Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  He heard screaming behind him and risked a look over his shoulder. Sure enough, the two demons following him had abandoned their chase and were going back to where Theodore was chopping their compatriots into bits.

  Aloysius jogged back along the corridor. As he came around the last bend, there was a hiss, and one of the demons burst into flames, collapsed, and turned into a pile of ash that slid along the floor like dry mercury. Sebastian lowered his hands; he must have remembered something, at least.

  The last two demons standing were facing Theodore with their axes out. Aloysius reached around, found that he still had his revolver, and, in fact, it still had a round in it. He walked up behind one of the demons, which was so intent on defending himself from Theodore that it didn’t notice him, and shot it in the armpit on the left side, a left-handed shot that he wouldn’t want to have to do when he was in a hurry.

  The demon fell, unfortunately pinning Aloysius underneath him, then started kicking around, turning in a quarter circle and grinding the metal plates against his legs. Aloysius dropped his gun and stuffed his left hand into his mouth. Not that the revolver hadn’t made enough noise already.

  He missed whatever Theodore did but felt an increase of weight and groaned out loud, not especially loudly, just to let his brothers know that perhaps they should get to work getting the demons off him, hacking their limbs off if necessary. He groaned again.

  Theodore tried to lift one of the demons aside, but couldn’t. “Help me,” he said. Jerome and Sebastian pulled from one side, and Theodore pushed from the other, crushing Aloysius even more firmly, but Aloysius wasn’t about to complain, because he couldn’t.

  They started work on the other demon, and Aloysius gasped for breath.

  “Hah,” Jerome said. “I’m not the only one.”

  Aloysius let that go. “Let’s get out of here.” He stood up. He felt a little wobbly on his feet but ignored it as best he could.

  “They’re coming,” Jerome said.

  Theodore opened a side door and they went in, leaving the door open a crack. Aloysius got the doubtful privilege of being the one to stand opposite the crack, his eye glinting in the light.

  Another group of gray-furred demons came marching down the hall. “Halt,” one said. Aloysius thought it was one of the two in the middle row, which struck him as odd. Leading from the middle? What kind of idea was that?

  One of the demons said, “That’s odd.”

  “What?” the first demon, who was facing Aloysius now and had a red stripe down the middle of his forehead. The red-stripe demon looked where the other demons was pointing, which was at the hole under the arm of the demon that Aloysius had shot. “Unnatural,” the red-stripe demon said.

  “Do you think it’s true then?” one of the other demons said. “That we’re dealing with…demons?”

  “Impossible,” the red-stripe demon said. But Aloysius could tell he was lying. “Summon demons? Here?”

  “I heard there was a galuk,” yet another demon said.

  “Keep your snout out of the alcohol,” the red-stripe demon said. “The walls have ears.”

  The other demons looked around suspiciously, and Aloysius closed his eyes, just in case light glinted off it or something.

  The sound of hooves echoed down the hall, and Aloysius opened his eyes. A group of six of the black demons was marching down the hall. None of them had any gold tags dangling from their ears or gold-chased horns or axes. In fact, they looked hunched over and rather dirty, with bare, pink patches in their fur.

  “Take the bodies back to the old coliseum,” the red-stripe demon ordered. “And stay there. It looks like there may be demons about.”

  The black-furred demons shuddered, silently picked up the bodies (except for a grunt or two), and hauled half of them away. No doubt, they’d be back in a few moments for the rest.

  “I thought you said there were no demons,” one of the demons said.

  The red-stripe demon shrugged. “They’ll believe anything. And I don’t want them wandering the halls and maybe running into their Makkur cousins to be ‘liberated.’”

  Something bumped into Aloysius from behind, and he fell forward into the door, which shut with a thump.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Chapter 39

  “Help me,” Aloysius said, leaning against the door. Theodore shoved beside him, and Sebastian leaned into both of them from behind. The door started to move, and Aloysius stuck his boot in the crack under the door, but he started to skid backwards.

  Damned boots; he should have had rubber soles put on them or something.

  The demons burst through the door, toppling them over and yelling. Light flooded the room as one of them turned the lights on. The gray demons grabbed the three of them while Jerome ran deeper into the room. One of the demons followed him and backed him into a corner. Jerome faked to the right, the left, then rolled between the demon’s legs and ran for the door. The demon waiting outside the door caught him easily, lifting him to his tiptoes by one arm.

  Aloysius relaxed. They hadn’t killed the kid.

  “You’re the ones who killed the patrol,” the gray demon with the red stripe said.

  “Yeah,” Aloysius said. “They caught us and wouldn’t let us go.”

  “Search them,” the red-stripe demon said. “Beware any unknown implement.”

  “The hole,” another demon said.

  In short order, the demons had their guns (Aloysius didn’t have any rounds left, so didn’t mind), their pocket knives, and Theodore’s two Philippine knives. Aloysius couldn’t believe that Theodore didn’t have any other weapons on him but wasn’t about to ask, just in case.

  The black demons returned and carried the other corpses away; the gray demons didn’t say anything about their prisoners, and the black ones didn’t ask. Aloysius thought that two of the gray demons seemed very uncomfortable with the black demons around, resting their hands on their steel axes and stamping a little.

  “We should drag them,” one of the gray demons said.

  The red-striped leader flicked an ear.

  “Why?” the gray demon asked.

  “Use the spears.”

  “Kill them?”

  The red-striped demon snorted, not in amusement. “Use the spears to guard them! Did you forget what we came here for? We don’t have time to drag prisoners!”

  “They’re not very heavy,” one of the other demons said.

  One of the demons with the spears said, “Recall the servant runners?”

  The red-striped demon shoved the last demon against the wall. “They are the enemies of the black ones, Geggoon. Do you think I want to let black ones have the satisfaction of trampling the prisoners? We’d have a stampede on our hands.”

  “I thought the Makkur were weak,” the demon gasped.

  “His Majesty tells us they are weak, because there are millions of us and only a thousand or so of them. But how many patrols did we have with us today? Five. We’re lucky we’re not all dead. We have bigger problems than these.” He waved at the humans.

  “Now what?”

  “We find Rannah’s patrol and go. It’ll be hours before His Majesty sends reinforcements, no matter what the Lieutenant said.”

  The demon nodded, and the red-striped demon let him go. He pushed away from the wall and pointed his spear toward them.

  The demons formed up behind him.

  “March,” the leader said. “Try to run, and you’ll have spears and axes in the backs of whoever’s last in line.”

  Aloysius said, “We can help you defeat the other ones.”

  “March!”

  They walked forward.

  Aloysius had yet to be in a situation where talking himself out of it left him, really, any better off than if he’d kept his mouth shut. Nevertheless, he said, “It’s true. They do have a gallon.”

  “A what?” the leader said.

  “Galuk,” Jerome said.

  The demons smacked their li
ps nervously.

  “It’s a little girl,” Aloysius said. “A small human.”

  “A demon girl,” Jerome said.

  “Oh, yeah. She would be a demon girl, to you.”

  One of the demons said, “We’ll have to—”

  There was a smack. “Shut up,” the leader said. “Go on,” he told Aloysius.

  “If you help us get the girl, the galuk, then we’ll try to return everything to the way it was, your demons, I mean, your black ones here, and we hu—demons back where we belong.”

  “I’ll think about it,” the leader said.

  “Where are we going?” Sebastian said.

  “Be quiet,” the leader said.

  Sebastian gave Aloysius a dirty look.

  They walked in more or less silence, turning down the winding, red-brown corridors as directed. There was a distant, keening moo.

  Something sharp pricked him in the back.

  “Run,” the demon behind him shouted.

  Aloysius trotted forward, Jerome and Sebastian setting a quick pace.

  “Faster.”

  They picked up their run. There was another moo, and four of the demons shoved their way between their prisoners and ran down the corridor, flat out, their hooves pounding the curving floor. The leader was with them.

  The two demons behind them said, “Keep running,” and they continued to run forward.

  With every turn they made, the noise ahead of them got louder. It was the sound of fighting, metal on metal, roaring, moaning.

  “The pit,” Jerome yelled. “Celeste Marie is here.”

  They came around the last corner, and Sebastian almost ran right into the fighting. Theodore grabbed him and ran sideways. Jerome had calmly stepped to the side as he’d come through the doorway; Aloysius stumbled on a body in front of him, fell, and rolled out of the way before the demons behind him could trample him.

  About a hundred of the black demons were in a big courtyard that led into three arched, open doorways, fighting a dozen gray demons in the middle of the room, standing back-to-back. The four demons that had come before them were fighting their way toward the central group. As Aloysius watched, one of the spear-carriers that had guarded them threw its spear straight into a mass of black demons. One of the black demons seemed to erupt in blood all along its arm, and another demon was impaled through the chest. The two demons shoved their way to the red-striped demon’s side and hacked at the black demons with their axes.

  The rough, dirty-looking black demons, despite outnumbering the gray demons, weren’t doing very well. They didn’t have axes or spears and were fighting with what looked like pieces of junk. One of them, however, had a gold tag dangling from its ear and used a pair of gold axes. He stood near the central doorway and roared at the demons.

  “Keep them away from the coliseum!” he yelled. “Protect Granata! To fall in death in battle with us is to walk the pathways of paradise!”

  Personally, Aloysius thought it would have been more inspiring had the demon been chopping away at the gray demons while he said it.

  Jerome pulled his sleeve. He was edging along the wall; he’d end up at the right-hand arch if the demons didn’t chop him down first. Aloysius looked over at Sebastian and Theodore, on the other side of the corridor into the courtyard. Theodore nodded and pushed Sebastian along the wall in the opposite direction.

  Well, he had wanted them to follow him, but it might be better to let Theodore start a distraction off to the side somewhere if things got hairy.

  Another group of gray demons burst into the room, two dozen of them this time. The other gray demons cheered; apparently reinforcements had come sooner than expected. But through another corridor, just after Sebastian and Theodore crossed the doorway, more black demons poured in. They appeared to be led by a few older, gold-bedecked demons but were mostly made up of the same servant-class herd.

  The red-striped demon’s group changed direction and fought their way back to the new demons.

  Aloysius heard the red-striped demons say, “Inside the coliseum is Granata and a demonling girl. Kill her. She’s a galuk. Granata is going to pull back his warriors from the demon world and kill us all.”

  Aloysius cursed. Him and his big mouth.

  The new group of demons roared and headed toward the coliseum and the thickest group of the black demons.

  Jerome almost jerked him off his feet, heading toward the far-right archway. Aloysius followed, picking up a bent rod off the floor from the hand of one of the fallen black demons. They made it as far as the doorway: inside, black demons dressed in human clothing and carrying gold axes were marching toward them, or rather, toward the fight. Jerome slipped behind a pile of junk just inside the door, but Aloysius could tell he wasn’t going to fit. He backed away from the door.

  The leader of the black demons—the one who had given the servants the speech a few seconds ago—had spotted him. “A demon!” he shouted. “Kill him!” However, with the gray demons charging them, the other black demons weren’t listening; they were dying and (accidentally, it seemed) taking down a few of the gray demons.

  Then the clothed demons ran into the group, shoved the servant demons out of the way, and went to work. It wasn’t long before the gray demons had been wiped out, except for the dozen or so fighting back-to-back in the center. The red-stripe demon was gone.

  “Kill the demons,” the leader screamed again.

  A handful of demons ran out of a corridor screaming, “They’re coming! Run!”

  The leader ignored them and stalked toward Aloysius, who, now that the demons in human clothes had passed him, had gone inside the coliseum.

  Of course, he was running for his life, so he didn’t have much time to look around, but of what he could see, he was fascinated. It was a three-level affair with a mezzanine around the top level and a pit in the center where the floor had collapsed. At the bottom of the pit was a glowing fire. Along one wall was a golden cage with a demon standing beside it; he couldn’t tell what was inside the cage.

  But the room itself! It was full of machine parts, either surplus or junk, stacks of them in neat piles throughout the room. He was almost certain that Jerome was standing behind the ruins of one of the digging machines, and he guessed that there was some kind of flying machine next to the cage.

  He led the demon around the room. Its bellows were mostly drowned out by the sounds of fighting outside. Then there was a ripping sound, and Aloysius looked over his shoulder. Theodore was standing over the demon’s back with a steel axe in his hands. He lifted it over his head and took off its head with one double-handed blow.

  Behind him, the demon by the cage bellowed, and Aloysius got a good look at him. It was the Father Dennis/Granata demon; his cassock was lying on a pile of junk beside the cage.

  The sound of fighting got louder, and a group of about twenty gray demons burst into the room and charged at Granata, black warrior demons right behind them.

  Jerome screamed and ran toward Granata and the cage, and Sebastian followed him. Theodore handed Aloysius the black demon’s gold-chased axes, and they charged the gray demons.

  Chapter 40

  Celeste Marie was dying. Jerome jumped onto Granata’s dais and into the cage bars, not caring whether he lived or died. It wasn’t going to be a peaceful death, either. She was rigid in the hammock, straining against herself, her mouth gaping open in an airless scream.

  He slithered through the bars and reached for her, then reached with his toes, which had somehow become dirty and covered with blood. Of all the dumb things to notice at a time like that, he thought. He brushed his toes against her arm. The skin on her arm ripped. He put his foot down and tried to stop the hammock from rocking back and forth from him kicking against it.

  He tried to force his head through the bars again.

  He stood there with his arm stretched out, watching her die. She let go for a second, snapped taut again, then fell into the hammock.

  She wasn’t breathin
g.

  He had to get to her.

  Blood was running down the sides of his head. He rubbed the blood into his hair to make it more slippery, then tried again.

  He screamed.

  None of these things did any good. She still wasn’t breathing, and he couldn’t reach her. The color in her face was turning flat. The bruises turned darker as the rest of her skin turned just a little paler. Her skin dotted with sweat, and he almost cried out that she didn’t have the water to sweat; it would kill her. The blood coming out of the torn skin on her arm stopped welling up.

  Something hit him in the back.

  He screamed again.

  He didn’t mind that he was trapped here; he didn’t mind that the world wasn’t going to go back to the way it was supposed to be. He didn’t mind the dead, other than Celeste Marie.

  He untangled himself from the cage and turned around. Granata and Sebastian were struggling over some black clothing, of all the stupid, unimportant things. Jerome walked over to Granata, pulled a small, extremely decorative axe out of the back of the demon’s belt, hooked it among the chains on his ears, and pulled.

  Granata screamed. Jerome shook the chains off the axe and went for the other ear, this time chopping the axe toward the base of his ear. The tip of the axe caught in Granata’s horn. Jerome jerked the axe free, leaving a trail of blood down the back of the demon’s head, but Sebastian had Granata tangled up somehow, and Jerome took another swing.

  The axe chopped into the ear but not all the way through, leaving it dangling from the heavy gold by a flap of skin down the demon’s neck.

  Jerome stepped back as Granata stumbled toward him. Sebastian had both hands around the demon’s neck and was choking him. Sebastian was dwarfed by the demon, who was at least a good foot taller than him, and would obviously be shoved away as soon as Granata had the sense to stop batting at his brother.

  Jerome considered Granata’s backside, then chopped at the back of the closest knee. Granata went down, Sebastian on top of him, the black cloth trapped between them. Sebastian was still gripping Granata’s throat. Jerome considered again. Sebastian was in the way. He tapped his brother on the arm with his elbow and raised the axe overhead.