The Demonists (23 page)

“C’mon,” he said.

He still wasn’t sure how she was going to react, but she quickly came forward and took hold of his hand in a bone-breaking grip. And without further hesitation, they dove into the center of the opening, which would supposedly take them another plane of reality.

Together.

“H
ello, class,” the Teacher said as he walked across the front of the room, the student on his shoulder thrashing, but only weakly.

The Teacher could feel their stares on him, those whom he had been teaching the ways of the dark lord these past weeks. He could feel their respect, but he could also feel their fear.

And fear was what it was all about, for fear would restore the great Damakus to his full glory.

The two fleshy bubbles continued to hover around him like balloons dragged along by a toy vendor at holiday parade.

There should have been more, he thought
.
This was yet another gift bestowed upon him by his dark master. The ability to remove the life force of a living thing had been a lost art form for countless millennia, a gift presented to only the most holy and worthy of disciples.

But there should have been more. He had failed in the harvest. Somehow the authorities had anticipated his coming after the first two parents were claimed, denying him
—denying Damakus—
his harvest.

He dropped the squirming child on the floor in front of his desk. From his pants pocket the Teacher found the key and opened the manacle ring to accept the student’s ankle once again.

“Your foot,” the Teacher said, motioning with his fingers for the child to obey.

The student glared at him defiantly, pushing himself back across the floor.

“Don’t test me, boy,” the Teacher growled, and reached out, grabbing hold of the student’s foot, yanking him closer.

But before he could get the manacle around the boy’s ankle, the Teacher sensed that something was amiss. He released the student and stood, looking around the classroom. The two bubbles of life force had drifted away from him and were now hovering above the heads of the students still chained to their seats.

The female student who had given up her teeth stared at the pulsating globules, reaching a tiny, filthy finger up to it as it undulated above her head.

“Don’t you dare touch that!” the Teacher bellowed.

The child looked at him then, fear in her eyes, but quickly turned her attention back to the hovering sphere.

“Pretty,” she squeaked, her index finger going up toward the weightless bubble.

The Teacher threw himself toward the child, but he wasn’t quite quick enough, as the child’s index finger made contact with one of the sphere’s fleshy surfaces, pressing upon it until— There was a flash of energy, an explosion of warm light that temporarily chased away the darkness of the classroom.

The light repelled him, burning the Teacher’s pale, bullet-riddled flesh as he stumbled backward. He blinked repeatedly, attempting to wash away writhing blots of brilliant color that now obscured his vision.

“You insolent brat!” he raged.

The little girl looked at him with different eyes now, eyes that had been filled with fear and misery now overflowing with something else entirely.

Hope.

The other children watched yearningly, the soul spheres now drifting toward them.

The Teacher had to stop this. He grabbed the girl and pulled her in close. He opened his mouth wide and inhaled, first drawing the filthy scent of the female student into his lungs, followed by the energies she had stolen. She tried to hold on to her prize, but his strength was too great, and he took the soul stuff into his own body.

The fear in the room was once more palpable, the awful emotion driving the spheres of life energies away as if carried by a strong gust of wind. The Teacher called them back to him, and they had no choice but to obey, orbiting around his head.

“There must be order here,” the Teacher proclaimed. He then regurgitated from inside him that which had been stolen, blowing the precious life energies like smoke, back into the fleshy spheres of containment.

But his satisfaction was short-lived as he remembered there was still another unruly student to deal with. He looked around to find that the boy had crawled down the aisle to the incubation tank, where his master grew.

“And where do you think you’re going?” the Teacher asked, striding down the aisle.

The student looked at him defiantly, and the Teacher could see that he meant their master harm as he grabbed hold of the tank’s edge, attempting to pull it over.

“You test me, boy,” the Teacher said, reaching for the student as he struggled to tip the tank but was not strong enough.

The infant Damakus acted, two barbed tentacles shooting out from the tank to wrap hungrily around the fleshy globes that still hovered near the Teacher’s head. The muscular limbs squeezed until the bubbles popped, the crackling white energy within eagerly absorbed by the boneless appendages.

“O dark lord,” the Teacher said in a powerful voice. “Let this meager offering satisfy your needs. The life forces of two who loved, and nurtured, filled with the horror and fear of terrible loss. Energies— souls—tainted with the sweet, sweet tang of angst. Sustenance to spur the growth of your return.”

The Teacher smiled. He hoped that the offering, and the sadness of the children that now permeated the room, would be enough to satisfy his master.

But his hope was short-lived, for he sensed a sudden intrusion to his safe haven, his place of teaching, and the land that it inhabited. This was his world given to him by his master so he could carry out Damakus’ bidding unhindered.

“How can this be?” he muttered beneath his breath. He grabbed the student by the back of his pajama top, hauling him down the aisle to his seat, where he was properly shackled, then stormed from the classroom.

Drawn toward the source of the disturbance.

John Fogg dragged Agent Brenna Isabel from the shifting clouds of white, the two of them collapsing to a patch of lawn.

They were both trembling, their teeth chattering in reaction to the extreme cold that they experienced while traveling from their world to—

Here.

“Well, that’s something I wouldn’t care to do again,” John said, rubbing his hands furiously up and down his arms in an attempt to get some of the warmth back.

Agent Isabel lay curled into a tight ball, her body shaking on the ground.

“C’mon,” John said, attempting to haul her up. “That’s it. You’ve got to move around—get the blood circulating again.”

“Oh. My. God,” Agent Isabel said, each word forced from her mouth. She was still trembling uncontrollably, and John had no choice but to help her get warm.

“You’ve got to move,” he told her again, rubbing his hands up down her arms, and back. “Come on now.”

He didn’t mind the action, for it helped him with his own circulation, and he actually started to feel somewhat normal again.

“What . . . what did we just do?” she asked. Her lips were a purplish blue, and there were even some touches of frost at the tips of her auburn hair. John hugged her closer, rubbing at her arms vigorously.

“We’ve gone to another place,” John said, still rubbing but now looking around. The cold mist was thick and blowing about, but he was now able to see the structure that seemed to appear before him.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. The building was small, run-down, and painted a god-awful shade of red. It was like something he’d seen a million times in books on early Americana. The little red schoolhouse in all its quaint glory.

“Of course there’s a schoolhouse,” John muttered beneath his breath. “Where else could he teach them about Damakus?”

Agent Isabel’s shaking had calmed down, and she suddenly pulled away from him, uncomfortable with his familiarity toward her.

“Thanks,” she said, stiffly moving away. “Where is your wife?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking around. He was tempted to call out her name, but something told him that maybe that wouldn’t be wise.

Agent Isabel turned to the wall of fog behind her, sticking her hand inside. She gasped, pulling it back, a look of shock on her face.

“It’s so cold,” she said, shoving her fingers beneath her armpit to warm them.

“The cold of nothing,” John said, looking to the curtain of shifting white. “It appears our disciple has been given a special place to perform his duties.”

At first John wasn’t sure that he’d actually heard it, glancing quickly over to Agent Isabel to see if she’d noticed. She had stopped and was listening as well, looking toward the schoolhouse.

“You heard it, too?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, reaching down to unsnap her holster and remove her gun.

They both stood perfectly still, the thick gray mist blowing around them on a silent wind.

“There,” Agent Isabel said, now moving toward the building.

He’d heard it as well, and there was no mistaking what it was. John followed closely behind her, the two of them drawn toward the almost ghostly sound of multiple children.

All of them crying.

Theo did not wait for the others.

The entities inside her were wild, compelling her to run from the passage toward the mist-enshrouded building.

She could feel them inside her, pumping her heart, flowing through her blood, engorging her muscles, attempting to change her in such a way as to deal with what she would find in this tiny pocket of reality. “No,” she grunted aloud, forcing herself to stop—to take control. They fought her, but to no avail; she was stronger than them, the magic inscribed upon her flesh making her superior.

The demons protested, but she was capable of suppressing them for now, giving her a chance to check out where she was. Theo was at a back entrance to the building, a rusted chain and lock woven through the door handles to prevent anyone from coming, or going. She approached the door, touching the chain with the tips of her fingers, knowing that she needed to be inside.

Any volunteers want to help me get in?
She put the question out there to the demons, feeling a multitude of stirrings. Grabbing the chain in both hands, she waited to see if any would volunteer, opening up the dam of her control just a little to allow one of the demonic beasts to come through long enough to assist her. There was a sudden, painful surge of power down her arms, and she felt her skin stretching to accommodate the powerful musculature that had begun to manifest. Her fingers grew thicker, the skin like rock, as she took the chain and both hands and pulled in opposite directions.

The center links came apart with ease, falling to the ground in front of the door, allowing her to remove the chain. The demon that had lent her its strength wanted to stay a bit longer, desperate to tear the doors from its hinges, and rampage through the structure mangling anything that dared get in their way, but Theo promptly informed the entity that it was done, pushing it back down where the others of its ilk congregated.

In control again, she grabbed hold of one of the door handles and pulled it open to reveal a figure in filthy, tattered clothing standing there to greet her.

“One needs the proper authorization to enter this building,” the man said, winding back and punching her square in the face.

Theo flew backward, landing hard upon her butt, rolling backward to the ground, stunned by the strength of the blow.

“Do you have the proper authorization?” she heard the man ask as he left the building walking over to where she lay. “I don’t believe that you do.”

Theo tried to react, to recover enough to get up from the ground before more harm could be done, but she couldn’t escape the darkness as it closed in all around her, putting her back with the inside her.

“He’s likely going to kill me,” she informed the gathering of demons that encircled her.

Billy Sharp, or the demon wearing the benign shape of the little boy, pushed through the crowd to speak to her.

“Do you recall what was promised us?” he asked in his high-pitched child’s voice.

“He’ll kill me, and you will all die. You’re bound to me in such a way now that if I die, you die with me,” she told them all. “So it would benefit you to—”

“Do you recall?” Billy insisted.

She didn’t want to remember what she had done to acquire the information that they’d needed, what she had agreed to.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

“And you will give us this?” he asked her.

She didn’t answer, feeling a terrible constriction about her throat. She could only imagine what the man was doing to her.

“Yes,” she finally agreed. “You’ll get what you want . . . what I told you I would do.”

The demon child studied her with dark, cautious eyes.

“Yes,” she finally screamed at him. “I swear.”

The boy smiled, happy with her response. “Okay, then,” he said. “Would you like a little help?”

Theo opened her eyes, looking into the face of the man who was attempting to kill her. This close, he looked like a walking corpse, and he held her by the throat, before his horrible face, studying her.

“Who are you?” he asked, realizing that she was awake. “And how on earth did you get here?”

She couldn’t breathe, the pressure on her neck excruciating. It was only a matter of seconds before fragile workings within her throat collapsed and she was as good as dead.

The demons waited just long enough, almost as if wanting to show her how needed they now were.

How valuable they could be.

Theo experienced the physical changes almost immediately, the muscles, cartilage, and bone around her neck and throat thickening in such a way as to prevent any damage.

She could breathe again, taking in the foul stench of her enemy.

The man smelled of rot, as if the flesh on his body had begun to decay. The stink of him was obscene, and she wanted nothing more than to be free of his clutches.

The disciple was squeezing with all his might, waiting for the inevitable collapse of her trachea beneath his powerful grip, but the new makeup of her throat wasn’t about to let that occur.

She looked into his dull, film-covered eyes and saw a moment of realization there, the idea that something had happened to steal away the murder he was about to perpetrate.

That maybe he should have been more careful.

Her body had morphed as well, the muscles in her legs having grown thicker, and more powerful, the feet inside her shoes growing so large—the nails on her toes so sharp—that they shredded through the sneakers on her feet. Theo pulled her legs up, the remains of her footwear dropping like discarded skin as she dug her new talon-like toes into the front of the man, raking down the front of him, tearing away clothing as well as the foul skin beneath.