Authors: John Urbancik
“What about Jack?” Lisa asked.
“Your friend,” the demon said, “is probably dead. Would you stand by as the rest of your world joined him?”
Lisa barely heard the question. “Dead?” He couldn’t be dead; she’d only just discovered him.
“Are you not listening?” the demon asked, closing the short gap between them and looking directly down at her.
Lisa met its eyes, fighting the urge to run. As she’d said, where would she go?
“You must take me back to your world,” the demon said, “and let me recapture my ward. You took my key.”
Lisa blinked through her tears. “What key?”
4.
After Nick finished, Jack Harlow sat down again. It was a lot to bear: losing his immunity from the dark was one thing, but losing Lisa was unacceptable. “So,” Jack said, “why are you still alive?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why didn’t the demon kill you while you were there?” Jack asked. “It sent you back instead.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Nick said.
“He wanted something,” Jack said. “Maybe it needs Lisa alive.” There were options, here, that drove ice picks into the marrow of his bones.
“I can’t track a demon,” Nick told him. “Vampires have a certain scent.”
“Some do,” Jack said.
Nick narrowed his eyes, but went on. “I can follow their trail, because they leave one, here on earth. I can determine which direction is most probable, follow sounds and odors. We all leave trails when we go, unless we know well enough to erase them. But this demon . . . I don’t think he’s here.”
“Demons can be summoned,” Jack said.
“Do you know how to do that?”
“No.”
Through the stained glass, a particularly violent display of lightning cast uneasy—and unstable—red and blue lights around them. Thunder boomed outside, echoing under the high ceiling. Shadows, even in the church, bristled as if alive.
“We should keep moving,” Jack said.
5.
Nick agreed. If they sat still, anything and everything could find them. Another coordinated attack was possible. The demon might return on its own if they waited—and survived—long enough.
But Jack knew neither how to summon nor destroy it. They were half blind, and further handicapped by the storm.
“I’m still weak,” Jack said as they left the main part of the church. “I can’t start off running.”
Nick nodded. The narthex, between doorways, was darker than inside. Trays of unlit candles flanked the doors. Dark woods. High ceilings. Nick did not want to die in a church.
Outside, the rain had lightened to a mere deluge. Lightning rippled, thunder roiled, and the street seemed empty.
But every corner, every shadow, potentially hid enemies.
They reached the sidewalk and turned right, away from the office building and downtown. Almost immediately, the high rises gave way to a few scattered apartment buildings amid a sea of houses, some of which had been converted into restaurants, law and dental offices, as well as convenience stores and a hotel. The streets were more densely packed with cars now; red brake lights shone brightly and reflected off the water-logged streets as Nick and Jack crossed Magnolia and reached the western side Lake
Eola
.
Nick knew where Jack was going, but he wasn’t going to stop him.
1.
The demon took Lisa’s hand
. Until that moment, she’d been unaware of a number of things: the heat had dried the rain completely but now soaked her in a thin layer of sweat; the demon was actually her height, neither taller nor shorter, and proportions in this place shifted; her heart had calmed to its normal beat; and she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She let the demon take her hand.
“When I come and go,” the demon said, “I move via a key . . . or something like a key. It’s insubstantial and unremarkable and intangible. It fades quickly, in the mind of something as powerful as me, but without it I cannot travel.”
“You were on earth,” Lisa said.
“I was summoned, yes. Granted a weak, shoddy key.” They walked, now, hand-in-hand alongside the lava river, as if they were friends on a path alongside a lake, skipping stones, watching the fountain rather than the agonized souls clamoring for escape. “Stupid humans play with books and spells they know nothing about. This realm is filled with people guilty of just such a crime.” He stopped, bent over the river, and reached in. Everything scattered, but he still plucked one soul by the nape of his neck and displayed him to Lisa. “This man summoned me most recently. He has been here, now, five hundred years.”
“What about last night?” Lisa asked.
“Time, in your world,” the demon said, “works differently.”
The demon dropped the soul back into the river. Its scream sounded muted, as did all other sounds but the demon’s words. “He didn’t know what he was doing. He hadn’t fully brought me into your world. I had to return here. But, I was drawn elsewhere first, to your city, to an unnatural urgency. The watcher’s magnetism, you might say. I could not resist, despite my limited time. I responded by fashioning and enslaving my little army. I separated the three of you, kept you fighting your own battles, so I might answer this unusual need and destroy the watcher.”
“Jack,” Lisa said.
The demon went on without pause. “When the vampire bitch snatched him, I knew my task was done and came home. The key dissolved, or so I thought.” He nodded toward the molten river. “It’s one reason why they are punished so severely.”
“He might not be dead,” Lisa said.
“Vampires feed until sated,” the demon said, “and leave only corpses.”
Lisa clenched her eyes closed. The demon squeezed her hand, reassuringly. “However,” the demon added, “he may have slipped away if something else, equally as compelled, fought
for
him.”
Lisa chuckled. Lightly. “What a strange thing to hope for.”
“During all the millennia in which I have held my post, there have been precisely four escapes.” The demon smiled. “Less than my predecessor, I should point out. The most recent, however, when you caught the remnants of that key, was facilitated by you.”
“Me?”
“I need him back,” the demon said.
“I didn’t do anything,” Lisa said.
“His name is
Kaz’azeal
,” the demon said. “He was never human, not from any realm you’d know.” The demon stopped walking, turned to look directly at Lisa. “I am not happy.”
Lisa met the demon’s gaze. “Neither am I.”
“Then you will help me,” the demon said.
“I don’t know how.”
“I will tell you,” the demon said. “But first, I want to illustrate just how important it is for you to do this. You are familiar with the Black Plague?”
Lisa nodded.
“The Red Death acts similarly, but worse,” the demon said. “Its initial symptoms are like your flu. I contracted it once myself, and for that I made
Kaz’azeal
suffer greatly. He is a carrier. He will spread this to your world, and will slaughter thousands regardless. He consumes flesh, human and other. His saliva carries the disease, and his breath. He will grow quickly to his original size.”
“How big is that?” Lisa asked.
The demon released Lisa’s hands and stepped back. A moment later, his upper body expanded, his legs bulged. His head smashed the ceiling as he grew. Brown dust fell, as did a hundred tiny creatures. Lisa stumbled backwards, falling; the demon looked down at her. “Thrice this.”
After a moment, during which the demon became Lisa’s size once again, she asked, “What do you need me to do?”
2.
The watcher and hunter walked alongside the lake, away from the streets and most human eyes. Jack felt uncomfortable with the attention; he still wasn’t sure of how to undo it. His primary concern was Lisa. With his mind fully his own again (
Jia
Li had screwed it up pretty badly, albeit by nature rather than malevolence), he realized how much Lisa had protected him. The hope of a regular life. Without that, without love, he would have lost his heart and soul to
Jia
Li. That must be what it was—love—and it gave Jack strength. Inexplicable and sudden as it had been, it gave Jack strength enough to continue walking, despite exhaustion and pain, despite the swirling storm. Into the very depths of Hell, if he must; Jack would go anywhere and do anything to keep Lisa safe.
Nick said little as they walked. He watched the trees, and looked back frequently in case something followed them. Only the wind, thus far.
Jack glanced across the lake, past the fountain (spewing water despite the onslaught coming down), at a gazebo on its edge. There, during the day, weddings performed, and groups of schoolchildren gathered to be loaded back into their bus after field trips. It was too dark to tell if the figure there now was male or female, or even human, but it watched them.
3.
Nick saw it immediately, caught it in his periphery: a greenish shape surging like a ship on the water. Straight and tall at first, it was a mass of tentacles, whipping and flailing, twenty yards from shore and coming closer.
Nick drew his gun and fired. He let loose three, four shots, hitting the mark every time. The squid-like thing dropped forward with a splash. After a moment’s silence, it erupted from the water right at the edge of the lake. It had come from forgotten times and depths. Nick fired again, aiming for the stalks on its apparent head, thinking those blinking and swiveling things might be eyes. It lashed out, its tentacles plenty long enough to reach them on the paved path. Nick ducked, barely avoiding one; another struck Jack below the shoulder.
A tentacle wrapped around Nick’s ankle. It yanked, pulling Nick’s leg out from under him. He went down and lost his gun. He scrambled to grab something, but the path was too smooth. The thing dragged him toward it.
Nick bent his knees and pulled himself into a sitting position. He was on the grass now, a patch five yards wide at this point, and being dragged too quickly. He took a stake from his jacket and slammed it into the tentacle just under his ankle.
The thing shrieked.
He shoved the stake down far enough to lodge into the ground. It was moist, muddy, and didn’t grab very well, but the spike stuck.
Nick freed his foot and rolled sideways, avoiding an expected attack that never came. He threw himself away from the squid, over and beyond the paved path, and out of its reach—hoping the thing couldn’t leave the water.
No such luck.
The thing bent; it was segmented, like a giant insect, with tentacles protruding from all sides, eyelet things on stalks emerging from its head, and similar appendages acting like feet on its bottom third.
Three tentacles bore down on him. Nick rolled backwards, sliding into his gun and kicking it further away. He felt the wind when one limb missed him; it struck the path and cracked the pavement.
Nick glanced at Jack. The watcher was on his feet, running; the squid-thing pursued him, losing interest in Nick. He grabbed his gun, though it had proved useless, and looked at his stake. Somehow, despite the water-saturated grass, it had grabbed onto something. The squid went only as far as the spike allowed, then pulled and strained against it, whipping its tentacles at a retreating Jack.
Nick reached for his knife, his longest weapon, but Lisa still had it. Cursing, he went instead for the butterfly knife. It was short, silver like all his weapons, kept at his ankle. He was fortunate to still have it. If the stake could hurt the squid, the blade—even a mere four inches of silver—would cut it.
He flipped it open and ran.
He didn’t attack the beast; that was suicide. He raced around its apparent reach, through the trees lining the outside of the path. The squid thrashed, smacking everything it could reach; soon, it would wrench itself free.
When one of those tentacles came near him, Nick slashed with the knife. It cut easily; there was no bone. Didn’t sever the end of the limb, but gashed it good. Blood—or something like it—spurted from the wound.
The squid aimed all its appendages at Nick, striking and slashing furiously. Nick stepped out of range, slashing when something came close enough.
Nick pulled another stake. He had to do this just right . . .
Years of fighting vampires had honed his nerve. At exactly the right moment, Nick stepped forward and swung the stake. He caught the tip of a flailing appendage and lodged the end of the stake into the tree next to him.
Then he ducked and rolled backwards, out of the way, as the other appendages—there must have been thirty—smashed the ground and tree.
The oak was thick and sturdy. Though it shuddered with every strike, it seemed unlikely to break right away.
Two limbs down, thirty to go? No way. Nick flipped his butterfly knife shut and ran after Jack. He’d done just about as much as he was able; two would have to be enough.
4.
Jack had managed to run maybe twenty yards before stumbling. He felt like a stupid character in a bad horror movie; he’d look up to see the bad guy looming overhead, chainsaw (or other implement) over his head, and that would be the end of Jack.