Lisa Shearin - The Trouble With Demons

Professional discipline was pretty much gone at that point.

The interrogation room opened, one of Sora’s grad students looked, saw, squeaked, and slammed the door.

Smart kid.

Those angry demon eyes looked directly at me. And got even angrier. Then it growled, rattling the windows.

I shouted over my shoulder. I sure as hell wasn’t turning my back on that. “Carnades, if you want to haul me out of here, I think you’re gonna have to get in line.”

There were a few heartbeats of stunned inaction; the only sound was the wheezing in and out of the demon’s breath like some sort of putrid bellows.

Then he roared-and half the people in the room ran. Half the people included most of the accused perps, some still in handcuffs. The watchers let them go; they had a bigger problem, and it was still growing.

While less people gave the rest of us more room to fight, it gave the demon less targets to hit and a greater probability of hitting those targets, namely us.

“You still curious about demons?” Phaelan asked me.

“Not anymore.”

“Too bad you didn’t decide that five minutes ago.”

We had bladed weapons; the demon preferred blunt objects, like office furniture.

In the street we’d used fireballs. That was outside. This was inside, with entirely too many flammables like furniture, walls, and civilians. The watchers opted to go with crossbows with a little magical something extra glowing on the bolts that’d go through any living creature like hot butter. At least they should have. Apparently the normal rules of magic didn’t apply to this particular demon. The bolts shattered on impact and the demon didn’t even slow down, chucking a file cabinet at the bowmen. They dove out of the way before impact, and we had to rethink our strategy, such that it was. The demon wasn’t warded, at least not with any ward I’d ever seen; it was just impenetrable. A bad quality for something that needed killing.

Even worse was the reaction of most of the watchers. As keepers of the peace on an island full of magic users, Sedge’s people had probably seen it all. I don’t think they’d ever seen anything like this. That made all of us. But the thing didn’t want all of us.

It wanted me.

“Run!” I screamed at Phaelan.

“We go together, or we don’t go!”

The demon tried to stomp Phaelan to reach me, but my cousin darted to the left as the massive foot came down. Phaelan spun with deadly grace to plunge his rapier through the thing’s foot-and the blade shattered on its skin. My cousin gaped at the remaining hilt in his hand and his words blistered the air blue. He loved that rapier.

I was watching the demon’s feet, not its hands. My mistake. Huge mistake. Next thing I knew I was snatched off my feet, dangling upside down, with one leg clenched in the demon’s fist. He swung me around and I got a quick and blurry view of the entire squad room. Some Guardians were behind the thing with fireballs ready to launch. Fire safety must have gone out the window along with the furniture. The demon pulled me up to his face, I guess to get a closer look at what he was about to eat. I got a closer look at what was going to eat me. No teeth, just knotty, bony gums. That was really gonna hurt. I’d rather be bitten in half than gummed to death. At least that would be quick.

The demon’s breath came out of his nose in a sulfur-scented, gag-inducing stench.

Nostrils. Open holes. No wards.

Hot damn.

My hands were free, and an instant later, so were the pair of short swords I wore in a harness on my back. A second after that, the demon was sporting a sword up each nostril.

His shriek shattered what windows were left. Then he dropped me.

Being dropped was good; landing was not. Vegard, bless him, was there to catch me, which meant he let me squash him flat when I landed.

The demon pulled out the blades, threw one, then had the bright idea to use the other like a skewer at a buffet.

“Sorry!” I called to the hapless watcher who almost became the demon’s next snack choice.

There was a massive safe next to Sedge’s office where the watch kept their deadlier weapons. I couldn’t begin to guess how much it weighed, and one demonic kick sent it skidding across the floor, slamming into the interrogation room door, trapping Mychael and the professor inside.

I felt power building behind me. A lot of it. Expertly controlled, focused, and deadly. Had to be Carnades. I hoped all that effort was to take out that demon, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

“You and your goblin lover summoned a demon to slaughter our watchers,” the elven mage snarled from beside me. He was focusing his magic and attention on the demon. His rage was focused squarely on me. “Ruthless and very clever, but not clever enough. You are under arrest.”

I couldn’t believe this guy. “Gargantua here’s on a rampage, and you’re still trying to arrest me! You ever heard of perspective?”

We both hit the floor and rolled as a fist the size of an office chair slammed into the floor where we’d just been, cracking the stone and knocking half the people still in the room off their feet.

Carnades and I ended up in a tangle against a bookshelf. The elven mage flung a ball of incandescent white death that hit the demon square between the eyes.

The demon absorbed it, grew larger, and got a lot more angry.

The blue demons cheered from their cell.

Two strides put the yellow demon in front of his blue buddies’ cell. Red-hot sparks flew as one swipe of its claw-tipped hand sliced through both wards and bars like wet paper. The blue demons poured out and made a beeline straight for Carnades and me.

Magic just made big, yellow, and pissed even bigger. But magic had torched the blue ones in that street and would have done the same now, except the blue boys were a lot keener on survival than they had been before. They moved in flashes of blue, faster than any mortal or demon had a right to move. The presence of their yellow friend must have been a morale booster.

An explosion shook the building as the safe blocking the interrogation room simply disintegrated. Mychael was warded and ready for whatever was out here, and Sora was right behind him.

The professor looked up at the yellow demon and cut loose with a string of obscenities that would’ve made Phaelan’s crew blanch-or fall in love.

Mychael looked at me, and then up at the yellow monstrosity. He knew where the worst danger was, but he wanted to come to me. If he did his “white knight” thing now, watchers and civilians were going to die.

The demon had a watcher in each hand; one was limp and bleeding.

“Get him !” I shouted, pointing at the demon.

Mychael hesitated only a second before diving into the fray. I could hear him and the professor shouting orders.

Carnades and I still had a problem. That trio of blue demons was circling us like we were the entrйe they’d been waiting for all their lives. Sedge was leading his watchers against the yellow demon; Phaelan was nowhere to be seen; and Vegard was fighting his way over to us. He wasn’t going to get here in time. My survival was up to me and a mage who hated my guts.

The yellow demon picked up a desk and hurled it at a knot of watchers. They scattered, the desk shattered, part of it flew out a window, and a chunk the size of my fist hit Carnades in the temple. He went down like a rock, and the blue demons rushed him.

I dove between them and Carnades before I could think what I was doing. But I knew what I was doing. I didn’t like Carnades, but if those demons shredded him, guess who’d get tossed in the deepest prison pit the Conclave could dig?