I raised the brazier like a shield. “It would give you a lot of pain, too. I know you’re solid now.”
“Not that solid.” Its voice skittered with amusement, like dry, multilegged things in the dark.
The creature gave a heat-mirage shimmer. A layer of its swathing haze pulled away, like a wet peel of sunburned skin, and fell to the ground in a congealed lump. The blob twitched and writhed, as the demon shed another layer to plop beside the first. Clump after clump became semisolid until the imprisoning circle was filled with contorting masses of ectoplasm, heaving and struggling to be born into something vile.
I stepped instinctively back; beside me, Justin went taut with the same revulsion that held me transfixed. Stripped of his outer coating, Azmael looked as though someone with no real understanding of human form had tried to sculpt it out of dry and filthy earth. Eyes sat in sockets without lids and the nose recalled the vestige holes on a mummified corpse. And when the misshapen mouth moved to speak, my skin crawled at the wrongness of it.
“Do you not like my inner form, Maggie Quinn?” the demon taunted me. “Perhaps you liked me better as a shadow?”
“I certainly liked you better before you could talk.”
The pseudo-face showed little more emotion than the veiling layers of smoky ectoplasm, but it managed anger pretty well. “And I prefer you quivering with fear.”
The first Hell-blob leapt up. It wasn’t done cooking, but it had too many legs, too many eyes, and its gaping maw seemed impossibly large, impossibly full of ragged, sharklike rows of teeth. The jaws snapped; I stumbled back, even as the thing hit an invisible barrier at the circle’s limit.
“What are those things?” Lisa stood at one shoulder, Justin at the other.
“Trapped,” I said, relieved, but not entirely. The beasts pawed the ground, a distorted hunting pack, growling with foul, sooty breath.
Azmael stood in the center of its minions. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Lisa.” The beasts at its stubby feet snarled and sniffed the air. “I’m grateful to you for opening the door for me. The tasks you and the boy set before me allowed me to gain a liberty I haven’t had for centuries.”
“I never wanted—” Lisa began.
“I knew what you wanted better than you knew yourself.” It made a tsking noise, almost droll. “Yet you give me no thanks.”
I picked up one of the discarded cartons of salt. “I hope you enjoyed your leave, Smokey, because your pass is about to be revoked.”
A derisive, dismissive snort. “I think not.” The sulfurous eyes turned to me, anticipation making them swell. “You were right about this much, Maggie Quinn. I am hungry after so long without a solid form. And your kind is a wealth of rampant emotion.”
With a certain drama, it crouched and brushed clear a section of the white line. Its hand smoked and blistered and stank, but remained intact. “Oh, that does sting.”
The pack of demon-spawn slipped their invisible leash, poured out of the gap. They scrabbled on phantom claws past our horrified eyes, buffeting us as they rounded the corner and headed for the smorgasbord of teenagers dancing in short-lived blissful ignorance.
“Oops!” said Lisa. At least, the voice was hers, but the tone was Azmael’s taunting humor. She turned, and I recoiled from the otherness in her eyes. “You’d better get going, Supergirl.” She reached out and took the salt that I cupped, forgotten, in my hand, and let it run out of her fingers. “I think you know where to find us, if you survive.”
Her body turned, walked away, stiff-jointed like a puppet. I took a step after her, but Justin caught my arm.
“Leave her.”
“But Lisa …”
“Is one person.” He pulled me insistently toward the front of the hotel. “We have to stop those things, or they’ll kill everyone inside.”
Stanley hadn’t roused from his faint, and Brian was still unconscious. I didn’t know if Brandon was even alive. But those demon-dogs were going to cut a swath through the senior class unless we stopped them.
I gave up arguing and ran, still clutching the brazier, leaving behind the fallen, and racing to save those I could.
31
i wondered how the beasts would get inside, since they didn’t have arms to open the doors. As we rounded the corner, though, we saw the last two creatures squeezing through the crack between the doors.
“They’re not solid,” I said in relief. “They can’t really—”
The last Hell-dog launched itself at me with a cougar-like scream. Pure reflex jerked the brazier up as the quite solid weight of the monster sent me sprawling to the ground. I screamed, too, as razor teeth hammered at the brass, trying to get through to my throat.
Justin kicked the beast aside. It immediately flung itself back at us, but I whacked the snarling thing with the brazier and it exploded in a cloud of infinitesimally small dropules of the primordial goo. Almost instantly they began to gloam together and rebuild themselves.
“Semisolid, I’d say.” Justin pulled me up from the ground and away from the quickly growing Hell-blob. “Keep that weapon handy.”
We each yanked open one of the glass doors. Terrified screams poured from the ballroom. By my quick and dirty reckoning, the monster-per-kid ratio lay in our favor; only it wasn’t how many people they killed, but how much terror and pain they inflicted, feeding Azmael’s hunger.
There was nothing to do but wade into the carnage. I swung my big brass bowl of kick-ass at a demon-dog that had pinned a boy from my chemistry class. The monster burst into a satisfying, if temporary, wet mist. Grabbing a napkin from the nearest table I handed it to the guy. “Keep pressure on the bleeding.”
Justin grabbed a chair and smashed a creature savaging a girl’s leg. She burst into hysterical tears, and he had to pry her loose before moving on to the next fight.
Three monsters down. Seventeen left. Eighteen, I amended, as the first re-formed beast leapt on a fleeing band geek. I quickly un-formed it again. At the end of the room, one of the light stands crashed to the floor in a shower of sparks. A speaker went next, conveniently squishing an eight-legged monster beneath it. Anything heavy, applied with enough force, could smash the things, but I noticed my brazier, perhaps because of its link to their master, made the smallest bits.
A few students tried to fight back. But the more the kids screamed, the more blood that soaked the ugly carpet, the stronger the monsters became and the more quickly they remade themselves. Despite the numerical advantage, we were fighting uphill.
The demon-hounds herded and pushed with flashing teeth until the crowd stampeded like Irish fans at a soccer match; tables, chairs, and fallen students were only temporary impediments while the beasts picked off the stragglers. Feeding time at the watering hole, and survival of the fittest.
A heavy student, side-blocked by an even heavier dog-beast, crashed into the table in front of me. I jumped back as empty dishes and silverware catapulted into the air. I brought the brazier up like a shield; something clanged against it, and dropped at my feet.
I looked down. The salt shaker lay on the carpet, spraying my stocking-clad toes with white.
Something important lay in the memory of Azmael casually brushing aside the salt circle, something besides his new invulnerability to sodium chloride. It had cleared a path for the pack of minions, given them a clean way out.
So … what the Hell, to use a fitting phrase. I picked up the shaker, unscrewed the lid and climbed over the table to get to the student, who screamed as the beast teethed on his arm. “Close your eyes!” I shouted over the din, and dumped the entire shaker over them both.
The Hell-dog disappeared in a puff of black smoke. No tiny droplets, no wet mist. Just a dry, clean ‘fffft!’ and then nothing. Even the smell vanished.
“Dude!” I turned my head to see Backstage Guy, the one I’d met at play practice, his tux spattered with blood and black demon-goo, a mike stand in his hand, heavy-side up. “Yo, Glowing-ass-girl! What did
you do?”
“Salt,” I said, clambering down from the table. In the wreckage of another setting I found two more shakers, handing both to Dude. “Unscrew and dump.”
I ran through the tables, gathering as many shakers as I could. Professor Blackthorne was holding his own with one of the beasts, standing over it with a chair leg and splattering it apart every time it re-formed.
“You will not”—splat—“defy”—squish—“the laws”—scrunch—“of nature.”
I dumped one of my saltshakers over the monster between squishings. The droplets fizzled out of existence, and Blackthorne looked at me, eyebrows shooting all the way up to his wildly askew hair.
“Supernatural creatures follow supernatural laws,” I explained, grabbing ammunition off the nearest table.
“Of course they do,” he said, smoothing white wisps out of his red face and regaining his sangfroid.
“Unscrew and dump.” I dropped two shakers in his hand and left him to it. I saw other students getting the idea, and felt the tide turning with every poof! Just like magic.
Jessica Minor was perched on a table, defending the high ground from a snapping beast by whacking at it with a paper-seaweed centerpiece. It was tempting to let a Hell-dog take down the Hell-bitch, but a blast of white from behind me ended my moral dilemma and obliterated the demonette so quickly that its mad snarl hung in the empty air.
“Viva Maggie!” called the guerrilla of the Spanish Club. Don de Chiclet raised a fist full of salt. “Viva la revolucíon!”
The stampede had ended. Jocks, band geeks and brains, preps, ropers and stoners stanched each other’s wounds and helped one another up. Thespica was sucking Backstage Dude’s lungs out—in a good, nondemonic way—with a pile of salt at their feet. Good for you, Backstage Dude.
I saw Justin and hurried toward him, limping barefoot through the carnage. He was bleeding from some teeth marks on his arm, and his face was streaked with sooty demon residue. “I’m okay,” he assured me, as the sound of sirens reached us.
“Come on.” I pulled him toward the back door. “They won’t let us leave once the authorities get here.”
“Hang on, Maggie …”
Seeing Professor Blackthorne directing the first aid efforts, I stopped. “Professor, there are three more students out back. One of them is … he fell over the terrace wall.”
The teacher gave me a level look. “That’s what I’m supposed to tell the police?”
“I … I don’t know.” I was out of lies. “I have to go stop the … the thing that started all this.”
Another stare, an instant’s examination that seemed eternal. Finally, he said, “Go. I’ll think of something. But your final grade is going to depend on your explaining the supernatural chemistry at work here.”
“I will, I promise.”
And if I live that long, I’ll make good … somehow.
32
the Jeep raced along Beltline. I hoped all the cops were at the Marriott, because I was way past the speed limit.
“How do you know where they are?” Justin asked me, one hand clinging, white-knuckled, to the roll bar. The wind whipped my hair around my face and I had to drive with the skirt of my dress tucked tightly under my thighs. I never found my shoes.
“I just know. It’s the way the quest always ends. Luke goes all over the galaxy, but he still has to come back to the Death Star to meet Darth Vader.”
“You know this isn’t a movie, right?”
“Yes. That ugly bastard has my best friend, and I have no idea how to fight it.” I zipped through a yellow light. “Now think. Why did the salt work before, but not tonight?”
“It might have to do with its solid form.” He shook his head. “All the supernatural traditions say it should have worked. Jewish folklore uses salt to bless a baby and keep the demons away. Chinese women take salt baths for the same reason …”
“So what do we use instead? Crosses? Holy water?”
“Azmael predates the birth of Christ. I don’t think either of those would affect him.”
I whipped onto the street that ran behind the school, my mind racing through the problem. If Azmael predated Christ, then he, it, also came way before Morton.
With a squeal of the tires I turned the Jeep in a tight U, changing directions as quickly as my thoughts. “We’re using the wrong salt.”
“What?”
“Azmael isn’t going to be afraid of easy-pour, iodized, table salt. We need the real unprocessed thing.”
“Where are you going to find sea-salt at this hour?”
I pulled up in front of a corrugated aluminum building and pulled the brake. “Landscaping shed. They keep fifty-pound bags for deicing the sidewalks in winter. Grab the bolt cutters in the back, will you?”
Justin stared at me, wasting precious moments on bewilderment and perhaps a little awe. “You were a Girl Scout, weren’t you?”
“Nope. But Nancy Drew was always prepared.”
My bare feet met the cold tile of the natatorium with a quiet slap-slap; the diving board loomed above, and I saw the man-shaped darkness waiting there.
It was all about knowing the rules. Quests were circular; Azmael held to tradition, obviously. The accident at the pool had been the first time I’d glimpsed the Shadow. Even if the accident had misfired because Stanley wrote my name down wrong, it was still where the demon had come for me.
And of course, the deep water terrified me. Lisa knew, so Azmael knew; there was simply no other place they could be.
The smell confirmed this, faint but distinct. Chlorine and brimstone and rotting flesh. It was a good thing I had nothing but dread churning in my stomach.
Outside the gym, Justin had helped me shoulder my backpack and balance the weight. “Can you carry all this?” His paladin’s face pinched with worry.
I grinned. “I’ve been in training for twelve grades.” Then sobering, I went over our hastily constructed plan. “I have to go in by myself, but once I have him distracted—”
“I’ll be there.” His hands rested on my bare shoulders as he looked down at me, a riot of emotions in his eyes. If this were a movie, he might kiss me now, or tell me to stay alive, no matter what, or vow to rescue me. And I might be wearing shoes and have less mascara running down my face.
Though come to think of it, “I’ll be there” had been the perfect thing to hear just then.
“Are you alone, Magdalena Quinn?” The demon’s reedy voice echoed in the big, empty gym. The water in the pool beside me shivered, then returned to placid lapping.
“Yes, I am, oh great and powerful Az.”
“You took your time. One would think you were leaving your friend to reap her own wickedness.”
Judge not, lest you be judged. I remembered that much from Sunday school. Lisa would have to answer for her ancillary role in the events of the past two weeks, not to mention tonight’s carnage. But not to me.
“Lisa is my friend. And I don’t let jumped-up, minor demon jackasses take my friends.”
The smell intensified with said jackass’s anger. “Then come up and try to rescue her, mighty demon-hunter. I’m waiting.”
I guess that was netherworld speak for “Nyah nyah nyah, I’d like to see you try it.”
Ahead, the diving pool glimmered darkly; diffuse light reflected on the surface, but did not penetrate the inky blackness at all.
“Leave the backpack on the ground,” Azmael said. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
An ominous growl rumbled out of the shadows. I saw the gleam of teeth. Great. Another doggie. We’d destroyed the ones at the prom, so the demon must have regained enough … power, mojo, whatever … to create more. Not the best news I’d had all evening.
“I’m leaving it,” I shouted up at him. “Call off your dog.”
“When you obey me, stubborn child.”
I had to get my burden to the pool, so I walked forward, the beast shadowing me, its claws clicking on the tile. The growl deepened as I rea
ched the base of the diving platform, the claws sped, leapt. In a practiced move, I slipped one shoulder from its strap, let the weight of the pack swing down, around, to meet the dog’s attack. The monster sank its teeth through the nylon and pffft! disappeared without time to whimper.
Whoa. It had barely touched the salt inside, hadn’t taken a dousing at all. I wish that had worked as well on the Jacobson’s dog when it had chased me to school every morning of fifth grade. I began to think this insane plan might actually work.
I heard another growl, and figured a second minion had come to ensure my compliance. But hell-dog number one had done me a favor, ripping a large hole in the fabric. In the blind spot beneath the platform I set the pack on the edge of the pool and let the big crystals of the unprocessed rock salt pour into the water.
“Okay. I’m coming up. No backpack.”
I hiked up my dress and began to climb the ladder to the high dive, another thing easily accomplished by heroines in movies, but a major pain in real life. In my next battle with a creature from Hell, I would definitely forgo the formal wear.
An eternity later, I crawled onto the wide platform, winded and trembling from fatigue and nerves. Turns out I like heights only slightly more than I like the depths. There’s irony for you. I stayed on all fours as I fought off the vertigo and tried to catch my breath. I was one scary demon-fighter, all right.
Azmael stood in the center of the dais. Lisa lay unconscious near me. If we survived this, she was going to be pissed that she’d been cast in the helpless female stereotype, getting kidnapped and fainting.
“No quip, Maggie Quinn? No witty repartee?”
I stared at the creature’s feet, as not-quite-right as the rest of its mistake of a body. “Just wondering if you shouldn’t have cloven hooves.”
“I am exactly as I should be!” Its voice rang against the steel beams and concrete. “Exactly as I have been for ten thousand years.”
Slowly, I got my legs under me. Movie heroines never have to hitch up their tops, either, but I’d be darned if I’d give Azmael a thrill by falling out of my dress. “Ten thousand years, huh? No wonder you go around with the veil-o’-stench. You must be pretty sorry to lose it.”
Brimstone Page 22
