The Trouble With Demons

Chapter 28

I didn’t know how much time we had until the mini-demons grabbed the Saghred and came back through that mirror, but depending on how close the exit mirror was, we might only have minutes.

There were no Guardians in the room with the Saghred. The containments on the rock had all failed, so Mychael had pulled his men back. And if the mini-demons managed to keep their chittering to themselves, they could get back here with the rock before any Guardians were the wiser.

Here. Right here. We’d be in the same room with an unshielded Saghred and a demon queen who had the key to open it. And once she did, the demon king might not be the only one to escape. Sarad Nukpana was in there, as were thousands of other things that should never be allowed to leave.

But my father was also in there.

Every last one of them was a soul without a body. And here we all were, lined up like sheep for slaughter-or in this case, possession. Sarad Nukpana could possess Piaras for real this time.

I felt a growl starting in my chest and I let it grow. I figured I couldn’t be scared out of my wits and growl at the same time.

If the queen was using all of her strength to keep the Hellgate open, that meant she couldn’t spare any magic to obliterate me. She could stick me up there next to Rudra Muralin, but she wouldn’t kill me; she needed me. And if she did get off a shot, her concentration would waver, and the Hellgate would flicker. I’d have to trust Tam to act when that happened. He’d never let me down before, and I had to believe now wasn’t going to be the first time-and the last. I dug deep into my rage, trying to scrape up some courage to go along with it. To do what I was going to do, I’d need every last bit of both and then some.

The queen’s nails were all twisty; I told myself they’d never last in a real fight. And that was what I was going to give her-a fight like she’d never had. If I died doing it, fine. At least I’d die; it’d be a damned sight better than being a Saghred-wielding demon slave.

I was a Benares. If I was going out, I was taking that bitch with me.

Of the five of us, I was the closest to her and she was mine.

I looked over at Phaelan. He smiled, showing me all of his teeth. Whatever I had up my sleeve, he wanted to be in the middle of it.

Vegard was like Phaelan; he’d wanted to kill something ever since we’d been grabbed. If he died doing it, not a problem. He was a Guardian; it was his job. Piaras’s eyes were determined-and warm brown. There was no sign of Sarad Nukpana. The goblin was probably too busy shoving his way to the front of the line to get out of the Saghred.

I felt Tam’s eyes on me. I turned just enough to see the barest nod. I let out the breath I wasn’t aware that I’d been holding. When I moved, so would he.

I shifted my weight, ready to spring. The demon queen was within range. As she turned toward Rudra Muralin, it was as though everything went into slow motion. She was turning to taunt him, and it was like I had all the time in the world. I bared my own teeth. I didn’t need all the time in the world, just two seconds to get her on the ground and get that dagger.

The queen froze, then spun around, her eyes glowing and locked not on me, but on the back of the Assembly.

I heard it. Voices coming from beyond the doors, in the halls with the eggs and their Volghul guards. Mortals and demons shouting, screaming, struggling.

“Children!” The demon queen’s voice rang out. “I release you to feed!”

A deafening roar went up from the demons in the darkness, and shapes and shadows surged up the stairs and through the massive doors surrounding the Assembly chamber. Their triumphant roars and starved shrieks added to the din.

“Go with them,” she ordered the Volghuls standing on guard around the columns.

I took a look and did the math. Only one Volghul was left for each of us. One on one. Now that’s what I called better odds. Yes, they were demons and we were unarmed mortals who couldn’t use our magic, but I knew for a fact we had something going for us that they didn’t-the desire to survive at any and all costs.

I felt a pressure building, and the air in the room contracted, tightened, as if something in the hall beyond was trying to suck all the air out of the Assembly. I covered my ears with my hands, trying to stop the stabbing pain against my eardrums. Everyone else did the same, demons included. Then the pressure stopped, suddenly and painfully. I lowered my hands, half expecting to see blood on them. All around us, the Assembly doors began slamming with resounding booms until they were all closed.

Beyond the doors was silence. On the dais, no one moved.

The doors didn’t open. No demons appeared to report victory to their queen. No mortals stormed the Assembly to rescue us. Nothing.

That was either really good or very bad.

“Kuitak!” the queen snapped at a Volghul.

“Your will, Majesty?”

“Take the Scythe and go free my-”

Oh, hell no.

My shoulder took the demon queen in the midsection with a satisfying thud. The Scythe flew out of her hand and skidded across the dais, disappearing over the side onto the floor below. We both scrambled for it, but not before the queen’s foot gave me a solid kick in the head, and black flowers bloomed on the edge of my vision. I shook them off and threw myself on top of her, grabbing for her throat, my weight and momentum taking her to the floor. The demon queen hissed and twisted sharply, putting us face to fangs with her on top. One of my arms was pinned between us, but the other got in two solid punches to the side of her face and she had a few less fangs.

The second punch snapped her head to the side and gave me enough leverage to flip her onto her back. Problem was I’d miscalculated how close we were to the dais stairs. I think I hit every bone in my body rolling down those stairs entangled with the demon queen. She was hissing; I was snarling. Her claws were going for my eyes; I was going for anything I could knee, elbow, or punch.

Everything was pretty much a blur while we rolled down the stairs, but from what I could hear, the boys were giving as good as they got. From the stench of burning demon flesh, I guessed that Vegard had gotten clear of the Hellgate distortion and was lobbing fireballs. Piaras’s voice rang out in a single, imperious word, and a Volghul flew by overhead, arms and legs desperately flailing. Tam’s sibilant incantations from the dais above us were tight with effort, fighting for control. I’d taken on the queen, leaving Tam to replace the void of her power with his own, to single-handedly try to keep the Hellgate from exploding, imploding, or whatever it was that a loose Hellgate did.

Tam was powerful, but he was mortal. His power had limits, and time was not on our side.

The queen and I rolled to a stop as a needle-thin shaft of white light exploded the head of the nearest Volghul. I didn’t move. It didn’t seem smart with skull-piercing lightning bolts flying around.

My mistake. A big one.

The demon queen got her hands around my throat and dug in. I screamed, searing pain following the hot wetness of my own blood running down my neck. I’d been right, her nails hadn’t survived the fight, but broken nails left jagged edges, and they were razor sharp.

A dot of blazing white light appeared in the exact center of the queen’s forehead. The fighting around us immediately stopped. The only sound was Tam’s unbroken stream of incantations and hissing, labored breathing.

The light remained where it was, unwavering.

“Her death will be your doing!” the demon queen shouted into the darkness.

A strong, deep voice came from the shadows just beyond the columns. Mychael’s voice. “Release her or share your guard’s fate.”

Just what I didn’t need-a hostage situation and a standoff all rolled into one.

Mychael’s statement was a warning; his words were raw power given voice. Demanding, compelling, those words gave the demon queen a choice, and one choice only-obey or die.

The queen swayed as if from an unseen breeze, but her hold on me never lessened. Mychael’s voice had gotten to her, and for a brief instant he had controlled her.

Her fiery eyes blazed with renewed rage. “Show yourself, mortal!”

I heard the sharp echo of Mychael’s boots as he stepped up on the stage and into the light, but he didn’t pass between the columns. He knew better. Mychael’s left arm was extended; the light beam coming from his index finger was leveled like the deadly weapon it was, never wavering from its target. In his right hand, his sword blazed with pure, white light. His entire body was surrounded by a glowing nimbus.

When the demon queen saw him, her full lips curved in a satisfied smile. “You. I should have known. Come to me, and I will allow the elfling to live.” Her words had power of their own, not the magical compulsion of a spellsinger, but the smoothly seductive tones of a temptress with millennia of experience.

“Release her and you will not die.” Mychael’s voice was calm, but unyielding.

The seductive smile twisted into a sneer. “You think you can destroy me? I will rule when you are dust. Come closer, paladin.”

“Sir, no!” Vegard shouted.

“I can feel the distortion from the gate,” Mychael assured him, keeping his eyes on the demon queen. “I need not come any farther. And neither do your brothers.”

Backup. Guardian backup. Now that was some much-needed good news.

“More flesh for my children,” the queen said in approval.

“More gifts for me.”

Mychael’s beam flared in intensity, searing a blackened circle into her forehead like a brand. The queen screamed in pain and fury, and her claws contracted. I clenched my teeth against the pain. I wouldn’t scream again.

“My children will feast on you!” she shrieked at him.

“Your children are prisoners.” Mychael’s voice was relentless. “Release her.”

“Impossible, there were hundreds.”

“Now they are captives.”

“You lie!”

“Then where are they?” he asked quietly.

The demon queen didn’t have an answer for that, and neither did I. But I had connected some dots, and I knew she wasn’t going to like the picture it made. When I told her, she’d either let me go or finish the bloody job she’d started. Anything was better than a naked demon queen on top of me.

I tried to speak without moving my throat, which was easier said than done. “You have no Scythe,” I rasped. “Saghred coming here… Guardians already here… Only I can touch the rock.” I swallowed, or at least I tried to. “And you have a beauty mark that’s about to become fatal.”

The demon queen smiled, sure and confident. “Not all of my servants are here.”

Several things happened more or less at once.

The demon queen half jumped-but mostly flew-straight up into the shadowed vaults of the ceiling like she’d been shot from a cannon.

Then she vanished.

It had to be a cloak, one so complete that it left no sign that she still existed. I knew better; she wasn’t leaving without everything she’d come for. If she could cloak, it meant she was outside of the Hellgate distortion.

It also meant that she could do anything magically speaking; and from up there, she could do it to anyone.

I scrambled for the last place I’d seen the Scythe. I was bleeding, but it wasn’t life threatening, at least not until I collapsed from blood loss and woke up on the wrong side of that Hellgate.

Both of Tam’s hands were sunk into the Hellgate membrane on either side of the slit. All around him, forms writhed and pushed against the milky surface-big forms, hulking; one hand trying to press its way through was twice the size of Tam’s head. Tam saw that massive hand and his incantation sounded more like a snarled string of goblin obscenities. There were bigger, meaner, and more dangerous things desperate to get through that Hellgate before it sealed.

If Tam could seal it.

I ran up the stairs to the dais, and to Tam.

“What can I do?”

The demon queen’s voice rang out from the vaulted beams supporting the ceiling. I didn’t know the words, but I knew what it sounded like.

A call to arms.

Volghuls poured like purple tides through four of the five mirrors.

Tam’s black eyes blazed. “Get the Scythe!”

I didn’t want to leave him there.

“Now!”

I jumped over the side of the dais to where the Scythe hopefully still was. There it was, gleaming in the dark, the first thing to go right all day. I snatched it up and a mini-Volghul came with it. I shrieked; I couldn’t help it. The little bastard sunk his teeth up to the gums in my leather sleeve, his claws raking my bare hands.

My shriek gave way to swearing, which led to stabbing. The thing was trying to eat me from the fingers up. The Scythe was a knife, and I used it. A couple slashes and a stab later, one less Volghul was going to reach adulthood.

Mychael and his Guardians were battling the Volghuls coming out of the mirrors. Piaras had joined his soon-to-be brothers. Those mirrors needed to be shattered. Anything thrown through magically linked mirrors would go in one side and out the other. But if something were coming through at the same time, it’d be like two people trying to come through the same door from opposite sides. Except in this case, the thrown object would break the glass.

Broken glass, no more Volghuls.

I desperately looked around for something, anything. The Assembly was a ruin, there had to be chunks of stone, something. I spotted one. It was close to the mirrors, but I had one shot at it, so I needed to be as close as I could get. I scooped up the rock, saw a demon head coming through, and threw it with everything I had.

The mirror shattered, leaving one less demon door, and hopefully a demon with a concussion on the other side.

“Raine!”

It was Phaelan. My cousin was in the safest place a non- magic user could be in a room full of magic-flinging mages and demons-behind Carnades’s stone altar.

You know the saying “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy”? I did, and I wished I didn’t. If Carnades Silvanus wasn’t my worst enemy, he was at least in the top five. I’d have liked nothing more than to have left him right where he was, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t a particularly nice person, but I wasn’t a murderer.

I’d unlock his manacles, but first I’d take what I needed from him.

The Scythe was good and sharp. Carnades’s white linen sacrificial robe was nice and clean. My throat needed a bandage. I grabbed the hem just above the elf mage’s ankles, plunged the blade through the material, and slashed my way around the robe.

Carnades screamed in appalled rage through his gag and tried to kick me with his bare, manacled feet. If he could have made some coherent words, I’d probably have been turned into a slug.

“I’m not trying to kill you,” I snapped.

I wrapped the cloth around my throat a couple of times to try to stop me from getting any more light-headed from blood loss than I already was.

I flipped the Scythe point down and reached for Carnades’s ankle manacles to pick the lock.

Phaelan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We have to let him go.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do. We’re not killers.”

“Speak for yourself.”

I ignored him and kept working. A second or two later, Carnades had free ankles.

A pair of spells collided, ricocheted, and sent a comet of green flame shooting straight for us.

“Incoming!” Phaelan yelled. He ducked behind the altar and pulled me down with him.

The flame smashed into the stone tiers behind us, blasting a hole that was big enough to sit in. I popped back up and went to work on Carnades’s wrist manacles. They clicked open just as another green comet blazed toward us, twice the size of the first. Phaelan swore, I added to it, and we both grabbed handfuls of robe and hauled Carnades over the side of the altar. He landed hard and face-first.

I didn’t mean to do that. Really.

Carnades sat up and tore off his gag in fury. “You planned this from the very-”

That did it. I didn’t hear the demons; I didn’t hear the explosions. It was just me and a mage who had blamed me, degraded me, and pissed me off for the last time. I got in his face.

“Let’s try this again,” I said between clenched teeth. “I am saving your life for the second time in two days. I tried to warn you, but you didn’t listen. I don’t like you, I don’t believe in anything you stand for, but I don’t stand by and let people get killed. If I can help, I will. That’s the kind of person I am. You can believe it or not; right now I don’t give a damn!”

Carnades was speechless. Phaelan was checking out his robe.

“White robe, chained to an altar-what are you, some kind of sacrificial virgin?”

“I am not a… virgin.”

Carnades almost choked on that last word. Highborn elves were notoriously uptight when it came to sex. It was a wonder there were any of them left.

“I bet you don’t even wrinkle the sheets,” I muttered.

The next explosion made all three of us duck and cover. That was way too close. As the blast faded, I heard tearing or peeling or…

… Oh crap.

I looked up and saw a Rudra-shaped indent in the Hellgate. The goblin was gone. Escaped.

Phaelan and I swore and scrabbled away from that altar. It was cover but it was also a death trap if Rudra Muralin was crouched on top. He had weapons; between Phaelan and me, we had one knife. Carnades stayed put. Fine.

An explosion shook the Assembly, and the stage floor buckled from underneath, slabs of the stone jutting up at sharp angles. Phaelan and I were already on the floor, and after that, so was everyone else. Two mirrors toppled and shattered. That left only the citadel mirror and one other. We had to reach that mirror.

My mouth was bone-dry, my body was determined to bleed to death, and breathing was entirely too much work. “Phaelan, I need you to-”

A Volghul slammed into me from behind and tore the Scythe out of my hand.

Carnades had to have seen it coming and the son of a bitch didn’t say a word. Phaelan was right; I should have left him on that altar.

In a flash of opalescent flesh, the demon queen dropped from the ceiling attached to what looked like a spider’s web. I didn’t want to know what part of her it had come from.

She landed in a crouch at least twenty feet from the citadel mirror. The distance didn’t matter; she covered it in two leaps and dove through, the Volghul with the Scythe right behind her. Rudra Muralin dashed out of the shadows where he’d been hiding and was right on their clawed heels.

The demon queen, Rudra Muralin, and the Scythe of Nen-all in the citadel, close to the Saghred.

If she got to the rock and opened it, the disembodied souls of the demon king, Sarad Nukpana, and the worst that could ooze out of the Saghred would possess the first bodies they could find, and those bodies would be Guardians. They would turn the most elite magical fighting force in the seven kingdoms into the most elite and evil magical fighting force.

All under the command of the king and queen of demons.