Let's Make A Deal

He was my only son. My only child. They took him.  Ripped him from his bed in his sleep. If it had been my debt to bear, I would have understood. My blood would have sealed the fate of my child and given me the grand, rich, future that I felt I deserved. 

It wasn't my debt. It wasn’t even a debt of my family, my blood. The debt came from his father's grandfather. A man we rarely interacted with. He was the one that sold his first born for wealth and power. Or so he thought. He had not read the fine print, just took the deal and kept the rewards wholly to himself. 

The fine print informed him it would take a first born of his lineage. He assumed that meant his eldest, a daughter. When she wasn't taken, he didn't question it, just assumed something else had worked in his favor. 

What he didn't understand was that they traded value for value. The first child born of his lineage to have value was his great grandson born to the firstborn son of his eldest son.

My son. 

They took him at just the right age. Old enough for myself and his father to be wholly and fully in love with him as our child, young enough that he will never be able to remember us. Aside from being raised by demons, he would never fully know the loss of his parents. We, on the other hand, would mourn him until we breathed our last. 

That was undoubtedly their plan, at any rate. Our plans were a little different.

The blood of Old Order Knights flowed through me from both of my parents, one of the highest concentrations able to be found in the modern world. It was not something we broadcasted and odds were the demons were clueless.  I had to wait a few weeks in order for them to maintain their ignorance, but as soon as I could pull the trigger on the Knights, I did.

They were fairly easy to find once we stopped trying to look in other dimensions and turned our gaze a little closer to home. The demon that took our son was a prominent minister in Birmingham taking advantage of those easily led astray. The hatred that permeated the southern United States kept him very well fed and the donations from his clueless flock kept him very well appointed. 

We knew better than to meet him on his territory where he would be strongest. It took a few days of watching him, but we finally caught him entering a neutral location. Even an apostle of darkness can't say no to fast food French fries. 

I sat at his table without asking and he thought me to be from his flock until I informed him a squad of Knights was surrounding his estate that exact moment. He knew what I wanted and asked what I was willing to trade. 

It's a funny thing how a person will consider the world when something greater than them is at stake. Really, the demon was just doing his job. As awful a job as it was, it was his by demon draft  and he had to be admired for excelling at it instead of half-assing it. Very few people took this level of pride in their chosen professions. And, really, was I much different from him? Seven Old Order Knights were being sent to their possible deaths because I commanded it, because I decided the life of my son was greater than theirs and they agreed without question. 

I cast my gaze around the restaurant. People who will probably never amount to much because they don’t or can’t or won’t realize that they could if they just looked outside of their boxes. They were probably decent people at their core, but some undoubtedly abused their kids or their spouses. They did these terrible things, wasted their lives all on their own. The demon across from me didn't have to lift a single finger to make them evil. He came for the fries, but he stayed for the screaming kids and frustrated parents growing more and more resentful of the innocent creatures they forced into the world. I found I couldn't be pressed to care that he used them like this. In a way, I wholly felt they deserved it. 

When I asked him how he felt about the world wide web, he cringed a little. Then I asked him how he felt about Old Order Knights working for him. This sparked his interest. 

One of the Specialists came in with a laptop and showed him the darkest recesses the internet had to offer. He nearly choked on his fries. As a show of good faith, he called one of his minions and ordered them to bring my son to us along with the contract his great grandfather signed.

I hugged my son as tightly as I could while I cursed the offspring of the evil of the world.  But, I did leave in a loophole for them should they choose to look for it.  The demon loved challenges.