Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

“I defeated Dux Bellorum once before,” he called to the demon. “I will do it again! Again and for all time!”

“I don’t care,” the demon muttered and hefted her wooden spear for another strike.

We needed a weapon, but what would work against an only semicorporeal demon? We needed to banish her—did Zora know how to do that? Not that she could do anything in her current state. Fallen to her knees, she clutched the box around her neck. Hard to access a computerized book of spells when you didn’t have your laptop. Not that she would have had a chance to sit down and read anything at the moment anyway. She seemed catatonic, staring in awe, unmoving. She had seen the unknowable and it had broken her. So that was what that looked like.

I ran to her side and grabbed her shoulder, trying to shake her out of it. I must have looked like a monster, my teeth bared, eyes red with smoke.

“Zora, she’s a demon, like in the stories, Faust and crap. You have to banish her. Do you have a spell for that? Can you banish her?”

She seemed to wake up a little. “I didn’t … I didn’t summon anything—”

“I know you didn’t, but can you banish her?”

Eyes still round and shocky, she pawed at the amulets on her chest, picked one—a Maltese cross—then went to find her bag of supplies, which she’d left lying against the cave wall.

Maybe she really could do it. We just had to hold out until then. I stood guard between her and the demon, hoping I could protect her long enough for her to do something. Hoping I could keep out of the way of those blades. I was back to the problem of weapons. As in, I needed one. I swallowed; my mouth was dry.

Weapons, what weapons did we have besides rocks and bad intentions? That plastic tub with the tranquilizer gun—suddenly, I was intensely curious about whether a tranquilizer dart would work on a demon. Too bad the demon was standing between me, the doorway to the passage, and access to the gun. Shouting across to Enkidu, “Hey, why don’t you go get the gun,” would not do us a lick of good. The demon would only redirect her attack at him. And start guarding the doorway.

I wondered if we could wear her down with continual harassment, like a pack of wolves nipping after a deer until the animal simply couldn’t run anymore. I had a feeling demons didn’t really get exhausted. I could go Wolf and just rip her throat out—if it weren’t for those sharp silver weapons. In addition to the sword and dagger, along with the spear tucked under her arm, she had more knives nested in sheaths on her belt. Unless we could get rid of the metal, the three of us lycanthropes were useless.

Kumarbis was holding his own against the testing attacks she made, sparring at him, searching for a weakness. He was dodging, batting back, using vampiric strength, speed, and experience. Eventually, though, the demon would find that opening.

This was all up to Zora. I hated that our lives depended on the crazy woman.

“Zora…” I couldn’t help but prompt. She was still rummaging.

Meanwhile, Sakhmet had grabbed a torch out of one of the scon

ces and swung it at the demon. The boundary of fire, a swoop of sparks falling outward from the torch, made the demon pause. Fire, of course—magical protections based on fire to keep her out had worked the last time.

Sakhmet was also speaking in what might have been Arabic, some kind of prayer or chant. Protection against demons, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was working. She seemed to be making some progress with the fire, though. She advanced, slashing, and the demon retreated. Kumarbis dashed forward and yanked the spear from her hand, tossing it out of her reach. The demon stabbed at him with a sword while grabbing another spear from her back, but the vampire lunged away. Sakhmet drove forward again, and the demon hissed in annoyance.

Enkidu took another one of the torches and joined the were-lion, so they came at the demon from two sides, harrying her while she slashed at the torches and growled at them. She succeeded in knocking the torch out of Enkidu’s hands, but he rolled away from the blow and retrieved it with little trouble.

It wasn’t just the flames that slowed down the demon; it was the light. The goggles. Maybe I could make this all go away. Leaving Zora, I circled, softly as I could, not attracting attention, to the demon’s back. Our attacker was occupied by the fire and Kumarbis’s harassment, which at this point was mostly verbal. Declarations about how dare she and so forth. He was rather less effective than the lycanthropes.

The demon’s back was to me now. I planned my strike carefully, and my limbs were all but vibrating with anticipation. This was supremely dangerous, but if it worked—it had to work, we didn’t have a choice.

Two steps to reach her, then I jumped on her leather-clad back, grabbing the last pair of spears bound there to help me get leverage when I reached to her head and yanked on the strap that secured the goggles. I fell back, rolling. The strap slipped easily over her spiky dark hair, and I hit the ground and ran hard until I came up against the wall.

The demon shouted in fury, curses and threats of violence. I was damned. Yes, probably. She hunched over as if she’d been injured, and she dropped her spear to hold her hand tight over her eyes. I was right—she was effectively blind without the protection.

The goggles in my hand were just goggles, made of leather and dark glass, held together with metal rivets and buckles. I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Maybe that they would turn to ash in my hand once separated from their owner.

She didn’t stay incapacitated for long. Pulling another spear from her back, she was again fully armed, and when she turned to me, she had her eyes squeezed shut.

“I can hear you gasping for breath, wolf,” she muttered. “I’ll kill you yet.”

Assured, she came toward me. She could hear my breathing, and the more I tried to keep my adrenaline-fueled breaths quiet, the louder they sounded. If I tried holding my breath entirely, I’d just end up gasping like a gulping fish. When I moved out of her way, no matter how quietly I tried to step, my feet scraped on the stone, and she tilted her head, listening.

“Hey! You!” Enkidu shouted from the other side of the cave, then threw a rock that hit the demon’s thigh. From a few feet away, Sakhmet tossed another, hitting her in the back, and the demon was suddenly on the defensive. They weren’t big rocks, just stones small enough to wrap a hand around and heft. They weren’t going to hurt her. But they definitely caught her attention, and she flinched away from the attack, turning to growl at her attackers. Instinctively, her eyes opened—and she cried out as the faint torchlight struck them, wincing them shut again.

I only caught the briefest glimpse, but they were black as onyx all the way through, hard and gleaming.

Scowling, clearly frustrated, she pulled out a piece of cloth from under her leather armor—undershirt of some kind—ripped off a long length of it, and tied it around her eyes. Blindfolded, she was still scary as hell.

Apt phrasing, there.