Damoren (16 page)

“
How do you mean?”

“
Well, a vampire isn’t called blood- sucking corpse, and a Lamia isn’t a snake-tailed flesh-eater. They have their own name that we use.”

“
So, what do you suggest?” Allan asked.

Matt smiled.
“A strutter.”

Allan blinked.
“Why?”

“
It’s a song by Kiss.”

He blinked again, then shook his head.
“You’re joking?”

“
No. I wanted to name a demon after them. I mean it’s got that big Gene Simmons tongue. They call him The Demon. So it fits.”

“
Why not call it a Simmons?”

Matt gave a little shrug.
“Didn’t like the ring as much. Not as punchy as, strutter.”

Allan looked at Matt like he was something that just crawled out from under a rock, then laughed.
“You’re daft, you know that? I thought you were serious.”

“
I am. I’d like to name it strutter. I mean I’m the one who killed it, right? So I should name it.”

The amused smile vanished from Allan
’s face. “No. You’re not naming a demon breed after a band. No.”

“
That’s why I said you could keep Terriblis lingua, but change th—”

“
No,” Allan said flatly.

“
You’re no fun.”

“
So is this all you did last night,” Allan asked, swiveling his seat around toward the monitor, “come up with demon names?”

“
Pretty much. I think your computers are still buggy. I was trying to see what you guys had found about that big thing we saw on the video, but I can’t access the database.”

Allan
’s shoulders slumped a little. “Oh.
That.
”

“
What?”

Allan swung the chair back.
“The, um, others think that giving you access to our records isn’t a good idea.”

“
What?” It was more shock than anything.

“
I didn’t realize they had blocked you yet. I’d assumed Schmidt would have talked with you first.”

A hot knot of anger clenched inside Matt
’s gut. “He blocked me? That son of a bitch!” He brought his hand down onto his armrest a little harder than expected. The resounding thud echoed through the room.

Sighing, Allan nodded.
“I know.”

“
So what in the hell am I supposed to do around here?” he asked, his fingers tightening into a fist. “If he’d told me back in Canada that I’d be treated like some criminal, I’d have told him to kiss my ass. What happened to,
Dämoren trusts you, so we trust you?
”

Allan
’s gaze darted past Matt, then back. “They’re worried about you having access to all of the Valducan records.”

“
They?” Matt turned to see Mikhail tensely stooped lower over his book, obviously trying not to appear like he was listening. Matt looked back to Allan. “Why don’t you just say Schmidt and Malcolm?”

“
It’s not just them. Others agree, as well.”

“
Yeah. I’m sure there are.”
Anya, for one
. She’d thrown suspicion on Matt the instant that ifrit turned, but he didn’t want to say that to Allan. He’d noticed enough side-long glances to know Mikhail wasn’t the only Librarian that liked her.

“
But,” Allan said, optimistically. “I did get them to agree you can have access as long as it’s under my watch. So as long as you’re in here, with me, you can go through it.”

Matt leaned back into the swivel chair, letting out a long breath.
“Thanks, man.”

“
Don’t worry,” Allan said through a toothy grin. “I’ll be putting you to work.”

“
Like what?”

“
For one, finding out who those people were. We’re pretty certain we’re dealing with a cult, but don’t know anything beyond that.” He turned and opened a picture on his computer: A zoomed still of the robed man talking on the phone. A pendant hung from his neck, but too fuzzy to make out clearly. In the night vision’s green monochrome, it was impossible to even tell what it was made of. The light seemed to glint off it.
Metal? Stone?

“
Anya and I have gone through every glyph we know of, but haven’t found anything that matches it.” He opened a new window. Another picture, this one zoomed in on the pendant itself, filled the screen. Crude digital lines, drawn in black, followed the medallion’s pixilated curves. There was clearly a circle of sorts. Inside it a shape.

Matt leaned closer.
The little drawn lines gave it almost the appearance of a letter ‘J’ lying on its side.

“
I’m thinking a scorpion or maybe a sphinx,” Allan said. “Anya is leaning toward a crescent moon or a face. So far we’ve found nothing that comes close.”

“
So what do you need me to do?”

“
At this point we’re checking the old records. The ones that aren’t fully scanned in.” Allan turned back around. “You said you came across a cult once. Louisiana.”

“
Shit. There was nothing like any of that stuff there. It was all pentagrams and upside-down crosses.”

“
But it worked, right? They did summon one?”

Matt nodded.
“It was some weird thing. Looked like a horned lizard on two legs. Didn’t do much before I got there and put it down. After that, I burned the barn.”

“
Well,” Allan said, the excitement draining from his voice. “Just look through them. See if anything jumps out at you.”

“
All right.” He nodded toward the cabinet near the wall. “Mind if I pour one?”

“
It’s nine in the morning.”

“
And I’ve already been banned from reading anything without supervision,” Matt said. “I’d like a drink.”

Allan gave an understanding nod.
“Make it two. Oi, Mikhail, you wanna drink?”

The dark-haired boy looked up.
He glanced at Matt, then to Allan. “Please.”

Matt got up and removed the bottle and three glasses from the little cabinet, and filled them.
He handed one to Allan, then walked over to where Mikhail sat. The boy looked no older than seventeen. It felt sort of weird giving whisky to someone so young. Then again, Clay had given Matt alcohol since he was fifteen. Besides, he had no idea if there even was a drinking age in Russia or Slovakia, or where ever the boy was from.

Mikhail took the glass and raised it in thanks.

“So,” Matt said returning to his chair. He sipped his drink. “What have you found on that big demon in the video? Any idea what it is?”

Allan nodded.
“Sonu thinks it’s an oni, and I believe he’s right.”

Matt gave a little gesture with the whisky glass, telling Allan to explain.

“They have a lot of other names. Ogres. Trolls.”

“
Trolls? Like, fairy tale trolls?”

Allan knocked back his drink. He winced, exhaled,
then set the glass aside. “The folklore is derived from real monsters. Now, we don’t know if Beowulf’s Grendel was an oni, or even if there was a Grendel, but the monsters responsible for most of the legends were real. Same with dragons.”

Matt cocked a brow.

“I’m serious,” Allan said. “You have legends of these monstrous, flying serpents from all across the world, spawning from cultures completely independent from one another. China, Greece, India, Europe.” He tapped them out on his fingers. “Even Mexico. They were real. Saint George killed a demon, the biggest kind of demon. They’re extinct, now. Hopefully, forever.”

“
Hopefully.” Matt finished his drink. “So what do we know about oni.”

“
Not much.” He turned and began clicking on his computer. “We had thought them extinct as well. Last one was reported in 1635, in Ireland.” He rolled aside, giving Matt a view of an old wood-engraved picture. A monstrous, single-horned creature with jutting teeth swung a gnarled club, like a tree-trunk, at a trio of swordsmen. Another swordsman lay crumpled at its feet.

“
What we do know is that they’re incredibly strong, cunning, and very powerful. What exactly they can do is unknown, but some reports say that powerful ones can fly.”

“
Jesus,” Matt said. “Anything work on them?”

“
Not much. No known metals or herbs seem to hurt it. Although, one was killed by a jade bullet in Fifteenth Century Korea.”

Matt thought about that.
“Don’t know how well a stone bullet would work in a modern gun. The pressure and rifling might blow it apart. Shotgun, maybe.”

“
That’s what Malcolm uses. He has his loaded with all kinds of different stuff, similar to your magic powder.”

“
Smart.”

Allan picked up the empty glass.
He rolled it in his hand, looking at it as if it might yield some hidden secret. “We’ve been affixing gems and stones to bullets for several years now. Jade shouldn’t be too hard.” He stood, took Matt’s empty glass and carried them back to the bottle still resting beside the cabinet. “That does bring up a point,” he said, refilling them.

“
What’s that?”

Allan handed him a refreshed glass and sat.
“We’ve had a lot of new or lost breeds come about recently, and we know virtually nothing about them. Their weaknesses. The more we find out about them, the better prepared knights will be in the future.”

“
I wasn’t really planning on letting them live that long.”

“
We can kill them, yes. But what if more emerge a hundred years from now? If we can tell our successors what can harm a tongue terror or a horned hound or any of the others, we might save lives. I mean, someone, at some point, loaded a silver-tipped quarrel onto a crossbow and shot a werewolf, just to see what would happen. And haven’t you benefitted from their risk?”

“
What are you suggesting, Allan? That before killing these things we shoot them with several different bullets and throw some herbs in their faces, just to see what works?”

Allan gave a little shrug.
“Essentially, yeah.”

“
And you called me daft.”

“
I’m just saying that next time we find one, before anyone slays it, you maybe plug it with a silver bullet, also a copper or gold while you’re at it. Nothing that’ll kill the body. Maybe a leg or arm. If it responds, we can note that. If it doesn’t, then we learned what not to use next time. Either way it’s valuable knowledge.”

Matt thought about that. He remembered that old Colt he used to carry when he was with Clay.
It saved his life more than once. Silver for werebeasts and vampires. Gold for rakshasas. Copper for sigbens. Sigbens, or chupacabras as they called them in Central America, lost the demon-metal lottery in Matt’s opinion. Most modern bullets were copper-plated, and worked on them just fine. A rancher with a varmint rifle could defend his livestock quite easily. Although the demon never really died, it just lost its body and jumped to the next one, maybe hundreds of miles away. It made hunting them real difficult since most Sigbens couldn’t stay in a region very long before some lucky shot made it someone else’s problem. He sipped his drink. “So why me?”

“
What?”

“
Why do I have to be the one that shoots it?”

“
Because you’re a good shot. Me, I can’t even shoot a handgun. Wouldn’t make much sense for me to be blasting at it.”

“
You’re kidding me?” Matt asked, taken back. “You can’t shoot a gun?”

“
Well,” Allan said, shifting in his seat a little. “I’ve shot before. Guns really aren’t that easy to come by back home so I never really got all that into it.”

“
So you just carry Ibenus when hunting? What if you drop her? What if
they
have a gun?”

“
You’ve seen me take out a shooter before,” Allan said, cocking his brow a little.

“
You were lucky, man. It was impressive, but lucky.” Matt gestured to the books around them. “How many stories have you read where a knight lost his weapon? You can’t just count that you won’t and that the partner you’re with has a shot. These bastards are using familiars to shoot us. One nearly shot me. I like you, Allan. I really do. But not carrying a gun is just flat fuck crazy.”

Allan gave a hurt look, then sipped his drink.

“I’ll tell you what,” Matt said, feeling a little guilty. “I’ll pop a test round or two into one of those demons for you, but only if you do, too.”

The Englishman
’s gaze flicked back, hopeful.

“
Luiza and I are going shooting tomorrow after breakfast. Then we’re doing some reloading. You should join us.”