The Time I Got Kidnapped By Aliens

Well, I Never Really Had A Chance At Heaven Anyways

~~~~~~~~~~Dan~~~~~~~~~~

I couldn't think about anything right now, not my past, not the things I'd done, not the boy in my room, none of it. I had a job to do.

We had been planning this moment for years, and we had to get to Zarglath before the Belzar. We just hadn't planned on it happening this soon.

I sprinted back to the van, hearing the explosions of Jerry's fireballs and the roaring of the Belzar shaking the ground beneath my feet, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to not run right back out and jump into the fight full force. They had it, I knew it. They could handle a few scouts.

I just wished I could help handle them too.

But none of that mattered right now. I had to summon the demon.

My hands shook as I made a circle of salt and herbs, ripping open the bottles with my teeth. Another loud roar shook the van, paired with an angry scream from Cleo, and I steeled myself further.

The bible, where was the bible? I rustled through the other bags, plastic crinkling.

There!

Tucked up against the boy, curled up in a tiny ball was another white bag.

I refused to consider the omen that was and grabbed it, throwing it into the center of the circle and grabbing a lighter out of my pocket. It clicked several times before igniting, and I threw it too, into the circle.

Words started pouring from my throat, low and guttural, words that seemed impossible. I had them memorized, we all did.

I pulled the unconscious boy into my lap.

The words poured out, faster and faster. The fire roared up, burning a hole into Bella's rug, turning blue and black and green and a thousand incomprehensible colors at once. The boy shifted as I unsheathed my knife, holding it to his throat in preparation to pour his blood into the fire, onto the holy pages that were blackening in the flames, into ashes, and floating away.

The room jolted, throwing everything to the side, flipping it off its axis. Books tumbled from their shelves and the boy was thrown from my lap.

"Why hello there, Daniel," an icy cold voice boomed through the room.

I shook my head, regaining my bearings and looked to the circle. There he was, Zarglath, in all of his chaotic glory, leaning leisurely on a thin red cane, donned with a grinning skull. He always liked to make an entrance in front of people from other dimensions, thought he was proving a point.

I had forgotten how much I hated this demon. We had a bit of a history. He was egocentric, a typical spirit of darkness, and had screwed me over a few times in the past.

"Hello Zarglath," I responded coldly.

"Now now, you weren't going to kill that beautiful little human over there for little old me, were you?" He grinned, his sharp teeth gleaming in the flames licking up his legs, leaving his elegant red suit untouched.

I just stared him in the eyes, waiting for him to get to the point.

There was something ungodly behind his eyes, something that made you lose your mind just a little bit every time you looked at him. Something that made the entire world make just a little bit less sense.

His grin widened even further, stretching across his entire face, revealing more rows of jagged teeth. I shuddered just a bit, he was an unnatural being.

"So, Danny," He said in a conversational tone, leaning forward as far as the circle would allow. I noticed that he was hovering just a few inches off the ground, a few inches from where the bible was laying in dying smolders in the center of the destroyed rug. "What is it that you and you friends out there," he nodded towards the door to the van, where I could hear the continuing sounds of distant fighting, "need?"

Before I could take a breath to answer, he continued. "Now I would need a certain payment, of course, for any favor. I don't do things for free," he glanced at me once again, wicked eyes gleaming. "And I do think that that pretty little human over there would suffice, the one that you were going to murder simply to get my attention. He would make a nice addition to my collection." His eyes flared a violent red and the room jolted again, books clattering and papers flying through the air, bringing the boy tumbling back towards the circle, groaning groggily. I jumped forward, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt before he could disrupt the line of salt and herbs, and pulled him back into my lap.

Zarglath shrunk back down closer to the ground, letting a fake pout cloud his sharp features. "Now that wasn't very nice of you, was it?"

"I need the Morla, I need to know where it is," I said, inciting an overly dramatic eye-widening from him.

"Well isn't that so?" he asked wickedly, leaning towards me once again. "Why don't we shake on it?"

"The Morla for the boy," I said sternly, pushing him off me and standing. It wasn't common for a creature to be taller than me, so it was a bit strange standing near this towering creature, this chaotic being.

I nodded abruptly and reached over the line, feeling my energy shift, feeling everything tilt, feeling my limbs come loose, like I was going to disintegrate into the billions of atoms that held my frail existence together.

His icy cold hand brought me back down to Earth, colder than anything I had ever felt, colder than the power that ran through my bones when I channeled it, colder than my past, colder than the darkest part of space, where the only lights were distant pinpricks of light, stars so far away that if you blinked they were gone.

I gasped and stumbled forward, feeling my foot slide across the line, feeling it break, feeling the demon's influence spread throughout the space around me, out into the world.

He let out a harsh laugh and shot me a wink, disappearing into thin air with a pop. I reached for the boy on the floor, but my hand slid through the open air. He was gone.

A loud thump echoed through the van, sound ringing in the air for a moment too long, and the trapdoor leading to the underside of the van shot open, letting out a disheveled looking Arbor.

He glanced over at me, narrowing his eyes in a glare colder than even Zarglath's hand.

"Now what the fuck was that?" he growled, stomping the trapdoor closed beneath his feet.