Crossroad Demon

Their clients

**Crossroad Demons** are demons tasked with "buying" souls for Hell through deals with humans. These deals consist of the demon granting the human's wish in exchange for ownership over that person's soul, resulting in the person dying and going to Hell to be transformed into a demon upon death. Crossroad demons are named as such because they, in particular, can be summoned at crossroads by humans seeking to make deals.

In 2020, the new Queen Rowena MacLeod ordered that no more deals are to be made, effectively putting the Crossroad Demons out of a job. But was later restored by King Lazarus.

## Characteristics

Generally, red-eyed demons are stationed as crossroad demons, as they have the ability to teleport. Named as they create their pacts at a crossroad, they are Hell's deal-making demons. They answer to the King of the Crossroads; previously, this was Lazarus. After Lazarus' ascension to King of Hell, Raziel became the King of the Crossroads for the next several years until his own first death in 2017 but was resurrected by Mabrius.

White the deals are typically beneficial to humans, the benefits are almost always temporary as the deals are usually made at the price of the person's soul. Crossroad Demons are master manipulators and love to play with people's emotions, particularly negative emotions such as greed, guilt, and fear. All Crossroad Demons sign their contracts with a kiss which corrupts the human extremely slowly.

A Crossroad Demon can be summoned by digging a hole in the dead center of a set of crossroads and burying a box containing a picture of the mortal wishing to make the deal, some graveyard dirt, and a bone from a black cat. The demon most often featured in the series prefers to possess the bodies of strikingly attractive brunette women who appeal to men making the deals. It increases the corruption by a massive amount. Exceptions to this include the one shown in the body of an adolescent teenage girl making a deal with a 14-year old Bela Talbot and three shown as men - the most significant of which is Lazarus. While their smoke from is black smoke like other demons, Lazarus' was red.

Some Crossroad Demons have shown the ability to modify the deals they have made for their own purposes. For example, both Duke and Melvoch have used their deals with Gunner Lawless and Alice respectively to force them to work for the demon in question in exchange for keeping the hellhounds from dragging their souls to Hell. In the case of Duke, killing him broke the deal and resulted in Gunner being immediately dragged to Hell. In Alice's case, killing Melvoch broke her deal completely with no sign of the hellhounds ever coming after her.

Sometimes Crossroad Demons are shown to hold power over their contracts. Jacob's Crossroad Demon possessed the authority to break Evan Hudson's deal, but later could not break Jacob Smith's as Almos held all the contracts at that time. After capturing the rogue Crossroad Demon Guy, the Smiths appeared to believe they could force him to break all of the deals he had made but were interrupted by Lazarus who took care of it instead. Duke held control over Gunner's contract and his death immediately broke Duke's hold on the hellhounds that were meant to come for Gunner. Luther Shrike was able to use Melvoch's human bones as leverage to force Melvoch to "renegotiate" his deal and resurrect Luther after he had been dragged to Hell.

The recipient of a deal suffering an accident is a technicality that allows a Crossroad Demon to collect their soul early as long as the demon did not personally kill the person. However, this is considered bad practice by Lazarus and was forbidden under his rule.

## History

### Early Life

Jacob's Crossroad Demon first makes an appearance in Alabama where it makes a deal with Robert Johnson and several other people including George Darrow and Evan Hudson who uses the deal to save his wife from cancer. In order to save Evan, Jacob decides to summon the demon and exorcise it which will buy time as it will take the demon time to get out of Hell. However, when he does summon it, he attempts to get it to break Evan's deal instead, trying to lure it into a devil's trap. The demon avoids the trap and taunts Jacob about his father being trapped in Hell, offering him a ten-year deal to save him. Jacob pretends to agree, but then successfully lures the demon into another devil's trap. Jacob offers the demon a deal of his own: break the deal and he will set her free, refuse and he'll exorcise her. The demon refuses so Jacob starts an exorcism. Finally, partway through the exorcism, the demon gives in and breaks the deal. Jacob breaks the devil's trap and frees the demon who after taunting him one last time, flees the woman it was possessing, leaving her confused.

## Powers and Abilities

As demons, they possess all standard demon powers. Though salesmen, they're physically stronger and more powerful than black-eyed demons, being a higher rank. They also appear to have control over individual hellhounds (their main method of dragging a soul to Hell), although other demons (e.g. Meg) can also control hellhounds. Crossroads demons cannot control other demons' hounds.

* **Demonic Possession** - Like all demons, they require vessels to walk the Earth.
* **Super Strength** - Crossroad demons are stronger than humans, most monsters, and normal black-eyed demons.
* **Astral Perception** - They can see other beings that are invisible to humans, such as hellhounds.
* **Reality Warping (by deals)** - The crossroad demon's main power is that it can manipulate reality to make the wishes of the mortals it deals with come true. However, they can't do this without a deal for a soul.
	+ **Resurrection** - Both Jacob's Crossroad Demon and Melvoch displayed the ability to resurrect the dead as part of the deals they make.
	+ **Healing** - Crossroad demons have shown the ability to heal as part of the deals they make. Lazarus was able to heal Malcolm Knapp's paralyzed legs while both Jacob's Crossroad Demon and Melvoch could heal terminal illnesses.
	+ **Power Granting** - After being blackmailed by Luther Shrike, Melvoch was forced to grant Luther immortality as long as Luther was on his property.
* **Teleportation** - They have the ability to teleport, and commonly appear when summoned to make deals.
* **Immortality** - As demons, they can live forever unless killed.
* **Super Stamina** - As demons, they don't require food, water, sleep or oxygen to sustain themselves.
* **Invulnerability** - As demons, they are invulnerable to most forms of harm.
* **Telekinesis** - A crossroad demon was able to throw John and Jacob around with his mind.
* **Flight** - In their demonic smoke forms, they can fly.

## Weaknesses

Being a lower demon, they possses multiple weaknesss that can harm and kill them.

### Harming, Misleading, and Trapping

* **Devil's Trap** - A Devil's Trap will hold a Crossroad Demon for an indefinite amount of time.
* **Hex Bags** - Hex bags can cause extreme pain to a Crossroad Demon.
* **Higher Demons** - Higher Demons such as Princes of Hell and Knights of Hell can effortessly overpower a crossroad demon, regardless of their status.
* **Holy Water** - Holy water affects Crossroad Demons.

### Banishing or Killing

* **Angels** - Angels can overpower and kill Crossroad Demons.
* **Angel Blades** - It can kill a Crossroad Demon.
* **Demon-Killing Knife** - This knife can kill a Crossroad Demon.
* **Exorcism** - It will pull a Crossroad Demon out of its host and send it to Hell.
* **Demon Curing Ritual** - A Crossroad Demon could be cured by this ritual and become human.
* **Burning Their Human Bones** - Burning the bones of a Crossroad Demon's original human body could kill them while just scorching them caused harm to the Crossroad Demon. Threatening them was an effective form of leverage against a Crossroad Demon.
* **The Colt** - This gun could kill a Crossroad Demon.
* **Nephilim** - Lazarus greatly feared the possibility of Lucifer's son being born and destroying The World and himself.

## Known Crossroad Demons

* **Melvoch** (deceased)
* **Malcolm's Crossroad Demon** (deceased)
* **Lazarus** (deceased)