Lisa Shearin: The Trouble With Demons

I dragged some air into my overworked lungs. “Purple demon,” I rasped.

“You can see him?”

“Yes!”

“You sure?”

I had plenty of responses to that, but didn’t have time or the breath for any of them. If we survived, I could always smack Phaelan later.

What I thought were ridges on the demon’s back unfolded into a pair of batlike wings, and the thing went airborne above the people crowding the narrow street. I swore, and ran faster.

I caught sight of him again where the maze of buildings emptied into an enormous city square bordered with coffee-houses, pubs, bookstores-places students liked to go between classes. The kids called it the Quad. If the demon wanted victims or hostages, he’d just found hundreds to choose from.

It was a sunny day, midmorning, and the beginning of the semester. The Quad wasn’t just full; it was packed. Hovering above it all, his leathery wings keeping him about ten feet over the unsuspecting students’ heads, was my quarry. The kids felt the whooshes of air from his wingbeats and looked up and around in confusion. They had no clue what was right over their heads and I didn’t want them to know. With knowledge would come fear, and with fear could come a stampede. That did not need to happen.

The demon looked at me and grinned, exposing a mouthful of needle-fine teeth, and gestured with spidery fingers at the bounty spread below him. His for the taking, and the bastard wanted me to know it.

Unless I stopped him.

So that was it. He wasn’t trying to get away; he wasn’t even trying to snatch a student for a snack. Though he wouldn’t mind taking one with him for later. He wanted me to fight him, and he wanted me to use the Saghred to do it.

No way, no time, no how. And especially not here. I didn’t believe in collateral damage.

The demon knew. He shrugged elaborately, his lips split into a feral grin, and he dove into a group of students.

I screamed the word I rarely used except in cases of extreme rage and near-death experiences. That word and the half a dozen armed Guardians who’d caught up with me made the kids around us scatter in a panic.

The demon was snatching up students, taking them about a dozen feet into the air and dropping them on the crowd below. The kids couldn’t see him, but they knew their classmates weren’t jumping and falling by themselves. Some of the ones he dropped landed on other students, knocking them to the ground; others he dropped landed unmoving on the cobblestones. All of them were in danger of being crushed underfoot if the students stampeded.

I felt Vegard and his boys pulling together some serious kick-ass magic behind me. It got the demon’s attention, as he dangled a young student by the scruff of the neck. A pretty, dark-haired human girl. I recognized her. Katelyn Valerian, the archmagus’s granddaughter.

The demon looked at me.

And then he roared and materialized in all his demonic glory in the middle of the Quad.

The students’ screams were deafening as they panicked and ran-or tried to. There were too many of them and too little open space. I didn’t blame them for running, but I also didn’t want to be trampled. I wanted that demon.

Someone beat me to it-and that someone wasn’t Vegard.

I knew that voice.

A rich baritone of staggering strength and power pierced the chaos, his spellsong dark and discordant, the notes booming and harsh. A long-fingered hand extended above the crowd toward the demon, fingers spread, helping him focus his spellsong.

Piaras Rivalin.

Oh no.

Piaras had just turned eighteen, but the young elf had the pipes and talent of a spellsinging master. Youth and lethal skill were a dangerous combination. Piaras’s voice was a weapon; he was in college to learn how to control it. Last week he’d inadvertently knocked out half the Guardians in the citadel. Right now, the kid had that demon-a demon that had his girlfriend’s life clutched in his claws-tacked to a piece of sky like a bug pinned to a board.

The demon snarled and tried to break free, but Piaras held firm. He’d reacted instinctively without realizing what he had bitten off. He knew now. His normally pale face was strained with effort, his lean chest rapidly rising and falling, struggling to keep air in his lungs to keep that spellsong going. He spotted me, his large brown eyes relieved and imploring at the same time. Poor kid had never seen a demon before. Now he’d caught one and had no idea what to do with it.

That made two of us.

I didn’t know what I could do to help, but I wasn’t going to let him down. I’d think of something.

The students who had been sitting at the cafй table with Piaras had knocked over their chairs and scrambled out of the line of fire should that demon be able to strike back. All of them ran except for one young goblin student-Talon Nathrach. Piaras’s friend. The son of a more-than-good friend of mine, Tamnais Nathrach.

Piaras’s expression turned from fear to fierce determination; the demon’s sharp features contorted with raw hatred. If Piaras’s spellsong faltered, that demon would fry him where he stood-or rip his throat out like that elven mage.

No way in hell or anywhere else.

Vegard swore and kept his fireball in readiness, but didn’t launch it. I knew why. Interrupting another magic user’s spell with one of your own was potentially deadly for anyone in the general vicinity-especially the spellcaster. Piaras was in enough danger without me or Vegard making it worse.

Piaras’s song held the demon immobile, but the thing was strong enough to snarl and tighten his grip on the back of the Katelyn’s neck, puncturing the girl’s skin with his claws. Katelyn screamed. Piaras snarled and redoubled his attack.

Talon hissed a low countermelody in Goblin to run under Piaras’s spellsong, merging seamlessly into his spell. The unwholesomely handsome goblin was a spellsinger and dancer at Sirens, his father’s nightclub. I had thought his songs were limited to making the clientele horny. Apparently I was wrong. Piaras’s spell held the demon; Talon’s spellsong told the demon in no uncertain terms what was going to happen to him unless he let Katelyn go.

Piaras and Talon were both scared to death, but they were doing what needed to be done, and damned if they weren’t doing a fine job. I’d worry about how they were doing it later. But they couldn’t keep it up for much longer.

Vegard extinguished the fireball and carefully stepped into the area beneath the demon and the dangling girl.

Phaelan swore under his breath.

“Miss Valerian,” Vegard said, “I’ll catch you; you’re going to be fine. Just try to relax.”

“Good luck with that,” Phaelan muttered.

I elbowed him in the ribs.

The big Guardian’s voice was calm and commanding, but most important, he pitched his voice low, carefully avoiding vocal conflict with Piaras and Talon’s work.

I stood there feeling worthless, desperately trying to come up with a way to help without making matters fatally worse.

With visible effort, the demon unclenched his fingers, letting Katelyn fall into Vegard’s waiting arms. Vegard pushed her in the direction of a coffeehouse. The demon’s thin lips stretched in a mockery of a smile. He had wanted to be rid of her; now he could focus all of his attention on Piaras and Talon.

Steel weapons wouldn’t work and neither would fireballs. Dammit. Those kids couldn’t hold him all day.

“Can the boys let him go and dive for cover?” I asked.

“He’d roast them before they could blink,” Vegard said. “We need a demon trap.”

“So get one!”

“I’ve sent Dacan, but he won’t be back in time.”

A voice brushed against my mind, its familiar intimacy like a caress of dark silk against bare skin. I didn’t need to see him; I knew who he was.