Setting people on fire would be wrong, of course, anyway. Maybe the demon would burn. It would be fine to enjoy burning that.
The demon had swiveled to observe the five black wolves. It did not exactly have a head, it didn’t exactly even have a front end, but when its attention fell on them, maybe because his thoughts were filled with fire, Alejandro felt it as a kind of burning. Not truly like fire, but like acid, like poison. The demon did not make a sound, but its fanged mouth—mouths—opened in a gaping, silent threat.
Or maybe it was laughing. Alejandro felt that it might be laughing.
Carissa whirled to the side and loped away at a deliberate pace, to the right. Grayson swept a forceful glance along the row of Dimilioc wolves and went after Carissa. Alejandro followed him immediately. A little to Alejandro’s surprise, Carter went the other way, with Rip. James, if he had come down at all, had stayed in the tunnel, unobserved and quiet.
Carissa slowed her pace, letting Grayson and Alejandro come up close behind her. In moments, they were near the ash circle and there she paused. One of the young witches yelled in alarm. Gregor Kristoff grabbed the young man by the shoulder and shook him hard. He also started to chant in a low voice, indistinct words that might have been Latin. The demon swung away from its stalking of the Special Forces people and started across the width of the circle toward Carissa. Now it reminded Alejandro more of the other one. It was a little like a bird and a little like an insect and a little like a vampire, but not exactly like any of those things. It seemed to half dissolve with every step and then re-condense, as though it occupied one place and then another but hardly passed through the space in between.
The witch was shouting now, nothing Alejandro understood, but he had lost English anyway and was not sure he would have understood even Spanish. He did not remember the witch’s name, and did not care. Carter and Rip had come up on the other side of Herrod’s team, threatening the witches from that side. No one had actually formed a plan, but now everyone was in place to work together: Herrod’s team to relieve Raichlen’s and recover the priest; the black dogs threatening the witches too closely to let the witches attack the humans.
Alejandro reared up, wanting to leap to the attack—why did the Master not give the signal—how long were they to hold back—they should rend the demon and crush it and get past it to do the same to the witches—
The demon shifted its position and condensed, things like eyes glittering, flicking from one of them to the next, picking a target.
Then it turned and struck instead, in its strange way that covered ground far too fast, through and past all the human soldiers, straight at the priest.
Carissa whipped around and sprang to meet it. She snatched the gun right out of one man’s hand and slammed heavily into the demon, coming down with all her weight—small for a black dog was not small. She bore the demon down effortlessly. But she did not tear with teeth or claws. Instead, as the demon-thing snapped at her with fangs it surely hadn’t possessed the instant before, Carissa dropped the gun from between her jaws and rammed it forward with one powerful forelimb. She forced it deep in the demon’s...it wasn’t exactly a mouth. Or the chest. But call it the chest, though it snapped at Carissa with many mouths, striking mostly her heavy pelt.
The gun didn’t fire. In Carissa’s black dog form, she didn’t have fingers that fit inside the trigger guard. But as she forced the gun into the demon, she crushed and twisted the metal, spilling the silver bullets out of the weapon, scattering them through the peculiar, half-physical body of their enemy.
The demon shrieked and...shrank, somehow. Condensing, but at the same time becoming less substantial. But then it swelled up again, flinging Carissa aside with one peculiar half-clawed limb—astonishing strength. But she twisted her body and raked with her hind legs, converting what might have been an uncoordinated sprawl into an awkward but controlled leap.
“¡Orale!” Alejandro did not shout the word aloud. But it was there, vivid, in his wordless snarl of satisfied hatred. He lunged forward, not waiting for a signal. Suddenly everyone was moving. Alejandro lost track of everything but the demon; that was his immediate enemy. He was past Carissa before she hit the floor. The demon was reaching after her, clutching with some of its...limbs, snapping with some of its...mouths. But he hurled himself into it with all his weight, trying to throw it back bodily, tearing at it.
Yet he hardly knocked it back at all, not because it matched his strength or weight, but because it gave like liquid before his attack. And then almost at once flowed together again, slashing with claws or spines or some other kind of razor-edged weapons that he was sure hadn’t even been there a moment before. The slashes were shallow, barely cutting through the shaggy pelt that protected his throat and chest, but they burned almost as badly as silver. He tried to get away from the demon, furiously aware that his own attack seemed barely to have hurt it. He should have realized. Of course if an ordinary attack would wound it, Carissa would not have used silver. He had realized, but he had not cared. Now he knew he should have held back.
The demon clung to him like cobweb, cutting and burning and impossible to shed. It was reaching for his mind; he felt it. Or maybe for his soul. The human part of his soul, the human part of his mind. It was going to tear that part of him free of his shadow and...he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell, he didn’t want to find out. For that instant, not finding out was the most important thing in the world. Some part of him wanted to panic—some part of him did panic. He flung himself back toward the edge of the black circle, rolling in a vain attempt to crush the demon or force it to let go. Like cobweb, like clinging mist, like poisoned malice, it followed and clung and tightened its grip.
Human instinct or terror made him force his shadow down, the change of body as sudden and forceful as he could make it. As he took his smaller human shape, he snatched Natividad’s bead from his pocket and tucked himself down around it.
The demon seemed to lose its grip, or perhaps its sense of its prey. It drew back. But it was still trying to force the change. He could tell that was what it wanted. The black dog form would be no protection against the demon; worse than no protection; this terrible demon understood things born of shadows. It was trying to pry his shadow out of him and...consume it, use it, master it, he didn’t know. Natividad’s bead helped, but it was not enough.
Then the human woman, Raichlen, stepped coolly past him, thrust her bare hand past Alejandro’s face, and scattered a handful of silver bullets straight into the half-solid demon as though sowing corn in good earth.
It recoiled, and Alejandro scrambled clear. He was entirely in human form now, and staggered as he came to his feet, not sure whether it was safe yet to shift again. The bead was still clenched in his hand, warm, threaded with a more violent heat.
The woman put herself between Alejandro and the demon. She had a tiny knife in her hand, not one of the long weapons, but hardly finger-length. He could feel the burn of it even at a distance: if it was not pure silver, it was close.
Raichlen was an older woman, maybe the Master’s age, maybe older than that. Maybe that was why she could stay so calm. Her expression was intent, as though she faced any trivial human enemy, as though the demon was nothing special, as though it didn’t worry her at all. Alejandro was outraged that a mere human woman would try to protect him—grateful that she had protected him, but outraged at the same time. Taking Carissa’s strategy, he put Natividad’s little aparato in his mouth and forced his shadow up, reluctant though it suddenly seemed.
The demon was on Raichlen before he could finish the cuerpo. It unfolded many-jointed limbs that a second before it had not possessed, closing them around its prey from every direction at once. Its attack was only a little bit physical, though suddenly the woman was bleeding from many narrow little slashing cuts on her face and throat and hands. But that was not why she recoiled, or dropped the knife. Those little cuts were not what contorted her face and drove her to her knees. Demon-stru
ck. Alejandro was seeing it happen, and this time at very close range. He didn’t like it at all.
Carissa hurtled in from one side in mostly human form, caught Raichlen’s knife with one almost human hand before it hit the floor, and ripped the little silver blade right across half the demon’s limbs.
Alejandro leaped also, half-shifted as he was, at one of the human soldiers. The man saw him coming and shouted, wordless and hoarse. Another almost managed to face him, almost managed to bring his long, heavy knife up into a defensive position. In another time and place, Alejandro would have laughed at that hopelessly slow attempt at defense. Now he just snatched the knife from the soldier as though the man had meant to offer it to him. He gripped it with a partly human hand, clumsy with his half-shifted form and with the instant bright burn of the silver. Clumsiness didn’t matter either. If Carissa could endure the touch of silver, he could. He could force his fingers closed around this big knife for the small space of necessary time. Whirling, he lunged back toward the demon.
Silver was an assault against the dark. It burned, a cold kind of burning, rapidly becoming vivid agony. He endured it. If he had been fully in his black dog form, he could have covered the distance much faster. He did not let himself shift the rest of the way because then he could not have gripped the knife. His shadow pressed hard, wanting to rise, wanting him to drop the weapon. He refused it, forced it down, and hit the demon from the rear...it did not exactly have a rear, but he hit it from the opposite side as Carissa.
Hissing like a kettle, black smoke pouring out like steam, the demon flinched and retreated, flinched again and retreated farther. It had released the Special Forces woman...it had mostly released her. Most of it was retreating, but traces of it clung to her, like a contagion. Yet the larger part of the demon fled before them. The taste of its fear was sweet, even though long lines of white blisters were rising on Alejandro’s palm.
At least Alejandro’s knife was long and heavy and had a hilt that fit his hand properly, burn though it might. Carissa’s tiny knife hardly had a hilt. But her expression was savagely exultant as she drove the demon away from its intended prey.
The demon was retreating. It was flowing away, faster now. Away from their combined attack, toward the inner circle of ash and grit that protected the witch and his disciples. That was where the other, broader battle was still unfolding, the Master’s black wolves and Herrod’s people pitting all their cleverness and strength against the witch and his amigotes. Alejandro had missed everything that had been happening here. But the inner circle had been cut through in four different places, scored through by silver and scoured away with, by the scent of it, blessed wine.
Even now, neither black dog nor human seemed able to cross that circle. Silver bullets could, but shooting Gregor Kristoff seemed to do little harm; silver glinted all around him but he was still on his feet. One of his disciples had been shot, though, from the way he sat on the floor clutching his leg. Another had panicked and fled across the circle. A black wolf had gotten that one, obviously. Parts of the body was strewn across half the room.
Beyond the circle, Carter and Rip were tearing up the machines, ripping the cords out of the walls, crushing the engines. As the generators failed, the lights flickered and died, but the Special Forces people were throwing chemical lights down here and there and one of the black wolves—probably Carter again, Alejandro thought—had found a container of gasoline, tipped it over, and set it on fire. It burned hot, with sullen dark-red flames, threatening to become a danger to all the human people in this underground place. A thin trickle of gasoline had cut across the inner circle, too, and soon the fire would burn across the circle as well. That was clever. Maybe it would finally break the circle’s protection.
From Gregor Kristoff’s expression, that circle might already no longer stop a demon. Because that was exactly where the demon was heading, hissing with all the mouths it sometimes seemed to have. Alejandro understood suddenly: that was the source of Carissa’s violent pleasure. She too had seen that the inner circle had been breached. She was driving the demon that way on purpose. For her, the demon had become a weapon and an instrument of vengeance.
That was very satisfying. Alejandro took a firmer grip on his silver-edged knife and threw himself into helping Carissa drive the demon toward the only people who deserved to feed its appetites. All around the ash circle, the Special Forces people gave back. They held up silver knives or handfuls of silver bullets to help force the demon toward the circle. The priest, his eyes narrowed and his expression grimly determined, held up a heavy silver cross in each hand. Grayson himself had circled around to the other side of the circle, cutting off any chance of retreat that way as the demon stalked toward the witches, its half-physical body leaking off into greasy black smoke around the edges where silver had cut it.
Then Kristoff cried out, a short angry phrase in Latin, and the demon shied back, twisted sideways, and struck the priest.
Its movement was so sudden Alejandro could not even try to prevent it. Carissa seemed to have seen that attack coming, for she had lunged into its path and tried to drive it away from the priest and on toward the circle, but her little knife was too small and though the demon flinched, it poured itself past her and closed around the priest.
Then it recoiled at once as he slammed both silver crosses into its...not exactly its face, but a part of its body that seemed sometimes a little like a face. But the witch cried out again, and the demon, hissing and keening, snapped at the priest with mouths that suddenly formed, closed throttling tendrils around his throat, and tore his chest open with something like a nest of spines that surely it had not possessed an instant before.
Then it wrenched itself away, bleeding great clouds of smoke where the silver crosses had touched it and burned it, where Carissa’s knife had torn it, where Alejandro’s bigger blade had cut into it. Special Forces soldiers slashed at it as well, which was good although they were only human-fast. The demon might have tried to strike Carissa if not for all the human soldiers suddenly backing her up, all their silver burning in the dark. One threw a glass vial of holy water at the concrete floor beneath the demon; the glass shattered like a bomb. It jerked back and turned away, and Alejandro forced it again toward the inner circle. Toward Kristoff, whom he truly wanted to see get eaten by a demon.
But it was too late for the priest. He was sprawled on the concrete floor with all the graceless abandon of death, surrounded by blood and the smell of death. That was infuriating—he had been a Dimilioc ally, at a remove. Certainly he had been useful. Alejandro wanted Kristoff to very soon also be torn and bloody.
The demon, crouching low and still making that creaking hiss, bent to touch the circle of dust and ashes with a limb that was sort of like a hand and sort of like a claw. Then it bent lower still, licking or tasting the ashes...that was what it seemed to do. Carissa put out a hand, restraining Alejandro when he would have tried to force it onward. She was right, because then the demon raised itself up, glared at the witches with eyes that came and went and were not exactly eyes anyway, and lunged forward into the circle.
The remaining disciples screamed. Kristoff did not. He made a fast gesture, spoke one word, and the demon shrieked—or cried out in exaltation, it almost seemed both at once—and fled. It took time only to snatch up the disciple who had been shot. The young man’s horrified scream was cut off short as the demon carried him away, racing up and out. Stone exploded above, and the demon was gone. Shards of stone rained down all around. Alejandro knocked a car-sized piece of stone out of his way before it could crush a man—Josiah, he saw, but he would have done as much for anyone.
“I can’t believe we let another one get away,” Carissa said viciously, from beside him.
Alejandro stared at her. He understood only after a second. It had not fled exactly. Or not from the world into the fell dark. It had gone into the world. Like the first demon, it had been freed and now it went where it would, to do as it pleased.
That was too bad, but really Alejandro was only disappointed the demon hadn’t taken Gregor Kristoff instead of the young witch. He would have liked to hear Kristoff screaming as he was carried away.
If that was not to happen, at least he wanted to see Kristoff brought low and helpless. Arrested was not really what he had in mind. But it was Colonel Herrod who took charge now, walking forward with an air of calm certainty to stand directly outside the circle, exactly where the demon had crossed it. The colonel looked thoughtfully across the circle at Kristoff. Then he brushed the ash and dust and salt out of his way fastidiously with his foot and said, “Well. Would you care to surrender to my people? Your alternative choices seem limited. I don’t imagine you would rather surrender to the Master of Dimilioc.”
Not far away, the fire reached the circle as well, flickered, and burned right through it. On the other side, behind the witches, Grayson reared up, appearing more massive than ever in the firelight. Then he pulled himself smoothly most of the way back into human form. His expression was unmoved, but his eyes were fiery and the bones of his face still subtly distorted. He said in his deep, harsh voice, his level tone all the more frightening for its juxtaposition with his crimson eyes, “For what he has done, he will die screaming. They will all die. My wolves will eat their hearts. Carissa may have Kristoff’s. She has earned it. The rest of us will content ourselves with the...student.”
“Uh, look, no, we totally surrender!” the remaining disciple cried with gratifying urgency. “To, like, the real human!” He edged away from Gregor Kristoff, holding up his hands in token of submission. Kristoff glanced at him with open contempt but didn’t speak to him.
Carissa had discarded the little knife at last. Like the Master, she was almost entirely in human form. Like him, her eyes were still very much not human. Her hands, blistered and burned, were almost human, but every foreshortened finger bore a jet-black claw. She was not smiling. Nor scowling. Her attention was entirely on Kristoff. She said suddenly, “Shoot him!”
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