DEMON OF THE COIN
The yellow fog had a putrid scent. It smelt of rotting leaves and rotten eggs. The girls coughed in reaction, and as they coughed a voice pierced the mist:
"The ancient salamander of legend speaks not of just a small lizard-like amphibian, but a creature forged by flame and living in the fire" announced a harsh voice. "Had you been cognizant to the legend, you would have known what I am. But you didn't, and now you have released me!"
Sarah and Erica looked at one another, and then looked to the dark shape that seemed to have formed from just near the coin.
The fog in the room finally cleared, and the apparition of the man on the coin solidified.
He was dressed in a dark suit in style a century ago, and had sharp features, but otherwise would have been considered a classically handsome man in his early twenties. Except for two things. The skin had an odd mold on it in places, as if the tarnish from the coin had remained on the man. The bright red eyes, the window to whatever there was in place of a soul, stared hungrily at the girls.
"Quit the melodrama" said Erica at last. "If you are from the coin, you've been there for awhile."
"Watch out, Erica" said Sarah, who moved back. "Red eyes mean trouble. We're talking about a demon or a witch."
"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah" said the man in an ironical tone. "How could you dismiss me as just another demon? In return for dismissing me from my prison of a hundred and fifty years, I'm here to grant your wish?"
"Grant a wish?" asked Erica, looking cagily at the man. "What are you supposed to be, a genie?"
"I am the rarest type of demon, a demon with a corporeal form that allows me to haunt the world without possessing the body of a living being" said the thing, pompously, as he stretched out his fingers. "You have met one of my order before, Valerie Mudrap."
"And that's supposed to impress us?" said Sarah warily. "I don't want anything from whatever you are. I'm not following you through a door in the floor or anywhere else to get a wish."
Sarah, remembering the downfall of Mudrap, considered using a force on the demon, but by merely holding up its hand, the demon obscured itself behind a translucent wall of the foul-smelling mist.
"You'll find that you won't be able to pierce my shield" said the man. "Until now, I had been stripped of all my powers but for adjusting my coin to fit the time. My prison even looked like a penny for decades in the vain hope someone would throw it in a fountain. But always stamped with the salamander to warn as it like me was born in fire."
"Then your greatest enemy has been inflation" said Erica, crossing her arms.
"My greatest enemy has been the mark of the salamander which to one and all announced my coin was counterfeit" said the demon indignantly. "Believe it or not, even here in Whitechapel, the salamander didn't mean to the masses that a demon was sealed in the coin, but that the coin wasn't minted by the government. And no one makes wishes with counterfeit coins. Until now, by accident, you Sarah made a wish. Enough to free me, and enough to wreak havoc on your world."
The demon smirked, and with a wave of its hand, the see-through yellow wall turned invisible.
"What wish?" said Erica.
"The wish that Ethan was cool" said the demon. "There was my luck, Erica. That Sarah made the wish."
"Why?" asked Sarah.
"Because of your friend's gambit to blow-up the lucifractor, there is, as a result, even now, not enough dark energy in town to swing a cat" said the man. "Much less let a vampire survive for more than a few minutes. But I'm not undead, I never was alive. To me, dark energy is a tool, and nothing else. The dark energy will build up to normal in the span of years, every deed of mundane evil helps. But I needed another source to even emerge from my coin, the energy of a heart that's pure; a soul whose light has been magnified after being occluded, subsumed and then miraculously released from the bloodsucking curse. For those who can see souls, your soul shines like a beacon. I must admit, I'm much impressed."
"I heard that before" said Sarah. "From someone I hate as much as you."
That "someone" had been the ghost of Jesse, patched through in an ill-advised use of Ethan's "Spirit Speaker" some months before.
But behind her bravado, Sarah was concerned. Releasing a powerful demon by innocently wishing on a coin was not something she wanted on her conscious. And, more immediately, that idea of "Ethan being Cool"? What was the demon going to do to make Ethan cool? Could Sarah stop it in time? Sarah remembered that in Erica's case, her being cool was having her turned into a (semi-evil) vampire. Or was Ethan being cool a play on words? Was Ethan going to be deep frozen at the South Pole?
"Well, you shouldn't hate me" said the demon in an oily voice. "The very radiance emanating allows me to pull the great feat that I intend to do. Turn the world on its head to make Ethan Morgan the coolest teen in school. And no, Sarah, I'm not going to freeze Ethan . . . he'll be very much alive and very popular."
"Even if Sarah made the wish" challenged Erica, "what makes you think you can use our energy . . . ."
"Not your energy" smirked the demon. "When you were a vampire, your soul had as much light as a dark lantern with a broken shutter and no candle. But Sarah's . . . ."
Sarah tried to make a karate kick, but her leg connected to the invisible wall.
"I'm also smarter than Valerie Mudrap" said the demon pompously. "I am known in the ancient works as the Tempus Mercator Daemonium, demon merchant of time. When I am fully powered, I can trick a mortal into making a deal; undoing or redoing an event in their lives. In return for their immortal soul, of course. It is only unfortunate that when I make a deal, it usually leaves me able to make changes of a personal and sometimes only transitory nature."
"I never made a deal with you" said Sarah.
"She didn't, don't try to pull on trick on us" said Erica .
"I never said she did" said the demon. "It was an ancestor of your Benny Weir who thought that this was the hilarious way of rendering me harmless. Sealing me in a coin, and for me to be forced to grant a wish to the one who freed me."
"He's not our Benny Weir" said Erica, as if this was equivalent to "Tempus" and the stealing of souls.
"No" said the demon. "I have pure energy at my disposal, for what was supposed to be a harmless although a slightly selfish wish. Ethan Morgan to be cool. And how? Well, Erica, trapped in my coin, you gave the perfect idea on how to make Sarah's wish come true."
"What idea?" asked Erica warily. "If you hurt Sarah . . . ."
"Sarah, you won't be hurt" said the demon with faux-kindliness. "Nor am I going to try to make you're a vampire again . . . I don't have that power anyway. But . . . ."
"But what?" said Sarah sharply.
"You'll see" said the demon. "Shortly. All I have to do is reach into the past, and get one little thing."
The demon, in a uncanny, low, echoing voice said the following:
Nam vis a clavum a solea perierat,
quia volo de solea equus claudus abiit,
enim volo a equus est a ascensorem nunquam got per,
nam vis a ascensorem nuntium, nunquam pervenit,
nam vis nuntium exercitu, non misit,
nam vis exercitu proelio periit,
quia volo de proelio bellum perierat,
quia volo de bello regnum cecidit,
et omnia volo a clavum.
And then the demon's hand turned the strange yellow, while it reached into thin air, and removed a nut and a bolt.
Sarah and Erica stared at the piece of hardware in shock.
"Here is your nail, Sarah" said the demon. "Enjoy this priceless souvenir for the rest of your days. And your wish has been fulfilled. Although Ethan himself might have, mixed, ideas about his new place in the grand scheme of things."
The demon threw the bolt down on the desk in front of Sarah. He laughed mockingly.
Sarah was now more angry than scared. It was odd, but the obvious lie that the small piece of hardware lying before Sarah was a nail seemed to shake her out of her surprise.
"I want you to put that nut and bolt back" said Sarah, putting all her courage into her voice. "Where and whenever you found it. I haven't helped my Dad fix things around the house all my life not to know the difference between a nail and a bolt. I never wanted to make a wish, and I never wanted to let a demon grant any wish of mine. Get back in your salamander coin where you belong."
"Sarah, Sarah, Sarah; a nut and bolt literally, but I meant a nail figuratively" laughed the demon. You know . . . ALL FOR THE WANT OF A NAIL" said the demon, its voice going into a shriek. "SO, ENJOY YOUR NEW LIFE!"
And so the demon disappeared in puff of yellow smoke and the smell of rotten eggs.
Sarah looked at the nut and bolt thinking.
"All for the want of nail? What does that demon mean? Literally a nut and bolt? What changed from missing this one nut and bolt? And how?"
"A missing bolt made Ethan cool?" said Erica, interrupting Sarah's thought. "I wish I knew how!"