The Trouble with Demons

by Spear, Terry

  Alana frowned at Jared. “I thought you said demons only have one name.”

  “That’s what Treikal taught me.”

  “We do, except some were getting me mixed up with a Matusa because our names were so similar.” The demon had a round jovial face, and he did look a little like a politician.

  “Ferengus?” Alana asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him. Sour Matusa.”

  Hunter shook his head. “So the boy mispronounced the demon’s name. It makes sense that Gryndal was trying to call Ferengus forth since he’s in with the others. But if he’s in Dallas, how could he be close enough to be summoned?”

  “He couldn’t be summoned if he’s already in the Earth world,” Alana said. “Gryndal must not have known Ferengus had made it to Dallas, but he knew Gryndal would be in Orlando. So he planned to meet with him through a portal to the demon world here. So now what do we do?”

  “Locate the one in Baltimore. Or we could go back and take care of Ferengus in Dallas. But the Baltimore Matusa will be unaware of our intentions if we go after him. I’d bet Ferengus would be warier. So I say we go to Baltimore and get rid of him first,” Hunter said.

  “All right,” Alana said. “I want to check on my mother.”

  “What are you supposed to do as a gate guardian, Samson?” Jared asked.

  Samson shrugged his broad shoulders. “The Kubiteron must teach me everything she knows.”

  “Great. She doesn’t know anything,” Jared said as they walked into the hotel lobby.

  “What if you learn she’s up to something you might not be ready for?” Hunter asked.

  She glowered at him.

  “Just warning you, but I need to get you home, Alana.” Hunter punched the elevator button. “We’ve gotten rid of the Matusa here, but you need to return home for your own safety.”

  “You said you’d protect me from the Baltimore Matusa.”

  “I will protect you from now on. No Matusa will get near you.” Samson gave Hunter a disparaging look.

  “See?” Hunter waved at Samson. “You have your own personal bodyguard. He can return to Dallas with you.”

  “You know, Matusa—” Alana said.

  Hunter flipped his phone open and punched in his mother’s number. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor, and when there was no answer, he scowled and shoved his phone in his pocket.

  “No one home?” Alana asked, unable to keep from sounding amused.

  “As soon as I get hold of my mother, she’s letting your uncle know you’re here.”

  “But Ferengus is there.”

  Hunter didn’t respond.

  “Fine. Can I use your phone?”

  “What for?” he asked.

  Jared unlocked the door to their suite.

  “To call my mother. She’s supposed to be phoning me at Uncle Stephen’s house today, but no one’s home. I don’t want her to worry.”

  They walked into the living room.

  “Where’s your uncle’s cell?” Hunter handed her his.

  “Battery died.”

  “Why don’t you talk to your mother telepathically?” Jared asked.

  “Too far away.” Alana punched in numbers, but after a few seconds, shook her head. “No answer. Answering machine’s full.” She called information. “I need the number for the Holloway Mansion, Baltimore, Maryland.” Then she called the number. “May I speak with the manager?”

  Jared said to Samson, “There’s not enough room for you to sleep here. You’ll have to find another hotel room.”

  Samson folded his muscular arms across his chest. “I stay with the guardian.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Johnston? I’m Alana Fainot and I’m looking for my mother, Caroline Fainot. She’s not there? But she was supposed to be. She never arrived? Thanks.”

  Alana’s brows pinched in a worried frown, and she punched in information again. “I need the number for Trendy Donuts, Baltimore. Thanks.” She poked in the number.

  Hunter motioned to Jared’s laptop. “While we’re here, keep monitoring for other demons.”

  Jared gave the Samuria one final glare, then sat on the sofa and opened his laptop.

  Alana paced. “Yes, I’m Alana Fainot, and I’m calling to see if my mother, Caroline, has been there.” Her gaze shifted to Hunter, and he could tell the news wasn’t good.

  “Thanks.” She snapped the phone shut. “I’m going to Baltimore.”

  Jared looked up from his laptop.

  Hunter took a deep breath. “We stay the night and leave first thing in the morning. You keep trying to reach your mother in the meantime.”

  “What if the Baltimore Matusa learned where I live?”

  “Then it’s already too late.”

  She cast Hunter a chilly glare. “You could be more sensitive about my feelings.”

  “If you wish to go now, I’ll stay with you,” Samson said.

  Hunter glowered at him. “I’m Matusa. I give the orders. So if you want to stay, keep that in mind.”

  The Samuria smiled. “I only take orders from the guardian.”

  “Right.” Alana collapsed on the loveseat. “That’s why you didn’t go home when I told you to.”

  “I can’t obey that order. I must stay with you because we’ll work as a team.”

  “You may get your wish, Samson. The same Matusa or another is here,” Jared warned.

  “Where?” Hunter asked, not believing another could have arrived as if the place was churning them out wholesale.

  “The same location in the park.”

  They looked at Alana. She was wearing her astral-dazed expression.

  Samson yanked the door open and Hunter and Jared raced after him, but Hunter suddenly stopped. “Stay with Alana, Jared, in case he gets past us. Don’t let her out of the room.”

  He nodded. “Will do. Want the laptop?”

  “No, too cumbersome. Make her stay put!” Hunter dashed after Samson, and when the two arrived at the portal in the park, they found the same scrawny teen trying to summon a demon as Ferengus coaxed him.

  Where had he come from?

  Alana waved her hands as soon as she saw Hunter and instantly an impenetrable forest surrounded them, shielding them from everyone else in the park.

  “The boy is a warlock who cloaked his identity from me earlier,” Alana warned Hunter. “He’s in with them and I hadn’t wiped his mind as I thought.”

  Ferengus moved toward Hunter, his eyes burning with hatred. “The Kubiteron is mine.”

  Hunter spun around and kicked Ferengus in the chest.

  Before Samson could attack, the warlock cast a spell and the demon’s hair and skin turned ice blue.

  Alana cast a spell at the warlock, but in her astral state, the spell didn’t work against the magic user.

  The warlock snarled at her. “You’re no match for—”

  She returned to her physical form in the hotel room before he finished his threat. Alana jumped up from the couch.

  “You’re back,” Jared said, sounding surprised.

  “They’re outnumbered, or will be once the warlock brings Gryndal back from wherever Hunter sent him. I’ve got to stop the guy.” She dashed for the door, but Jared blocked her. She growled low. “Get out of my way or you’ll see what the other half of me is capable of.”

  He hesitated.

  She raised her hands.

  He shrugged. “I think you’re scarier than Hunter any day.”

  The two flew out of the room, dove down the stairs, and raced out of the building.

  "We’re coming to your rescue," Alana assured Hunter and hoped they weren’t too late.

  When they reached the shelter of trees, she made an opening for Jared and her, then they entered the center, and she sealed up the opening. Everyone, Hunter, Samson, Ferengus, and the warlock were gone, and so was the portal.

  “What happened?” Jared asked.

  Alana stared at the spot where the portal had been. "Hunter, where are you?" She turned to Jare
d. “See if there are any demon signatures nearby.”

  “None.” He took a deep breath. “They must be in the demon world.”

  “We have to help them.”

  “No. Hunter wouldn’t like it if I took you back to Seplichus. He already said so.”

  “He didn’t know he was going to need our help there.”

  “He said no.”

  “Okay, cowardly lion. You wait here while I search for him.” She opened the portal.

  Jared grabbed her arm. “Hunter will kill me but you give me no choice, Miss Dorothy of Oz. Next, you’ll want a pair of ruby shoes to take you home.”

  “Yeah, well, I already said I wanted to go home to Baltimore, but nobody would listen to me. Now look at the mess we’re in.”

  They stepped through the portal and into a steamy jungle.

  “Where’s the city?” Alana whispered.

  “We can only get to the city we previously visited through a Dallas portal. I’ve never been though a portal at Paradise World. Figures we’d end up in a seething jungle in the demon’s world.”

  “But Samson wouldn’t have been in the jungle, would he have?”

  “Maybe he’s from a small city nearby. The closer the portal is to a large established city, the more stable it is.”

  “Great.” Alana cast a bug protection spell when the mosquitoes the size of dragonflies buzzed around their heads. “What else do they have in a place like this?”

  “Snakes, crocs, poisonous spiders and frogs, just like Earth, from what I’ve read. But bigger and meaner.”

  The scum-covered water covered rose to their ankles, and Alana grimaced. “How did you manage to stay in Hunter’s hospital room without the nurses kicking you out?”

  “I can cloak myself.”

  Just as she’d assumed. “Do it.”

  Jared stared at her. “Why?”

  “Something’s following us. Don’t you hear it sloshing in the water behind us? If it can’t see you, maybe you can gang up on it before it attacks us.”

  “So now you want me to play the cowardly lion?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, and watch my back.” She closed the portal, shutting out the light and wind.

  Jared vanished. Her stomach tightened. Though she knew Jared stood next to her, she couldn’t quash the feeling of dread that she was alone to face whatever monsters lived here. “If we need to get out of here quickly, I can open another portal where we stand. But Hunter said he couldn’t open more than one at a time.”

  Jared’s invisible hand grabbed her wrist, and she swallowed a shriek.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “To your left. A body floating down in the water.”

  Alana drew closer. “Oh… oh, it’s the warlock. He’s… he’s dead.”

  “How? What killed him?”

  “How would I know?” She quickly cast a protection spell around her and Jared. “But apparently he wasn’t as powerful as he wanted me to believe.”

  “Hunter, Jared and I are trying to locate you. I wish you could let us know where you are,” Alana telepathically communicated.

  They squished through the muck, but splashing nearby drew their attention. They stopped and listened.

  “I thought Samson wouldn’t ever leave you,” Jared whispered.

  “I left him. The warlock froze him, and I couldn’t help Hunter or Samson. I had to return to my physical state. What I don’t understand is how they all ended up here.”

  “Probably Hunter was pulled into the portal when he tried to send the Matusa back.”

  Alana headed for the splashing, but Jared grabbed her arm again, and she gasped. “Quit doing that!” she said harshly under her breath.

  “Why are you heading for trouble?”

  “Maybe it’s Hunter or Samson.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Jared opened his laptop. “Three Matusas and a Samuria straight ahead and to our right.”

  “What’s following us?”

  “Nothing demon that I can track, but it might be something just as sinister. The demons who live in the wild are more animal than human, for lack of a better term. The ones in the cities are more evolved like us. So except for Hunter and the others, we won’t find much out here that we’ll want to meet.”

  Whatever splashed in the water a few feet behind them, gained on them.

  “How far are the demon signatures from here?”

  “About a half mile to our right.”

  “Let’s hurry then.”

  “Not out here. One false step and you could be over your head in quicksand.”

  A branch snapped to Jared’s right.

  Alana peered in that direction. Nothing but cypress and sycamores, vines climbing to the jungle ceiling, and green scum-covered water up to their shins.

  “Ahh!” someone screamed from behind her, then a thump.

  “Jared?” she whispered.

  She flailed her hands through thin air, trying to locate him but couldn’t feel him. “Jared?”

  Heart thundering against her ribs, she backtracked to where she heard the sound and stumbled over something solid. With shaking hands, she reached down and felt a body. “Jared?”

  He was still invisible, but the form she touched rested on a raised bit of ground, felt human, and was wearing clothes. Reaching farther up, she touched his face. Blood soaked her fingers. “Ohmigod, Jared.”

  She opened the portal, then elevated his body and summoned him into Earth world.

  A family of four nearly ran her over at the park, and she quickly surrounded herself and Jared with a high stone wall covered in vines. “Jared, wake up. Make yourself visible so I can heal you.”

  He didn’t move. Pressing her ear against his chest, she heard his steady heartbeat. She ran her hand over his face, concentrating on the blood oozing out of a gash on his forehead and stopped the bleeding.

  He stirred.

  “Jared? Make yourself visible.”

  He appeared before her, his face pale, his eyes dazed, the gash in his forehead swollen and already discolored as he lay on his back on the brick walk.

  She held his hand. “Jared, can you hear me?”

  “I…” He closed his eyes and whispered, “The laptop.”

  “Oh God.” She glanced back at the portal. “You must have dropped it. I’ll… I’ll get it.”

  Jared didn’t answer and she reached over and touched his cold cheek. “Rest. I’ll return and help heal you, but your demon curative powers will aid you in the meantime. I’ll get the laptop.”

  Opening the portal, she rushed back through.

  Reentering the demon jungle took nerves of steel and right now Alana’s felt like pieces of dental floss. She lunged forth, then reached around in the muck, feeling for the laptop, hoping that the water wouldn’t have ruined it. Then she saw it sitting on the raised ground. The demons’ signatures glowed on the monitor, maybe a quarter of a mile away.

  "Jared, rest. I have to try and reach Hunter and Samson," Alana relayed to him one last time and closed the portal so she could open it later if she needed an emergency exit. Trudging off in the swamp, she hoped whatever had taken a swipe at Jared wouldn’t get her next.

  But as soon as she began to move, she heard something following her. Despite Jared’s advice, she quickened her pace. Either it was attracted to her movement or maybe her scent, neither of which she had any ability to cloak.

  "Hunter, I’m coming."

  Chapter 21

  Hunter would ring Jared’s neck if they even all made it safely back to the world of fun and games at the Paradise theme park. How could he let Alana follow him here into a world as deadly as any prehistoric one could have been?

  In the jungle heat, Samson had quickly recovered from the effects of the severe frost bite the warlock had cast on him. Hunter could still envision the boy’s wide eyes when some kind of reptilian swamp creature came out of nowhere, blending with the trees and vines and broke the warlock’s neck, then sank into the swamp aga
in.

  The creatures kept their distance, maybe sensing how dangerous the Matusa could be, maybe figuring a warlock wasn’t anything to fear. But when Ferengus pulled Hunter into this world, he hadn’t expected a jungle. Though he knew Gryndal had to be somewhere here also since he’d kicked him through the portal earlier.

  Neither of the Matusa could return to Earth unless summoned, but Hunter had every intention of destroying Ferengus and Gryndal before he left the jungle. A heavy mist had separated all of them, and he didn’t think he could even locate Samson. Then Alana’s telepathic message reached him, and he knew he couldn’t do anything but find her and get her back to safety. Jared. Didn’t Hunter tell him to keep her in the hotel suite?

  ***

  A dense fog filled the swamp and unable to see anything, Alana stopped. Whatever was following her, quit moving, too. She glanced at the laptop. A Samuria demon moved toward her, but the Matusas were scattered still about a quarter of a mile away.

  “Samson, can you hear me? I’m opening the portal and I’ll summon you through,” she communicated. Then she opened the portal and called to Hunter. “I’m attempting to bring Samson through the portal, Hunter. I’ll close it, then you have to open a portal near you and return. Jared’s back in Earth world. He’s been injured.”

  She opened the portal, watching the Samuria grow closer, though she couldn’t hear him sloshing through the swamp like she should have. Eerily on edge, she drew closer to the gateway.

  “Samson?”

  He materialized next to her making her gasp, and he grabbed her arm. “Summon me through, Alana.”

  “Hunter, we’re going back. If you don’t follow, I’ll be returning for you alone. So get your butt in gear and get back here.”

  She summoned Samson through the portal and closed it, though leaving Hunter behind with two Matusas preyed on her. But as soon as she led Samson back to Jared, she’d do just what she promised and go back for Hunter. And kill him for making her return to the hostile jungle.

  She rushed for the stone wall surrounding Jared. “What happened, Samson?”

  “Someone froze me.”

  “The boy. He was a warlock.”

  Samson growled. “I don’t know how I ended up in Swarly Swamp when I expected to be in my village of Mondoon, but the next thing I knew, the heat had defrosted me and the warlock was dead, floating face down in the muck. I searched for Hunter and the two Matusas, though I thought maybe the boy and I got knocked through the portal and I was stuck here alone.”