Demoneater

by Royce Buckingham

  The Demoneater tore into the leafy treat, but it slowed him enough that Nat was able to reach the third floor and duck into a bedroom, where he found his apprentice huddled in one corner with a pack of quivering refugee demons.

  “We’ve only got a few moments before it chews through the plant,” Nat said.

  “These are the last of them from the lower floors,” Richie said, “the ones that can’t make the jump out a window.”

  “Where are the rest?” Nat said.

  “I pushed as many as I could through the first-floor windows.” Richie dropped his head. “But lots of them were eaten before I could get to them.”

  “What about the Beast?” Nat asked.

  “I’m not letting that thing out,” Richie spat.

  “I understand,” Nat said, and indeed he did. The Beast had eaten several of Richie’s friends and had tried to eat both Richie and Nat. The young skateboarder owed it no favors when he could spend his time saving other, less dangerous demons.

  “Have you been to the attic?” Nat said.

  “Heck no,” Richie replied.

  “I’ll go.”

  “Nat, there’s, like, centuries worth of old chaos up there.”

  “Then that’s where it will go next.” Nat turned and started off.

  “The Demoneater,” Richie said, stopping Nat, “it’s part human. That’s how it was able to follow Lilli.”

  “Yes,” Nat agreed. “Why? Do you think we could turn it back?”

  A roar from just beyond the overgrown plant reminded them that the monster was still coming.

  “Nah,” Richie said. “Just kill it.” He handed the snake staff to Nat..

  “Just get these down and get to safety,” Nat said.

  Richie gathered a collection of huddled glass stemware that clinked nervously, a book with a torn cover that couldn’t fly, the old broken broom with tape around its center, and a chipped pair of glass Christmas ornaments that couldn’t stop humming “Silent Night.”

  “Where should I take them once they’re all outside?”

  “You won’t be taking them anywhere,” Nat said grimly. “We’re letting them go.”

  “What?”

  “Most have probably already gone,” Nat said.

  “But we’re Keepers,” Richie replied, “not . . . releasers.”

  “Lilli’s demons died in their cage. I won’t have that happen to the ones I’m responsible for.”

  “But we’re throwing generations of work out the window,” Richie said.

  “It’s better that they’re loose than dead.”

  As if to emphasize Nat’s point, a ripping sound echoed up the hall.

  “It’s breaking through,” Nat said. “Can you climb down with these?”

  “No way. We’re twenty feet up.”

  “Here. Keep the staff. It can hold you.”

  The staff frowned at Nat and hissed, looking distressed as he handed it back to Richie.

  “But don’t you need it?” Richie said.

  “Get moving,” Nat replied. Richie just stood there. “Now!” Nat demanded.

  Richie jumped and began to struggle through the window with demons clinging to him. The snake staff wrapped itself around his wrist and secured its tail to the window ledge.

  Boom!

  “Go, go, go!” Nat yelled. Then he wheeled and ran down the hall.

  Richie climbed through the window and looked down—he was far up enough to break his neck if he fell. He took a deep breath and began to lower himself with the demons, hanging on to the snake staff.

  Suddenly, he was jerked upward. Richie threw his head back and saw the Demoneater’s toothy mouth in the window, slurping up the snake staff like it was a strand of spaghetti.

  “No!” he shrieked. He cocked his arm to throw a Christmas ornament at the creature, until it shrieked too. He was too high to jump. The Demoneater pulled him up slowly.

  Just then, a metal object thumped against the house. He looked down. Sandy stood on the ground with Nik, and they held the unpredictable demon ladder between them. Richie felt a simultaneous sense of vertigo and déjà vu.

  “Here!” Richie yelled, planting one foot on the ladder. Instead of saving himself, he began to dump the demons down to Sandy, who scrambled to catch the fragile ones, leaving Nik to hold the swaying ladder. Outside the house, the demons did not reveal themselves to Sandy, so the ornaments she caught looked like ordinary ones, and the demonic glassware she kept from shattering on the walk looked like a bunch of plain old crystal glasses. She knew better and saved them anyway.

  “Get down!” Sandy demanded after Richie had emptied his hands.

  “I won’t let it eat Dhaliwahl’s staff!” Richie shouted. A deceptively powerful demon, the snake staff had been left in Nat’s care by Dhaliwahl. It had also saved Richie’s mentor from the Beast in the basement.

  “You can’t save them all!” Sandy insisted.

  “No,” Richie said, “but I’m gonna save this one.”

  Pernicious came shooting up the ladder to help as Richie was dragged upward. The little demon leaped at the Demoneater, using all his powers of confusion and trickery to dodge, poke, and harass the huge creature from outside. Stuck inside and too big to fit through the window, the Demoneater grabbed for the shifty little pest, ramming its head against the window frame, causing the house to shudder and the ladder to cringe away just as Richie had set his feet on it to steady himself.

  “Whoaaa!”

  Nik fought to hold the frightened, bucking ladder in place as the Demoneater forced a tentacle through the window and pinned Pernicious against the exterior wall of the house. Richie clung to the windowsill, one foot on an unstable rung.

  The snake staff had almost disappeared down the Demoneater’s throat when an unearthly wail erupted from the window. Richie would have covered his ears if he hadn’t been hanging on for his life. The Demoneater suddenly regurgitated the snake staff, along with a surprised-looking paperback book, which flapped its cover and fluttered off.

  Pernicious, the serpentine staff, and Richie tumbled from the house. The staff still held Richie by the wrist. Pernicious popped into a two-dimensional parachute shape and caught the serpent by the tail, slowing their fall.

  “Loooook ouuuuuut!” Richie yelled.

  Together, they spiraled downward as Sandy dove for cover. Pernicious did not make a large enough parachute to give the young apprentice a soft landing, and Richie landed hard—right in the vengeful and thorny blackberry thicket, which pounced.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE SWORD OF CHAOS

  Nat stood behind the Demoneater with a sword. He withdrew it from the creature’s tubular abdomen, and thick, green blood oozed out through its cracked exoskeleton. The Demoneater writhed against the window, bloated, hurt, and furious.

  “I don’t know who you were,” Nat said, “but I believe you were once like me and Richie, maybe desperate, maybe hungry.”

  The Demoneater had grown huge. It didn’t look hungry—it looked gluttonous. It didn’t need to eat them anymore, Nat realized; it enjoyed eating them. It had learned to feed on the very beings Nat and his lineage protected.

  The Demoneater tried to turn around and roared. Even the blood liberated from its body was terrified. It fled, slithering off as the creature wrenched itself about, bashing out walls.

  “You’re not a demon,” Nat said. “And I’m not obliged to let you live unless you turn back into a human, which I suggest you do immediately.” Nat raised the sword again.

  The sword began to dance in Nat’s hand, overeager. It jabbed and slashed spastically, dragging Nat by the arm behind it. The Demoneater managed to turn and face Nat, only to find itself confronted with the whirling blade. The creature dodged and ducked as the sword lunged about wildly as Nat flopped after it.

  “I can’t hold it much longer,” Nat groaned as he struggled to keep the sword under control. “Fight the hunger. Go back to being an annoying investigator.”

  Th
e creature rammed through a wall, bursting into the next room in an explosion of plaster dust and splintered wooden studs. Nat let go of the sword, and it flew toward the fleeing thing, just missing its tail.

  Crash!

  The blade smashed through the window and tumbled outside. Nat winced and then turned and ran for the attic.

  The blackberry vines swarmed over Richie. They tightened around him, digging in with their thorns.

  “Help!” he cried. He couldn’t get up, so he tried to reason with them. “I promise I’ll never trim you again.” In answer, one of the spiny vines wrapped around his neck, drawing blood and choking off his air supply.

  Suddenly, Nat’s flailing sword dropped into the thicket. It immediately began whacking at random, left and right. It cleared a careless swath through the blackberry shoots, and Richie was equally in danger of being stabbed.

  “Sandy . . . ,” Richie rasped, digging his fingers under the vine around his neck. “Grab the sword!”

  Sandy waded through the curling, angry blackberry branches to help him, but they didn’t attack her. In fact, she couldn’t see them move. She only saw Richie entangled and wondered how he’d gotten that way. She eyed the blade doubtfully. It looked more dangerous than the thorns. She wondered briefly if the library would employ a one-armed librarian.

  “But I’m not a Keeper!” she said.

  “You’ve got hands, don’t you?” Richie said. He yanked his neck sideways as the sword buried itself in the ground right where his head had just been. His neck dripped blood from a dozen gashes, and he wondered if they were about to slice open his carotid artery.

  Sandy nodded. She did have hands, at least for now.

  “Then friggin’ grab it!” Richie wheezed. “I’m dyin’ here!”

  Sandy made a grab for the sword and felt its hilt against her palm. The weapon calmed instantly in her hand. Sandy rose, standing over the blackberries and holding the medieval weapon high like a warrior princess with glasses.

  “Hiiiiii-yah!” she shouted, and she whirled, severing vines. With each swing she trimmed off a thick shoot, and soon the bush was cleared away.

  “Give me your hand, Richie!”

  He did, and she yanked. Richie screamed in pain as he was pulled from the clinging thorns.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” Sandy yelped. “You okay?”

  Richie looked up, bleeding. “‘Hi-yah’?” he smirked.

  “What was I supposed to say?”

  “I dunno. En garde? Touché? Taste my steel, freakish demon foliage? Anything but ‘hi-yah.’”

  Sandy helped him to his feet. “I’ve read about this weapon,” she said. “It’s an incarnation of the chaos of war from the Middle Ages, where there was often no order and no logic to who was struck or who died. In the heat of battle, this weapon flails at random.”

  “It seems calm with you.”

  “I don’t get heated.”

  Nik and Pernicious joined them, and Richie watched, suddenly curious, as they both changed color from polka-dot yellow back to blue and green, respectively. A subway whistle sounded from the porch, and they all turned.

  Zoot stood on the top step, his trident pointed at the recolored demons and his lips contorted to make the most sound he could muster. When his whistle ended, he looked exhausted and forlorn. With a sad, urgent wave, he motioned them inside.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE ATTIC

  Nat burst into the attic and slammed the metal door behind him. “The storage room,” he said.

  Storage areas in homes accumulated junk over the years, but in Nat’s case the years were centuries and the junk was demonic. The attic was jammed full of chaotic beings. There were thousands of them, gathered over generations—bizarre objects, breezes, noises, smells, apparitions, physical manifestations, animated foliage, and boxes piled high and brimming with assorted chaos incarnate. Nat threw off the heavy bar on the door and eased into the room—it was best not to startle them.

  Some cowered. Some whirled to face Nat. Others gibbered nonsense. But they all recognized him as a Keeper and gave him space. A number of them were dying demons, the old ones whose chaos was running low. They didn’t have the energy to agitate him. Nor would they have the energy to elude the Demoneater, Nat thought.

  Random items were piled so high that Nat had to walk down aisles between rows of artifacts, some in motion, some deathly still. Nat bumped a box and spilled hundreds of skittering, slimy little beasties across the floor. They gathered, melding into a single creature, which drew on their collective disorder to leap into the rafters with a burst of energy, where it blended with the wood and shadows and immediately went back to sleep.

  Nat hurried past the others, making his way to a ten-foot- wide picture window at the front of the house, where he paused and stared out at Seattle. He’d already made his decision, and he spoke to the vast inventory of creatures behind him with an odd mixture of regret and hope.

  “It’s a big, bad world out there, you guys, and there’ll be no one to keep you safe. I won’t lie; some of you will be killed. But I can’t protect you here anymore.” He nodded, as though still convincing himself that he was doing the right thing. “All I ask is that you go easy on mankind. They mean well. They don’t understand you, but there can be a place for you alongside them.”

  Nat lifted a hat rack, which, in turn, tried to lean over and take his coat from him. He turned the rack onto its side and then swung it in a great arc and smashed the picture window into a million shards of glass.

  Craaaash!

  “Forgive me, Seattle,” he whispered.

  The demons in the attic perked up. They stared at the sudden opening. Then a few began to inch toward Nat to investigate. The first to reach the window was an old camera tripod that shook whenever someone tried to take a picture. It wobbled past Nat and set one long leg experimentally on the windowsill. When Nat didn’t stop it, the tripod climbed out, and then it was gone.

  “Go ahead.” Nat nodded to the others.

  They began to evacuate, believing that they were merely escaping Nat, not yet understanding that they were fleeing a carnivore on its way upstairs to eat them.

  Phantom noises and smells began to trickle out next. Whispers in the dark drifted past Nat’s ears—maddeningly faint words, like an important message played over and over that one could never quite catch. Intriguing cinnamon scents that tempted Nat to open his nostrils flew by, followed by the surprising acidic smell of dog feces.

  The fliers drifted out and caught the breeze. Creepers skittered past onto the roof and down the side of the house. The trickle became a flow and then a flood, and demons streamed through the window as though they were being sucked from a rocket ship into the empty vacuum of space. Impending freedom revived the chaos in many of them. Some grew rapidly as they left the confines of the attic, as Charr, Wedge, and Flappy had done when they left the house. Nat knew they would clash with humanity, yet they deserved to live, and coping with chaos was part of what it meant to be human. It was a lesser evil than letting them die, and Nat stood aside as, before long, a mass exodus rumbled through the window like a stampeding herd.

  After the most eager of self-motivated among them had evacuated, Nat began dumping box after box of stored and immobile demons through the opening, pausing only to dodge larger, late-breaking creatures as they roared past. He still had to make choices. A camera that purposefully snapped when someone had their eyes closed wasn’t a priority—the world was full of those—but he made sure that the medieval helmet that made squeaky farting noises when a person wore it made it out. He wondered how many knights it had humiliated in its time.

  Soon those that could flee had done so, and Nat had dumped, thrown, or poured out most of those that couldn’t after them. He sighed as he watched the work of his predecessors vanish into the rainy Seattle night, and he wondered if those that came before him would have done the same thing were they still alive.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Nat shook f
rom his stare and turned to the see the wood framing around the metal door splinter. There was a moment of silence, and then the door exploded inward. Nat dove aside as it flew across the room and slammed into the wall where he had just been standing. The Demoneater’s round head squeezed through the raw hole in the wall, its bulbous eyes searching and rows of teeth gnashing.

  Nat rolled to his feet as the monster pushed its upper torso through the gap. The Demoneater had grown even larger, having gorged on demons from the lower floors. Its arms rotated in and out of their wet sockets—claws, paws, pincers, whatever it could summon to rip apart the framing and walls. Teeth and tusks rotated in and out of its mouth, taking turns tearing at the plaster.

  Nat moved aside for a shuffling pair of shoes that took their owners to places they didn’t mean to go—they’d once made him wander absently to the graveyard where his parents’ memorial stood. Afterward, he was glad he’d gone, but he’d never put the shoes on again. The shoes leaped out the window. Then Nat turned to face the the Demoneater creature, which had finally pushed its entire undulating bulk through the door.

  The Demoneater stopped thrashing and took a long look at the remaining stash of demons in the attic. He shivered with anticipation. There were still many.

  When he’d first begun to eat them while stranded on the open sea centuries earlier, it was just for survival, but he existed on them now, hunting them, and they had changed him. He took forms that helped him harvest them—the most efficient was a monstrous version of the most highly organized of organic creatures—the insects, the natural biological enemies of chaos. Appearing to be human was now but a convenient disguise.

  He looked across the room. There was nothing between him and the young Keeper—nothing to stop him. The boy would have to go, he decided. Unlike the crunchy girl, the boy was a warrior. He fought for the demons like a shepherd battling for his flock. Even now he was helping them escape. The boy Keeper existed to foil his growing appetite, so the answer was simple: the boy would not be allowed to exist any longer. With that thought and the promise of another orgy of chaos to devour, Calamitous willingly surrendered the last of his human self to the creature he had become and coiled his writhing body beneath him to strike.