Baleful Betrayal

by John Corwin

  "We tripped a ward!" Carswell shouted.

  "That was a demon ward," Tyler said. His eyes widened. "I hope to God your people can fight."

  "Weapons free," George called.

  Carswell and his people drew silver swords and formed a line just as something crawled from the inky mass on the floor.

  I gasped as the creature stepped into the light. With at least a dozen legs coated in shiny black chitin, it stood as tall as a Great Dane. Each leg bristled with spiky fur and terminated in pointy spikes that clinked with every step. The monster unleashed a screech that nearly sent my skin crawling off my body.

  "Oh, shit." Tyler backed away. "That's a crawler."

  It skittered toward Carswell's team.

  "A very descriptive name," I said in a dry tone. "What, precisely, does it do besides crawl and turn my knees to jelly?"

  "Scuttles, shrieks, and devours souls."

  "Can we squash it?" I asked.

  "I have a better suggestion." Tyler cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Run!"

  "Hold your ground!" Carswell commanded his people. "Prepare to engage with lancers."

  The creature closed to within several yards of the Custodians.

  Carswell swung forward his arm. "Fire!"

  Silver darts whistled through the air and pinged off the crawler's armor.

  "You can't kill that thing with darts and swords," Tyler said. "Its armor is too tough."

  Sticks removed two short rods from within his suit and raced toward the monster. He leapt, brandished the rods in each hand, and flicked them. They extended to thick staffs, each one with a curving blade at the end. The crawler shrieked and pounced. Sticks whirled his staffs and somehow knocked the creature aside in mid-air.

  The crawler's claws scraped across the concrete like nails on a chalkboard, drawing sparks and making the hairs on my head stand on end. Sticks was on the creature almost immediately, staffs blurring, chitin flying as he hacked away at the tough armor.

  "He's not going to win," Tyler said.

  "Is there anything we can do?" George asked.

  Tyler bit his lip. "Crawlers have a soft spot we might be able to exploit, but it'll be tricky."

  "Just tell me what to do," George said.

  "No." Tyler shook his head. "Let me try." He stepped toward the battle.

  I grabbed his arm. "Are you crazy? You don't even have a weapon."

  "If this works, I won't need one." He patted my hand. "I'll be fine."

  Before I could argue with him, he easily slipped out of my grasp and raced toward Sticks and the crawler.

  Unable to simply sit back and watch, I followed.

  George moved swiftly to block my path. "Miss Glass, perhaps you should remain here."

  "Out of my way." I glared at him.

  "Mr. Rock possesses superhuman reflexes, which may preserve his life." He raised an eyebrow. "What if you get in the way and cause him to hesitate at a critical moment?"

  I hadn't thought about that. From the way the crawler leapt back and forth like a giant jumping spider, it was likely I would get pounced if I went anywhere near it. "Fine."

  "Don't worry. I have Arcanes on the way to help."

  "Those are the witches and wizards?" I asked.

  He returned a grim smile. "Something like that."

  Tyler yelled instructions to Sticks. "Let me lure it away. I'll let it think it has me. When it goes to feed, it'll open its armor and shoot a tube at me. That's when I need you to strike, okay?"

  Sticks batted aside a needle-sharp crawler leg, spun, and sliced through the appendage where he'd weakened the chitin. Sweat trickled down his forehead. He glanced at Tyler and nodded.

  Tyler shouted and waved at the crawler. Sensing easier prey, it leapt toward him. Rather than fight it, Tyler backed away slowly, like a cornered animal.

  I could barely stand to watch. I felt powerless. Hopeless. The man I loved was about to be devoured by a creature of Hell and I had no way of helping him short of discovering a flamethrower.

  Tyler tripped and fell backward. The crawler lunged. I screamed.

  He rolled side-to-side as the crawler's barbed feet tried to pin him to the ground. The shape of a human face writhed beneath the creature's armor where a spider's head might be. The face stretched into a smile. The chitin split open and a glistening black tube the size of my arm shot toward Tyler's head.

  His hands flashed out and caught the protuberance. A round mouth lined with teeth snapped in his face. Tyler squeezed. The face within the monster shrieked in pain. Its front legs stabbed at Tyler. He narrowly dodged the thrusts.

  "Now would be a good time, Sticks!" he shouted. Tyler clenched his teeth and squeezed the tube.

  The crawler shuddered and screamed in pain.

  Sticks flipped over the monster. His eyes locked onto the tender spot and followed up with a lightning thrust. The blade on his staff plunged deep into the opening. The face beneath the crawler's chitin unleashed a deafening shriek. Sticks braced his feet and drove the staff even deeper into the demon.

  "Twist it like a blender," Tyler yelled. "Churn its insides like a frozen margarita!"

  Sticks moved the staff back and forth like a rower. The other Custodians came up behind the monster and began hacking at its legs. With a final shudder, the crawler collapsed. Tyler rolled free at the last minute, hopped to his feet, and brushed off his hands.

  "Anyone have hand sanitizer?" he asked, his wolfish grin back in place.

  Carswell took something from a pouch on his belt and sprayed it into my boyfriend's outstretched hands.

  "Thanks, man." Tyler rubbed his hands together.

  I launched myself at him and squeezed him in a fierce hug. "You crazy asshole!" I backed away and pounded his chest with my fists. "What were you thinking?"

  He gripped my wrists and held me at bay. "Obviously, I was thinking about a nice cold drink with the margarita comment." Tyler pecked a kiss on my nose. "You're kind of cute when you're mad, Em."

  I blew out a breath. "You're lucky I don't have superhuman strength, or I'd bend you over my knee this minute." I suddenly remembered we weren't alone and felt heat creeping up my face. Thankfully, most of the others were preoccupied looking at the dead crawler.

  Sticks turned around and gave Tyler a nod.

  "I agree, Mr. Sticks." George looked at the dead crawler and shook his head. "Mr. Rock is no ordinary demon." He tilted his head slightly. "How did you know about the creature's weakness?"

  "One of my former acquaintances told me about it," Tyler replied.

  "Another demon?"

  "Yeah." Tyler's voice lost its excited edge. "There are some people who summon demons and make them fight. He was unfortunate enough to be one of their favorite summons."

  "Demonic gladiator matches?" George looked mildly surprised. "I've never heard of such a thing."

  "They're more popular than you might think." Tyler shrugged. "You just have to pray your name never ends up in a demonomicon."

  "That brings me back to my original question about the demonicus," George said. "What purpose does it serve?"

  "The demonomicon is a directory of all known demon names. I heard about it from my former acquaintances. Each demon name is associated with a pattern." Tyler pointed to the different patterns on the floor. "The smaller patterns are lesser demons." He wrinkled his nose. "If they knew my pattern, it would be about that size."

  "I'm sure you have a very large pattern," I mumbled.

  George cast me a questioning look, but said nothing.

  Tyler flashed me a smile, and I abruptly remembered everyone here except me probably had supernatural hearing. My face went hot, but I kept my head up and pretended not to care.

  Tyler returned to the patterns, this time pointing out the large one in the middle. "The bigger and more complex the pattern, the more powerful the demon." He sighed and shook his head. "I'm no expert, but the size and complexity of this pattern means someone summoned a demon of epic proport
ions." He pointed to the soulless bodies. "And it ate all their souls for breakfast."

  ###

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  Enjoyed this book? Try the Overworld Arcanum Series. Here's a sample from Conrad Edison and the Living Curse.

  Conrad Edison Chapter 1

  I wondered if this would be the day my parents died.

  Their fate loomed, a black cloud on the horizon. I had no love for these people, but death was too awful even for them.

  I couldn't remember my real parents, and there seemed little difference between this set of adults ordering me about and the others before them. The only thing they all had in common was they'd either died or suffered another terrible fate on or around my birthday. It was nearly that time of year again, so I reckoned if anything was going to happen, it would be soon.

  "We need some bloody eggs, Edward!" Mrs. Cullen glared at her husband. Her small brown eyes narrowed to slits. "That's far more important than you running down to the pub for a pint with the boys."

  "I'll get your bloody eggs on the way back." Mr. Cullen, as usual, wasn't swayed by his wife's argument.

  I sat in the back seat of the car and watched the two bicker back and forth about when to get the eggs and what other necessities were more important than Mr. Cullen's desire to drink himself into a stupor as he did whenever possible. It was more entertaining than counting the cows we passed in the countryside on our way into town, and more pleasurable than wondering what fate awaited these two. It was also the only thing keeping my mind off the nauseating motion sickness I got when riding in cars.

  "I refuse to let you spend all our money on yourself." Mrs. Cullen crossed her arms. "I won't allow it!"

  Mr. Cullen growled. "Then come with me, you bleeding twit."

  His wife's face darkened. "I'll show you who's a twit." She reared back and punched him in the side of the face.

  The car swerved, leaving the country lane and scraping against a stone pasture wall. Mr. Cullen, cursed, jerked the wheel, and brought it back onto the road. His chubby face crimson, he swung a backhand at his wife and popped her in the forehead.

  Screeching, Mrs. Cullen clawed at her husband's face. The car swerved back and forth. I gripped the door handle. The oatmeal I'd had for breakfast rose in my throat as the motion sickness worsened.

  "Please," was all I managed to say before the urge to throw up nearly overwhelmed me. I pressed the button to roll down the rear window but it wouldn't respond.

  "I said stop it!" Mr. Cullen shoved his wife hard. Her head cracked against the window.

  She began to wail.

  My ears hurt, but the motion of the car steadied. Shuddering, I took deep breaths to calm my stomach and kept my eyes on the road ahead. Something black flashed through the air. It smacked into the windscreen. Blood spattered, thick and gray. I knew it was supposed to look bright red, but I rarely saw anything in color, except for brief flashes.

  Mr. Cullen shouted in surprise. He turned on the wipers and cleared the dark liquid. A large crow lay on the hood. It cawed loudly. Its wings fluttered. Then the creature went still.

  "Did you see that?" Mr. Cullen said to his wife.

  She was still too engrossed in her loud crying to respond.

  A bad omen. Today might be the day the Cullens died. It might happen in this very car.

  I didn't like watching my parents die. The Hughes had been hit by a London bus only ten feet behind me, giving me quite a shock when I turned around to see what was taking them so long to cross the road. The Smiths had died skydiving when a jumbo jet, miles off course, ran right into them after they deployed their parachutes. The Andersons, a very quiet couple, had abruptly decided to call in a death threat against the Prime Minister and were promptly jailed. The Turners had vanished while out for a walk one evening, never to return.

  The closest I'd come to dying had been with the Lewises. I'd lived there with three other foster children at the time. Mrs. Lewis was screaming at us to come down to the kitchen for dinner. Just as me and the other children reached the kitchen door, a freakish flood of water washed it away in a heartbeat, leaving us to stare at the great hollow where it had once been.

  Thinking about what lay in store for these people only made me sicker.

  I tapped on the window.

  Mr. Cullen's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. "What do you want?" His voice was angry.

  "Window." I didn't dare say more for fear I might throw up.

  "What the bloody hell for?"

  I made a gagging motion.

  He bared his teeth. "Keep it down, you weakling."

  Mrs. Cullen abruptly stopped crying. "Is he sick again?"

  "What do you think?" Mr. Cullen snorted. "We ended up with the runt of the litter this time."

  "Least he don't eat too much," his wife said with a smirk. "And they pay better to watch after this one."

  "Now we know why." Mr. Cullen glared at me in the mirror. "He's stupid and weak."

  I couldn't disagree. School was very difficult for me. I was awful with math and science and barely able to keep up with language arts. Sports were too much for my body to handle. I bruised easily and bled too much from simple scrapes. Nobody wanted me. Like the Cullens, most of my foster parents did it for the government money.

  I normally would look away from Mr. Cullen's angry stare, but unless he wanted me to sick up all over the back seat, he had to stop the car or roll down the window.

  "Blast it," he growled and slammed on the brakes.

  My head bounced off the back of his seat. I felt a little dribble escape my mouth, but managed to clench it shut. I opened the door, released the seatbelt, and fell onto the grass outside just in time. My breakfast spewed into the ditch. After a few seconds, of heaving, I felt empty. A bell jingled. I looked up and saw a sheep watching me as it chewed a mouthful of light gray grass.

  I tried to remember what green looked like. I'd glimpsed it once while out with Cora. Her name brought with it a flash of memories. In my mind, I saw the rosy cheeks, the orange hair she frequently dyed different colors, and her brilliant green eyes. That's how I remember colors.

  We stop outside the grocery store. "You're a wonderful boy, Conrad." Cora kisses my cheek.

  For the first time, I glimpse her true colors. For the first time, I feel safe.

  "Do you remember what to do?" she asks.

  I nod.

  "Sometimes, good people have to do bad things." She takes my hand and we go inside the store to steal our dinner.

  "Baaa," the sheep said, jerking me from the solace of my memories.

  Ovis Aries, quadruped, ruminant mammal.

  I jerked back. Who said that?

  Mr. Cullen got out of the car and glared at me. "Are you finished?" He looked into the rear door and cursed. "You tossed up on the back of the seat!"

  Before I could cower, he slapped me on the back of the head. I nearly fell forward into my own sick.

  I threw my arms over my head. "I'm sorry!"

  "I'd hit you again but then you'd just bleed all over the car." He gripped the back of my shirt and jerked me off the ground. "Get in before I leave your scrawny body in the ditch."

  I climbed inside and looked down, praying he'd get back into the driver seat.

  He grabbed the back of my head and shoved my face into the stream of vomit on the back of the seat. "Clean it off, boy." He rubbed my head back and forth across the fabric. With one final curse, he shoved me hard back into my seat. "Worthless."

  I remained absolutely still and kept my eyes down. Mr. Cullen wasn't as abusive as some I'd known in the past. Humiliating me usually satisfied him. I put my hands under my legs so he wouldn't see my fists tightening. My tiny little pitiful fists. I hid my anger behind downcast eyes. Even if I were stronger, I wouldn't fight back. That would only get me sent back to the orphanage. Anything wa
s better than being back there again, even a little abuse.

  "Why didn't you get that dead bird off the hood?" Mrs. Cullen asked as we pulled back onto the road. "It's getting blood all over the paint."

  "Because the stupid boy made me forget." Mr. Cullen slapped his hand against the steering wheel. "I'll make him clean it up when we get to town."

  I looked at the bird and wondered if strange words would come into my head again. They didn't. I remembered the words clearly. Ovis Aries, quadruped, ruminant mammal. What did they mean? Aries sounded familiar. Mrs. Cullen liked the daily horoscope and I'd heard her mention it before.

  "I've never seen a person so useless," she said to her husband. "He's supposed to be nearly twelve, but he looks eight." She turned around and looked at me between the seats. "What did you say happened to your parents?"

  I looked down. "I don't know, ma'am."

  "Don't know, or won't say?"

  "I was a babe when they died."

  Mr. Cullen chimed in. "The boy's slow in the head, woman. You're only confusing him."

  "Why else do you think they pay extra for his care?" She stared at me for a moment. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the extra headache."

  "It's worth the few extra pints it buys us." Mr. Cullen snorted. "And it paid for your hair coloring."

  "True." Mrs. Cullen ran a hand through her white hair. "Perhaps we could train him to feed himself so we didn't have to take him everywhere."

  "Yeah. Maybe he's smart enough for that at least."

  I can feed myself. I wasn't smart, but I wasn't mental. The Lewises used to leave me and the others alone for days. We'd survived on bread, jam, and lots of cheese. Sometimes Mrs. Lewis even left food in the fridge when she and her husband left on their monthly holidays. Apparently, the government money was quite good for four children.

  The Cullens had been convinced from day one that I was unable to survive on my own. I would rather be left at their house than forced to sit in the car while they drove around and yelled at each other or left me outside while they went into the pub for hours.