The crime scene was a discordant jumble of bright light and pitch blackness – sirens and flashlights slicing through the starless night, casting weird shadows across the lawns and streets of the neighborhood. Emmons flashed his badge at the appropriate people and made his way closer to the center of the chaos, weaving around barricades and ducking under caution tape as required. The first perimeter, the yellow caution tape, was standard crime scene issue; it would have been the first cordon up. The sky-blue tape would have been put up shortly afterward, once the first team in confirmed a past or potential etheric disturbance. All enchanted and ether-active gear would have to be left outside the perimeter, and at least one etherscope technician would be on duty at the scene for the next 24 hours. It was the last tape that really meant trouble, though. Deep purple, almost invisible in the autumn darkness, so that the silver runes seemed to be hanging in midair. In theory, no demon or demon-active could cross the warding tape, but Emmons had never heard of it actually working. He’d never heard of it failing either – by the time police hit an active demon summoning, either the breach had collapsed in on itself, or the demon had already fled the scene. If you can call making a bloody beeline for the nearest population center fleeing.

Emmons took his mood from the people already present; the investigators looked upset, and worn, but not edgy. They weren’t expecting danger, or casualty reports. Probably nothing too bad then – an unlicensed summoner who burned out his own soul before even piercing the ether – or an amateur sacrifice. Horrible, but not threatening, he thought, not likely to endanger others. He reflected again on having a job in which a mere ritualistic murder counted as good news, while he flashed his badge for the fifth time and shouldered his way through the door.

The inside of the home seemed quiet, hushed, in comparison. Soft light poured from two tasteful ceramic lamps in the entryway, the calm glow punctuated by an occasional wall-reflected camera flash, and the murmur of voices deeper inside the house. He followed the flashes to the scene proper, in the ground floor living room.

There was an immense amount of blood. It was literally everywhere – the walls, the ceiling, the floor and furniture. Not actually dripping in most places, but a fine, uneven spatter, just short of aerosolization. To anyone else it might have looked unreal, more like the pattern from a spray bottle than a body, but Emmons had been on the beat long enough to know blood when he saw it, and recognize those wet scraps flung into the corners of the room as flesh, possibly human. He wasn’t as expert when it came to summoning circles, but when he saw the giant glyphed wheel scribed into the floor of the main room, he knew he’d found the reason for the black tape.

He looked at the people already in the room, one of them was bound to be his ParaPsi liaison. Not the two kids with cameras, or the older woman covering the larger lumps of flesh with preserving white plastic. Not the boys in blue, obviously. Could’ve been the man in the black if he wasn’t so obviously playing bodyguard, which left – her. Big glasses, dark hair tied back in a bun. Looked a little like Lynda Carter’s disguise on that old Wonder Woman show. She seemed to be taking in the scene with calm disinterest, which was little creepy, but he supposed he was doing the same thing. Better than the ParaPsi they’d sent last time, who couldn’t stop sobbing into his own beard.

“I’m Detective Emmons,” he said, moving close to her. “What do we know?”

She barely glanced at him, still gathering data from the scene.

“Not sure yet,” she said abstractedly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Pennington, Sarah Pennington. Parapsych liaison”

“Pleased to meet you, Inspector Pennington,” he said softly, politely. “Now, obviously a number of people have been killed here tonight. Any information you can provide, however fragmentary, might be helpful.”

She seemed to snap back from someplace, recollect herself. Embarrassed for a moment, then annoyed, searching his tone for reproach.

“Yes. Well. As you can clearly see we’re dealing with some sort of summoning ritual here. The layout here is confusing, but there are no sacrificial implements or elements, so all this,” she indicated the reddened walls with a tilt of her head, “is probably the work of the summoned demon.”

“Is there still a threat?”

“Unlikely. The local ether is shredded, so we’re still not sure what happened here, but standard parascan doesn’t register any diabolical presence within 300 miles. Also, the circle hasn’t been broken, which means the summoning conduit itself likely imploded.”

“If the circle’s unbroken, how was the demon able to attack?”

“Well, that’s where things get confusing.”

“Perhaps it would help if you walked me through it.”

“Detective, please. I know you must have dealt with scenes like this more than I have, and the rest is so arcane and jargony that –”

“Please, Inspector. Just take me through it. I think it will help us both.”

Again she weighed his tone and found only quiet politeness. She muttered something under her breath and pushed her glasses higher on her nose.

“Well, to start, the summoning circle doesn’t make any sense. The elements I recognize are all mixed up, and the rest is structurally familiar, but in a dialect I’ve never even seen. And I’ve seen all of them. Which suggests our subject was either a divinely inspired nutcase or he’d somehow discovered a new strain of demon.”

“Does that happen often? Discovering new demons?”

“Rarely. Only twice in the past hundred years. Researchers unearth a record of some obscure sorcerer or sage-king who bound such-and-such a demon where such-and-such doesn’t appear anywhere in the Rolls. Even then it’s usually just an alias for a known power, but the only way to tell for certain is by summoning it. Dangerous work – the historical records tend to be fragmentary at best and the demonological jargon of dead civilizations is always a real bitch to transliterate. You never know exactly what’s going to show up in the summoning circle. Most demonarcheologists will only work with government funding and authorization, so as to gain the military protection that comes with it. When Schumaler first summoned the kehavir in ’83, he insisted on having three platoons and phalanx of Abrams at his back. Uncle Sam threw in air support and an offshore boomer on standby. Anyone with the know-how to summon a rediscovered demon species would know better than do it in his own home, without serious, serious back-up.”

“Maybe he had backup and they got taken.”

“No bullet holes or scorch marks on the walls, no signs of any weaponry at all.”

“So, our victim is either some sort of demonological idiot savant summoning powerful forces without proper protection, or he took all proper precautions but what he summoned was so powerful that he was able to take out all resistance instantaneously.” Emmons frowned at the idea. “Is it possible they were set up? Given some kind of trapped ritual? I’m seeing a lot of holy symbols and objects here,” he said, “Angels and crosses and stars and white candles, but no skulls or sacrificial blades. Nothing that says ‘experienced demon-traffickers’.”

She sniffed dismissively. “The holy objects are a pretty common ploy. Intimidates the lesser demons, and reminds the greater demons who they have to answer to if they start breaking the rules. That’s actually another thing,” she said, studying the walls again. “In general, the more powerful a demon, the more intelligent it is. The kind of savagery I’m seeing here is more consistent with a low-level scrub demon or feralite. The noble demons like their torments to linger. Even if time was a consideration they tend to be more… artful. Have you ever seen photos of the Azerbiel Incidient in Prague?”

He thought for a moment. “Was that the one with the skin ropes?”

“No, you’re thinking of Mexico City. Prague was when a rogue demon viscount, with only 14 minutes of free activity, daisy chained the circulatory systems of his five summoners together. Left them in incredible agony, but not in immediate danger of death, though any attempt to move them would have been fatal. Rescuers on the scene couldn’t really do anything except stand around and watch them die. That’s the sort of thing you expect from any power above the third circle or so. They’d consider this –” she said, indicating the gore-stained room with a flip of her hand, “Strictly déclassé.”

“Could it have been wounded somehow? Maddened?”

“I don’t see how. Considering where these things come from, pretty much any earthly torment is just a walk in the park. Anything short of an Abrams, anyway.”

“I thought Hell was where they were strongest.”

“Well, yes, technically, but only because the act of summoning itself binds them, limits their power and imposes artificial weaknesses upon them. And summoning is the only way they can cross over. Honestly, did you think demons stayed in Hell just because they liked it there?”

“Well, don’t they?”

Her nose wrinkled in annoyance. “Well, yes. To an extent. It’s like spending all day at the office – you may love your work, but you don’t want to be at it every waking second. Leap at the chance for a paid vacation, sort of thing.”

“Fair enough. What about the parts of the circle you do you recognize?”

“Nonsensical. Bizarre. This node here, for instance, energizes the pull of the circle. It’s got a long focus, long enough for the Far Shadow, maybe even some of the nearer Stellar Entities, which would be consistent with our undiscovered species hypothesis – most new species are likely to be found far away from the mortal sphere. But there’s no focusing node to balance it, no direction or coordinates. There are some delimiters, some places it can’t, in theory, go, but unless they’re using a particularly obtuse glyph set, they’ve ruled out all the known Realms. Like if you dropped a letter in the mail with the instructions ‘Deliver to anyone at all, except people that accept mail.’ Very weird. I’m also seeing a distinct lack of binding elements.”

“And those are?”

“Oh, come on, Detective –”

“Please.”

 She blew an imaginary wisp of hair from her face with an irritated huff.

“Binding elements are – I mean, they’re the cornerstone of summoning, the very first thing you learn, and the most important, really. Very few people have the strength of will to bind a demon on their own, and almost none since the first millennium. The reason summoning circles work at all is because virtually all demons have already been bound once by Lord of Creation, and then again by Solomon the Wise. And many have been bound again by lesser practitioners since. It is traditional, when one has bound a demon, to command it ‘Do this thing for me, and also, obey those who command you in my name, and also, while you’re on earth, you’re completely vulnerable to table salt and running water.’ It’s the basis of all applied demonology. Without it, the first demon summoning would probably have been the last. Demons can’t really be killed, and the only way to imprison or defeat them is with those same binding elements. Sometimes demons manage to slip free of a particular bind or circle, go rogue, but those binding elements can still be re-evoked. That’s what TASK teams do when they go after escaped demons. One of the classic nightmare scenarios for a summoner is somehow calling up a Greater Power that escaped the Binding of Solomon, and thus cannot be easily commanded or bound. It’s the sort of scary story they tell to first year summoners, but it’s probably impossible and I can’t believe you haven’t already heard all this before.”

“Always best to be briefed by the experts. Thaumathurgically speaking, what’s our next move?”

“Well, a straight mystical assay is out, the ether here has been all but annihilated, we won’t get any information from it for years. I’d like to run some of these glyphs by a few of my colleagues. I doubt it will help, but it’s worth a shot.”

“None of them smarter than you, eh?”

“A mechanic might occasionally see a car he doesn’t immediately recognize, but if he sees a machine without any sort of engine, or wheels, or gas tank he can be pretty sure it’s not a…” she froze, her face suddenly pale “…not a car at all.” She trailed off.

“What? What is it?”

“You were right,” she said quietly, dazed. “You were right, there are too many holy artifacts. I thought it was just, like, magpies, they’d grabbed everything they could, to show their power over darkness, but that wasn’t it at all… Cosmology 101. The Maw of Hell is vast, gaping, it pulls all things all toward it, it is never far from where you are. But the Vault of Heaven is closed and mysterious. It cannot be directly sought. The unfocussed pull, the missing bindings – Detective, they weren’t trying to summon a demon, the fool bastards, they were trying to summon an angel.”

“Czerk said that was impossible. Einstein too.”

“It’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be, Emmons, that’s the only way the universe makes sense. But if they found a way, if they somehow subverted the Will…”

“Stay with me, Pennington. Look at all the blood. Surely that’s demons’ work?”

“Imagine it,” she said faintly, in that same faraway voice. “You’re an angel, part of the Celestial Hierarchy. You are perfectly suited for your position, and all things are perfectly suited to you, you exist in the most beautiful, perfectly perfect place in existence, and have done since the beginning of time. And then some jumped-up primates, who have always been weirdly favored by the Great Creator, pull you out of perfection, drag you into this gratingly imperfect realm. And maybe this sort of door only swings one way, maybe you can’t go back, ever. And maybe you’re one of those perfect beings that carries a sword, or is made of swords, or claws, or wheels of cutting light. What would you do to the people, to the monsters who had trapped you, who had stolen everything from you; destroyed all that is good in the universe?”

“Wait – aren’t angels messengers? Aren’t they supposed to come to earth?”

“Very few, actually, the weakest and least of them. The rest – it’s like some fish can breathe air for a time, but you wouldn’t want to dredge up something from the deepest ocean trench and throw it on a beach.”

Emmons stood silent a moment, considering. “Say you’re right. Berserk angel. What’s our next move?”

She laughed softly, an uneven, wet sort of chuckle. “There’s no next move, not for us. Just possibilities. Whether or not it’s theoretically possible for a summoned angel to find its way home, this one can’t anymore; it’s a killer. They don’t go much for that, in the Heavenly Realms. It might kill itself, but I don’t know what that would look like. Could disintegrate completely, like an alavade, or explode like a wounded efreet. Better if it’s the latter, really, so we’d know for certain. Otherwise…Otherwise it’s not a suicide, but it’s no longer an angel either. I don’t know how long it takes an angel to Fall, exactly; nobody’s ever actually witnessed it happen. But I know what a fallen angel becomes.”

The room had fallen silent now, even the photographers had stopped to listen. Emmons tried to shrug nonchalantly “But that’s not so bad, is it? Single rogue demon. Nothing the TASK teams can’t handle, right? Have the thing sent properly to Hell in no time.”

Her eyes went wide in anger, she looked like she wanted to hit him, but her arms stayed locked at her sides, hands clenched. “Don’t you get it, Emmons? This one’s never been to Hell, it’s never been bound, it’s never been Named, there’ll be no record of it in the Rolls, no record of it anywhere.”

She closed her eyes and chuckled mirthlessly again. “So I guess I was right, too. It is a new kind of demon. The kind that we can’t stop.”

She hugged herself as her laugh faded to a sort of strangled sigh. For just a moment, the rasp of her inspector’s jacket against itself sounded like the rustle of distant wings.