Darren Shan - Death's Shadow

“Leave my girl alone, you crazy bitch,” he growls, unleashing another bolt of energy. This one hits Juni in her distorted chest, blasts her off the top of the building, and she yowls like a cat on fire as she drops.

Dervish takes out two of the demons feasting on Sharmila, using magic to pop their brains like grapes. They’re dead before they hit the floor. The third glances up, sees that Dervish has beaten off Juni and disappears down the stairs.

Dervish limps across the roof. I’m closer and faster, so I get to Sharmila before he does. She’s slumped unconscious. I leave her that way and pour magic into her legs to stop the worst of the pain and cauterise the open wounds. The demons have stripped her to scraps below her thighs. Most of the bones are intact, but I can’t restore the flesh around them.

“Will she live?” Dervish barks, hobbling close to inspect the damage.

“Maybe. But I can’t do much with the legs. She’ll lose them.”

He sighs, eyes drifting, then snaps back into focus. “Where are we? What’s happening? Be quick.”

“You had a heart attack. We’re on the roof of a hospital. You’ve been in a coma for four days. Demons are attacking. Juni Swan was leading them.”

“I thought I killed her in the cave,” he growls.

“You did. She came back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” I gulp. “You didn’t finish her off this time either. I can sense her. She’s wounded but alive.”

“Is she returning for more?” he asks eagerly, fingers twitching, for a moment looking half as crazy as Juni did.

“No,” I answer, tracking her mentally as she slips through the window on the first floor. “You must have hurt her. She’s gone back to the demon universe.”

“Damn.” He stares around, eyes going vague. He looks like he’s about to collapse. I step forward to support him but he comes alert again and waves me away. “We’re exposed. We have to get out of here.”

“There are at least nine demons downstairs,” I tell him. “We could create a barrier, block their route to the roof…”

“What if more cross and climb the walls?” he grunts. “No, we have to move.” He takes hold of the bar pinning Sharmila to the door. “Can you make sure she doesn’t feel this?”

“I’ll do my best.” Once I’m focused, I nod and he pulls sharply. The bar rips out of the wood and Sharmila’s flesh. She moans softly, but I use magic to numb the pain and she falls silent again. Dervish slides around and takes Sharmila on his back, holding her arms crossed around his neck.

“Will you be able to carry her?” I ask. He’s sweating and trembling.

“Only one way to find out,” he mutters and staggers down the first of the stairs, back into the demon-infested building.

We make our way down through the levels of the hospital. The air throbs with the screams and moans of people who were struck by glass shards when the windows shattered. We spot some of them as we descend. They’re milling around helplessly, while nurses and doctors try to calm and help them.

I spy a demon on the fifth floor, chasing a man with a cast on his right leg. I look at Dervish, silently asking if we should help. He shakes his head. “We can’t do anything,” he wheezes. “I’m running out of strength. We need to save our energy—we might have to use it to break free.”

“We weren’t sure you were going to recover,” I tell him as we stumble down the next set of steps.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have. But they made the mistake of opening a window too close to me. The magic flooding through hit me like a wave and revived me.”

“Magic brought you back to life?”

He nods. “And it’s keeping me going. Which is fine. But when the window closes, I’m toast. That’s why we have to get out of here. The demons will have to return to their own universe or perish when the window shuts, but there might be soldiers or werewolves waiting to move in.”

We trudge on in silence, Dervish panting, struggling to support Sharmila. His legs are shaking badly. Even with all the magic in the air, he can’t last very long. He might drop before we make the ground. If he does, I’ll have to leave him. Sharmila too. I’m not a coward but it would be foolish to stay. In desperate times you have to act clinically. Dervish and Sharmila understand that and would only curse me if I let myself be slain for no good reason.

As we come to the second floor I spot a lizard-like demon slithering through the door from the stairs. I motion for Dervish to stop and we wait until the creature has passed. As we come abreast of the door, I glance through the circular window. There are two more demons with the lizard. One looks like an anteater, only it’s bulkier and has several long snouts. The other is some sort of demonic insect with a heavy golden shell, the size of a large dog.

As I watch, they kill an elderly woman and a nurse, then claw open a door and slip into a ward out of sight. Dervish has moved on, but I remain where I am, a wretched feeling in my gut.

“Hurry,” Dervish huffs. “We’re nearly there.”

“Dervish…” I say hesitantly.

“What?” he snaps.

“There are three demons.”

“So?”

“They’ve gone into the maternity ward.”

Dervish shuts his eyes and sighs. He looks more like a corpse than one of the living. I think he’d be happier if he was dead. I wait for him to say something, but he only stands silent and unresponsive.

“The babies,” I whisper. “We can’t let them slaughter babies.”

“We should,” Dervish croaks. “It’s the first law of being a Disciple—if you don’t stand a decent chance in a fight, run .”

“I’m not a Disciple.”

“I am.” He pulls a weary face. “But to hell with it.” He gently lays Sharmila down, stretches and groans, then steps up past me, pushes the door open and holds it like a doorman. “Ladies first.”

The ward rings with the sound of crying, but it’s the natural noise of babies who have been abruptly awoken. I’m sure the mothers are terrified, but they’re trying to control their fear so as not to alarm the little ones.

The half-dissolved bodies of two nurses line the corridor ahead of us. Fresh corpses. They must have tried to stop the demons. I pray we have more success.

Dervish is looking a bit better than he did on the upper floors. We’re close to the window—the mage has managed to keep it open, curse him—so there’s more magic in the air. He moves ahead of me, his legs no longer shaking quite so badly. His gown gapes at the back. I can see his bottom. That would make me smile any other time, but nothing strikes my funny bone at the moment.

We find the insect demon terrorising a young mother in a room on our left. She’s no more than three or four years older than me. Another woman’s with her. The pair are shielding the baby from the beast. It’s snapping at them, relishing their fear, stretching out the terror.

“Hey, roach!” Dervish calls. The demon turns and Dervish fires an energy bolt at it. The demon shoots across the room and smashes into the wall. But it recovers quickly and propels itself at Dervish. He catches it and they roll to the floor, wrestling. “Go!” he shouts at me.

My instinct is to help him, but the other demons could slaughter several babies while we battle with this one. Better to advance. Even if I can’t kill them, I can delay them and hope the window closes while we’re fighting.

I let the women escape with the baby, then hurry down the corridor. I catch evidence of an attack in a room to my right—a small hand lying on the floor near the door, attached to nothing—but I don’t stop to probe. Best not to look too closely at something like that.