it knew my name because Lisa did. I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around that, but I didn’t take the time to analyze it now.
I flung the handful of salt. It hissed and fizzled against the creature’s cloaking outer layer, and the acrid smell redoubled until I choked on the burning fumes, my eyes streaming until I couldn’t see to defend myself. That was some deflector shield.
“Don’t be rude,” he—it?—chided. “I’ve waited so long to meet you.”
“Sorry,” I wheezed. “I left my book of demon etiquette at home.” I don’t know how I found the courage to quip. But I figured collapsing in a gibbering puddle of terror wouldn’t do anyone any good. Least of all me.
Justin’s hand slid into his pocket. I knew he was armed, too, and I drew the demon’s attention to me with another lame verbal sortie. “I gotta tell you, buddy”—Behind it, Justin silently opened his Ziploc bag—“now that you’ve got armpits, I suggest some deodorant. Because … damn.”
“This century is full of wonders.” A tendril of its smoky layer snaked toward me, winding as it came, twisting into a thin rope of shadow. I forced myself not to retreat. “The human capacity for false courage is just one of them.”
The cord snapped around like a bullwhip, and I flinched as it struck Justin’s hand, sending an arc of fine white crystals flying harmlessly across the paving stones. The tentacle lashed again and wrapped around Justin’s throat.
His fingers tore at the blackness without effect. The demon didn’t even look at him, but cocked its head at me. “Was that sporting, Magdalena? No. I think not.” It lifted Justin higher, until he was hanging from the smoky extension, his back bowed as he tried to find purchase. He couldn’t even draw enough breath to choke.
“Let him go!”
“Drop your weapon.” I tossed my carton to the ground, next to Lisa whose fingers twitched, just barely. Justin made tiny, gasping half-coughs, and his grip on the demon noose began to slide away. “Now ask nicely.”
Slowly, as if forcing my stubborn knees to bend, I took a supplicant’s position. I couldn’t read the creature’s expression—I could only see its eyes through the concealing black miasma—but I sensed its surprised pleasure. Arrogant son of a bitch. “Please,” I said, my fingers creeping across the stone until they met cold brass. Lisa’s hand inched to the carton of salt. “Let … him … Go!”
On my word, Lisa and I moved together. She snapped the canister up, throwing the contents across Justin and the demon-tentacle that held him. I lurched to my feet with the brazier, and slammed the metal with all my might and momentum into the monster’s amorphous head.
Solid was a relative thing. The weapon clanged, I felt the impact up my arm. Acid yellow eyes dripped like the yokes of two rotten eggs, then congealed and rolled back up to where they belonged. Where the salt struck, its smoky extension sizzled and evaporated; Justin fell to the ground as the creature reeled back, making an animal squeal of pain.
“Close the circle,” I shouted at Lisa. The demon had stumbled backward into the broken ring. “Close it!”
Lisa jumped forward and poured salt over the gaps. I felt a strange subliminal buzz as the line became complete again, a scant instant before the demon collected itself.
I hurried to Justin, who pushed himself up, wheezing painfully. Pulling loose his tie and opening his collar, I saw his skin was blistered and bruised, but his breathing eased quickly. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Help me up.” He staggered to his feet, squaring his shoulders as we turned to face the trapped demon.
“Oh Lisa,” it said, disappointment in its tone. “You had such potential. That one”—it gestured to the unconscious Stanley—“was just a clown. I had high hopes for you.”
“That’s enough, Azmael.” I stepped forward, speaking the creature’s name aloud for the first time, bringing it into the open and reducing its psychological power.
It hissed at me, eyes burning brighter for a moment. “Your bravado annoys me. You will be very afraid before I’m done with you, Magdalena.”
The demon knew the power of a name, too. “You’re trapped, Ass-my-el. And I’m going to punch your return ticket.”
A tendril of its cloaking layer gestured carelessly to Lisa and Justin. “I will kill these two first, to give you great pain.”
I raised the brazier like a shield. “It would give you a lot of pain, too. I know you’re solid now.”
“Not that solid.” Its voice skittered with amusement, like dry, multilegged things in the dark.
The creature gave a heat-mirage shimmer. A layer of its swathing haze pulled away, like a wet peel of sunburned skin, and fell to the ground in a congealed lump. The blob twitched and writhed, as the demon shed another layer to plop beside the first. Clump after clump became semisolid until the imprisoning circle was filled with contorting masses of ectoplasm, heaving and struggling to be born into something vile.
I stepped instinctively back; beside me, Justin went taut with the same revulsion that held me transfixed. Stripped of his outer coating, Azmael looked as though someone with no real understanding of human form had tried to sculpt it out of dry and filthy earth. Eyes sat in sockets without lids and the nose recalled the vestige holes on a mummified corpse. And when the misshapen mouth moved to speak, my skin crawled at the wrongness of it.
“Do you not like my inner form, Maggie Quinn?” the demon taunted me. “Perhaps you liked me better as a shadow?”
“I certainly liked you better before you could talk.”
The pseudo-face showed little more emotion than the veiling layers of smoky ectoplasm, but it managed anger pretty well. “And I prefer you quivering with fear.”
The first Hell-blob leapt up. It wasn’t done cooking, but it had too many legs, too many eyes, and its gaping maw seemed impossibly large, impossibly full of ragged, sharklike rows of teeth. The jaws snapped; I stumbled back, even as the thing hit an invisible barrier at the circle’s limit.
“What are those things?” Lisa stood at one shoulder, Justin at the other.
“Trapped,” I said, relieved, but not entirely. The beasts pawed the ground, a distorted hunting pack, growling with foul, sooty breath.
Azmael stood in the center of its minions. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Lisa.” The beasts at its stubby feet snarled and sniffed the air. “I’m grateful to you for opening the door for me. The tasks you and the boy set before me allowed me to gain a liberty I haven’t had for centuries.”
“I never wanted—” Lisa began.
“I knew what you wanted better than you knew yourself.” It made a tsking noise, almost droll. “Yet you give me no thanks.”
I picked up one of the discarded cartons of salt. “I hope you enjoyed your leave, Smokey, because your pass is about to be revoked.”
A derisive, dismissive snort. “I think not.” The sulfurous eyes turned to me, anticipation making them swell. “You were right about this much, Maggie Quinn. I am hungry after so long without a solid form. And your kind is a wealth of rampant emotion.”
With a certain drama, it crouched and brushed clear a section of the white line. Its hand smoked and blistered and stank, but remained intact. “Oh, that does sting.”
The pack of demon-spawn slipped their invisible leash, poured out of the gap. They scrabbled on phantom claws past our horrified eyes, buffeting us as they rounded the corner and headed for the smorgasbord of teenagers dancing in short-lived blissful ignorance.
“Oops!” said Lisa. At least, the voice was hers, but the tone was Azmael’s taunting humor. She turned, and I recoiled from the otherness in her eyes. “You’d better get going, Supergirl.” She reached out and took the salt that I cupped, forgotten, in my hand, and let it run out of her fingers. “I think you know where to find us, if you survive.”
Her body turned, walked away, stiff-jointed like a puppet. I took a step after her, but Justin caught my arm.
“Leave her.”
“But Lisa …”
“Is one person.” He pulled me insistently toward the front of the hotel. “We have to stop those things, or they’ll kill everyone inside.”
Stanley hadn’t roused from his faint, and Brian was still unconscious. I didn’t know if Brandon was even alive. But those demon-dogs were going to cut a swath through the senior class unless we stopped them.
I gave up arguing and ran, still clutching the brazier, leaving behind the fallen, and racing to save those I could.