devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place (12 page)

I thought at first that it had been an explosion of some kind. But no one in the clearing moved. No one ran away. In fact all activity had stopped and everyone watched. Waiting in eerie silence.

Like a herd of deer caught in an open field that was surrounded by hunters, the dark celebrants seemed rooted to the spot in helpless horror.

Finally, a scream erupted from the center of the crowd and my head jerked in that direction. The celebrants fell away and I could finally see what had entered the epicenter of that sexual tornado.

The first scream was quickly followed by several more as the naked young woman who lay tethered to a large, flat stone altar realized what was about to join her on the altar.

It was bent almost double at the base of the altar. Its long, wormlike body was outlined against the dusky fog of the clearing with a double row of thick, sharp spikes, which reached from the top of its head to the tip of a thick, short tail that waved frantically, beating celebrants away from the altar and ended in a deadly looking fork.

The head was wider than the body and sported long, curved horns that rode the sides of its head, just above narrow, glassy eyes. As it slowly unfolded itself into an upright position, its arms, long and banded with tight, lean muscle, rose toward the screaming woman, who was now being held down by a couple of her fellow witches as she tried to struggle free from the thick ropes that bound her.

I realized the woman was a witch and was therefore probably a willing participant of the ritual but my relief at that fact was quickly replaced by dread at what she and I both just realized was about to happen to her.

Now that it was upright, the long, purple body of the demon who was about to mount the altar and the witch showed an extra appendage, just below the waist that was purple and spiky and leanly muscular just like the rest of the body and promised extreme pain and certain death to any unfortunate female it decided to make its acquaintance with.

Another scream from the witch on the altar punctuated that thought and I reached into one of my soft, knee high boots for a knife.

Now
it was time for me to intervene.

I straightened, gave a sigh and reached back for Emo. He grasped my hand and shuffled my mental drawers.
I’m with you boss. Any idea how we’re gonna vanquish a fire demon?

I threw him a mental shrug and said,
No clue. As usual, we’ll be winging it.

Frunkin’ wonderful.

The first thing I had to do was get its attention. I strode quickly into the robed crowd, urging the upright ones out of my way with a show of my upraised knife and kicking the ones writhing on the ground to encourage them to move out of the way.

As I neared the demon, whose spiked back was still turned to me as it started climbing onto the altar, I flicked out with my power and gave the scary, jutting member on the front of its body a painful electric noogie.

The thing screamed like a girl and whirled around, falling off the altar and landing on its feet.

I almost screamed like a girl too when I got a look at its face.

The demon’s face consisted of a tall, scaly purple brow with spiky hairs growing out from a V at the center toward its horns. The eyes were narrow, bulging, red and fizzing now with angry sparks, probably due to the fact that I had electrified its joy stick. The lower half of its face was all snout and teeth. Hundreds of long, razor sharp teeth fought for space in a cavernous mouth that constantly leaked saliva. It flung up its head and roared as I neared, flinging spit in a wide arc around its raging form. It seemed to take offense at the fact that I intended to kill it.

Go figure.

My mental drawers shifted.
Way to go, boss, now you’ve pissed it off.

Thanks for your ongoing support and admiration, Emo. It means a lot to me.

Hey, no problem. Now what?

Well, the good news is that it is no longer focused on the witch.

And the bad news?

I think you know what that is, my friend. You might want to dredge up some of those royal powers you’re usually so stingy with.

I felt him take mental offence and smiled. You know, part devil, I can’t seem to help myself.

I am not stingy with my powers, Astra. Don’t you think I’d like to use them? I haven’t had them for a while you know. I’m a little rusty that’s all.

Now’s the time to practice, partner.

No, Astra, the time to practice is in the privacy of the office, when there isn’t a demon from the fires of Hell spitting on my brand new silk shirt. That’s the time to practice.

I turned and grinned at him and he sighed.

I felt the air around us change and Emo grunted a bit with the effort. Despite the effort required to initiate his power, however, it grew quickly once it hit the already power-drenched air of the clearing and I felt Emo’s surprise in my mind.

I pulled my own power forward and let it join Emo’s. The result was impressive, if I do say so myself.

The circle quickly cleared of celebrants. They moved beyond the light to hover on the perimeter of the clearing, away from the raging demon and me. Apparently nobody wanted to be there when we unleashed all that power on the very pissed off demon with the droopy pee-pee.

The only ones still left in that clearing were Raoul, who stood completely still, with head bowed and hands clasped in front of his robed body, as if he were in a trance, and the unfortunate hostess of the evening’s festivities on the altar, who also seemed to be less than conscious.

The demon opened its spit-filled maw and spoke in an impossibly deep, gravelly voice that pounded through the clearing and made the trees all around the edge dance manically again. “You dare to disturb the dark purpose!”

I stood up straighter and adjusted my expression from “Oh shit” to “Aren’t I a badass”. “I do.”

The demon stood for a beat staring at me as if it thought I’d lost my tiny frunkin’ mind.

I think maybe I had.

Then it raised its snout into the air and screamed.

The clearing exploded with the sound of human suffering. Beyond the light, I could just see the dark celebrants curled into fetal balls on the ground, clasping their ears and shrieking as if in exquisite torture. The spirits that had inhabited their bodies fled the human bonds to get relief from the ripping pain the demon’s voice was causing.

Emo and I covered our ears and looked at each other.
Let’s get this jerk!
Emo thought at me and I nodded.

We turned as one and focused our power on the screaming thing in the center of that clearing. The wall of power roared across the clearing and hit him, sending him flying into the thick trunk of a tree that was probably a few centuries old. He hit the tree and skidded down until he landed in a purple pile on the ground.

The trunk of the tree where he touched it burst into flame and the tree went up like a torch, all one hundred feet of it consumed in about three seconds.

Emo and I gulped. The power we had thrown out died with a pop and we stood there naked to the world, magically speaking, as the demon picked itself up and started moving toward us.

As he did I became aware of a series of whooshes behind the demon, which heralded the appearance of several more of its kind. I realized with a start that the demon hadn’t simply been throwing a temper tantrum when it had screamed but had apparently been calling for backup.

Aside from being a little bit impressed with myself over the fact that a demon from the fires of Hell thought it needed backup to deal with me, I was just about ready to pee my pants over the reality of not one but eight of the things coming for me in that clearing.

Dimly I became aware of Raoul, who apparently had come out of his trance and was chanting again.

Too little, my friend and too late I think.

“Get the Hades out of here, Raoul!” I screamed.

No response. The chanting continued.

The original demon continued toward us and as he drew near he burst into flame. I realized with a start that he was going to stay that way and my fear of our predicament climbed another few notches.

Emo, get out of here. Now!

Not gonna happen, boss.

Do it or you’re fired.

You’d better come up with something fast or we’re both gonna get fired.

I shook my head at his bad joke and shifted my mental drawers.
Dialle!
Emo and I are about to become demon toasties, do you think you could spare me a few minutes of your time and maybe a few bazillion jolts of your power?

The air shifted again and Prince Dialle was standing beside me. I turned to him and grinned, feeling my heart—and other parts—warm at the sight of him. But before I could tell him how happy I was to see him the demons attacked.

Fiery arms wrapped around me and I felt my skin start to melt as the demon squeezed me in its deadly embrace and opened its nasty mouth to bite my face. I screamed and threw my power out, this time joined by an additional burst that had Dialle written all over it. Thankfully the demon shot away from me and hit the rock altar. Then I shot him again and held him with the power while I took physical inventory. My arms and shoulders where the demon had grabbed me were bright red and looked like they would blister and peel. I suspected my face looked very similar. My clothes were still smoking and hung in tatters from huge burned-out spaces where the demon’s arms had clutched me. But I was happy to report to the Astra Q Phelps medical assessment team of one—that’s me—that I would live.

That’s when I remembered to take friend and lover inventory as well. Emo was barely holding his own against a demon that didn’t, thankfully appear able to flame out. He was basically just holding him away with a power bubble but I could tell from the look of strain on his face that he wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. Dialle had managed to take out three of the nasty things and was fighting two more, even while giving me a power boost.

Now that just pissed me off.

He couldn’t be that much more powerful than I was. I let the anger fuel my power and refocused it on the demon that was even now trying to regain its feet and come back at me. I managed to throw him back to the ground but he didn’t blow up into millions of tiny little pieces and disappear like I wanted.
Shit!

A movement above the clearing caught my eye and I looked up at the hundreds of spirits that hovered just above the action at the edge of the clearing, watching the festivities with happy spirit faces. Their hovering presence gave me an excellent idea.

I decided it was time they joined the fun, on the side of the good guys. Well, the good guys as compared to what we were fighting.

It’s all relative you know.

Reaching upward with my power, I used it to gather up the spirits and draw them in. At first I felt resistance but then they came to me almost eagerly, as if they finally realized that I was going to let them join the fight.

One thing I’d learned about spirits is that they resent the inability to use their personal power more than anything. I was about to give the spirits in that clearing not only a pathway to use their own power but I was also going to give them access to more power than they had ever experienced in their before
and
after lives.

The first spirits hit me with a painful jolt and I gritted my teeth against the onslaught. But as they started to accumulate and my power sucked up their collective energy, I no longer felt them as they climbed into my body and surrendered their power to me.

The energy in my body grew until I felt like I was getting taller, bigger, larger than life. Then I noticed the demon had unfurled itself from the ground at the base of the scorched tree and was looking at me as if, for a change, it wasn’t sure it wanted to tackle me. I laughed and the sound shook the trees around the clearing.

I realized I should have been startled by this but somehow I wasn’t. My cells had literally swollen with power and it felt as if the power belonged to me. I had incorporated it into my body and it had become a part of me.

Somewhere outside my consciousness I realized that everything around me had stopped and appeared to be waiting for me to do something.

So I did something.

I turned to the demon that now moved toward me and smiled. Wisps of spirit flowed from my eyes and my mouth as I did. I looked down at the ground and realized that yes, I was larger than life. The ground was further down than it should have been.

I threw back my head and laughed again, reveling in the power I contained within my body. Then I threw out a hand and the demon jerked backward from the strength of my power and flew upward, dangling from my upraised hand by an invisible thread of power. I made it dance for a moment, laughing as its horrible spiky limbs performed a jerky pantomime of dance in the air. Then I remembered there were other of its kind in that clearing and decided to finish it off. The demon’s mouth opened and he screamed again, this time in fear as its body started to pull apart, ion by ion until it finally exploded outward into a million, tiny little purple pieces.

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

I turned to the remaining demons and they disappeared with a pop. The horrified fear on their ugly demon faces was the only impression they left behind as they fled my power.

I looked at Dialle and my face must have shown my regret because he laughed. “Let the spirits go, Astra. You can’t keep them.”

I scowled at him but relented. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and concentrated on letting the power ease away from me. As the power ebbed the spirits flowed, making their escape in a sprightly fashion that spoke volumes about their opinion of recent events.

Then they began to fade away, most of them leaving us with happy smiles and one even threw me a jolly salute as he left the human sphere for all time.

It felt sad to see them go. For a moment, I was like an empty vessel without them. But once that feeling passed, it felt good to have given them a means to fight one last battle, taking away the helplessness that had held them to the Earth for far too long.