“So my payment?” You ask the Lord of Darkness.

“It will come,” Satan replies with a dismissive wave.

You grind your teeth, but pissing off Satan is the last thing any sane person does. Actually it’s not. The last thing you would do is get tortured for eternity. You decide to take a seat on the old corduroy couch instead.

“Balthazar, you’ve been declining my summons,” Satan continues crossing his arms.

Balthazar’s face looks like someone punched his favorite hellpuppy and that someone is bigger than he is. A sort of inevitable sadness. You feel a bit bad.

Then you remember the reward and feel much better. Immortality for a little demon summoning and your friend Jack’s soul is a hell of a steal.

“It wounds me, but I will have to get by with one less son,” Satan reaches out a hand and makes a fist. Balthazar’s spine bends in all sorts of interesting shapes. His screams vibrate the foundation. He will be dead in a few seconds.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” you start, then shrink back as Satan rounds on you, “but you promised me his immortality.”

“Ah right. About that. Immortality, while not impossible for me, would require giving up my own,” Satan says, “And that will not do.” He pauses to consider, claw-tipped fingers stroking his small beard. He snaps his finger in a revelation. “Balthazar, kill the boy”

Fight or flight kicks in. This was not part of the plan. Your eyes dart around the room, searching for an escape, but the windows are small and you performed the summoning in the living room like a moron. You can’t even grab a kitchen knife.

But Bathazar doesn’t move.

You dig deep in your consciousness and realize that you still hold his reins. You summoned Balthazar so Satan has no control of him. And since Satan owes you a blood debt, he can’t kill you either.

A feeling rushes over you, the same feeling you got when you accidentally checkmated a grandmaster while playing chess. You backed them into a corner and they have no idea.

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You look at Satan and see that he has figured it out as well. The intelligent thing here is to not provoke the lord of darkness but you’ve never been a good winner exactly.

“Nice try, Satan old pal, but there is only one demon and he belongs to me.” You hop up and strut across the room to Balthazar. “Maybe we can make a deal”

“I still control every demon in hell,” he says confused.

Oh right. Shit.

He raises his arms and portals of pure night open up all over the floor. Hands emerge, every color between black and red, every size between sickly and titanic. The hands drag bodies over the lips of the circles, hundreds of demons laboriously clawing their way into the material plane. The nearest one sends a sharp bony stinger straight at your chest.

“Help me,” you say to no one, your mother too far away to hear.

Balthazar rolls to his feet and lunges toward you, pulling his head away like his body is being yanked by an invisible force. You cringe away further, but he grabs the spike out of the air and buries it into the neck of a demon behind you. It’s head explodes as poison pumps into its veins. Suddenly you want to throw up.

“Release me, human,” he thunders. He’s still your thrall. Thank God.... Thank Satan?

“Nahhh, but you can definitely get me out of here if you want”

Balthazar doesn’t move. Oh right, being polite to demons means they can ignore you. You duck a fireball. It explodes behind you setting the walls ablaze.

“Get me out of here, now,” You squeak, as your rental cabin burns down and demons lunge at you. AirBnB is going to have a field day on your account.

Something hits you like a cannonball and you are flying toward the wall. You look down and Balthazar has you over his shoulder and is sprinting to the nearest window. He throws himself through it with a crash of glass and continues his wild flight over the yard.

You scream in terror. Not because the demons, not even because of the shards of glass in your clothes. No, you scream because you know what’s next.

Behind you, demons swarm all over the house, the stronger ones busting through the roof, the weaker ones crawling out the windows. Flames roar inside, but none of the demons seem to be bothered any.

Ahead, the ground cuts off. To the uninitiated, it looks like the end of a small hill, but you know that a massive canyon sits at the end of the sleepy meadow.

Without hesitation, Balthazar hurls himself over the edge, both of you falling like a shooting star across the sky. The wind whips your hair as you scream in pure terror. Balthazar laughs at your fear, purely confident in the face of heights.

He seems to have forgotten that he doesn’t have his wings in this form.