P.C. Cast - Mysteria Nights

Jeanie ran off. As Harmony struggled as if swimming upstream to follow, she glimpsed Dr. Fogg, as calm as could be, observing the scene like the scientist-physician he was, jotting down notes on his Blackberry as he evacuated the building along with the rest of the townspeople.

Finally, Harmony fought her way outside to the porch. Outside, shadows arced and swooped. Birds. First a rodent invasion, now a bird invasion?

The wind subsided the moment Harmony exited the church, as if it had tried at first to keep her from doing so before giving up.

That’s a weirder thought than the talking wind. No more of that, okay?

“I’m sane,” she muttered. “Really I am. I just live in Mysteria, that’s all—” She froze on the top step, her mouth falling open. The scene before her was so inexplicably impossible that her mind almost couldn’t process it.

What at first glance she thought were birds weren’t. “Flying monkeys?” she whispered. Good heaven, they were! From their little gold-trimmed suits to their Dixie-cup hats, they were replicas of the winged assistants from the movie The Wizard of Oz .

As if that weren’t bad enough, Damon stood in the eye of the furry hurricane, fighting back as if the whole thing were personal.

Damon swung his pitchfork at the flock of subdemons. “Be gone! Back to your Hell hole!” But with his powers reduced to what he could conjure as a mortal man, he could do little more than issue threats.

The subdemons had started emerging from a Hell hole in Harmony’s vegetable garden while she was preaching. More and more of them. Damon had tried to get them all stuffed neatly back down the pit before church was over. He could turn on the sprinklers, aye, and wash them all away, but what a muddle it would make, melting, sizzling subdemons everywhere. And how would he explain the little articles of clothing left behind? Nay, ’twas better to scoop them up by the pitchforkful and shove them back to Hell before Harmony emerged from the church.

He’d actually gotten ahead of the game when the winds began. Filled with dread, Damon turned around, a wriggling subdemon, caught by the collar, still dangling from his pitchfork as townspeople poured out of the church.

Hell’s bells. He should have known Lucifer would not let him win, would keep trying to sabotage the trust Damon had built in Harmony. For if Damon were to win over Harmony Faithfull, Lucifer would lose. Over the past few weeks, the Devil had shown no signs of giving up on his quest to assure the defeat of his ex–demon high lord.

How many incidents such as this had there been over the past months? Too many to count. First there’d been the goblin in the barn, then the minitrolls in Harmony’s kitchen. Now this, a flock of subdemons in the middle of the lawn in broad daylight on a Sunday morning, the most brazen violation yet! Well, except for the naked incubus he’d found sneaking through Harmony’s bedroom window one night, but that may have been only a coincidence, the wrong window on the wrong night for the unfortunate dark creature.

Damon redoubled his efforts to get rid of the subdemons, but they swarmed. He’d seen a lot of scenes during his long years working for the Devil, but few as chaotic as this one unfolding on the front lawn of Mysteria Community Church. Townsfolk ran every which way, complicating his efforts to chase the beasties from the churchyard. Damon attended to the subdemons while simultaneously trying to joke about the infestation to impart calm to the crowd. Even for Mysteria, this was a strange happening, although many of the locals took it in stride. It would not be so in any other town.

Competing with the subdemons’ raucous noise were the howls of the O’Cleary great-grandchildren, who ran wild like little demons themselves. Damon fancied that he’d like a family of his own someday, but two minutes spent with the O’Cleary offspring was almost enough to convince a man to drop all thoughts of procreation.

And then there was Dr. Fogg. His hair windblown, his tie whipping in the breeze, he pushed spectacles up the bridge of his elegant nose with one hand as he crouched down low, attempting to entice a subdemon with a broken Saltine cracker. Consorts with elves, that one does, Damon thought. The same with the sheriff. Damon could smell an elf a mile away, and even with his demon’s senses almost gone, he knew well what the doctor and especially Harmony’s friend Jeanie did in their spare time. Elves, too sexy for their pointy ears, they were. The town jail stank of them.

Damon knocked several more subdemons unconscious and dragged them to the Hell hole, shoving them back into the earth. “Tell your master his efforts are in vain. He’ll never destroy me. He’ll never turn me back the way I was before!” A derisive sound came up through the Hell hole, like a deep belch. The warm, moist breeze ruffled Damon’s hair. ’Twas Lucifer himself answering him.

Damon’s lips pulled back over his teeth. “Are you such a coward that you send your minions to do your dirty work? Why don’t you come out and fight me yourself?” Damon raised the pitchfork. “Come on. Come up here and fight like a man. I may be mortal, but I’m ready for ye.”

“Damon, who are you talking to?”

At the sound of the familiar voice, Damon’s heart plunged into his stomach.

Harmony sounded poised at the razor’s edge of hysteria.

“Dinna be afraid, lass!” With a sweep of the pitchfork, he took out several of the more brazen of the subdemons before her eyes, her wide, brown, disbelieving eyes. Some of the creatures lay dazed on the ground. A few crawled, pulling their broken bodies toward the Hell hole in the garden. Damon puffed up his chest and assured her, “They’ll soon be gone.”

“Gone . . .”

“Aye.” That’s when he noticed how brightly her eyes glowed, how her lips were so pale and tight, contrasting with her flushed cheeks. But what he noticed most of all was the shovel gripped in her white-knuckled hands, as if she meant to clang it against the side of his head. Nay, she was not frightened, not at all; she was as furious as the wind that had whipped her long hair and skirt only moments before.

Harmony’s glare intensified. “Gone, like those so-called rats you found in my kitchen?”

Instinct told him no answer he gave would be the right one.

“Gone where, Damon? To the south, maybe? Isn’t that where you told me you were from, Damon? Farther south than I’ve ever been? You weren’t talking about Mexico, were you?” Harmony ducked as a subdemon swooped low overhead. Then she advanced on him, her nostrils flaring. “Were you!”

Damon hesitated, the pitchfork raised in midair as his heart sank. A thousand alternate explanations came to mind, but with those excuses, would he not be slipping back into the lies that so characterized his previous life?

“Nay,” he said gently. “I was not talking about Mexico. But I can explain. I . . .” Say it . He jerked his pitchfork at the sky. “I was one of them.”

Harmony’s eyes went wide. “A flying monkey?”

“Nay, lass! I was a demon.”

There was a terrible pause. Then Harmony asked, “A demon demon?”

“Aye, a demon demon.”

“This is the truth, Damon. You swear?”

“I do.”

Harmony made a strangled sound and raised her shovel high. For a moment, Damon was sure she’d whack him in the head, but she struck at a low-flying subdemon instead, and then another as they wheeled overhead, taunting him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Clang . A subdemon fell to earth, another victim of Harmony’s vicious swing. “Why didn’t you?”

“I did! That very first day. In the kitchen. Ye thought I was lying.” As she stared at him, he saw her gaze turn inward and knew she remembered. “But ye took me in all the same. Deny it you might, lass, but ye are as close to an angel as I’ve ever encountered.”