The Trouble With Demons

Chapter 25

The dirt tunnel hadn’t extended far, only about thirty feet or so. That was good. The only way we’d managed to squeeze through was hunched over and scrunched up; wide shoulders need not apply. Vegard had gotten stuck twice. It had taken a lot of grunting and quick shoving, but Phaelan had gotten the big Guardian moving again. We were certainly motivated to keep moving; there were demons in front of us and possibly Carnades’s guards behind us.

We wiggled out of the demon-dug hole in the wall and into tunnels that I was more familiar with; I didn’t like them, but at least they were familiar. I shone my small lightglobe around. Nothing but a lot of dark and cold air in both directions. But on the upside, there were no demons waiting to eat us. Vegard’s lightglobe joined mine, crackling with what looked like lightning inside. Light and an incendiary device for demons. I liked it. I beefed up my own to match.

I sent my globe down the tunnel a few feet in each direction and swore silently. No demons waiting to bite our faces off, but the black blood and green ooze extended in both directions.

Phaelan saw what I saw and nodded in grudging approval. “You can’t fault the bastards’ tactics,” he whispered. “When you steal something, split up now, meet up later.”

Demons were strategic thinkers. Wonderful.

“But isn’t Hell supposed to be down?” Phaelan asked.

“We’re headed for a gate to Hell,” I reminded him, “not the actual place.” I looked at Piaras. “Which way?”

Piaras was standing quietly, unmoving, unblinking. Then he turned his head toward me, his dark eyes glittering like twin onyx orbs.

Oh no. Not now.

My hand dropped to the blackjack I had tucked in my belt; Phaelan shifted slightly behind me. His blackjack was the twin to mine. Vegard had silently moved to cover Piaras’s right side-his sword arm. I didn’t want to hurt Piaras; but I would knock out Sarad Nukpana. Piaras the virgin would lead us to the Scythe of Nen. Sarad the psycho might have other ideas first.

“Piaras?” My voice was calm, and I never took my eyes from his. Phaelan and Vegard would deal with Piaras’s hands if need be. I’d heard that the eyes were the windows to the soul; I needed to be sure Piaras’s soul was home alone.

Piaras blinked and shook his head, as if waking up from a brief nap. Then he saw me and froze, his now brown eyes wide. “What?”

“You tell us, little brother,” Vegard rumbled.

“Did you just get a visit?” I asked quietly. “You looked like you left us there for a second.”

“We just came out of the hole, didn’t we?” Piaras stopped and swallowed. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” I assured him. I lightened my voice. “It’s okay; just a trick of the light. My mistake.”

Piaras wasn’t buying it. “Are you sure?”

I looked up into his obviously brown and definitely scared eyes, and gave him a reassuring smile. “Positive. There’s no one in there but you, sweetie. Which way do we go?”

Piaras stood still as if listening. I couldn’t hear anything, but neither could he. The kid was concentrating; I was still shaking. Sarad Nukpana had come and gone, literally in the blink of an eye. It was a message for me, subtle and damned effective. The goblin had found a way around Justinius Valerian’s wards, or else he’d just muscled his way through. Either way, those wards weren’t keeping him out. Nukpana was watching, keeping an eye on his investment. If I didn’t get the Scythe for him, he’d instantly make Piaras pay-and probably have the kid try to take one of us down with him.

“Down there,” Piaras said, indicating the tunnel to the left. He looked over my shoulder at Phaelan. “And yes, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t say a thing,” my cousin protested. “Far be it from me to question a man’s purity.”

I didn’t want to say anything out loud, at least not yet, but I was more than confused by our direction. I was concerned. Not that I doubted Piaras’s ability to track the Scythe. Piaras said this was the direction, and the trail of black goo and green slime confirmed that something demonic or undead had been this way recently. But that didn’t mean I had to feel all warm and fuzzy about it. There were a lot of things wrong right now, and our direction was just the most recent.

There were no signs, sounds, or sensations of pursuit from behind us. That was good. Maybe. I didn’t know what had happened to Herrick, but true to his promise, he’d kept Carnades’s guards off of us. That brought up problem number two-there were no sounds or sensations of anything in front of us. But it was as if the demon queen had ordered her minions to bleed and/or ooze to give us a trail that no one could possibly miss. And last, but definitely not least, Sarad Nukpana could now come and go as he pleased. Like I said, no warm and fuzzies for me, but I was jumpy and twitchy in spades.

My experience with demons had all been of the bad kind. I didn’t know of anyone who’d had a happy demon encounter. The only happy camper was usually the demon because it got a meal out of it. The mortal they grabbed ended up dead and eaten, and sometimes not in that order. I decided it was better to be jumpy than some demon’s lunch.

The tunnel was definitely sloping upward. Up conceivably meant out of the tunnel. Vegard put his hand on my shoulder, and I damned near jumped out of my skin.

“Ma’am, I think I know where we’re going.” Vegard’s voice was so quiet that I could barely hear him and he was standing right next to me.

Vegard never whispered without a reason. A soft voice usually equaled a bad place or bad guys. I responded with a single nod; movement might not be a good idea, either. I shot a quick glance at Piaras. Brown eyes; check.

“The Assembly.” The sound barely made it past Vegard’s lips.

“Which is?” I mouthed.

“Where the Conclave met before the citadel was built.”

“That’s bad?”

“It ain’t easy. Crumbling ruins, five floors of offices under the main Assembly chamber.”

Phaelan spoke. “Let me guess: we’re under the bottom floor.”

Vegard gestured up ahead with his eyes. “We’re coming up on it now.”

“And those five floors are probably a bureaucratic maze of halls and tiny offices,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

With potentially a demon around any or every corner.

“Still straight ahead?” I asked Piaras.

He nodded, looking as nervous as the rest of us. That was good; it meant he was still himself. Sarad Nukpana would have been having the time of his life sending us on a stroll amongst demons.

“We’ll know for sure when we get closer,” Vegard told us, “but the Hellgate’s probably in the Assembly chamber. Huge room, vaulted ceiling.”

And plenty of space to stage demon hordes for an invasion.

I didn’t want to take Piaras anywhere near a Hellgate. If the demons from Carnades’s town house had gone to the Assembly-and it was looking like they had-Piaras’s work was done; it was time for him to leave.

“Any quick way to the surface from here?” I asked Vegard. I flicked my eyes toward Piaras. The Guardian saw, but gave no indication. He knew what I wanted-a way to get Piaras out of here. Now.

Vegard’s lips narrowed into a thin line.

Not the answer I wanted. “No way out but up,” I said.

He nodded. “Or back the way we came.”

“Do you know where the other end of this tunnel comes out?”

“No clue, ma’am.”

So, no choice but to take Piaras with us. If the demons had taken the Scythe of Nen to the Assembly, then that’s where we had to go.

“Well, I’ve never stormed the gates of Hell before,” Phaelan muttered sarcastically. “If we don’t die horrible deaths, who knows, it might be fun.”

In a matter of minutes, the tunnel turned into a deserted corridor. Stone. Hand-hewn. Man-made. And other than our muted lightglobes, pitch-dark.

Welcome to the Assembly, bottom floor, nowhere to go but up to Hell.

Apparently the demon queen’s command to bleed and ooze had expired some time ago. Not one drop of anything broke the accumulated dust in the hall we were now in. It looked just like the last half dozen halls we’d walked through. There weren’t any foot- or claw prints, either. That told me the demons might have taken a different route up to the Assembly. I really didn’t want to look, but I had to. I shone my lightglobe on the walls and up to the ceiling that was only a few feet above our heads.

Oh shit.

Intersecting lines showed where dozens of tiny claws had gouged the stone along the walls and straight up to the ceiling. The little bastards could run on the freaking ceiling.

Piaras looked where I was looking and said a word I didn’t think he knew. “Are those what I think they are?”

“I wish they weren’t.” I had an unpleasant flashback to the Volghul scuttling along the sides of the buildings that lined that street, brick chipping and flying as his claws dug in. I really didn’t want to have a swarm of tiny needle-fanged and razor-clawed demons drop on top of me out of the dark. Damn, why didn’t everything have to walk on the floor like the rest of us?

I took a steadying breath and let it out. “Vegard, could you-”

“Covering the ceiling, ma’am.” A second lightglobe flared to life above Vegard’s open hand. It crackled with cobalt fire as it floated above our heads and just below the ceiling. The fire extended beyond the confines of the globe, hungrily licking the ceiling as it traveled ahead of us. Anything in its path would probably find itself fried.

“Nice work,” Phaelan said. “I like it.”

“The demons won’t,” the big Guardian told him.

“Even better.”

We kept going.

Piaras was still on the Scythe’s trail like a hound on a strong scent, and Vegard knew the layout of the place. Phaelan and I felt like hired blades along for the trip.

I knew better. Even if she already had the Scythe of Nen in her hands, claws, whatever, I had a sinking feeling that the demon queen still wanted to have that chat with me. And here I was walking straight into her waiting clutches. I just wanted the Scythe; I had no intention of taking on a demonic horde or slamming a Hellgate. And even if I wanted to, I didn’t know how. But we needed to get close enough to confirm that the demons had the Scythe, and I was sure Mychael and Sora would appreciate knowing where the Hellgate was. I swore silently. Mychael. He had no idea where we were and what we were doing; maybe Sora had gotten word to him that Rudra Muralin was topside playing goblin ambassador, with Carnades as his clueless host and tour guide. I wondered if Rudra had roped Carnades into showing him around town so the elf mage wouldn’t be in his town house when Rudra’s demon allies went after the Scythe.

With my next step, I felt a crunch followed by a squish. I jumped back and stifled a squeal; it came out as a squeak. I grimaced and raised my boot; Phaelan saw what was on the bottom before I did. The last time I’d seen him look that sick was after a business rival sealed him in a brewing vat and Phaelan had the bright idea to drink his way to freedom.

I flexed my ankle and looked down. The goop on the bottom of my boot was blue, which was a healthy color for a demon, but flat wasn’t a good shape. I tried to scrape it off, then froze. I sensed it before I heard it. Scuttling, sibilant hissing, straight ahead.

And right behind.

Above and all around us, glowing eyes peered out of abandoned offices. They were small, but when there were that many, size didn’t matter.

Phaelan had a wickedly curved blade in each hand. “Let’s hope these bleed and die.”

Vegard’s lightglobes flared bright as day, showing us things that made me want to scream, run, and not stop doing either one until I was back in the middle of Carnades’s kitchen. Tiny demons, no taller than my hand, scurried like mice. That is if mice were blue and spindly and looked like legs with teeth. Really, really sharp teeth. I’d just squished their sibling; they probably weren’t happy about that.

A swarm of demons, no room to fight, and we all had blades out. No good could come of this. Magic would be best; fire would be better-both would make the tiny demons seething around us scream, which would bring bigger demon reinforcements from upstairs.

“If we skewer the little bastards, they’re gonna scream,” I warned in a singsong voice through clenched teeth.

“If they jump on me, I’m gonna scream,” Phaelan shot back. “Can’t the kid sing them to sleep?”

Piaras grimaced. “I don’t think they have ears.”

He was right. With that many teeth, the only other things they had room for on their misshapen heads were yellow eyes.

Phaelan went back-to-back with me. “If we just stand here, they’re going to eat us.”

“Shield and torch,” Vegard said calmly.

“Phaelan can’t shield,” I hissed.

“Mine aren’t that good,” Piaras added quickly.

“And I can’t torch,” I told Vegard. He knew why. No containments on the Saghred meant no containments on me. If I used the tiniest fraction of what I’d used in the watcher station, the demon queen herself would be down here in nothing flat. We needed a quick, quiet, hot burst, not a volcanic eruption.

“Can you shield them?” Vegard asked me.

“Yes, but I have to drop my blades.”

Vegard couldn’t believe what he just heard. “What?”

“I need a hand on each of them, bare palm.”

“Can’t you-”

“No, I can’t!” I snapped. “I’m a seeker, not a soldier!”

“If we survive this, I’m teaching you how-”

“Whatever! I’ll shield; you roast!”

I slowly sheathed my blades with dozens of hungry demons within touching distance and grabbed hold of Phaelan and Piaras and pulled them close.

Vegard did his thing. A wave of ice-blue flame rolled off of the Guardian and engulfed the demons. It didn’t burn them-it froze them. The ones on the ceiling started falling to the floor like fanged icicles. Once the last one hit the floor, I let Phaelan and Piaras go.

Vegard took a couple of deep breaths. War magic like that was like lifting weights, and he’d just lifted more than his share.

“Ma’am, when we get out of here, I’m going to teach you how to-”

The shadows shimmered and parted, revealing a Volghul that had probably been there the entire time. I didn’t know if all Volghuls looked alike, but this one could have been the twin to the one Tam and I crammed into that bottle.

The demon looked straight at me and smiled, his teeth pointy and sharp, handy for things like ripping throats out. His claws seemed to be flexing with a life of their own and were similarly practical. Others flowed out of the offices ahead and behind us.

My steel was sheathed; I reached for my magic.

A Volghul’s claws whipped out, wrapping themselves around Phaelan’s throat. The tip of one razor-sharp claw rested confidently against the big vein in my cousin’s throat. Phaelan wasn’t going anywhere.

And neither were we.

“Our queen wants the Saghred bearer alive.” The Volghul’s smile broadened, showing me all of his teeth. “As do I.”