Scene: The Yorkshire Hunt

The boy's leg shot out with inhuman speed, catching Mick square in the stomach. The air left his lungs in a painful whoosh as he staggered backward, barely keeping his footing on the muddy embankment.

"Bloody hell," Mick wheezed, hunched over and trying to catch his breath. "That's the third time he's gotten me."

Eight-year-old Timmy Clarke stared at him from across the clearing, his eyes solid black marbles in a face too young for the cruel smile it now wore. The child's small frame seemed to vibrate with unnatural energy as he bounced lightly on his toes, head cocked at an unnatural angle.

"Perhaps you might consider accepting some assistance?" Marchosias's sardonic voice echoed in Mick's mind. "Or shall we continue with this... masterful display of detective work?"

"I've got this," Mick muttered, straightening up. He kept his voice low enough that the gathering crowd of concerned villagers at the edge of the park couldn't hear him talking to himself. That's all he needed—the locals thinking he was as mad as they already suspected.

"Are you quite certain? Because from where I'm standing—which is, regrettably, exactly where you're standing—we're getting beaten up by an eight-year-old."

"He's possessed by a demon," Mick hissed through clenched teeth. "One that apparently knows kung fu."

"Throzal is hardly a martial artist," Marchosias replied with the mental equivalent of an eye roll. "He's simply using the boy's natural agility combined with his own strength. Children make surprisingly effective vessels when properly motivated."

"Yeah, well, enlightening as this lesson is—" Mick began, but stopped as Timmy suddenly bolted toward the village pond.

"Shit!"

Mick lunged after him, narrowly avoiding a pensioner walking her dog. The boy moved with unnatural speed, darting between concerned onlookers with the fluid grace of something that had never been human.

Mick's phone rang in his pocket. He fumbled for it without slowing down, nearly dropping it as he vaulted over a park bench.

"Hargraves," he answered breathlessly, keeping his eyes fixed on the small figure weaving through the village green ahead.

"Mick, it's Reeves." Detective Inspector Diana Reeves' clipped London accent was unmistakable. "Where are you? The background sounds like you're running a marathon."

"I'm a bit busy right now," Mick panted, dodging around a mother with a pram who gave him a startled look. "I'll have to call you back."

"I have something that needs your attention," she continued, undeterred. "The Blackwood case. The circumstances match your... particular expertise."

"Look, I really can't—" Mick broke off as he watched Timmy scramble up a tree with inhuman agility, perching on a branch and grinning down at him with that same terrible smile. "I've got to go."

He hung up and jammed the phone back into his pocket, approaching the tree cautiously.

"Come on, Timmy," Mick called up, trying to sound calmer than he felt. "This isn't you. Let me help."

The boy's head rotated further than a human neck should allow. "Timmy's having ever so much fun," came a voice that was nothing like a child's. "Aren't you, Timmy?" The last words emerged in a perfect mimicry of what must have been the boy's actual voice, making Mick's skin crawl.

"You do realize there's a simple solution," Marchosias commented idly. "I could manifest just enough to—"

"No," Mick said firmly. "No scaring the kid more than he already is. He's still in there."

"Your compassion is touching, if completely impractical."

"There has to be a connection," Mick muttered, circling the tree. "Something linking the demon to the boy. Something personal."

"The necklace," Marchosias suddenly said, his mental voice sharpening with interest. "The pendant around his neck. It's carved bone—human bone, if I'm not mistaken. Not exactly standard playground accessories for British schoolchildren."

Mick squinted up at the boy and saw a crude pendant hanging from a leather cord around his neck. "Where the hell did he get that?"

"Ask him. Or better yet, ask the demon. Throzal has always been vain about his trophies."

"That's a nice necklace, Timmy," Mick called up, forcing a conversational tone. "Or should I say, Throzal? Bit ostentatious, isn't it? Wearing your kills around a child's neck?"

The demon's smile faltered slightly. "You know my name, human?"

"I know more than that," Mick replied, moving closer to the tree. "I know you're barely a mid-level entity. I know you specialize in animal mutilations and minor hauntings. I know you're not powerful enough to maintain possession of a child without an anchor."

The boy's face contorted with rage. "You know NOTHING!"

"I know you're using that bone pendant to maintain your hold," Mick continued, reaching the base of the tree. "I know if I take it from you, you're finished."

With a shriek of fury, the possessed child launched himself from the branch, directly at Mick's face.

"Duck!" Marchosias warned.

Mick dropped to the ground as the boy sailed over him. He spun around in time to see Timmy land in a crouch, already tensing to spring again.

"Let the boy go," Mick demanded, slowly rising to his feet. "You're outmatched here."

The demon laughed with the child's mouth. "By you? A drunk? A failure who couldn't even save his own—"

"Not by me," Mick interrupted, his voice dropping dangerously low. "By what's inside me."

For the first time, uncertainty flickered across the possessed child's face.

"Let me show him," Marchosias urged. "Just a glimpse."

Mick hesitated, then gave a small nod. He felt the familiar cold rush as Marchosias surged forward inside him, not taking control but making his presence known. Mick knew his eyes had gone black when the demon inside Timmy took an involuntary step backward.

"You're..." the creature began, its voice losing some of its confidence.

"He's with me," Mick said quietly. "Now let the boy go."

"Never," snarled the demon, backing toward the pond. "The child invited me in. He found my relic. He spoke my name. He is MINE."

"Half-truths," Marchosias commented. "The boy found the bone, yes, but he couldn't possibly have known what it was. Throzal is manipulating the rules. The possession is tenuous at best."

"Last chance," Mick warned, advancing slowly. "Leave willingly, or we'll make you leave."

The demon's answer was to make Timmy sprint toward the pond's edge, clearly intending to flee across it.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Mick groaned, breaking into a run.

"Perhaps you could have threatened him AFTER we were in grabbing distance?" Marchosias suggested dryly.

Mick put on a burst of speed, closing the gap. He lunged, fingers just brushing the back of Timmy's shirt—

—and found himself grasping at air as the boy feinted left, then darted right with inhuman agility.

Mick's momentum carried him forward, directly into the murky waters of the village pond. He crashed through the surface with a spectacular splash, arms windmilling futilely.

Underwater, everything was green and brown and surprisingly deep. His feet failed to find the bottom as he flailed, disoriented. Weeds tangled around his legs, pulling him deeper.

"This is certainly one approach to demon hunting," Marchosias remarked, somehow managing to sound bone-dry even in Mick's waterlogged mind. "Though I confess it's not one I've encountered before."

Mick kicked hard, breaking the surface with a gasp. He wiped muddy water from his eyes to see Timmy standing at the pond's edge, doubled over with laughter that was too deep and cruel to belong to a child.

The demonic mirth cut off abruptly as a woman's voice called out, "Timothy Alexander Clarke! What on earth is going on?"

A harried-looking woman in her thirties hurried across the green, her face a mixture of confusion and anger. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

The demon inside Timmy hesitated, caught between flight and maintaining its human charade. In that moment of indecision, Mick saw his chance.

"The pendant," Marchosias reminded him. "We need the pendant."

Mick surged forward through the water, reaching the edge of the pond in three powerful strokes. He lunged upward, but his fingers closed on empty air as Timmy danced backward with unnatural agility, cackling.

"Too slow, drunk man!" the demon taunted in a voice that was a grotesque parody of childish sing-song.

Before Mick could make another grab, Timmy spun around and ran straight into his mother's arms, nestling against her like a perfectly ordinary eight-year-old boy seeking protection.

"Timothy Alexander Clarke!" The woman held her son at arm's length, looking him over with the expert eye of a mother who could spot a scraped knee at fifty paces. "I've been looking everywhere for you! What's gotten into—" She broke off, noticing the bone pendant hanging around his neck. "What on earth is this filthy thing?"

The demon, in the perfect disguise of an innocent child, gave Mick a triumphant smirk over the mother's shoulder. But the smirk faltered as the woman's fingers closed around the pendant.

"No—" the demon began, but it was too late.

"Disgusting," the mother declared, yanking the necklace off with a snap of the leather cord. She held it between thumb and forefinger like a dead mouse. "Where did you get this? It looks like something from that horrible shop your friends keep sneaking off to."

The demon's eyes widened in panic as its anchor was removed. Mick, still waist-deep in pond water and looking like a drowned rat, could only watch as the exorcism he'd been struggling to perform was accomplished by an unwitting mother's disgust.

"I don't want to see you with this sort of rubbish again," she continued, and with a flick of her wrist, tossed the bone pendant into the pond. It landed with a small plop just inches from Mick's face, sending ripples across the murky surface.

The effect on Timmy was instantaneous. His small body went rigid, eyes rolling back to show only whites. A sound began deep in his chest—not a child's voice but something ancient and furious, rising in pitch until it became a wail that no human throat should produce.

"Timmy!" the mother cried, grabbing her son as he began to collapse. The wail cut off as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch, and the boy blinked up at her in confusion.

"Mum?" he said in a perfectly normal eight-year-old voice. "Why are we at the pond? And why is that man all wet?"

The mother turned to stare at Mick, still standing in the water with duckweed in his hair and a stunned expression on his face. "Yes, exactly what I'd like to know. Who are you and why were you chasing my son?"

"I'm a... specialist," Mick improvised lamely. "Your son had a... a seizure. Just happened to be passing through." He gestured vaguely at the pond. "Tried to help. Obviously."

"A masterful explanation," Marchosias commented dryly. "I'm sure she's completely reassured now."

"A specialist who decided treatment was best administered from the middle of a duck pond," Marchosias noted. "Very convincing."

The woman didn't look convinced either, but she was too focused on her son to press the issue. Timmy was blinking up at her now, confusion clear on his face.

"Mum?" he said in a perfectly normal eight-year-old voice. "Why are we at the pond? And why is that man all wet?"

Mick tried to maintain some dignity as he squished across the village green, painfully aware of the crowd of onlookers who had witnessed his impromptu swim. Duckweed clung to his hair, and something that might have been a small water snail was making its way across his shoulder.

"That went exceptionally well," Marchosias said, his voice rich with amusement. "I particularly enjoyed the part where you demonstrated your mastery of aquatic exorcism techniques."

"Shut up," Mick muttered, picking a lily pad from his collar.

"The look on your face when you surfaced surrounded by those ducks... truly priceless."

"I said shut up."

"Ah well, Throzal is banished, the boy is saved, and you've added 'pond drainage' to your detective skills. I would call this a successful day."

Mick squeezed water from his jacket sleeves, grimacing at the murky liquid that poured out. His phone chose that moment to make a sad, gurgling noise in his pocket.

"Bollocks." He fished it out, water dripping from the case. The screen flickered weakly, then went dark. "Perfect."

Squishing his way to his car, Mick stripped off his sodden jacket and tossed it in the boot. He grabbed a semi-clean t-shirt from his emergency bag and used it to dry his hair as best he could.

Ten minutes and one stop at a village shop later, he was seated on a bench with a new disposable phone, dialing Reeves' number.

"Hargraves," she answered on the second ring. "I was about to send out a search party."

"Sorry about earlier, Diana," Mick said, still picking pond debris from his hair. "Had a situation that needed immediate attention."

"Did it involve a swimming pool? You sound like you're gargling."

Mick sighed. "Something like that. You mentioned the Blackwood case?"

"Yes." DI Diana Reeves' voice turned serious. "Three victims so far. All found with... unusual characteristics."

"Unusual how?"

"Black residue where their eyes should be. Bodies completely drained of blood but no wounds except strange symbols carved into their chests. The press doesn't have these details yet, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Mick sat up straighter, pond water forgotten. "Where?"

"All within Greater London. Latest victim was found in Hampstead, near the Heath."

"I'll be there in four hours," Mick said, already heading toward his car.

"Hargraves," Reeves added before he could hang up. "There's something else. The last victim... the symbols were different. One of them matched a drawing in your case file from last year. The one with the child—Eliza."

Mick felt a cold that had nothing to do with his wet clothes. Inside his mind, he felt Marchosias go very, very still.

"We need to go," the demon said, all traces of humor gone from his voice. "Now."

"I'm on my way," Mick told Reeves, ending the call as he slid behind the wheel.

As he pulled away from the village, leaving behind an exorcised child and a pond full of bewildered ducks, Mick grimaced at the memory of the bone pendant now sitting at the bottom of the murky water. He should probably go back to retrieve and properly dispose of it, but the humiliation of another pond dive was more than he could bear right now. Besides, there were more pressing concerns.

"What do you make of it?" he asked aloud once they were on the open road.

"Nothing good," Marchosias replied grimly. "If someone is using symbols connected to Eliza... they're either trying to send us a message or trying to draw us in."

"Either way, it's working," Mick said, pressing the accelerator harder as the countryside began to blur past.

"Indeed," the demon agreed. "And I suspect we've only seen the beginning."

The car sped south, carrying them toward London and whatever darkness awaited.