Demoneater

by Royce Buckingham

  As Nat and Richie talked, a wide shadow the length of a limousine appeared in the water, tracking parallel to the Wanderer. Nikolai saw its thin wake and grabbed Pernicious by the scruff of the neck in his not-too-gentle fashion, yanking his demonic companion off the rail just as the shadow erupted from the tossing waves of the sound, breaching and leaping over the rail where Pernicious had been standing only a split second before.

  The thing’s body was segmented, like a centipede’s. Foreflippers propelled it into the air and then retracted suddenly into slimy holes in the creature’s torso. Grasping tentacles slid out in their place, groping for the little demons.

  Wham!

  It slammed into the boat, bending the metal rail as its round, mewling head and forelimbs landed on the deck.

  Nik catapulted himself, with Pernicious in his arms, from the deck up to the flying bridge in a single mighty leap, barely avoiding the grasping appendages. As the boat churned forward, the drag of the water on the huge creature’s abdomen pulled it, squirming, back into the water. The monstrous thing slid beneath the churning surface with astonishingly little noise, disappearing and leaving only the bent rail and two frantic demons as signs of its passing.

  “Naaaaaaat!” Richie wailed. “What was thaaaaaaat?”

  Nat stared down from above, his two minions clinging to his raincoat, terrified. He hadn’t seen it clearly.

  “And don’t tell me you don’t know!” Richie yelled.

  Nat steered into the storm, head jerking around, wary. “That wasn’t an Orca whale,” he said, “and definitely not Flappy.” But he couldn’t tell Richie he knew what it was because he didn’t know. He’d been seeing things for many years that he did not understand, and making sense of the chaos he saw wasn’t always easy, especially based only on a glimpse.

  Wham!

  The boat shuddered.

  “It’s ramming us!” Richie yelped. “We’re sinking!”

  “We’re not sinking!” Nat yelled back. “But put the wooden armor on. It floats.”

  Richie quickly donned the wooden armor. The finely carved suit was cut in the fashion of medieval plate mail. It was large and hung on him like a dress, but it was also surprisingly lightweight and comfortable. It was ancient, but its teak wood had not rotted, even in the wet Seattle weather.

  “Come steer!” Nat said.

  Richie bounded up to the bridge in his new armor, and Nat handed over the wheel.

  “Head straight into the storm,” he reminded his apprentice. Then he grabbed a spotting scope and scanned the water for the creature.

  “Where are you?” Nat said to himself. “What are you?”

  “Maybe it’s gone,” Richie said hopefully.

  A horrible scraping sound rose from the bowels of the boat. “I don’t think so,” Nat said.

  He climbed down and leaned over the side of the pitching craft, wondering momentarily if the thing might leap from the water again and pluck him from the boat like a trout jumping for a fly. He looked down and, to his horror, discovered the source of the scraping sound: giant crab claws grasped each side of the boat, tearing into the hull. The thing was hitching a ride underneath.

  “It’s huge,” Nat said under his breath. He had to get it off. Water was already seeping in through a hole in the side of the wooden craft that one of the claws had punched open.

  Nat glanced about and then hurried to the huge anchor in the bow. He quickly tied it to a net and flipped the lever on one of the mechanical devices on the deck. The lever activated a machine that clicked through several gears and then launched the net over the bow. Nat motioned for Nik to heave the anchor into the bay.

  The net disappeared over the front, and the boat ran directly over it so that it dragged along the bottom of the craft. The mesh tangled around the clinging creature, and when the anchor caught moments later, it ripped the thing from the hull.

  Cruuuuunch!

  The boat bucked as the claws peeled a wooden plank from its side just above the waterline. Nat grabbed the rail. Nik flew past, tumbling through the rain and wind. Nat grabbed Pernicious by the tail as the little demon grabbed Nik by a furry leg. Both minions dangled over the water.

  Suddenly, they broke through the storm, and the boat settled into calm waters. Pernicious pulled Nik in, and Nat helped them both scramble aboard.

  Richie eased off the gas. “Now what?”

  “We’re here,” Nat said.

  “We’re where?”

  “The eye of the storm.”

  CHAPTER 22

  THE EYE OF THE STORM

  The storm still raged around them, but its fury was fifty yards away in all directions. The boys turned, looking around in disbelief. With the waves and wind still visible in the distance, the calm was surreal. The Wanderer floated in a protected invisible bubble as though the laws of physics and nature had taken a time-out so that they could do their demonic business.

  “What are we looking for?” Richie asked.

  Nat felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, a prickling like the feeling of a spider crawling on his bare skin. He looked straight up.

  “That,” Nat said.

  Far above them, a dark shape whirled at the center of the raging winds. Nat’s determined look turned to uncertainty and then fear. A distant memory rose inside him, like the oncoming urge to vomit—the same feeling he’d had in Lilli’s trailer when the visual manifestations had played out his deepest emotions. The swirling winds nearby sounded familiar—too familiar. The cresting waves that circled him at a distance reminded him of a night long ago, the nightmare from his childhood.

  “I know that monster,” he said unsteadily.

  Richie thought Nat was speaking to him. “Yeah, it’s Flappy, right?” he said.

  “No, it can’t be,” Nat said, more to himself than to Richie. “It’s something else.” Suddenly, he shook his fist. “I know you, demon! I know this wind!”

  Nat leaped to bow of the boat. “I defy you, murderer! You should have killed me years ago when you took my parents. But now I’m back!”

  “Nat, calm down,” Richie said, nervous.

  But Nat was too worked up. “Come down here and fight!”

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the thing above them turned and plummeted waterward. It had great wings that beat at the air, sending sudden gales in all directions. Its vast size grew more apparent as it approached. It was as large as a city bus, even discounting the wings, which were a bit small for its body. It was even bigger than the Troll, and they were bobbing in the water right where it was going to hit.

  “No!” Richie pleaded. “Go back up there, and don’t fight!”

  Nat tore across the foredeck and swung the harpoon cannon, bringing it to bear by tilting it almost vertical on its swivel. “Come and get it!” he yelled. He aimed the harpoon as the massive monstrosity drew within range.

  Richie could begin to make out its shape. It was a huge reptilian thing, and it flew spastically on its undersized wings.

  “Nat!” he cried. “It is Flappy!”

  Nat froze, stunned. He saw it too now, and he recognized his demon. Indeed, Nat’s first minion—which he had known for years only as his small, spastic companion—had grown huge and violently chaotic in the wild, like Charr, like Wedge, like it had that night long ago, when he and his parents had been tossed into the water.

  Nat’s thoughts tumbled back to the day his mentor, Mr. Dhaliwahl, had opened the puzzle box for the first time. Nat had lived at the house as Dhaliwahl’s apprentice for less than a month, and his role in keeping the demons was still unclear. “Put out your hand, young Nathaniel,” Dhaliwahl said in his thick East Indian accent as he twisted the lid with his wrinkled old fingers. “Here is a thing I want you to see. And to hold.”

  Nat reached, and a tiny creature crawled out onto his hand. A little dragon, from the look of it. It sneezed and blew Nat’s bangs sideways.

  “Does it breathe fire?” Nat asked.

  Dhaliwahl
harrumphed. “Do not be absurd. This is no fantasy of a child. It is a wind demon.” Dhaliwahl took a deep breath. “I want to show you how gentle it can be, teach you that these wild creatures do not mean harm.”

  “Harm?” Nat scoffed. “How could it? It’s downright cute. Can I keep it?”

  “Keep it?” Dhaliwahl hesitated. “I do not think that is a wise . . . ”

  “I’m going to be a Keeper, right?”

  Dhaliwahl looked pained, though Nat didn’t understand why at the time. The little demon rolled over and blew a blast of air up Nat’s nose.

  “Look. It likes me,” Nat laughed. He had not laughed much since his parents had disappeared in the violent storm that left him an orphan, but the discombobulated little monster looked so helpless and goofy that he couldn’t help but chuckle. The wind demon hopped up and fluttered through Nat’s hair, mussing it, tangling it, and then the demon crashed to the floor in a heap.

  “He’s a confused little guy,” Nat said. “I’ll call him Flappy.”

  Flappy was already distracted, whirling with the living dust bunnies in a corner, chasing them in vain as his own winds blew them out of reach.

  “Very well,” Dhaliwahl said at length. “The two of you are an unlikely pair, but perhaps it is good for you to come to understand one another.”

  The truth hit Nat like a thirty-pound bag of wet sand thrown by a three-hundred-pound ogre: his own little minion was the storm that had killed his parents.

  Flappy dove toward the boat, bringing gale-force winds, chaos, and death. “It was you!” Nat screamed.

  Nat ratcheted back the harpoon gun’s firing lever. “Ahhhhhhh!” he cried.

  Flappy charged, drunk with his newfound power, not recognizing his own Keeper. In truth, neither recognized the other now—anger, chaos, vengeance, and the intoxicating whirl of unrestrained freedom all conspired to hide their gentle selves, and the two faced each other as wild adversaries. Nat snarled and aimed his weapon. The wind demon swept in low over the water, sending out rooster-tail waves in its wake.

  Suddenly, the huge worm-creature from the deep surfaced, sending a huge wave over the stern of the boat. Pernicious stood on the rear bulkhead, and the wall of water washed the little demon overboard.

  Nat was too focused on the target of his anger to tear his eyes away from Flappy. Nik threw a life preserver, but the wide mouth of the sea creature snapped it up before it reached Pernicious and spit it out, shredded.

  Richie whirled to find a weapon and grabbed the vessel’s flare gun.

  “Nat!” he yelled. “The thing is back!” Richie leveled the flare gun at the squirming creature as it churned toward Pernicious.

  Wooomph!

  The flare sailed through the air but fell short of the creature, sizzling harmlessly into the waves. Pernicious flailed at the water. Unlike the limb-changing beast bearing down upon him, Pernicious was not a natural swimmer. Richie didn’t have time to load another flare, and Nat was preoccupied. The little demon was doomed.

  But the creature charged past Pernicious, unwilling to veer even a few feet to devour the small demon. Instead, it plowed through the water to intercept larger prey—Flappy.

  Richie saw what the thing was after and screamed to his mentor, “Nat! I know what it is! It’s the Demoneater!”

  The revelation shook Nat from his gaze. He glanced away from Flappy as the huge Demoneater porpoised through the waves between them.

  Flappy did not slow, and the Demoneater met the wind demon head-on.

  Ka-whoooosh!

  The furious collision of giants sent water spouting in all directions, drenching the Wanderer so that Nat and Richie momentarily lost sight of the confrontation.

  When Nat blinked and wiped stinging saltwater from his eyes, he saw the Demoneater coiled around one of Flappy’s wings like a python trying to bring down an eagle. The wind demon spun in circles around the Demoneater, whipping up a whirlpool that threatened to swallow them both.

  Nat aimed the harpoon cannon. “Monster!” he cried.

  “Don’t shoot Flappy!” Richie pleaded. “He didn’t mean to sink your folks. He was just a wild animal out of control, like he is now.”

  Nat didn’t seem to hear him and aimed carefully. The Demoneater’s mouth expanded, stretching to swallow more and more of Flappy as the two titans began to sink together into the swirling water.

  Flappy was being eaten, but the wind demon was also in the crosshairs of his harpoon cannon’s sight. He could kill Flappy himself. He only had to fire, or he could let the Demoneater finish the job. Either way, his parents’ death would be avenged by the destruction of the demon that killed them.

  “You taught me not to kill.” Richie was suddenly by his mentor’s side. “Even the dangerous ones. They know not what they do, right?”

  Nat nodded, but he pulled the trigger anyway.

  Kaboom!

  The harpoon flew.

  “Noooo!” Richie held his ears as smoke rolled from the cannon.

  But the harpoon didn’t hit Flappy. Instead, it tore into the Demoneater, jutting suddenly from its torso as though it had appeared there by magic. The thing roared, releasing its grip on Flappy, and fell back into the waves, where it curled and writhed as Nat threw on the electric winch, hauling it in. Nat left the winch running and leaped to the flying bridge, where he jammed the throttle down, cranking up the engine.

  The Demoneater fought for traction in the water, but the boat was tethered to its hard shell by the barbed harpoon. The Wanderer bore down upon it like a relentless steamroller.

  Griiiiind!

  The propeller thumpa-thumped over the creature, chewing at its exoskeleton and slicing the harpoon’s rope neatly in two, cutting the thing adrift.

  Flappy regrouped and lifted off again, rising into the air, the storm rising again with him.

  Richie saw Flappy escaping into the sky and grabbed the puzzle box. The boat was too far away for him to touch the massive demon with the box, or even throw it. Richie twisted the lid open. He could feel its pull, the ancient artifact drawing chaos, eager to capture and contain it. It was one of the most powerful demonkeeping tools known, and Richie dropped it into the flare gun on top of a fresh charge and fired it into the air.

  Wuuumph!

  The flare shell catapulted the box skyward, straight into Flappy’s gaping mouth. The huge demon swallowed it and then jerked to a halt. The wind gusted suddenly. It blew Richie, Nat, and Nik across the deck in all directions.

  Flappy began to fold inward. Nat stared up at the demon, unsure of what was happening. He hadn’t seen Richie launch the box, and he would have screamed in dismay if he had, for a miss would have lost the priceless device in the waters of Puget Sound. Richie stared too, but he knew exactly what was going on—the box was sucking up the wind demon from the inside. Flappy struggled and then imploded, shrinking into the box, which swallowed the demon’s wispy form like a vacuum pulling in a cloud of escaped dust.

  And suddenly the entire bay went eerily calm.

  The box fell from the sky and hit the deck of the Wanderer, skidding to the edge.

  “Nat, grab it!” Richie yelled, but his mentor was slumped against the wheel, physically and emotionally drained.

  The box hit a cleat, flipped into the air, and skidded over the transom. Richie scrambled and dove after it, but it tumbled past his outstretched hand, fell into the water with an ominous plip, and disappeared from sight.

  Richie lay on the deck. “Uh, Nat . . . ,” he said. But before he could turn around and face his mentor, Pernicious bobbed up in the water, gingerly holding the puzzle box.

  “Demon overboard!” Richie yelped.

  Nat still didn’t move but just gazed out over the water.

  “Get him out of there, Nik!” Richie ordered.

  Nik swung a fishing net on a long pole, scooping Pernicious out of the water. Richie helped the little troublemaker aboard, secured the box, and then went to Nat.

  “It’s gone,” Richie
said to him, helping him up.

  Indeed, the Demoneater had floated away, jerking and spasming, its interchangable limbs schlurping in and out of its slimy arm sockets at random as it writhed into darker waters.

  “I know,” Nat mumbled. “I saved my demon.”

  “You did the right thing,” Richie said, looking at the older teen with earnest admiration.

  “Did I?” Nat wondered aloud.

  “Yeah, but we should get back home,” Richie suggested. “It’s freezing, we’re soaked, and Sandy will be worried.”

  Nat nodded absently, staring out over Puget Sound, but he didn’t move from the wheel. In fact, his fingers still gripped it, white-knuckled.

  “I’ll drive,” Richie said.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE HOUSE

  Sandy had been waiting in the locked house for hours. She was going to be in more trouble with her parents than she had ever been, she thought. She was also bored, which was almost worse, so when she heard a noise outside, she couldn’t resist peeking out the rain-streaked window. The view was blurred. She harrumphed and went to the front door, cracking it open. The rain and wind had stopped an hour earlier, but it was still dark and hard to see.

  Sandy stepped onto the porch and slunk down the steps, peering through the darkness. She looked out into the street and gasped. A great shadow loomed beside the curb near Nat’s front path, and something moved nearby.

  Light footsteps echoed toward her. She took another step and then another, curious and frightened at the same time. Soon she was leaning over Nat’s fence. She could just make out the outline of a huge creature. It was eight feet tall and twenty feet long. It had a rectangular body, rounded at the corners, and the head was a huge curved lump at the front of the thing, which stuck out like a turtle’s skull.

  “What do you want?” said a vague figure in the darkness.

  Sandy jumped and just managed to stifle a scream as the figure stepped forward. It was Lilli.