Slipping past him, I motioned to Camille. “You take the right side of the hallway; I’ll take the left. Peek in the door and slam it if something tries to get out. Everybody be on their guard. For all we know, we could be facing a spirit demon.”
Vanzir shivered. “Could be a spirit demon. They scare the hell out of me, and I’m a dream chaser. Some of them eat any psychic energy in their paths, which means Morio and Camille better be alert and ready to run. If it is a spirit demon, whatever you do, don’t let it touch you.”
Camille shuddered. “Why?”
“If one touches you, they can latch onto your psyche, and you’ll play hell trying to dislodge them. That’s how they feed. Psychic leeches, you might call them. Only they’re a damned sight smarter than any leech you’ll find in a swamp, and a whole lot deadlier.”
I held up my hand. “In that case, Roz, you switch places with her. Camille, I don’t want you and Morio in front; you two stay back a little. I’m not taking any chances losing either of you to a spirit demon.” Camille started to protest, but I waved her silent. “Listen, you’re far more valuable alive than dead. Got it?”
She gave me a grin. “Got it, General. Okay, while we’re waiting, maybe Morio and I can tune in on whatever’s going on. If it is a spirit demon, maybe it will sense our energy and show itself. By the way, how do you kill one of them?”
Vanzir rolled his eyes. “Don’t you girls know anything about demons?” When we stared at him blankly, he shook his head. “Besides the fact that you want to kill us all? A spirit demon can be killed, but the worst way to attack it is through magic. It eats up spells like candy. They’re just fuel. Silver is always good. You can actually hit them on the physical plane and it will affect them if you have a silver weapon. And an experienced enough witch can trap them—”
“Of course!” Morio snapped his fingers. “A Snare spell. If they wander into it, the energy creates a barrier they can’t absorb, and yet they can’t free themselves. Kind of like when a spin-bug traps a spider in its own type of web, which it attaches to the spider’s guy wires and spins in a parallel direction.”
I stared at him. “Spiders, huh? I don’t even want to think about spiders.”
Morio grinned at me. “Subject makes you a little jumpy, does it?”
I shuddered. We’d fought a bunch of werespiders some months back. Hobo werespiders, at that. I still got creeped out every time I saw a brown arachnid scuttling across the floor. Luckily, the Spider-Be-Gone spell that Queen Asteria’s technomage had cast on our house was still doing the trick. The Elfin Queen knew how to pick her helpers.
“Yeah,” I said. “So what’s a spin-bug? I’ve never heard of one. We don’t have them in Otherworld.”
Smoky spoke up. “Spin-bugs aren’t endemic Earthside, either. Nobody knows where they came from, actually, though I’ve heard they can be found in some of the older Fae barrows.”
“That’s right,” Morio said. “The spin-bug’s a spider-eater. It looks like a cross between a praying mantis and a centipede, and it spins a web out of its butt, just like a spider. It usually hooks its own web next to that of a spider’s and waits in ambush. The spider thinks the webs are connected and tries to scuttle over to put the bite on the spin-bug. Everything looks safe enough, but the moment the spider touches the spin-bug’s web, boom, it’s stuck.”
Camille leaned against the wall. “So the Snare spell is like the web. It looks like magical energy the spirit demon can eat, but when he gets in the middle of it, he can’t touch it, and he can’t get away. Essentially, he becomes a sitting duck.”
“You got it,” Morio said. “And then we pick him off.”
“Can you cast one?” She frowned, thinking. “I have a vague idea of how it might be done, but there’s no way in hell I’d trust my magic unless I knew precisely what to do. Even then, I’d be on red alert.”
Morio let out a long sigh. “Theoretically. I’ll need your help, and we can’t do it here in the hall, and it can’t be done on the run. We have to set it up somewhere quiet so I can concentrate.”
“The living room?” Camille glanced back down the hall at the archway. “We could put the curtains back up to make it more inviting to those in the spook division.”
The youkai gave her a nod. “Let’s go—”
“Hold on!” I vigorously shook my head. “Nobody’s going anywhere without group consensus. We don’t even know if it’s a spirit demon we’re facing. What if you’re wrong? What if it’s something that decides to double around and take you two on while you’re focused on setting up the spell?”
“What if we’re right, and we have no other way to combat the creature?” Camille asked.
A sudden thump put an end to our bickering. “Oh crap, what’s that?” I spun around as a second thump landed squarely on the door at the end of the hallway. It shuddered. Whatever was back there was big. At that moment, I noticed the padlock holding the door shut. The door opened out into the hallway—the hinges could easily be busted through.
“The lock looks flimsy. Maybe whatever it is, isn’t so tough after all.”
“Don’t count your chickens,” Camille said. “The lock’s been charmed.”
Oh hell. If it was magically enhanced, then there was no telling what was behind the door. Whatever it was, it wanted out, and from the way the wood was splintering around the hinges, it was about to get its wish. I headed down the hall.
“Come on! That thing’s coming through. Get ready.” Roz and I stood in front, leaving enough space through which Morio and Camille could aim their spells. “What’s a spirit demon look like, anyway?”
Vanzir pulled out a nasty-looking kris blade with a bone hilt. I flinched. That thing was likely to leave a bad scar, if it didn’t cut off whatever appendage it managed to hit.
He saw my grimace and let out a snort. “What? You expect me to use silver? Or some hoity-toity fancy-assed dagger? I’m a demon, girl, even if I don’t look the part. Get used to it.” His gaze met mine, and his eyes swirled with a kaleidoscope of colors and took on a wild, rough look. It never failed to give me the shakes.
“Just answer me,” I said over the repeated slams against the door. Either our friend’s keeper was out of the house, or whatever we were about to face was being given a pep talk before being freed to attack us.
“Spirit demon. Check. The best way to differentiate between a ghost and a spirit demon is that it will have glowing eyes the color of fire. The thing has a hole—a vortex, actually—where its heart should be. The hole looks like a whirling fogbank, and it’s about the size of a small melon. That’s where it leeches energy. Tendrils come through the hole and fasten themselves into the aura of its victim. Holy crap, that was a big one!” He jumped as the door shuddered.
Whatever it was, it was almost through. I thought about breaking the lock to get it over with, but who knew if it had been booby-trapped? And to get close enough to break the lock would put me in the danger zone. No, better to let the mountain come to us rather than go to the mountain.
Camille apparently didn’t think so, though. She moved toward the door. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Stop right where you are.” When she turned to look at me, I said, “Listen: I’m a werecat, right?” She nodded. “We know when to make the jump and when to sit and wait. Be patient. I know it’s hard, but trust me, my instincts are not saying attack first. There’s a reason that nobody’s opened the lock and let it out on us.”
And when I said it, I knew it was true. Whatever was behind that door was so nasty that its keeper had no intention of getting close to it. I glanced at Vanzir. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything when you came spying here yesterday?”
He shook his head. “I knew this place was overrun with a bad miasma, but I had no idea there was anything like this here. I thought we were facing a bunch of venidemons and their guardian, that’s all,” he muttered. I could tell it bothered him that he wasn’t prepared for this, so he was probably telling the truth. And he was oath-bound not to lead us into a trap. He’d be dead by now if he had lied. His symbiont collar would have strangled him.
At that moment, the door gave way to one particularly nasty thud, and we all jumped as a creature lurched out. The thing must have been a good seven feet tall at the shoulder. With three heads, it looked all too much like a very nasty mutant Rottweiler with large, bared teeth. It saw us and raised one of its heads to let loose with a long, piercing howl.
“You shall not pass,” said the second head, while the third growled.
“A hellhound!” I tried to get a grip. Tabby wanted me to bolt, and Panther wanted me to tear the creature apart. I fought to stay in control and not shift.
“Crap!” Morio immediately dropped his bag and stepped back. “I’m going in as my true form. None of my spells will work against a hellhound.”
As he began to shift into his full demonic form, Camille yelled out, “Hellhounds don’t like the cold, either!”
Smoky pushed past her in a blur and was on the creature as I managed to bring myself back to the edge of control. The dragon’s hands—now bearing long talons instead of fingernails—swiped at the three-headed dog and left a row of deep scratches along one side of the hellhound’s back. As Smoky leapt away to avoid being bitten, I rushed in, my dagger raised.
The hellhound’s left head—the one that had ordered us to back off—snapped at me. I managed to avoid the long teeth, but he laughed and said, “Fair meat for the children.”
“Don’t be so hasty, dogface!” As I headed in, I saw Morio racing by. He was a good eight feet tall in full demonic form. His eyes glistened golden topaz, and his body was lightly covered with a downy fur the color of burnished copper.
Morio’s face was still close enough to his own to recognize, except his nose had lengthened and turned black and shiny. Steam puffed out of his nostrils, and a row of needle-sharp teeth gleamed as he opened his mouth. The fox demon walked on feet, not paws, and his hands were still human, though they were fully furred and tipped with curved claws. A cock the size of my favorite vibrator hung heavy from his loins.
“Holy crap,” Vanzir yelled. “I wish I could do that!” He swung with the heavy kris, slashing at the haunches of the hellhound. He managed a strike with the last few inches of his blade.
Morio was on the hellhound now, which stood on its hind legs to engage him. Camille let out a short scream, and I saw the blur of her skirt as she raced by, her own dagger out and ready.
I took the opportunity to drop and roll, right against the hellhound’s feet. One good strike, and I hamstrung his right back leg. He let out a loud yowl from his right head as I rolled away again. I came up in time to see the youkai and the hellhound in the grips of a duel to the death. The hellhound was close to Morio’s demon size, and they were probably evenly matched for strength.
“Out of the way, girl!” Smoky pushed me aside and landed a long swipe of talons down the left side of the hellhound, leaving five bloody lines that dripped smoking blood to the floor, where the drops ate into the wood, leaving burn marks.
“Its blood is acidic,” I shouted, spinning around to look for an opening.
Camille leapt away with a short scream, her fingers smoldering where she’d struck with her dagger and missed, hitting the side of the beast with her hand. She dropped the blade and leaned over, moaning. “Damn, it’s worse than iron.”
As the hellhound turned its attention to her, Smoky let out a low growl that set the entire hall to vibrating and moved in. We all edged away, recognizing his breaking point. All except Morio, who dashed forward to drag Camille out of the way.
Smoky threw back his head, his long braid coiling around his shoulders like a snake. His eyes took on the look of frozen glaciers and tundras long forgotten by the sun, and he raised his arms, letting loose a chant that was both impossible to understand and impossible to ignore.
Within seconds, the temperature of the air dropped a good thirty degrees, and his hands were vibrating, his talons gleaming like icicles. The hellhound turned away from Morio and Camille as Smoky thrust his hands forward and grabbed the sides of the center head. His face contorting, Smoky growled as the head froze—turned to pure ice—and shattered in his death grip.
The hellhound’s other heads both shrieked—whether in surprise or pain I’m not sure—and it backed away, the stump of the center head covered with a frozen pool of the acidic blood. But once Smoky was pissed, he stayed pissed until the object of his anger had taken a nosedive into oblivion or until he’d decided he’d done enough damage. That much we’d learned about the dragon. And when somebody hurt Camille, there was no escaping him.
Smoky flew at the creature—a blur of white and silver—landing beside it with a heavy thud. He laughed then, his eyes crinkling in delight as he tore through the hellhound’s hide, gutting it.
The hellhound let out one last howl as a cloud of smoke emerged from its belly. Within seconds, the creature, entrails and all, vanished in a puff of ashes and blood.
I stared at the spot on the floor where it had stood, then looked up at Smoky. The delight in his eyes, the joy of battle, died as quickly as it had appeared. He hurried to Camille’s side as I raced over to join them. Morio was already examining her hand.
She was on the floor by now, gritting her teeth as Morio probed the wound. The acid had burnt through to the bone in one small spot. Smoky smoothed her hair as I shushed her cries.
