The Trouble with Demons

Page 43

 

  “The demons obviously didn’t find it in Professor Berel’s town house. ”

  “How about his office here?” I asked.

  “I’ve been in there. Nothing in there matches that description, though you’re more than welcome to look. Laurian Berel didn’t like knives, daggers, or any edged weapons. But colleagues and visiting academics kept giving him the things as gifts. I guess they thought a demonologist would like weapons. ”

  “Demonologists can’t be easy to shop for,” I said.

  Sora smiled. “We’re not, though most of us will take a couple bottles of good whiskey. Since Laurian didn’t want to admit that he was afraid of daggers, he gave every last one of them away. Only a few of us knew of his fear. ”

  I had an unpleasant flashback. The Volghul claws that ripped out his throat definitely qualified as edged weapons. Killed by what you feared the most. Oh yeah, everybody wanted to go like that.

  “Apparently the demons didn’t know that daggers weren’t his thing,” I said.

  Raised voices came from the classroom with the partially open door. I could see a man, presumably a professor, cross his arms and lean against the front of his desk.

  “Let me get this straight—a demon ate your homework?” the man asked dubiously.

  “Yes, sir. ” The response sounded like it came from the front row.

  “You mean dog. ”

  “No, sir. Demon. A Crog. ”

  The man raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive, sir. ”

  “You don’t want to change your story?”

  “I can’t. It’s the truth. It was in my bookbag. ”

  “Where is it now?”

  “It jumped out and ran off when I unbuckled the bag. ” The boy made a face. “I really didn’t want to chase it, sir. It didn’t take anything else, and Crogs are really disgusting. ”

  Sora pushed open the door. “Was the Crog brown with blue stripes or green?” she asked the startled student.

  The boy sat up as straight in his chair as possible. “Blue, Professor Niabi. ”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Unfortunately positive, ma’am. I got a really close look at it. ”

  Sora turned to me. “Crogs like any kind of paper, parchment, or ink. ”

  I made a face. “Ink?”

  “They’ll drink the stuff if they can find a bottle. You usually find Crogs in libraries or bookstores. ” She turned back to the wide-eyed student. “Were you in the Scriptorium last night?”

  He nodded. “I was finishing a research assignment. ”

  “You must have picked him up there. The Scriptorium staff sets traps baited with outdated textbooks,” Sora told me. “This one must have had a taste for fresher paper. ”

  “There hasn’t been a Crog in the Scriptorium in years,” the student insisted fearfully. “Chief Librarian Kalta would never permit it. He has wards in place to keep everything out. ”

  And everyone. I’d had an up close and unpleasant encounter with Lucan Kalta last week.

  I stepped forward. “And how do you know about the Scriptorium’s wards?”

  The student looked questioningly at Sora. She nodded.

  “I have a part-time job in the Scriptorium,” he told me.

  That would make Lucan Kalta his boss. The kid must have needed the money real bad.

  “Excuse accepted,” Sora told the student. “In the immediate future, check your bag before leaving the Scriptorium. ”

  “Definitely, ma’am. ”

  Sora left the room; I followed. Vegard had waited outside. “Demons are turning up everywhere,” he muttered.

  Sora strode purposefully down the hall. “Not just any demon, Vegard. And not just any place. ”

  What I knew about demons wouldn’t fill a hat, but I’d gathered from Sora’s reaction in that classroom that blue stripes were worse than green. “Blue stripes are bad, I take it?”

  “They are. Greenies are as common as rats in a warehouse.

  Officially they’re not even demons. They closely resemble Crogs, so most people just lump them together, most demonologists included. ”

  “So blue-striped Crogs are significant how?”

  Sora kept walking, but her lips curled in a satisfied smile. “They’re not summoned. ”

  “Let me guess: they came through the Hellgate. ”

  “Correct. And they stay close to it. ” Her smile broadened.

  “Very close. ”

  Chapter 22

  “The Hellgate’s under the Scriptorium?” I asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Sora said. “The Scriptorium is in the center city, and under the city are—”

  “Tunnels. ” My lack of enthusiasm was evident.

  Sora nodded. “Hundreds of miles of them, I understand. Never felt the urge to go exploring myself. Though it’s ill-advised to open a Hellgate in a tunnel. You’d need a chamber. Fairly large, definitely stable, and if you don’t want to get caught while you’re opening it, easily defensible. ”

  “Anything like that under the Scriptorium?”

  “Too many to count. Though with very few exceptions, the center city is where most of the sightings have occurred. ”

  “Under the campus. ”

  “Unfortunately, yes. The largest area to cover and also the most densely populated. ”

  “How far is the Scriptorium from here?”

  “Just two blocks. ”

  I looked down, wishing the Saghred had given me the ability to look through floors and rock. “Tunnels and chambers right under our feet. ”

  Sora lowered her voice. “Quite possibly. ”

  I swore silently. I hated tunnels. I especially hated tunnels probably seething at this very second with demons and dark mages—or Reapers. Thankfully, I had work to do up here. “Can I see Professor Berel’s office?”

  “Follow me. ”

  Laurian Berel’s office was what you’d expect a department chairman to have. Spacious corner office with a window. At least it would have been spacious if it’d been cleaned out in the past couple of decades, and there was probably a window with a nice view behind those heavy and closed drapes. Permeating the place was a smell I couldn’t identify and quite frankly, I didn’t really want to. I was tempted to pull back those curtains and open the window to let in some fresh air, but something on a long table in front of the window made me reconsider that. Several somethings, actually.

  Demons in miniature. Dead and otherwise. The dead ones were either preserved in jars or stuffed and mounted. The others were alive and in clear cases faintly glowing with containment spells. A couple of them were glowing a little too faintly for my comfort.

  “Pets,” Sora told me.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Most of us faculty feel the same way. ”

  Vegard’s expression was somewhere between appalled and just plain disgusted. “That’s creepy as hell, Professor,” he said. “No pun intended. ”

  They were all looking at us, and one looked uncomfortably similar to the yellow latrine demon, except this one was green. I didn’t want to ponder what caused the color difference. Its lips curled back, showing me several rows of needle-sharp green teeth. He glared at me. I stared back. Then I realized something and looked away—you can’t win a staring contest with something that doesn’t have eyelids.

  “I don’t even want to ask how he fed them,” I muttered. “Or what. ”

  “Sometimes he did a better job of it than others,” Sora told me. “One time he was having a faculty meeting in here while he fed them. He got distracted, and Green Teeth there got a surprise treat. Laurian was certainly surprised. Did you notice he was missing two fingers on his left hand?”

  My stomach did a little barrel roll. “I must have missed that one. ”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “You were face-to-face with a Volghul. You
had more important things to do. Laurian always said that these little ones were bound and could do him no harm. ”

  Yeah, where had I heard that one before?

  “If we’re all still alive next week, I’m sending these things back where they came from,” Sora told me.

  Berel’s pets compared to what would be coming through that Hellgate were like house cats compared to lions—giant lions that were damned near impossible to kill. I looked down at the now chittering demon in the cage. I’d take Green Teeth here anytime.

  I didn’t feel comfortable turning my back on the late Professor Berel’s pets, but I couldn’t exactly search the office while staring at a lidless mini-demon.

  From the looks of things, Berel had been department chairman and had occupied this office for a long time. You just couldn’t get that kind of clutter overnight. There wasn’t room for one more book on Berel’s shelves. When he’d run out of horizontal space, he started stacking books vertically on top of other books. The shelves were floor to ceiling with a ladder on rollers that could slide down the entire length of the wall. That told me the shelves weren’t likely to fall on me, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Besides, I wasn’t looking for a book.

  “Do you mind if I search?” I asked Sora. “I promise not to trash the place. ”

  “Search away. Anything I can do to help?”

  “I know he hated daggers, but if he had kept one that he’d been given, where would he have put it? Did he have a safe, strongbox—”

  Sora was shaking her head. Not the response I’d hoped for.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she said, “but I’ll look. ”

  “Thanks. ”

  “What can I do, ma’am?” Vegard asked me.

  I nodded toward a row of file cabinets next to the table with the mini-demons. I smiled apologetically. “Check those, please. ”

  He gave me a flat look. “Professor Niabi?”

  “Yes?”