let me hear your voice tonight (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai) wrote2010-07-23 10:17 pm
alexseanchai) wrote2010-07-23 10:17 pm
Entry tags:
Mumblety-peg
Title: Mumblety-peg
Rating: PG
Summary: Bela has a reputation to uphold and a few demons to kill.
Pairings: None.
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 450
Bela likes to give the impression that all she has, she stole, or got paid in exchange for something she stole. Her reputation is a valuable commodity in itself. It's not true—she has plenty of investments, mostly in real estate, energy, and energy efficiency; energy efficiency will always make money eventually—but she's better off if everyone thinks it's true.
Her reputation and half a million is what gets a knife said to kill demons into Bela's hands. "I'll have the knife either way," she tells its owner. "The only question is, do you come out a half million richer, or poorer by however much you choose to spend to try to stop me?" She's dealt with him before, acquiring something for him that was damn near impossible to steal, so he has reason to think she's not bluffing. (She is.)
Bela tracks down a demon in DC who's dripping temptation in the ears of several members of Congress. The knife works.
Bela picks a convenient crossroads in the middle of nowhere and digs a ditch around it, filling the ditch with salt except for a few centimeters at one point, then covers the salt with dirt. She summons the demon with whom she dealt at fourteen, and the moment the demon appears, she kicks an iron bar into place, trapping the demon. "Let's renegotiate," Bela says, holding up the knife. "You free me from my contract, I free you from the circle. Or I die next year and you die right now."
The demon is probably right that threatening her to get leverage over the holder of Bela's contract is like threatening a Wal-Mart cashier to get leverage over a Walton. Bela kills her anyway.
A few months later, a devil's gate opens. That's the rumor, at least. Bela spends some time in Tallahassee investigating the demonic-sounding clouds that appeared over that city, leaving the knife safely in Queens—she doesn't intend to come face to face with any demons, and she cannot risk losing the knife before she finds the holder of her contract.
When Bela gets back to her apartment, she watches the security tapes on fast-forward, rewatches part of it at normal speed, and fires everyone responsible for this building's security. On the tape, a young woman (white, blonde, twenties, about one-seventy cm) walked right in the door, stopped, looked around, tore up a section of carpet, scratched through the devil's trap underneath with an engraved penknife, and applied brute force to everything else Bela had protecting the knife. Then she turned to the camera and waved, her eyes demon-black. "Don't worry," she said. "This can't kill Lilith anyway."
"Lilith, is it?" Bela murmurs. "Well well."
Rating: PG
Summary: Bela has a reputation to uphold and a few demons to kill.
Pairings: None.
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 450
Bela likes to give the impression that all she has, she stole, or got paid in exchange for something she stole. Her reputation is a valuable commodity in itself. It's not true—she has plenty of investments, mostly in real estate, energy, and energy efficiency; energy efficiency will always make money eventually—but she's better off if everyone thinks it's true.
Her reputation and half a million is what gets a knife said to kill demons into Bela's hands. "I'll have the knife either way," she tells its owner. "The only question is, do you come out a half million richer, or poorer by however much you choose to spend to try to stop me?" She's dealt with him before, acquiring something for him that was damn near impossible to steal, so he has reason to think she's not bluffing. (She is.)
Bela tracks down a demon in DC who's dripping temptation in the ears of several members of Congress. The knife works.
Bela picks a convenient crossroads in the middle of nowhere and digs a ditch around it, filling the ditch with salt except for a few centimeters at one point, then covers the salt with dirt. She summons the demon with whom she dealt at fourteen, and the moment the demon appears, she kicks an iron bar into place, trapping the demon. "Let's renegotiate," Bela says, holding up the knife. "You free me from my contract, I free you from the circle. Or I die next year and you die right now."
The demon is probably right that threatening her to get leverage over the holder of Bela's contract is like threatening a Wal-Mart cashier to get leverage over a Walton. Bela kills her anyway.
A few months later, a devil's gate opens. That's the rumor, at least. Bela spends some time in Tallahassee investigating the demonic-sounding clouds that appeared over that city, leaving the knife safely in Queens—she doesn't intend to come face to face with any demons, and she cannot risk losing the knife before she finds the holder of her contract.
When Bela gets back to her apartment, she watches the security tapes on fast-forward, rewatches part of it at normal speed, and fires everyone responsible for this building's security. On the tape, a young woman (white, blonde, twenties, about one-seventy cm) walked right in the door, stopped, looked around, tore up a section of carpet, scratched through the devil's trap underneath with an engraved penknife, and applied brute force to everything else Bela had protecting the knife. Then she turned to the camera and waved, her eyes demon-black. "Don't worry," she said. "This can't kill Lilith anyway."
"Lilith, is it?" Bela murmurs. "Well well."
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Glad you enjoyed!