by Jenn Stark
There was nothing refined about the way Danae was taking out the tide of demons spilling into the hallway from rooms to her right and left, however. Where had these asshats all come from? Were these part of the group Llyr had released in the basement, or had there been a second delivery?
A roar distracted me. Nigel. He’d managed to muscle the demons back down the hallway, and I knew exactly where he was heading. With Danae in the line of fire, so to speak, I couldn’t blast his way clear, exactly, but I could distract the horde.
“Go,” I yelled to no one in particular. Still, it had the effect of drawing the attention of at least a couple of the slithering beasts—the ones with horns in particular. Better hearing through antlers? With Nigel lurching forward, I wrenched open the right side of a set of double doors and hurtled into the room beyond.
Into a hornet’s nest of demons.
“Crap, crap, crap-crap-crap!” Still, at least with everyone I cared about stuck fighting out in the hallway, I could blast the bejesus out of the creatures in front of me with impunity. I vaguely noted something a little different about this crew, but didn’t hesitate as I lifted my hands.
Fire erupted between my palms, then shot out into the room.
As the demons dove for cover, I drew not only on my ability to throw fire, but also on the skills I’d recently learned at the elbow of the Japanese sensei who’d been gracious enough to take me in when I’d been completely undeserving of her time or talent. Sensei Chichiro might not have been proud of me as a student, exactly, but there was no question that she’d taught me more than I could ever have learned on my own.
In the space the first blast of fire afforded me, I imagined everything I could think of that might come in handy in fighting demons. Regrettably, my lexicon of demon-fighting tools was a bit lacking, so I borrowed anything I could from the neighboring slayer arsenal. In my mind’s eye, I conjured up a complete battery of silver bullets, wooden stakes, golden lassos, buckets of holy water, crucifixes, stars of David, and giant lead balls—reconfiguring the balls at the last minute into dice-sized lead cubes to differentiate them from the bullets. I wanted to know what killed these bastards.
In another blink, the ceiling of the library exploded into a rain of terror. Fully half the demons were incinerated into smoke, presumably from the holy water, but others took the drenching without issue, only to burst into vapor when they were punctured with wooden stakes and silver bullets by turns. Still more ducked under the barrage of dice, the cubes bouncing harmlessly off their shoulders, and rushed me as I leveled a new mass of energy at them. I sent an additional fireball toward the doors to keep anyone from getting any ideas about screwing with my friends in the hallway.
With the end of the first wave of assault, however, there still were a good half-dozen of the demons left standing, and they were the biggest and meanest looking of the bunch. They were naked, but they wore their hide almost like it was their clothing, as thick and tough as Carhartts sprayed with Scotchgard. Now they all turned to me with interest gleaming in their eyes, and their taloned fingers dripped with a goo that hissed and sizzled when it struck the floor beneath them.
A twinge of dismay skittered down my spine. Not poison again. These dickheads must have come from the same branch of the demonic family tree as the guys in the basement. And something else too. It wasn’t just excitement that glowed in the eyeholes of the surviving demons, but actual honest-to-God fiery eyeballs. Some white, some red, some gold, some purple. If I’d been at Disney World, it would have been a cool effect.
“You guys able to shut that off at night?” I asked, stepping to the left as carefully as I could, the effluvia of dozens of blasted demons mingling with all manner of discarded weaponry. “Or do you just never sleep?”
The closest creature opened his mouth, breathing out a rush of words that sounded like a sibilant curse, and the others followed suit. Despite myself, I tensed, but no relevant body parts of mine spontaneously combusted.
“You part of the group that Llyr just puked up in the basement?” I tried again, thinking of the demon we’d trapped in the circle. These creatures didn’t look like they were zombies, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have information. Hopefully about more than what the good dragon liked for dessert.
“We are not ruled by Llyr,” growled the demon nearest to me, his lips curling in derision over his fangs. “We were summoned here by the witch’s call.”
That…was unexpected.
“Danae invited you?”
Laughter erupted, which was probably the most unnerving thing I’d heard in a long time—huffs and grunts and growls of mirth that sounded like trolls about to roast a flock of lambs. Through all this, I’d kept my hands up, fire playing freely over my palms, and it seemed to be doing what it needed, as the six demons watched my fingers almost as much as they watched me.
“The tide turns, mortal. The gods are coming to walk the earth once more. As they do, we do. The witch of the iron sea can summon our kind to do her bidding, but she cannot control us as she once did.”
“So this was a demonstration of your anger.” I looked pointedly at what was left of their demon incursion. “That didn’t turn out so well, huh?”
The head demon growled, but I was well past being growled at. I kept the fireball lit between my hands. It might take a few tries, but I’d be able to knock these guys out eventually. “How many of you are there, now that Llyr’s added to your number?”
He grinned at me. “Call me legion—”
I couldn’t help myself. I blasted him with a fireball that left little more of him than his glowing orange eyes rolling around on Danae’s inlaid floors. His demon brethren gaped.
“Let’s try this again,” I said. “How many of you are there? And answer me in actual numbers, or we’ll be subtracting you from the rolls.”
What happened next was almost as bad. The demons spoke in such a clamor that their voices became an almost living thing. I remembered this trick, remembered it from a Templar trap deep in the heart of Italy, one I hadn’t been subjected to directly but had overheard, and that was bad enough. These bastards were trying to trap me in a mind game, there was no doubt about it.
Screw that.
Three more of them disappeared into a swirl of smoke, their eyes rolling around next to the lead cubes that littered the floor.
Now only two of the demons remained. They stared at me a long moment.
“You will never know the answer you seek,” one finally hissed at me. “We were bound only to God. Now that we are fallen, no one may bind us longer than the length of a conjuring spell. We follow no one, we kneel to no one, we know no God.”
“Then I guess we’re done here.” I raised my hands to reduce these last two to their eyeballs, but I was saved the trouble. The twin points of two athames suddenly appeared in the centers of their foreheads, and they slumped to the ground in front of a disgusted-looking Danae. Before they were fully prostrate, they burst into eddying smoke, everything but their eyes seeping into the floorboards. Their eyes…and a remarkably foul stain.
Only now did I notice the door standing open at the far end of the room.
“Took you long enough,” I groused.
“Did you get anything out of them of importance?”
“Not really. They don’t seem to worry too much about lead, though.”
“They weren’t the undead.” Danae dismissed my discovery, still scowling down at the goop that covered the floor. “This isn’t going to clean up well,” she muttered.
I crouched to the floorboards as more doors opened. Nigel stepped into the room. He’d apparently reached his go bag, since he was wearing clothes, and he helped the witch who’d fought by Danae’s side into the room, settling her into a chair as the other witches from the elevator filed in, two of them bearing their still unconscious comrades, all of them looking exhausted. One of them moved to a cupboard and pulled several robes free, but I noticed this only in my peripheral vision. My prim
ary vision—specifically that of my third eye, was trained on the floor.
“Anyone want to explain to me the significance of the eyeballs sticking around after these guys go on to their great reward? Because these haven’t stopped glowing. I don’t remember that being a feature of the other demons.”
“These were stronger, earthbound. Not the banished, but demons who lived in this plane, who’d escaped the purge,” Danae said, using the tip of her athame to poke at the eye. It’d crystalized into a hard glass-like shard. “There are tales of witches stringing the eyes of demons into jewelry, but as the centuries passed, both they and we cleaved more to the shadows. You cannot kill what you cannot find.” She shrugged. “And so we both survived. But now…”
“Now they’re coming out of hiding,” I finished for her. “And so are you.”
“And so are you, it would appear.” She straightened and accepted a deep black robe from one of her coven, then Nigel was at my side with another one, and I finally looked down at my own clothes. They were hanging off me in strips, making me look like some sort of extra for the Walking Dead.
Still, I frowned at the robe. “You get to slide into your gear, and I get to look like I just checked into a day spa for the damned? I don’t think so.”
“Put it on, Sara,” Danae said, her voice suddenly sounding more tired than I’d ever heard her. “Everything has changed, and we need to prepare for this new scourge upon the earth.”
Chapter Five
“First things, first,” I said when I’d wrapped the robe around me. “Why didn’t your security team notify you that your little mansion here was infested with beady-eyed demons?”
We were sitting around the large table, and there were more of us now—the survivors from the massacre in the cavern as well as a backup team of a half-dozen witches wearing identical robes. I didn’t know who was taking care of the bodies of the fallen, but I assumed someone was. No matter how you sliced it, it was a dark day for Danae’s coven.
Danae herself sat at the head of the table, a stone bowl before her filled with water, her athames, now clean, lying to either side of the vessel. I thought again of how accomplished she’d been wielding those blades—far more than I had ever felt, Mistress of Swords or no. I wondered if there was a special witch school for knife wielding. Something to look into during happier times.
“The security team were not alerted to the incursion of demons because the equipment has been set only to monitor human events,” Danae said flatly. “We have grown far too lax in the past decades, never considering that our one-time predators might return to make us prey.”
“The coven is—was—a target for demons in the past?”
“In the far past, yes,” Danae said. “Though much of folklore is built on the idea that witches serve demons, the reality was the opposite in most cases. We summon them as we need them, and we killed them as required. But as the centuries passed, the shadows grew long for both of our kind. As I said, you cannot kill what you cannot find. Eventually we stopped looking, and assumed they had as well.”
“And they had,” I said. “But how often did you summon demons, still? Was that a regular outing for you, what happened today? Before the whole demon-breathing dragon bit?”
Danae managed a grim smile. “I don’t know. I confess it is not only our knowledge of demon activity that has been lax over the years. We do not keep up with our own kind either, the various covens falling into secrecy in order to preserve their populations. Though the earth is a far more forgiving place than it used to be, it still pays to be careful.”
“You’re saying you don’t have open lines of communication between the covens to even know if there’s been additional demon activity?”
She frowned. “No, but I don’t believe there’s been an attack on any of the covens by either demon or other races. Such an attack would necessitate the covens coming together.”
Nigel shifted in his chair. “So you’re going to alert them?” he asked. “We don’t have a lot of time here if the earthbound demons are rising, and we’ve just seen another couple hundred escape into the world. The covens have to be warned, and we have to know where they are in case we need their help—or they need ours.”
Danae lifted her brows. “You think your swords and guns can help defeat a demon horde?” she asked derisively.
He met her stare coolly. “I think we bloody well helped save you all tonight.”
The air instantly became electric, and I held up my hands. “Look, I think we can agree that what happened here isn’t going to be an isolated incident. That crew came because they felt your summons, Danae. If other covens are issuing similar summons, then they’re at risk as well. If covens haven’t moved from their home base since the last time demons stalked them, they’re also at risk. I think we’re going to see great maneuvering of any creatures that were once in power, who might see an opportunity to rise to power again. Demons most definitely included.”
Beside me, Nigel grunted. “I will say I had no idea there were so many of the bastards out there. You don’t hear about them. Not even as urban legends.”
“Their history is long and tortured, and perhaps more twisted than most realize,” Danae said quietly. Her gaze shifted to me. “Which brings me to the point. You will inform the Council of what happened here tonight?”
“Of course.”
“And they knew you were coming here?”
I hesitated. “Not…technically.” In the days since I’d returned to Las Vegas, I’d kept a pretty low profile. My relationship with the Council could also best be described as twisted. That said, there was no longer time for niceties. The Council would have to be informed of everything I’d learned tonight, everything we’d done. The fact of the matter was that demons had been released into the world here in Chicago. There was nothing that said they might not have been released elsewhere as well. “But I’ll tell them now. And I’ll share what your captured demon provided, if you think we can believe him.”
“He was constrained to tell the truth as he knew it. If he was a minion of Llyr’s, that would not have changed his bond within the circle.”
“About that,” Nigel interjected. “Did he dupe you—acting as some sort of double agent to open the door to Llyr? Or was there something wrong with your circle?”
I winced at the bald question, but it was something we needed to know. Danae didn’t shrink from it. “We failed in our protections,” she said simply. “And we paid with our lives. The path that Llyr took was left open because no demon willingly enters into a witches’ circle unless required by summons, and no demon cares to be closed off from his means of escape.”
Danae suddenly lifted her head, her gaze sharpening as she glanced toward the front of the house. The room where we were sitting had no windows, and there was no way to tell the state of the moon outside, but there was also no doubt that the witch sensed something was amiss. I tentatively put out feelers as well, but couldn’t pick up on any disturbance in the Force.
“What is it?”
“Yours is not the only appointment we had tonight, I’m afraid,” Danae said. “I had hoped to have more time to discuss the reality of the challenges you’re facing. Since I don’t, I’ll be blunt. The Council is an entity divided against itself. It cannot hold in its present state, no matter how much the Magician seeks to fortify its ranks.”
I rubbed my forehead. I knew this already. “The Emperor, yeah. I don’t know who all is allying with him, but probably the High Priestess. The Fool had thrown in his lot with him, but no longer.”
“No. That’s not the problem. You’re not thinking broadly enough,” Danae snapped. Whatever was heading our way, it was making her decidedly uneasy. “You like to think in terms of light and dark, black and white, ones and zeroes. That’s not the issue here. This division in the Council is not going to fall into two neat groups.”
I frowned. I’d kind of bought into the two-neat-groups idea, sort of like a game of magic kickball. Eve
n if I couldn’t figure out who exactly to put on which team. “So what is the division?” I asked. “Three?”
Danae dismissed that idea with a curt shake of her head. “What do you truly know of the Council?”
Nigel and I exchanged a look, and I got the sudden feeling that I wasn’t going to enjoy where this was going. “They’re a group of Connecteds who banded together with the purpose of balancing magic in the world, light to dark, small to great. They were first assembled when it became clear that the great gods of the world were overmatching the Connecteds of the world, as well as the rank and file of humanity, turning the former into servants and the latter into slaves. Working together, they were able to banish the gods beyond the veil. Lots of celebration, cake all around.”
“And since then?”
I frowned. She knew all this as well as I did. “Since then, they’ve sought to maintain the strength of that veil, while ensuring that no one group becomes too powerful over another such that a similar scenario could be repeated of servitude and enslavement.”
“And how has the Council maintained this balance all this time?”
I shifted uneasily in my chair. But the truth that sprang to my lips couldn’t be ignored. “Largely toward promoting ignorance among the Connecteds of the true depths of magic to which they were capable. Anyone terrifically strong, they sought to contain by elevating him or her to the Council. And there weren’t all that many who were strong. Most of the time, magic and psy abilities remained hidden, creeping out only long enough to be discredited by any traditional powers, then retreating back into the shadows to operate under the radar.”
“But not anymore,” Nigel put in. “Now we’ve got SANCTUS, Interpol, and actual governments aware of the activities of the dark practitioners—not to mention aware of Sara’s existence. The Council hasn’t squashed that.” He grimaced. “Hell, the Council has actively encouraged it, some of their members.”
Danae nodded. “The hubris and innocence of the Magician at once. He is true magic and acts from a place of that true magic. But not all share his perspective.”
