The Trouble with Demons

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 entrée 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?



Besides, it’d gall the hell out of him if I saved his life. I grinned at the demons and bared my teeth.



“You hungry?” I yelled over the chaos. “You want a piece of this? You want a piece of me?” I had a ball of blue fire in each hand, and the demons were circling me. There was one of me, two fireballs, and three demons.



And a whirlwind of searing flame curling and twisting in the center of my chest.



The Saghred.



Oh no.



Not now. Not here. Please, no, not here.



The whirlwind turned into a tornado. My breath hissed in and out from between clenched teeth. My chest was on fire. The fire and the Saghred’s power that fed it blazed under my breastbone, white-hot and raging.



Take the power, or the power will take you.



It wasn’t a voice; it was the Saghred’s desires manifesting itself in my head.



It was also the truth.



I shoved down the fire and my fear. I swallowed them hard and held them down. The fire flickered and writhed, trying to get around my will. I pressed harder and it just increased its struggle, wild and untamable. It knew it was stronger. It knew it was going to win this time. I was its instrument, its bond servant, and I would do its will, surrender to its desires.



No!



The sounds of battle faded until all I could hear was my own breathing, and the sibilant words of the demons who had backed off a step or two, but no farther. I couldn’t tell if their words were death spells or demon-speak for “You first” and “No, you go first.”



It didn’t matter, the Saghred didn’t care, and no one had asked me what I wanted. Those demons just thought they were hungry. The Saghred hadn’t had a decent meal in nearly a thousand years. And as I’d discovered a few days ago, I was the Saghred’s bond servant, and part of that job was accepting soul sacrifices to feed the Saghred. And right now, the Saghred had a hankering for blue demons.



There was no way in hell demon souls were flowing through me to feed that rock.



The demons knew, and one of them moved in a blurred flash to snatch up Carnades’s quasi-conscious body as a hostage, the mage’s bared throat clutched in talon-tipped hand. It looked at me and bared dozens of needle-sharp teeth in a smile that told me Carnades was about to be the second elven mage to die today.



Not going to happen.



Time slowed for me until the demon’s fingers constricting around Carnades’s throat barely moved at all—but they were still moving. One of the pointed nails punctured the mage’s skin and a thin stream of blood flowed leisurely down his pale neck, vanishing into the collar of his robes.



I took a deep, shuddering breath. Then I clenched my jaw, gritted my teeth, and with every ounce of strength and sheer stubbornness I possessed, forced down the Saghred’s starvation, its demands, its desires. Forced them down bit by struggling bit. When I had as much control as I knew I was going to get, I aimed the stone’s power directly at the demon holding Carnades hostage.



The demon’s eyes widened in terror and disbelief. You’d have thought I’d shoved him headfirst into the business end of a cannon. He knew the power I was packing, and he knew the barest touch of that power wouldn’t leave enough of him to fill a dustpan. He froze. So did the other two. Everything and everyone in the room went dead silent. Waiting.



For me. For what I was going to do.



I slowly raised my arm and extended my hand, leveling it at the demon. I think it was glowing; I think I was glowing. Carnades’s eyes opened and he saw the demon.



And then he saw me.



Rescue now; explain later, I told myself.



“Put. Him. Down.” My teeth were clenched and my voice shook against the power I was barely holding in check.



But I was holding it. I had it under control.



And Carnades knew it. Now I saw a flicker of fear turn into raw, unreasoning hatred. He saw—completely and clearly for the first time—the level of power I had, and he knew its source. It didn’t matter if I saved him. He didn’t care. What I could do—what I was—was all that mattered to him now. I’d just sealed my fate. Carnades would not only see me arrested, he would see me executed. Today if he could get away with it. In his misguided and twisted reasoning, I had just become too dangerous to live.