by Kevin Hearne
Run around to the back, Oberon, I said. My friend was already ahead of me. There’s no way you can fight this thing.
I was coming up hard on my lawn, with the demon close behind; I could hear the whistling of its spiracles in addition to the skittering of its six legs. Once I hit the earth, I could draw power and slap the thing with Cold Fire, but there were drawbacks to that plan: One, Cold Fire took some time to work, and, two, using it weakened me so much that I’d be completely vulnerable after casting it.
With no sword to penetrate its chitin and no safety cushion for Cold Fire, I’d have to depend on my magical wards to take care of the demon before it took care of me. That, too, would take some time, but perhaps I could dodge behind my mesquite tree and stay out of the range of its serrated front legs long enough for my Druidic juju to do its work.
The earth is all too willing to help out with getting rid of demons: They don’t belong on the earth, are in fact anathema to it, and thus it takes very little coaxing to set up a demonic ward around one’s house. Teach the earth to detect a demon’s presence upon it and encourage it to tidy up the soiled area, and you’re done—sort of.
The problem is that the earth isn’t renowned for its reaction times. Every ten years I like to meditate for a week and commune with its spirit, which people like to call Gaia nowadays, and she chats fondly about the Cretaceous period as if it were something that happened just last month. A security-conscious Druid cannot afford to take the long view on intruders, however, so I set up my mesquite tree as a first line of defense and as an alarm bell for the elemental of the Sonoran Desert. The elemental would get the earth’s attention much quicker than I could—and perhaps make an appearance as Gaia’s champion. The truth was I didn’t exactly know what would happen when a demon awoke the earth’s wrath; I was simply betting the earth would win.
When my foot touched the grass of my front yard, I practically cried out in relief, drawing power immediately to replenish my spent muscles and hyperoxygenate my blood. It gave me a burst of speed and allowed me to narrowly miss a plunging stab from the demon. Its clawed foreleg whistled past my calf and sank convincingly into the sod, and it reminded me of a trick I had used on some Fir Bolgs when they’d attacked me at home.
“Coinnigh!” I yelled, pointing a finger back at the insect’s claw as I ran, commanding the earth to close tightly around it and prevent it from escaping. It slowed the demon down but failed to immobilize it; the chitin was too slick for the earth to grab on to, and, after a couple of mighty yanks, the horror was able to free itself. Still, it accomplished two things: It gave me time enough to duck behind the mesquite tree, and it definitely tripped my wards.
Thorny vines of bougainvillea shot out from my porch posts, attempting to snare the demon, which I now noticed was not grasshopperish at all, but rather a monstrous black wheel bug, complete with a ridged, coglike wheel of dorsal armor and a menacing beak it used to plunge into its victims and drain all their juices. The vines weren’t strong enough for that much hell; they shriveled almost upon contact. The lawn began to ripple and quake underneath the creature, and the roots of my mesquite tree shot up from underneath it and wrapped themselves around the beast’s back four legs. That definitely got its attention. It keened its frustration at the upper range of human hearing as it thrashed about, but like the vines, my poor tree’s roots could not stand the demon’s touch for long. They were strong enough to hold it for perhaps ten seconds only, and had I known they would do such yeoman service, I would have used Cold Fire and ended it.
“O’Sullivan! What the fuck is that thing?”
Gods Below, Mr. Semerdjian was still outside! And with the fog dispersed and the streetlights doing their job, he had a clear view of something mortal eyes should never see. I didn’t know how to begin explaining this. “Uh, little busy!” I said.
“You’re going to need a damn big can of bug spray!” he called. “Or maybe a rocket-propelled grenade. I have one in the garage, you want it?”
“What? No, Mr. Semerdjian, don’t! It won’t help! Just stay where you are!”
I had to shut him out. If I allowed him to distract me, I’d be demon chow. The black wheel bug tore free of my tree’s roots and advanced on me once again, across a lawn that was still heaving violently. It sliced at me with its tubelike beak, stabbing past the trunk of the tree almost too fast to track, and it grazed my shoulder and opened up a burning cut. My tree was having none of that. The canopy of branches began to whip against the demon’s head and thorax, not doing much damage but successfully blinding it with a curtain of feathery green leaves. The wheel bug reared back and flailed away at the branches, severing many of them with each sweep of its sharply bladed foreclaws, and it appeared this additional delay would last only a few more seconds before its attention refocused on me. There wasn’t enough time to get inside and retrieve my sword, but perhaps there would be enough time for Cold Fire to work. I pointed at the demon and had the trigger word for the spell formed on my lips, but then I saw that the cavalry was coming.
Behind the wheel bug, a huge saguaro cactus was growing from the churned sod of my lawn at a ridiculous rate. Not content merely to cram a century’s worth of growth into the space of a few seconds, it showed signs of sentience and the ability to move—singular abilities for a saguaro. It could be nothing but the Sonoran Desert elemental my mesquite tree had called, Gaia’s champion sent to fight the spawn of hell. It loomed out of the night and smashed a heavy spined arm across the back of the demon’s abdomen, just behind the cogs of its wheel.
The demon’s carapace cracked a bit and it screeched in that bone-shuddering register, whipping around to hack at the saguaro’s trunk and arms. It lopped off an arm and even took off the top of the cactus, but this wasn’t a creature that fell over from decapitation; there was no head to decapitate. When such accidents occur in nature, saguaros just seal themselves internally and grow new arms, no problem. The elemental wasn’t even slowed down. Another arm whacked at the demon’s head, crushing one of its globular black eyes and spraying jets of ichor across my lawn.
The demon knew it was in a fight for its life now. This wasn’t a puny human it had to eat before it could do whatever it wanted on this plane; this was a champion of the earth itself, the corporeal manifestation of an entire ecosystem, and a particularly deadly one at that. The black wheel bug directed a flurry of scissoring blows at the saguaro, trying to cut off all its arms so it could then deal with the trunk, but the arms grew back even faster than it could sever them. It wasn’t ten seconds before a long one on the far side of the trunk twisted around and crashed through the demon’s skull. The arm kept going all the way down the elongated body, splitting the creature in two and dumping its flanks to the ground, where the legs spent some time twitching a spastic dance of death.
Immensely appreciative for the aid and trying to ignore the unholy stench, I sent my thanks through my tattoos down into the earth, communicating with the elemental in a sort of emotional shorthand, since human languages meant nothing to it.
//Druid grateful / Aid welcome // I said. The elemental was flush with victory and pleased with itself. It offered to repair the damage to my lawn, my tree, and my vines, wanting to leave no trace of hell in its territory, and I accepted graciously. It didn’t quite know what to do with the demon mess; the head and thorax were little more than black tar at this point, but the abdomen and legs were still fairly intact and clearly not of this earth. It didn’t want to absorb the demon into the ground, but it seemed to realize I couldn’t stuff a giant wheel bug down the garbage disposal either. I offered a suggestion: Encase it all in rock, condense and crush every bit of it down into liquid, and then leave me with a stone keg crafted with a plug near the bottom. I’d give it to some ghouls I knew (actually, Leif knew them, he had them on speed dial), they’d have a party with it because demon juice w
as like Jägermeister to them, and then they’d return the keg cleaned out and ready to be reabsorbed into the earth. The elemental was pleased with this solution and began to work on it right away.
“O’Sullivan?” an uncertain voice pulled my consciousness back aboveground. It was Mr. Semerdjian.
“Yes, sir, how may I help you?” Everything was back to normal—that is, the vines looked great and so did my mesquite tree. The saguaro cactus using its many arms to mold stone as if it were clay and making loud bug-crunching noises was admittedly worth comment.
My neighbor raised a shaking index finger to point at the saguaro. “That moving cactus … and the big bug … and you, you spooky bastard. What are you?”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and grinned winningly at him. “Why, I’m the Antichrist, of course.”
Mr. Semerdjian responded by fainting, which seriously surprised me. I’d expected a vulgar expression of disbelief, like a middle finger or a clutching of the crotch, because the man had seen a giant demon and casually offered to blow it up like a tough guy. Why would saying the name of the boogeyman from Christianity make him lose his mind? He was a Muslim, for the free love o’ Flidais!
Actually, his collapse was a blessing. When he woke up, everything would be swell and I’d deny that any of it ever happened. If he tried to get anyone else to believe him, well, they wouldn’t. The cut on my shoulder was already healing over.
The elemental finished its work and left the stone keg full of distilled demon on my empty driveway, where I could easily camouflage it and the ghouls could load it into their refrigerated truck. Sonora said its farewells and then sank back into my lawn from whence it came, cleaning up as it disappeared, leaving no sign that anything supernatural had occurred. My lawn even looked like it had been freshly fertilized.
Yeah, come on out. I have a couple calls to make. First I called 911 for Mr. Semerdjian, establishing an official record of my concern for his welfare. If he woke up calling me the Antichrist, he’d get a strong dose of sedatives and maybe one of those snug little straitjackets to play around in. Next I called my daytime lawyer, Hal Hauk, to get the number for the ghouls. I didn’t think Leif would want to talk to me right now, and besides, he was probably having an ASU student for breakfast.
After I rang the ghouls, the ambulance arrived for Mr. Semerdjian, and I waited for them to take him away before making my last call, to Malina Sokolowski.
“Hello, Malina,” I said with relish when she answered the phone. “I’m still around. Your little spell didn’t work.”
“You were attacked too? Those bitches!” she spat. “Damn them!” She was clearly upset; she’d never used anything but the politest, formal language with me. “It makes me wonder who else got hit tonight and who else is dead now.”
That wasn’t the response I expected at all. “Wait. What bitches? Who’s dead? Malina, who’s dead?”
“You’d better get over here,” she said, and hung up on me.
Chapter 4
“Yeah, but not the kind you’re thinking about, unfortunately,” I said aloud. “Are you willing to try going for that run again, buddy? We need to pay Malina Sokolowski a visit.”
“Well, I don’t know many witches who do like dogs, so she’s hardly exceptional in that regard. Witches tend to be cat people.”
“Of course,” I laughed. “And thank you for reminding me. Just let me go inside and get my sword. I want to be prepared this time. Stand sentinel out here?”
I shoved the juice back in the fridge and hurried for the front door. Does he smell like a demon? I asked.
I hauled open the door and beheld a slim Native American man in the street. Straight black hair spilled past his shoulders from underneath a cowboy hat, and he was dressed in a white sleeveless undershirt, blue jeans, and scuffed brown boots. He held a grease-stained brown paper bag in his left hand, and he had a smirk on his face.
He waved leisurely with his right hand and said in a slow, friendly voice, “Evenin’, Mr. Druid. I reckon you know who I am?”
I relaxed and fell into the unhurried rhythms of his speech. By speaking like him, I would make him relax as well, and he’d be more likely to trust me. It was the first rule of fitting in: Talk like a native. As soon as people hear a foreign accent, it’s like ringing the doorbell of xenophobia. They immediately classify you as the other instead of as a brother, and it was this fundamental aspect of human nature that Leif had seemingly forgotten. It applies to dialects and regional accents as well, which is why I’m obsessed with mimicking those properly whenever I can. Ask any Boston Yankee what happens when they get pulled over by police in the Deep South, and they’ll tell you that accent matters. So I took my time with my reply, as if I had all day to get to the end of a sentence, because that’s the way my visitor spoke. “I surely do, Coyote. Only question is which tribe you’re callin’ from this time.”
“I’m callin’ from the Diné,” he said, using the proper name for the tribe the United States called Navajo. “Mind if I come up and sit a spell?”
“Not a’tall,” I said. “But you catch me poorly equipped for comp’ny. Ain’t got any tobacco in the house, ’shamed to say.”
“Aw, that’s all right. I’ll take a beer if you got one.”
“That I can handle. Come set on the porch here and I’ll be right back.” I dashed inside and snaked a couple of Stellas from the fridge, while Coyote walked up to the porch. I had the tops popped off and was back outside as he was settling into his chair. I held a bottle out to him and he smiled.
“Mmm, fancy beer,” he said, taking it from my hand and examining the label. “Thanks, Mr. Druid.”
“Welcome.” We both took a swig, sighed appreciatively like men are supposed to do, and then he held up the bag in his left hand.
“Got some sausages here for your hound. Mind if I give ’em to ’im?”
“What kind o’ sausages?” I asked.
Coyote chuckled. “Old paranoid Druid. You never change. Normal sausages, perfectly safe. Chicken–apple flavor. I didn’t want your hound to go hungry while we talk.”
“That was right nice o’ ya, Coyote. My hound and I both thank ya for it.” If he knew Oberon wanted chicken–apple sausages tonight, that meant he was close by when we first ran into that demon—close enough to help, but he clearly chose not to. It also meant he could hear Oberon’s thoughts. I took the bag from him and opened it up to find eight perfect chicken–apple sausages the size of bratwurst, still warm and smelling delicious. I tore open the bag and laid it down on the porch in front of Oberon so he could get at them easily. He wasted no time inhaling them.
“Good,” Coyote nodded, taking another swig of beer. He seemed unaware that he had replied before I had repeated Oberon’s words. “So, seen any demons ’round here?”
Oberon stopped chewing and raised his head, ears perked, and I studied Coyote carefully for any signs of suddenly sprouting horns or the stench of brimstone. He threw his head back and laughed at us. His canine teeth shone in the pale yellow light of the streetlamps.
“Hoo-ee, you oughtta see your faces! I bet ya seen a demon, all r
ight! Lemme guess, a big black bug?”
“Yeah. But I reckon ya didn’t have to guess, didja?” I asked.
“Naw, I saw him comin’ this way afore I got here. But he ain’t the only one out there, ya know.”
“Yeah, I figured,” I said.
“I ’spect you did, Mr. Druid. And you’re the reason they’re runnin’ ’round here, eatin’ people.”
“What do you care if a demon makes mischief in town?” I asked.
“What do I care? If a demon went ’round eatin’ white men like you, you’re right, I wouldn’t care. But I said they’re eatin’ people, an’ by that I mean they’re eatin’ my people, Mr. Druid. My people are feedin’ a demon that’s here because of you. So we have somethin’ to talk about, you an’ I.”
“I see.” I nodded, and Oberon took this as a signal that it was okay for him to finish off his repast. “Where and when did your people die?”
“A maiden at Skyline High School was eaten yesterday, when all t’other kids were eatin’ lunch inside.”
“What, at the school? Where ever’one could see?”
“Nobody seen it happen but me. She was by herself, eatin’ flatbread outside. An’, besides, humans can’t see this one. You coulda seen it, though. An’ I seen it for sure.”
“What did it look like?”
“Huge black thing with wings.” Oberon belched and I felt a bit of indigestion as well. I knew the demon Coyote meant. It was one of the first creatures out of hell when Aenghus Óg opened the portal and the first demon to disregard the binding. It was very strong, and since it flew, there was no way I could kill it with Cold Fire, which required the demon to be in contact with the earth. “So what’re ya gonna do?” Coyote asked.