Drop Dead Demons

by Kirk, A

  I’d been trudging for what seemed like hours, following the trail of light. And blood. Once I started moving, my blood on the ceiling had kept a steady pace in front of me. Little creepy. I also wasn’t too thrilled by my faithful golden ducklings rolling behind me. I flinched every time the deactivated spikeballs clinked and dinged. I was still worried they were going to attack.

  The lights seemed to be leading me in a straight shot, no turns or corners, but it was hard to tell. If they went out and I had to double-back, Logan and I could be lost forever. I’d just passed through a dark intersection when I heard the shouts.

  “No bloody way!”

  I stopped. “Matthias?”

  I retraced my steps. The intersection was a round chamber with six tunnels shooting off in different directions. Four of them were dark.

  “Try that again, you crazy bugger!”

  It was the Aussie. As much as I hated him, I was glad to hear his voice.

  “Oh, no you don’t. I’m— Ow! Bollocks! Now you asked for it!”

  Thrashing sounds. A whip cracked. An angry, glass shattering squeal followed. Along with sounds of a battle.

  That Matthias wasn’t winning.

  I couldn’t run with Logan on my shoulder, but I tried. Following the tunnel that echoed the Aussie’s cries the loudest.

  Of course the tunnel dead-ended. Must’ve taken the wrong one. I started to turn.

  “You bloody son of a—Ugh!”

  I whirled. Nope, Matthias was definitely on the other side of this wall. I set Logan down and lightly tapped his face.

  “Hey, wake up.”

  Nothing.

  I tapped — okay, slapped — harder. “Logan!”

  The fighting sounds were getting worse. Matthias’s grunts increased. So did his colorful language. And my anxiety. My body started to prickle. I was tired and scared, and he needed to wake up!

  “Logan!”

  I grabbed his shoulders. The contact came with a flash of light from my hands. His body jolted, eyes flew open.

  I jumped back, let go. “What did I do?!”

  He flopped to the ground, coughing. Alive. I breathed easier.

  Logan pushed back his hair, streaking blood into the neon white, and looked around.

  “What happened?” He touched his chest. “Ow.”

  “Matthias is in trouble.”

  I helped him up, and he cocked his head as the battle sounds echoed.

  Logan put his ear up against the wall, slid his hands over the stone, eyes roaming the space. “I’ve never seen these tunnels before. I don’t know where we are.”

  Oh, great. Why did I expect good news? We’d be lost forever.

  The ground trembled. Logan jumped back as rock crumbled and trickled down the cave wall. Keeping his eyes forward, he gestured me to retreat. The ground shook harder. More and more stone fell from above.

  I covered my head with my arms. “What’s happening?”

  “Not sure.”

  His translucent bow and arrow materialized in his hands. His eyes swirled pale like they were whipping cream. He aimed at the wall.

  We heard a muffled screech and the wall shook as if a wrecking ball crashed into the other side. Fissures cracked in the stone, spidered out.

  Something was coming through.

  “Get out!” Logan yelled.

  I wanted to comply, but my muscles revolted. I was too tired to run.

  A small tornado whirled around Logan and levitated him a foot off the ground. As the tornado carried him backwards toward me, four more arrows appeared in his bow. Cool.

  Another mighty blow hit, and the wall gave up, shattered like a pane of glass, as a deranged demon with eyes the blistering yellow of a sun flare burst through.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t too tired to run. But the blast threw me off my feet. I landed on my stomach, lungs collapsing, and rolled sideways, ducking behind a pile of fallen rock, fighting to suck in precious air.

  Pulverized stone along with pieces of sharp, twisted metal rained down, clanging against the rock around me.

  I stayed low as the creature with the head the size of a minivan and the body of a giant centipede barreled toward Logan. The valiant Hex Boy remained levitating, arrows poised, and held his ground, letting the demon get closer…and closer…waiting to shoot the arrows because—

  Who the heck knew? It was stupid!

  “Logan, shoot!”

  He did. Five arrows flew. But three pinged harmlessly off the demon’s side, and the two that buried in its flesh didn’t seem to stop it at all.

  Logan reloaded and—

  “No!” came the guttural command.

  Four black ropes shot through the opening, whipped around the demon’s body, and stopped it in its tracks.

  Matthias stepped through the broken wall.

  Scowling, scraped, scratched, bloody, dark hair caked with dirt and stringy with sweat, T-shirt ripped, and eyes filled with fathomless black, the Aussie strained at the end of the black ropes. Or as I called them, his shadow whips.

  “Shove off! This nasty bugger is mine!” The demon lurched and nearly jerked Matthias off his feet. He grunted a crazed smile at Logan. “On second thought, mate, maybe you could give me a hand getting him back to the portal.”

  Logan dropped to his feet and said, “Stay back.”

  The white-haired wonder studied the demon, rolled his shoulders, then brought his bow and arrow up, holding steady. At the last second he shifted his aim to the left.

  The arrow pinged off the wall and ricocheted back toward the demon. Instead of piercing flesh, the arrow arced around the demon in a spiraling rotation down the body. It created a whirlwind, encapsulating the demon and lifting if off the ground, swaddled like a babe in the eye of Logan’s tornado.

  The arrow made one final pass to swirl once around Matthias, ruffling his sweaty hair, before evaporating in wisps of pearly smoke.

  “That’s new.” Matthias commented, grunting a pull on the shadow whips and dragging the centimole with relative ease along on a cushion of air. “Something you been working on?”

  Logan blushed. “Well, you know, just trying to, uh, change things up.”

  The bow disappeared as Logan followed Matthias, readjusting his suit coat.

  “I like it,” Matthias said. “So where did you and the nitwit come from?”

  I came out of hiding and lifted one side of my lip in a sneer. He sneered back. So mature.

  Logan shook his head. “Craziest thing…”

  He got Matthias up to speed as they dragged the monster, kicking and screaming but held tight by the wind, back through the hole and down the corridor. I started to follow, but the golden spheres were hot on my heels. Would they go after the Aussie? It wouldn’t pain me, but I scooped them up and dropped them in my pocket. I hurried to catch up with the guys at what I hoped was a safe distance, trying to keep out of the demon’s line of sight because it seriously creeped me out.

  I hated bugs.

  Even when they weren’t ten feet tall, had a segmented body longer than a bus, and looked like a supernaturally overgrown, demonic centipede. Why couldn’t demons ever be pretty?

  Undulating from each body section were dozens of thin, pointy yellow legs, layered with sharp spikes. The body was covered, in part, by scales — more like armor plates — and the rest sprouted thick, chestnut fur lined with jagged black stripes.

  The head, other than the six glowing yellow eyes, resembled a mole’s. Long and conical with a pointy nose and long whiskers. The ears stuck out like rolled-up pieces of pink leather, and next to them protruded two very long…horns, I guess, but they acted more like arms and ended in some nasty looking pinchers. One of the pinchers was tied shut with a black whip, but the repeated click-click of the other was an ominous sound.

  When its yellow eyes tracked me, a low growl rumbled in its throat. I felt a serious need to itch. Everywhere. I did my best to angle myself out of the beady eyes’ reach.

  We lumbered al
ong for a while and eventually entered a massive cave. My neck craned to take it all in.

  Over his shoulder, Logan smiled at my awe. “Welcome to the portal.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was an oblong, basketball stadium kind of space. Maybe bigger. The domed ceiling, some thirty feet high, gave it an illusion of greater grandeur.

  Stalactites hung from above looking like the gnarled fingers of an ancient giant. They pulsed with inner light that bathed the room in an eerie glow reflected in the pool of clear aqua blue water below. Liquid dripped off their tips, and small ripples fanned out on the pool’s steaming, lightly bubbling surface. The entire space was warm and humid with a faint aroma of sulfur.

  Matthias wiped sweat off his brow. “The pool started bubbling and the place has been a sauna ever since this bloody runt broke through.”

  He gestured across the cave at a massive metal, net-like structure that fed out from the ceiling to the floor, some twenty feet in front of the portal. Made of wide latticed-metal strips, it weaved together in a variety of colors from bright silver to dull steel, shiny bronze and glittering copper. Part medieval castle drawbridge, part net. Only instead of butterflies, it caught monsters.

  “Ripped through it like it was friggin’ paper.” Matthias pointed at a huge gaping hole in the center. “Never seen that before. And tough to kill. Kept breaking my lines, making a run for it. But may have something to do with Rose, so we keep it alive for now. Maybe we can use it against him.”

  The metal structure looked like it could hold back a tank, but the hole said otherwise. Through it, I had an uninterrupted view of the far stone wall.

  At least I think it was stone. Currently, it shimmered in and out of focus, blurring periodically like it was trying to transform into something else. Or it was trying to dissolve.

  When Logan cut off the wind around the demon, the creature dropped onto its side. Matthias immediately pounced on one of the mid-sections. Muscles bulging and straining through the barely-there remains of his tattered shirt, he quickly had the squirming demon hogtied with dozens of shadow whips.

  Matthias smiled a grin that dimpled his red cheeks.

  “This one was almost a challenge,” he said to Logan, then turned to me. The dimples disappeared. “Quit touching things you shouldn’t.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Shut up. I’m the one who found you so you owe me.”

  From atop the demon, the Aussie cracked a whip at my feet. I jumped back with a yelp and glared at him.

  “Stop it!”

  He did it again.

  “Ow! You got my toe!”

  “I was aiming for your face.” His dimples were back. “This time I won’t miss.”

  As Matthias lifted his arm for another “crack” at me — jerk — the beast squealed and struggled beneath him, forcing the Aussie to bend his knees surfer style to ride it out. The demon flung its head side to side. Thick webs of drool slung across the cave and stuck to the walls like just-cooked spaghetti.

  Logan stepped in front of me and into a shooting stance, slowly readying his bow with six arrows. “Aurora, get to safe ground.”

  Like I knew where that was in this labyrinth of Crazytown.

  The creature’s low growl amplified to frenzied-screech levels in zero point scare-me-silly seconds. Rock cracked and pebbles crumbled off the walls. In a colossal burst of power and rage, the pinchers broke through the shadow whips and snapped open.

  Click, click, click.

  Matthias yanked back to tighten the whips around the legs, but in a blind fury the demon twisted and bucked, nearly folding its body in half and flinging the Aussie up and across the room. He bounced off the hanging stalactites with a hideous crunch, cartwheeled through the air, and landed with a dull thud, kicking up a cloud of dirt.

  He didn’t move.

  The whips around the monster’s legs unfurled and the ground shuddered as the hellion heaved to its feet with a ferocious roar.

  “Stay back!” Logan told me and started shooting arrows, but before he could get a decent hit, the demon swung its tail around and smacked him into the air. He ricocheted off a side wall like a rag doll and thumped to a stop near the Aussie.

  Logan didn’t rise, either.

  Just when I thought my stomach couldn’t plunge any lower, the beast turned on the boys’ prone bodies, letting out another sonic-boomified, spittle-splattering screech. I fought the instinct to cover my ears against the ear-piercing pain, and instead waved my hands above my head, jumping up and down, shouting.

  “Hey! Over here!”

  The hellion swung its massive head. The quivering nose dropped to the ground and shoveled back and forth, advancing on me, a bloodhound on the scent.

  I spun and bolted.

  A claw slammed down in front of me. The thing was seven feet wide and dug its pointy ends into the dirt, blocking my path. I spun, changed direction.

  Another claw slammed down, blocking. I ran from side to side, forward and back, but at every escape, a giant claw dropped like a prison door. When the cat played with its food, being the mouse sucked.

  The jaw opened so far it practically unhinged. I saw fangs. Long ones. A burst of air brought steaming layers of air scented with the putrid stench of rotted meat. A skeletal arm, still dripping with shredded, decaying flesh, wedged between two of the monster’s back teeth.

  My stomach lurched.

  The mouth snapped shut, nose scooted along the ground and slimed onto my toes. The head lifted then cocked to one side as it studied me closely. Long whiskers tickled my neck. Its tongue flicked out. I cringed. Tried to squeeze through the claws. Felt heat and pressure around my body. If my explody power would just get the heck in gear it could save my sorry—

  Too late. The demon made contact.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “You can’t kill it.”

  “Oh, I can kill it.”

  I squinted at Matthias and stepped in front of the demon which had rolled onto its back, feet waving aimlessly in the air. It even wiggled back and forth, like it was giving itself a good back scratch.

  It had been doing this lap-dog routine ever since its tongue slurped up my side with a disgusting amount of vomit-o-licious saliva. I’d screamed, batted the monster away, waiting for the beast to wedge my severed arm between its serrated snappers, but instead, a cold, wet nose had butted under my armpit, flopping my arm up and down until I finally figured out it wanted me to pet the short, wiry hair on its snout.

  It had growled when I tended to Logan and Matthias who woke up quickly. Water dumped in his face helped Matthias come alive.

  Now, upside-down, the multitude of glowing eyes watched me while the…green and purple tongue — ew — unfurled onto the ground, dirt sticking to it like fly paper. A happy chittering tickled from her throat. She nuzzled my hand.

  How did I know the centimole was a female? I didn’t. But since I was already surrounded by way too much testosterone, it made me feel better.

  I nudged her off and pointed a warning finger. “Lick me again, Fido, and I won’t stop him from killing you.”

  Matthias snorted. “Like you can stop me.” Then he looked at me with disgust. “Fido?”

  I shrugged. Clueless as a puppy, the panting demon flumped back onto her belly and playfully batted at the ground before she trapped something black under some of her front legs and used her teeth to tear it apart.

  “Matthias!” Ayden’s frantic voice echoed through the cave before he rushed in. “Forget the portal! We still can’t find Aurora and Lo—” He stumbled when he saw us. “Oh, thank God.”

  “We’re fine,” I said.

  He gathered me into a rib-breaking hug and slapped Logan on the shoulder.

  “What happened? I would’ve been here sooner but Caviezel found me and had a fit about the books. I had to clean up or get detention so I called Blake and Jayden to—” His eyes focused over my shoulder. “Why is there a demon here? And why is it using Matthias’s coat as a chew
-toy?”

  “What?” The Aussie jerked toward the pile of slobbered black fabric then shoved a fist through the air. “Come on! I should get to kill it for that alone.”

  “No!”

  Matthias pointed an angry finger at me. “Yes!”

  “No.” Ayden stood next to the creature. “You can’t.”

  Matthias gave him an ugly look. “I should’ve known you’d take her side.”

  “Oh, grow up.” Ayden his ran his hand under the demon’s neck. He fished around, then pulled out a circular piece of metal, a tag of sorts hanging off a chain that none of us had noticed. Within the metal something swirled.

  Ayden gave Matthias a tired look. “You can’t kill it, because a blood contract has been activated.”

  Matthias’s head flopped back. “No. Bloody. Way.” He heaved a dramatic sigh then turned on me, furious. “I can’t believe you ran off and made a blood contract with a demon!”

  “Yes, Matthias,” I smiled sweetly. “In between Tristan’s jogging with me at four a.m. to the Ishida’s where Ayden and Jayden take over my weapons and hand-to-hand combat training right before Ayden drives me to school where I’m stuck with you all day until everyone but you heads over to Blake’s for weight training, homework, and stealth tactics with Logan after which Ayden drives me home where my clandestine-operation-running aunt locks me in the house, I ran off and made a blood contract with a demon!” I huffed a breath. “By the way, what the heck is a blood contract?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ayden led me toward the cave opening.

  I resisted his pull on my arm. “But a blood contract sounds serious. I’d really like to know what kind of danger I’m in.”

  “School’s almost out,” Ayden said. “You’ve been gone too long. Luna covered with your other classes. I’ll be so glad when Tristan’s back. But now I need to get you back so Blake can take you home, because the real danger is your parents if they find out you’ve been missing.”

  Or see that D on my last homework assignment. Hopefully, Jayden could tutor me tonight.