by Simon Hawke
"When it happens, it will happen very quickly," Modred said. "With any luck, they won't be in time to make much difference."
"There's that word again," said Loomis. "That's really what it all comes down to, isn't it? Luck. This whole thing's just a crapshoot."
"Much like police work often is," said Modred.
Loomis snorted. "Yeah. Tell me about it. Damn. I knew I should have stayed in Chicago and retired."
The entity appeared with a sudden rush of wind and a swirling of crackling thaumaturgic discharges. Wulfgar maintained rigid control over it as it bellowed with rage and he concentrated all his willpower on the next stage of the spell. The creature thrashed within the pentagram marked off on the floor and then it seemed to blur, its form becoming indistinct, shadowed by a ghost image as it began to twin. It was working perfectly so far. Like a cell dividing, it split apart into two identical, slightly smaller creatures, though no less fearsome and ferocious.
The hammering started on the wall from the neighboring apartment. Wulfgar was concentrating so hard, he didn't even hear it. Sweat streamed down his face as the beast solidified into two distinct forms.
"Seek," said Wulfgar.
The creatures disappeared. As did another creature that was crouching outside, beneath the front window of the apartment. Blaize went streaking across the lawn, running harder than he had ever run before, heading toward the nearest contact point where a patrol car waited, the officers inside it drinking coffee and convinced that the entire exercise was a futile waste of time.
The first demon appeared smack in the middle of the plaza, bellowing like a freight train. It stood on squat, muscular legs ending in cloven hooves, its powerful, apelike torso with its long, muscular arms almost twice the length of its lower extremities, its lupine head with its snapping jaws and glowing eyes jerking back and forth as it howled, seeking victims. It raked out with its sharp claws and disemboweled the nearest man as the woman he was with screamed in frozen terror, and then she too fell victim to the slashing claws. Within seconds, two people were dead and the demon bounded toward others in the plaza as the square became filled with screams and people fleeing hysterically in all directions, knocking into each other and falling, some never to get up again as the entity descended upon them.
Loomis had his unit parked across from the plaza, less than fifty yards away. "Jesus!" he said, drawing his weapon and starting to open the door. Modred pulled him back.
"Stay here!" he commanded, and then flung open the door and bolted out. Billy was out the door in the same instant, but before Kira could leave the car, the radio came alive, the officer shouting that a demonic entity had just materialized in Canyon Road, where the shops were open late and people were crowding the street, promenading among the cafés.
"Two of them!" said Kira, stunned.
Billy and Modred were already out and running onto the havoc-ridden plaza, within sight of the demon. With all the screaming they would never hear her. There was no other choice. The runestone in her palm glowing brightly, Kira teleported, leaving Loomis in the car alone with Gomez and the enchanted paragriffin sculpture, Ramses. In the next instant, the radio came on again as an excited voice reported "Unit Nineteen, Unit Nineteen, we've got contact! Repeat, we've got contact! Positive report from a thaumagene in Sector 9."
"That's Blaize!" said Gomez.
"Holy Mother of God," said Loomis, grabbing for the mike.
"Nineteen, this is Loomis! I want the address of the contact, dammit!"
As the officer in Unit Nineteen gave the address, Gomez leapt from the car, shouting, "Come on, Ramses!"
"Wait a minute!" Loomis shouted. "Where the hell are you going?"
But Gomez was already out and Ramses had leapt out the open window. As Loomis watched, the cat leapt onto the sculpture's back and Ramses took flight, carrying the thaumagene effortlessly.
"God damn it!" Loomis swore, smashing the steering wheel with his palm. He drew his stag-handled .357 Magnum and leapt from the car, running onto the plaza.
Wulfgar sat on the floor, his entire body shaking with the strain of controlling two demonic entities simultaneously. He was bathed in sweat. His hands were clenched tightly into fists and his jaws were clamped together, his lips drawn back, exposing his teeth as he grimaced with the effort.
His eyes were squeezed shut, but his brain registered a double set of images as he saw through the eyes of the two demonic entities. And then he saw them.
Two of them, running toward the entity in the plaza. And then the third, materializing in the middle of the street on Canyon Road.
That one, he thought. And he released control.
His body jerked forward, as if suddenly released from a strong pull it had been straining against. He collapsed, overcome with a hollow, vertiginous sensation, and for an instant, he seemed to feel as if parts of him were falling away in two separate directions. He fought to keep his mind from fragmenting entirely.
He propped himself back up, moving as if he were a marionette with its strings cut, his motions jerky. His hand closed around the shotgun by his side. With an enormous effort of will, he stood, breathing heavily, and gasped out a teleportation spell. He disappeared.
As the first demon appeared out of nowhere in the plaza and bedlam erupted, Megan Leary brought up her radio and quickly called in her backup. Chambers and Mason were the closest, being stationed just down San Francisco Street. Rosowitz and Stanley were already running full tilt down the stairs. With so many people running around down there, teleporting even such a short distance was out of the question. People around her in the outdoor lounge atop the hotel were shoving against her, crowding up against the balcony walls for a better look at what was happening below. Someone jostled her and she stumbled forward, dropping the radio. It fell to the street below and shattered.
She swore furiously and, in the next instant, from the speakers of the portable police band radio on the patio table behind her, where Stanley had placed it so they could monitor the calls, she heard the report of the second demon entity in Canyon Road. Then someone stumbled against the table in the press to get up to the balcony wall and that radio, too, toppled off the table and fell to the floor, where it broke and fell silent.
There was no way she could contact any of the others. And having arrived as undercover agents, their rental cars were not equipped with radios. They had only their small portable Bureau units and Megan had lost hers. She was now completely hemmed in by onlookers rushing to the wall to see what was happening below. Shouting and pummeling at them, she tried to fight her way clear, but couldn't, so she drew her pistol and fired three shots into the air.
With cries of alarm, the crowd surged back from her and she teleported to Canyon Road.
Modred and Billy spread out and came at the demon from both sides. Modred had torn off his hat and the emerald set in his forehead flared with a brilliant flash as a bright green bolt of thaumaturgic force lanced out from it and struck the demon. The creature bellowed in pain and charged him, smoke curling from its shoulder, which was almost completely burned away. Modred couldn't believe it. Such a blast should have surely shaken the Dark One and destroyed his concentration. Yet still the demon came!
It was almost upon him when the creature was suddenly grabbed from behind by a huge knight in a full suit of armor, with a sword at his side and a shield on his arm. He tossed the demon away from him with no apparent effort, using only one arm, and the creature flew about ten feet and landed with a jarring impact on its back. Immediately it got back up. The air was filled with the sounds of people screaming and the creature howling like a banshee. Modred let fly with another bolt that struck the demon squarely in the chest. It flew backward from the force of the blast, yet as Modred watched with disbelief, it struggled to its feet again. Its mad eyes flared and twin, bright red bolts of thaumaturgic force lanced out at Modred. He leapt to the side and rolled as he hit the ground, feeling the heat of the energy bolts pass by him.
; The knight had drawn his broadsword and its steel blade gleamed with brilliant white light as it descended in a sweeping arc upon the creature, cleaving its skull, crunching through bone and continuing through to the base of its neck, splitting its entire head right down the middle. The beast fell to the ground and remained there, motionless. In the next instant the knight vanished and Billy once more stood in his place. He rushed over to Modred.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," said Modred, picking himself up off the ground. He stared at the inert form of the demon. "I don't understand. How—how could he possibly have maintained the concentration of his spell under an attack like that?"
"I know," Billy said. "He should have lost it. The demon should have dissipated. And yet look at it, it's still lying there!"
"It's dead," said Modred. "How in the hell can it be dead? The spell should have simply dissipated and it should have disappeared!"
Loomis came running up to them. He looked down at the creature's corpse, then he glanced at Billy, a strange expression on his face. "I don't know what the hell I just saw," he said, "but we've still got trouble! There's another one in Canyon Road!"
"Kira!" Modred said, realizing for the first time that she wasn't with them.
"She went after it," said Loomis.
"My God, I know what he did!" said Billy. "Hurry, there's no time to lose!"
He teleported.
"Hold it!" shouted Rosowitz as he and Stanley came running across the plaza. Chamber and Mason were racing toward them from the other side of the square.
Modred vanished, leaving only Loomis standing there. Loomis acted as if neither Billy nor Modred had ever even been there. He glanced down at the demon's corpse, then looked up at the Bureau agents.
"It's dead," he said to them. "Good work, boys. You got 'im."
Rosowitz and Stanley exchanged confused looks.
Kira was almost run over by the fleeing crowd as she materialized in the middle of Canyon Road. People were screaming and running in blind panic down the street as the bellowing demon entity came bounding after them, bodies strewn in its wake. As the fleeing crowd passed her, Kira held up her hand, palm out, and the glowing sapphire runestone gave off a brilliant, blinding flash of energy as a bright blue bolt of thaumaturgic force beamed out from it and struck the charging creature.
It screamed as the energy bolt slammed into it and flew backward, but immediately got up again, howling with rage, its entire upper body charred and its right arm missing.
"Holy shit!" said Kira. She raised her arm again and the runestone blazed forth another bolt of force.
Megan Leary came running up behind her and stopped dead in her tracks as she took in the scene. For a moment she was totally confused. Kira was the necromancer, and yet Kira was fighting the demon entity! She was throwing out tremendous bolts of thaumaturgic force, expending an incredible amount of power, and it seemed not to be depleting her at all!
Completely taken aback, Megan simply stood there for a moment, and as it suddenly dawned on her that she had been all wrong about Kira, all wrong about everything, out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement. She turned to see a handsome, strangely golden-skinned man with long, flaming red hair down to his shoulders. He was dressed in a black robe and he held a riotgun in his hands. He was moving unsteadily, as if in a sort of daze, and as she realized that he was about to fire at Kira, she threw her arms out in front of her, fingers splayed, and a blue aura of energy crackled from her fingers as the bolt of force shot out across the street and struck Wulfgar.
Megan saw him stagger, but incredibly, he did not fall! He turned toward her, swinging the shotgun around, and fired. The blast took Megan full in the chest.
With her third bolt of energy, Kira finally felled the creature and then she heard the shotgun blast behind her. She saw Megan hurled backward by the force of the blast and she saw the Dark One. Immediately she raised her arm and the runestone flashed again as the force beam shot out, but it passed through empty air. An instant before it would have struck him, Wulfgar disappeared.
Kira swore and ran to where Megan lay in the center of the street. The people had all fled. The street was empty as Kira crouched down over the fallen agent.
"I . . . fucked up . . ." gasped Megan.
"Hold on!" said Kira, holding her hand palm down over the ruin of Megan's chest and hoping desperately that there was something the runestone could do to repair the horrible damage. But even as she did so, Megan's eyes glazed over and she was gone.
Wulfgar materialized back inside his apartment, clutching at his chest in pain. The robe was charred where Megan's bolt had struck him and his flesh was badly burned. So close, he thought, fury consuming him. So close! He had failed! He had not seen Kira destroy his demon, he had seen only that woman with the blond hair, attacking him—a human adept, attacking him!—and he had shot her, then he saw Kira turning toward him and he teleported instantly, barely avoiding the much more powerful bolt of force that had been hurled at him from the runestone. Barely in time. He would heal, he could still escape, they had no idea where he was, but he needed to recover his fragmented subconscious selves . . .
As he concentrated, grimacing with pain, a look of horror came over his face. He couldn't reestablish contact! It could only mean one thing. They were gone! Both gone! Panic flooded into him. He already felt the weakness overwhelming him, the dizzying sensation of having lost an essential part of himself, and he tried to think what he could do, but his thoughts were already becoming disorganized and he found that he could no longer concentrate, could no longer even think clearly. His mind desperately attempted to form concepts, but all he was aware of was the pain, the loss, the terrifying sense of being incomplete, forever mentally crippled—
The front window exploded in a shower of glass as a bright, gleaming, gold and silver object came bursting through it. With a screech, Gomez launched himself from Ramses's back and landed on Wulfgar, his claws raking wildly as he yowled with feline fury. Wulfgar threw his arms up in an instinctive attempt to protect his face even as he felt one of his eyes being clawed from its socket. He cried out and fell backward, with Gomez clinging to him, howling and spitting and clawing at his face, and then he found an opening and fastened his teeth in Wulfgar's jugular vein.
Blood shot out in an arcing fountain, spurting high as Gomez tore savagely at Wulfgar's throat. A horrible gurgling came from the necromancer and he thrashed desperately on the floor, unable to dislodge the cat. Gradually, his thrashing grew weaker and weaker, until he finally lay still in a spreading pool of blood.
Gomez kept tearing at his throat, growling and digging in with his claws, until he heard a familiar voice behind him.
"Let him go, Catseye. Let him go. He's dead."
Gomez stopped and raised his bloody face from the ruin that was Wulfgar's throat. Blaize was standing behind him, having leapt in through the shattered window.
"Damn, Gomez," said Blaize. "You got him!"
"Yeah," Gomez said with satisfaction. "I got him." He looked down at the necromancer's inert form. "That was for Paulie, you son of a bitch," he said.
Someone started pounding furiously on the wall. "That's it!" A voice shouted from the neighboring apartment. "I've had it with you people! I'm calling the police!"
Joe Loomis sat in his office, putting the finishing touches on his report. There were a lot of people waiting for it, important people, people who wanted answers. They would get their answers, answers that they could accept, even if they weren't honest ones. It was not the first time he had ever left anything out of a report, but it was the first time a report that he had written was almost a total fabrication.
He lit up a cigarette and sat back to read it over. The Bureau agents got almost all the credit for solving the case. He gave Rosowitz and Stanley credit for using their abilities as adepts to dispatch the demon in the plaza, when they hadn't even had time to throw a single spell. Both men knew that his report was nothing but a load
of shit, but neither of them was stupid enough to dispute it. They both knew what this would mean to their careers. They hadn't managed to break the nefarious "cult" that the Bureau was so obsessed with, but they had been largely instrumental in solving the "Demon Killer" murders of Santa Fe and that made for no small change.
The Bureau agents had questioned Kira's involvement, as well as that of the mysterious adepts they had seen at Paul's house, but Loomis, having gotten his story straight with Paul, had simply explained to them that the "adepts" they had seen had actually been several of Paul's students in the thaumaturgy program. He had been working with them at his home, not an entirely unusual thing for a professor of a small and highly exclusive graduate program to do, and a spell he had been demonstrating had backfired on him, causing temporary blindness. They had simply been helping Kira get him to a doctor. One of them, the "albino" they referred to, had stayed behind at Paul's request to call Loomis and explain what had happened, and when they came busting in, they had simply missed him by a few moments because he had teleported back to the college to let Paul's office know about "the accident." It sounded reasonably plausible and they had bought it.
As for Kira's ability to resist Leary's spell of compulsion, Loomis had a ready explanation for that as well, thanks to Paul's help. Kira had a freak natural immunity. Paul had explained that there were, in fact, some people, though it was very rare, on whom certain types of psychologically manipulative spells simply didn't work, much as there were people who could not be hypnotized. Megan Leary, rest her soul, had simply reached the wrong conclusion and the whole thing had proceeded from there on that "mistaken assumption." However, Loomis told them, he had seen no need to include that in his report. The agents had agreed, since not mentioning that they were pursuing the wrong suspect made them look much better.
