The New Kid (17 page)

Will stood to the sound of someone clapping.

“Well done. Very nice. That’s quite the weapon you have there, young Will.” It was Rage, and both he and Jason had undergone their own metamorphoses, shedding any pretense of normalcy and allowing their true demonic shapes to emerge. They still looked more or less human—emphasis on less—but they were demons through and through: taut, muscular, their skin pale and rife with purple veins, their fingernails long and tapering to deadly looking points, their eyes liquid ebony.

Rage was clearly an older, more advanced demon and when he stood to his full height he towered a full eight inches above Jason. Will was fairly certain he’d scored big; this Rage character could very well be an Underlord.

Rage gritted his teeth and the veins on his head pulsed with anger. True to his reputation, it looked like he harbored one hell of a temper. He and Jason separated, one going left, the other right. Will knew an attack was coming and it was going to come fast. Rage and Jason began to breathe rapidly, their nostrils enlarging, chests expanding, leg and arm muscles flexing. This part, the waiting, was what Will hated the most. He just wanted to get it over with. But he willed himself to concentrate, to focus his mind on his senses, to let instinct take over and guide him into his primitive places, the places
where he
felt
instead of thought and could slow the world around him down. In this way he was a superior warrior, a fighter to be feared, even by fully evolved demons.

The most likely move was for one of them to engage him head on while the other attacked his back. It was a time-honored, effective battle technique and the only way to subvert it was to forget about defense and concentrate on offense. So Will took a step backward like he was going to defend, then tore forward, rushing past Jason and forcing him to whirl and defend his flank. Jason raked at Will with his claw-like nails and just missed tearing into Will’s neck and possibly opening an artery. With his other hand he made a rock-hard fist and pounded it into Will’s chest, a blow so powerful that Will’s heart skipped ten beats before starting up again.

Will dropped to his knees. He looked like he’d had it. But he wasn’t done, not by a longshot. Using the Megashocker he slammed Jason’s kneecaps and then hit him with a full-on uppercut to the crotch. The demon howled in pain—even demons hated taking a crotch shot—and then tucked into a ball and rolled across the floor and up the wall as Rage exploded with anger and flew through the air, careening into Will feet first and driving him into the wall with a punishing series of kicks, first to Will’s chest and neck and then to his head. As he fought, Rage trembled with anger and screeched like an eagle. Will’s skull was pounding yet he was able to spring up and grab hold of a pipe with one hand, then chin himself up and flip over so he was hanging upside down like a bat. He fought off Rage with the Megashocker while planting a fist in Jason’s face.

The skirmish raged on for ten or twenty seconds that felt like forever to all three parties; pain had a way of elongating time. Fists found flesh and bone and with blow after blow Will’s Megashocker sent waves of pain through his tormentors, who were so charred by the weapon they were literally smoking. He was putting the hurt on them in a big way. Rage made a move for Will but Will anticipated it, feinting one way and thrusting the other, and caught Rage by surprise,
jamming the Megashocker’s tip into the older demon’s eye socket. Rage’s head jerked violently back and forth until Will thought it was going to snap right off his body. Then he yanked the Megashocker out of Rage’s eye socket as Jason’s reinforcements, Duncan and Todd, arrived.

The entire sewer tunnel erupted in a flash of stench and blood as Rage totally lost it, his temper flaring, and vomited out demon bile that burst into nanoparticles, forming a cloaking cloud that enabled him to effectively vanish. And then two more demonteens arrived—ones Will didn’t recognize—and started attacking Will with a vengeance. One of them was the long-haired kid Natalie had seen earlier. Using the Megashocker and a combination of martial arts kicks Will put them down. He finished one of them off by using the Megashocker to form a strangulation current that not only strangled the kicking beast but eventually beheaded him. The demonteen’s body shook and vibrated with electrocution and then he exploded, parts flying everywhere and then disintegrating into sparkling microparticles. Meanwhile the long-haired demonteen lay motionless on the floor, a victim of one of Will’s time-bending Capoeira kicks.

“Good, Will, good for you,” a voice echoed through the sewer, bouncing off the walls. It was
like
Rage’s voice, but it wasn’t him; it was deeper and had more of a rumble to it. Will searched for the origin of the voice and saw nothing but a green mist hanging over the sewer. The only thing he knew for certain was that the voice was coming from below.
Way
below.

Will’s hands, knuckles, elbows, and head throbbed but he ignored the soreness and fought on as Todd and Jason and Duncan mounted an attack. They got in several painful kicks before Will’s anger boosted his adrenaline up a level and he lashed out, slamming Todd’s head against the wall and cracking Duncan’s kneecap with the heel of his boot. A few last kickass blows to these punk demons and he would boot their skanky butts all the way to purgatory. Then he
could chase after Rage, maybe pick up his trail. If he was lucky, it just might lead him to the Dark Lord’s lair. He raised the Megashocker to put Duncan, Jason, and Todd down for the count. Jason lunged at him and Will gave him an uppercut with the Megashocker, piercing his neck. Demon blood spurted out as Jason gurgled and toppled sideways. He grabbed for Will but Will swiped at him with the Megashocker, slicing off three of Jason’s fingers. Then the long-haired kid rose up, floated up really, and made a move for Will who, with his free hand, whipped out a five-sided cutting disk and fired it at the kid, slicing off his scalp. Then Will yanked the Megashocker out of Jason’s neck and was about to finish him off when he heard the clanking of the service elevator and the sound of footsteps and then Natalie’s voice.

“Will?”

She’d just come down the stone steps and was walking numbly forward, her eyes unyieldingly wide as she was trying to comprehend what she was seeing. She was astounded by how Will looked, the power in his body, the fury in his eyes.

Will’s heart hammered as he ran through the various probable outcomes of a human girl encountering the likes of Jason, Duncan, Todd, and the others. And in that brief moment Duncan and Todd ripped a length of pipe from the wall and flung it at Natalie like it had been shot out of a cannon. If it hit her anywhere in her upper body cavity or her head she was dead. Will bent time and ran toward her. But the pipe had been thrown too hard, and he knew that this time he wasn’t fast enough.

C
all it fate or lady luck, but Natalie happened at that very moment to slip on the slick stones of the sewer and fall sideways, so instead of obliterating her skull entirely the hurling pipe only clipped her, knocking her sideways. While Will’s attention was drawn to his fallen angel the demonteens retreated into the dark like bats. Will was torn. He yearned with all his being to follow them, to track them as he would a wounded animal. This might be his lucky night; he might have hurt them badly enough to slow them down and if he could follow them they might lead him right to the Lord of Darkness himself. But he couldn’t leave Natalie like this. And he knew that his brief moment of hesitation had already been enough to allow the demons to escape. They had a head start and he’d be hard-pressed to catch up to them once they reached their network of catacombs. He put this failure out of his mind for the time being, holstered the Megashocker, and tended to Natalie, kneeling down beside her.

“Natalie, can you hear me?”

She lay motionless and Will’s heart ached at the prospect that his error in judgment might have resulted in the death of a beautiful
young woman he’d just begun to be crazy about. He silently cursed himself for telling Natalie anything, for thinking he could involve her without putting her in appalling danger.

“Natalie, it’s me, Will. Can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes and her heart beat rapidly, not because she’d just witnessed something she knew to be unthinkable but because Will’s face, his incredibly handsome face—with his perfect skin, his unbelievable lips—was only inches from her own. The voice in her head said,
Kiss me, just please kiss me.
But then she remembered where they were and what had just happened. She blinked and said, “I’m fine. I’m good. At least I think so.”

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said and helped her to her feet.

In moments they were in the service elevator and rising up and away from the hellish scene of a battle Natalie still struggled to comprehend.

“Um, Will, what happened down there, exactly?” she asked. “What were those things? Were they demons?”

“Listen, Natalie, the important thing right now is to make sure you’re alright.”

He looked deeply into her eyes and she felt herself growing weak in the knees. But it had nothing to do with the tiny bump on her head.

She was a prisoner of his mismatched baby blues. Will held up a finger.

“Follow this with your eyes,” he said, slowly moving his finger back and forth.

Natalie could see his finger perfectly fine but found her eyes wandering to Will’s own: the one startling blue, the other lighter, almost gemstone blue. They pulled her in like some magic crystal ball and as she was growing faint she realized she had once again forgotten to breathe. She took a deep breath and blinked, then followed his finger back and forth.

“I’m okay. Thanks.” She used one of her sleeves to wipe the sweat from her brow. “I’d be better if you’d tell me what it was I just saw back there.”

“What exactly did you see?” asked Will.

“It was pretty dark,” said Natalie. “But I saw enough. More than enough, I think. You cut off Jason’s fingers! He’s the captain of the basketball team!”

“He might have some trouble with his jump shot,” said Will. At least until the fingers grew back.

“And that other kid, the one whose scalp was hanging there. . . .”

“What about him?”

“His name’s Baily. Baily Winters.”

“So?”

“He died in a car accident last year.”

“Well, it looks like he’s made a nice recovery,” said Will.

As the service elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the hallway Natalie shuddered. “Will, I wasn’t kidding about Baily. He was
dead
!”

“I believe you. And like I told you, the Dark Lord isn’t too picky about his recruits. He must have pulled him right out of the cemetery.”

“Will, those . . . things were so creepy.”

“I warned you it was gonna get ugly. I should never have brought you along.”

“No, you did the right thing. Those . . . creatures, those demons, they had to have taken Emily. I’m not afraid,” she lied.

“They’re demons, Natalie, of course you’re afraid. You’d have to be nutso not to be. But fear is a funny thing. The more you resist it, the bigger and meaner it grows. So don’t try and fight it, go ahead and be really, really afraid. It just means you’re sane.”

Natalie nodded, figuring Will must have had about as much experience with fear as anybody on the planet, and decided to take
his advice to heart. She wouldn’t fight her fear, she’d let it flow inside her. She’d make friends with it if she had to—whatever it took to get her twin sister back.

“So there really is such a thing as demons,” muttered Natalie, mostly to herself, but of course Will felt obliged to answer her.

“For as long as mankind has existed, demons have roamed the earth.”

“That sure explains a lot,” said Natalie.

“Let’s find Rudy and get out of here,” said Will.

“Will, there’s one more thing. They . . . He . . . whatever you want to call it, it tried to get to me, tried to infect me. I heard the ringing in my ears. Then He called my name, three times, just like you said.”

Panic coursed through Will like venom.

“What did you do?”

“I thought of something . . . good, something wonderful.”

“What?”

She just blushed. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she held off the mind probing of the Dark Lord by thinking of him.

“Um . . . just things.”

Will smiled, and touched her shoulder affectionately. She’d repelled the threat.

“Good. You did good. Come on.”

Upstairs the party was in full swing, groups of kids grinding in the flashing lights to the pulsing beat. The room was even thicker with smoke than before and everyone had danced themselves into a frothy sweat. Will spotted Rudy grinning like the village idiot, one hand wrapped around a can of beer and the other resting on a plump Goth girl’s bulging hip. Will hurriedly approached him.

“You were supposed to hang with Natalie,” he hissed, wrenching the beer from Rudy’s hand. “What the heck happened?”

“Geez, man, I’m just kickin’ it a little, lighten up! I’m not your bitch!” snarled Rudy.

But Will was not about to lighten up. Anger pulsed through him. He cupped his hand around the back of Rudy’s neck and squeezed, his fingers like a vise.

“When I ask you to do something, just do it, okay?” he said.

Pain shooting through his neck, Rudy gasped. He nodded.

“I’m sorry, Will. I’m cool, I just lost her for a second, then I thought for sure she’d come right back. For all I knew she was in the can or something! Take it easy, okay?”

Will let go, and when he took Natalie by the hand and led her from the hall Rudy followed like an obedient dog.

The trio was watched carefully by every pair of eyes in the place and Natalie had a sudden ugly vision that every last one of these kids was a creature like the ones she’d seen downstairs and that they would attack like a pack of coyotes and rip them to shreds. She held her breath as they made their way to the door. No one made a move to stop them. This time.