Demon Derby (31 page)

Michael kicked the wall in frustration, punching a hole
into the brick. “Don’t do anything stupid, Casey. I’ll be right back.”

The light from his wings blurred into a streak that climbed the stairs. It took a moment for my eyes to recover from the bright flash that accompanied his flight, but once they did, I saw that Michael and Ruthanasia were gone.

The swarm swiveled in the air to look at me. Thousands of faceted alien eyes evaluated me and found me lacking. I wanted to cower before the swarm, throw myself on the ground and beg for mercy. This was clearly a powerful demon. What did I think I could do against it? I was nothing.

That was when I felt it—the all-too-familiar thrum of defiance building inside me. The idea of quitting still pissed me off. Maybe these things were twisting my thoughts. But there was nothing they could threaten me with that I hadn’t made peace with a long time ago. I wasn’t afraid to die. I was afraid of not living. Before, my anger and fear had made me lash out at people I cared about, spinning me out of control. But now my anger felt focused. Now I had something really worth being angry about.

“Hunter.” The swarm drifted closer, undulating above me. The hairs on my arms instantly stood on end. “Bow down before the Lord of the Flies.”

I felt the black cloak of its will push down on me, buckling my knees. I staggered, grabbing one of the wires and tearing it out of its casing. The spider demons let out high-pitched, agonized screeches, but none of them dared come close. The swarm watched with glittering eyes as I struggled
to stay upright. Heck, I couldn’t even breathe, the pressure was so strong.

“Get out,” I managed to say, but the words came out in a whisper.

The swarm darted toward me, buzzing hungrily. I felt the demon’s will push me again, smothering my desire to fight back, urging me to lie down and die. It was so tempting. Anything to make the pain stop.

“Suck it, demon,” I said, echoing Ruthanasia’s words. And suddenly I knew what to do. I had no way to defeat a demon lord. But at my back were thousands of souls crying out for a second chance. Darcy deserved it; if she’d sold her soul, she was probably in there. And Little Casey’s mom and Lauren, if that was what happened to them. If I could stand tall for just one moment despite the fact that I was scared shitless, I could give them that second chance.

I rose on quivering legs, stretching my arms toward the swarm as if to welcome it, and then I swung my
kusari-fundo
as hard as I could. Not toward the demon. Toward the vat. The chain wrapped around a pressure valve and tore it free.

The vat exploded. I threw my arms up to cover my face as pieces of metal rained down around me but miraculously failed to hit me. The dull murmur of the souls inside rose to a triumphant fever pitch. The demons had tricked them. Imprisoned them. Tortured them. And now they had a chance for vengeance.

They took it. The air filled with a bright, howling light. The buzzing voice of the Lord of the Flies turned into a howl
of agony as the swarm was buffeted by flickering humanoid shapes. The air filled with lancelike streaks of light; the spider demons crouched in corners and shrieked in panic and pain. I heard a sound like rain and couldn’t figure out what it was until I saw the flies pattering onto the ground, covering the cement floor.

“You!” The remaining flies turned to me, and I felt the anger of the demon within. Its fury hit me so hard that I slammed back against the machinery, and twisted metal punctured my skin in various places. Darting white lights kept striking the swarm, injuring the bugs, but there were still enough to take me down. I staggered, trying to flee, but there was nowhere to go.

The swarm darted toward me, and I screamed, falling to the ground and holding my arms overhead. White light streaked before my eyes, forming a barrier that the Lord of the Flies struck against, howling in anger. Empty insect hulls fell to the ground in a torrent, and the swarm still battered the wall before me, desperate to get to me.

The light of the barrier flickered. I could see the souls within growing dimmer and dimmer as the demon ground them down.

I swore I heard a whisper then, and a thin layer of light settled on me like a blanket. Or maybe a shield. “Get out, Casey.”

Darcy. She’d been in that vat after all. I didn’t know how the demon had gotten to her, and right then I didn’t care. She was my friend. And friends don’t abandon each other.

I thought about everything that had happened. Everything I’d lost—Darcy, and the kids with cancer who hadn’t made it, and a year of dead time I’d never get back. I thought about Rachel and Kyle and my insane parents. Ruthanasia. Michael. I wanted my life back, and I was ready to fight for it.

My knees shook so hard, I could barely stand; my stomach heaved with terror. The pancakes stayed down through a sheer act of willpower. But I still stood. Before me, Darcy flickered one last time.

Her light went out.

The Lord of the Flies howled his triumph. The swarm that settled on me was maybe a tenth of its former size, but it was still enough to cover my skin. I felt the weight of monstrous insect bodies on my face. Their legs scrabbled at my lips, trying to work their way into my mouth. I felt them crawling in my clothes.

I felt a surge of panic. Any moment, they’d start eating me alive or something equally horrific.

But I’d won.

They’d thrown everything they could at me, and I’d been terrified every step of the way, and I’d stood up to them anyway. I—the poor damaged cancer girl—had faced repeated demon attacks and lived. And now I understood why I’d been chosen: I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Michael had said that one day I wouldn’t need an object to make a Relic. That comment hadn’t made sense to me at the time, but it did now.

“I’m ready,” I said.

The flies scrabbled into my mouth. Their oily, rotten taste made me gag. I struggled against the urge to vomit, taking a deep breath. With the breath came that galloping rush of electric energy from the Between, the same white light that made up Michael’s wings. But now it filled my entire body with life and motion and power. If I held on too long, it would wash me away, but now I knew how to ride it—like pain—how to let myself go and just allow the energy to pour into me, because the pain would be over soon, and if nothing else, I knew how to endure.

A glow filled the room, and it was me. My body hummed with power as I opened myself up fully to the Between. I didn’t feel scared anymore. This was where I belonged.

The flies disintegrated. I could hear the frustrated howl of the Lord of the Flies as its body turned to ash and floated to the ground. And as the last insect fell, there was a clap like thunder as the Lord of the Flies popped out of existence, and the air consumed the empty space.

The room was still and silent. My body no longer hummed; I let the electric energy go back to where it had come from. The motionless flies were already starting to sink into the cement, leaving no evidence behind. The spider demons were gone, destroyed by the avenging souls, or maybe just hiding. At this point, I really didn’t care.

The souls were gone, including Darcy. I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten to thank her, or ask what had happened, but she had to be okay, right? I hadn’t felt any cosmic stairway to heaven open up and carry them away to nirvana, or whatever
was supposed to happen. But I hadn’t felt them being sucked into a whirling vortex either. Hopefully, they’d gotten exactly what they deserved—a second chance. I wasn’t sure what that would be—an afterlife, maybe? Or reincarnation? But whatever it was, it had to be better than ending up as a midafternoon demon snack.

I went upstairs and out the back door into the fresh nighttime air. I’d never been so happy to be alive. After everything I’d been through, that was saying a lot.

The bright lights of the convenience store were a shock after being in that dark basement for what had felt like hours. I pushed open the door, shielding my watery eyes with one hand. The clerk eyed me carefully from behind his shield of Plexiglas. I probably looked like the average pothead on a munchies run. I tried a smile and a wave, but he only scowled and dropped his hands out of sight under the counter, where I was sure he had a gun or an alarm. Maybe both.

Caffeine would make me feel less like a member of the zombie hordes. I grabbed a soda, paid for it, and immediately cracked it open and drained half the bottle in one long swallow. I burped. Then I fainted.

How embarrassing.

A few weeks later, I emerged into the alleyway behind the convention center, sweaty and elated and generally happy to be alive. The charity bout to raise money for Ruthanasia’s reconstructive hand surgery after her tragic “fireworks accident” had been a lot of work to put together but totally worth it. We’d lost the bout, which was no surprise, given that Ruthanasia couldn’t skate and poor Darcy was decorating milk cartons and Missing Children boards. I couldn’t decide if I’d lost or won the battle with the Lord of the Flies, but I was still standing, and that felt momentous.

“Case!” Kyle sprinted out the doors with a huge handful of receipts clutched in front of him like a weird bouquet. “We made over fifteen thousand dollars tonight! Holla!”

“Woo!” I clenched my fist and pumped it. “Couldn’t have done it without you, man.”

“You’re right.” He grinned. “And totally my pleasure. I’m worming my way into Michael’s good graces so he’ll take me on as an assistant coach. Then you’ll have to follow my every command. You know that, right?”

I snorted. “Fat chance.”

He mock-grumbled at me. “Fine. See if I take you out for pizza.”

“Did someone say the magic word?” came a voice behind us.

I whipped around to see Michael grinning at us from the
doorway. He’d been maniacally happy ever since he’d found me unconscious in the convenience store. Like the kind of happy that makes people wonder about your sanity and makes the cops question you at length about the disappearance of one of your skaters. But somehow his brother the computer genius had manufactured a pretty tight alibi for him, so the cops had been left with nothing but vague suspicions about Michael’s weird behavior. We couldn’t exactly tell them that he was elated to have racked up his first completed mission as a guardian of the universe.

“I dunno, dude. Is the magic word ‘pizza’?” asked Kyle.

“Yep.”

“Then I did.”

“Cool.” I was starting to feel a little invisible—and a little pouty over it—when Michael picked me up and swung me around in a dizzying circle. Then, with my skates dangling a good six inches off the ground, he kissed me. I couldn’t figure out if my head was swimming from the spin or from the lip-lock. I didn’t care.

“Ahem.” Kyle cleared his throat loudly, and Michael and I reluctantly released each other.

Michael shot an apologetic glance at my best friend. “Sorry, dude.”

“Next time, get a room,” joked Kyle.

“How about I set you up with one of the girls and we get adjoining rooms? I think Ruthanasia is single.”

They started toward the door without me, talking smack and dissecting the bout. They’d already begun to devise new
and nefarious ways to torture us at practices. It was so cute that I couldn’t even get mad.

“I’ll just wait here, guys. Don’t mind me,” I called.

Michael raised a hand and waved without turning around. “We’ll be back in a minute!” he replied.

The door closed behind them, and I huddled against the wall. The breeze was starting to feel a little overly cool as my body temp returned to normal after the workout I’d had. I’d skated in at least two thirds of the jams. It probably would have been wise for me to take off the skates, but that would have required effort.

The one minute turned into four, and they still weren’t back. I would have worried, but Kyle texted me:
MORE PAPERWORK. WAIT LONGER
. The guy even shouted in texts.

I rolled up and down the short alleyway in a belated attempt to give my muscles a cool-down so they didn’t cramp later. And when the trio of demons appeared at the end of the alley wearing Apocalypsies tees and sporting enough teeth to drive an orthodontist to binge drink, I wasn’t even surprised. I hadn’t seen any demon activity since we’d emerged from the factory. I knew it could only be a matter of time.