People in this part of the world like to envision demons as fiery red creatures with horns sprouting from their foreheads and barbed, whiplike tails. If they really want to vent their spleens about the evil of heck and sin, they add on goats’ legs and invariably point out the cloven hooves, in case you missed them. I’m not sure who came up with that-I think it was some feverish, sex-starved monk in Europe during the Crusades, and I tried to miss as much of that as I could by passing the time in Asia-but it’s obviously been an enduring and compelling image for several centuries. I saw quite a few of them coming out of the hell pit, because it was nearly a contractual obligation by now that some of them appear in that form. But most of them were nightmares out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, or maybe Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Some of them flew on leathery wings into the desert night air, with fingerlike talons outstretched to rip into something soft; some of them bubbled across the ground in uneven gaits, owing to the uneven number of legs they had and differing lengths of their limbs; a few of them galloped on those infamous cloven hooves; but all of them, without exception, had lots of sharp, pointy parts, and they stank like ass.
Aenghus Og didn’t waste time with introductions or even a respectable archvillain laugh. He didn’t taunt me or inform me I was about to die; he just pointed at me and uttered the Irish equivalent of “Sic ’im, boys!”
Almost all of them did, but a couple of the bigger ones didn’t-I distinctly saw one of the cloven-hoofed lads take off for the hills, and the largest thing on wings disappeared into the sky somewhere.
Aenghus had the gall to be surprised at their defection-he actually shouted at them to come back, and I supposed he must have been counting on them to finish me off after the smaller ones roughed me up a bit. I saw the Pack move to protect Hal and Oberon, who were chained up and unable to defend themselves from rogues or run away, and that gave me a brief moment’s relief.
“What did you expect, Aenghus?” I mocked him as I beheaded the vanguard. “They’re bloody demons.” And then there was no time for me to talk, because they were upon me and all I could do was concentrate on what to kill next and on keeping down the contents of my stomach.
After about three seconds it occurred to me that I would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers or violent illness. An awful lot of the buggers had come out of that pit, and they were still coming. Luckily they were still in front of me-they hadn’t had time to try flanking me-so I drew a little of the remaining precious power from the earth, pointed at them with my index finger off the hilt, and shouted, “Doigh!” as Brighid had instructed, hoping that would take care of a few of them and bracing for the wave of weakness she warned me about.
It turns out you can’t brace for that kind of weakness. There was a thing with stork legs propelling a huge mouth full of teeth coming at my throat from my left, what looked like the Iron Maiden mascot coming at me from the center, and a horrific cross between a California girl and a Komodo dragon on my right. Every single one of them overshot me and even tripped over me as I abruptly dropped to the ground like a baby giraffe, my muscles utterly unable to function.
Aenghus Og crowed in victory and yelled to Radomila, “I’m closing the portal now! He’s dropped the sword! Do it!”
Oh yes. The sword. The one my fingers were incapable of holding now. The one that was keeping me from becoming demon food. I needed power, and I tried to draw some, but when I reached for it, it went dead beneath me. Aenghus Og had drained it all to bring hell on earth. There was no telling how far I would have to go to draw enough strength to stand again; as it was, I could not move an inch. My night vision faded, and all I had to see by was the orange light of the fire pit. The skinless Iron Maiden demon scrambled back quickly and took the opportunity to snack on my ear, and the pain was unspeakable, worse than reading the collected works of Edith Wharton, but I couldn’t muster the strength to pull away or even say ouch. Likewise for the armored mosquito the size of a schnauzer that landed on my chest and stuck its proboscis into my shoulder: I wanted to swat him, but I couldn’t. Something with blue scales and a steroid habit hauled me up by my leg high into the air, and I saw a giant mouth of gleaming teeth and assumed I would be heading in there momentarily. The bloodsucking schnauzer- mosquito assumed that as well, because it pulled out with a wet pop and flew away. But then I was dropped unceremoniously to the ground, breaking my left wrist in the fall. I had fallen facing the hell pit, so I had a view of the horde and of Aenghus Og berating Death.
“Well, he’s obviously dead by now, so what are you waiting for?”
Not dead yet, Aenghus. Dead in short order, perhaps, like the wasted land beneath me, but perhaps not. The horde of demons wailed and gnashed their teeth from an epic case of fiery (yet somehow cold) heartburn, forgetting about me, for the most part. The flying ones hadn’t been affected by the Cold Fire, so the giant mosquito found me again and began to suck me dry. Unlike normal mosquitoes, it didn’t inject a local anesthetic to deaden the pain when it stabbed me. But I bet its saliva would leave a much nastier mark afterward-if I lived to deal with it.
The demons I’d hit expired in several ways from the Cold Fire: Some of them melted into a puddle of goo, some of them exploded, and some of them flamed up briefly before scattering as ashes. The one who had eaten my ear ended that way-I’d never hear from him again, nor would I ever be able to appreciate Iron Maiden properly.
“What’s happening?” Aenghus asked rhetorically, then answered it like the insufferable ass he was. “Oh, I see. Cold Fire. But that means he must be weak as a kitten. Where is the sword, Radomila?” Buried under demon goo a few yards away from me. Why would she know anything about that? And what was it he had commanded her to do earlier? And hey, Aenghus, are you going to do anything about the rest of the demons that didn’t get hit with Cold Fire, like the flying one on my chest and the ones that came out of the pit after I used the spell but before you closed it? He’d probably let them all go, and they’d wind up blending in with the population of Apache Junction.
The werewolves were tearing into anything that came near Hal or Oberon-good. But they would need my help to break those silver chains, and I couldn’t even help myself right now.
Radomila sounded apoplectic: “I can’t find it. I know it’s here, but I can’t pinpoint it!”
“Then explain what good you are to me!” Aenghus spat. “The one thing you guaranteed me is that you would be able to find the sword and bring it to me even if he removed the cloak you put on it. Now you tell me you cannot?”
Ha-ha. I didn’t remove the cloak. Laksha did, and when she removed it, she must have dispelled whatever tracer Radomila was trying to find. Laksha hadn’t tried to hide Fragarach’s natural magical signature, though, so that was why Radomila knew when I’d drawn it-she just couldn’t get a fix on its location. Speaking of Laksha, shouldn’t she have made some progress by now?
Radomila was about to offer Aenghus a snarky retort when her eyes flew wide open and lost their focus. Ah, yes, here we go. That look meant that Radomila sensed someone had a target lock on her ass. But this was one tail she couldn’t shake: It was her own blood, after all.
“Answer me, witch!” For a god of love, Aenghus was remarkably blind to nonverbal cues. Radomila wasn’t worried about him or any promises she had made right then. She was feverishly trying to figure out a way to ward off whatever was coming for her.
Too late. Her skull caved in from four directions, as if four railroad workers had swung their hammers perfectly in sync from the cardinal directions. Bits of brain and blood splattered the inside of the cage and even sullied the pristine armor of Aenghus Og.
Now that is why I am paranoid about witches getting hold of my blood. Druid’s Log, October 11: “Never make Laksha mad.”
The giant sucker popped his proboscis out abruptly and took off-he wasn’t full, so I assumed that something bigger and badder was coming to take a bite out of me.
It wasn’t bigger, but it was definitely badder. As the talons sank into my chest, I recognized the battle crow, the Morrigan as a Chooser of the Slain. Her eyes were red. Not a good sign.
Aenghus Og recognized her too, and he finally spied me lying there amongst all the ruins of his demon army as he whirled around, trying to figure out how his pet witch had gotten smooshed. He looked uncertainly at Death, who had passively watched all the proceedings, but the hooded figure shook its head at him and then pointed in my general direction. He was pointing at Laksha in the woods behind me, of course, not at me, but Aenghus made the logical conclusion given his lack of information.
“Ah! Did you do that, Druid? Didn’t know you had it in you. Well, it won’t help you at all. There’s the battle crow on you now, just like old Cuchulainn, and she will be supping on your eyeballs soon. I bet you can’t move a muscle right now.”
