very Demon now rallied to the call and the battlements of the fortress clamoured with feet scaled and clawed. Now was their time – their time to be free. No more would they lie in hiding, in the dark hot places beneath the crust of the world. The fair-folk and the humans, every animal and plant would cower to their king.
Or so they thought. Sar-adin remembered things differently. It was true, they had walked the earth when their king walked with them, but as slaves, not masters. They were tools to do his bidding and he ended their lives just as freely as the lives he ordered them to take. The Darkening King fought and burned and killed for himself, and for power, and in the end there would be nothing left alive. Sar-adin knew it just as surely as he knew that Barbarossa had lost his mind. And in that fervour, in the pounding of feet and scale, the rushing to the butcher’s call to kill or be killed, Sar-adin would find his moment and his end. There would be no forgiveness, no place to hide, but even his kind, cruel as they were, needed saving.
He had done as Barbarossa had asked and left him to his dinner and guests, to gloat over the battle. Now, quickly and quietly, he made his way through the hallways of the fortress and the eastern tower. The hallway was empty and the door unguarded, just as Sar-adin knew it would be. But when he turned the key he found that it was already unlocked, and on the cold hard stone outside two of his kind were waiting.
“Traitor!” seethed the largest.
He had fought with one of them more than a century ago. He did not recognise the other. Barbarossa had known! How like him to plan and counter-plan. When had he realised? Surely not before sending him with the clowns? And then it dawned on him – the flies that had gone with them, the machine-mind’s spies, must have seen more than he knew, seen what he’d done to the clowns, and now the butcher knew Ned’s exact route to the fortress.
“Everything I have done, I have done for our kind,” said Sar-adin, no remorse or sadness in his voice, only the certainty of what was to come.
The largest Demon drew his dagger, slowly and with purpose. If Sar-adin could not best them, the Engineer and Medic would walk into Barba’s trap and everything would be undone.
“If you kill me, you kill us all. Our king will feed on the folk and humans and when he is done, who do you think he will feed on next?”
Both of the Demon’s eyes glowered with rage, and they closed the gap between them.
“Not you, traitor – our blades will feed on you first.”
Sar-adin moved quickly, his arms pouring with flames even as he drew his weapon. How many times had he been ordered to take lives in the name of evil? Too many to count, he realised, and it was then that the blade struck deep into his belly.