The Trouble with Demons

by Shearin, Lisa

  Tam nodded once and didn’t take his eyes from the spot. He’d closed his mind to us, but not before I felt something that I’d rarely sensed in Tam. Fear.

  “Raine first,” Mychael said, back to business. “Then the Saghred. Then I will deal with Carnades.”

  “Not if I get to him first.” Tam said it like a vow. And I knew Tam; if he vowed to do something—especially if it involved much-needed vengeance—the object of said vengeance better leave town, or in this case, the island.

  “Phaelan’s following him around with a rock,” I reminded him. “You might not get the—dammit!”

  Mychael’s palm felt like a branding iron on the side of my neck.

  “Battlefield healing,” he told me, holding me still. “We don’t have time for fancy.”

  I grimaced. “Do what you have to,” I managed through pain-clenched teeth. I did my best not to move—or scream. “I have payback due to some people on the other side of that mirror, too.”

  The citadel was quiet. Way too quiet. Either nothing had happened yet, or everything already had. Or in my family, silence didn’t mean the fight was over; it meant everybody was catching their breath—or sneaking up on somebody to stab.

  Tam swore to himself. I heard him in my head, and couldn’t have agreed more with his word choice. There was no demonic welcoming committee waiting to slice us to ribbons when we’d stepped through that mirror, but there weren’t any Guardians, either. As I’d guessed, the mirror was in a containment room, but the room was empty, and the door was standing wide open. Under normal circumstances, that’d be downright inviting. But I wasn’t about to stroll through that door and find demon hospitality at the end of a skewer.

  Once we were through the mirror, Mychael shattered it. There wasn’t a Hellgate for the demons to escape through anymore, but Mychael didn’t want them leaving the citadel, at least not alive.

  Mychael held up a hand for me and Tam to stay put, and he and Vegard took up positions on either side of the door. Mychael nodded once and they made their move. When Vegard’s shoulders relaxed, I knew the hall was clear. Suspicious as hell, but clear.

  At least of men or demons.

  The air was literally vibrating with magic. It was coming from all around us, but mainly from the floor beneath our feet. Tam clenched his dagger in his teeth to free his hands and quickly tied back his long black hair in a tail.

  “We’re one level above the Saghred’s containment room,”

  Mychael said in mindspeak. “There should—”

  Screams, shouts, and demonic roars damned near deafened us, like someone had opened a soundproof door to a madhouse. That someone had used a sound veil, a good one. Apparently they didn’t need to be quiet anymore—my money was on the demon queen.

  Mychael ran down the hall and all but threw himself down the stairs; Vegard, Tam, and I were hot on his heels. It suddenly occurred to me that my hands were empty. I didn’t have a weapon to my name, and no one I was with had one to spare. I silently swore a blue streak. I was running full-speed and unarmed into a nest of demons. Usually I’d get what I needed from the first bad guy I could knock down and pilfer, but this time the bad guys were demons—naked demons. No sword belts there. Though when you had claws, horns, and a mouth full of fangs, steel was redundant.

  No one had been upstairs, because everyone was down here.

  Too many Volghuls and not nearly enough Guardians. The only Volghul I’d seen go through the mirror was the one with the demon queen. The number of Volghuls down here didn’t bode well for the number of Guardians left alive up in the citadel. Where was Sora and a demon trap when you needed them?

  Open space was at a minimum, which made for ugly, close-quarters fighting.

  And Piaras was in the middle of it.

  He had his back to the Saghred’s containment room door with a pair of long daggers in his hands. The blades were glowing. Not the white of Mychael’s magic, but like polished silver infused with pure light. I didn’t know Piaras could do that. Like Justinius said, the kid could rise to the occasion. He wielded those silver blades with feline grace and, hell, even with flair. Piaras couldn’t move like that—but Sarad Nukpana could.

  However, Piaras was killing demons, not Guardians. Nukpana would have been doing the opposite. Piaras’s lips were moving in spellsong incantation. I couldn’t hear the words, but the Volghuls that got too close to him obviously could. They screamed and staggered back, and when they went down, they didn’t get back up.

  Piaras’s eyes were wide and terrified, but determined. They were his eyes, not Nukpana’s. What abilities the Saghred had enhanced in me, I’d kept. It looked like the same was true for Piaras. The goblin’s sword skills must have rooted themselves deep in Piaras’s reflexes. Creepy as hell, but anything that kept him alive was good.

  Helping Piaras stay alive was Archmagus Justinius Valerian.

  The old man was kicking demonic ass and having the time of his life. It was beautiful.

  He’d staked out ground in the hall near Piaras, and the forces of Hell literally couldn’t budge him from that spot. He vaporized a knot of demons trying to overrun him and Piaras. That move alone went a long way toward evening the odds, and it boosted the heck out of Guardian morale. The men redoubled their efforts and more Volghuls died. Justinius was flushed, but he was grinning like the spell-happy maniac he was. The archmagus was back, and I didn’t see Carnades anywhere. Maybe Phaelan and his rock had another talk with him.

  Mychael jerked his gaze up toward the ceiling. He heard something, and so did I. It wasn’t coming from the ceiling; it was coming from inside the ceiling. Scuttling, scratching, and moving fast.

  Running away from the Saghred’s chamber. The little purple bastards had gotten their claws on the rock.

  “They’re taking it to the queen,” Tam said. Like their elven counterparts, goblin ears did more than just look good.

  Mychael shot a glance back at Justinius. His duty was to protect the old man, but the old man didn’t look like he needed or wanted any help. It’d just piss him off. As six more demons went down in blue-flamed death, I knew I never wanted to piss him off, either.

  “Where does that air duct go?” I asked.

  Mychael actually growled. “All over the damned citadel.”

  I felt a tugging in my chest and grinned in fierce determination. The Saghred wanted me to follow it, and I was only too happy to oblige. The rock had been stabbed with the Scythe once, and it didn’t want it to happen again.

  “I can track it,” I said.

  No one asked how I could; they knew. I took off running down the hall in the opposite direction of the Saghred’s containment room with Mychael, Tam, and Vegard right behind me. The tugging led up, so up the stairs I ran. Up was good; up meant out. I was sick and tired of being stuck underground. The tugging led to a dark hall with a pair of doors about twenty feet ahead. I stopped. There were lightglobes set into the walls, but they were as dark as everything else. I was impulsive, occasionally dim, but never suicidal.

  “What’s through those doors?” I asked Mychael in mindspeak.

  “Our gym.”

  The gym. The place where Guardians worked out, trained—learned to kill.

  “It’s packed with weapons.” My lack of enthusiasm was evident.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there another way in?”

  Mychael nodded once.

  A room with weapons was good for me since I didn’t have any; but it would be bad for all of us if the demons got to them first, which they probably had. Just because they had claws, fangs, and horns didn’t mean they wouldn’t take anything hanging on the walls—like those demon-slaying, green-bladed, hooked spear thingies. I swallowed. Killed by demons with weapons that were made to kill demons. Irony sucked.

  A faint clinking came from the darkness, not just inside the doors, but farther into the room—much farther than I wanted to go without knowing exactly what was in there.

  “Chains,” Mychael
said before I could ask.

  I arched a brow.

  “Attached to punching bags,” he clarified.

  Oh.

  I wondered if the demon queen knew that we’d destroyed her only way home, and now her situation was all or nothing, do or die, kill or be killed. She was cornered and we had no choice but to go in after her and however many Volghuls were sharing the dark with her. The queen had the Saghred and the Scythe; and if she managed to stab the former with the latter, she’d have all the backup she needed, and we’d have Hell on earth—thousands, maybe millions of souls looking for new bodies, and the inhabitants of Mid would be just the beginning. And the four of us would be at the front of the line. It was up to us to stop it all, and my hands were as empty of blades as the day I was born. We didn’t want to rush in, but it only took a second for a demon to stab a rock.

  The whole situation had suicide mission written all over it.

  I didn’t need to project my thoughts to Mychael and Tam; I was sure they’d arrived at the same gloom-and-doom conclusion.

  “Stay here,” said Mychael’s voice in my head.

  I didn’t have to say or think “like hell”; my expression said it perfectly.

  Mychael gave me a look; you know the one. Then he handed me the best gift I’d ever gotten from any man—a knife. Actually it was more like a short machete. I loved it. It didn’t increase my confidence level in where we were going, but it went a long way toward making me feel better about not dying immediately when we went in.

  “Tam, you and Vegard go in through the locker rooms,”

  Mychael said.

  I felt Tam’s magic power up. “Veils?”

  “The best you’ve got. Whoever gets to her first takes her down.”

  Tam grinned in a flash of fangs, but there was death in his eyes. “Race you.”

  “Raine, you’re with me,” Mychael said.

  If Tam didn’t like that arrangement, he didn’t say or think anything. I didn’t care who went with whom; I didn’t like the idea of splitting up, period. Demons with an evil rock of power and the means to open it didn’t seem like the best time to divide forces. But Mychael didn’t get to be paladin by being a crappy tactician, so until something jumped out of the dark and started killing us, I’d go along with his plan.

  Mychael gave Vegard and Tam half a minute to get to where they were going. Then looked down at me, his eyes dark and unreadable in the faint light. “Can you veil?”

  Damn. I had a feeling he was going to ask that. I’d never done it before, but thanks to the Saghred, I could do pretty much anything I put my mind to. Problem was, I’d never put my mind to wrapping myself in a veiling spell, and now wasn’t the time for a screw up.

  Mychael took my hesitation as an answer. He reached out and took my hand, and once again, his magic ran up my arm and into every part of me. Instantly, it felt as though I were still there but not quite. I looked down at myself and up at Mychael. We were both still there.

  “No one can see us,” he assured me. “Including demons.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  We slipped silently—and hopefully invisibly—around the corner into the gym. The hand-holding thing worked out well. I was right-handed and Mychael was a lefty, so our respective weapon hands were free. I was holding the knife Mychael had given me; Mychael’s weapon hand was empty. Though considering what he’d done to the demon queen earlier, his empty hand was a lethal hand. But if anything came at me, veils and hand-holding were history.

  We weren’t alone. I couldn’t see the proof, but I sure as hell sensed it. The room smelled like a gym was supposed to, with two notable and gut-wrenching exceptions—blood and brimstone. Blood in a gym wasn’t unusual, but this was fresh, and it hadn’t come from a demon. Brimstone meant we were in the right place with the wrong people.

  The demon queen didn’t want to kill us. Usually someone wanting to keep you alive was a good thing—unless that someone was the queen of demons. In that situation, given a choice between taken dead or alive, I’d go with dead. And if I died, I was taking as many demons as I could down with me.

  We moved into the room, Mychael intent on any shadow, brush of air, or sense of movement. Considering recent bad experiences, I was checking out the ceiling. Just because we didn’t hear clicking or scraping didn’t mean Volghuls weren’t dangling from the rafters like giant bats waiting to drop on us.

  We didn’t have to look far to find the demon queen. She was waiting for us in a picture straight out of a nightmare.

  Illuminated by a pool of sickly green light, the demon queen held the Scythe of Nen tightly against the throat of a captive Guardian, and a young blond elf lay dead at her feet—an elf in a Guardian uniform who couldn’t have been much older than Piaras. His eyes were open and fixed, and the blood pooling on his chest said how he’d died. The bloody Scythe in the demon queen’s hand said who had done the killing.

  And clutched in the captive Guardian’s white-knuckled hands was the Saghred.

  Oh no.

  I froze and held my breath. He might as well have been holding a bomb with a lit fuse. If one drop of blood fell from the Scythe onto the Saghred, he was worse than dead.

  He’d be a Saghred sacrifice.

  “Do you desire this, elflings?” Either she could see us, or the bitch just knew we were there.

  The Guardian she held captive hadn’t been cut. The blood on the Scythe’s blade was from the dead elf. She’d wet the blade in preparation for plunging it into the Saghred. I knew this as sure as if she’d told me—or as if the Saghred had told me.

  I dropped Mychael’s hand. She knew we were here, and I wanted both of my hands free.

  “Yes, elflings,” the demon queen purred when we materialized, pulling the Guardian closer. He gasped and shuddered; I didn’t blame him. Some things you just didn’t want touching you. “You all appreciate the helplessness of your situation. Soon you will experience helplessness as you never have before. The soul of another violating your body, pushing your soul aside, taking you completely. I have heard it said that you will remain aware through all of it—the taking, the possession—for the rest of your lives.” She smiled at us, pleasant, almost human, as if she’d just given us the best news in the world. “And you will be helpless to stop anything your new master or mistress wants your body to do.”

  Just when I thought I couldn’t be more scared, someone came along and redefined the word for me. Killed by what you feared the most. Laurian Berel had been killed because of a dagger; he’d been terrified of daggers. I wouldn’t be that lucky. I wouldn’t be killed by what I feared most—I’d get to live with it, and wish I were dead. No control, helpless, completely at the mercy of another. Sarad Nukpana would love to have the job. He’d love to have me. I glanced down at the Saghred held tight in the Guardian’s hands. Colors swirled just beneath the surface, flowing, circling. Souls waiting and eager to get out.

  “A sacrifice to use it; a sacrifice to open it.” My voice only shook a little. Good for me. A lot better than I’d expected. Fear, mixed with an urge to run, blended together with a desire to bloody my own blade with royal demonic black.

  The queen inclined her head in a single, regal nod. “One must die, so that my lord and king may live again.” She gazed down at the dead elf. “He gave himself for a noble cause. Isn’t that what you teach your young ones, Paladin? Nobility and self-sacrifice?”

  “He gave nothing.” Magic spun in the air with Mychael’s words. “You took.” He was a step closer to her; I hadn’t seen him move. “And you will pay.”

  The queen laughed, bright and brittle—and nervous. She stepped back, pulling her prisoner with her. “And you will make me? I think not. You will not risk losing another of your own. That is a great weakness in you—you’re unwilling to lose even one, even when you have no chance of preventing it. Defiance in the face of futility. It is a weakness that my husband’s soul inhabiting your body will cure you of.�
�� Her gaze turned lascivious. “You will be cured of many such weaknesses—and inhibitions.”

  There were a few Volghuls around her that I could see; I was sure there were more in the dark. When it came to bad guys, there were always more in the dark.

  “Kuitak?”

  “Your will, my queen?” said a Volghul from the shadows at her right shoulder.

  “If the paladin moves or uses that magnificent voice of his again, tear out his Guardian’s throat.”

  In the blink of an eye, the Volghul had the man’s throat in his claws, and the demon queen held the Scythe poised above the Saghred.

  “I have everything I need.” Her smile spread as she looked at Mychael. “A strong and desirable body for my husband to inhabit, and the elfling to wield the Saghred for us.” She spoke without turning to a pair of Volghuls standing behind her. “Find the goblin. He is here; I have caught his scent.” She inhaled in pure pleasure. “Still delectable,” she breathed. “Bring him to me; do what you will to the human with him.”

  One of the Volghuls ran a quick black tongue over purple lips. “We hunger, Your Majesty.”

  She dismissively waved her free hand. “Then feed on him, but be quick about it.”

  My power was free to do with as I willed. No Hellgate distortion was holding me back, and the queen knew it. But the captive Guardian held the source of that power clutched in white-knuckled hands. If I tapped my Saghred-spawned power, would the Saghred take him? Would it take all of us? I had no idea what the damned rock would do.

  I knew what I wanted to do, what I had to do. That Guardian wasn’t going to die. Mychael wasn’t going to be possessed by the demon king and then had by his bitch bride. I didn’t care what I had to do to save him, but he would walk out of here alive, soul intact. We all would.

  She had the Saghred, but I was the Saghred. And I was really pissed off.

  Mychael’s hand lightly touched my arm, telling me to wait. He was buying time. We didn’t have any time; the Guardian had even less time, and the smug demon not a dozen feet in front of me was acting like she had all the time in the world. She wanted Tam here to watch.