Retro Demonology (3 page)

She continued the torture, trying hard not to snicker. There was another moan, then a cry of anguish. By now the demon would be pulling out its hair, if it had any. “‘It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, of regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…’”

There was a pronounced thump as the fiend keeled over in a dead faint on the metal shelf.

“Trapper scores!” Riley crowed. After a quick glance toward a cute guy at a nearby table, Riley dropped the book and pulled a cup out of her bag. It had the picture of a dancing bear on the side of it.

“Is that a sippy cup?” the librarian asked.

“Yup. They’re great for this kind of thing. There’re holes in the top so the demons can breathe and it’s very hard for them to unscrew the lids.” She grinned. “Most of all, they really hate them.”

Riley popped up on her tiptoes and picked the demon up by a clawed foot, watching it carefully. Sometimes they just pretended to be asleep in order to escape.

This one was out cold.

“Well done. I’ll go sign the requisition for you,” the librarian said and headed toward her desk.

Riley allowed herself a self-satisfied grin. This had gone just fine. Her dad would be really proud of her. As she positioned the demon over the top of the cup, she heard a laugh, low and creepy. A second later a puff of air hit her face, making her blink. Papers ruffled on tables. Remembering her father’s advice, Riley kept her attention on the demon. It would revive quickly, and when it did the Biblio would go into a frenzy. As she lowered it inside the container, the demon began to twitch.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said.

The breeze grew stronger. Papers no longer rustled but were caught up and spun around the room like rectangular white leaves.

“Hey, what’s going on?” a student demanded.

There was a curious shifting sound. Riley gave a quick look upward and watched as books began to dislodge themselves from the shelves one by one. They hung in the air like helicopters, then veered off at sharp tangents. One whizzed right over the head of a student, and he banged his chin on the table to avoid being hit.

The breeze grew, swirling through the stacks like the night wind in a forest. There were shouts and the muffled sound of running feet on carpet as students scurried for the exits.

The Biblio stirred, spewing obscenities, flailing its arms in all directions. Just as Riley began to recite the one Melville passage she’d memorized, the fire alarm blared to life, drowning her out. A heavy book glanced off her shoulder, ramming her into the stack. Dazed, she shook her head to clear it. The cup and the cap were on the floor at her feet. The demon was gone.

“No! Don’t do this!”

Panic stricken, she searched for it. In a maelstrom of books, papers, and flying notebooks, she finally spied the fiend navigating its way toward a closed door, the one that led to the Rare Book Room. Ducking to avoid a flight of reference books swooping down on her like a flock of enraged seagulls, Riley grabbed the plastic cup and stashed it in her jacket pocket.

She had to get that fiend into the container.

To her horror, the Rare Book Room door swung open and a confused student peered outward into the melee. As if realizing nothing stood in its way, the demon took on additional speed. It leapt onto a chair recently vacated by a terrified occupant and then onto the top of the reference desk. Small feet pounding, it dove off the desk, executed a roll, and lined itself up for the final dash to the open door, a tiny football player headed for a touchdown.

Riley barreled through everyone in her way, her eyes riveted on the small figure scurrying across the floor. As she vaulted over the reference desk something slammed into her back, knocking her off balance. She went down in a sea of pencils, paper, and wire trays. There was a ripping sound: Her jeans had taken one for the team.

Scrambling on all fours, she lunged forward, stretching as far as her arms could possibly reach. The fingers of her right hand caught the fiend by the waist, and she dragged it toward her. It screamed and twisted and peed, but she didn’t loosen her grip. Riley pulled the cup from her pocket and jammed the demon inside. Ramming her palm over the top of the cup, she lay on her back staring up at the ceiling. Around her lights flashed and the alarm brayed. Her breath came in gasps and her head ached. Both knees burned where she’d skinned them.

The alarm cut out abruptly and she sighed with relief. There was another chilling laugh. She hunted for the source but couldn’t find it. A low groaning came from the massive bookshelves to her right. On instinct, Riley rolled in the opposite direction, and kept rolling until she rammed into a table leg. With a strained cry of metal the entire bookshelf fell in a perfect arc and hit the carpeted floor where she’d been seconds before, sending books, pages, and broken spines outward in a wave. Suddenly all the debris in the room began to settle, like someone had shut off a giant wind machine.

A sharp pain in her palm caused her to shoot bolt upright, connecting her head with the side of the table.

“Dammit!” she swore, grimacing. The demon had bitten her. She shook the cup, disorienting the thing, then gingerly got to her feet. The world spun as she leaned against the table, trying to get her bearings. Faces began to appear around her from under desks and behind stacks of books. A few of the girls were crying, and one of the hunky boys held his head and moaned. Every eye was on her.

Then she realized why they were staring: her hands were spotted with green pee, and her favorite T-shirt was splashed as well. There was blood on her blue jeans and she’d lost one of her tennis shoes. Her hair hung in a knotted mass over one shoulder.

Heat bloomed in Riley’s cheeks.
Trapper fails.

When the demon tried to bite her again, she angrily shook the cup, taking her frustration out on the fiend.

It just laughed at her.

The librarian cleared her throat. “You dropped this,” she said, offering the lid. The woman’s hair looked like it had been styled by a wind tunnel, and she had a yellow sticky note plastered to her cheek that said “Dentist, 10:00 am Monday.”

Riley took the lid in a shaking hand and sealed the demon inside the cup.

It shouted obscenities and used both hands to flip her off.

Same to you, jerk.

The librarian surveyed the chaos and sighed. “And to think we used to worry about silverfish.”

Riley grimly watched
the paramedics haul two students out on stretchers: One had a neck brace and the other babbled incoherently about the end of the world. Cell phones periodically erupted in a confused chorus of ringtones as parents got wind of the disaster. Some kids were jazzed, telling Mom or Dad just how cool it had been and that they were posting videos on the Internet. Others were frightened out of their minds.

Like me.

It wasn’t fair. She’d done everything right. Well, not everything, but Biblios weren’t supposed to be psychokinetic. No Grade One demon would have the power to cause a windstorm, but somehow it had. There could have been another demon in the library, but they never work as a team.

So who laughed at me?
Her eyes slowly tracked over the remaining students. No clue. One of the cute guys was stuffing books in his backpack. When she caught his eye, he just shook his head in disapproval as if she were a naughty five-year-old.

Rich creep.
He had to be if he was still in college.

Digging in her messenger bag, she pulled out a warm soda and took several long gulps. It didn’t cut the taste of old paper in the back of her throat. As she jammed the bottle into her bag the demon bite flared in pain. It was starting to swell and made her arm throb all the way to the elbow. She knew she should treat it with Holy Water, but the cops had told her not to move and she didn’t think the library would appreciate her getting their carpet wet.

At least the cops weren’t asking her questions anymore. One of them had tried to bully her into making a statement, but that had only made her mad. To shut him up she’d called her father. She’d told him that something had gone wrong and handed the phone to the cop.

“Mr. Blackthorne? We got a situation here,” he huffed.

Riley shut her eyes. She tried not to listen to the conversation, but that proved impossible. When the cop started with the attitude, her father responded with his you-don’t-want-to-go-there voice. He’d perfected it as a high school teacher when facing down mouthy teens. Apparently campus cops were also susceptible to
the voice
: The officer murmured an apology and handed her the phone.

“Dad? I’m so sorry….” Tears began to build. No way she’d cry in front of the cop, so Riley turned her back to him. “I don’t know what happened.”

There was total silence on the other end of the phone.
Why isn’t he saying anything? God, he must be furious. I’m so dead.

“Riley…” Her father took in a long breath. “You sure you’re not hurt?”

“Yeah.” No point in telling him about the bite; he’d see that soon enough.

“As long as you’re okay, that’s all that matters.”

Somehow Riley didn’t think the university would be so forgiving. “I can’t get free here so I’ll send someone for you. I don’t want you taking the bus, not after this.”

“Okay.”

More silence as the moments ticked by. She felt her heart tighten.

“Riley, no matter what happens, I love you. Remember that.” Blinking her eyes to keep the tears in check, Riley stowed the phone in her messenger bag. She knew what her father was thinking: Her apprentice license was history.

But I didn’t do anything wrong.

The librarian knelt next to her chair. Her hair was brushed back in place and her clothes tidied. Riley envied her. The world could end and she’d always look neat. Maybe it was a librarian thing, something they taught them in school.

“Sign this, will you?” the woman said.

Riley expected a lengthy list of damages and how she’d be responsible for paying for them. Instead, it was the requisition for payment of demon removal. The one a trapper signed when the job was done.

“But—” Riley began.

“You caught him,” the librarian said, pointing toward the cup resting on the table. “Besides, I looked at the demon chart. This wasn’t just one of the little guys, was it?”

Riley shook her head and signed the form, though her fingers were numb.

“Good.” The librarian pushed back a strand of Riley’s tangled hair and gave her a tentative smile. “Don’t worry; it’ll be okay.” Then she was gone.

Riley’s mom had said that right before she died. So had her dad after their condo burned to the ground. Adults always acted like they could fix everything.

But they can’t. And they know it.

Two

Forced to wait outside the library, Denver Beck gave a lengthy sigh as he ran a hand through his short blond hair. His mentor’s kid had just topped the list for Biggest Apprentice Screwup. That upset him not only for the ten kinds of grief she’d get from the Trappers Guild but the fact that that had always been
his
honor. Who’d have thought she could outdo his nightmare capture of a Pyro-Fiend in a rush hour MARTA station? A disaster that had required not only the fire department but a hazmat team.

“But somehow ya did it, girl,” Beck mumbled in his smooth Georgia drawl. He shook his head in dismay. “Damn, there’s gonna be hell to pay for this.”

He rolled his shoulders in a futile effort to relax. He’d been wired ever since Paul phoned him to say that Riley was in trouble. Beck was on the way to the library even before the conversation ended. He owed Paul Blackthorne nothing less.

Barred from entering the library by the cops, he’d cooled his heels and talked to some of the students who’d been inside during the trapping. It’d been easy to get information—he was about the same age as most of them. A few reported they’d seen Riley capture a small demon, but none of them had been clear as to what had happened next.

“Somethin’s not right,” Beck muttered to himself. A Biblio-Fiend could make a damned mess, but that usually didn’t involve emergency personnel.