They watched me in twitching silence.
When I was only a few steps from the vat, I knew I was in the right place. I could hear the souls of the damned packed inside. Their cries for mercy hovered right at the edge of audible without quite crossing over. But I could feel them. It made my teeth hurt.
I didn’t know how the souls had gotten there. Michael hadn’t told me the mechanics, just that the demons tricked people into making a deal and then saved their souls to snack on later. I probably didn’t want to know the rest. If these were the kinds of people who would make deals with demons, some of them had probably done some pretty horrible stuff. But they deserved a chance to make things right.
There was a pressure valve at right about eye level. A good whack from the kusari-fundo would take it right off. I took a quick look around, judging how much room I had to work with, and began to swing my weapon, steadily and deliberately building up momentum.
“Hey, guys?” I called to Darcy and Ruthanasia. “Get ready to move in a sec, okay?”
They didn’t answer. I carefully stopped the swing before turning to look over my shoulder. They were talking to each other; Ruthanasia’s back was to me, and I couldn’t even see Darcy. What in the heck were they doing?
“Guys?” I asked, and then I heard this alien hum so strong that the walls vibrated. My teeth began to chatter. And somehow it felt off to me. The vibration of a Relic felt powerful, but it didn’t hurt. This did—it felt like I was about to rattle into tiny little pieces and shatter all over the floor.
I took a half step toward Ruthanasia and Darcy, looking for the source of that horrific sound. It was Darcy. She opened her mouth, and blackness came out.
Calling them “flies” didn’t do them justice. They were about as big as butterflies, black-winged, with stingers like toothpicks. I could see them clearly from about twenty feet away; they were that big. Their wings dripped muddy brown ooze that speckled Darcy’s cheeks as they escaped from her mouth.
Ruthanasia scrambled backward as the swarm continued to erupt from Darcy’s body, forming a cloud about head height. The hum grew, drowning out the teeth-gritting noise from the vat behind me. I would have been relieved if I hadn’t been so scared.
Finally Darcy’s body just … deflated. As if there had been nothing inside but a giant swarm of flies. No bones. Nothing human.
I kept expecting her to get up, grin, and yell, “Gotcha!” Because this had to be a joke. Darcy couldn’t be a sack of bugs; she was my friend. Bugs do not force-feed you nachos and take you out shopping and make you have fun despite yourself.
But they might make you act funny. How many times had I thought she hadn’t been herself lately? Michael had been wrong. Ruthanasia wasn’t the demon. That demon attack in the bathroom had been intended to divert our suspicion to Ruthanasia, not away from her. It had worked. We’d never suspected Darcy.
I put my head into my hands and took an unsteady step right onto one of the cables. One of the spider demons chattered nervously. I whipped my head around, expecting it to pounce on my head. It didn’t. It backed away from the swarm of flies, its belly to the ground in a posture I could only describe as cringing. It was afraid.
“What the hell?” I murmured, my weapon hanging uselessly at my side. How was I supposed to fight bugs?
Ruthanasia looked up at the seething mass of demonic insects hovering over her.
“Are you nuts?” I shrieked, lurching in her direction, only to get my foot caught in the maze of wires. “Get out of here! Find Michael!”
Her face was taut with anger. “This is for Lauren,” she said, totally ignoring me.
“Ruthanasia!” I tugged my foot free, which threw me off balance and made me stagger into one of the spider things. It took a halfhearted swipe at me, ripping my sleeve. I jabbed at one of its eyes, splattering myself with more goo, but I didn’t even pause to wipe my fingers. I had to get to my friend before it was too late.
But it was. She dug into one of her pockets and came out with a derby brochure. Her knife was clutched in the other hand. I had no idea what she thought she was going to do with a knife and some paper against a swarm of bugs, but I felt pretty safe in assuming it wasn’t going to work.
The swarm sank toward her. She didn’t run, although I saw the fear on her face. Instead, I heard the unmistakable sound of a lighter being struck, and she lit the brochure on fire.
“Suck it,” she said, and then she threw the flaming paper into the swarm.
Spots danced before my eyes, either from lack of oxygen or from the light show. The flies literally burst when the flames hit them. They made a popping sound that reminded me of those little bottles people always use on New Year’s, the ones that you pull the string out of and a bunch of streamers come out the end.
Too bad there wasn’t enough fire. The flames obliterated maybe a quarter of the swarm before they went out, and then the swarm engulfed Ruthanasia. She flailed and cursed as the bugs closed in over her.
“Casey!” she shrieked. “Do something!”
What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have a giant flyswatter, I didn’t carry a lighter, and my kusari-fundo was useless against bugs. My eyes scanned the room frantically for something useful as I scrambled closer, tripping over random equipment.
“Get off her!” Michael flew through the door. His wings blazed with a pinkish light so bright that my eyes felt like they might melt.
“Michael!” I yelled. “Where have you been?”
“Chasing your butt all around town,” he snarled. I took a step back, and his face cleared a little. “I had to track Ruthanasia’s car; I can’t sense you in here.”
Then the swarm spoke. In the movies, bug beasts always took the form of a humanoid figure or maybe a face, so you could see their “mouths” move when they talked. But not this thing. It hovered in an amorphous blob, and all its insectile little mouths spoke at once. It sounded almost robotic. “Begone, Sentinel, lest you fall. You teeter on the edge,” it said.
Michael’s face tightened, his lips drawing down into a frustrated scowl. His eyes gleamed the same dull red that I remembered from the park.
“Michael!” I yelled. “Stay out of this! You don’t want me to have to fight two demons, do you?”
And then Ruthanasia gasped, “Help me!”
“Get her out of here!” I cried.
He blinked in surprise when he saw her on the ground. But he recovered from the shock quickly. Faster than fast, he swooped down and picked Ruthanasia up. Her face was pale; she clutched her hand to her chest. It looked like a lump of melted wax. I wasn’t sure if the damage was from the fire or the bugs, but either way, I couldn’t bear to look at it. I felt like a coward, but I couldn’t look at it any longer.
“I won’t leave you, Casey,” Michael said, his wings blazing brighter with his anger.
Ruthanasia began to convulse in his arms, foam dripping from her mouth. Her body shook uncontrollably, the movements so erratic that he almost dropped her.
“Please!” My voice rang out, stronger than I felt. I worried I might pee my pants, that’s how scared I was. But I’d lost Darcy already. I wasn’t about to let Ruthanasia fall too. And Michael looked like he was about to lose it. “If you don’t go, she’ll die.”
Michael kicked the wall in frustration, punching a hole into the brick. “Don’t do anything stupid, Casey. I’ll be right back.”
The light from his wings blurred into a streak that climbed the stairs. It took a moment for my eyes to recover from the bright flash that accompanied his flight, but once they did, I saw that Michael and Ruthanasia were gone.
The swarm swiveled in the air to look at me. Thousands of faceted alien eyes evaluated me and found me lacking. I wanted to cower before the swarm, throw myself on the ground and beg for mercy. This was clearly a powerful demon. What did I think I could do against it? I was nothing.
That was when I felt it—the all-too-familiar thrum of defiance building inside me. The idea of quitting
still pissed me off. Maybe these things were twisting my thoughts. But there was nothing they could threaten me with that I hadn’t made peace with a long time ago. I wasn’t afraid to die. I was afraid of not living. Before, my anger and fear had made me lash out at people I cared about, spinning me out of control. But now my anger felt focused. Now I had something really worth being angry about.
“Hunter.” The swarm drifted closer, undulating above me. The hairs on my arms instantly stood on end. “Bow down before the Lord of the Flies.”
I felt the black cloak of its will push down on me, buckling my knees. I staggered, grabbing one of the wires and tearing it out of its casing. The spider demons let out high-pitched, agonized screeches, but none of them dared come close. The swarm watched with glittering eyes as I struggled to stay upright. Heck, I couldn’t even breathe, the pressure was so strong.
“Get out,” I managed to say, but the words came out in a whisper.
The swarm darted toward me, buzzing hungrily. I felt the demon’s will push me again, smothering my desire to fight back, urging me to lie down and die. It was so tempting. Anything to make the pain stop.
“Suck it, demon,” I said, echoing Ruthanasia’s words. And suddenly I knew what to do. I had no way to defeat a demon lord. But at my back were thousands of souls crying out for a second chance. Darcy deserved it; if she’d sold her soul, she was probably in there. And Little Casey’s mom and Lauren, if that was what happened to them. If I could stand tall for just one moment despite the fact that I was scared shitless, I could give them that second chance.
I rose on quivering legs, stretching my arms toward the swarm as if to welcome it, and then I swung my kusari-fundo as hard as I could. Not toward the demon. Toward the vat. The chain wrapped around a pressure valve and tore it free.
The vat exploded. I threw my arms up to cover my face as pieces of metal rained down around me but miraculously failed to hit me. The dull murmur of the souls inside rose to a triumphant fever pitch. The demons had tricked them. Imprisoned them. Tortured them. And now they had a chance for vengeance.
They took it. The air filled with a bright, howling light. The buzzing voice of the Lord of the Flies turned into a howl of agony as the swarm was buffeted by flickering humanoid shapes. The air filled with lancelike streaks of light; the spider demons crouched in corners and shrieked in panic and pain. I heard a sound like rain and couldn’t figure out what it was until I saw the flies pattering onto the ground, covering the cement floor.
“You!” The remaining flies turned to me, and I felt the anger of the demon within. Its fury hit me so hard that I slammed back against the machinery, and twisted metal punctured my skin in various places. Darting white lights kept striking the swarm, injuring the bugs, but there were still enough to take me down. I staggered, trying to flee, but there was nowhere to go.
The swarm darted toward me, and I screamed, falling to the ground and holding my arms overhead. White light streaked before my eyes, forming a barrier that the Lord of the Flies struck against, howling in anger. Empty insect hulls fell to the ground in a torrent, and the swarm still battered the wall before me, desperate to get to me.
The light of the barrier flickered. I could see the souls within growing dimmer and dimmer as the demon ground them down.
I swore I heard a whisper then, and a thin layer of light settled on me like a blanket. Or maybe a shield. “Get out, Casey.”
Darcy. She’d been in that vat after all. I didn’t know how the demon had gotten to her, and right then I didn’t care. She was my friend. And friends don’t abandon each other.
I thought about everything that had happened. Everything I’d lost—Darcy, and the kids with cancer who hadn’t made it, and a year of dead time I’d never get back. I thought about Rachel and Kyle and my insane parents. Ruthanasia. Michael. I wanted my life back, and I was ready to fight for it.
My knees shook so hard, I could barely stand; my stomach heaved with terror. The pancakes stayed down through a sheer act of willpower. But I still stood. Before me, Darcy flickered one last time.
Her light went out.
The Lord of the Flies howled his triumph. The swarm that settled on me was maybe a tenth of its former size, but it was still enough to cover my skin. I felt the weight of monstrous insect bodies on my face. Their legs scrabbled at my lips, trying to work their way into my mouth. I felt them crawling in my clothes.
I felt a surge of panic. Any moment, they’d start eating me alive or something equally horrific.
But I’d won.
They’d thrown everything they could at me, and I’d been terrified every step of the way, and I’d stood up to them anyway. I—the poor damaged cancer girl—had faced repeated demon attacks and lived. And now I understood why I’d been chosen: I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Michael had said that one day I wouldn’t need an object to make a Relic. That comment hadn’t made sense to me at the time, but it did now.
“I’m ready,” I said.
The flies scrabbled into my mouth. Their oily, rotten taste made me gag. I struggled against the urge to vomit, taking a deep breath. With the breath came that galloping rush of electric energy from the Between, the same white light that made up Michael’s wings. But now it filled my entire body with life and motion and power. If I held on too long, it would wash me away, but now I knew how to ride it—like pain—how to let myself go and just allow the energy to pour into me, because the pain would be over soon, and if nothing else, I knew how to endure.
A glow filled the room, and it was me. My body hummed with power as I opened myself up fully to the Between. I didn’t feel scared anymore. This was where I belonged.
The flies disintegrated. I could hear the frustrated howl of the Lord of the Flies as its body turned to ash and floated to the ground. And as the last insect fell, there was a clap like thunder as the Lord of the Flies popped out of existence, and the air consumed the empty space.
The room was still and silent. My body no longer hummed; I let the electric energy go back to where it had come from. The motionless flies were already starting to sink into the cement, leaving no evidence behind. The spider demons were gone, destroyed by the avenging souls, or maybe just hiding. At this point, I really didn’t care.
The souls were gone, including Darcy. I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten to thank her, or ask what had happened, but she had to be okay, right? I hadn’t felt any cosmic stairway to heaven open up and carry them away to nirvana, or whatever was supposed to happen. But I hadn’t felt them being sucked into a whirling vortex either. Hopefully, they’d gotten exactly what they deserved—a second chance. I wasn’t sure what that would be—an afterlife, maybe? Or reincarnation? But whatever it was, it had to be better than ending up as a midafternoon demon snack.
I went upstairs and out the back door into the fresh nighttime air. I’d never been so happy to be alive. After everything I’d been through, that was saying a lot.
The bright lights of the convenience store were a shock after being in that dark basement for what had felt like hours. I pushed open the door, shielding my watery eyes with one hand. The clerk eyed me carefully from behind his shield of Plexiglas. I probably looked like the average pothead on a munchies run. I tried a smile and a wave, but he only scowled and dropped his hands out of sight under the counter, where I was sure he had a gun or an alarm. Maybe both.
Caffeine would make me feel less like a member of the zombie hordes. I grabbed a soda, paid for it, and immediately cracked it open and drained half the bottle in one long swallow. I burped. Then I fainted.
How embarrassing.
A few weeks later, I emerged into the alleyway behind the convention center, sweaty and elated and generally happy to be alive. The charity bout to raise money for Ruthanasia’s reconstructive hand surgery after her tragic “fireworks accident” had been a lot of work to put together but totally worth it. We’d lost the bout, which was no surprise, given that Ruthanasia couldn’t skate
and poor Darcy was decorating milk cartons and Missing Children boards. I couldn’t decide if I’d lost or won the battle with the Lord of the Flies, but I was still standing, and that felt momentous.
“Case!” Kyle sprinted out the doors with a huge handful of receipts clutched in front of him like a weird bouquet. “We made over fifteen thousand dollars tonight! Holla!”
“Woo!” I clenched my fist and pumped it. “Couldn’t have done it without you, man.”
“You’re right.” He grinned. “And totally my pleasure. I’m worming my way into Michael’s good graces so he’ll take me on as an assistant coach. Then you’ll have to follow my every command. You know that, right?”
I snorted. “Fat chance.”
He mock-grumbled at me. “Fine. See if I take you out for pizza.”
“Did someone say the magic word?” came a voice behind us.
I whipped around to see Michael grinning at us from the doorway. He’d been maniacally happy ever since he’d found me unconscious in the convenience store. Like the kind of happy that makes people wonder about your sanity and makes the cops question you at length about the disappearance of one of your skaters. But somehow his brother the computer genius had manufactured a pretty tight alibi for him, so the cops had been left with nothing but vague suspicions about Michael’s weird behavior. We couldn’t exactly tell them that he was elated to have racked up his first completed mission as a guardian of the universe.
“I dunno, dude. Is the magic word ‘pizza’?” asked Kyle.
“Yep.”
“Then I did.”
“Cool.” I was starting to feel a little invisible—and a little pouty over it—when Michael picked me up and swung me around in a dizzying circle. Then, with my skates dangling a good six inches off the ground, he kissed me. I couldn’t figure out if my head was swimming from the spin or from the lip-lock. I didn’t care.
“Ahem.” Kyle cleared his throat loudly, and Michael and I reluctantly released each other.
Demon Derby Page 22
