Beside her, Dag shifted, his gaze moving over her with obvious concern, but she couldn’t do much to reassure him. She couldn’t even reassure herself. Something was so very, very wrong. She felt it in her bones.
Obviously, they all knew something was wrong with this meeting; the eight of them wouldn’t be here otherwise. But this was a wrongness that didn’t quite fall in with the kind of wrong they were expecting. Something else was going on, something that seethed beneath the surface of the room’s energy, like a great dark snake stalking its prey. If she listened closely to the sound waves beneath the buzz, she swore she could hear it hiss.
She laid her hand on Dag’s leg, trying to think of what to tell him, how to describe the sensation crawling under her skin, but he had his gaze focused on the stage like most of the others in the auditorium. She wanted to shout to get his attention, but she couldn’t even manage a whisper. It was like her voice had become locked inside her and she couldn’t find a key.
“And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen,” the man at the podium intoned, “it is my pleasure to introduce the organizer of this event, the inspiration for good works around the globe, and today’s keynote speaker, Mr. Richard Foye-Carver.”
The audience stood to applaud. The move should have made it impossible for supershort Kylie to even see the stage, let alone the tall, fit man currently striding across it, one arm lifted to wave to the crowd. Providence, though, had carved a path through the bodies, leaving her a perfect sight line to the man of the hour.
She could see every detail as if she occupied a much closer spot than her seat at the back of the room. She saw his perfectly coiffed, elegantly graying hair and his expertly tailored suit. She saw the healthy tan of his skin and the flashing white of his disarming smile. She even saw the way he leaned down to shake hands with a few attendees who approached the stage for the chance to bask in the fame and glory that surrounded his noble acts.
She saw all of that, but beneath it, she saw something else.
As if she viewed a data construct or a hidden code, Kylie stared at the man with a hazy green veil before her eyes. The filter seemed to blur his outer appearance, make it vaguely translucent, and show her an image of what rested inside.
The sight made her want to scream.
Her hand flew to her mouth, instinctively protecting against the quick rise of nausea. Bile choked her and her mouth flooded with sour saliva as the thing seethed and writhed beneath the skin of the man. She had no words to describe it, nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference for the mass of rotten, festering evil that hid within the photogenic masculine exterior. She couldn’t name it, but she knew instinctively what it wasn’t.
It wasn’t human, and it wasn’t something they had been prepared to face.
Clinging to Dag’s hand, she used every bit of strength she could muster to pull him down to her. Of course, she couldn’t force a Guardian to move, so she had to wait until he turned his attention toward her and leaned in close, a clear mask of concern molding his features.
“What is it?”
Kylie lifted a hand and pointed to the stage.
“Demon.”
Chapter Eighteen
Got zol af im onshikn fun di tsen makes di beste.
God should visit on him the best of the Ten Plagues.
Dag’s first reaction was denial, simple and instantaneous. He and his brothers had discussed the Seven at length. They knew Uhlthor had been freed but lacked the strength to take his full form, and they knew the goal of this action by the Order was to free Shaab-Na from its prison. Neither of them could have entered this room without the power of a major sacrifice.
And Kylie did not know what a real Demon was. She had thought the lowly drude qualified, when it was barely more than an unthinking insect compared to the evil of the Seven. She could not know the reality of a Demon.
Yet she stared at the stage as if the gate to hell itself had opened before her. Her skin had paled to a hue so white, he feared she might faint at any moment. She shook from head to toe, fine tremors he didn’t believe she even noticed, and her dark eyes had gone stark and wide, her pupils so dilated he could barely see the chocolate brown of her irises.
She looked as if she had seen …
A Demon.
Scowling, he turned his gaze toward the front of the room and opened his sight to the man on the stage.
“Nazgahchuhl.”
He spat the name and looked immediately to his brothers. This event they had not prepared for. Another of the Seven had been freed from his prison and had hid among the humans while awaiting his moment to strike. The Corruptor had been using the body of the Hierophant to walk among humanity and the Guardians had not seen the truth.
Shame and rage flooded through him. He and his brothers had failed to respond to a Demon’s rising, had allowed one of the Seven to gather its supporters and arrange this complex and massive strike against humanity. And now his own mate was in danger.
At the center of the stage, the Demon in the man’s body spread his arms to encompass the entire audience and raised his voice to allow every word to reverberate through the sound system. “Thank you, friends, for the enthusiasm of your welcome, and allow me also to thank each and every one of you here in this room for the enormous contribution you are about to make to the future of this world.”
Dag tensed, ready to leap forward, when the lights blinked out and everything descended into hell.
* * *
This is. So. Not. Good.
Kylie saw the lights blink out and instinctively dropped to the floor. She couldn’t have explained why, because it wasn’t like she suddenly came under attack from a flock of pigeons, but her butt hit concrete a split second before Dag roared out his battle cry.
She felt the rush of air under his wings while her eyes tried to adjust to the dark and realized once and for all that the excrement and the bladed wind machine had just become very close acquaintances. She and the rest of the humans in this auditorium had just come under attack from a Demon.
She knew Dag had doubted her at first, but when he’d seen what she saw, he’d spat out a name that made her skin crawl. She had no doubt she’d been correct, and no idea how this changed their carefully laid plans.
Who was it who had come up with the whole “splitting up” part of the plan? Because right at that moment, she wanted to give that person a good, swift kick in the tokhes.
Built like a theater, the convention center auditorium lacked windows, so when the lights went out, it became black as pitch. Kylie could literally not see her hand in front of her face, not even when she waved it around close enough that she could feel the breeze it stirred on her skin.
She shouldn’t have worried, though, because a source of light presented itself soon enough, in the form of the sickly, putrid red light of the energy four robed nocturnis directed into four corners of the room. Well, it looked like they’d been right about one thing.
Patsh zikh in tuches un schrei, “hooray!” Slap your butt and yell, “hooray!” It might end up being the only thing they got right, but it could prove to be the most important.
Gathering the slightly bent and worn edges of her courage, Kylie pushed herself to her feet and faced the nocturni in her corner of the room. He stood perhaps twenty feet away, his face illuminated by the light of his tainted magical energy. She could see the malevolent excitement in his eyes and the cruel line of his mouth as he chanted something she didn’t understand and had no desire to translate. She just wanted it to stop.
She inhaled deeply and reached inside herself, finding the spark of magic at her core. This time it leaped immediately to life, going from ember to blaze in a blinding flare of pale green light. She accepted the surge of energy with gratitude, letting the magic flow through her, under her skin, and down her arms until her fingertips itched like a thousand bug bites.
Then she raised her hands and let it loose.
It struck the nocturni in the sid
e, catching him off guard and making him cry out not in pain, but in anger. His gaze swung toward her, but his hands remained pointed at the swirling vortex of darkened energy at the end of his stream of magic. Instead of responding to her attack he shouted something and another robed figure rushed out of the darkness toward her.
Kylie yelped and dodged, managing to put a row of chairs between her and her attacker, but it interrupted her concentration, and her hold on the casting nocturni broke apart. Damn it. She had to stop that portal.
Unable to see in the dark, her attacker ran right into the row of chairs and tumbled head over heels into a tangle of plastic and metal. Chairs slid and skittered across the floor, giving Kylie enough time to run to the end of the seating area and into the open outer aisle. It made her more vulnerable, but it also gave her a lot more room to maneuver.
Her gaze zipped around the room looking for Dag, finally catching sight of him at the front of the room. He and Kees seemed to be attempting to catch the Hierophant/Demon host in a pincer move, approaching the inhuman entity with wary caution. She didn’t want to distract him from an enemy she knew was a lot more powerful than the one she faced, but darn it, she could use a little help here.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one. The initial buzz of confusion caused by the loss of light had turned into widespread panic when the magic had begun to fly. People screamed and shouted, pushing and shoving as they tried to rush toward the nearest exits. The ushers continued to block the way, erecting some kind of magic barricade that contained the audience to the center of the room. Like cattle in a pen.
She pressed herself against a concrete wall to avoid the pushing and shoving of overwrought conference attendees. It really seemed like that was something the Wardens should have planned for a little better. She’d give up any one of those defensive spells Wynn had taught her for something that would just freeze the mass of humanity in place.
And make them stop screaming. Do not forget to stop the screaming.
An odd, low popping noise reverberated from the far corner of the room. Immediately, Kylie’s gaze swung in that direction in time to see another swirling vortex of energy splinter open like a miniature star gone nova. A moment later, deformed figures sprang forth into the auditorium, long, claw-tipped arms swinging out to catch human prey, huge maws opening to show rows and rows of dripping, threatening teeth. They looked like sharks and gorillas and psychopathic dust bunnies all rolled up into one slavering, grasping bundle of evil.
And they kept coming.
She heard Ella scream, a sound of mingled pain and frustration, and knew she must be hurt in order to have allowed the portal in her quadrant to open. She needed help, but first Kylie would have to ensure her own area didn’t add to the nightmare.
Screams of panic had turned to abject terror and agony as the demonic minions began to feed. She could hear the crunching of bones and a wet, sucking, tearing sound that she didn’t even want to know the source of. Keeping her eye on the prize, she quickly found the nocturni she had already jolted once and began pushing through the crowd to get to him.
She could see the edges of the vortex before him begin to glow, and she knew she didn’t have much time. Raising both hands, she began casting as she ran, concentrating on forming the bubble Ella had said would trap a fellow caster and turn his own spell against him. For a moment, she thought she saw a shimmer begin, but then someone knocked into her from the side, interrupting her concentration and snapping the spell in two.
Well, fuck it, she thought. She didn’t know enough about magic anyway. She’d had less than a week to practice the easiest of those spells, and Jews weren’t supposed to be doing magic, anyway. As a half-Jew, she shouldn’t be surprised if her magic turned out to be half-assed. Luckily, her brain was her most potent weapon, and it was still working at full capacity.
Pouring on a burst of speed, she flew toward the portal-opening nocturni, hands outstretched as if ready to trap him in a renewed burst of magical energy. He looked at her briefly and bared his teeth in a taunting smile, but Kylie had her own kind of magic. At the last moment, she dropped her hands, grasped the back of a hard, molded plastic and metal chair, and swung it with all her might at the nocturni’s head. There was a satisfying crack just before he crumpled to the concrete.
The vortex winked out with a shriek of protest. She didn’t know if the sound came from the aborted portal itself, or from whatever had been waiting to cross through it, but either way, it gave her the willies.
Dropping the chair, she looked around, trying to judge a path to Ella’s side. Unfortunately, a multiplying sea of demonic minions stood between them.
What was she supposed to do now? She’d try blasting the portal closed, but clearly magic was not the way she was going to win this fight. What other tools did she have in her little bag of tricks?
She still had the drive-away salt in the pocket of her jeans, but no way did she think the two small pouches’ worth that Wynn had provided would be enough to get her through all those monsters. She’d have a better chance with a handy trailing vine, a leopard-spotted loincloth, and a ululating cry. A better plan must be had.
The scent of blood had begun to taint the air, and although the back of the room remained safer than the front where Ella had been stationed, the murderous creatures had begun to push away from their portal and deeper into the room. This seemed to be keeping Knox and Spar busy, as they tried to take out the demonic minions while avoiding the innocent human bystanders who kept getting in the way. The poor clueless audience members just didn’t know where to run and a few of them inevitably ended up throwing themselves between a Guardian and his prey. Only quick reflexes and solemnly sworn vows kept those fools alive.
Maybe she would have to resort to her half-assed magic after all.
If there was one thing Kylie could do better than almost anyone in the world, it was tweak code. She could always seem to find the subtle little glitches in a string of computer commands that kept a system from operating the way she wanted it to, and she had become renowned for finding the simplest, sneakiest little twists that got her the perfect result. If her magic had first shown itself in this ability, maybe that meant she could turn it back onto the magic itself.
Narrowing her eyes, Kylie reached once more for her magic, letting it fill her up and tingle in her fingertips. Then she brought to mind the shield spell Wynn had hammered into her brain and looked for the code.
It almost jumped out at her. She felt like she had just landed in the Matrix, seeing data scrolling before her in endless streams. She could see the code of the magic and knew exactly where it needed to change to perform her will. A quick twist of her mind, and the spell that flowed when she raised her fingers was something a little different from Wynn’s protective shield. Instead, it became a battering ram of vivid, living energy that she held out before her and used to slice through the crowd.
Everything it touched slid away and to the sides. She felt a little like Moses parting the Red Sea, only she didn’t have the entire nation of Israel at her back, and she only needed to get as far as the other side of the room.
Not understanding exactly what she had done or how long it would last, Kylie held tight to her magic and ran. She didn’t bother to test herself too rigorously, ducking and dodging around the largest and hungriest-looking of the monsters and taking the path of least resistance to Ella’s side. That still amounted to a lot of resistance. Luckily, for the moment, nothing seemed able to cut through her supershield.
She took a detour to edge around the still gaping portal. The only mercy about the thing was that it remained its original size and shape, meaning only one entity could pass through it at a time. Any more and they’d end up clogging the drain, like some kind of preternaturally evil hair ball. Still, not something a living person wanted to get in front of. So far, everyone who had was dead.
Kylie averted her eyes and pointedly ignored the sticky slickness under her feet as she finally set eyes on
Ella. The Warden lay under a row of chairs, unmoving, and bleeding sluggishly from a wound in her side. Luck had stuck with her, because without the chairs making her difficult to spot, she’d have wound up brunch for the forces of Darkness a long time ago.
Hurrying to her friend’s side, Kylie reached down to feel for a pulse, just to be certain. It beat strong and steady against her fingers, but that left their little army of good guys down one valuable soldier. And that farkakta portal to Demonland was still wide open.
Maybe it was time for a new plan.
For once in her life, being small was turning out to be a big advantage for Kylie. It made it a lot easier for her to hide and scurry and escape notice than most of the other people in the room, not to mention the ginormous winged Guardians who currently dove in and out of the fray, ripping apart any demonic creature they could lay their claws on. The continuously replenishing horde kept them so busy that no one had yet noticed Ella had fallen.
Certainly her mate, preoccupied with the big Demonic kahuna in the front of the room, had not. If he had, he’d have been at her side by now. That was a good thing, because Kylie and the rest of the innocent people here really needed him and Dag to keep Nazgahchuhl occupied, otherwise this battle would already be over, and Kylie would not have been on the winning side.
At the moment, she still wasn’t certain she was on the winning side, but she definitely wasn’t ready to give up. A survey of the room showed only the one active portal, so that was a heck of a lot better than the alternative, and it indicated that Wynn and Fil had fared better with their opponents than Ella had with hers. Go, team.
Right, a new plan, Kylie reminded herself. Number one had to be to close that portal. Cutting off the flow would mean Knox and Spar could concentrate on really taking out the summoned creatures, allowing Kylie, Wynn, and Fil to figure out a way to begin getting the survivors to safety. At least the ushers had abandoned their posts at the doors. Kylie had a feeling they had not been cult members, but staff bespelled to follow commands. Once a demon creature had taken one of them as a little snack, the rest had scattered into the crowd, leaving the doors locked, but unattended.
Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series) Page 25
