Monday morning came around with that inevitability that made it either the best or the worst day of the week, for Jonny it was just a Monday.
“You were pretty slick.” Jenny said perkily as he entered the lab.
“What?”
“One minute you’re bantering froggy with Domi the next you’re gone and Domi looks like a cat that got double cream when I saw her on Sunday.”
“Entente cordial.” Jonny smiled and refused to be drawn any further on his weekend activities.
He had other matters on his mind, and Dominique’s number on his phone; he had a demon to catch.
He returned to the STM and prepared for the next experiment. Don came in after coffee and nearly exploded when he saw his solutions were gone for a second time.
“Hey! They were on my bench!” He ranted at Jonny.
“And they are now in the fridge.” Jonny replied levelly. “Those solutions go off pretty quick if left on the bench, you should be more careful with them if you want to get decent results.”
“The fridge.” Don said in a subdued tone.
Jonny nodded.
“Jenny made room for them.”
“Oh, sorry.” Don replied. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
A peace of sorts was established by the helpful gesture, Jenny had been right.
It took most of the week to get good reproducible results from the wild type protein channels, the IV curves all following the same sinuous pattern as he moved from one channel in the patch to the next. They opened and closed at his command but they opened upon nothing more deadly than the mica upon which they lay. The way was clear to begin on the mutants, but which one had provided the passage to hell and unleashed a demon on the unsuspecting Phil?

He spent a very unsatisfactory Friday morning leafing through Phil’s lab books. They were a mass of badly collated scribbles and some of the IV printouts had clearly been shuffled so that they no longer resided in the correct place in the books. He closed the books with a frown, he would have to do it the logical way, start at the first mutant in the series. Bloody tedious, but also dangerous. He would have to start working nights in order that he could ensure nobody else was around when he opened a mutant channel protein for the first time.
Before then he had a second test to conduct on the head of department. He felt Artemesia’s excitement. She liked nothing more than causing pain and discomfort to the demons, she was still more angel than demon even though she had been condemned by Gabriel and expelled. He took a long lunch break and went for a walk in a nearby park as he planned the test, the test by water. A possessed would be unable to drink holy water. But like carting bibles around, this test provided its own set of logistical problems, he could hardly march up to the head of department, force his mouth open and pour in 50ml of milli-Q grade holy water. He paused and grinned slightly at the thought, it would wipe that annoying smile off David’s face, but it would also lead to him being sacked in short order. Jonny shrugged and started walking again, planning it as he would an experiment, designing, mentally testing the design, refining, testing it again, round and round until he had covered the obvious problems. He found a seat and sat down to watch the world go by. Beside him the pale, glowing angel with wings neatly furled drew no curious stares from the passers by, they could not see her, but this afternoon a lucky few would. He explained precisely what he wanted to do for the test to Artemesia, and then her role in the procedure. She looked at him with an expression of delight on her beautiful face, she must manifest fully in this world in her angelic form; that would diss Gabriel off but good.

Coffee time, when the disparate members of the department came together for a break and a chin wag, David never missed it. Jonny ensured that he arrived at the counter at much the same time as David and waited for his ‘distraction’ to take place. There was an almighty screeching of tortured rubber from outside on the street and a good few people turned their heads at the sound, including David. But he had another reason for turning, his demon detected Artemesia’s full on manifestation outside above the road, wings at full stretch and gleaming. It took only a moment for Jonny to upend the little vial of holy water into David’s afternoon coffee and then step away to peer out of the window with several others. A young girl stood in the road with a delivery van just a couple of feet short of her. The van driver had been on his mobile and not paying attention to the child as she chased her balloon into the road. Artemesia’s angelic appearance right in his face had made him brake violently and saved the girls life, now he was staring wide eyed as that same angel alighted beside the girl and took her hand to lead her back onto the safety of the pavement and her distraught mother. The mother had no eyes for Artemesia but there were enough fingers pointing from other pedestrians. Behind him there was a muffled curse and David dropped his coffee onto the floor.
“Sorry, sorry.” He said effusively. “Just burned my lip on the coffee, wasn’t paying attention. Could I have something to mop it up ?”
“I’ll do it professor.” Mary the coffee lady volunteered.
“Thank you Mary.” David beamed and got himself a bottle of water instead, ‘to cool the burn’.
Absolutely masterful play acting Jonny reflected. David and his demon had failed the second test.

 It had gone six thirty before Jonny emerged from the STM room and, predictably for a Friday night, everyone else had gone, leaving just the odd machine running and the lights on.
“Lights on, everybody gone home.” He mused quietly.
He could put one more mutant sample down he reflected, the membrane patches worked an absolute treat, far, far better than the tedious and less reliable monolayer preps. But the sun was setting and he was tired after a long hard week.
“Lets go Mesi.” He said shutting off the lights in the lab.
Stopping in the office he checked his computer, the usual pile of trash e-mails from central bureaucracy, they could wait until Monday before he trashed them all. Shrugging on his coat he locked the office door and ambled down to the entrance.
“Night Frank.” He waved to the porter on late duty.
“See you Jonny.”
The rush hour traffic was still very heavy, some mishap somewhere in the city had thrown the delicate balance off and it was grinding along painfully slowly, if he caught a bus now he would be in for a long dull ride. He decided to kill two birds with one stone, get food and wait out the gridlock.
The Subway franchise was a godsend to many a late worker, still open long after the ordinary sandwich bars had shut up shop, and a good tasty bite into the bargain. He selected a twelve inch monster and a cup of coffee with a choc chip cookie to top it off.
“Ahhh.” He sighed contentedly as he finished off the last of the cookie and washed it down with the coffee.
Looking out of the window he was slightly dismayed to see that the traffic was still jammed up and showing no signs of dispersing.
“Bummer.” He muttered stepping out onto the pavement and considering his options.
Get a bus, eventually. Or he could get a beer in one of the many bars along the long drag into town, maybe even pull he thought idly. Normally Artemesia would have given him an etheric elbow at that point in his lascivious train of thought but not tonight, what was wrong ?
His senses sharpened up immediately and he scanned all around him for any signs of demon spoor, but there were none. Then he noticed what had captured her attention, she was gazing up into the sky just over the roofs where the stars were twinkling brightly and a crescent moon just peeped over the ridge tiles. He watched for a moment and a brilliant blue white star rose over the obscuring roofline followed by the second horn of the moon.
A shiver vibrated through his body as Artemesia spoke.
“The demon moon rises Jon.”

Cradling the constellation of Orion the young moon had the star Rigel at the perfect centre of the pointing horns, the demon moon. How long had it been since the last such moonrise ?
“It’s tonight Mesi.” He stated and a passing stranger looked at him anxiously before hurrying away from the intense look on his pale face.
“Back already ?” Frank asked genially as Jonny signed back into the building.
“Traffics gridlocked, its either another experiment or getting wasted down the bar.” Jonny said with a grin. “And the rent is killing my social life already.”
“Know the feeling.” Frank commiserated, university salaries for the workers were scandalously low.
“Probably be here gone midnight.” Jonny forewarned Frank so that the porter wouldn’t come into the lab at some unfortunate moment.
“No problem Jonny, see you later.”
“Later.” Jonny returned and set off back up to the lab.
Setting up the membranes to incubate on the gold electrode in the STM, Jonny removed a small heavy wooden box from the back of the cupboard where he kept all the STM accessories, but this was no accessory pack. Setting it carefully on the bench he felt along the edge for the slight depression of the hidden lock. Sliding it downwards there was a soft click and the lid slowly opened up to reveal a neat array of nine glass bottles.
“I’m frightened Jon.” Artemesia whispered at the sight of those ancient bottles.
“No choice Mesi, tonight is the perfect time for an uber demon to attempt passage. You’re going to have to play my demon pet.”
Her sad, beautiful face now distorted, becoming longer, leaner, her cheekbones almost angular, her once perfect teeth now a row of yellowing blades behind her pale lips. The wings that part unfolded from her back looked leathery and had a mottled, diseased aspect to them. Her slender pale arms carried scales and terminated in cruel long taloned claws, her long legs became crooked and clad in shaggy bedraggled fur, now cloven hoofed and evil to behold.
“Sorry.” He said as he picked up the first bottle and carefully removed the ornate glass stopper to allow fulminating vapours to wash malodorously about the room, sending sharp cracks of eldritch energy blasting through the ether.
“That should get its attention.” Jonny murmured as he stoppered the bottle and selected another.
With great care he traced a pentangle around the STM and placed a drop of each of five more, equally vile, solutions at the apex of each arm, he felt his skin crawl as he placed the last drop in position, there were demons near.

“Mesi.” He said.
He had a brief glimpse of her unsheathing a sword of flame and then she was gone and the air filled with shrieks of pain and frustration as the lesser devils were sent fleeing and those foolish enough to attempt to fight back were cut away from this dimension to plunge back through the levels of hell. The air was heavy with the acrid scents that he had anointed the pentagram with, but now it was clear of any demonic ‘static’, the way was prepared.
Next Jonny prepared his sanctum, placing crystals at the cardinal points around where he would stand and then tracing a circle about them with holy water, but he left the tiniest gap in the protection. This demon would need to be drawn out of the safety of the pentagram before he could strike it down, here he was the bait in his own trap. A pentagram medallion on a golden chain about his neck gave the impression of an unsuspecting neophyte of demonology. Every alchemist worthy of the name knew that to wear a pentagram was not a protection but a surefire passport to hell, for it allowed the demon to possess the wearer with ease. Jonny was taking a calculated risk by wearing it, but an uber demon was a wilely beast, thoughtful, intelligent, a survivor of the eternal war.
He added one more thing to his disguise, a pair a horribly unfashionable tortoiseshell spectacles, these were neither protection nor part of the ritual, they were to make him look like a susceptible male. Demons were sexless but would often manifest as a woman to make themselves look alluring and desirable, to the, usually, male summoner.
Packing the wooden box with its disgusting contents once more Jonny looked over his preparations with a hyper critical eye, all was in place; time to start the experiment.
He hung the DO NOT ENTER sign on the door, then locked it anyway, no sense in leaving anything to chance even when no right minded person should be in the building, it was already past ten o’clock.

Settling to the task he began to scan the sample to find a suitable patch of the membrane, one packed with the mutant channel protein that could unlock the paths of the other dimensions where true evil lurked, waited, paced impatiently. It was a slow business, the patches had to be in low concentrations or they would clump together and become useless. Finally his painstaking progress brought success, a big patch, well adsorbed to the gold and absolutely stuffed full of the trimeric channels; it was a beautiful sight filling the monitor in shades of orange, brown and white, row upon row of trimers in regular arrays. He selected a spot right in the centre of the patch and carefully set up the approach, too fast and he could damage the fragile proteins. Contact. Dialling up the voltage he watched tensely for a sign of current flow. Nothing. He had come down between the channels. This game of tic tac toe continued as the night slipped further into the dark abyssal realm of the demon moon, midnight was approaching and the moon would reach its zenith.
Contact. Now the digits responded and an IV curve traced itself across the glowing monitor, the only light in the room.
“Gotcha.” Jonny breathed and felt Artemesia tense.
His initial voltage scan had not been very wide, just minus 0.1 volts to plus 0.1 volts, now he had to gradually increase it until the channel responded and began to open on his command. Time to move into the protection circle. He stepped carefully over the invisible ring and set the voltage range for the next scan. It reached plus 0.62 volts when he felt the change in the air, a sudden chill and the definite pungent odour of brimstone hung in the air, the channel had opened all the way into hell.
He stopped the scan and decreased the voltage by 0.01 volts just to be safe. One final check of all his preparations. Little bottles of buffers sat in the rack on the bench but one of them was bogus, it most certainly did not contain Tris buffer at pH 7.5, this one he loosened the cap off so that it would come off at a flick of his finger. Artemesia crouched in one corner of the lab, a picture of abject subject demon, nor was this entirely acting, she was afraid of this unknown demon, it was powerful.

“Be ready Mesi.” Jonny said quietly and looked down towards her.
“Yes Jon.”
Briefly her face shed its demonic appearance and smiled bravely back at him, then it darkened back to a hell whore of fangs and eyes of flame.
Jonny set the scan going again but more slowly than before, the brimstone breath tainted the air strongly, the demon was waiting on the other side, eager, hungry, vile.
The door handle rattled.
“What ….?” Jonny muttered anxiously.
The handle moved again, surely Frank wouldn’t be trying to get in, not after Jonny’s warning and the notice.
The rattling stopped and after a moments silence Jonny heard the one sound that he dreaded more than any other, the key was being unsteadily inserted into the lock.
The scan still incremented with slow precision and vapours were manifesting themselves above the STM, evil shades that only the trained eye might perceive, the demon was very close to coming through.
The key was in the lock and turning. He had only moments in which to act.
Jonny killed the scan and leapt over to the door as it began to open, dragged it fully open and nearly precipitated Don full length into the lab.
“What part of DO NOT ENTER don’t you understand Don ?!” Jonny yelled into his surprised face.
“I…hey, I just came by for my I-pod. No need to shout.” Don retorted with some slurring.
“You’re pissed.” Jonny grated angrily.
“You’ve wrecked my experiment and you want your stupid I-pod !” He continued, stabbing a finger viciously into Don’s chest and causing him to recoil.

Jonny had not felt this angry in a long count of years, that a drunken student should interrupt a supremely dangerous demon hunt just because he wanted to listen to his pathetic excuse of music ! He could have killed him on the spot and it showed in his face. Don took two fearful steps backwards and fetched up against the bench.
Jonny was not going to allow him to remain at large; he grabbed Don by the wrist and spun him around with casual violence.
“Oww ! Leggo !” Don squawked with his arm painfully twisted up his back.
“Out.” Jonny growled and propelled him forwards, frog marching him away from certain death.
Out of the lab, into the lift and then to the desk where Frank looked up in surprise from his paper.
“Something up ?” He asked with a frown as he saw Jonny pushing the unhappy Don ahead of him.
“Yes.” Jonny glared back. “Don is drunk, he should not be here in this condition. Sign him out and make damn sure he does not come back in tonight.”
“I…” Frank began to say but something in Jonny’s posture told him that this was not a good time to argue procedure.
Jonny released his iron grip allowing Don to shakily sign his name and then escorted him to the doors.
“DO NOT COME BACK.” Jonny told him uncompromisingly, and shoved him out.
Only when Don had disappeared back into the night did Jonny turn back to Frank and draw in a calming breath.
“Sorry I lost it there Frank, but he blew away my experiment.” Jonny explained.
“But you’d do well not to allow anyone who has been drinking back after hours.” He added darkly.
“Sorry Jonny. You…”
Jonny waved a hand at him.
“It didn’t happen Frank, he came, he went. End of story.”
Frank opened his mouth to apologise again but Jonny was gone.
The vapours were curling rankly about the main lab as Jonny re-entered it and Artemesia was standing in the doorway to the STM room with her sword in hand, holding the line should the demon come through.
“Okay Mesi.” Jonny murmured and stepped into the dark room.
The acrid smell of brimstone was enough to make him gag for a moment but he formed a cross before himself and the air seemed to clear and become more breathable. Shutting the door and relocking it, he once more took up his position within his flawed circle of protection and prepared for the showdown. Praying that there were no more unwelcome visitors in the building.
“Is the building still clear Mesi ?” He questioned her.
“There are no demons Jon. Only you and Frank remain within.”
“Here goes then.” He said grimly.