Devil Ash Disarray (Devil Ash Saga Book 3) (36 page)

Then on the surface of the water not a hundred yards away, he saw the bozo in a boat rowing toward the tall rocks. The man kept cranking his head around to watch where he was rowing. He spotted Aura and started calling out to him. Aura recognized the voice right away.

Oh no,
he thought.
Not him
.

Aura’s new archenemy Bora row-row-rowed his boat straight for certain doom. Aura groaned. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with already. Now he’d probably end up having to save Bora, too. He considered for a moment simply allowing Bora to fall prey to the greater demon. It was his own fault he’d included himself needlessly in the situation. Aura was
just
on the verge of winning the fight, after all… The death toucher reconsidered this option however, deciding that devils should stick together against demons, regardless of personal feelings.

Before he could do anything to deter the helpful devil from entering the demon’s Aquarium Cage, Aura’s thought process was interrupted by a wet, smacking sound nearby. He directed his attention to one of the tall rocks next to him. A small, blue fish flopped around frantically on the flat section of stone. It was in the middle of the rocks, and Aura couldn’t understand how the fish got there. A big red fish fell only a few feet in front of his face, and Aura looked up.

The streams of water that made up the many bars of the Aquarium Cage were teeming with demonic ocean life. He saw demon fish of every color and size, eels, crustaceans, clams, and even a few sting squid. The ocean life got carried along by the strong water currents, sometimes accidentally spilling out of the water streams. Half a chunk of Aura’s rowboat climbed up a stream until it fell out near the top, crashing into a rock on the way to a watery grave below.

“
Wasn’t that fun
?” came the sadistic voice of Orkazek, amplified through all the water. “
Let’s see how well you can run away now
,
stupid
!”

Aura leapt to his feet and jumped to the closest rock. Before he even landed, the rock he’d just been standing on was obliterated. Orkazek accelerated through it teeth-first like it were a styrofoam surfboard. With no time to rest Aura powered on to the next rock platform, sticking to the outside edge of rocks as he kept moving. He dodged a few more swimming-bullet attacks from his demon opponent that leveled even more rock platforms, until a certain man’s voice was heard calling from somewhere outside.

“Hello? Aura! Are you in there? I’m here to help you! How do I get in there?”

“Don’t!” Aura yelled, rolling off a tall rock platform onto a slightly lower rock and narrowly avoiding losing his head to the demon. “You don’t want to come in here! Trust me, we’re both better off if you leave!”

“But that would go against my Devil Scouts
Senior Scoutmaster
pledge to always help out a fellow devil in demonic distress!” Bora replied. He abandoned his boat and took to flying around the dome-like cage of water. “I wouldn’t ever be able to face my wife and nine children again!”

Aura let out a thunderous groan.

“
Another stupid devil wants to join in our fun
?” said Orkazek, hidden once again in the water. The streams all surged with demon laughter. “
The more the meatier, I suppose
!”

As Bora swooped around the outer perimeter of the tall rocks, trying to catch glimpses of the action happening inside the Aquarium Cage, Orkazek made his move. Though Aura tried to warn the man to get away, his voice was mostly drowned out by the rushing sound of water ringing throughout the cage. Bora had no idea what to expect from this bizarre situation, and so he fell victim to the demon’s Stream Queen ability.

A new channel of water burst out the side of the Aquarium Cage, ensnaring the clueless man before he even knew what had happened. The water current pulled him along unwillingly into the various water tunnels that made up the cage bars. This was on the opposite side of the battlefield as Aura and the nearby water column currently housing the demon whale.

“
Who do you think will reach him first
?” asked Orkazek. “
You or I
?
I’ll even go easy on you and take it slow
!
This will be an excellent opportunity to show you what’s in store for you
!”

The black blur of demon in the water crept forward, idling slowly. Aura ignored it. He had a lot to think about and not much time to do so. As Bora struggled to free himself from the water column, Aura had to take into account how long the man could hold his breath for. Two minutes, tops. A bigger problem was that the water streams did not carry the man in the directions that Aura expected them to.

He hopped along the remaining tall rocks with platforms still large enough to support him. At first he had almost caught up to the man, but the water’s current changed directions at a cross section between columns and swept Bora up toward the top of the cage instead. Chasing the man wasn’t really working out. The bigger problem was that even if he caught up to Bora he had no way of getting him out without plunging into the water stream himself.

Though Orkazek was just playing with her food, the massive demon closed in on the drowning devil. The killer whale swam to a point just downstream from where Bora was being pulled. Aura could tell it would take only seconds until Bora met his fate in the demon’s jaws. In a cold sweat, Aura looked around his surroundings for something,
anything,
that might help him.

He didn’t find much. There were some small rocks scattered around the platforms from all the demolishing going on, but they were too small to be of any help. More fish and ocean life swirled around the water column currents, sometimes spilling out of the cage. Most of the spilled contents found their way to the sea below since the tall rocks were shrinking. Some fell from the very top of the cage, splattering to pieces on the rocks below.

Aura’s eyes rested on something squirming on top of the rock in front of him, tangled in a wad of seaweed. In a split-second decision, he made the only choice he had if he wanted to save Bora’s life. The death toucher hauled ass, leaning down to grab the entangled sea creature as he hopped across the rocky platforms. His eyes worked like searchlights following a single current in the watery cage, while at the same time plotting a safe way to navigate across the remaining slick rocks.

The water current pulling a drowning Bora looked like it would converge with the demon’s water current somewhere near the base of the cage. If that happened, it would be game over for Bora. Aura saw the dark shadow in the water speed up as he glided to a new rock. A grin spread across his face. He was heading in the right direction.

Devil and demon raced, one by land and one by sea. With Orkazek’s monstrous jaws spread wide open and motoring through the water, Bora looked to be on a crash course with a painful, bloody death. But Aura reached the stream before the demon and leapt in without a second thought just as Bora floated by. Aura karate kicked his nemesis,
and it felt so good.
It also saved the man’s life by knocking him out of the water stream. Aura launched Bora into the sky outside the demon’s Aquarium Cage, and to safety.

Aura could only hope the man hadn’t already drowned, or was too weak to swim once he hit the sea again. He couldn’t think about Bora at the moment, as he found himself in a new,
more life-threatening
dilemma. The death toucher was now trapped in the water once again with a blood-thirsty whale speeding at him.

This is where the slimy aquatic demon Aura picked up on the rocks came in handy. The demon in question was a particularly plump sting squid. Aura had become familiar with the creature during one of his many jobs for Goddard, and knew all too well of the demon’s painful stinging embrace. That’s why he held onto a single tentacle that wrapped around his gauntlet. His hand struggled to release the stinging squid,
and fast
.

The current speed now worked in the boy’s favor, pulling the sting squid forward. The squid demon’s long rubbery tentacle stretched out several feet. Plenty of length to ensure it made it into the oncoming Orkazek’s mouth
before
the death toucher did. The killer whale felt something enter its mouth and instinctively clamped down, thinking she’d gotten one of the devils. Instead, she had just bitten down on one nasty little surprise.

The sting squid, besides inflicting an incredibly painful toxin via tiny barbs on its tentacles, had another trick up its many sleeves. A thick, inky black liquid is stored within the squid’s body, ejected as a self-defense mechanism for escaping predators. As soon as Orkazek bit down, all the ink inside that fat little squid
POPPED
like a zit in the whale’s mouth.

All these unexpected factors left the killer whale demon in a state of pain and confusion. To make matters worse for the creature, in the instant before the water became too clouded with ink to see through, the last thing Orkazek saw coming at her was the death toucher. He looked like he was poised to strike, and indeed that was Aura’s plan. With his gauntlet hand held forward, the only way to tell the boy was coming in all that ink was by the bolts of blue electricity shooting off his death touch hand, illuminating the surrounding water.

Orkazek panicked. The demon reacted in the only surefire way to save her life. She simply created a new water stream, directly in front of her. She sucked Aura out the new opening stream and blasted him out of the water cage, back onto the wet rocks.

“
Urk
!
Ulp
!
So spicy
!” said Orkazek, exiting the water stream. She landed on a rock that was only two rocks over from where Aura sat, gasping for air like he was chugging a soda. “
What a cruel trick to play, death toucher
!
And that other stupid devil got away
,
too
!
What a pain
!
You could have killed me
!
It was almost a perfect plan, but you forgot how incredibly smart I am
!”

Damn that stupid whale
! thought Aura. He was soaked from head to toe and his ponytail had come undone, letting his long black hair flow like seaweed.
I really thought that’d work. And apparently sting squid ink is spicy
?
Maybe if I get out of this alive I should start a new condiment business
. He filed that idea away for later.

“
You’re a nasty piece of work, death toucher
!
Fooling me like that
!
But you’re so stupid you forgot I could just kick you out of the water if I need to
!
Moron
!
Because of that you just lost your only shot at beating me
!
The same trick won’t work twice
.”

“I’ll show you a
nasty piece of work
!” Aura roared, jumping to his feet losing his temper. He flung himself at the demon, groping madly through the air with his black cursed hand.

Orkazek didn’t even move. She didn’t have to. From above, the water stream shot down like a waterfall barrier and consumed the demon. Orkazek was pulled up through the new column of water like a UFO abductee caught in an alien tractor beam. The water stream rose up with her, leaving the death toucher devil standing alone on his slippery rock jail.

“
All I have to do is stay in the streams and you’ll never catch me
!” said Orkazek, her confident voice radiating out of all the water streams at once. “
And since you can’t come in after me, you’re as good as dead
!
Face it death toucher
;
this is where you die
!”

Aura felt like giving up. This battle was just a big pain in his ass and he wanted it to end. He was a tired, sopping wet mess and all he really wanted was to see some bikini babes. With his life on the line, failure was unfortunately not an option for him. Even after scouring every inch of the battlefield looking for another sting squid or equally useful aquatic demon and coming up with nothing, Aura did not lose his determination.

She can eject me from the streams at any time,
thought Aura.
But she can also be fooled. There are things she won’t eat, as well. And I can predict her movements by following the flow of the currents. There’s got to be some useful way to take advantage of this information
!

A flash of movement in a far off stream caught the boy’s eye. There was something large and brown trapped in the current of a rising water column. The blurry brown shape, which was bigger even than Aura but did not look alive, spiraled slowly through the water. A chill ran down Aura’s spine as he strained his eyes to understand what he was looking at.

It’s Bora’s boat
! Aura thought. The fully intact (minus the paddles) wooden rowboat that Bora brought out to rescue him was completely submerged in the water stream, working up speed as it powered through the water like a ghost ship.
That could be exactly what I need to get out of here
!
Now I just have to be in the right place at exactly the right time
…