The Trouble With Demons

Chapter 14

Tam ran through the apartment to Talon’s bedroom door. It was locked. Tam kicked it once and the lock ceased to be a problem-and so did most of the door. The kid was halfway out the window when Tam jerked him back into the room by his collar.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Talon looked at his dad like he’d lost his mind. “I have a date.”

Tam blinked. “A date?”

“You know, with a girl.”

Tam gave him a shake, and I couldn’t help but notice that the kid’s boots weren’t touching the floor.

“Okay, okay. Technically a woman.” Talon grinned lasciviously. “Two women, actually.”

Tam put him in a chair, but kept his hand right where it was. “I told you not to leave this room.”

“Well, see, here’s the thing. When you told me not to leave, it was after I’d already set this up. So technically my plans supersede-”

“Nothing!” Tam roared in his son’s face. “Your plans supersede nothing!”

“You don’t have to get so-”

“Yes, I do.”

In a split second, Tam’s voice went from a roar to a tight, hissing whisper. Talon’s aqua eyes went wide as saucers. I think he wanted the roar back.

“I’m sorry?” Talon guessed.

With some effort, Tam unclenched his hand from the back of his son’s neck. “You could have been.”

Talon stopped just short of rolling his eyes. “Give me some credit. I take precautions; I always carry protection.”

A vein I’d never noticed before was throbbing in Tam’s temple. “That’s not the kind of protection I mean.”

“My bodyguards?” Talon shrugged. “They can come along; I don’t mind. They just can’t watch. I’m not into that.”

If Piaras hadn’t been in even more danger, I would have enjoyed watching Tam’s attempts at parenting a goblin teenager.

I raced back through the apartment and flung open the door. “Phael-”

Phaelan and Vegard fell into the room from where they’d been trying to listen through the door.

“The damned thing’s soundproof,” Phaelan said indignantly, as if him getting caught eavesdropping was entirely the door’s fault.

“We couldn’t hear a thing, ma’am.” Vegard managed to sound incensed and apologetic at the same time.

“I’m sure Tam had it built that way,” I told them both. “Phaelan, Guardians took Piaras back to the Fortune. I need to know if he’s still there.”

“He should be.”

I felt my own temple start to throb. “Does your crew know to keep him on board?”

Phaelan had to think about that one. “You would think so.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Dammit!”

“Dammit, what?”

I told them what Sarad Nukpana had said.

Vegard’s next words blistered the air blue, and if I hadn’t grabbed his arm as tight as I could, he’d have been running for the ship. As it was, he almost jerked me off my feet.

“You won’t get there in time,” I told him. “Phaelan, get hold of your ship’s contact wizard. Tell him to keep Piaras on board. And if he’s gone-Go. Get. Him.”

“You have a contact wizard?” Vegard asked Phaelan, his tone somewhere between disbelieving and impressed.

“My one concession to magic.”

Contact wizards could relay telepathic messages over great distances. I’d told Uncle Ryn about them years ago, and he saw the wisdom in being able to communicate instantly with any ship in his fleet. Within a year, all of his ships had a contact on their crew. Phaelan didn’t like magic, but I’d never heard him complain about contact wizards. The stone in the ring Phaelan wore let him stay in communication with any contact in Uncle Ryn’s fleet.

Phaelan had moved a few paces down the hall and was talking in low tones to his ring. Touching the ring’s stone and projecting his thoughts was all he had to do, but that smacked too much of magic for Phaelan’s comfort. He could talk to his right boot for all I cared, just as long as I could be assured that Piaras was still on the Fortune surrounded by pirates.

“Well?” I asked.

“Five Guardians showed up at the Fortune about a half hour ago and said that Mychael wanted to see Piaras immediately,” Phaelan said. “They had a signed and sealed note from Mychael, and the kid recognized the one with the note, so he went with them.”

My blood ran cold. “Mychael, did you-”

“No, I did not.” The intensity of those four little words was frightening. “I want that Guardian’s name, Phaelan. Does your wizard have it?”

Phaelan asked and smiled fiercely as he listened to the answer. “The Guardian didn’t give his name, but Piaras did.” He looked at me. “He said to tell you that he had gone with Sir Jari Devent.”

“Who’s that?” I asked Mychael.

“Knighted last year.” The muscles worked in his jaw. “He’s the younger brother to the defense attachй at the elven embassy.”

Oh hell.

“Who reports to elven intelligence,” I finished for him.

“Were the other Guardians elves?” Mychael asked Phaelan.

“He didn’t say.”

“Find out.”

Phaelan did. “All elves,” he reported. “All in Guardian uniforms. But this Jari person was the only one who came forward; the others stayed on the dock. Think we’ve got some fake Guardians?”

“Probably. One traitor is too many.”

“My contact wizard said they looked real enough. Military bearing, the works.”

I glanced sharply at Mychael. We were thinking the same thing.

Professional soldiers, like elven embassy guards.

“Carnades couldn’t get Piaras this morning at headquarters, so Balmorlan’s making his move now,” I said.

Since we’d arrived on Mid, Piaras and his spellsinging voice had attracted the wrong kind of attention from the worst kind of people-people who recognized him for the dangerous weapon he was, and each one of them was determined to possess that weapon for themselves. Taltek Balmorlan, an inquisitor for elven intelligence, had Piaras kidnapped a week ago and imprisoned him in the elven embassy until he could get him off the island.

“Embassy guards?” Phaelan asked, his voice deathly quiet.

Last week, he’d seen embassy guards slaughter six Guardians and load an unconscious Piaras into a waiting coach-and he hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to stop it. I wasn’t the only Benares wanting payback. As embassy guards, Balmorlan’s men had diplomatic immunity, and as a wanted criminal, Phaelan’s testimony wouldn’t have been worth the parchment it’d have been scratched on.

“Cousin, we need to do something permanent about Taltek Balmorlan,” Phaelan told me.

“Agreed. Let’s get Piaras first, then we can make Balmorlan sorry.”

“My contact wizard said Piaras armed himself before he left the ship.” Phaelan paused meaningfully. “Heavily.”

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “Mychael, can you contact someone in the citadel to-”

Tam and Talon were looking down into Sirens’ theatre, and from their expressions, they weren’t admiring the view.

“Mychael, we’ve got unwanted guests,” Tam said.

Two strides put Mychael at Tam’s side. I went to the glass wall and peered down into the theatre two stories below. The only illumination was the pale flicker of lightglobes mounted along the walls to mark the exit aisles. Something was moving down on the floor of the theatre. I blinked. Cancel that. The floor of the theatre was moving. Shifting mist, with pale green motes of light winking beneath the surface. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it shouldn’t be there, and we shouldn’t stay here.

“Your wards?” Mychael’s voice was tight.

Tam didn’t take his eyes off of the swirling mist. “Meant to stop physical entry or magical attack.”

I had a sinking feeling that the sparkly mist rolling around on the floor was none of the above. Thin threads of mist snaked upward from between the floorboards. Cold spots formed into columns of frosty air between the tables, frost that reached the window in front of my face. I felt the bone-chilling cold right through the glass. Below us, wisps of icy vapor swirled and solidified into things that weren’t magical and sure as hell weren’t physical.

At least not anymore.

They were dead, and from the looks of them, they’d been that way for a long time. They were armored and entirely too well armed. They drew new steel from moldy and rotting scabbards and sheaths.

The undead warriors appeared to be vaguely human, but unlike any human that I’d ever seen, unless those men had been dragged repeatedly through fire and then what remained of their bodies entombed and held together by the steel armor they wore. Runes and symbols were etched into the steel, glowing red from within.

Specters, ghosts, phantoms-call them what you wanted. Once they were through the boards, those sparkly bodies became entirely too solid. The really bad part was that since they were dead, us killing them probably wouldn’t make them any more dead than they already were.

I hoped Uncle Ryn’s men had had the time and good sense to get themselves back into the tunnels.

Talon swallowed. “I vote we go out my window.”

As if on some perverse cue, Talon’s window slammed shut down the hall behind us, and doors in Tam’s apartment and on other floors started doing the same. The slamming was the only sound in the entire building. Some sicko sorcerer had a twisted sense of humor. My bet was Rudra Muralin.

“This isn’t Rudra’s work.” Tam scooped up my thoughts like dice off a gaming table. That link of ours was coming in handy. Tam went to a massive cabinet that stood against one wall, placed his hand on the door, fingers spread. He hissed a few words in Old Goblin and the door simply vanished. Inside were an assortment of poled weapons; most of them taller than me. Some had a single, wickedly curved blade on one end; the rest sported a blade on both ends. They were monstrous and made the swords I carried look like toothpicks.

I wanted one.

Tam tossed a double-bladed one to Mychael, who expertly caught it. The moment he touched it, a brilliant blue-white light ran down the length of the weapon and blazed with white fire once it reached the curved blades.

“No necromancer on Mid can raise anything that old, and not in those numbers,” Mychael told me. “And Muralin’s got his hands full with a Hellgate.”

“We think,” I reminded him.

“I think her demonic majesty got tired of waiting,” Tam said.

“But those aren’t demons,” Phaelan said.

I understood what Tam was saying. “No, they’re not,” I told Phaelan, “but they’re dead. They’re ghosts.”

“But there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“You want to go down there and tell them that?”

“No. But demons don’t command ghosts. Do they?”

“Where do really bad guys go when they die?” I asked Phaelan.

“Hell?”

“And who’s ruling Hell right now?”

“The demon queen?”

“Give that man a blade on a stick.” I had a disturbing thought.

“Will a blade on a stick work?”

Mychael spun the bladed pike once with practiced and deadly efficiency. “As long as they remain in their solid form, these should work. Bits and pieces don’t fight back very well.”

“What’s the plan?” My question was for anyone who might have one. I wasn’t exactly flush with experience dealing with dead people who didn’t have the courtesy to act that way.

Mychael’s response was pure, stoic paladin. “We go downstairs, destroy those things, and go after Piaras.”

“Good plan. Simple and direct.”

A ghostly face appeared at Tam’s glass wall, right in front of me. I bit back a shriek. No body, just a floating armored head surrounded by mist. A floating, decaying, rotting head. Half of his face had been peeled back all the way down to the bone, skin and tendons dangling loosely from his jaw. Ruined eyes the color of curdled milk stared through the glass. A flicker of red flared to life in the center of each sightless orb. Those dead eyes shouldn’t be able to see me, but I don’t think anyone had told him that.

“Our lady sends her greetings and regards to the one who commands the Saghred.” The words sounded choked with dirt and gravel, and flecks of decayed skin fell from the pallid lips as it spoke. “She would hold discourse with thee.”

Mychael moved to step in front of me. I laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“Who is your lady?” My voice only trembled a little. Good for me.

“The queen of demons, the mistress of Hell, and the consort of our imprisoned lord.”

Oh crap. That lady. Tam was right.

“You rejected our queen’s first invitation. The Reaper’s presence led us to you.”

I took in a slow breath. “And why does she want to talk to me?”

“To request a boon.”

A favor. The demon queen wanted a favor from me, and she’d sent her most winning and polite courtiers to ask me not so nicely. I glanced down at the theatre floor. Dozens, with still more squirming up through the boards. When they solidified, they stood motionless, as if waiting for some unspoken signal, probably from the big, bobbing head. My throat tried to swallow, either that or scream. I couldn’t do either one.

“I will hear her request.” When a platoon of ancient, burned, and mutilated undead seal my friends and me inside a building, I like to know why before they start killing us.

“Keep him talking, Raine,” came Mychael’s voice in my mind. “We will clear the way.”

“And don’t piss him off,” Tam just had to add.

I was about to ask how the hell they expected me to do one without the other when I saw them out of the corner of my eye. One moment they were at the weapon cabinet, the next they’d literally blended into the woodwork. Vegard had likewise vanished. I’d seen Mychael and Vegard do it before, but it didn’t make it any less spooky. I knew they weren’t gone, at least not yet. It was an illusion that would enable them to move along the wall until they reached the door on the far side of the room. I imagine Tam had all kinds of hidden exits. And armed as they were, I knew where they were going. Downstairs. The three of them against a horde of undead warriors. Warriors who were waiting on the bobbing head in front of me to give them the signal.

And I had to keep him distracted. Wonderful.

“My mistress seeks the Scythe of Nen. She says that you know of its resting place.”

“She heard wrong. Not only do I not know where it is, I don’t know what it is. If you could tell me-”

“Dost thou call my lady and queen a liar?”

Way to go, Raine. “Not at all. She’s merely misinformed. Happens to the best of us.”

“You refuse to assist my queen?”

In my career, I’ve had some lowlifes try to hire me, but Hell set a new record for low.

“Not refuse,” I clarified. “I’m merely unqualified to be of assistance-seeing that I don’t know what this Scythe of Nen is, I can’t possibly know where it is. If you would tell me what-”

“She said you would respond thus.”

“Your lady is as wise as she is… uh…”

“Demonic?” Talon said helpfully.

Those red eyes fixed on him and the kid yelped. “I meant that in the most respectful and honorable and… and… Oh shit, I’m so dead.”

The red flickering in the head’s eyes dimmed and the ruined face actually managed to look like it was listening to a voice we couldn’t hear. I had a sinking feeling I knew who he was talking to.

The eyes flared, enraged. “My lady says that it is you who are the liar. You will bring it to her.”

I was losing what little patience I’d managed to scrounge up. Every second I stood here talking to an arrogant, floating head put Piaras that much more out of my reach. “Perhaps if you would tell me what it was, I could-”

“You insult our lady with your denial. She would question you herself.”

“My schedule’s a little full just now, but I’m sure we can set something up for next week when-”

“She would question you in person-and she will question you now.” The lips spread in a smile, and more flakes fell off. Talon made a strangled sound.

I’d had enough. Apparently I couldn’t talk to anyone-living, dead, or undead-without pissing them off. “I got that invite from her purple sidekick this morning,” I shot back. “I told him no by stuffing him in a bottle. There’s a full bar downstairs; maybe we can find something to fit you-if there’s anything small enough.”

The red in the center of his eyes spread until what had been milk white was blood-red. “Disrespect like that shall not go unpunished. My men and I are here to take you to where our lady waits.”

I helped myself to one of Tam’s blades on a stick. “Come and get me, shorty.”

And he did, straight through the glass wall as if it weren’t there. Apparently being undead lets you do all kinds of nifty tricks. Like move entirely too fast for a disembodied head. Not only was the head in the room with us, he’d brought his mist with him, mist that froze anything it came in contact with.

Like my leg. One swooping pass barely brushed me and I couldn’t feel anything below my knee. It was all I could do to stay on my feet.

“Your queen won’t like it if I’m frozen solid,” I managed through pain-clenched teeth. “I can’t exactly chat with her that way.”

“You will thaw quickly where we’re going.”

Oh yeah, that would be Hell.

Phaelan came up directly under the head and impaled it on his sword. At least that was his plan. The head darted away, leaving Phaelan’s blade sticking into thin air, and my cousin completely creeped out.

I considered a fireball, but I didn’t think Tam would appreciate a fire in his nightclub.

The head swooped at Talon, the kid dove and rolled, and I swung the pike like a club, sinking the blade into the back of the thing’s armored head.

And my blade got stuck.

Part of me thought this was progress; my blade was in the head. That was good. The other part wanted to drop the pike the blade was attached to and run. Some things were just too gruesome to stick around for.

Phaelan lunged again, and the head whipped around, jerking me with it. If I hadn’t had a death grip on that pole, the thing would have flung me across the room. As it was, I had a head on a blade on a stick that was dragging me around Tam’s living room like a rag doll. Phaelan was darting and weaving looking for an opening, and Talon was jumping around with no idea what to do.

“Grab Raine!” Phaelan yelled to Talon.

The kid stopped jumping around. “What?”

“Grab her! Keep that thing from moving!”

I saw where he was going with this. Goblin teenager as anchor. Talon wasn’t that big. The only thing him grabbing me was going to do was get him flung around with me-or get his ass kicked if he “accidentally” grabbed me the wrong way.

Talon grinned at me. I glared at him.

The kid got the message and grabbed me around the waist. He was heavier than I thought, and stronger. The head was still for only an instant, but Phaelan was fast.

He brought his blade up in a slashing arc and severed the thing’s ear, which fell with a wet plop to the floor. Black goo oozed and dripped out of the ear and the hole that was left in the head. Talon made a strangled sound. Phaelan followed his slash with a straight stab right between its eyes. More goo, also black.

Talon’s grip on me turned to jelly and I actually felt the kid’s skin go clammy.

“Not feeling good,” he managed before fainting and dragging me down with him, his full weight landing on top of me.

A noxious vapor came from inside the helmet, and when it cleared, the helmet and head were gone.

I pulled in enough air to speak. “Get him off me,” I gasped.

Phaelan looked down at us and grinned. “The kid’s really gonna hate that he was unconscious for this.”

I scowled up at my cousin. “Move. Him.”

Phaelan dragged Talon off of me and tossed the kid like a limp doll across one shoulder.

We went downstairs-and saw a pair of masters at work. They didn’t look like they needed our help or anyone else’s.

Mychael and Tam were working as a team to take on the undead horde, with Vegard taking out any stragglers. They were doing a fine, workmanlike job. The phantoms could turn back into mist and rematerialize to fight again-that is if the glowing blades didn’t get them first. Anything their blades put down didn’t get back up.

I saw why Mychael was commander of the most elite magical fighting force in the seven kingdoms. I didn’t impress easily. But damn.

Mychael and his blades glowed with a white light that blazed so brightly I couldn’t look directly at him for more than a few seconds at a time. His blades sliced through and felled corporeal warriors, and the slightest touch of his light turned phantoms to harmless mist that sank back through the floorboards. Some turned to mist but retained their shape, their mouths moving in silent cries as they sank back through the floor. The phantoms were desperate to keep that light from touching them, but getting away from Mychael put them squarely in Tam’s range. Tam’s hands, blades, and entire body glowed red. What few attacks that made it past his blades to him glanced off in a shower of fiery sparks. They couldn’t kill Tam, but Tam was decreasing their numbers with every spin of his weapon.

Soon there wasn’t anything left of the demon queen’s undead horde except more black goo that Tam was going to have a heck of a time getting out of his theatre floor.

Phaelan carried Talon over to the bar and laid him out on it. Tam was there in an instant, checking his son for signs of life.

“What happened?” His dark eyes reflected concern, relief, and rage all at the same time.

Talon groaned and started to stir.

“He’s fine,” I assured Tam.

The kid tried to sit up, weaving unsteadily. “Did I faint?”

“Yeah, you did,” I told him.

“I don’t normally have a problem with blood.”

“That’s okay; it wasn’t the normal color.”

Talon swallowed and looked like he might be sick. “That must have been it.”

Phaelan tried to muffle a grin and failed miserably. “Next time I’m about to kill something that bleeds black, I’ll warn you.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Vegard was poking the floorboards with his boot. I guess he was making sure nothing else was coming up through it. “You’re borrowing buckets of trouble today, ma’am.”

“I don’t have to borrow anymore; I’ve got plenty of my own, and so does Piaras.” I checked the blades strapped across my back. “Now let’s go get him.”