The Island of Mona, Britain, 61 A.D.

Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, military governor of Britain reined his horse to a stop, surveying his legion. The eagle-headed Roman standards blew proudly in the wind. His legionnaires stood in fine formation, the sunlight gleaming off their helmets and shields. Good men. They’d served Suetonius valiantly in many campaigns before this.

An icy chill spread through Suetonius’s heart as he looked across the glade. The sun shone upon the flowing white robes of the Druids arrayed against his legion. Men, women and children. Old men. Little girls with leaves and flowers in their wild hair. All howling like wild beasts or moaning and swaying as if in a drunken stupor, or chanting exaltations to their gods. Not a one of them armed or shielded. Yet, there they stood, in defiance of a thousand Roman swords.

Would he stain those swords with innocent blood? His hand paused above the eagle-headed hilt of his sword. He licked his dried lips. The sweat stung under his armor. He glanced over at Tacitus, standing safe and aloof to the side of the legion, his fine white and blue robes stirred in the wind. The snide expression on his soft, fat face reflected the haughty detachment of the historian. Suetonius detested the man. What would he convey to posterity of this day? That he, Suetonius had led a legion of Rome in butchering a gaggle of old men, priests and girls, like unto a common horde of barbarians? Or worse, that his legion had fled from a powerless enemy, disgracing the empire and perhaps emboldening the Celts to further defiance? Either course could end in Suetonius’s crucifixion.

He looked down the line of his men. He saw fear in their eyes, sweat sparkling on their faces as they looked longingly to him for the order. A Druid high priest stepped forward, his carved oaken staff held high above his head. His long silver hair danced on the wind, his beard a snowy mane worthy of Zeus. His eyes flared like blue fire, his voice booming above the glade like a clap of godly thunder. Suetonius’s legionnaires cowered, as men confronted by the divine. As the high priest shouted arcane spells, the young virgins danced and swayed about him, as though entranced. Suetonius felt a strange power caressing his vitals. All around him and within, a cold, tingling energy sapped his resolve and his courage. Suetonius sensed his men were on the edge of madness. They felt it as well. He knew if he didn’t decide now, they would either bolt or run wild like a pack of rabid dogs.

The sparkling green eyes of one young maiden caught his eye. She was little more than a child. Her hair was a soft chestnut fading to blonde, blown zephyr-soft on the wind, like the shimmer of a bee’s wing. She smiled. He winced and bowed his head. So much like his beloved Cassia, long since lost to illness. So like the daughter she might have [bore] him, had she lived. He looked to the cloudy blue skies, resolving himself to what would come. He would retreat. He looked to his centurion, Marcus, and raised his hand to order the withdrawal.

"Is this the Gaius Suetonius Paulinus to whom I once pledged my love and surrendered my body?" a woman’s voice said beside him. Startled by a voice he knew could not be the one it resembled, he turned. There Cassia stood before him, astride a fine white stallion. She was as beautiful as she had been in life, her golden hair like sunlight, her eyes emerald fire. A beauty rivaling Helen’s, a presence like Artemis or Athena. He savored her, fearing to break the spell or end the dream by taking his eyes from hers. He reached hesitantly for her face, his fingers touching only empty air. "Can you do nothing but gape? How far have you fallen? You, a general of the City Eternal!" Her fair features creased in a frown.

"Cassia…" he managed in a strangled throat. "Do not hate me. I could not ... I will not dishonor your memory with this slaughter. I will turn my legion aside, withdraw from this island..."

"And, disgrace my memory, and all of Rome by such treason?" Her eyes flashed with anger. He started, his horse nearly bucking beneath him. "Did I lay with a coward? A stoneless maid in a man’s body who would run from barbarian tricks and magics? Show me you are a man! Hew down this rabble! For me, and for Rome!"

"Cassia...?" Was this truly the woman he’d loved? Whose kind voice and gentle hands had once calmed his madness? "But ... they have no weapons. They are old ones, women and children. What kind of soldier…what kind of man could..."

"Leave such musings to priests and old women. Empire, and life itself are born of blood and fire. The fire lives in your heart and loins still, does it not, my man?" She smiled cruelly. A lump formed in his throat. "Butcher these swine ... toss their virgin daughters to your men as trophies of victory. Drown your pain in blood, as you were born to do. And, rape, Gaius," her eyes flared with animal passion as she licked her lips. "Live for me. Feed your lust, that I might live again through you."

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, his breath catching in his throat. "I ... I can not."

She scowled at him hatefully. He gaped in horror as her alabaster skin was marred with lesions and festering boils. "The gods exact their vengeance upon me in the afterlife, for your betrayal!" She screamed in anguish, her once beautiful face bleeding torrents of sickly blood onto her pockmarked fingers. "I will suffer for all eternity, unless you strike for my honor!" Her hideous image faded, melting into the air like some nightmarish wraith. Suetonius buried his face in his hands, his mind drowning in agony.

"Commander...?" Marcus inquired fearfully, no doubt thinking Suetonius mad.

Suetonius lifted his head and surveyed the field. He pulled himself straight, his pain and fear washing away. "To arms, centurion! Sound the call!" He drew his sword. "Attack! Strike for Caesar! Kill them all for Rome!" The legion cheered en masse. He spurred his horse and led the charge, the wild, blood-hungry cries of his men raging through him. They cheered him on as they killed. As he killed. Blood sprayed wildly, covering everything as he rode through the defenseless throng of the Druids, hacking like a madman. A wild beast within guided his arm while the man he had been stood and watched, helpless to prevent it.

"Burn the grove, my love," Cassia cried as she appeared beside him on her phantom steed, beautiful again and cleansed of sickness. "Burn the grove, that they shall have no refuge," she shouted with a hungry smile. Seeing the last of the surviving Druids scattering into the surrounding trees, Suetonius rallied his men and ordered Marcus to gather oil and kindling and set the grove afire.

"Stop!" an old man cried, standing alone between the legion and the grove. Suetonius recognized him at once. He was the high priest who had defied the legion before. "The grove is sacred. You must not destroy it." The old one panted in exhaustion, his hair matted down with sweat. "Kill me if you desire. Or, say the word, and every young man in these islands will be your slave, every woman your concubine. But, do not burn these trees. For all our lives, yours as well as ours, do not!" He was plainly terrified, trembling in mortal horror. What could frighten a man more than death?

Curious, Suetonius dismounted and walked towards the old man. "Do not listen to the ravings of an old fool," Cassia hissed at him. "Kill him!"

"That demon has bewitched you," the old man cried, pointing at Cassia. Suetonius gasped in shock, and stopped dead in his tracks. He could see her? He looked about. Marcus and the soldiers stared dumb-founded, as if the old man had pointed at empty air. "It is a false vision sent to deceive you. You must see the truth! A demon lays imprisoned beneath this glade, where it has been for ages. That is why the grove is here, and why my folk have tended it. Our spirits and those of our forbears live in these trees. That is the power that bars the door of the demon’s prison. Destroy the grove, and the demon will be unleashed upon Man again. My people and yours…your empire and all nations will come to ruin if you set it free!"

Fear clutched at Suetonius’s heart. He looked at Cassia. "Cowardly fool! If the Druids had such power as the old fraud claims to wield, would they not have used it to destroy your legion? The only power he has is the fear his lies conjure in the hearts of the weak-minded. Kill him!" Suetonius looked into the old man’s eyes. He looked deeply, but saw no lie. No evil. Only a strength of heart he remembered in his father. "Gaius! If you ever loved me ... if you are a man ... kill him!" Suetonius shut his eyes tightly, his fingers straining on the hilt of his sword. A roar of pain rising from his throat, he opened his eyes and swung, severing the high priest’s throat. The old man’s eyes flared, then faded into gentle sorrow as he fell, his arms spread wide in the grass. Suetonius bowed his head, panting, blood dripping from the point of his sword onto his sandaled foot.

Wiping his sword on the fallen priest’s robe, he looked about. Not a man would meet his eye. Least of all, Tacitus. The historian’s hand trembled as he dipped quill in ink well, hastily scribbling accounts on parchment. His former haughtiness now clearly replaced by fear, he was no doubt embellishing this nightmare in such a way as to cast the legion in the warm light of heroism, and the Druids in the cold shadow of evil.

Cassia stood and waited, her cold eyes on Suetonius. He sighed. "Burn it." Cassia smiled.

~*~

By the time the sun had set and the full moon had risen a bloody red, the fires had burned down to their embers and the trees were gone. Through the day and into the night, as the flames had roared and smoke choked the air, the men had drank and reveled and raped. Some had gone mad, roasting and eating the entrails of their victims.

Ash and burned twigs crunched beneath the soles of Suetonius’s feet as he walked the blackened earth. The death all around him was bathed in a hellish red glow. As were the ancient Celtic carvings, runes and knotted loops carved into stone markers scattered throughout the glade. Had this once been a burial ground, he wondered. He looked down at his hands, still stained with dried blood. As he feared they would be forever. He could still hear the screams of the Druids as they’d burned alive. He could have sworn he’d heard other screams, long after the last Druid had perished. Screams coming from the trees themselves. Had it been his own madness, or some spell that had made him see ghostly shades of men and women rising from those flaming branches, the trunks and boughs bleeding red as the flames lapped higher?

"You have done well, my husband," Cassia said, a translucent ghost as she stepped through a stone marker, stars faintly visible through her robes and body. He turned his eyes down, no longer able to look at her. A black mist was rising from the earth, coiling strands of darkness slithering from the burnt tree stumps. Some of the soldiers squealed like pigs and writhed in torment as the darkness flowed up their legs and bodies. "Get it off! Get it off!" Some hacked at their own limbs with their swords, crippling themselves. Some rolled in the dirt, shrieking in anguished dementia. Frozen, Suetonius could only watch in horror as the darkness gathered, all flowing toward one spot. Where Cassia stood. She spread her arms, her face haloed by the red moon. The darkness rose up inside her, filling and mutating her ghostly form.

"Free," she cried, in a voice no longer her own. A voice no longer human. "Free!" Suetonius sank to his knees in horror. The thing Cassia was becoming before his eyes ... huge and black and terrible ... loomed over him. He quaked, his flesh crawling as its eyes burned with blood red fire, boring into his heart. Its body… twice a man’s height…was thin and lanky, in ways almost serpentine. It had arms and legs not unlike a man’s, but with clawed hands and feet, and a long, lashing tail like a lizard’s. It reminded him of some huge, ugly desert reptile standing erect on its hind legs.

Its face ... he had to look away, whether more in fright or revulsion, he couldn’t be sure. Jaws bared wide like a snake’s, curved fangs dripping with venom, a stinger-tipped tongue, long as a man’s arm, lapping as the monstrous thing laughed. Suetonius cringed in the dirt as the laughter sent icy tremors through him. Its hair was a flowing mane of burning crimson fluid, tinged with a ghostly shimmer of silver; as though a fountain of blood and flaming pitch were erupting from the top of the creature’s head. The burning red fluid seemed to flow throughout the creature’s frame, winding arterial rivers of it running the length of its body. "You have done well, General," it said, leaning its face towards him and hissing, its noxious spit sizzling in the dirt around him.

Anger slowly but surely wormed its way up through Suetonius’s fear. To steal Cassia’s image ... to trick him into committing an act that would damn him.... He looked into the demon’s leering face, its fangs forming what could only be described as an arrogant smile. Suetonius’s teeth clenched, his fists trembling as his rage mounted. His hatred exploded. "Damn you!" he roared. He sprang at the monster, and raised his sword. The demon lifted a hand, and Suetonius was paralyzed. Icy steel spikes seemed to shoot through his body and the sword fell from his numbed fingers.

"Such rudeness, General," the demon taunted, its body quivering with hideous amusement. Suetonius felt ill. "Is that any way to greet an ally?"

"Ally?"

"I can bring you great success and good fortune. If you will perform a simple boon or two for me."

"No! Never! I will never serve you again, you spawn of filth! Never!" He spat at the monster.

"Oh, but you will, General. I know you don’t believe that now. But, very soon, you will accept my help. Willingly, and gratefully." Great, leathery, pointed wings sprouted from the demon’s back. They stroked open to a terrifying width, blotting out the moonlight. "Until then." It leapt into the air and flapped off like some hideous, gargantuan bat. The cold wind it generated in ascending raised the hairs on the back of Suetonius’s neck. The monster’s shadow dwindled against the moon, its blood-curdling laughter echoing into the night. Suetonius shook with fear. The fear faded with the demon’s passing, transmuting into an anguished self-loathing at what he had unleashed.

"Commander," Marcus called in a fear-stricken voice, his hand jostling Suetonius’s shoulder, stirring him from a fitful sleep of still more nightmares.

"Wh—what do you want, Marcus?" Suetonius moaned, rubbing his eyes as he sat up on his cot. He glanced about in the half-darkness, the moonlight shining through the tent flap glinting off Marcus’s armor. Lighting a lamp, he saw the fear in Marcus’s face. "What is it?"

"The Celts have risen, Commander," he said, holding up a rolled parchment. "This just arrived from the Midlands. Queen Boudicca has rallied both the Iceni and the Trinovantes against us. Her army has burned Camulodunum to the ground. It is madness, Commander! The barbarians are slaughtering our people! Cerialis’s legion has been routed! Boudicca is advancing on Londinium as we speak! The messenger who brought this was all but demented with fear, Commander. He says Boudicca and her warriors fight as though possessed by a demon!"

Suetonius’s heart froze. What had he done?

Suetonius sighed as he leaned across the small wooden table in his tent in the British West Midlands, passing his hand over the map in front of him. Londinium was in ruins. He had been forced to retreat, unable to raise the forces he’d needed to stop Boudicca there. He winced in shame, having read Tacitus’s reports of the atrocities committed by the Britons after he had ordered the city evacuated. Now, Verulamium had fallen as well. "What are our chances, Marcus?"

Marcus stood beside him, nervously shifting from one foot to the other. "They outnumber us 10 to 1, Commander," he answered, not meeting Suetonius’s eyes. "Postumus has refused us reinforcements...."

"Answer plainly, man!" he barked impatiently.

Marcus looked up. "Sir ... in all candor ... if our own Celts do not turn on us, that is probably the best we can hope for. It seems impossible, sir."

Suetonius bowed his head. What now? More death? More blood on his hands, and for a battle he couldn’t win? What could he do to save lives?

"‘Ready to bargain with me now," a man’s voice said. Startled, Suetonius looked up in the direction of the voice. A young man stepped from the shadows of the tent. A tall, handsome man in black robes, with long flaxen hair that shone in the light of the rising sun. His black eyes shone keenly, his thin lips curled in a sly grin.

"Get out! I’ll have no dealings with you!" Visibly startled, and obviously assuming Suetonius had meant him, Marcus bowed and left the tent. Suetonius slammed his fist on the table in frustration. "I know who you are now! You can’t trick me again!"

"I don’t need to trick you, man. Look around you." The man raised a slender hand against the sunrise, blood-red light washing over his fingers as they cast long black shadows across the map. "Your hold on these islands is about to be broken. You need my help."

"You caused this!"

"How the situation came about is irrelevant. Only I can save you from it. Say the word, and I will withdraw my power from Boudicca’s army and give it to yours." He smiled as he stepped toward Suetonius. Suetonius cringed, instinctively reaching for his sword. "Your men will rally to you, fearlessly and flawlessly. The arm of each of your men will strike with the strength of ten. Your army will move as one, Boudicca’s force falling as wheat before your scythe."

"And, what do you ask in return for all this?"

"Does it matter? If you refuse, what awaits you but death on the battlefield, or Nero’s vengeance in Rome, should you escape? What choice do you have," he asked smugly, offering his hand.

Suetonius’s heart throbbed. He was tempted in his fear. Then, he remembered Mona, and his fear gave way. "Crawl back into the filth I saved you from demon," he said. The man dropped his hand, his smile turning to an angry scowl. Suetonius grinned in satisfaction. "Let the Celts have these islands. That will be Nero’s problem, not mine. I will free my men of their bond and flee into a wilderness beyond even the empire’s reach. I am done with you." The man bared his teeth, hissing hatefully and turned away.

Suetonius smiled as he began rolling up his map. "Betrayer," a woman’s voice cried out in anguish, sending a cold chill through Suetonius’s heart. "You would leave our murders unavenged?" He looked up and blanched in horror. The woman’s flesh was half-charred from her bones, her face a hideous, blackened half-skeletal mask, her scalp half-melted from her skull. A throng of women surrounded her, men and children, all burned and horribly disfigured, a grotesque parade of walking dead. "They did this to us, and you will not give us justice?" she screamed. He gasped, realizing these were the Roman citizens who had died at Camulodunum. He turned away, in shame, only to be confronted by another woman, covered in her own blood. She stood impaled on a large wooden skewer. He reflexively covered his face in disgust, but could not tear his eyes from hers.

She was surrounded by a dozen other women, all skewered and barbarically mutilated, one breast hacked off and stuffed in the victim’s mouth. Exactly as Tacitus had described the massacre at Londinium. "They did this to us after you ran and left us," she moaned in agony. "You will not stand for us now? Are you so much a coward?"

"Go away!" he screamed, falling to his knees and covering his ears. "You’re not real!"

"Our deaths were real. Our pain was real. They butchered my husband before my eyes. They laughed as I begged. I couldn’t even die with him."

"We died screaming in the temple vaults, clawing at the doors as the flames drew closer, the smoke filling our eyes, our throats," the burned woman cried. "Our babies screamed, clutching at us, begging us..."

"I can’t bring you back by making more like you," Suetonius protested, clawing at the earth. "I can’t make you alive again with more killing! I am so tired of the damned killing!"

"Then, make it stop, General," a girl’s voice said gently beside him. He breathed, his ears ringing in the silence. The screaming had stopped. He looked up, and there was the young maid he’d seen at Mona, smiling sweetly at him, white flowers in her hair. He looked around. They were all alone, he and the girl. "You can make this stop for me, General. Do it for me."

"But ... it’s my fault you and your people are dead."

"No, General," she said with kind, gentle laughter, passing a soft hand across his face. "It wasn’t your fault. It was Boudicca’s. It was her rebellious ways that forced you to Mona. If not for her, I would still be alive, as would all the others who have died in this needless war. Rome is law and justice. Rome is knowledge and peace. Destroy Boudicca, and bring civilization to these islands. Do this, so that my death will not be in vain. Do this so that others like me will grow up in a land of peace, safe from barbarian hordes. Please, General. For me." She kissed him lightly on the cheek. He bowed his head, tears running down his face. She brushed them aside. "Do this, General, and all is forgiven."

He looked up into her sparkling elfin eyes and smiled. "For you then, child. For you."

She nodded. "Open your heart to me, General. And, all your pain will go." He pulled off his armor and opened his tunic, baring his chest to her. Her small hand stroked his pectorals. He laughed as her fingers ruffled the hair on his chest. Her eyes exploded into hellish fire, her face warping and stretching, her jaws opening wide as his head, curved fangs extending. He screamed in excruciating pain as those fangs plunged into his chest, a stinger-tipped tongue stabbing into his heart. He collapsed, blinded by pain. His head swam in darkness. A moment later, sight returned. Just in time for him to see the girl laugh and spin as she grew before his eyes, turning into the young man he’d met before. "Is your gullibility truly boundless, mortal," he cried, laughing and clapping his hands in delight. Suetonius moaned, staring down at the bloody hole in his chest, dark lines of poison spreading like rivers under his skin. "That venom will continue to spread through your blood for years until you are dead, General. A slow, agonizing death. Agony beyond your ability to conceive. The last few hours of your life will seem like ages as you beg for death’s merciful release. Unless you obey me."

"You lied," Suetonius gasped in anguish. "You said if I agreed, you would give my army victory."

"And, so I shall, General. Unlike Man, I am bound by my word. But, in return for that victory, I demand two favors from you."

"What are they?"

"Oh, the first one is simple enough. No more than I demanded of Boudicca." He smiled wickedly. "Human sacrifice. The innocent slaughtered. Women and children butchered." Suetonius cried out in pain, writhing in torment. The man floated in mid-air inches above him, gently stroking his hair. "Fear not. It gets easier each time, believe me. As to the second favor…ah, well, we can discuss that later. Now, on your feet, General. You have a war to fight."

~*~

Nero’s palace in Rome was a long way from Londinium, but at last Suetonius met with his Emperor, although he dreaded the outcome.

"Leave us," Nero said, dismissing his guards as Suetonius was summoned into the emperor’s personal audience chamber. Suetonius directed his men to set down the oak chest he’d brought with him. "What is that?" Nero demanded, pointing at the chest.

"A gift for your imperial majesty," Suetonius answered, fighting to hide his fear as he dismissed his men. "A rare and ancient treasure I brought back from the British Isles."

"Indeed," Nero scoffed, taking a swallow of wine from his goblet. "I hope this is not some feeble attempt at bribery, Suetonius! I believe I made myself quite clear in my last message. Your services in Britain are over. Your victory over Boudicca was an impressive feat, I will grant you. But, you have gone too far. These barbaric slaughters of yours are doing more harm than good! I need soldiers to govern my provinces, not savages! I have chosen Publius Petronius Turpilianus as your successor. He will offer a gentler hand, I think."

"You misunderstand, sire. I am here only to finalize a few unresolved taxation issues before relinquishing command to my successor. Since there are certain items of considerable ... delicacy involved, I assumed you would rather I take the matter directly to you rather than to the Senate." He offered Nero a rolled parchment. The emperor sneered as he snatched the parchment from his hand and slammed the wine goblet down on a marble table. As Nero turned his back and studied the document in the light of a lamp hanging nearby, Suetonius cautiously extracted a tiny cloth sac from under his cloak. He untied the sac and emptied its contents…an arcane mixture of herbs and roots the demon had taught him to prepare…into Nero’s goblet.

Stamping his royal seal onto the parchment, Nero picked up the goblet and finished the wine. "Suetonius, I trust this concludes ... con..." The emperor grew pale, dropping the goblet and clutching his throat. His eyes bulged, his body convulsing. As Nero fell to the floor, clawing at his throat and gasping for breath, Suetonius opened the oak chest. He stepped back in fear as a living wave of darkness, like a river of pitch flowed out of the chest, slithering across the marble floor toward Nero. The darkness reared up like a cobra, red eyes flaring, fangs glinting, and tongue-lashing. Suetonius averted his eyes in revulsion as the filthy wave of blackness flowed into Nero’s mouth and down his throat.

Nero’s convulsions stopped. His body rose off the floor as if by magic, standing erect. Nero laughed, his eyes glowing red as burning coals. "It has been ages since I’ve worn a human host. It is good." He looked down at his hands and body. "To feel. To breathe. To lust." He chuckled.

Suetonius winced, the pain in his chest growing worse. "I’ve completed my second labor. My debt to you is paid. Now, keep your word, damn you!" He opened his tunic, exposing the hideously mottled black scabbing of his growing infection. "Take back your poison!"

Nero sighed. "Very well." He put his mouth to Suetonius’s chest and sucked like a giant leech, drawing the poison from Suetonius’s body. Suetonius watched as the dark rot of the infection drained from his chest, the pain fading. As the thing that once was Nero finished and pulled back, Suetonius saw the wound in his chest heal and vanish. He passed a hand over his chest. It was as though the wound had never been there. He exhaled in relief. It was over. At last, he was free.

Nero struck a gong, summoning the commander of his Praetorian guard. "My emperor summoned me," the armored soldier said, saluting.

"Yes, General. Gather your captains at once. I have a task for them. It’s time we dealt with this Christian rabble once and for all. Oh, and instruct my treasurer to provision an expedition to the African coast. We’ll be needing lions for the arena. Hungry ones." He smiled. Suetonius nearly gagged. As the soldier saluted and left, Nero touched the rolled parchment to the lamp flame and set it afire. He held the burning parchment up, grinning. "So pretty, fire. So pleasing to the eye, the dancing flame. So it was at Camulodunum. So it will be again."

Suetonius’s spine turned to ice. Was there no end to it? Not again. Not again.

~*~

The Island of Mona, Britain, 69 A.D.

Suetonius thrust his sword into the shallow grave where he had buried his written account of the past eight years. Just beside the grave where he had buried the Druid high priest the day this madness had begun. As he pulled off his uniform and doused himself with oil, he felt no fear. In his heart, he was already dead.

He had seen Rome burn and descend into civil war. And, he was as responsible for every Roman killed in that great holocaust as if he had set torch to oil with his own hand. He felt nothing as he struck the flint and saw the flame ignite. As the fire consumed him, he surrendered to the pain. He reveled in it. This was as alive as he had felt in as long as he could remember.

He looked up from the fire, and saw the high priest and the girl standing by, the moonlight shining on their white robes as they beckoned him. As he started towards them, a voice called to him from behind. He looked, and there was the flaxen-haired man smiling at him from the fire. "Come with me, General. I will provide you with an eternity of pleasures. With all of humanity to feed upon. Go with them, and you will suffer the pain of your victims for ages to come." He reached out his hand. Suetonius smiled.

Not again.

He turned and followed the high priest and the girl. The demon shrieked in frustration, descending into the fire. Suetonius resolved himself to what would come.