Authors: Michelle Knudsen
So that’s kind of a plan, right? Save Annie, remain inconspicuous.
I get up into an awkward crouch again and peek back around my rock-mailbox-burning-bush.
All of the demon contenders are in a neat line now, facing whoever or whatever that central authority figure or figures may be. I think they are presenting their human consorts, proving they’ve met the requirements of the competition. They step forward one at a time, and I feel more than hear a deafening roar from the audience in response. There is a pause, and then a decisive movement from the center, and the roar becomes a million times what it was and I have to fight not to cower behind my rock.
The demons turn and move outward, toward the edges of what has become a fixed great circular arena. What had been the central structure has now somehow moved itself to be far to one end and slightly above one edge of the circle. The demons set their humans against the enclosing wall, appearing to tether them there with some of their own tendril-energy material. Then they turn toward the center. There is another klaxon. And then . . . well, then, of course, all hell breaks loose.
The demons launch themselves toward the center of the arena and, necessarily, one another. They have all taken mostly fixed forms now, all different, but all about equally horrifying. Principal Kingston resembles what I can only think of as some kind of bear-lion hybrid with eight enormous spider legs sprouting awkwardly from a matted, filthy, furry abdomen. Ms. Královna seems to have a nautical theme going on: she has real tentacles now, plus a series of spiky fins, several long tendrils that look like sea anemone or jellyfish stingers, and a long eel-like head with rows and rows of very sharp-looking teeth. Mr. Gabriel looks a lot like the Minotaur from Greek mythology — giant bull’s head with sweeping horns curving up into cruelly sharp points, barrelly fur-covered chest, flashing red eyes, even a shiny golden nose ring — only with gargantuan black wings and a lower half that morphs gradually into some kind of monstrous bird, with hooked talons bigger than my head. His huge, muscular arms are almost human-looking, except for the giant clawlike hands at the end of them. I can’t help wondering whether the Minotaur thing is a nod to Annie’s one-time obsession with mythology or just a weird coincidence.
The demoness’s head swivels toward me, and as we make eye contact I feel her take hold of me, like she’s reached right into the essence of what I am, the swirly cocktail of molecules and atoms and particles and whatever else that combine to make me
me,
and stretched it, pulling it thin and wide and wrapping it around herself like a blanket.
Bed hog,
I think incoherently, and then what she’s taken — no, not
taken,
because it’s still connected to me, so maybe
borrowed
— what she’s borrowed, what’s she’s using, the part of me that she’s pulled over to where she is, settles into her like a second skin.
“Oh,” I say out loud as I stagger forward and land hard on my knees. That’s . . . really unpleasant. The umbrella analogy was
so
way off. I feel — diminished. Weak.
Vulnerable.
I fall forward onto my hands, head down.
“Okay,” I tell myself out loud. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Because I have to pull it together here, right now. I give myself a few seconds to breathe, in and out, there you go, totally fine, and then I make myself start to straighten back up.
This is harder than I would like, and I stop once I get back to my knees. I give myself another few seconds, breathing, getting used to this new different feeling of being
less
than I was before. Temporarily, I remind myself. Just for now. Except now is probably exactly the time when it would be highly beneficial to be at full power.
Well, not much I can do about that at the moment. I have to work with what I’ve got. One more deep breath and then I get all the way back up to my feet and raise my head.
The demons are going at one another like maniacs.
They all have weapons of some sort, either semi-familiar weapon-type things like axes and knives, or else parts of their demon bodies that kind of extend into claws and hooks and things like that. The weapons — all of them, external and body-part — are glowing red at various intensities. I watch for a minute, and I think I finally get how this is going to work.
Scary as the demons have all become physically, the real fighting is being done with their demony magic energy.
That
is what Gabriel and Kingston were feeding with the souls of the high school kids, and it’s also why my roachy goodness is so valuable to Ms. Královna. Because if the demons were just fighting physically, my resistance would be next to useless. But they’re not. They’re using their demon essence. The same stuff that gives off the red aura that Mr. Gabriel made me able to see. I see it now, in what they’re all using to smite one another with.
And I see something else, too. The more intense the red aura on the weapon, the more the other demon seems to feel it, and suffer . . . but then the more diminished the attacker seems to be, energy-wise, immediately after. I think they’ve only got a finite amount of the stuff to work with, and the harder the hit, the less they have left to hit with the next time. Or to defend themselves with against the others. Which, again, puts the demoness in a very good position, since she can use my resistance to bolster her own defenses. And so she can hit harder, and suffer less damage. It’s really frickin’ brilliant. She’s totally going to win.
Right. So she’s all set, and I should get to work.
The initial shock of having a great swath of my own personal energy shifted over to someone else has eased a little, but I still feel shaky and weak. Which sucks, given that I am surrounded by terrifying creatures who are going to want to kill me if they notice me. Which so far they have not, since I am very small compared to everything else around me, and they are all focused on the general massacre happening in the center of the arena at the moment. Which means I should get going while they remain thus distracted.
I turn to scan the edges of the circle, to find where Gabriel left my best friend.
I see Aaron first, who seems just as happy to be here as he expected to be. He’s cheering for his demoness and screaming insults at the other demons and to all appearances having the time of his life.
It only takes me a second more to find Annie, and what I see makes it hard to keep my hard-won upright position.
She’s screaming. She’s screaming and terrified and, in stark contrast to Aaron’s insane joy, staring frantically around her in absolute and completely bewildered horror. I had half expected to have to drag her away against her will once I cut the cord to the librarian, but I can see that this is not going to be necessary. Whatever delusions she’d let herself believe in, whatever romanticized fairy-tale scenario she had bought into, I think her eyes are fully open to her awful situation now.
I can’t stand to see her like this. It was almost better when she was delusional. At least then she wasn’t so scared.
So go save her, you idiot.
I start to run. It’s a stumbly run, because I am still not feeling anything like my personal physical best here, but it’s still faster than walking. I keep to the edges of the arena, since obviously running into the middle of the demony fray is not an option. But I really, really wish the arena were not quite so enormous. Especially because I have suddenly remembered that I have to sever Annie’s connection to Mr. Gabriel ASAP not just to get it done and over with, but because if one of the other demons manages to kill him before I get to her, then Annie is going to die right along with him.
Oh, crap.
I cannot let that happen. Not now, not when I’m here and I’ve come so far and the end is finally in sight.
I force my legs to run a little faster.
I am about halfway around when I feel something fast and sharp and agonizing slice through my shoulder.
One of the audience demons has noticed me. It’s green and reptilian and gigantic, and one of its long, snaky appendages is wrapping itself around my ankle while another goes for my arm. Each one has long, needle-thin spikes at various intervals along the surface, and one of these is red with blood from my shoulder. I scream and try to jerk away, which only succeeds in tumbling me to the ground, since the thing still has a firm grip on my ankle. It begins to drag me toward where the main bulk of it is, and I stare in helpless horror as a second mouth opens lower down on its scaly abdomen, opening wide to show me all of the many long and pointy teeth it is about to rip me apart with. I scream again and without thinking I slice at the tentacle with the ulu-protractor, praying to God and Sondheim and all that is holy and good that the demoness hadn’t said anything about only getting to use the protractor once, too.
Both of the demon’s mouths scream in pain and surprise, and the tentacle loosens around my ankle and I scramble back to my feet and take off, away, not looking back to see if it is still coming. I don’t think it can; I think the noncompeting demons have to stay out of the arena proper. I hope this is enforced with some kind of absolute, impossible-to-break prevention magic, a demonic Invisible Fence perimeter, because if it’s just that they have to pay a hefty fine or something for breaking the rules, I am probably totally screwed.
But nothing new grabs me or slices through me and I keep running. And when I’ve covered about another quarter of the distance, Annie sees me.
“CYN!”
she screams, and I can only pray again that Gabriel and Kingston are both too busy or too far away to have heard her.
Shut up!
I scream back at her in my mind, still running. I can’t hold a finger to my lips to make the international
shh
sign because that is really hard to do when you’re running as fast as you can and anyway I’m afraid I might cut my nose off with the protractor.
She can’t seem to shut up, though, and she screams my name twice more before she dissolves into wordless sobbing shrieks. Despite myself, I turn my head to see if anyone has noticed. And I stumble to a stop.
Kingston is looking right at me from across the arena.
He looks from me to Annie and then back, still fending off another demon with several of his spider legs. And then he looks in another direction, and I follow to see what he is looking at, and it is Mr. Gabriel.
Mr. Gabriel is not looking at me. Or at Kingston or Annie. He’s facing away from us entirely, in the final throes of slaughtering a demon that looks kind of like a giant scorpion crossed with a Venus flytrap and a dandelion.
Kingston looks back at me and smiles a terrible lion-bear smile. And my heart shrivels into a tiny knot and sinks into the depths of my toes, and I wait for him to call some warning to the librarian.
And then he turns to the demon he was still half fighting and gets back to it.
I stand there for a second, not getting it. Until I remember that Principal Kingston and Mr. Gabriel are not actually friends. In fact, they are enemies. They had a truce, but now it is over. That terrible smile was not because he was about to screw me and Annie. It was because I am about to screw Mr. Gabriel.
Annie screams my name again, spurring me back into motion and making me want to punch her in the face.
“Shut up, dammit!”
I scream, out loud this time, but I don’t think she can hear me. I don’t think she’s capable of much in the way of rational sensory input right now at all.
I glance again at Mr. Gabriel, just in time to see him deliver the killing blow to his plant-scorpion adversary. His energy weapons seem to be his long, clawlike hands, and as he stands over the other demon’s dead body, screaming up at the sky in savage triumph, he raises his hands above his head and I see that the red glow gathered there around them is growing stronger. And so apparently every demon you kill gives up its remaining energy to you, sort of
Highlander
-style. In the midst of everything, I can’t help wondering if anyone else I know has even seen that movie and would get that reference. I bet Ryan has. The thought of him is like being kicked in the heart, and I realize I have wasted several precious seconds in my own head, and meanwhile Mr. Gabriel is done with his victim and is casting around for a new one. There aren’t very many left.
I throw everything I have left into a desperate burst of speed.
Don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me
I beg the librarian in my head, but I don’t turn back around to find out if he’s seen me or not. I just keep running and running and running until Annie is there in front of me. And then I stagger to a stop and she collapses into my arms.
I shove her backward, away from me. No time for that, and anyway I’m still undecided whether I want to hug her and never let go or stick with my original desire to punch her in the face. I ignore her newly bewildered expression and find the tendril of the librarian’s demon energy that has her fixed to where she’s standing. It’s looped around both of her legs like manacles, anchoring her to the ground. She has clearly tried already to free herself; the skin around her ankles is red and angry and torn. She’s bleeding a little on one side, and the bit of Mr. Gabriel’s tether that touches her there seems to be pressing itself deeper against the wound. In fact — I stare, and have to fight back a wave of nausea. The tendril is lined with tiny . . . tongues. Lots of them. They are moving eagerly against her damaged ankle, literally drinking in her pain and fear and blood.
And through the semitransparent substance of the tendril itself, I can see a darker thread of Mr. Gabriel’s demonic essence, so deep a red it’s almost black, and somehow I know that’s what I need to destroy. It runs up and into Annie like a vein, carrying his terrible poison into her soul. She may be seeing things for what they really are now, but they’re still connected more than just physically. He’s still linked to her.
But not for long.
I drop to my knees beside her and swing my hand up and then down, slicing neatly through the librarian’s final hold on my best friend as easily as if his horrible demon-energy-binding were nothing but a piece of banana bread and I had the mother of all Ginsu knives to cut it with.