If he comes at you with it, growl at him.
"Cool. Here he comes." I heard Oberon growl menacingly, and Mr. Semerdjian’s peremptory commands abruptly changed to shrill pleas a couple of octaves higher.
“Ahhh! Nice doggie! Stay! Good dog!”
"He must think I’m stupid. He comes at me with a newspaper, intending to slap me upside the head, and then he says “good dog” and expects me to forget all that? I think he deserves a couple of barks."
Go for it. The amulet was cooling down rapidly now; a few more seconds would allow it to rest on my chest again without doing further damage. Oberon barked viciously, and Mr. Semerdjian’s panicked voice immediately leapt to Mariah Carey territory.
“O’Sullivan! Call off your dog, damn you! O’Sullivan! Get over here! Where did this f**king fog come from?”
Satisfied, I turned off the hose and stood up, letting the amulet fall back against my chest. It wasn’t fully healed, but it was getting better and I had the pain firmly under control. I walked leisurely across the street to where Oberon was still sitting.
“Here now,” I said calmly as I coalesced out of the mist into a wan column of light next to my hound. “What’s all the fuss, Mr. Semerdjian? My dog is simply sitting here, offering you no violence whatsoever.”
“He’s off his leash!” he spluttered.
“So are you,” I observed. “If you hadn’t advanced upon him in a threatening manner, he never would have growled at you, much less barked.”
“Never mind that!” Semerdjian spat. “He’s not supposed to be running around loose! And he definitely shouldn’t be on my property! I should call the police!”
“I believe the last time you called the police on me, you got cited for falsely calling 911, did you not?”
Semerdjian’s face purpled and he shouted, “Just get off my property! Both of you!”
Step backward into the street with me until we disappear from his view, I told Oberon. Now. We retreated, keeping our eyes on Mr. Semerdjian as we let the mist envelop us, and I imagined what it must look like to my neighbor: He watched a man and his dog walk backward in tandem without the man giving the dog any audible command, until they vanished like spectres into vapor.
That should creep him out pretty good, I told Oberon. Sure enough, Mr. Semerdjian called after us as we turned up the street.
“You’re a spooky bastard, O’Sullivan!” he yelled, and I stifled a laugh at the irony of his insult. “You and your dog had better stay away from me!”
"That was fairly amusing," Oberon chuffed. "What’s that word for when you play a joke on someone?"
A prank, I said, beginning to jog as Oberon trotted beside me. I released the binding on the water vapor, letting the fog disperse. We are like the Merry Pranksters of 1964, giving Mr. Semerdjian his own customized Acid Test without the benefit of any acid.
"What’s an Acid Test?"
Well, I’ll tell you all about it when we get home. Since you are apparently a filthy mutt—
"Hey!"
—you need a bath, and while you’re in the bath I’ll tell you all about the Merry Pranksters and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. But now let’s run to the market and get you your promised sausage.
"Okay! I want one of those succulent chicken–apple ones."
You mind if I make a call? I need to call Malina and let her know her spell didn’t work. I pulled out my cell phone and began to look up Malina’s number.
"Sure. But before I forget, I think you should know that Leif was probably lying to you just now."
How so? I frowned.
"Well, you remember how I got a nose full of demon four days ago when you rescued me in the Superstition Mountains?"
That was three weeks ago, not four days, but yes, I remember.
"Well, Leif told you Mr. Semerdjian didn’t smell like demon, but he kind of did. He still does, actually. Shape-shift into a hound if you don’t believe me; that lame human nose isn’t doing you any favors."
Wait. Hold up, I said, stopping in the middle of the street. Oberon pulled up after a few steps and looked back at me, tongue lolling out. We were still on 11th Street, just over a block away from my house; streetlamps periodically cast cones of light like yellow party hats in the darkness. You still smell demon even though we’re all the way down the street?
"Yeah. And it’s getting worse."
Oh, no, that’s not good, Oberon, I said, putting my cell phone back in my pocket. We need to go back to the house. I need to get my sword. A block ahead of us, something shifted in the shadows. It moved unnaturally above the ground, the size of a small Volkswagen, and then I discerned what was moving it: grotesquely long insectile legs, supporting a bulk that vaguely resembled a grasshopper. Insect size is supposed to be restricted to six inches or so, due to the limits of their tracheal systems, but apparently this demon didn’t get the memo.
Run home, Oberon! Now! I pivoted and sprinted at top speed for my front yard and immediately heard the demon leap into pursuit, its legs drumming out a chitinous clacking on the black asphalt. We weren’t leaving it behind; if anything, it was gaining on us. There would be no time for me to get my sword.
Chapter 3
Demons smell like ass—nasty ass that slithers down your throat, finds your gag reflex, and sits on it with authority. I got an overdose when Aenghus Óg unleashed a horde of them on this plane with the command to kill me, and now I finally caught a whiff of this one. It wasn’t a fragrance that Gold Canyon candles would be offering anytime soon.
Some of the demons had been strong enough to resist Aenghus Óg’s binding at first and run for the hills to work their own mischief. Though Flidais—the Celtic goddess of the hunt—had tracked most of them down, I knew a few must still be out there and they’d eventually come looking for me. Despite Aenghus’s demise, his binding was the sole reason they were on this plane, and until they obeyed its commands they’d never be truly free; the binding would just keep tugging at them until they lost the will to resist. I had killed most of the horde with Cold Fire, but this one must have gotten out of range pretty fast, and only now had it tracked me down in obeisance to the binding.
Run around to the back, Oberon, I said. My friend was already ahead of me. There’s no way you can fight this thing.
"I’m not going to argue," he said. "I wouldn’t want to take a bite of something that smells that bad, anyway."
I was coming up hard on my lawn, with the demon close behind; I could hear the whistling of its spiracles in addition to the skittering of its six legs. Once I hit the earth, I could draw power and slap the thing with Cold Fire, but there were drawbacks to that plan: One, Cold Fire took some time to work, and, two, using it weakened me so much that I’d be completely vulnerable after casting it.
With no sword to penetrate its chitin and no safety cushion for Cold Fire, I’d have to depend on my magical wards to take care of the demon before it took care of me. That, too, would take some time, but perhaps I could dodge behind my mesquite tree and stay out of the range of its serrated front legs long enough for my Druidic juju to do its work.
The earth is all too willing to help out with getting rid of demons: They don’t belong on the earth, are in fact anathema to it, and thus it takes very little coaxing to set up a demonic ward around one’s house. Teach the earth to detect a demon’s presence upon it and encourage it to tidy up the soiled area, and you’re done—sort of.
The problem is that the earth isn’t renowned for its reaction times. Every ten years I like to meditate for a week and commune with its spirit, which people like to call Gaia nowadays, and she chats fondly about the Cretaceous period as if it were something that happened just last month. A security-conscious Druid cannot afford to take the long view on intruders, however, so I set up my mesquite tree as a first line of defense and as an alarm bell for the elemental of the Sonoran Desert. The elemental would get the earth’s attention much quicker than I could—and perhaps make an appearance as Gaia’s champion. The truth was I didn’t exactly know what would happen when a demon awoke the earth’s wrath; I was simply betting the earth would win.
When my foot touched the grass of my front yard, I practically cried out in relief, drawing power immediately to replenish my spent muscles and hyperoxygenate my blood. It gave me a burst of speed and allowed me to narrowly miss a plunging stab from the demon. Its clawed foreleg whistled past my calf and sank convincingly into the sod, and it reminded me of a trick I had used on some Fir Bolgs when they’d attacked me at home.
“Coinnigh!” I yelled, pointing a finger back at the insect’s claw as I ran, commanding the earth to close tightly around it and prevent it from escaping. It slowed the demon down but failed to immobilize it; the chitin was too slick for the earth to grab on to, and, after a couple of mighty yanks, the horror was able to free itself. Still, it accomplished two things: It gave me time enough to duck behind the mesquite tree, and it definitely tripped my wards.
Thorny vines of bougainvillea shot out from my porch posts, attempting to snare the demon, which I now noticed was not grasshopperish at all, but rather a monstrous black wheel bug, complete with a ridged, coglike wheel of dorsal armor and a menacing beak it used to plunge into its victims and drain all their juices. The vines weren’t strong enough for that much hell; they shriveled almost upon contact. The lawn began to ripple and quake underneath the creature, and the roots of my mesquite tree shot up from underneath it and wrapped themselves around the beast’s back four legs. That definitely got its attention. It keened its frustration at the upper range of human hearing as it thrashed about, but like the vines, my poor tree’s roots could not stand the demon’s touch for long. They were strong enough to hold it for perhaps ten seconds only, and had I known they would do such yeoman service, I would have used Cold Fire and ended it.
“O’Sullivan! What the f**k is that thing?”
Gods Below, Mr. Semerdjian was still outside! And with the fog dispersed and the streetlights doing their job, he had a clear view of something mortal eyes should never see. I didn’t know how to begin explaining this. “Uh, little busy!” I said.
“You’re going to need a damn big can of bug spray!” he called. “Or maybe a rocket-propelled grenade. I have one in the garage, you want it?”
“What? No, Mr. Semerdjian, don’t! It won’t help! Just stay where you are!”
I had to shut him out. If I allowed him to distract me, I’d be demon chow. The black wheel bug tore free of my tree’s roots and advanced on me once again, across a lawn that was still heaving violently. It sliced at me with its tubelike beak, stabbing past the trunk of the tree almost too fast to track, and it grazed my shoulder and opened up a burning cut. My tree was having none of that. The canopy of branches began to whip against the demon’s head and thorax, not doing much damage but successfully blinding it with a curtain of feathery green leaves. The wheel bug reared back and flailed away at the branches, severing many of them with each sweep of its sharply bladed foreclaws, and it appeared this additional delay would last only a few more seconds before its attention refocused on me. There wasn’t enough time to get inside and retrieve my sword, but perhaps there would be enough time for Cold Fire to work. I pointed at the demon and had the trigger word for the spell formed on my lips, but then I saw that the cavalry was coming.
Behind the wheel bug, a huge saguaro cactus was growing from the churned sod of my lawn at a ridiculous rate. Not content merely to cram a century’s worth of growth into the space of a few seconds, it showed signs of sentience and the ability to move—singular abilities for a saguaro. It could be nothing but the Sonoran Desert elemental my mesquite tree had called, Gaia’s champion sent to fight the spawn of hell. It loomed out of the night and smashed a heavy spined arm across the back of the demon’s abdomen, just behind the cogs of its wheel.
The demon’s carapace cracked a bit and it screeched in that bone-shuddering register, whipping around to hack at the saguaro’s trunk and arms. It lopped off an arm and even took off the top of the cactus, but this wasn’t a creature that fell over from decapitation; there was no head to decapitate. When such accidents occur in nature, saguaros just seal themselves internally and grow new arms, no problem. The elemental wasn’t even slowed down. Another arm whacked at the demon’s head, crushing one of its globular black eyes and spraying jets of ichor across my lawn.
The demon knew it was in a fight for its life now. This wasn’t a puny human it had to eat before it could do whatever it wanted on this plane; this was a champion of the earth itself, the corporeal manifestation of an entire ecosystem, and a particularly deadly one at that. The black wheel bug directed a flurry of scissoring blows at the saguaro, trying to cut off all its arms so it could then deal with the trunk, but the arms grew back even faster than it could sever them. It wasn’t ten seconds before a long one on the far side of the trunk twisted around and crashed through the demon’s skull. The arm kept going all the way down the elongated body, splitting the creature in two and dumping its flanks to the ground, where the legs spent some time twitching a spastic dance of death.
Immensely appreciative for the aid and trying to ignore the unholy stench, I sent my thanks through my tattoos down into the earth, communicating with the elemental in a sort of emotional shorthand, since human languages meant nothing to it.
//Druid grateful / Aid welcome // I said. The elemental was flush with victory and pleased with itself. It offered to repair the damage to my lawn, my tree, and my vines, wanting to leave no trace of hell in its territory, and I accepted graciously. It didn’t quite know what to do with the demon mess; the head and thorax were little more than black tar at this point, but the abdomen and legs were still fairly intact and clearly not of this earth. It didn’t want to absorb the demon into the ground, but it seemed to realize I couldn’t stuff a giant wheel bug down the garbage disposal either. I offered a suggestion: Encase it all in rock, condense and crush every bit of it down into liquid, and then leave me with a stone keg crafted with a plug near the bottom. I’d give it to some ghouls I knew (actually, Leif knew them, he had them on speed dial), they’d have a party with it because demon juice was like Jägermeister to them, and then they’d return the keg cleaned out and ready to be reabsorbed into the earth. The elemental was pleased with this solution and began to work on it right away.