua asked.
    “I can with the seal and the right incantation, which is why I was going to the Temple of the Seal. Which is why you are here. If you are the Messiah predicted in Isaiah, and on the clay tablets in the temple, then you are the direct descendant of David, and therefore Solomon. I believe that you can send the demon back and keep me from suffering the fate of his return.”
    “Why, what happens to you if he is sent back to hell?”
    “I will assume the aspect of my true age. Which I would guess, by this time, would be dust. But you have the gift of immortality. You can stop that from happening.”
    “So this demon from hell is loose, and we are returning to the fortress without the Seal of Solomon or this incantation to do exactly what?”
    “I hope to bring him back under control of my will. The room has always held him before. I didn’t know, I truly didn’t know…”
    “Know what?”
    “That my will had been broken by my feelings for you.”
    “You love me?”
    “How was I to know?” The magus sighed.
    And Joshua laughed here, despite the dire circumstances. “Of course you do, but it is not me, it’s what I represent. I am not sure yet what I am to do, but I know that I am here in the name of my father. You love life so much that you would brave hell to hold on to it, it’s only natural that you would love the one who gave you that life.”
    “Then you can banish the demon and preserve my life?”
    “Of course not, I’m just saying that I understand how you feel.”

    I don’t know where she found the strength, but the diminutive Joy came from behind me and hurled the heavy lance with as much power as any soldier. (I felt my own knees starting to buckle in the face of the demon.) The bronze tip of the lance seemed to find its way between two of the monster’s armored chest scales and drove itself a span deep under the weight of the heavy shaft. The demon gasped, and roared, opening his massive maw to show rows of saw-edged teeth. He grabbed the shaft of the lance and attempted to pull it out, his huge biceps quivering with the strain. He looked sadly down at the spear, then at Joy, and said, “Oh, foul woe upon you, you have kilt me most dead,” then he fell back and the floor shook with the impact of his huge body.
    “What’d he say, what’d he say?” Joy asked, digging her nails into my shoulder. The demon had spoken in Hebrew.
    “He said that you killed him.”
    “Well, duh,” said the concubine. (Strangely enough, “duh” sounds exactly the same in all languages.)
    I had started to inch forward to see if anyone was still alive in the girls’ quarters when the demon sat up.