This could get ugly.
I told him.
Just do what you need to do.
All righty then.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my link with Dialle. I knew I’d tapped into it when the daemon hickey on my neck started to throb.
I pulled my power forward and channeled it through the open connection. I opened my eyes to see the effect and knew it had hit the circle when I saw Myra jerk and then look at my father. His eyes widened and his gaze flew to me.
Myra stood up and followed his gaze. I expected her to glare at me but she gave me a slow smile instead.
I was so shocked I almost lost my concentration.
The circle had grown a bit too light so I pulled back a little until it was the right mix of dark and light.
I knew I’d hit it just right when a small explosion on the clear prison announced that the lock had finally been breached. With the lock no longer active, the king’s prison dissolved into mist around him.
Raoul stopped chanting immediately and everyone in the circle stepped back, their heads drooping in complete exhaustion.
My bubble disappeared with a pop.
I strode toward the exhausted group a little cockily. I fought to keep the grin off my face because I like to believe I’m not that much of a jerk.
Pretty darn close though. It was all I could do not to remind them that the weak little Tweener they’d thought wasn’t man enough to help out had saved their sorry asses in the end.
Okay, this might be one of those less stellar moments in my life the Big Guy had been talking about.
Sigh.
I reached down into my vast stores of maturity and managed to pull myself together enough to ask if everybody was okay.
Everyone except Raoul nodded. I peered carefully at him and decided the experience hadn’t improved his sickly appearance at all. In fact he looked decidedly worse.
“You okay, Raoul?”
His head, which had nearly been resting on his chest, slowly lifted and he fixed pain-filled brown eyes on me. His face was literally gray and he looked like he’d aged twenty years since he’d come to Castle Gregg. His lips twitched as if he was trying hard to give me a smile but he couldn’t pull it off.
“I need to go,” he said in a raspy voice.
Myra reached a hand toward him but he jerked away. “No more magic. I need to go the old-fashioned way.”
I opened my mouth to argue that he was in no condition to leave on his own but he was already striding toward the door. Moving much more quickly than I thought he should be capable of.
I started to follow him but my father stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Leave him be. He has poisoned himself with dark magic. He must deal with it on his own.”
My stomach felt as if it were filled with lead. What had I done to my friend? He’d gotten involved in this mess because of me. Because I’d asked him to. It was all my fault that he was sick.
As if reading my mind my father gave my arm a squeeze. “We all make our own choices, Astra. This was his cross to bear. Your involvement didn’t change his fate.”
Emo approached my father. “Sir, the demons are whispering about a coup your wife is planning. If it’s true it would be world-shattering. We need to take steps to stop her if we can.”
My eyes flew to my partner. “You mean about her planning to chain Enoch?”
Myra gasped and my father jerked as if he’d been jolted. “Absurd!”
I shook my head. “Raoul went deep undercover in the coven and discovered her plans. That’s why he came here with us today. He knew we’d need the king and the Royal Court behind us to defeat Mother and Enoch’s dark army.”
My father looked as if he’d been struck. “It’s not possible. How can she think she’ll succeed?” He took a step back and for a moment I thought he would fall. I reached out a hand but he shook himself and his eyes focused on Myra. “This will seal her fate, sister. I cannot save her from this.”
Myra’s eyes shimmered with tears for my father’s pain. She nodded and reached for his hand. “If it’s true.”
Emo nodded. “I believe that it is, Archangel Myra. The demons are in a state of great excitement because they believe they’ll rule the dark world under Danika. They will be allowed to have their own Court. In fact,” he glanced at me, “that’s why I was looking for Astra, apparently Alcott is so giddy he’s lost his mind. Some of the demons have gone out into public and are showing their true faces. Humans are panicking and some have been hurt. I came to get Astra. We need to go kick some demon ass.” He grinned at me and then it seemed to sink in who he was speaking to and I watched the color leach from his face. “Umm, sorry sir, ma’am, it’s just an expression.”
I snorted, “A very accurate one.”
My father looked at Myra and said, “You must go to Him and tell Him what transpires.”
Myra frowned. “And what of you?”
“I must find Enoch and try to speak reason to him.”
I could tell she didn’t like that but she finally nodded and turned to me. “Go, child, deal with the demons who torment the humans. But watch your back. I’ll be busy elsewhere and won’t be able to save your butt if you get it into a fling.”
I laughed, “You mean sling?”
“Whatever.” She frowned at me and disappeared with a pop.
My father leaned down to kiss my cheek. “Go with His love and protection, Astra.”
“Blessed be, Father.”
And he was gone too.
I turned around and realized for the first time that Dialle the First and Second had disappeared too. Apparently they were anxious to get their own house in order.
Emo touched my arm. “The demons have returned to the Court. The king and Dialle were needed there.”
I nodded and looked into my partner’s beautiful black eyes. “I guess it’s just you and me then, partner. Care to kick some demon ass?”
He favored me with a slow, sensual smile that made me tingly in all the right—I mean wrong—places. “I’m always ready, boss.”
He offered me a hand and I reached toward it. “Let’s party.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Time to Shop
The demon sauntered down the aisle, selecting carefully,
His purchases were made of flesh and screamed quite frantically.
We landed in the Sky Mall, in the middle of complete chaos.
Clothing and shoes and various items of human beauty were strewn around the floor, spilling from dropped bags and hanging from toppled racks that had been ripped off walls and dragged out of stores into the middle of the mall.
The sound of screaming pinged off my ears and bounced around the mall, changing volume and octave as it came to us from several different directions.
As we stood among the mess, taking in the pandemonium, we didn’t know where to start.
A woman came shrieking out of a nearby store, half dressed and falling over her jeans, which were halfway down her legs as if she’d been trying to pull them on or off before she was rousted out by the maggoty demon that was hot on her trail.
Emo looked at me and pointed down the mall, where another demon had a shrieking woman by the back of her coat and was holding her up in the air, chewing on her short, curly blonde hair as if it was the finest gourmet meal. “I’ll get that one. You can have this one.”
I nodded and started after the quickly retreating pair at a run. The woman had apparently given up on trying to pull her jeans back up and had discarded them, taking off at a full-out run down the mall in her lacy pink underwear. The demon caught her easily a few stores down. I caught up with them just as the demon grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up against his scaly body.
He grabbed her wildly swinging legs with his other arm and held her so she couldn’t move. He rubbed himself against her and allowed the supra demons on his head to caress her horrified face. I threw a power jolt at the very tip of one writhing supra demon to get his attention.
The thing shrieked like a banshee and flung itself off the demon’s head, crashing to the floor. It lay writhing there until I zapped it again just for fun.
Disgusting things.
The demon host dropped the woman and turned toward me. “Mx. Phelps, come to join in the fun?” he said to me in his gravelly demon voice.
I shrugged. “Only one of us is gonna have fun here maggot boy and it isn’t you.”
He laughed, apparently he’d already assumed the mantle of power my mother’s expected coup promised and thought I’d buy into the power shift.
Unfortunately for him politics didn’t enter into my daily calculations. I tend to function under only a few very simple concepts.
Like a preschool reader for little demon slayers.
See demon.
See demon run.
Zap demon’s ass.
Move on to next demon.
I gave him a shot of everything I had right between the eyes.
The laugh died on his scabby lips as he started to pitch forward.
“To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you.”
As he fell I could hear all of the supra demons shrieking like tiny little star coaster riders. I took a couple of minutes to zap them too before I moved on.
The next demon held an old man by one ankle over the railing that overlooked a laser skate rink below. The man’s age-shrunken wife was banging the demon on one of his green, tree-like legs with her purse and screaming at him.
I felt a deep respect for the woman’s pluck, particularly considering her size and age. But I cast my eyes worriedly at her husband, who was trying to hold very still and yelling at his wife to get back.
I knew that if I zapped the demon he’d drop the old man onto the slate floor below. That would
not
be a good result.
The demon put a huge hand on the woman’s head and pushed her backward so her arms swung feebly and she could no longer reach him with the purse.
I approached carefully from behind the demon and the old woman saw me coming. She opened her mouth to speak but I held a finger to my lips and motioned her with my hand to continue swinging at the demon so he wouldn’t know I was there.
She was a sharp old bird and she quickly picked up what I wanted. In fact, since her arms couldn’t reach the demon she reached out and bashed him on the shin with her foot, then proceeded to stomp on his toes.
The demon barely felt her assault but it kept his attention on her and not on me.
I walked directly up behind him and, reaching between his legs from the back, I grabbed the family set and gave it just enough of a twist to catch his attention.
He grunted and swung around. I stepped with him until the old man was clear of the railing and then gave the set a nice twist that made him howl.
“Put the old man down now, very gently, or I’m gonna add a jolt of power to this nice twist I’ve got goin’ on and finish off the family future for you, wart boy.”
The demon bent its green, scaly head toward me and opened wide lips to show me a set of black, chipped teeth. He squinted at me through the pain. “Phelps?”
I felt a certain discomfort. Why did everybody know my name? It was almost like they had known I was coming…
Holy shit!
I gave the demon a jolt between the eyes and grabbed the old man’s arm to pull him out of the way before the demon fell on him.
Emo! We’ve been had. This was a diversion. We need to find my father. Now!
We can’t just leave these demons here. They’re gonna kill somebody.
Shit! He was right.
Dammit! Okay, move faster. Let’s clean this place up and get the hell out of here.
Emo thought a salute at me.
Yessir!
It took us another twenty minutes to find the last of the demons in the mall. They left a lot of human angst and physical devastation behind that we couldn’t do anything about. It was hard to walk away from the tear-stained faces and wails of pain and fear but I knew I had to.
As I jogged toward the spot where Emo and I had shifted into the mall I contacted Dialle.
Dialle? I need your help.
Astra?
I think your demon infestation at Court and my excursion into shopping hell were orchestrated by my dear old mother. I need you to meet Emo and me at the clearing in the wildlife refuge.
A long silence told me he was digesting the news.
Finally he said,
I’ll bring troops. The demons we’re torturing have told us what your mother is up to. We’ll need backup.
Emo ran up to me and grabbed my hand. “Where?”
“Clearing, wildlife preserve.”
And we were off.
We landed amid a cacophony of sound and smoke and screaming that made what Emo and I had just experienced at the mall seem like a day at a Venus beach sipping frosted rum drinks with the cute little umbrella sticking out of the glass. I particularly like the pink ones.
Oh… Sorry.
We’d landed just at the edge of the woods and hadn’t been seen yet. We were frozen into immobility by the scene in front of us.
Angel fought angel in the sky above our heads, looking exactly the same and making it impossible to differentiate by looking between the dark angels and the light.
On the ground demons and gargoyles, which by themselves would never be able to best an angel, attacked in such numbers that I could see angels lying around on the ground with missing limbs. One was even missing a head.
The angels, it appeared, were vastly outnumbered. I wondered why the Big Guy hadn’t sent more help.
Around the altar, witches in long, dark robes were on their knees with joined hands and dropped heads. Beneath the horrendous noise of fighting and death I could hear the steady drone of chanting.
I strained to see who was on the altar but the air above the dark celebrants was filled with smoke and bubbled with power and it was impossible to see anything beyond a vague shape.
I felt a change in the air of the clearing and one of those spike-covered demons from the fires of Hell popped into the clearing. He immediately spread his knobby lips and a wave of fire emerged from between them. An angel turned just in time to stop the fire with a wall of magic but as she did, two other demons jumped her from behind.