Running with the Demon (53 page)

Ignoring the demon, who backed to the tree line, bland features lit with expectation, Ross stepped forward. He kept his eyes on the maentwrog, who was watching him now, seeing him for the first time, realizing that a confrontation was at hand. The creature dropped down on all fours, muscles bunching, tongue flicking out experimentally. Its mouth parted to reveal multiple rows of sharpened teeth, and it gave a deep, slow hiss of warning.

Ross summoned the magic from his staff, and it flowed over him like liquid light, encasing him in its armor, giving him protection
for the battle ahead. The maentwrog cringed in revulsion as Ross slowly transformed, becoming less himself, less the human he had been, turning bright and hard within the magic’s armor. His features melted, smoothing out within the light, and when he advanced in a slow, almost sensual glide, his limp had disappeared completely.

Within the shadows of the clearing, time seemed to slow and sound to cease.

Then the maentwrog threw itself at its adversary in a stunningly swift attack, claws ripping. But the Knight of the Word sidestepped with ease, and the gleaming black staff hammered into the monster as it hurtled past. Fire flared like molten steel, and the creature howled, a high-pitched, ragged snarl, its neck arching, its body writhing. It spun about as it was struck, one arm whipping at the Knight, who was not quite quick enough to avoid it. The blow sent him sprawling backward across the clearing, and he felt the impact even through the shield of his magic.

He scrambled to his feet as the creature launched itself at him a second time. Again he avoided the attack, using the staff to block the deadly claws. The staff’s magic flared and burned, stripping off ragged lengths of reptilian skin, and the maentwrog spun away.

The Knight of the Word righted himself and moved to the center of the clearing, close to the remains of the maentwrog’s shattered prison. From the corner of his eye, he saw Nest crouched down at the fringe of the trees, ready to bolt. But she would not run. She would not leave Pick. Or him, he believed. Whatever happened, she would stand her ground. She might be only a young girl, but she had the heart and soul of a warrior. He knew that much about her. He wished anew that he had been able to tell her more, to give her something else with which to defend herself. But it was a pointless exercise; whether he lived or died, he had done everything for her that he could.

He edged left toward the demon. There was his real enemy. If the maentwrog gave him even a moment’s respite, he could … But no, it was too late for that, too late for anything but letting
events unfold as they would. He felt a great despair at his limitations, at the narrowness of the charge he had been given, at the hard truths that belonged to him alone.

The maentwrog crept toward him once more, body lowered to the earth, eyes bright and gleaming. It would not stop until one of them was dead. The Knight understood the nature of his adversary, and he knew there would be no quarter. The beast had killed stronger creatures in its time, and it was not afraid. Fueled by savagery and rage, it knew only one way.

It attacked, feinting several times in an effort to distract the Knight, then launched itself across the clearing, an unstoppable juggernaut of muscle, claws, and teeth. The Knight of the Word stood his ground and delivered a powerful blow, lashing out with such force that the magic’s fire engulfed the maentwrog. But the monster’s rush carried it past his defenses and right into him. The Knight was slammed against the earth, the armored light that protected him crushed downward like plastic. He rolled aside as the maentwrog thrashed within the cloak of fire, trying to reach him but tearing only the earth. He struck it repeatedly, slamming his staff against the massive body, fire bursting from its polished length. The maentwrog screamed and struggled to pin him to the ground, twisting and arching in fury. Twice the Knight was felled, the breath knocked from his lungs, pain filling his body, his strength momentarily leaving him. Both times he rallied, refusing to back away. He could no longer see either the demon or Nest. He could barely make out where he was, the clearing filled with smoke and soot, the shards of light from the devastated tree obscured. He moved in a world of sound and sudden movement, of responses born of instinct and swift reaction, where an instant’s hesitation would mean his death.

He broke from the maentwrog momentarily, sliding away through the murky gloom like a ghost, knowing he must wait for an opening. His strength was beginning to fail, and his magic was tiring. If he did not bring this battle to a swift conclusion, he would lose it. He was so battered already that he could no longer move without pain, his legs cramped, his arms leaden and weak. He had not been much of a fighter in the time
before he had become a Knight of the Word, and so fighting did not come instinctively to him. He had learned what little he knew from his dreams of the future and his confrontations in the present, and he was a novice compared with the thing he battled. His magic had made the difference so far, but his magic was not without limits and it was tailored to a different end.

Then the maentwrog swiped at him from out of the smoke and dust, knocking him from his feet. In an instant, the creature was on top of him, bearing down with its forelegs, pinning him fast. Its jaws snapped at his head, scraping against the magic’s armored light, ripping at the fabric. The Knight drove his feet into the monster’s chest, fire exploding at the contact, but could not break free.

In that instant, Nest Freemark rushed out of the smoke and darkness, screaming in fury, no longer able simply to stand by and watch. Wielding a six-foot piece of deadwood, she swung it at the maentwrog in an effort to distract it, desperate to do something to help. The Knight cried out at her to go back, but she ignored him. Surprised, the maentwrog swiped at her with one massive foreleg, and sent her cartwheeling back into the night.

One arm suddenly free, the Knight thrust the black staff deep into the monster’s maw and sent the magic forth. Fire lanced into the monster’s throat, burning and consuming, and the maentwrog reared backward in pain, trying to break free. But the Knight clung to it stubbornly as the maentwrog beat at him with its arms and tore at him with its claws, shrieking. The Knight felt as if everything was breaking apart inside his body, but the staff remained buried in the beast’s throat, the fire exploding out of it.

The maentwrog stumbled and fell, then lay writhing on the earth, frantically trying to rise, to rid itself of the fire within. The Knight yanked the staff from its throat and drove it into one baleful eye, feeling the maentwrog’s head shudder beneath the blow. He struck a second time, then a third, as fire flared in brilliant spurts and smoke billowed into the night.

When he could no longer lift his staff to strike, he tried to
disengage himself from the shapeless mass at his feet, but his legs refused to respond.

Don’t leave Nest alone!
he screamed in silent desperation, and then his strength gave out completely and he collapsed.

In the smoky aftermath, the clearing went still.

Raindrops fell on Nest Freemark’s face, soft, cool splashes against her heated skin. They fell out of the blackness in a ragged scattering, and then began to quicken. Nest brushed at them absently as she lay sprawled on the earth at the edge of the clearing, her eyes locked on the mix of smoke and gloom that roiled before her. She could not see what was happening. In the last desperate moments of the struggle between John Ross and the monster, everything had disappeared. Fire belched and inhuman shrieks rent the air, and then suddenly there was only silence.

“John,” she said softly, his name a whisper that only she was meant to hear.

A sudden breeze rose off the waters of the Rock River, gusted through the deep woods, and began to sweep away the haze. As the night air cleared, she could see both combatants, sprawled on the ground, motionless. She climbed slowly to her feet. Steam was rising off the maentwrog, and as she watched, it began to disintegrate, collapsing on itself as if a shell in which air had been trapped and released. The massive body broke apart and fell earthward in a cloud of dust and ash, and in seconds only an outline remained, a dark shadow against the torn and bloodied earth.

John Ross remained where he was, motionless and crumpled. The black staff no longer gleamed. Nest moved to where he lay and stared down at him in horror.

A sudden, violent explosion shattered the silence, and the force of the explosion was so powerful that the shock wave rocked her as it passed. The explosion had come from some distance off. She turned to look for its source, and she saw fireworks exploding everywhere. But they were not going off in any pattern, and the flashes of color that identified their location were not only overhead, but at ground level as well.

She swung back to find the demon standing only a dozen feet away, come forward out of the gloom to confront her. Shock and surprise jolted her.

“It’s only you and me now,” he said quietly, a serene look on his face, his hands folded comfortably before him. “I suspected that Mr. Ross might try to intervene in this, so I arranged a minor distraction. It looks to me as if it did the job. Care to check for yourself?”

She straightened, forcing herself to stand fast, closing away her emotions so that he would not see them. “What do you want from me?” she asked, keeping her tone of voice flat and expressionless.

“I want you, child. My daughter. I want you with me, where you belong.”

She choked back the urge to scream in rage. “I told you not to call me that. I am not your daughter. I am nothing like you. I have no intention of going with you anywhere. Not now, not ever. If you make me go, I will run away from you the first chance I get.”

He shook his head admonishingly. “You are in deep denial, Nest. Do you know what that means? You can pretend all you want, but when all is said and done, I am still your father. You can’t change that. Nothing can. I made you. I gave you life. You can’t just dismiss the fact of my existence.”

Nest laughed. A surge of adrenaline rushed through her. “You gave me life out of hate for my mother and my grandmother. You gave me life for all the wrong reasons. My mother is dead because of you. I don’t know if you killed her or if she killed herself, but you are responsible in either case.”

“She killed herself,” the demon interjected with a shrug. “She was weak and foolish.”

Nest felt her face turn hot. “But my grandmother didn’t kill herself, did she?”

“She was dangerous. If I had let her live, she might have killed me.”

“And so now I belong with you?” Nest was openly incredulous. “Why would you think I would even consider such a thing?”

The demon’s bland features tightened. “There is no one else to look after you.”

“What are you talking about? What about Grandpa?” She pointed at him threateningly, aggressively. “Get out of here! Leave me alone!”

“You have no one. Your grandfather is dead. Or if not, he will be soon.”

“You’re lying!”

The demon shrugged again. “Am I? In any case, none of them matter. Only me.”

Nest was shaking with fury. “Why you would think, after all you’ve done, that I would do
anything
you wanted, is beyond me. I hate you. I hate what you are. I hate it that I am any part of you. You don’t matter to me. You matter less than nothing!”

“Nest.” He spoke her name calmly and evenly. “You can say or do anything you like, but it won’t change what’s going to happen.”

She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“You are my flesh and blood, Nest. We are the same.”

“We are not the same. We will never be the same.”

“No?” The demon smiled. “You want to believe that, I expect. But you’re not certain, are you? How can you be? Don’t you wonder how much of me is inside you?” He paused. “Don’t you owe it to yourself to find out?”

He started forward. “Don’t touch me!” Nest snapped, clenching her fists at her sides.

The demon stopped, laughing. “But I must. I must touch you if I am to help you see who you can become, who you really are. I must, if I am to help you free the part of me you keep buried.”

She shook her head rapidly from side to side. “Keep away from me.”

He looked skyward, as if discovering the rain for the first time. It was falling more rapidly now, a slow, steady patter against the leaves of the trees, its dampness spreading darkly across the bare ground. Nest glanced down at John Ross, but he
still wasn’t moving. She looked over at Pick, slumped on the floor of his iron cage.

You have to help them
.

Then, for the first time that night, she saw the feeders. They had ringed the clearing, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of them, bodies scrunched together within the shadows cast by the trees, eyes bright with expectation as they gleamed catlike in the darkness. She had never seen so many gathered in one place, never in numbers like this. It seemed, on looking about, as if all the feeders in the world had come together in these woods.

“You belong to me,” the demon repeated, watching her closely. “Child of mine.”

She closed her eyes momentarily, blinking rapidly against the tears that were threatening to form. She was all alone, she knew. He had seen to that. He had done that to her. She stared balefully at him, daring him to come closer, hating him as she had never hated anyone. Her father.
A demon. A demon. A demon
.

“Step away from Mr. Ross, please,” he ordered softly.

She stood her ground in challenge. “No.”

The demon smiled coldly. “No?”

He gestured at her almost casually, and she was assailed with such fear that her legs buckled and her breath caught in her throat. She staggered under the weight of the attack, and as she did so the feeders came at her from every side. She whirled to meet their assault, her eyes locking quickly on those of her attackers, her magic turning them to mush. One by one they crumpled before her, falling to the sodden earth and melting away. But for each one she destroyed, two more took its place. She hissed at them like a cat, enraged and terrified by their closeness and numbers. They were touching her now, grappling for her, too many to fend off completely, and she was back once more in the darkness of the caves beneath the park, wrapped in electrician’s tape and unable to help herself. She fought on, striking out wildly, destroying any feeder who would look at her, forcing some to cringe away as she wheeled on them, thrashing against those who tried to crawl over her.