The Trouble with Demons

by Shearin, Lisa

  Phaelan spoke. “Let me guess: we’re under the bottom floor.”

  Vegard gestured up ahead with his eyes. “We’re coming up on it now.”

  “And those five floors are probably a bureaucratic maze of halls and tiny offices,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  With potentially a demon around any or every corner.

  “Still straight ahead?” I asked Piaras.

  He nodded, looking as nervous as the rest of us. That was good; it meant he was still himself. Sarad Nukpana would have been having the time of his life sending us on a stroll amongst demons.

  “We’ll know for sure when we get closer,” Vegard told us, “but the Hellgate’s probably in the Assembly chamber. Huge room, vaulted ceiling.”

  And plenty of space to stage demon hordes for an invasion.

  I didn’t want to take Piaras anywhere near a Hellgate. If the demons from Carnades’s town house had gone to the Assembly—and it was looking like they had—Piaras’s work was done; it was time for him to leave.

  “Any quick way to the surface from here?” I asked Vegard. I flicked my eyes toward Piaras. The Guardian saw, but gave no indication. He knew what I wanted—a way to get Piaras out of here. Now.

  Vegard’s lips narrowed into a thin line.

  Not the answer I wanted. “No way out but up,” I said.

  He nodded. “Or back the way we came.”

  “Do you know where the other end of this tunnel comes out?”

  “No clue, ma’am.”

  So, no choice but to take Piaras with us. If the demons had taken the Scythe of Nen to the Assembly, then that’s where we had to go.

  “Well, I’ve never stormed the gates of Hell before,” Phaelan muttered sarcastically. “If we don’t die horrible deaths, who knows, it might be fun.”

  In a matter of minutes, the tunnel turned into a deserted corridor. Stone. Hand-hewn. Man-made. And other than our muted lightglobes, pitch-dark.

  Welcome to the Assembly, bottom floor, nowhere to go but up to Hell.

  Apparently the demon queen’s command to bleed and ooze had expired some time ago. Not one drop of anything broke the accumulated dust in the hall we were now in. It looked just like the last half dozen halls we’d walked through. There weren’t any foot- or claw prints, either. That told me the demons might have taken a different route up to the Assembly. I really didn’t want to look, but I had to. I shone my lightglobe on the walls and up to the ceiling that was only a few feet above our heads.

  Oh shit.

  Intersecting lines showed where dozens of tiny claws had gouged the stone along the walls and straight up to the ceiling. The little bastards could run on the freaking ceiling.

  Piaras looked where I was looking and said a word I didn’t think he knew. “Are those what I think they are?”

  “I wish they weren’t.” I had an unpleasant flashback to the Volghul scuttling along the sides of the buildings that lined that street, brick chipping and flying as his claws dug in. I really didn’t want to have a swarm of tiny needle-fanged and razor-clawed demons drop on top of me out of the dark. Damn, why didn’t everything have to walk on the floor like the rest of us?

  I took a steadying breath and let it out. “Vegard, could you—”

  “Covering the ceiling, ma’am.” A second lightglobe flared to life above Vegard’s open hand. It crackled with cobalt fire as it floated above our heads and just below the ceiling. The fire extended beyond the confines of the globe, hungrily licking the ceiling as it traveled ahead of us. Anything in its path would probably find itself fried.

  “Nice work,” Phaelan said. “I like it.”

  “The demons won’t,” the big Guardian told him.

  “Even better.”

  We kept going.

  Piaras was still on the Scythe’s trail like a hound on a strong scent, and Vegard knew the layout of the place. Phaelan and I felt like hired blades along for the trip.

  I knew better. Even if she already had the Scythe of Nen in her hands, claws, whatever, I had a sinking feeling that the demon queen still wanted to have that chat with me. And here I was walking straight into her waiting clutches. I just wanted the Scythe; I had no intention of taking on a demonic horde or slamming a Hellgate. And even if I wanted to, I didn’t know how. But we needed to get close enough to confirm that the demons had the Scythe, and I was sure Mychael and Sora would appreciate knowing where the Hellgate was. I swore silently. Mychael. He had no idea where we were and what we were doing; maybe Sora had gotten word to him that Rudra Muralin was topside playing goblin ambassador, with Carnades as his clueless host and tour guide. I wondered if Rudra had roped Carnades into showing him around town so the elf mage wouldn’t be in his town house when Rudra’s demon allies went after the Scythe.

  With my next step, I felt a crunch followed by a squish. I jumped back and stifled a squeal; it came out as a squeak. I grimaced and raised my boot; Phaelan saw what was on the bottom before I did. The last time I’d seen him look that sick was after a business rival sealed him in a brewing vat and Phaelan had the bright idea to drink his way to freedom.

  I flexed my ankle and looked down. The goop on the bottom of my boot was blue, which was a healthy color for a demon, but flat wasn’t a good shape. I tried to scrape it off, then froze. I sensed it before I heard it. Scuttling, sibilant hissing, straight ahead.

  And right behind.

  Above and all around us, glowing eyes peered out of abandoned offices. They were small, but when there were that many, size didn’t matter.

  Phaelan had a wickedly curved blade in each hand. “Let’s hope these bleed and die.”

  Vegard’s lightglobes flared bright as day, showing us things that made me want to scream, run, and not stop doing either one until I was back in the middle of Carnades’s kitchen. Tiny demons, no taller than my hand, scurried like mice. That is if mice were blue and spindly and looked like legs with teeth. Really, really sharp teeth. I’d just squished their sibling; they probably weren’t happy about that.

  A swarm of demons, no room to fight, and we all had blades out. No good could come of this. Magic would be best; fire would be better—both would make the tiny demons seething around us scream, which would bring bigger demon reinforcements from upstairs.

  “If we skewer the little bastards, they’re gonna scream,” I warned in a singsong voice through clenched teeth.

  “If they jump on me, I’m gonna scream,” Phaelan shot back. “Can’t the kid sing them to sleep?”

  Piaras grimaced. “I don’t think they have ears.”

  He was right. With that many teeth, the only other things they had room for on their misshapen heads were yellow eyes.

  Phaelan went back-to-back with me. “If we just stand here, they’re going to eat us.”

  “Shield and torch,” Vegard said calmly.

  “Phaelan can’t shield,” I hissed.

  “Mine aren’t that good,” Piaras added quickly.

  “And I can’t torch,” I told Vegard. He knew why. No containments on the Saghred meant no containments on me. If I used the tiniest fraction of what I’d used in the watcher station, the demon queen herself would be down here in nothing flat. We needed a quick, quiet, hot burst, not a volcanic eruption.

  “Can you shield them?” Vegard asked me.

  “Yes, but I have to drop my blades.”

  Vegard couldn’t believe what he just heard. “What?”

  “I need a hand on each of them, bare palm.”

  “Can’t you—”

  “No, I can’t!” I snapped. “I’m a seeker, not a soldier!”

  “If we survive this, I’m teaching you how—”

  “Whatever! I’ll shield; you roast!”

  I slowly sheathed my blades with dozens of hungry demons within touching distance and grabbed hold of Phaelan and Piaras and pulled them close.

  Vegard did his thing. A wave of ice-blue flame rolled off of the Guardian and engulfed the demons. It didn’t burn the
m—it froze them. The ones on the ceiling started falling to the floor like fanged icicles. Once the last one hit the floor, I let Phaelan and Piaras go.

  Vegard took a couple of deep breaths. War magic like that was like lifting weights, and he’d just lifted more than his share.

  “Ma’am, when we get out of here, I’m going to teach you how to—”

  The shadows shimmered and parted, revealing a Volghul that had probably been there the entire time. I didn’t know if all Volghuls looked alike, but this one could have been the twin to the one Tam and I crammed into that bottle.

  The demon looked straight at me and smiled, his teeth pointy and sharp, handy for things like ripping throats out. His claws seemed to be flexing with a life of their own and were similarly practical. Others flowed out of the offices ahead and behind us.

  My steel was sheathed; I reached for my magic.

  A Volghul’s claws whipped out, wrapping themselves around Phaelan’s throat. The tip of one razor-sharp claw rested confidently against the big vein in my cousin’s throat. Phaelan wasn’t going anywhere.

  And neither were we.

  “Our queen wants the Saghred bearer alive.” The Volghul’s smile broadened, showing me all of his teeth. “As do I.”

  Chapter 26

  I wanted to get to the Assembly chamber as quickly as possible, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.

  Fate was a bitch with a warped sense of humor.

  “No resistance and this one lives,” said the Volghul holding Phaelan captive. The demon looked down at my cousin with confused distaste. “This one has no magic; it is a waste of skin.”

  Phaelan opened his mouth to say something he shouldn’t. The demon’s hooked claw penetrated his skin just deep enough that a single drop of blood welled around the claw’s tip. “You wish to contradict me, little mortal?”

  I shot Phaelan the mother of all shut-up looks. I’d seen what those claws could do. My cousin was not going to die in a pool of his own blood.

  The demon queen wanted me alive, but I suspected that distinction was only temporary, and it applied only to me. The Volghul that had Phaelan’s entire neck in his hand wanted to play—and he was looking for an excuse. In our family, snarky one-liners came as naturally as breathing. But if Phaelan wanted to continue breathing, we both needed to keep our big mouths shut.

  Phaelan was a hostage, the rest of us were prisoners. My cousin had no magic to defend himself, and now he had no weapons. And in a matter of moments, neither did the rest of us. I’d gotten my cousin into this; I’d get him out. I’d get us all out. Piaras was being treated like a prize. I knew why, and so did he. Phaelan was a hostage; Piaras was going to be a royal gift.

  With an escort of nine Volghuls that I could see, and more that I could sense, we weren’t going anywhere but where our captors wanted to take us. And I couldn’t see them going anywhere but the Hellgate. We’d be there in minutes. Any plans I’d come up with until now had centered on getting in, locating the Scythe, stealing it if possible, then getting out, preferably without being seen by anyone. Capture by demons had put a major crimp in those plans. Not that the finding, stealing, and escaping parts of my plan couldn’t still happen. A master thief might be able to snatch the goods out from under their mark’s nose.

  But their mark wasn’t the queen of demons. And I wasn’t a master thief.

  Phaelan and Vegard weren’t going to die, and the demon queen wasn’t getting her hands on Piaras. The only way either would happen would be over my dead body, and I’d take as many demons with me as I could.

  Our captors led us up the last flight of stairs and the heat hit us. A broad hall curved in both directions—my guess was we were in an entrance hall to the Assembly. A sickly green glow, like some sort of fungus, had been smeared along the walls at irregular intervals, dimly lighting a space big enough to hold hundreds of mages. The heat was stifling; but it wasn’t a dry heat, this was like walking into a greenhouse. Directly across from us were a pair of massive doors that must have been at least three times my height. They were closed and were guarded by more Volghuls.

  All of that registered in the only part of my brain that wasn’t screaming.

  The floor was covered with eggs.

  We were in a demon incubator.

  I didn’t want to meet the demons that had laid these things. The eggs were oval and almost came up to my knees. Some kind of sticky goo held them upright on the floor. Half of the eggs had hatched, the rest were glowing softly, their shells nearly translucent. Things were squirming inside, things that wanted to be outside. With us. In the middle of several of the already hatched clutches lay pale bones and what looked like the remains of shredded robes. The newborn demons’ first meals had probably been Rudra Muralin’s now-deceased allies. No wonder Muralin was topside playing ambassador. He wasn’t in control down here anymore. No one was—at least no one from around here.

  No wonder he wanted me to come down here to close the Hellgate.

  The Volghul that had my arm clutched in his claw saw where I was looking and knew what I had seen.

  “Yes, the mortal spellcasters made fine food for our children. They grow quickly and eat much. There is no more food here, so they have gone to the surface to hunt.”

  My stomach knotted. Newborn demons. That was what we’d run into downstairs, hatchlings on their way to feed. Swarming through dark tunnels that emptied all over the city. Except the demons weren’t going all over the city, at least not yet. First they’d take what food was closest.

  Campus. Hundreds of students.

  I remembered the terrified chaos in the Quad yesterday that had been caused by one demon. These were swarms, nothing but teeth and starving stomachs, small enough to go anywhere, ravenous enough to eat anything.

  I saw Vegard out of the corner of my eye. His face was an expressionless mask. Guardians protected the Conclave mages and students. Mychael would defend a student before a mage anytime, and Vegard thought like his commander. He needed to get away; we all needed to get away. Now. Someone had to warn those kids. Sora and her faculty were expecting Volghul-sized demons and larger—not hundreds, maybe thousands of piranha with feet and endless appetites.

  “Your young ones will be sweet.” The demon’s sharp black tongue flicked across his lips in anticipation. “Our young will feed first, then we shall join them.”

  I felt the pull of the Hellgate through the closed doors. Actually it was the Saghred doing the feeling; I wanted to be doing the running. What lay beyond those doors was the entryway into our world for a horde of demons. In the midst of my growing panic, it dimly occurred to me that I had absolutely no clue how many demons were in a horde.

  The Assembly was huge. Row after row of crumbling stone tiers that had once held chairs fanned up and out from the massive round stage with steps leading up to a dais that dominated the chamber. Seven columns rose from the edge of the stage to meet the vaulted ceiling.

  The Hellgate was on the dais, and it was only a gate in the loosest sense of the word. A slickly wet membrane was suspended between two of the columns like a spiderweb, opaque around the edges where it touched the columns, and increasingly transparent as it neared the center, with a narrow opening that looked more like a slit than anything else. A demon slid through and landed with a wet plop on the stone floor. It looked up, quivering in its eagerness. Demons only got that excited over one thing. Food. It scrambled to its feet, claws, whatever, and with two bounds disappeared through one of the five man-height mirrors set up at the base of the other columns. Depending on where the receiving mirrors were on the island, the demon might not have to go far to find what it wanted.

  “Oh shit,” Vegard breathed.

  I couldn’t have said it better.

  As fascinating as incoming demons from Hell were, my attention was riveted to a stone slab to the right side of the Hellgate opening, a slab that bore a disturbing resemblance to an altar. Or more to the point, I was riveted to who was on that slab.

>   Carnades Silvanus. Chained, gagged, and laid out in a white robe like a demon snack.

  Rudra Muralin stood at the head of the altar, and at the sight of me, what was a confident smile twisted into a smirk. He was one happy goblin. My goal—with my dying breath, if necessary—was to ruin his day.

  I wanted to yell out “I told you so” to the elf mage, but I looked around me at an uncountable number of yellow, green, and red eyes shining out of the darkness—and every last pair of those eyes were staring unblinking at us.

  We were newcomers, prisoners, playthings.

  We were food.

  I couldn’t see the stairs beneath my feet all that well, but it didn’t really matter since my feet didn’t touch them but once or twice. The two Volghuls who gripped my upper arms decided that I was easier to lift and carry.

  We were nearly to the stage before I saw the demon queen. She was tall and slender with opalescent skin that was a near-perfect match for the Hellgate’s membrane. She wore an intricate headpiece set with pale jewels. That was all. The queen of demons was naked. It took me longer to realize this. I was a Benares; I looked at the jewels first. But from the collective intake of breath from behind me, her nudity was the first thing—and probably the only thing—that Phaelan, Vegard, and Piaras had noticed.

  She had an unearthly beauty that was spoiled somewhat by her red eyes with vertical black pupils, and the twisting claws on the end of tapered, but otherwise elegant fingers. Aside from that she was flawless, and quite obviously female.

  “The Saghred bearer comes to me at last.” Her voice was lush and full, like overripe fruit on the verge of rotting. “You are too late to bring me what I wanted.” She paused, and her lips curled as if from a private joke. “But you are just in time to give me what I require.”

  As she spoke, she negligently twirled something between her fingers; it was silver, slender, and curved. I was sure there were cavorting demons carved into it, but I didn’t feel the need to move in for a closer look.

  The queen of demons had the Scythe of Nen.