Clawed, scaly fingers gripped jagged edges of the witch’s neck. From the inside.
A scaled snout emerged. Followed by a pair of glowing yellow eyes. An entire head popped out of the shattered neck hole.
Made it look like the torso had grown a new, much, much uglier head.
“Do you have any idea how much these things cost!” the little demon said.
And it was a demon, of course. A six tailed rat demon to be specific. Nasty smart little buggers.
Hilario adjusted his grip on the crowbar. Killing demons wasn’t like killing living beings. Demons didn’t even lose their form when they got killed. They just went back to the Demonic Dominion layer of the unseen world. The Great Demon Mother would simply reclothe their spirits in new scaly flesh and send them on their way.
It hardly seemed fair.
Hilario took a deep breath started to swing for the little demon skull.
The little rat demon held his clawed hands up. “Wait!” it cried, “Don’t you want to know why!”
Hilario adjusted his swing to miss the little demon. The crowbar bounced off the former Sapphire Witch’s shoulder. Rewarding him with more stinging in his hands.
Hilario snatched the demon from the jagged stump of neck. The thing squeaked and squirmed. The six long, scaly tails writhed from its rump. It dug its claws into Hilario’s gloves. Into his flesh.
He winced, both at the physical pain and the psychic pain the rat demon tried to inflict. Fortunately rat demons weren’t very strong by themselves. Physically or psychically.
He clamped his shields tighter and squeezed the rat demon’s body until its glowing yellow eyes nearly popped out of its misshapen skull.
“Yes, I am very interested in why,” Hilario said, “The trouble is, you’re just going to lie to me.”
“Who, me?” the rat demon said.
Behind them came the distinct sound of someone cocking a pistol.
“Let me persuade him,” Detective Marco said.
He stepped up and put the pistol barrel to the rat demon’s head. He had wasted no time retrieving his hand cannon from the Sapphire Witch’s coat.
Oh, poop nuggets on toast.
“Detective Marco,” Hilario said, “This isn’t helpful.”
Marco’s eyes glittered in the weak light of the van’s headlights. The man had a maniacal look to him. Like he’d seen one thing too many and was now teetering on the edge of precipice to crazytown.
“You got answers, you little freak, I want them,” Marco said, “I’m sick of this shit. First thing you’re gonna tell me is how do I wake up from this fucking nightmare.”
Yeah, wake me up, too, the gun said, And make sure I don’t wake up with some little wussy man like this one.
Marco snatched the gun away from the demon rat’s head.
“You shut up!” he shouted, “You shut up right now!”
He pressed the barrel back again the demon’s little head. But his hand shook and trembled. Rage or something else, Hilario wasn’t going to ask.
In a raspy voice Marco said, “And tell me how to make things stop talking. I want things that aren’t supposed to talk to shut the fuck up and stay fucking shut up.”
The rat demon glanced up at Hilario. “Is he always like this?”
“He’s under a lot of stress,” Hilario said.
He’s a big pansy man, that’s what he is, the gun said.
“You’re not helping,” Hilario said.
“I can make the creature tell the truth,” Rachel said.
Hilario turned. Rachel stood a little ways off. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.
Her eyes blazed with green light.
22
There weren’t any maps to the unseen world.
Not that various entities hadn’t tried, with varying degrees of success. The main problem was that the places of the unseen world refused to stay in the same place. Or stay the same shape.
Some of this was due to the constant wars between the various realms of the unseen world. Those who could master the dark powers, and could summon enough of those energies to themselves, could alter the reality of the world around them.
Now, it was bad form to do this. Many times treaties had been drawn up. Borders had been agreed upon. The entities involved had agreed to honor thusly.
And often, before the blood was even dry on the parchment, someone’s head was cleaved with an ax, or someone else’s castle had been set ablaze.
Or a dark mage simply pulled the realm out from under the creatures living there. Left them floating in the void. If they were lucky, another patch of land would appear under them. Usually a much worse one. But still, something to put one’s feet on.
Other times, well…
It sucked to live in the unseen world.
But there were patches of the unseen world that were more or less stable. Places that were either well defined, such as the realm of the elven folk, or fetid places like the realm the fake gem witch had taken them to.
Which no one wanted anyway.
There were always rumors of other realms, though.
Realms so well hidden that they stayed undiscovered. Places that sat at ninety degrees to the reality of the rest of the unseen world.
Legends that whispered of folk shaped like normal world people, but who had the powers of the unseen.
Hilario clutched the six-tailed demon rat and tried to comprehend what was happening.
They were still in the realm of Despair. That was easy to tell by the smell of decay and death tinged with sulfur. That and the rough stone building that housed the Eye of Malachi beyond the metal gate. Illuminated by the weak lights of his van, which had somehow, inexplicably, been pulled into the unseen world.
At his feet were the shattered remains of the Sapphire Witch automaton the six-tailed demon rat had been driving.
When had the switch been made? Had it been that creature all along? It seemed unlikely.
