Death's Shadow

 

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.

The anteater demon staggers into the corridor ahead of me unexpectedly, erect on two legs, holding a squealing baby over its head. I see the child's mother frantically reaching for it through the doorway, but she's being held back by the other demon. She's too shocked to scream.

As one of the anteater's snouts attaches itself to the baby's face, I use magic to rip the infant away. It flies safely into my arms. A boy. I absorb his memories of birth as I set him down, then turn to face the demon.

The anteater's snarling. It barks a command and the lizard joins it. The mother rushes out of the room, darts past all three of us, snatches her baby and flees. I remain focused on the demons, waiting for them to make the first move.

The anteater rears back two of its snouts and spits twin tendrils of mucous at me. I deflect the missiles and they spatter the walls on either side, burning into them. One thing about demons-they love to spit acid.

The lizard scurries towards me, using its tail as a whip to accelerate. When it's a metre away, it gives an extra hard thwack with its tail and shoots up at me, jaws stretched wide to clamp around my throat.

I made my fingers hard while the lizard was advancing, transforming them into a makeshift blade, a trick I learnt from Beranabus. Now I duck and swipe at the lizard's stomach. But it realises my intention and sucks in. I open a shallow cut, but it's only a flesh wound.

The anteater is on me before I can react. It wraps two snouts around my chest, one around my neck, and lashes at my face with the others. The one around my neck is the worst. It digs in tight, cutting off my oxygen.

I drop to my knees, then spring into the air like a frog. I hammer hard into the ceiling, knocking chunks out of it and shaking up the anteater. Its snouts loosen and when we hit the floor again I jerk free and leap to my feet.

I create a small ball of fire and blow it up one of the anteater's snouts. When it hits the demon's head, an eye bursts. The anteater squeals and stumbles away. Before I can pursue it and finish it off, the lizard bites down on my hip and jabs its forked tongue deep into my flesh.

I shake the lizard off, but I feel poison in the wound. Deadly, fast-acting. If I don't deal with it immediately, I'll be dead within seconds.

I use magic to counteract the poison, expelling most of it from my system and sapping the sting from the rest. I'm successful but the healing spell is draining. There's not much fight left in me. The demons sense my weakness and move apart-the anteater's recovered from his nasal mishap-then advance, trapping me against a wall. I summon what's left of my power, but before I can unleash a spell against them...

A window of orange light opens a few metres away. The demons gawp at it. I prepare for the worst, expecting Lord Loss or Juni to emerge. This is the end. I'm going to die here, surrounded by demons and newborn babies. My only hope is that some of the young survive. If they do, I won't have entirely wasted my life.

A man steps through the window and my heart leaps.

"Bran!" I shout.

A grave-faced Beranabus winks at me, then glares at the quivering demons. "I bet you thought you'd make off with easy pickings," he growls. "You meant to harvest this crop of babies and gorge yourselves, aye?"

An anxious Grubbs steps through the window, followed by Kernel, who looks different somehow, and a cautious Shark and Meera.

"What do the pickings look like now?" Beranabus asks.

The demons turn and flee. Kernel, Shark and Meera set off after them.

"Dervish?" Grubbs snaps.

"Back there," I pant. "Hurry. He was fighting a demon. I don't know-"

Grubbs is gone before I finish.

Beranabus squats beside me. "Hello, little one," he says softly. Then he hugs me and I weep into his shoulder. I absorb more of his memories as I clutch him but I don't care about the theft. I'm just delighted that, despite all the odds, it looks like I'm going to end this evening of butchery alive.