with its oversize jaws. Terrence stumbled forward under the demon’s momentum, but he didn’t go down. He reached out and caught himself on the office desk, and then he pushed off and rammed the demon into the nearest wall.
“Hit it, Domino,” he gasped, and spun his suppression spell again.
“It’s electricity, Terrence, it will-”
“Hit it!”
“Fuck that, Terrence,” I said. “All movements go too far.” I spun the telekinesis spell and hurled the demon across the room-tried to, anyway. Even with Terrence’s spell eating at its magic, the demon still had enough resistance left to counter most of the juice I could put on it. Gritting my teeth and reaching for more power, I slowly peeled it off Terrence, and its claws left bloody furrows across his abdomen and cheeks as it was pulled away from him. When it was clear, I spun the lightning spell again and electricity coursed over it. The demon dropped to the floor and curled up, twitching and smoking.
“I think the suppression spell has more bite than the lightning,” I said. The demon’s skin was beginning to dissolve, running down its arms and legs like black ink and pooling beneath it. “You okay, Terrence?” He was braced against the wall with one hand, the other clutching his stomach. He nodded. “Let’s kill as much juice as we can, both of us together, and try to choke it out.”
We couldn’t actually suck the juice out of the demon. We’d need a ritual for that, and even then I wasn’t sure I wanted to squeeze a demon. What we were doing was really the opposite-pumping as much of our countermagic into the monster as we could to neutralize its own.
It worked. The demon began dissolving more and more quickly as we opened up the tap on the suppression spells. Its liquefied flesh formed a smoking puddle of tar and ran in black rivulets across the linoleum floor. Soon all that was left was its head, and it shifted and shuddered as it dissolved and broke apart, like a fused mass of ice cubes under hot water. We repeated the tactic on the other demon and soon the floor was slick with smoking black tar. As we watched, the tar appeared to evaporate in fast-forward, the puddles receding from each other, thinning, and finally disappearing altogether.
“Still got the ones the roof fell on,” Terrence said. “Might be more outside.”
Right on cue, some of the rubble shifted and one of the crawlers poked its head out. We pumped countermagic into it until it dissolved and disappeared back into the debris. I used my telekinesis spell to dig out the last one, and we repeated the trick.
“These guys aren’t so tough,” I said.
“Fuck you, Domino,” said Terrence. I looked over at him and saw he was dabbing at the ugly red wounds on his face with a handkerchief.
“Damn, Terrence, sorry. You have any aspirin? I could try my healing spell.”
“I’ve seen your healing magic,” Terrence said. “I’d rather stand here and bleed.”
I couldn’t really blame him. “You any better at it? I can get Honey down here-she’ll patch you right up.” I knelt beside the soldier who had come through the window. His back and neck were broken, probably in multiple places.
Terrence shook his head. “I can do it. Need some props, though. I’ll live.”
“You were right, Terrence. The way to hurt these fucking things is to kill the juice. My spell is really defensive mojo. It would work even better if I could modify it into an attack spell.”
“Yeah, the problem with the crawlers is there’s always a lot of them. But even with the ones that work alone, killing their juice takes a while. Most of them don’t lie down and curl up while you working them over.”
“I’ll give it some thought on my next coffee break,” I said. “In the meantime, it’s nice to know the fucking things have a weakness.”
I spun my eye-in-the-sky spell and sent it outside. The soldiers who had been standing guard at the front door were dead. There was no sign of Anton. I hoped he’d had the sense to make himself scarce. He wasn’t going to accomplish much against a demon with his gun or machete. I didn’t know whether the crawlers could eat souls, but I sure as hell didn’t want Anton to go out that way.
A fat man in a white suit sat in a red Cadillac convertible parked on the other side of the driveway from the office.
The hood ornament had been replaced by a large white cross. The man looked up at my eye-which should have been invisible-and a fleshy smile peeked out between his heavy jowls. He waved.
“There’s a preacher parked out front,” I said.
Terrence eased forward, trying to stay out of sight, and looked out through the shattered window. “Maybe he needs a room,” he said. “But I don’t see a hooker in the car.”
“I don’t know, I think this guy’s got some juice. You hang back, I’ll see what he wants.”
I walked out of the office, picking my way carefully between Terrence’s dead muscle. The preacher opened the door of the Cadillac and clambered out, his face flushing with the effort. He stood and straightened his toupee, then smiled that beatific smile again. I was pretty sure he was even fatter than Anton-before he’d become a zombie, even. I checked him out with my witch sight and saw black juice radiating from him in waves, like the stink from a cartoon skunk’s tail.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” I said, stopping in my tracks and gripping the forty-five more tightly.
“You don’t recognize me, Ms. Riley? I’m disappointed.” He looked down at his gut-creating a few more chins in the process-and straightened his lapels. “I suppose it’s the new suit.”
“Valafar,” I said. “You’re possessing that man.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s hideously fat, don’t you think? A true glutton-and not just for food, mind you. Most appealing.”
“Thanks for showing up and giving me another chance to kill you,” I said. “You ran too fast the last time.” I started pulling juice from the parking lot, and I hoped Terrence was doing the same.
“That was neither the time nor the place,” the demon said. “Nor is this, if you ask me. But go ahead, kill me if you must. No need for witchcraft-the gun will do nicely.” He sighed and spread his arms.
“You’ll just possess someone else.”
“Well, sure,” Valafar said, shrugging. “But you’ll ruin my suit. Not that it will last very long, anyway-I wear them out so quickly.” One of his eyes popped and flames licked out.
“What do you want?”
“I want…what is it you say? A sit-down, yes, that’s right. A parley.”
“What do you and I have to talk about? You’re a demon, I’m a human, sooner or later we’re going to throw down.”
Valafar nodded. “Yes, I’m a demon. So what? What does that mean, anyway, a demon? It’s just another word for bad guy. You’re a bad guy, I’m a bad guy-we’re all bad guys to the sheep, stumbling their way through life until it’s time for them to be slaughtered. It’s semantics.”
“You’re a psychopath. Born without the knowledge of good and evil. It’s not in the cards for you and me to be friends.”
“Oh, right, you know that because it’s what your own personal demon told you, and of course he would never lie.”
“Okay, we’re talking. I’ll ask again-what do you want?”
“Will you trick me into revealing my secret plan?” the demon asked.
“I doubt it. I figure you’re itching to tell me anyway, otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here flapping your fat face at me.”
Valafar giggled. “I’ll tell you the honest-to-God truth,” he said. He started to cross himself but seemed to get lost about halfway through and wrapped it up with a vague flutter of his hand. “I don’t have a plan. None of us do, not really. Not even world domination. Oh, sure, we do want the world-we want it back-but not to rule it. We just want to have a little fun.”
“You should try Disneyland.” In my defense, I regretted the quip as soon as the words were out of my mouth. My bad, Anaheim.
“I believe I shall,” he said. “A whole park filled with people-with children-all for my amusement. It’s a lovely concept, these amusement parks. Sadly, I believe the current situation has forced it to close, temporarily. It will have to wait until things die down a little, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
