“It’s not a name. It’s a title. It means god-king. It was used by hereditary rulers who descended from Saidoune ibn Canaan, who founded the city of Sidon over seven thousand years ago. They ruled the people who later became known as the Phoenicians, and their kingdom stretched over modern Israel all the way to southern Jerusalem.”

“Roland’s contemporaries.” Luther grimaced.

“Not exactly. Moloch’s reign officially ended during the time of Roland’s grandfather. He was the last of his line.”

In the ancient age, wars could be decided by a single duel between powerful magic users. The rulers of the countries were expected to take the field and defend their land and their people. They went to great lengths to augment their powers. For my adoptive family, that meant dealing with shar, an irresistible urge to claim and protect land. Moloch paid a different price.

“Moloch’s family feared death,” I told Luther, “so they focused on regeneration. They wanted to become unkillable, and when their natural magic wasn’t enough, they reached for divine power. They allowed themselves to be worshiped as gods.”

Luther frowned. “Divinity comes with a big price tag.”

All living things generated magic, but humans with our intelligence and emotions were particularly adept at directing it. Human thoughts carried power, especially when blended with emotion, and few things were more emotional than a prayer. Each plea to a god sent him a portion of the human’s power, especially when it was spoken aloud. Together, the faithful powered up their deities like charging up a battery. The bigger the congregation, the greater the power. In theory, it was limitless. But Luther was right. The arrangement came at a heavy cost.

“And that’s why Moloch’s kingdom fell,” I said. “He became a god, obsessed with accumulating power through sacrifice and prayer. He lost his grip on the physical world. Normal human needs and urges no longer troubled him. He let his ancestral kingdom be conquered and carved into pieces. As long as the invaders worshipped him, he didn’t care.”

“Abandoning humanity wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for him,” Luther said. “Once you decide that burning tiny humans alive is a perfectly acceptable method of upgrading, you stop being human. Made the transition to godhood that much easier.”

I nodded. I’d seen the inside of Moloch’s citadel up close. There were no words to describe that kind of suffering. I hadn’t known human beings could endure that much pain and despair.

“After the magic civilization collapsed and tech flooded the world in waves, Moloch should have faded away like other ancient gods without a persistent mythos. But he got a boost from the Old Testament. He’s mentioned five times in Leviticus, once in Second Kings, and once in Jeremiah, not counting the allusions in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Sometime during the Middle Ages Christians became a bit obsessed with him and he made the transition to demonhood.”

Luther sighed. “Christianity, the most composite of all religions. Why let a rival god, even a small one, die when you can turn him into a demon and rummage through his rites and holidays for the bits you can scavenge to attract his worshippers?”

“Exactly.”

After the first Shift, magic hadn’t disappeared completely. It dropped too low to be useful, but it was still there. Every time Moloch’s name was mentioned, he got a crumb of power. That trickle kept him alive like an IV drip to a coma patient. Then the second Shift flooded the world with magic and delivered a shot of adrenaline to Moloch’s power reserve. He hoarded it, biding his time, until he had accumulated just enough.

“Four flares ago, Moloch chose to be reborn.”

Luther leaned back. “An avatar?”

“Yes.”

“Flares drop every seven years, which would make him in his mid-thirties. Plenty of time to build a power base.”

“He has a citadel in Arizona. He is practically indestructible. I dismembered him, cut off his head, and threw his body into his forge, and he popped right back up in less than two years. Near perfect regeneration isn’t his only trick. He is almost impervious to fire. He wields it like a weapon and he’s highly skilled in metallurgy. He overlaps with Hephaestus in powers, and he is taking full advantage of any stray Greek Neo-Pagans that come his way looking to serve a god with a forge.”

A shadow passed over Luther’s eyes. “Why Arizona?”

“Metallic mineralization belt. He mines copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc. It gives him access to some iron, but also tungsten, peridot, and azurite, which he uses to create enchanted weapons. He’s building an army. Also, the area he’s in is mostly empty and hot as hell.”

“Ha-ha. I get it. Hell as in Tophet,” Luther said. “The Levant is a rather crowded place right now. You can’t swing a sacrificial lamb without hitting some old god.”

He wasn’t wrong. Any of the fertile regions where ancient civilizations had flourished were becoming hotly contested territories when it came to deities. By contrast, the continental US was a vast and relatively sparsely populated area, especially since the Shift had decimated the population across the board. A lot of areas had fallen to the wilderness. A perfect place for an avatar to hide and quietly grow his power.

Luther rubbed his chin, thinking. “So, Moloch has free reign in Arizona? None of this is giving me the warm fuzzies, but so far all the bad things you’re describing are over there.” He pointed vaguely to the west. “I imagine you’re about to tell me something that will make it relevant and so much worse.”