The three of them ran down the walkway toward the wooden portable the Arts & Humanities department used for storage. The side door was locked, but Matt and Haku rammed into it together and shoved the door in. A shrill alarm sounded inside the building, and Rick skidded to a stop at the threshold.
“Breaking and entering now, Gavin?” he panted, resting one hand in the doorframe. “Christ…”
Matt ignored him. He flicked on the fluorescent lights and made a line through the piles of broken desks toward the boxes stacked in the far corner. Everything else in the storeroom had an inch-thick layer of dust crusting on the surface except for these, and sure enough, the boxes contained all the confiscated equipment from Professor Adler’s office.
Without wasting time, Haku ripped open the first two. “This is just the psych lab stuff,” he said.
“I already found what we need.” Matt straightened after digging through a box. He tossed a thick, rusty chain at Haku and slipped a beat-up Black and Decker nail gun into the back of his jeans.
“Are you two seriously out of your minds?” Rick called from the doorway.
Any other day, Haku might’ve cracked a dry comment about their academic program starting to feel more like a cheesy Sci-fi Channel original, or he would’ve bristled at Rick’s comment. Matt always knew that between the two of them, Haku felt the worst about all the cheap shots and contempt the school officials had for their program. If they’d never met during that last year in undergrad, Haku would probably be on track for a PhD in Behavioral Psych and maybe have a spot in one of those fancy displays at the gallery. He wouldn’t be in this mess now, that’s for sure.
When Haku caught him staring, he flashed Matt an encouraging smile as he wound the chain around his hand. “If we’re wrong about these demons being prone to iron, we can always hope they get tetanus from this rusty stuff.”
With a grin, Matt leaned over and gave Haku a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the confidence,” he said, meaning it. As he stood, he clasped Haku’s hand and helped him stand also. “Now let’s save our professor from that creep and kick some demon ass.”
Chapter Twelve
“Dwight.”
Slap, slap!
“Wake up, Dwight.”
Dannings struck him again across the mouth, and Adler started to come to with a raspy groan. He blinked to try to clear his vision and realized his glasses were hanging off the side of his face. That explained the persistent fuzzy blur in his eyes, but not why his head pounded like he’d been through six Cuba Libres, minus the cola. Slowly, he tried to move and found his hands were tied behind his back around a square column.
“Finally.” Dannings leaned over him and clasped Adler’s shoulder in a gesture that was anything but friendly. “I thought perhaps that last gallas had been too rough with you. After having gone through all this trouble, what good is settling the score if you’re dead?”
Adler straightened and winced when he felt a bump on the back of his head touch the column. “Huh?” He picked up the scent of chlorine and the sound of bubbling water. His vision finally somewhat focused, Adler realized they were inside the university’s indoor pool building. The lights were off except for the underwater lamps in the pool, bathing everything in an aqua glow and casting a waxy reflection on the domed ceiling.
One minute Adler had been in his office, analyzing the ashes of that creature Matt and Haku had discovered. Then the power flickered out, and as he’d reached over to the worktable to light the Bunsen burner, something attacked him. He was still trying to sort the events out in his mind as Dannings stepped back with a smug look.
“Certainly you know what a gallas is, don’t you?” Dannings smirked. “Ancient demonic emissaries charged with capturing the wicked and dragging them to the underworld. They’re something like bounty hunters, and with the right instruments, they can be manipulated into serving a human.”
“That demon the boys killed at the station…” Adler narrowed his eyes at Dannings.
“It was such a pleasant surprise discovering a gateway to hell right where the studio was going to be filming that documentary.” Dannings clicked his tongue. “Everything was planned out carefully so you would’ve been captured and anyone who interfered would’ve been taken care of appropriately. When your two class dunces showed up without you, they threw a wrench into the works. The gallas was confused and consequently, too easy to kill. With the second demon, I made sure it was a little more prepared for business.”
Two amber eyes flicked open in the shadows on the wall behind Dannings. The blackness slunk across the tiled surface, a shaft of light from the sodium lamp outside the pillbox window illuminating a gnarled claw and pointed fangs dripping with saliva.
“Have you gotten a photographic record of this creature? It’s a remarkable find ‑‑”
Dannings’s derisive laughter cut off Adler’s choked comments. “Tell me you’re not really this stupid, Dwight. Tell me you don’t think I’ve brought you here to discuss supernatural findings.”
“I ‑‑ I ‑‑ um…”
Dannings glared at Adler. “I want you dead, Dwight. And dead you’ll be.” He stepped back, losing himself in the shadows of the darkened pool house. “Kill him, my pet. Kill him now.”
The gallas slithered down the wall, its movement serpentine and graceful in a deadly sort of way. Fangs bared and claws tapping sharply on the tiled floor, the creature approached. Adler pressed back against the column as much as he could, not that an extra millimeter of distance between himself and the demon was going to do a bit of good. Any moment now, he would feel those razor nails tearing into him, the heat of its breath just before its jaws clamped over his head…
“Wait a minute.” Adler frowned. The demon froze a yard away from him as he gave Dannings a puzzled look. “Why is it you want to kill me, anyway?”
Dannings’s jaw dropped. “Why?” he sputtered, stepping out of the shadows. “Why!”
Making his best attempt a shrug, Adler said, “Now I’m curious.”
“This place doesn’t look familiar to you?” Dannings thrashed his hands around in the air. “This is the pool, Addlebrain!”
“Name calling isn’t very nice.” Adler shook his head with a sigh. “You haven’t changed at all over the years.”
Dannings stomped over and grabbed him by the collar. “All four years of my undergraduate career at this abysmally obtuse university, you managed to make a fool of me,” he growled. “It didn’t matter that I was the one with the full scholarship, that I was captain of the debate team, or that I kissed the ass of every dean on campus until my lips turned blue. You ‑‑ the Absent-minded Professor-in-training and chairman of the how-to-grow-your-own-pot-in-the-dorms committee ‑‑ were the one with all the friends and being invited to all the parties!”
“This campus is only a few hours from Berkeley, you know.” Adler blinked.
Letting out a frustrated shriek, Dannings shook Adler against the pillar. “Then when I finally got the recognition I deserved from my peers at Homecoming, you humiliated me with that practical joke, right here in this pool house!”
“Pearce,” Adler said calmly. “This outburst seems to be a manifestation of serious self-esteem issues. I think you might be suffering from a detrimental superiority complex.”
“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?” Dannings fumed.
“No.” Adler used a soothing voice. “I’m trying to help you.”
Dannings’s eyes widened, and he started cackle. “But the irony is, you did help me. Because of you and your prank, I now have the power to do anything I want in this world. And the next.”
On the other side of the pool, the entrance doors swung open with a loud metallic bang. Two men burst into the room, their sneakers squeaking on the tiles. “Dannings,” Haku shouted, Matt skidding to a stop beside him. “Get the hell away from our professor, you son of a bitch!”
“And leave the demon so we can get a tissue sample!” Matt added. Haku punched
him on the arm.
“By all means, have at it.” Dannings straightened with a cocky smirk. When he snapped his fingers, the demon shifted its stance from Adler to the two young men and charged.
“Boys!” Adler strained against the ropes. Dannings crouched down and cupped Adler’s chin.
“You’ve got your own problems, Dwight,” he sneered. “The gallas is going to be pretty quick with them, so the agony those two morons feel as the demon tears them to shreds won’t last too long. For you, on the other hand…”
Another form came to life in the shadows behind Dannings, this one more human in shape. As it lurched forward, the light illuminated the curves of a distinctly female body dressed in the faded, tattered remains of ancient funerary robes. She stepped into full view, her skin blackened and shriveled, face gaunt and patchy where pieces of desiccated flesh had fallen away. Her eye sockets were empty cavities where more shadows gathered, her lips pulled back away from her teeth.
Dannings laughed. “She’s going to make you suffer, Dwight.”
Across the pool house, Haku and Matt were taking up a defensive stance as Rick finally caught up to them. “Why’d you guys ditch m ‑‑ holy shit! What is that thing?”
“Something you don’t want to get caught by, get out!” Haku yelled.
“We need a pic of this ‑‑”
“Matt!”
“Sorry!” Matt gestured wildly with one hand while grabbing the nail gun from his back pocket with the other. “Get behind me, Rick!”
Haku started sliding to the right. The gallas stood some distance away, as if judging which of them would be the swifter first kill. He began to swing the heavy length of iron chain overhead. “I’ll distract it, Matt. It can’t get us both at once.”
The demon’s fiery gaze flipped up to the chain as it sliced through the air. Haku swung the chain forward, slashing at the creature. It quickly dodged the first strike, scuttling sideways up a support column.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Rick sputtered from behind Matt. He raised the camera overhead in the general direction of the gallas, and snapped photo after photo without taking aim.
The flashes of light from the camera enraged the demon. While Haku swung the chain around to try for another hit, the gallas leapt off the column with a sharp tearing sound. In midair, the demon split into two smaller, but full-bodied duplicates of itself. One lunged straight for Haku and the other toward Matt.
“Shit!” Rick screamed. Matt shoved him out of the way just before the demon hit. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of his lungs as he crashed back against the wall. The gallas stayed right on top of him, grabbing at his throat and squeezing hard enough to make the world flicker in a hazy burst of white stars.
Seconds away from having his windpipe crushed, Matt raised the nail gun to the underside of the gallas’s chin. He pulled the trigger and heard a loud pop as the air pumped the nail straight up into the creature’s head. Shrieking, the creature reeled backward. A gush of inky black blood spread down its chest from the wound at his chin.
Seriously pissed off, the gallas charged again. This time Matt didn’t have to worry about Rick getting caught in the attack, and he feigned a dodge to the left. The demon fell for it, ducking to the side in anticipation of its prey trying to escape. It realized the trick almost immediately, but Matt was already in motion, aiming straight for its wide-open right side.
Matt nailed it, literally. He popped in four more of the construction-grade nails, the last one piercing the gallas right in the back of its horned skull. It crashed to the floor in a writhing heap, smoldering as the iron cooked it from the inside out.
“Can I get a hand here, Matt!” Haku cried out. He had his duplicate of the gallas pinned to the column. Somehow he’d managed to get the chain wrapped around its neck and was using the support beam for leverage as he tried to keep it in place. The iron burned every inch of the demon’s flesh it touched, but it needed to make direct contact with its bloodstream to lethally poison it. The gallas had more than enough strength to thrash around and yank on the chain in an attempt to throw Haku off balance.
Skirting around the charred remains of his demon, Matt sprinted over. He pulled back on the trigger over and over again. “Dammit,” he swore. “I think it’s jammed!”
The gallas gave a violent wrench on the chain, and Haku’s grip almost slipped. Matt dropped the nail gun and braced himself behind Haku, gathering up the slack to hold the demon in place. It thrashed around again, pulling Matt forward until he pressed right up against Haku. The front of his pants rubbed against the curve of Haku’s firm rear.
“You know, if only this wasn’t a life or death situation--” Haku smiled through his clenched jaw, struggling to keep a grip on the increasingly frenzied gallas. “‑‑ it would actually be pretty sexy.”
“I’m kind of having fun as it is.” Matt managed a grin.
“Is that’s why you’re so hard back there?” Haku grunted.
“Can’t hide it, can I? Maybe I ‑‑” The rest of Matt’s sentence got cut off as the demon gave one final tug on the chain and a link snapped open. The chain fell away, and Matt and Haku tumbled to the floor.
The gallas whipped around and dove for them. Matt and Haku rolled apart in opposite directions, dodging a vicious swipe of the creature’s claws. Still hanging onto one half of the chain, Matt swung the shortened coil around and tried to catch the demon by the neck again. He bought just enough time for Haku to grab the nail gun off the floor and ram the pointed tip of the nail that was wedged tight in the barrel into the demon’s temple.
Howling in pain, the gallas flopped to the ground in a twitching heap. It started to smolder like the other one, then stopped moving all together. Panting heavily, Matt moved beside Haku and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “We did it!”
With the demons taken care of, they turned their attention back to helping Professor Adler. They caught sight of that strange woman, her clothing and long black hair moving on a breeze that was neither felt nor heard. Energy crackled throughout the room, making the hair on the back of their arms and necks stand on end as if an electrical storm was gathering.
“This is bad.” Haku swallowed.
“What the hell is that?” Matt’s eyes widened. The woman moved forward without taking a step, her feet lost beneath the swirling hem of her robes. On the surface, her flesh bore the signs of the damaging passage of time. But her body had maintained all its shape from the swell of her bosom tapering down to a trim waistline, a rope of gold highlighting the curve of her hips. There was also an aura of power radiating from her, leaving Matt with the impression there was enough strength in her arms to break anyone in half. Definitely not the impression something like a reanimated, bony corpse or mummy would leave.
“A Fury,” Matt said quietly. “How bad is this, Haku?”
“Bad, bad.”
“No, she’s wonderful.” Maaya spoke from behind them, his deep voice soft and breathless.
Startled at the man’s sudden appearance, Matt glanced back at Maaya. But Haku didn’t look away from the woman. “That’s Divya,” he whispered.
“Found at last,” Maaya sighed, his tone loving.
Across the way, Dannings realized the gallas had failed its purpose. “Sons of bitches,” he cursed at Matt and Haku, and maybe Maaya, too. Matt couldn’t tell if Dannings could see the man or not; he certainly showed no reaction to Maaya’s presence.
Reaching into his coat pocket, Dannings pulled out a leather satchel and emptied the contents. Pieces of parchment fluttered to the floor and a stone vial plunked down on the tiles. From his other pocket, he pulled out a golden sphere that looked slightly smaller than a golf ball.
“This lucky streak you pinheads have had is over,” Danning snarled at them. “Let’s see how well you two do against a hell full of demons.” He jabbed a finger at the ancient sheets of parchment and barked at the woman. “You heard me. I’ve got the Key and you’re going to unlock that
gate to hell. Right fucking now!”
“Divya.” Maaya followed her name with a soft string of words in Hindi. The Fury turned her head toward the sound of his voice, her gaze sightless but nonetheless a stare. Maaya smiled. “This has turned out so unexpectedly well. This is the most she’s moved or responded in millennia. She’s finally ready.”
“For what?” Matt gaped.
“To be reborn.” Maaya seized Haku and Matt by their collars, his grip infinitely more powerful than the gallas’s. He lifted them six inches off the floor and stepped forward.
“What the hell?” Haku strained against his grip. “Let us go!”
“She’ll need to retain some of her humanity when she transforms. Any human’s blood will do the trick, but ideally it should be full of purity, righteousness, and all that good shit,” Maaya explained. “At first I thought Matthew would be enough and hoped to keep you around, Haku. But just to be on the safe side, she might as well take you both.”
“What!” Haku and Matt yelled in unison.
Divya remained frozen, her attention on Maaya. Beside her, Dannings flew into a rage. “Don’t just stand there, you bitch! You have an order, do you hear me?” He waved the golden sphere around in his fist.
Her arm darted out so fast it took even Maaya by surprise. She snagged Dannings by the wrist, pulled him to her, and touched the side of his face. He started to tremble, his body quaking in her grasp. A glow radiated from her hands that quickly spread up her bare arms and throughout her body. Her form disappeared in the glare of the light, but Dannings dried and shriveled in her grip. The pieces crumbled apart, turning into ash the moment they touched the air.
The light surrounding Divya faded, but did not disappear completely. The glow lingered on her new, unblemished skin and in the threads of gold and silver now woven into her pristine silk robes. She turned her hands over, inspecting her fingers before moving her gaze down across her body. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in a cascade of ebony waves that nearly touched the ankles above her bare feet. Tilting her chin back up, she fixed her gaze on Maaya, one almond shaped eye a vibrant gold, the other honey brown.
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