Demon Inside

Maleficarum sidestepped, giving Nick a clear shot. The gun’s report was muffled by the blanket of white around them, but one of the dogs jerked sideways, a momentary pause before he headed for them again.

Flames burst around them, haloing them as they ran, but again, the hounds barely paused. Megan could see how shaggy they were, how pinkish saliva dripped from their long, sharp fangs even as the fire went out.

Maleficarum leaped, grabbing one of them by the neck and toppling it into the snow. Its yowl of fury pulled an echoing scream from Megan’s throat, a scream that seemed to go on forever. Nick’s sword sliced through the air and down, hitting the back of the second hound with a horrible thunk. The beast fell, snarling, its teeth snapping the air only a foot or so from Megan’s ankles.

Greyson grabbed her and pulled her back from the squirming thing, while Spud picked up the third dog and lifted it above his head, his squat face set in grim concentration. He heaved the dog back toward the road, where it landed with a yelp on the cracked edge of the hole in the pavement.

Maleficarum still shouted, wrestling with the first dog, but as Spud moved to help him an ugly crack sounded, like a twig breaking at the bottom of a well, and the dog subsided. Maleficarum was bloody, his shirt was torn, but he stood up with a broad smile as if he’d just been on a wonderful amusement-park ride.

“Right, ’oo’s next then?”

He and Malleus haw-hawed for a minute over that one, while Megan tried not to scream. This wasn’t fun. This wasn’t a great night out on the town. This was a precursor to her possible death, and she failed to see the chance to hurt some hellbeasts as an upside to that.

They resumed formation and walked on, trudging through the rapidly deepening snow. Over the whistling of the wind gunshots sounded in the distance, but stopped before Megan had a chance to figure out where they were coming from. All the while her skin crawled, prickled with the power around them, itched with the despair that had taken over the town. She could feel people crying in their houses, could almost hear medicine cabinets opening and bottles of pills and packages of razor blades being removed from shelves.

Red lights, festive in the snow, flashed off the windows of the strip mall nearby as an ambulance passed on a side street at the far side of the square, its siren blaring. It shouldn’t have been reassuring, but it was. Somewhere in this place was sanity, somewhere the normal order of life continued.

They’d almost reached the center of the park, where the benches squatted next to a few halfhearted pieces of playground equipment—a wooden swing set, a dented slide, one of those tents made of bars that Megan could never figure out what children were supposed to do with except sit on—when something whispered off to the right.

They all stopped, turning, but it took a moment for Megan’s snow-blind eyes to catch on to what she was seeing.

They slithered up the great elm tree by the fence and swarmed over the white earth, their bodies like oozing black stains. Snakes. Serpents, sliding toward them, moving with a speed Megan couldn’t fathom. It was so cold, it was too cold for them, too cold…

Greyson grabbed her right hand, Nick her left. She saw flames erupt over the spreading mass of snakes but knew it was futile even as they started to run, heading for the far end of the park as fast as they could manage on the icy ground.

Malleus and Spud veered off to one side. Megan started to follow them but Greyson and Nick yanked her back, keeping her moving forward even as something yowled and screeched to her left. She dared a glance and saw the brothers fighting with something, a beast that reminded her vaguely of the Nepalese mountain demon who’d attacked her in a different park months before. That had been a su

It wasn’t a yaksas, though. She realized it when they reached the far fence and looked back. The snakes were still spreading, moving as inexorably as the tide, getting closer to Malleus and Spud as they struggled with the thing. It was black or green or dark blue, she couldn’t tell, but it was huge, and she screamed when it swung a great fist and sent Spud flying. He landed on the grass and stayed there, motionless.

Megan’s heart stopped. Beside her Greyson jerked, ready to run to Spud, but another scream rent the air. They turned toward it to see a woman leap from one of the windows on the square. For one sick, dizzy moment Megan thought she was flying, the way her body seemed to hang there, before she plunged to the ground and bounced once, twice, before settling in the middle of the road.

Megan’s hands flew to her face, covering her eyes, her mouth. Greyson’s coat muffled her cries, his arms like a vice around her shoulders.

She didn’t understand when he shifted and gripped her neck hard enough to bruise, when he shoved her violently down to the ground at his feet and stepped sideways. The edge of his overcoat brushed against her face as she scraped her palms on the snow. In the same movement Greyson pulled his gun, aimed, fired, fired again. Off to the side Spud still lay silent. Malleus and Maleficarum were wi

How she was able to smell the alcohol on the men she didn’t know, but she could, just as easily as she could see them heading across the park. She even recognized one or two of them, from Kelly’s Tap the night of the fire at Maldon’s place.

That they recognized Greyson and her was obvious. That they carried a grudge was even more so, if the shotguns in their hands were any indication. With them came something she hadn’t felt in months, the slow malevolence of a person completely overwhelmed by Yezer. If they’d been making themselves visible Megan would have seen dozens of them, she knew.

What the fuck was Roc doing? Everything should have been taken care of by now, he was supposed to be here, trying to sneak some of her rubendas back to her, trying to get her as much power as he could. Instead she was looking at three guns, aimed straight at her, her bodyguards were injured or otherwise occupied, and all that stood between her and death were Greyson and Nick. The odds weren’t bad, but she would have liked better.

One of the men fell. Blood blossomed like a rose high on the right side of his chest, making his plaid shirt bizarrely effeminate, and poured from his mouth in a dark stream to stain the snow beneath him. Greyson’s second shot blew off the top of his head.

Nick twisted his body as she started to rise from the ground, so both of them stood in front of her. That was worse somehow, not being able to see, not knowing if the other men were ru

Taking aim, apparently. Nick pivoted again, ducking, and came up with his gun ready. All she could hear were shots, louder than she remembered them from before, and it wasn’t until she thought of being in the car with Greyson while the witches attacked that she remembered she had a gun too.

Her cold, stiff fingers slipped on it, fumbled with it, but she managed to edge herself out enough to take aim. Nick stumbled against her so her first shot went wild, but he righted himself immediately before she squeezed the trigger the second time.

Pain exploded in her left arm, so bright and hard she didn’t know what it was for a moment. She screamed and dropped the gun as she fell, hitting her right shoulder hard against the wrought-iron fence behind her.

One last shot blared through the park, then screams, then silence. Megan tried to say something but her throat didn’t want to work. Nothing wanted to work, not her arms or her legs, or her head. She just wanted to curl up in a ball. It was so cold, if she huddled up she might be warmer.