The Trouble with Demons Page 2

  I had Phaelan and Vegard with me and four uniformed Guardians around them. They were close, but not too close. Other Guardians in plain clothes mingled with the crowds. Most women go shopping with their girlfriends; I go with an armed escort.

  Within the hour, the armorer had taken my measurements and would be making me some leathers a woman could be proud of wearing and safe being seen in—or shot at. I’d ordered three ensembles: one in black, one in brown, and one in midnight blue. To his credit, the man didn’t balk at the rush job. I knew he wanted me to be wearing his work as soon as possible. When someone finally did take a shot or stab at me, he wanted to make sure it was his leathers that saved my hide. There was nothing like a foiled hit to boost business.

  Phaelan was less than thrilled with my choice of colors.

  “You wear red,” I told him as we left the shop. “I don’t. With my red hair it’d make me look like a lit match.”

  Something blue darted on the edge of my vision. Several blue somethings, man-sized, about a quarter of a block ahead. A blue so bright that it gave Phaelan’s doublet a run for its money.

  One of them stopped and stared at me.

  I stopped breathing.

  The thing was standing in the middle of the street, people flowing around it as if it weren’t even there.

  It was blue, all right. From its clawed feet to the top of its bald and horned head. Blue.

  It was also naked.

  I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, and I really didn’t want to get close enough to find out. But it didn’t appear to have anything to indicate that it was either sex. Creepy.

  It grinned at me and darted down a side street.

  I think my mouth fell open. “What’s bright blue and buck naked?” I never took my eyes from where it’d gone.

  “Hmmm, I don’t know,” Phaelan mused. “I haven’t heard that one. Vegard?”

  The big Guardian shrugged. “New joke?”

  “No joke,” I told them both. “You didn’t see it, did you?”

  At the tension in my voice, Vegard moved in front of me. Protectively. Annoyingly. Now I couldn’t see anything. I ducked under his arm and headed for that side street. Vegard reached out to push me behind him and I ducked out of reach and ran. Phaelan and the Guardians were right on our heels.

  “They were blue, naked, claw-footed, with horns on their heads,” I told Vegard.

  “What?” The Guardian stopped, pulling me with him.

  “Ma’am, are you sure you haven’t been—”

  I drew breath to retort, but a scream from that side street answered him better than I could.

  It’s been my experience that nothing clears a crowded street quicker than a scream. In this instance, I approved of crowd cowardice. Fewer people on the street meant fewer people hurt. It also meant fewer people between me and where I was determined to go. And if I had to drag a big, blond Guardian behind me, so be it.

  Vegard drew a massive battle-ax from the harness on his back, the steel blade shimmering pale blue with magic.

  He insisted on looking around the corner first. I let him.

  He took a look and relaxed the arm holding the ax. “Ma’am, there’s nothing there.” He said it as if nothing was precisely what he expected to find.

  I wasn’t giving up. “What about the scream?”

  “One scream, no victim—at least not here.” Vegard turned to a pair of Guardians in plain clothes. “Erik, take Dacan and see if you can track down where—”

  I stepped around Vegard to look down that street myself. “I can’t believe there’s no . . .” I looked, saw, jumped back, and flattened myself against the stone wall beside Vegard.

  There were nearly a dozen of us. There were more of them. A lot more.

  “Vegard, there are definitely—”

  The scream turned into a shriek, and it was coming from that street.

  Phaelan had his rapier in his hand and stepped around the corner. In a split second, his face went from combative to confused. “What the hell?”

  “I don’t have it!” a terrified voice shrieked.

  Vegard and I looked where Phaelan was looking. An elf in mage robes was rolling around in the street, cringing and trying to cover his head. Just him, no one else. Apparently that was what Phaelan and Vegard saw.

  I saw a gang of blue monsters mugging a mage.

  I tried to duck past Vegard. The big Guardian moved with me this time, completely blocking my way.

  “But they’re beating the crap out of him!” And I was tempted to beat the same thing out of Vegard.

  “Who are they, ma’am?”

  I swore. The creatures had to be using a cloaking spell of some kind. I desperately looked around for something, anything. There it was. A broken piece of cobble. Perfect. I bared my teeth in grim satisfaction, took aim, and threw that chunk of brick as hard as I could at the closest blue head.

  It hit. The pain made the thing drop its cloak, and it turned, thin blue lips curling back to show me a collection of jagged, unnervingly sharp, and entirely too many teeth. One by one, the others did the same as they left the elf lying motionless in the street and turned on us.

  Sometimes it was bad when a plan worked. The “I told you so” on my lips turned into the four-letter word that I rarely use.

  Now Phaelan and Vegard saw what I saw.

  Phaelan didn’t say anything; he just blanched.

  “Demons!” Vegard bellowed to his men.

  The Guardians drew weapons shimmering with magic, magic that would slice through anything it touched. Vegard picked me up and forcibly put me behind him. I didn’t stay there. Thanks to me, we had the undivided attention of over two dozen blue and now angry demons, so Vegard didn’t have time to argue with me.

  Some of the demons cloaked again.

  Vegard’s pale blue eyes darted. “Dammit!”

  “It’s a cloak,” I told him.

  I drew the pair of swords strapped across my back. The longer my steel, the farther away I could stay from those things. In theory.

  “You can see them?” Vegard asked.

  “Yeah, I’m just lucky that way.” I centered my attention on the demon that had focused his yellow eyes on me. He grinned. I didn’t.

  I felt Vegard’s power building beside me.

  “Shield your eyes,” he ordered.

  “What are you—”

  “Street dust,” he said with a vicious smile. “No cloak is that solid.”

  I half covered my eyes, and with a simple gesture and word, Vegard kicked up a dust storm, coating the demons in dust and whatever else was in the gutters. The cloaked demons were still cloaked, but thanks to Vegard’s dirt bath, everyone could see them just fine. I loved a man who could think dirty on his feet.

  The demons charged. We spread out to give ourselves room to fight. I claimed a piece of street with a wall at my back. Better a wall than a demon.

  “Want some company?” Phaelan’s maniacal grin told me this was the most fun he’d had since last week, when he’d helped blast a hole in the elven embassy.

  Phaelan wasn’t the only one who wanted to keep me company. The demon who’d targeted me was closing distance fast. He didn’t have a weapon. Those horns and talon-tipped hands were weapons. When he was within range, I opened his gut with the tip of one of my blades. I expected insides to fall out, not his hand to go into the hole I’d made, making it bigger.

  Oh, that wasn’t good.

  The demon grinned wider and pulled out a fistful of something you’d think he’d need to keep. The stench was all too familiar.

  I was almost too disgusted to move. Almost.

  The demon flung it right at us.

  “Incoming!” I yelled. I ducked and pulled Phaelan with me.

  The glob splattered on the wall behind us, sizzling coin-sized holes in the brick. Coin-sized holes that could have been in us. The demon reached in and reloaded.

  We weren’t going to be here when that hand came out.

>   Vegard nearly sliced a demon in half with his ax. The demon healed. Immediately. One second he was almost in two parts, then he wasn’t. Vegard coolly noted it and put his ax back in its harness. When he’d sheathed his weapon, his hands glowed incandescent white.

  Change of tactics. One of the things the Saghred had done was to make me a fast learner when it came to magic. I didn’t have to tap the stone, just use the power boost the Saghred had given the abilities I already had, letting me save my skin without risking my soul.

  Phaelan was darting and weaving, trying to get in close enough to take out that demon’s hands before the demon could take out more ammo.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  I kept my eyes on Vegard’s glowing hands. “Learning.”

  It was the same concept as a lightglobe, times a thousand. Basic magic, multiplied into something lethal. I looked down at my hands and concentrated. Considering that two dozen demons had us pinned down, I did my concentrating real quick. I had almost conjured a respectable flare of light when one of the demons roared.

  I damned near jumped out of my skin. “Son of a bitch!”

  I tried again, this time through gritted teeth. The teeth gritting must have helped, because in the next instant, I was lobbing fireballs along with Vegard. Mine weren’t as big as his and didn’t glow as bright, but they made up for it in tenacity. These weren’t flames the demons could drop and roll to put out. It was sticking to them—and burning. Saghred-enhanced magic was saving my biscuits once again.

  The elven mage was struggling weakly to drag himself out of the middle of the street. A demon blocked his way. He was taller than the others, his skin darker, almost purple. The mage looked up, eyes wide with panic, and said something I couldn’t hear.

  “Vegard, cover me!” I yelled.

  I didn’t wait for a response. Rage fed the fireballs in my hands until I could feel the heat. I ran toward the mage, hurling the fireballs at the demon as one clawed hand locked around the mage’s throat, claws piercing his flesh, pulling him to his feet and tearing his throat out doing it. The demon simply raised his free hand, and one of my fireballs ricocheted off of it and came right back at me.

  I swore and ducked. The fireball hit the wall behind me and burned straight through the brick. Seconds later, I heard flames crackling from inside. Crap.

  The demon was staring at me, his eyes yellow with a vertical slit for a pupil, like a goat. But unlike any goat I’d ever seen, the demon’s pupils glowed red.

  A familiar fire bloomed in the center of my chest. The Saghred. I silently went through a litany of curses. I did not need this now. I braced myself for the surge of Saghred-spawned power that was coming. Power that would consume me, force me to fight it rather than the demon. Power that was going to get me killed just like that mage.

  Nothing. No surge, no force, nothing. What the hell?

  The demon smiled slowly, the tips of his needle teeth visible. I desperately called my magic for another fireball. Not a spark. All the fire I had seethed in my chest. It wasn’t white-hot and raging; the stone’s power wasn’t fighting to get free. It burned bright, warm, welcoming.

  For the demon.

  The demon looked at me, unclenched his hand, and negligently tossed the dead mage aside. Then he stepped back and bowed deeply and respectfully.

  “We are honored by your presence,” he told me.

  Then he cloaked, invisible to all but me, and with one leap was on the wall like a big purple spider, the talons of his claws and feet clicking and gouging chunks out of the bricks as he scuttled around the corner, right over the clueless heads of a crowd that was forming at the end of the street.

  I knelt over the mage. His dead eyes stared sightlessly at the sky as blood pooled and spread beneath his ruined throat.

  I heard murmurs from the far end of the street. Most of the people had just arrived, waiting until the fight was over to come out of hiding.

  I was kneeling over the mage, his blood on my hands. They were looking at me, grim-faced, angry, and accusing.

  “Murderer!” someone yelled.

  Oh shit.

  Chapter 2

  Running sounded like a real good idea. As a Benares, I’d been taught that there’s no shame in running, only in being caught.

  I ran, but not to get away from the mob. I ran to catch a murdering bastard demon. I didn’t know if it was what they thought they’d seen me do, or the fact that I was running straight at them, but the mob who’d just called me a murderer got out of my way. Vegard shouted for me to stop. I ignored him and kept going; he’d catch up. He always did. Phaelan was already beside me. What I was after didn’t make any difference to my cousin; I’d found trouble and he wasn’t about to miss a second of it. When all this was over, I needed to have a long talk with Phaelan about his mental stability.

  While I was at it, I might want to check into my own. Tall, naked, and purple wasn’t trying to get away from me; he wanted me to follow him, and I was obliging him. That wasn’t healthy, mentally or otherwise. But I didn’t have any choice. He was back on the street, running through innocent bystanders and heading toward campus. There were hundreds of young magic users there; some knew how to defend themselves, but most hadn’t learned yet. I had to take him down before he got there. Problem was, I had no freaking clue how.

  The demon knocked people aside and slashed others with his claws. I didn’t even need to keep the demon in sight; I only had to follow the grisly trail of fallen and bleeding people.

  “What are we chasing?” Phaelan panted. He’d sheathed his rapier. Smart man. Crazy, but smart. The street was too crowded, and he didn’t have a target. I did.

  I dragged some air into my overworked lungs. “Purple demon,” I rasped.

  “You can see him?”

  “Yes!”

  “You sure?”

  I had plenty of responses to that, but didn’t have time or the breath for any of them. If we survived, I could always smack Phaelan later.

  What I thought were ridges on the demon’s back unfolded into a pair of batlike wings, and the thing went airborne above the people crowding the narrow street. I swore, and ran faster.

  I caught sight of him again where the maze of buildings emptied into an enormous city square bordered with coffee-houses, pubs, bookstores—places students liked to go between classes. The kids called it the Quad. If the demon wanted victims or hostages, he’d just found hundreds to choose from.

  It was a sunny day, midmorning, and the beginning of the semester. The Quad wasn’t just full; it was packed. Hovering above it all, his leathery wings keeping him about ten feet over the unsuspecting students’ heads, was my quarry. The kids felt the whooshes of air from his wingbeats and looked up and around in confusion. They had no clue what was right over their heads and I didn’t want them to know. With knowledge would come fear, and with fear could come a stampede. That did not need to happen.

  The demon looked at me and grinned, exposing a mouthful of needle-fine teeth, and gestured with spidery fingers at the bounty spread below him. His for the taking, and the bastard wanted me to know it.

  Unless I stopped him.

  So that was it. He wasn’t trying to get away; he wasn’t even trying to snatch a student for a snack. Though he wouldn’t mind taking one with him for later. He wanted me to fight him, and he wanted me to use the Saghred to do it.

  No way, no time, no how. And especially not here. I didn’t believe in collateral damage.

  The demon knew. He shrugged elaborately, his lips split into a feral grin, and he dove into a group of students.

  I screamed the word I rarely used except in cases of extreme rage and near-death experiences. That word and the half a dozen armed Guardians who’d caught up with me made the kids around us scatter in a panic.

  The demon was snatching up students, taking them about a dozen feet into the air and dropping them on the crowd below. The kids couldn’t see him, but they knew their classmates wer
en’t jumping and falling by themselves. Some of the ones he dropped landed on other students, knocking them to the ground; others he dropped landed unmoving on the cobblestones. All of them were in danger of being crushed underfoot if the students stampeded.

  I felt Vegard and his boys pulling together some serious kick-ass magic behind me. It got the demon’s attention, as he dangled a young student by the scruff of the neck. A pretty, dark-haired human girl. I recognized her. Katelyn Valerian, the archmagus’s granddaughter.

  The demon looked at me.

  And then he roared and materialized in all his demonic glory in the middle of the Quad.

  The students’ screams were deafening as they panicked and ran—or tried to. There were too many of them and too little open space. I didn’t blame them for running, but I also didn’t want to be trampled. I wanted that demon.

  Someone beat me to it—and that someone wasn’t Vegard.

  I knew that voice.

  A rich baritone of staggering strength and power pierced the chaos, his spellsong dark and discordant, the notes booming and harsh. A long-fingered hand extended above the crowd toward the demon, fingers spread, helping him focus his spellsong.

  Piaras Rivalin.

  Oh no.

  Piaras had just turned eighteen, but the young elf had the pipes and talent of a spellsinging master. Youth and lethal skill were a dangerous combination. Piaras’s voice was a weapon; he was in college to learn how to control it. Last week he’d inadvertently knocked out half the Guardians in the citadel. Right now, the kid had that demon—a demon that had his girlfriend’s life clutched in his claws—tacked to a piece of sky like a bug pinned to a board.

  The demon snarled and tried to break free, but Piaras held firm. He’d reacted instinctively without realizing what he had bitten off. He knew now. His normally pale face was strained with effort, his lean chest rapidly rising and falling, struggling to keep air in his lungs to keep that spellsong going. He spotted me, his large brown eyes relieved and imploring at the same time. Poor kid had never seen a demon before. Now he’d caught one and had no idea what to do with it.