The Demonists

  There was a headless corpse at her feet.

  “Is that . . . ,” Brenna started to ask.

  “Yeah,” John answered, feeling as though he might be sick.

  “Get out of here,” his wife ordered. Her mouth was like that of sharks, enormously wide and filled with rows and rows of razor teeth. “Take the kids with you and go,” she again commanded, waving them away with appendages that looked more like a bird of prey’s talons than hands.

  The children were still in the grip of Damakus, their bodies twitching and moaning as it continued to feed upon their nourishing fears. Brenna knelt down to the children, attempting to rouse them. “Theo,” John said, beginning to approach.

  She held out a claw. “No,” she said. “Just go.”

  “John,” Brenna called to him, and he turned from his wife to assist the FBI special agent with the children.

  The children started to gradually awaken, and Damakus reacted, its multiple limbs flexing and lifting its growing mass up off the floor. The demon lord threw its body toward them in an attempt to halt their leaving, but a child’s desk was thrown across the room, striking its amorphous head and knocking it back.

  “Get the hell out of here—now!” Theo screamed as the demon lord turned its attention to her.

  John did as he was told, helping Brenna drag the children to the front of the classroom and toward the doorway. The kids were crying, actually frightened to leave the environment where they’d been imprisoned and tortured for so long. It had become what they knew, and they were afraid to leave it.

  They were almost through the door when John stopped, turning for one last look before going.

  Damakus towered over his wife, the demon’s monstrous form rising as its many-tentacled limbs waved threateningly. John watched as she crouched down, preparing to attack her prey, when Damakus struck. One of its muscular limbs darted forward, a spearlike appendage at its tip impaling the woman, pinning her to the floor of the classroom.

  “No!” John screamed, moving to go to her, but Brenna grabbed hold of his arm, preventing him from going any farther.

  “The children,” she said to him. “The children need us . . . you if we’re to get out of here alive.”

  He heard Brenna’s words and knew them to be true, but how could he leave Theo there like that?

  It was almost as if his wife could hear his thoughts, and she turned her now monstrous gaze to him, her eyes telling him that it was all fine.

  Brenna continued to tug upon his arm, and he finally allowed himself to be taken, ripping his gaze away from the horrors of the room.

  And the love he was leaving behind.

  Theo gazed down at the pulsating appendage sticking out from her chest. She could feel the demon lord’s mind attempting to find its way inside her skull, to feast upon the fear of her impending demise, but she would not let it in.

  Not yet.

  She glanced over to see the old woman standing nearby. “Nana?” she asked.

  The old woman approached, kneeling down beside her. “It’s time now,” Nana said as Theo looked at her. “Give them what they want.”

  Theo could feel them huddling at the border of her psyche, waiting for what had been promised to them.

  “I never wanted this,” she said, and felt the heat of her tears as they streamed down from her eyes.

  “I know, dear,” Nana said. “But a bargain is a bargain.”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to come back.” Nana smiled, laying a cool, ghostly hand upon Theo’s fevered cheek.

  “The smartest thing my grandson ever did, marrying you,” the old woman said as she bent down to lay a gentle kiss upon Theo’s brow. “Now send that miserable piece of shit back to the nothingness where it belongs.”

  Nana was gone, her words a gentle echo inside her skull, gradually replaced by the yowls of the demonic.

  It was time to give them what they’d asked for, Theo admitted as she peered into her psyche to see them all standing there, the little boy, Billy Sharp, out in front.

  “Well?” the demon child asked.

  “Make it quick,” Theo said, temporarily lifting the magick that kept the demons in check. “And make sure that you return it to me in one piece.”

  The demon child laughed, a happy sound escorting her down into oblivion.

  As the demons took control.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The floor beneath their feet heaved upward, wood snapping, walls cracking, windows shattering as the schoolhouse shook in its death throes.

  The children screamed as chunks of the plaster ceiling rained down upon them. John charged ahead, herding them all toward the doors and hopefully to some semblance of safety.

  The noises coming from back in the classroom were unlike anything he had heard before, the nearly deafening howls of something not of this Earth crying out in pain—

  Or was it pleasure?

  He found himself frozen in the foyer of the school, staring down the hallway from where they’d come, contemplating the fate of his wife. He was tempted to go back, to do anything that he could to help her—to save her if he could.

  To die with her if he had to.

  The building shook as if in the hands of some enormous child playing with a dollhouse, a large portion of the ceiling breaking away and falling down toward him.

  He was struck from the side, tackled to the floor as the plaster chunk crashed down to where he’d been standing.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Brenna Isabel asked, lying atop him.

  He really didn’t have a satisfactory answer, figuring that dying with his wife wouldn’t have been all that popular a response.

  She hauled him up, dragging him across the uneven floor to where the children huddled.

  They all looked at him, their eyes wide and wet and filled with fear—but there was something else. There was hope in their gazes, hope that they were going to be rescued. Hope that he and Agent Isabel were going take them away from this nightmarish place.

  John chanced a final look down the corridor and watched in horror as it shook so violently that the walls and ceiling caved inward in a choking cloud of asbestos dust and dirt.

  He’d seen enough, running toward the front doors and hitting them with full force. The doors didn’t open, and he bounced backward, nearly falling on his ass.

  “Are they locked?” Brenna asked, panic setting into her tone. “Don’t tell me that they’re fucking locked.” She ran at them then, and they still didn’t budge.

  He looked at the doors carefully and saw that the frame had been bent in such a way that the doors were being held shut.

  “No,” he said, running at the doors again. “The doorframe is bent— help me,” he said.

  They went at the door, grabbing it in such a way, pushing and lifting in an attempt to free it from where it was caught.

  The cries of the demonic from the background grew even louder, and he hoped and prayed to any deity that might be listening that they wouldn’t be too late to save the children.

  He was guessing that someone, or something, might have been listening—or maybe it was just good luck—as the door popped free of the twisted frame, swinging outward with a tortured shriek.

  They all spilled out onto the grass, the air still thick with fog.

  He turned and gazed at the school building, watching as it shook, the brick façade cracking and starting to crumble in many places.

  “C’mon,” he said, moving the children along from where they had come out. “Get as far away as you can.”

  They could hear the building crumbling over the sounds of something inhuman crying out.

  “Is it coming for us?” one of the children asked, a little boy with snot streaming from his nose. “Is Damakus going to get us?”

  He told the child no, but then felt guilty. He had no idea what was going to happen.

  They went as far as they could, then stopped, watching the building as it t
rembled, shook, and fell apart.

  And they waited.

  For what they did not know.

  “Do you know who we are?” the demon spokesman asked through the mouth of his physical host as the tentacles of the lord Damakus attempted to crush the life from her ever-changing body.

  “I do not care,” the dark lord’s voice boomed within her mind. “I am the end times—the beginning of a new age—an age of fear that will be built upon the putrefying corpses of humanity.”

  “All well and good,” the spokesman, who’d worn the form of Billy Sharp, to put his host body at ease said. “But there are questions that must be asked.”

  The demon lord continued to grow and evolve. Damakus pushed upon the walls and ceiling of the dilapidated structure, threatening to bring it all down upon them.

  The woman’s form was far smaller than her foe—and quicker— avoiding the thick, oozing tendrils that wanted to smash and crush, to reduce her to little more than a stain on the schoolhouse floor.

  But Damakus’ wants were far from the demons’ concern. They needed to know things, and they believed that the newly resuscitated demon lord could provide them with some of the answers that they sought.

  The woman threw herself upon Damakus’ undulating mass, sinking thick black claws into the demon lord’s abhorrent flesh, climbing his body to look him in the multiple sets of eyes.

  “The detonation of an infernal artifact brought you back from the brink of nothing,” the demon spokesman said, clinging to the writhing head of the Damakus. “A jar that contained one thousand of the underworld’s most powerful demons. Who was responsible?”

  The demon lord screamed and roared, thrashing its boneless form in order to dislodge his relentless attacker, but the woman clung tick-like to his body.

  “How dare you question the likes of me?” Damakus’s voice boomed inside the woman’s skull. “You are insignificant in the grand scheme of things!”

  “Who?” the spokesman questioned, allowing more of his demonic brethren to come forward, transforming the woman’s body into something that barely held the semblance of humanity.

  “Who put us in that jar?”

  Damakus’ form reacted to the question violently, managing to dislodge the woman, sending her hurling across the room and into a wall, bringing the rubble down atop her.

  “We all have our parts to play,” High Lord Damakus’ voice pulsated through the ether. “You and yours were nothing more than refuse, castaways after your function was performed.”

  The high lord’s giant mass sinuously moved across to where the wall had fallen.

  “Refuse?” the demon spokesman, whose female host form now appeared lacking in any form of femininity, or humanity, questioned as she rose from the rubble to gaze upon her foe with malicious eyes.

  Damakus reared away, taken aback by the startling transformation. “Castaways?” the spokesman continued, unable to contain his own writhing furor, as well as the furor of the others that resided within their host body.

  Lord Damakus attacked, his monstrous form colliding with that of the demon spokesman’s newly transmogrified host form. Walls collapsed and ceilings fell as the two were locked in combat.

  “As high lord, I will be obeyed,” Damakus proclaimed, his commanding voice echoing inside the host body’s skull. The spokesmen could feel the human attempting to come back—to regain control over her form.

  But they were not yet ready.

  “Tell me,” asked the spokesman, as claws tore away oozing chunks of Damakus’s flesh, “would mere refuse have the need to obey the commands of authority?”

  Damakus fought wildly, powerfully, but the spokesman and his demonic brethren were a force to be reckoned with.

  “Would castaways bow before the might of those deemed superior?”

  The spokesman drove Damakus down to the shattered schoolhouse floor, his psychic screams deafening as his body was torn asunder.

  “I think not,” the spokesman said, pulling away large chunks of writhing flesh from the body of the high lord and hungrily shoving them inside her mouth.

  “There is knowledge to be found in the flesh one’s enemies,” the spokesman declared, and the other demons agreed.

  As they all partook of the high lord’s body and all that it would tell them.

  Feasting upon the flesh of a demon god.

  . . .

  The schoolhouse gave one last mournful moan before collapsing in upon itself, thick clouds of dust and dirt mingling with the chilling fog. John made a move toward the wreckage but realized the futility of the action and came to a stop at the structure’s outskirts.

  All he could think of was her, and how maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he had stayed with her inside and . . .

  “John?” Brenna called.

  He turned to see her approaching before turning back. The dust from the collapsed building filled the air, clinging to his face and clothes.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, standing beside him.

  He kept his emotions in check, attempting to reassure himself that Theo had died for a good cause, and that hopefully the demon lord Damakus had been returned to the oblivion from where it had pulled.

  “Do you think . . .?” Brenna began. He knew she was talking about Theo.

  “Do you?” he questioned. “The place is in ruins. I doubt anything could have survived.”

  John flinched as he felt her hand on his shoulder, and turned to look at her.

  “We should probably see to the kids,” she said, quickly removing her hand. He agreed, turning from the rubble. The children were all sitting on the grass, the wall of mist at their backs. Looking at them, he was reminded of photographs from World War Two, and the liberation of the concentration camps. The look in the eyes of the survivors, it was very much the same.

  Haunted, but alive. Survivors.

  “We have to get them out of here,” he said beneath his breath. He scanned the fog behind them, trying to remember from where he and Brenna had first arrived in Theo’s wake.

  “Do you think it’s still there?” Brenna asked. “The opening?”

  “I have no idea,” he said, walking over to where a section of mist seemed particularly thick. “I’m thinking that maybe the passage was like a tear—a rip in reality and that—”

  One of the children started to scream.

  They spun around, running to where the kids sat. Rebecca was now standing and screaming like a banshee as she pointed to where the school once stood.

  “What is it, honey?” Brenna asked, trying to calm her down.

  John looked to where the child was pointing. At first he saw nothing more than the shifting mist, and the outline of the schoolhouse rubble beyond it, but then— “What?” Brenna asked, seeing his reaction as he started to move closer. “What is it?”

  A shape had emerged from beyond the rubble, appearing not at all human, and his blood ran cold. What new nightmare would they be forced to deal with now? he pondered as the thick mists blew across the moving figure, temporarily obscuring their view. Brenna had pulled her gun once again, standing beside him at the ready, as they both squinted into the fog.

  The figure reappeared even closer and Brenna raised her weapon.

  “No,” John said, pulling down her arm as he realized who it was coming toward them through the mist.

  Theo was completely naked, and covered in blood that did not appear to be her own. John ran to her across the short expanse of grass, reaching her just in time as she collapsed in his arms. He noticed how heavy she seemed, as well as the swollen nature of her stomach.

  As if she’d eaten a really large meal.

  Brenna took off her suit jacket, wrapping it around the woman’s naked shoulders as they walked toward were the frightened children waited.

  “Damakus,” Brenna said to her.

  Theo’s head slowly turned to look at her.

  “Is he gone?” the FBI agent asked. “Did you . . .”

  She didn’
t finish the question.

  “He’s gone,” Theo said in a voice so very small. And he noticed that as she answered about the dark lord’s whereabouts, she rubbed her swollen belly.

  “Then we won,” Brenna said. And John could see that she was forcing a smile. “We won,” she stressed again, waiting for her enthusiasm to be reciprocated.

  John was about to agree in some way, maybe a smile, and nod—or maybe even a hearty high five.

  But then Theo began to laugh, a horrible mocking sound, as she took them toward the mist, and hopefully the passage that would bring them home.

  “We won a battle,” she said, pulling Brenna’s coat tighter around her, against the cold, the words that followed chilling him to the core.

  “But the war has just begun.”

  EPILOGUE

  It was their ten-year anniversary and they’d decided to celebrate. They had heard about the Blue Ox in Lynn from a few of their food critic friends and had decided to give it a try.

  John sipped from his tumbler of whiskey, carefully watching his wife across the table from him for any signs that things might be turning sour. Between their own productions and the activities of the Coalition, they’d had very little personal time lately, and he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t too much for her.

  “What?” she asked over her glass of red wine, as she caught him staring.

  “Doing okay?” he asked.

  “Doing fine,” she said. “The natives have been put to sleep,” she added, making reference to the demons that remained a part of her.

  “How about you?”

  He set his glass down. “I’m good,” he said, attempting a smile, attempting to make it seem as though everything really was just fine. Things had been relatively quiet since the Damakus affair, and he was seriously beginning to wonder. There had been some minor investigations: a haunted distillery in Boston, a possible bogart infestation in northern Maine, which had turned out to be raccoons. Odds and ends with a paranormal bent, but nothing that pointed to the level of danger that had been foreshadowed. He found it all a bit unnerving, waiting for the next shoe to drop.