The Trouble with Demons Page 7

  That was very bad.

  Most of the watchers did their duty and stood their ground; other watchers took the duty-be-damned approach and started backing away. I wasn’t a watcher, I had no duty, but I stood my ground anyway. Sedge Rinker stepped up beside Vegard and me.

  Sedge kept his voice down. “Ma’am, you and your cousin might want to take advantage of this to leave.”

  “Finally, a lawman I can agree with,” Phaelan muttered.

  The growing demon stood up, and then up some more. The damned thing was so big it was wearing the desk like a hat. Then it turned around, facing us. Its eyes were black, beady, and really, really angry. With a single shake of its head, the desk went flying, splintering against a wall.

  Professional discipline was pretty much gone at that point.

  The interrogation room opened, one of Sora’s grad students looked, saw, squeaked, and slammed the door.

  Smart kid.

  Those angry demon eyes looked directly at me. And got even angrier. Then it growled, rattling the windows.

  I shouted over my shoulder. I sure as hell wasn’t turning my back on that. “Carnades, if you want to haul me out of here, I think you’re gonna have to get in line.”

  Chapter 6

  There were a few heartbeats of stunned inaction; the only sound was the wheezing in and out of the demon’s breath like some sort of putrid bellows.

  Then he roared—and half the people in the room ran. Half the people included most of the accused perps, some still in handcuffs. The watchers let them go; they had a bigger problem, and it was still growing.

  While less people gave the rest of us more room to fight, it gave the demon less targets to hit and a greater probability of hitting those targets, namely us.

  “You still curious about demons?” Phaelan asked me.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Too bad you didn’t decide that five minutes ago.”

  We had bladed weapons; the demon preferred blunt objects, like office furniture.

  In the street we’d used fireballs. That was outside. This was inside, with entirely too many flammables like furniture, walls, and civilians. The watchers opted to go with crossbows with a little magical something extra glowing on the bolts that’d go through any living creature like hot butter. At least they should have. Apparently the normal rules of magic didn’t apply to this particular demon. The bolts shattered on impact and the demon didn’t even slow down, chucking a file cabinet at the bowmen. They dove out of the way before impact, and we had to rethink our strategy, such that it was. The demon wasn’t warded, at least not with any ward I’d ever seen; it was just impenetrable. A bad quality for something that needed killing.

  Even worse was the reaction of most of the watchers. As keepers of the peace on an island full of magic users, Sedge’s people had probably seen it all. I don’t think they’d ever seen anything like this. That made all of us. But the thing didn’t want all of us.

  It wanted me.

  “Run!” I screamed at Phaelan.

  “We go together, or we don’t go!”

  The demon tried to stomp Phaelan to reach me, but my cousin darted to the left as the massive foot came down. Phaelan spun with deadly grace to plunge his rapier through the thing’s foot—and the blade shattered on its skin. My cousin gaped at the remaining hilt in his hand and his words blistered the air blue. He loved that rapier.

  I was watching the demon’s feet, not its hands. My mistake. Huge mistake. Next thing I knew I was snatched off my feet, dangling upside down, with one leg clenched in the demon’s fist. He swung me around and I got a quick and blurry view of the entire squad room. Some Guardians were behind the thing with fireballs ready to launch. Fire safety must have gone out the window along with the furniture. The demon pulled me up to his face, I guess to get a closer look at what he was about to eat. I got a closer look at what was going to eat me. No teeth, just knotty, bony gums. That was really gonna hurt. I’d rather be bitten in half than gummed to death. At least that would be quick.

  The demon’s breath came out of his nose in a sulfur-scented, gag-inducing stench.

  Nostrils. Open holes. No wards.

  Hot damn.

  My hands were free, and an instant later, so were the pair of short swords I wore in a harness on my back. A second after that, the demon was sporting a sword up each nostril.

  His shriek shattered what windows were left. Then he dropped me.

  Being dropped was good; landing was not. Vegard, bless him, was there to catch me, which meant he let me squash him flat when I landed.

  The demon pulled out the blades, threw one, then had the bright idea to use the other like a skewer at a buffet.

  “Sorry!” I called to the hapless watcher who almost became the demon’s next snack choice.

  There was a massive safe next to Sedge’s office where the watch kept their deadlier weapons. I couldn’t begin to guess how much it weighed, and one demonic kick sent it skidding across the floor, slamming into the interrogation room door, trapping Mychael and the professor inside.

  I felt power building behind me. A lot of it. Expertly controlled, focused, and deadly. Had to be Carnades. I hoped all that effort was to take out that demon, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  “You and your goblin lover summoned a demon to slaughter our watchers,” the elven mage snarled from beside me. He was focusing his magic and attention on the demon. His rage was focused squarely on me. “Ruthless and very clever, but not clever enough. You are under arrest.”

  I couldn’t believe this guy. “Gargantua here’s on a rampage, and you’re still trying to arrest me! You ever heard of perspective?”

  We both hit the floor and rolled as a fist the size of an office chair slammed into the floor where we’d just been, cracking the stone and knocking half the people still in the room off their feet.

  Carnades and I ended up in a tangle against a bookshelf. The elven mage flung a ball of incandescent white death that hit the demon square between the eyes.

  The demon absorbed it, grew larger, and got a lot more angry.

  The blue demons cheered from their cell.

  Two strides put the yellow demon in front of his blue buddies’ cell. Red-hot sparks flew as one swipe of its claw-tipped hand sliced through both wards and bars like wet paper. The blue demons poured out and made a beeline straight for Carnades and me.

  Magic just made big, yellow, and pissed even bigger. But magic had torched the blue ones in that street and would have done the same now, except the blue boys were a lot keener on survival than they had been before. They moved in flashes of blue, faster than any mortal or demon had a right to move. The presence of their yellow friend must have been a morale booster.

  An explosion shook the building as the safe blocking the interrogation room simply disintegrated. Mychael was warded and ready for whatever was out here, and Sora was right behind him.

  The professor looked up at the yellow demon and cut loose with a string of obscenities that would’ve made Phaelan’s crew blanch—or fall in love.

  Mychael looked at me, and then up at the yellow monstrosity. He knew where the worst danger was, but he wanted to come to me. If he did his “white knight” thing now, watchers and civilians were going to die.

  The demon had a watcher in each hand; one was limp and bleeding.

  “Get him!” I shouted, pointing at the demon.

  Mychael hesitated only a second before diving into the fray. I could hear him and the professor shouting orders.

  Carnades and I still had a problem. That trio of blue demons was circling us like we were the entrée they’d been waiting for all their lives. Sedge was leading his watchers against the yellow demon; Phaelan was nowhere to be seen; and Vegard was fighting his way over to us. He wasn’t going to get here in time. My survival was up to me and a mage who hated my guts.

  The yellow demon picked up a desk and hurled it at a knot of watchers. They scattered, the desk shattered, part of i
t flew out a window, and a chunk the size of my fist hit Carnades in the temple. He went down like a rock, and the blue demons rushed him.

  I dove between them and Carnades before I could think what I was doing. But I knew what I was doing. I didn’t like Carnades, but if those demons shredded him, guess who’d get tossed in the deepest prison pit the Conclave could dig?

  Besides, it’d gall the hell out of him if I saved his life. I grinned at the demons and bared my teeth.

  “You hungry?” I yelled over the chaos. “You want a piece of this? You want a piece of me?” I had a ball of blue fire in each hand, and the demons were circling me. There was one of me, two fireballs, and three demons.

  And a whirlwind of searing flame curling and twisting in the center of my chest.

  The Saghred.

  Oh no.

  Not now. Not here. Please, no, not here.

  The whirlwind turned into a tornado. My breath hissed in and out from between clenched teeth. My chest was on fire. The fire and the Saghred’s power that fed it blazed under my breastbone, white-hot and raging.

  Take the power, or the power will take you.

  It wasn’t a voice; it was the Saghred’s desires manifesting itself in my head.

  It was also the truth.

  I shoved down the fire and my fear. I swallowed them hard and held them down. The fire flickered and writhed, trying to get around my will. I pressed harder and it just increased its struggle, wild and untamable. It knew it was stronger. It knew it was going to win this time. I was its instrument, its bond servant, and I would do its will, surrender to its desires.

  No!

  The sounds of battle faded until all I could hear was my own breathing, and the sibilant words of the demons who had backed off a step or two, but no farther. I couldn’t tell if their words were death spells or demon-speak for “You first” and “No, you go first.”

  It didn’t matter, the Saghred didn’t care, and no one had asked me what I wanted. Those demons just thought they were hungry. The Saghred hadn’t had a decent meal in nearly a thousand years. And as I’d discovered a few days ago, I was the Saghred’s bond servant, and part of that job was accepting soul sacrifices to feed the Saghred. And right now, the Saghred had a hankering for blue demons.

  There was no way in hell demon souls were flowing through me to feed that rock.

  The demons knew, and one of them moved in a blurred flash to snatch up Carnades’s quasi-conscious body as a hostage, the mage’s bared throat clutched in talon-tipped hand. It looked at me and bared dozens of needle-sharp teeth in a smile that told me Carnades was about to be the second elven mage to die today.

  Not going to happen.

  Time slowed for me until the demon’s fingers constricting around Carnades’s throat barely moved at all—but they were still moving. One of the pointed nails punctured the mage’s skin and a thin stream of blood flowed leisurely down his pale neck, vanishing into the collar of his robes.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. Then I clenched my jaw, gritted my teeth, and with every ounce of strength and sheer stubbornness I possessed, forced down the Saghred’s starvation, its demands, its desires. Forced them down bit by struggling bit. When I had as much control as I knew I was going to get, I aimed the stone’s power directly at the demon holding Carnades hostage.

  The demon’s eyes widened in terror and disbelief. You’d have thought I’d shoved him headfirst into the business end of a cannon. He knew the power I was packing, and he knew the barest touch of that power wouldn’t leave enough of him to fill a dustpan. He froze. So did the other two. Everything and everyone in the room went dead silent. Waiting.

  For me. For what I was going to do.

  I slowly raised my arm and extended my hand, leveling it at the demon. I think it was glowing; I think I was glowing. Carnades’s eyes opened and he saw the demon.

  And then he saw me.

  Rescue now; explain later, I told myself.

  “Put. Him. Down.” My teeth were clenched and my voice shook against the power I was barely holding in check.

  But I was holding it. I had it under control.

  And Carnades knew it. Now I saw a flicker of fear turn into raw, unreasoning hatred. He saw—completely and clearly for the first time—the level of power I had, and he knew its source. It didn’t matter if I saved him. He didn’t care. What I could do—what I was—was all that mattered to him now. I’d just sealed my fate. Carnades would not only see me arrested, he would see me executed. Today if he could get away with it. In his misguided and twisted reasoning, I had just become too dangerous to live.

  Part of me was tempted to let the demon finish its job. The instant Carnades died, most of my problems would die with him.

  I’d never liked that part of me. I knew it’d be the worst mistake I’d ever made, but I kept my hand—and the harnessed Saghred’s power—on that demon where it belonged.

  The demon may have been evil incarnate from the lower hells, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “Gently,” I added, showing him more than a few of my teeth.

  The demon complied. His movements were slow, jerky. I was making him do something he didn’t like and he wasn’t happy about it. His yellow eyes were glowing orange.

  No, he definitely wasn’t amused.

  I didn’t care and I probably should have.

  Carnades took a step back, staggered, then steadied himself. His blue eyes blazed with hatred and every dark and twisted thing that lay beyond. He wanted that demon dead and cold, and me the same way beside it.

  I felt them move before I saw them. In a blink, the other two demons were on me, then the third one joined them.

  And Carnades did nothing to stop them.

  Son of a bitch.

  I released the hint of power that I’d held in check, and the three demons vanished in a hiss of steam and sulfur. Not just vanished.

  Vaporized.

  Sickened and gasping for air I couldn’t find, I staggered to my feet. Releasing that power released the hold I had on the rest of it. I’d just pulled a rock out of a dam with a wall of water on the other side, pushing through the hole I’d made, punching against the dam that held it back. Cracks were spreading; nothing could hold that torrent back; nothing could stop that power.

  I couldn’t stop that power.

  “Raine!” It was Mychael’s voice sounding like it was coming down a well. I was at the bottom of that well, trapped, with no way out.

  “You’ve got to discharge!”

  I was going to implode or explode or something fatal and final if I didn’t get rid of the power charge that had built up inside of me. I couldn’t force it back where it came from. There was too much of it, a wall of power bearing down on me. It was coming, and I couldn’t stop it. The Saghred and I were one. Mychael said the containments were failing.

  Clearly, no containments held the Saghred now.

  Or would ever hold it again.

  “His magic grew him; your magic can destroy him,” Sora was calling down that same well.

  I had no idea what she meant, but I knew what I could do, what I had to do before the power that surged through my veins killed me—and everyone else.

  Then on some level, I understood what Sora meant. It was so simple.

  I extended my hand, fingers spread. The yellow demon was massive, but it was across the room, and my hand covered it completely, at least that’s what it looked like. It was a distance illusion, but illusion was magic, too.

  I began slowly curling my fingers closed. The demon began compacting like I was crushing a wet sponge in my hand. It roared, then those roars turned to screams, and finally a thin shriek as I closed my hand until it was the tightest fist I could make. I tasted blood in my mouth, and black blooms danced on the edge of my vision. I opened my hand and released what was left and heard a wet, sickening plop from across the room. Then came the retching noises from a few of the watchers.

  That and awed—and horrified—silence.


  The last thing I heard before silence and blessed unconsciousness took me was Carnades’s calm, cold voice.

  “Lock her up.”

  Chapter 7

  I woke up in a dark, warm room. Not a cell. And I was tucked into a soft bed, not a prison cot with a threadbare blanket. Nice. And deeply wrong. When I passed out, I must have hit my head. Hard.

  I was in my bedroom back home in Mermeia.

  “Aside from bruises that most certainly will hurt when you wake up, you’re surprisingly unharmed, all things considered.”

  My father sat in a chair half hidden in shadow near my window. That was one reason why I hadn’t seen him. The other reason was even more unnerving than waking up in a place where I couldn’t possibly be. Unnerving, but not unexpected. We’d spoken directly one other time.

  I’d been able to see through him that time, too.

  Eamaliel Anguis’s elegantly pointed ears marked him as an elf, a beautiful pure-blooded high elf. His hair was silver, and his eyes were the gray of gathering storm clouds. Eyes identical to my own. I could see why my elven sorceress mother hadn’t cared that he was nearly nine hundred years old.

  Yes, nine hundred years old, and he didn’t look a day over thirty. Elves had the same life span as every other race, so having a father who looked four years younger than me took weird to a whole new level. He’d spent the last year or so inside the Saghred, the other eight hundred and something years the result of an extended life span from too much contact with the Saghred. A fate I really wanted to avoid.

  I knew I wasn’t really at home in my bedroom. One, it was impossible. Two, this bedroom was way too neat to belong to me.

  I felt my temple for the lump that had to be there. “No concussion?” I muttered to myself.

  “Just unconscious from what you did.”

  I remembered and groaned. I’d just done the worst thing possible at the worst possible time in front of the last person I wanted to see me do it.

  I was screwed. Royally, completely, and utterly.