The ball of light dims, then is quenched, plunging us into blackness.
Bill-E and Juni’s screams get louder. The demon shrieks triumphantly. The sound of scampering feet. My first instinct—turn and run for dear life. But my magic half holds me in place. Makes me listen. The scampering sounds come closer. Closer. Any second now, those teeth will be ripping into my flesh and tearing off chunks of…
Sudden silence.
Down! the voice barks.
I drop instinctively and, in response to a second command, stick my legs up in the air. I force magic down to my feet, transforming them, directed by the voice.
The demon hits. A wet stabbing sound. My knees buckle, but I hold them straight. There’s weight pressing down on me, more than I could naturally bear. I use magic to steady my legs and support the heavy load. The demon’s struggling, screeching. Something splashes over my face and neck—blood or bile, maybe both. I scream with fear and hate, then force my feet up higher. The demon chokes, writhes a few more times, then goes still.
I hold my position, wary, in case the demon’s faking. But when, after several long seconds, there’s no movement, I allow myself to relax a bit and summon a fresh ball of light.
My legs are rigid above me. The demon’s impaled on them. I can see two grey, metallic prongs sticking out of the monster’s back. My feet, transformed into blades. How cool is that!
“Grubbs!” Bill-E yells.
I tilt my head and look behind me. Bill-E and Juni are standing in the doorway. I see panic in Bill-E’s face. He can’t see the blades from there. He thinks the demon’s feasting on me.
“It’s OK,” I call, lowering my legs, using my hands to try and push the demon off. When that fails, I use magic to propel it clear, then turn my legs back to their normal form. I stand.
“Grubbs?” Bill-E says, softly this time, uncertain.
I smile at him and Juni. She looks suspicious too. “I killed it.”
Bill-E takes a step forward. I increase the brightness of the light so he and Juni can see me clearly, as well as the motionless demon.
“You killed it?” Bill-E echoes, walking cautiously towards me, staring at the dead monster. “How?”
“Magic.” I feel weird. I’ve never killed anything before, apart from flies and other insects. I know this is a demon and it was trying to kill me, but it’s still a strange sensation. I don’t feel guilty—I’m glad as hell that I’m not the one lying dead!—but I’m not thrilled either.
Juni steps up beside Bill-E. She’s trembling. Brushes strands of white hair out of her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” she mumbles. Takes a step towards it. Stops. “Are you certain it’s dead?”
“Yes. But others might come. We can’t afford to hang around.”
“I have to examine it,” she says.
“This isn’t the time for an autopsy!” I snap.
“I have to make sure there are no wires or engines inside.”
“You think that thing’s a fake?” Bill-E exclaims. “Are you insane?”
“No,” Juni says. “To both questions. But I have to be sure. If this is real, it changes the entire way I think about the world. Before I accept that, I have to be certain this isn’t a clever movie prop that got out of control.”
Juni crouches next to the demon. Studies it closely, hands raised defensively in case it leaps back to life and attacks. I move up behind her, also worried about the demon, no longer positive that I killed it. Remembering when I fought Vein and Artery. I could cut them up into bits, but I wasn’t able to kill them. This might be a lesser demon, or I might be more powerful than I was before. Or it might only be wounded, faking death to lure us closer.
Juni kicks one of the demon’s legs—no response. She kicks a mouth stalk. It wobbles from side to side, but only from the force of her blow. Slowly, carefully, she prises its main mouth open and peers down its throat. I tense. If the demon’s faking, this is the perfect moment to strike. I see the teeth start to come together and prepare a ball of energy to hurl.
But I’m stressing for nothing. The mouth’s only moving because Juni is fiddling with the demon’s neck.
“I need a knife,” Juni mutters, running her hands over the demon’s ant-like shell. She looks up. “Either of you?”
Bill-E fishes in a pocket and passes her a small Swiss army knife. Juni pauses, grimacing, then cuts into the demon’s flesh. It’s softer than it looks, or else Juni is stronger then she appears, because the blade plunges in up to her hand. She shudders, then carves downwards along the length of the demon’s side. Worm-like guts ooze out as she slices, as well as a greyish substance which might be blood. Remembering the spray I caught earlier, I wipe a hand across my face and it comes away wet and sticky with the same grey liquid.
“I’d kill for a shower,” I mutter, chuckling darkly at the sick joke.
Juni cuts a long, jagged line through the creature’s flesh, ignoring the grey blood and guts, then hands Bill-E his knife. He grimaces and tries to wipe the muck off on his trousers. Juni looks at me and grins shakily. “I wanted to be a vet when I was younger,” she says—then drives her right hand deep into the demon’s stomach.
“This is so gross,” Bill-E moans.
“It hasn’t put you in the mood for liver and kidneys for breakfast?” I ask.
Bill-E’s face goes green and he almost throws up again.
Juni searches with her fingers for a minute, then draws her hand out. All sorts of horrible bits and pieces come with it—fleshy and slimy, no wires or mechanisms. Juni stares at her fingers, rubs them together, then tries to clean them by digging her hand into the earth.
“Convinced?” I ask.
“It’s impossible,” she sighs. “Demons are creatures of myth, the phantasmagorical creations of primitive superstition.”
“They’re the Demonata,” I correct her. “Mankind’s greatest enemies. They’ve existed since before the dawn of our species. They hate us and love to kill. Sometimes they break through into our universe and the bloodshed starts. That’s what happened here.” I lock gazes with her. “They’ve already killed some of us. If we don’t warn the others, they’ll slaughter us all.”
Juni nods slowly. “I thought I was so clever,” she whispers. “I knew so much about the mind, people, behaviour. Now…”
Her eyes clear and she gets up, businesslike. “Who can we trust?” she asks.
“Dervish,” I answer promptly. “But he won’t believe us.”
“He’ll believe me,” Juni growls and her face is beautifully stern.
KIDNAP
I keep expecting the worst as we reel back through the warehouse, anxiously retracing our steps, making mistakes and having to backtrack. I’m sure the lamps will come on outside, the hole will be discovered, guards will pour into the building to block our escape. Chuda Sool will appear and summon an army of demons. We’ll die miserably and be added to the pile of corpses around the stone.
But none of that happens. Apart from the wrong turns, our journey back to the hole in the external wall passes unremarkably. And when we get there, the lights are still dead outside, the guards in their huts, nobody aware of our presence.
“Will we try and fill in the hole?” Bill-E asks.
“That would take too much time,” Juni says. “We should just—”
I point at the mud-like mess on the ground. Draw upon the magic. Snap my fingers. “Ubsacagrubbsa!” I quip. And the molten rocks flow upwards, defying gravity. They fill the gap, solidifying within seconds. It’s not perfect—there are no individual bricks now, just one large patch of unbroken block—but it should only be noticeable if one of the guards passes up close.
“Nice work,” Bill-E says.
“You’re growing more powerful by the minute,” Juni notes.
“Let’s not waste time on compliments,” I grunt, then lead the way through the welcome, nighttime darkness of Slawter in search of my uncle.
Even though I’m soaked from head to toe in demon blood, Dervish doesn’t believe us. Rather, he doesn’t want to believe.
“This is a movie set,” he insists. “The D workshops are full of amazing demon facsimiles. It wasn’t real, just a—”
Juni curses crudely, surprising us all, then points a finger at the startled Dervish. “Don’t give me that rot!” she snarls. “You weren’t there—I was. You didn’t see it—I did. It was no piece of movie magic. It was a demon. It would have killed us all if not for Grubbs.”
I feel pride welling up inside. Bill-E gives me a dig in the ribs and sticks his tongue out, making sure my head doesn’t get too big.
Dervish stares uncertainly at Juni, finding it harder to dismiss her protests than mine. That’s a positive sign. Chuda Sool hasn’t fried Dervish’s brain completely.
“It was a real demon,” Juni says slowly, keeping her eyes on Dervish’s. “I don’t know how these things can be real but they are. It killed Emmet, Kuk and Kik, a lot of others. It—”
“No,” I cut in. “That demon wasn’t the killer. I think it was just a guard, set there to protect the stone in case anybody got through the rest of the building. There are worse demons than that around—Lord Loss, for one.”