Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3)

Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3) Page 16

It's nothing like Ceridwen's traveling winds, Danny thought.

Leaping into his father's conjured dimensional doorway was like having himself turned inside out and his guts scraped onto the floor with a rusty butcher knife.

Danny wasn't sure how long he'd been lying in the warm, dry darkness, but he appreciated the coolness of the concrete floor against his aching face. Everything hurt, even what little hair he had left on his body.

Images of Eve, Squire, and the monstrous animal they'd brought with them kept playing in his mind, and he squeezed himself tighter into a ball, trying to protect himself from the painful recollection.

You screwed your friends, Ferrick. Face it, he thought, and he would see it all play out again - how he had chosen his demon sire over the closest thing to a family, other than his mother, he'd ever had. They had seen him licking the dead woman's blood off his face. The look of horror and disdain on Eve's face was etched in his mind, now. And all he could think about was how it would break his mother's heart if they told her what they'd seen.

Danny wasn't sure he could live with that.

She's not your real mother, a voice whispered way in the back of his head, and a cold detachment flowed over and through him. Suddenly it was easier to deal with the idea of betrayal. Danny tried to push the troubling thoughts from his head, to rest and recover from his journey through his father's interdimensional escape route, but his senses were awake now - the smells and sounds of his surroundings urging him to rouse himself.

There was, after all, something very familiar about this place.

For the first time since being spat out of the swirling rip in time and space, Danny was able to open his eyes. His eyelids burned, and his eyes ached. He wondered if this was going to be something he'd have to get used to if he was going to stay with the demon - with my father.

Sensory stimuli bombarded him as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. The slight smell of mustiness mixed with the perfume stink of fabric softener, and beneath it all the thick aroma of home heating oil. He was in the cellar of a home, that was obvious, but the surprising thing, as he climbed to his feet, was that he knew exactly whose cellar he was in.

By scent alone, Danny knew he was in the basement of his Newton home. His vision cleared, and he glanced around the room, saw the plastic storage bins of tax information and the boxes of Christmas decorations recently moved closer to the stairs because of the quickly approaching holiday season. His old ten speed bike stood gathering dust in the far corner.

He smiled momentarily, and then realized that he was alone.

Where was his father?

More importantly, where was his mother? The image of Baalphegor murdering and eating that old woman flashed across his mind, and he could not stop himself from picturing the same barbaric fate befalling his mother.

"Shit," he hissed.

Danny bolted across the room, navigating the obstacles of the basement with ease, and bounded up the cellar steps two at a time. His pulse raced as he saw that the door up into the kitchen was already open.

When he reached the top of the steps, he barged into the kitchen, heart clenched, holding his breath. He glanced around and for a moment his hideous imagination showed him a glimpse of precisely what he expected to find. Then he blinked and saw that there was no blood splashed across the countertops or the tile floor, no dismembered limbs strewn across the kitchen. A wave of relief began to sweep over him, but he shook it off. The absence of carnage meant nothing. He still had no idea where his father had gone.

He could be tearing her apart in another room right now, dumb ass, yelled the pleasant little voice in the back of his head.

Frantic, he darted into the living room, and then the dining room, finding them both empty. He hoped that his mother was out shopping or visiting one of her girlfriends.

Starting to calm a bit, Danny headed down the hallway to the foyer, where he noticed the first sign of something amiss. The front door was open wide, and a package - likely a result of his mother's addiction to online shopping - was lying on the floor. He noticed a brown, UPS truck parked by the curb in front of the house.

He picked up the package and placed it on the hallway table. Then he shut the door and glanced up the stairs to the second floor. That was when he smelled it. He knew what it was right away.

The scent of blood. As horrifying as it was to acknowledge what it might mean, it was far worse to realize how much he had grown to like it.

The scent drew him up the stairs. It came from his bedroom at the end of the hall. He paused momentarily, preparing himself. Taking three deep breaths, the stink of blood almost overwhelming him with its intoxicating stench, he strode down the hall, placed his hand against the wood of the door, and pushed it open.

"Holy shit," Danny exclaimed, staring in horror at his room. His posters had been torn down, the walls covered in strange, geometric symbols, written in blood.

Baalphegor was still working, using his claws to paint the sigils upon the egg white walls and ceiling.

"What are you doing?" Danny asked, transfixed by the bloody shapes.

His father looked at him and smiled. The demon squatted behind Danny's bed, which had been pushed haphazardly into the center of the room. As Danny approached he saw the body of the UPS man, torn open and lying on the floor. The demon dipped his claws into a gaping hole torn in the corpse's belly, using the blood as ink.

"This is really fucked up," Danny muttered, a part of him happy that his mother's body was nowhere in the room.

"That's your humanity talking," Baalphegor replied, scrawling a shape that looked like an upside down, capital A upon the lower section of bare wall. "There will shortly come a time when something like this will barely register with you."

A war erupted inside of him, in both his heart and his mind. If ever he had witnessed an act of pure evil, this was it. He knew that, understood how completely wrong it was. And yet it thrilled him as well. And that part of him that loved the scent of the dead man's blood reminded him that this was no different from a lion attacking prey on the veldt or hawks snatching mice up from the fields. He and his father, they weren't human.

Danny's hand self-consciously went to the sack of skin hanging from his chest. It throbbed as he touched it, as if aroused by his attentions. Maybe he wasn't human, but he had been given a gift of humanity . . . a gift, and a curse.

"You're saying that murder, and seeing shit painted on walls with blood, and corpses with their bellies torn open will be like, been there, done that?"

Baalphegor looked away from his work, head turning completely around on his shoulders as he nodded. "It will all be . . . what's the expression I'm looking for?" The demon thought for a moment and then snapped his bloodstained fingers. "Old hat. Things like this will all be old hat."

At the moment, Danny really didn't see the appeal.

Baalphegor stood erect, admiring his handiwork.

"What's all this for?" Danny asked.

The demon rubbed his hands together. "This will aid you in the next step toward your evolution."

Danny moved closer to his sire, but was distracted by something that protruded from beneath his bed. The hairy paw of a stuffed animal. He bent down and yanked the stuffed monkey out from beneath the bed, brushing clumps of dust from its fake brown fur. He'd forgotten all about it.

His father had given it to him - his human father. It was right before his parents had separated, right before the skin problems that would eventually lead to the discovery much worse than a case of severe psoriasis.

"What is that?" Baalphegor asked.

Danny chuckled, looking at the stuffed animal's stupid face. "It's a stuffed monkey," he said, holding it up for the demon to see.

"A stuffed monkey," Baalphegor repeated. "Was it once alive?"

"No. It's fake. It's just a stupid stuffed animal."

The demon moved with its inhuman quickness, snatching the monkey from his hands. Baalphegor stared at the toy, his black lips peeling back to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth.

"My father gave it to me," Danny explained, and then was forced to correct himself. "My . . . y'know, my human father . . . gave it to me before he split from my mom."

"This . . . splitting, it still pains you?" Baalphegor asked.

Danny shook his head. "Naw," he said. "Been over that for years."

"You're lying," the demon hissed. "But it doesn't matter, for soon it will be true. All of this." The creature spread its thin, muscular arms presenting the bedroom. "All that it represents in your life will have no meaning. The hurt will no longer matter."

Danny found himself backing up, away from the demon sire, his eyes for some strange reason riveted on the stuffed monkey. The thought of giving up something so simple . . . it disturbed him.

"I sense your apprehension," Baalphegor said, moving toward him. "And I can understand, for it's all you've ever known." He dropped the stuffed monkey to the floor, his taloned foot stamping down on it, tearing open its belly to reveal the white stuffing within.

"If it makes it any better, remember that this and everything around it will be no more, once the Devourer feeds."

"Mr. Doyle and the others, they'll come up with a way to stop it . . . to stop the Devourer," Danny said, wanting to believe it. He imagined the world destroyed, everyone that he ever loved or cared about dead or worse. Maybe there is something to this whole evolving thing, he thought, his hand again going to the swollen growth attached to the center of his chest.

Baalphegor slowly shook his head. "Doyle is a mage, nothing more. Not even the most powerful of this world's mages. Merely one among them. The demise of this world is inevitable. No matter how they fight - no matter the level of sacrifice - it will all be for naught."

Danny stared at the writings in blood where his Slipknot, Insane Clown Posse, and Green Day posters used to hang. The markings looked different now, darker, thicker.

"What do they do?" he asked, pointing them out. "How do they help with the . . . the transition?"

"The severing of a Collector from his accumulated humanity is a painful and emotional experience," the demon explained. "These sigils aid in the process of acceptance."

The demon came closer.

"Do you feel their calming effects on you?" he asked. "Helping you to accept your destiny?"

Danny held the sack in his hand, eyes squinting down at the opaque flesh, attempting to see what was stored within. What exactly does humanity look like? A soul? Even a makeshift one like his.

At first he thought the sound was thunder, but then he realized that it was the middle of November, and there weren't many November thunderstorms in New England.

Baalphegor looked about, a snarl upon his hideous features. "Now is the time," the demon demanded, extending his hands toward the growth.

Danny wrapped his hand around it, protecting it. Behind his demon sire he could see the strange, blood symbols expanding, running into one another. The dark crimson of the blood turned black, and that dark void fell away into nothing. It was as though the symbols were written in acid that burned away a section of wall, leaving a sucking hole into space, a vast chamber of darkness beyond.

"What the hell?" Danny whispered. He craned his neck, trying to see, even as the demon moved to block his view.

Baalphegor sighed, shaking his head. "You're early," he muttered, turning slightly to address the dark void in the wall behind him.

"Do you have what was promised?" asked a voice from the void, and Danny saw something move in the black, a flicker of tail, like some kind of leviathan swimming in a sea of shadow.

"I told you, you're early," Baalphegor replied. "He has not yet given it to me."

The demon looked at Danny and extended his clawed hand. "Enough of this dalliance, my son. The time is now. Remove the sack and place it in my hand."

Danny shied away, turning his body to protect the sack. In the abyss beyond the wall of his bedroom - maybe beyond the wall of the world - the face of something truly horrific peered in at him, circular red eyes watching him, and then it was gone, swimming off with a flourish of a powerful tail.

"Who the fuck is that?" Danny demanded.

"We haven't the time for this, Baalphegor," the thing in the darkness hissed. "Complete your part of the bargain. Take the sack and be done with it."

Danny shook his head in fear and confusion. "Bargain? What's he talking about?" He tried to move past his father, to get a closer look at the substantial ocean of darkness that had filled half of his room. "The writing, those sigils you painted on the wall, those weren't for me, were they?"

Baalphegor sighed, a thick, steaming trickle of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth to the floor. "Do not make this difficult."

Danny looked back to the darkness, his hand falling away from the sack. And the nightmare that swam in the shadows was there at once, drawn to the sack of humanity like a shark to blood. Danny stumbled backward, startled by the sight of the thing. It reminded him of the piranhas he'd seen at the aquarium - but huge and . . . different.

Horribly different.

Baalphegor sprang at him then, knocking him backward to the floor.

"A bargain has been struck," the demon growled, leering over him. "A bargain that will save my life and start you on the path to fulfilling your destiny."

"What kind of bargain?" Danny asked, glaring up at his father defiantly. "I didn't agree to anything."

"Has he been told?" the thing from beyond asked.

Danny thrashed beneath his father, fear and hopelessness warring in him. He'd already betrayed his mother and his friends, betrayed his humanity. If his demon sire had lied to him, he had nothing left. It wasn't a choice anymore of embracing his soul or his demonic nature . . . it was a choice of nothing or nothing.

"Have I been told what? What the fuck is going on?"

Baalphegor climbed off of him, allowing him to stand. The demon stood at the brink of darkness, the thing that swam in the shadows peering out at them eagerly.

"All he knows is that his evolution is at hand," his sire explained.

"Tell me," Danny demanded as he rose to his feet. "What haven't I been told?"

"There is a special purpose waiting for you, child," the piranha said, its hideous mouth filled with far too many teeth. "Give up the burden of your humanity and achieve this promise all the sooner."

Danny's brain felt as though it just might explode. This was too much for him to handle. How could he hold it all in his head, in his heart? All his life he'd thought he was an ordinary kid, and then his body had started to change, twisting into something horrible and grotesque. When he'd learned from Mr. Doyle what he really was, part of him had been relieved. All the harassment he'd taken, all of the looks, not to mention all of the instincts and urges he didn't understand . . . it was all for a reason.

He wasn't a freak. He wasn't human at all, so he no longer had to live up to the expectations human society put on a typical teenager.

But his metamorphosis had continued, leeching away more and more of his humanity. His reflection was more monstrous, more demonic, every time he looked in the mirror, and his instincts had followed suit. The flashes of violence, the hunger for carnage . . . his true nature explained it all. Mr. Doyle, Eve, Graves . . . all of them had urged him to fight it, had told him he could choose to be good and noble despite his bloodline.

God, how he had wanted to believe them.

If only Dr. Graves was here, right now, he thought. He would know what to do, what to say. Everything always seemed so much clearer seen through Graves's eyes. Right and wrong. Danny guessed that was why Graves had been a hero during his life.

But I'm no hero, he thought. I'm just a kid.

And not even that. I'm a demon.

Now he was being asked to give up all that he had ever known to become a full-fledged monster. This whole special purpose thing, it was more than he could stand.

A demon, yeah. He caressed the fleshy sack on his chest. But as human as I choose to be, as long as I have this.

"I can't handle this," he said, his hands going to his head, as if to keep it from breaking apart. "This is all too much to deal with."

He heard Baalphegor chuckle, a low, rumbling laugh that sounded like the engine of an idling truck. "It is your humanity that plagues you, changeling. Give it up, and your pain disappears."

Can it be that easy? Danny wondered. Tear this thing from my body and everything will be all right?

He looked down at the growth. It was even larger now, storing up his life experiences even to the last moment.

"And then you'll give this to him?" Danny asked, motioning to the creature floating in the darkness.

"That was our covenant," Baalphegor answered. "In exchange they will provide me with escape. This plane of existence, and so many others will be gone soon. I do not wish to share their fate."

Escape. It sounded good to him at the moment, too. To give this up . . . he held the throbbing sack of flesh in his hand again.

"Will . . . will you take me with you?" Danny asked.

Baalphegor chuckled again, shaking his strangely shaped head from side to side. "That would be impossible."

"Your destiny is here," the piranha gurgled excitedly from the darkness.

Danny's thoughts were a whirlwind, the demons watching him - waiting for him to make up his mind - making his fevered brain swirl all the faster. He took hold of the growth with the intention of ripping it from his chest and had started to tug on it when he felt the most unbelievable pain. It was as if he were taking hold of his guts and pulling them from his body.

Gasping aloud, he fell to his knees.

"It does not want to leave you," Baalphegor stated, squatting down on his haunches, watching him with excited, golden eyes. "Cut it from your body - free yourself from its constraints."

"Free yourself," the piranha whispered, over and over, a chant urging him to action.

He wasn't sure why he did it, but Danny reached into his pocket, searching for the penknife that he sometimes carried. Instead he withdrew the piece of stained glass that he'd found at the church in Southie. He stared at it, rubbing away the grime to reveal a single eye peering up at him.

Daring him to act.

Danny brought the edge of the glass up to his chest, ready to press the sharp edge against the thick tendril of flesh that connected the sack to his body.

Free yourself. Free yourself. Free yourself. Free yourself. The thing that swam in the ocean of darkness chanted.

"You sure you want to do that, kid?" asked a voice from somewhere close by, and Danny turned to see his closet doors swing open and Squire emerge. "Just think of the risk of infection."

Before Danny could respond, there was a roar like a lion, and something exploded from inside the darkness of the closet, black and huge and lighting fast, massive jaws open wide in fury.

Squire had not come alone.

Shuck landed in a coiled crouch in front of Baalphegor, driving him back toward the pulsing void in the wall. Squire caught a quick glimpse of the other demonic entity within the sea of darkness and shuddered at its ugliness, even as he turned to Danny.

"We gotta get you out of here," the hobgoblin said, taking him by the arm and hustling him toward the bedroom door.

Danny tore his arm away and twisted around to stare at the demon that was about to square off against Shuck. At his father. Squire couldn't tell if what he saw in the boy's eyes was longing or anger or both.

"It ain't for you, kid," Squire told him. "Come with us, we can help you get over this bad stretch."

The kid looked down into his eyes, and for a minute, Squire believed he had gotten through to him.

Then Danny's eyes flashed, and his lips parted in a nasty snarl as he hurled Squire across the room. The hobgoblin bounced off the wall and landed on the floor in a heap. He shook his head, trying to clear away the cobwebs, and watched through bleary eyes as Danny leaped across the room, tackling Shuck just as the shadow beast prepared to pounce on Baalphegor.

"Son of a bitch," Squire grumbled, climbing to his feet, just as Eve and Ceridwen appeared in the doorway.

"Oh, this is good," Eve sniped, eyeing the dimensional rift that had been opened in the kid's bedroom.

"Yep," Squire agreed, watching as Baalphegor turned his attention toward them, and then four shapes emerged from the pulsing void. They were powerful looking beasties, their bodies covered in thick, spiny shells, like crabs gone horribly, horribly wrong.

"Can't imagine things getting any better than this."

The world turned red.

Danny saw everything through a crimson haze, as though a red filter covered his eyes. The rage had claimed him. He wrestled the thrashing, black-skinned animal to the floor of his bedroom. With incredible strength, the beast twisted in his grasp, stretching, trying to snap its jaws down on him, to tear a chunk of flesh from him.

"Gonna bite me?" he snarled. "I don't think so."

His demonic nature ascendant, he reveled in the thrashing violence. He brought his jaws down, biting into the thick, black skin, reveling in the rank taste of the animal's blood as it gushed into his mouth.

The beast roared in pain, bucking wildly in Danny's grasp. He had his arms around the animal's neck, straddling its muscular back as he attempted to force the animal to the ground.

From the corner of his eye he saw Baalphegor and a quartet of demons he had never seen before - crablike monstrosities that had emerged from the oil-black darkness of the abyss beyond the world. The demons stalked toward Squire and Eve.

Danny faltered. His rage was inflamed, but his allegiance was torn between his friends and his father. In frustration, he took his anguish out on the closest thing to him. Danny grabbed hold of the still struggling animal's snapping jaws, exerting all his might as he pulled them apart, wanting so desperately to hear the sound of snapping sinew and bone.

"Want to bite me?" he growled with exertion, feeling the musculature of the animal's jaw start to give. "I'll show you what fucking happens when things try to bite me."

He smelled it before it struck, a strange metallic smell hanging heavily in the air. It reminded him of the way the night smelled after a heavy summer thundershower.

The bolt of lighting sliced down between him and the beast, severing their connection with the proficiency of a surgeon's scalpel.

Danny staggered backward and crashed into his bureau. Pictures fell, glass shattered. He clutched the edge of a half-open drawer and turned, baring his fangs in a hiss. Pain and rage twisted into hatred, and he longed to eviscerate whoever had dared to attack him, whoever had hurt him.

Then he saw Ceridwen, floating in the air in the middle of his bedroom, robes whipping around her in an unseen wind she had summoned. Her beauty was unearthly and heartbreaking. She was kindness and grace and the purity of the sky and the ocean . . .

And she glared at him as though he were her enemy.

"Leave the beast alone, Daniel," Ceridwen said, held aloft by a swirling funnel of wind. She held her staff out before her, its frozen, icy headpiece crackling with fire and mystical energies.

The shadow beast had received the brunt of her assault. It lay on its side, shivering as its ebony flesh smoldered. Danny could barely control his anger. Instinct made him crouch, ready to surge up into the air and bring her down, but he knew she could destroy him.

And that just made him all the madder.

"You love it so much," he snarled, grabbing hold of the dog-like animal and lifting its prone form up from the floor. "Why don't you fucking marry it," he screamed, tossing it away into the sea of darkness that composed the back wall of his room.

He looked at Ceridwen, a nasty sneer of defiance on his face.

"Not nice," the elemental sorceress said, the frozen sphere at the head of her staff flaring to life. It burned like the heart of the sun.

"Not nice at all."

Eve stood in a corner of the room, a curtain of dark hair falling in front of her face. She didn't like any of this. Not at all. Tensed for battle, she held her talons out in front of her and watched them elongate to wicked dagger tips. She bared her fangs and stared in dismay at Danny and Ceridwen squaring off over the body of Shuck.

This wasn't the way things were supposed to go. They were here to save the kid . . . to redeem him.

Not a person had ever walked the earth who knew more about redemption than Eve. And she knew very well that some could never be redeemed. But Danny . . . he was one of them. She cared for the little fucker, and now he was embracing the darkness.

Eve was going to have to rip out his throat, and then his heart. She was going to have to end him to save him.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd lost someone this way. But it never got easier.

And Shuck . . . she'd come to care for the stinking, slobbering beast. It hurt her to see it injured, just lying there on its side. She had to restrain herself from going to it. But as much as it pained her, there were bigger problems that required her attentions.

Before she got to Danny, there were grown-up demons to slaughter.

The first of the crab-things attacked with a chittering hiss, its razor-sharp claws snapping in her face. The demon Baalphegor held back, almost as if he were waiting to see how the crabs would do before deciding to join the fray.

All he had to do was ask. The crabs weren't going to do shit.

She lunged forward as the lead crustacean reached for her again, grabbing hold of its arm and twisting. The creature squealed in pain as she tore the arm away with a crack of carapace and an explosion of foul-smelling fluids. She held the limb, using it as a weapon to drive the other demons back.

"Pretty good, eh?" she said, licking the spatter of ichor from around her mouth.

"Not bad," Squire said, leaving her side, returning to the closet behind them.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, still holding the crustaceans at bay.

"Give me a sec," the hobgoblin said, diving into a pool of shadow at the back of the closet.

"You little shit," she hissed, just as another of the creatures attacked. She stabbed with the limb, its point puncturing the carapace that covered its belly. This beast squealed as well, falling back to join its brethren. Beyond them, the back wall of the room pulsed with living darkness, some hell dimension or other on the other side. Baalphegor had ripped a hole between the planes.

Conan Doyle was going to be pissed.

Eve braced herself for another attack, then heard a clatter behind her as Squire returned, tromping out of the closet.

"You better have come back with a really big axe," she snapped.

"I've got something better than that," he said. And then she heard the unmistakable sound of a clip of bullets being loaded into a weapon.

Eve chanced a quick look behind her and saw that the hobgoblin had returned with one of the largest, semiautomatic rifles she had ever seen. It was huge in Squire's grasp, but he held it like a pro, flipping the safety to the "off" position.

"If you would be so kind as to get out of the way," he said, absurdly formal.

She barely had enough time to dive to one side before the little shit opened fire.

The weapon was a modified 50-caliber, semiautomatic rifle that Squire had picked up from the manufacturer down in Tennessee. Guns normally weren't his thing. He preferred the simpler killing tools like swords, knives, and battle-axes - preferably enchanted. But every once in a while a firearm came along that captured his fancy. The last one had been back in 1920, when he'd first laid eyes on the Thompson Machine Gun. It had been love at first sight, and he hadn't been smitten like that again until he saw the 50-caliber in action.

The hobgoblin planted his feet, screaming for Eve to get out of his way. As she moved, he pulled the trigger, spraying the demonic crustaceans with a shower of bullets modified to deal with the infernal. John Paul himself had blessed the steel-jacketed babies that were ripping through the creatures' shells like they were papier-mache, a favor that Squire had called in just before the Pontiff joined the heavenly choir in 'oh-five.

The crustaceans squealed in agony, as parts of their bodies were turned to paste and dark shards of carapace. They started to retreat, the survivors hurling themselves back into the ocean of darkness at the back of the room. Squire continued to fire the weapon into the throbbing void, hoping for a few more lucky hits.

In his excitement, he'd lost sight of Baalphegor, and it wasn't until he heard Eve screaming above the noise to watch his ass that he realized the demon was crawling across the ceiling above him. He raised the heavy weapon, preparing to shoot the son of a bitch down, but just as he pulled the trigger, Eve leaped to his aid.

Squire screamed at her, but it was too late. Blessed bullets erupted from the gun and strafed both Eve and Baalphegor.

The hobgoblin cursed and jumped out of the way as they both dropped from the ceiling in a bloody heap. He tossed the weapon aside and hurried to kneel by Eve.

"Come on, speak to me, darlin'," he said, reaching out and rolling her over, gasping at the number of holes the bullets had punched in her clothes and in her flesh. Blood soaked her blouse and jacket.

Her eyes snapped open, bright red with her curse, and she hissed at him, baring her fangs.

Squire gave her his biggest smile. "Would it help if I said I was sorry?"

Eve shot up a hand and clutched his throat in an iron grip.

"Do you see this outfit? Do you have any idea what this cost? I'm gonna make you hurt as much as I hurt now," she hissed, blood still leaking from her wounds.

Explosions of color danced around the outskirts of his vision as he tried to breathe, but Squire caught sight of Baalphegor, the demon's body leaking precious fluids as he pushed himself up from the floor. He tried to get Eve's attention but she was too caught her up in her petty nonsense to notice.

She looked as though she was just about to do something awful to his eyes, when he managed to squeak a single word.

"Demon."

Baalphegor had propped himself halfway up, and his claws were sketching the air, halfway through the process of casting a spell.

Eve saw that Squire was focused not on her, but behind her. She twisted around, tossing him aside, but it was too late. Tendrils of black magic erupted from the demon's hands, pulsed once, and then simply exploded, the sheer force of the magic summoned obliterating the structure around them.

Reducing it to nothing but rubble and the stench of brimstone.

It was as if Danny had been removed from the passage of time.

The energy from Ceridwen's staff had expanded outward, engulfing him in a light that seemed to permeate straight to his soul. He was frozen, hanging in the air, powerless.

She floated like a goddess before him, her robes flowing around her, moved by a wind that he could not feel. Lightning sparked from her eyes, and a cold blue mist churned around her hands like tiny, twin storms.

"This is not you, Daniel," she said, her voice booming in his ears.

He wanted to scream that she was wrong, but the pain was too great for him to speak. The ice-cold blazing fire generated from her staff engulfed him, attempting to burn away the darkness within him.

How could she understand what it was like to know, to finally understand, that he was evil to his core? That he had been born a demon, a creature of darkness, and that he still was this thing? Whatever chance he'd had to be human, he had surrendered it when he stood by and let his father slaughter that old woman, when he had tasted her blood, when he had not balked at the murder of the delivery man.

Ceridwen might blame it on his sire, but she did not realize that his bestial nature had been festering inside him for months now, becoming harder and harder to control with every passing day. The sorceress saw what she wanted to see. She was trying to convince him that the monster that existed inside him could be caged - controlled.

But what if he didn't want it to be? What if he wanted to set it free, to allow it to mature? To allow it - him, to achieve his special destiny, whatever the hell that was? He had loved the humanity his mother had given to him, cherished all of the memories and experiences and emotions that even now existed inside the tough, fleshy growth on his chest.

His soul. His humanity. And oh, God, it hurt so much. To have those feelings, that humanness, be a part of him and to have done the things he'd done and seen the things he'd seen . . . to know what he was . . . the guilt and horror and anguish was just too much for him to withstand.

Better to surrender to evil than have to feel the sorrow and regret.

The darkness welled up inside him, pushing back the light. Danny opened his eyes to see the shocked expression on the Ceridwen's face as she sensed the change in him, and he used it as his opportunity. He attacked her; slashing with his claws, raking a bloody furrow across her shoulder.

He was free of her power.

And then the world exploded around them.

Rising up from the burning debris, Baalphegor-Moabites shrugged off the effects of the explosion, ready to continue the battle.

The demon peered through the thick black smoke and fire, unfazed by the hellish conditions. It's just like home, he thought, taking in a lungful of dirty, searing heat, only much, much milder.

To say that he was angry was an understatement. When he'd first been approached by the mysterious gathering of hellions, spouting their fearsome knowledge of the Devourer's coming, he saw their offer as the perfect opportunity. Here was the chance to survive when so many would perish, and all he need do was harvest the collected life experiences of his spawn littered across the forbidden planes, save one.

In exchange for one humanity sack, from a changeling left upon the earthly plane, the hellions would provide him an opportunity to flee the coming devastation, to travel to pristine dimensions where the demonic had yet to tread.

It was an opportunity he could not afford to lose, and now it had gone horribly awry.

Baalphegor heard the wails of sirens piercing the night, the puny creatures that thrived upon this world attempting to extinguish what his rage had wrought. In his anger he decided that he would kill them all. He began to move through the gathering of humanity, just outside the perimeter of smoke and fire, longing to vent his anger and frustration in an explosion of slaughter.

The demon paused.

There is still a chance that this can be salvaged, he thought, searching the rubble around him for signs of life. If his offspring still lived - and if even only recently slain - the organ could be harvested, the exchange could still occur.

Ignoring the temptation of wanton death and murder, Baalphegor extended his senses, searching for his son within the burning debris of the ruined home. And, stronger than the pungent odor of blood upon the air, he found the scent.

With a shriek of victory, Baalphegor dug deeply into the wreckage, past the shattered wood, crumbled plaster, and brick and found what he so desperately sought.

"There you are," the demon hissed, extracting the limp body of Daniel Ferrick from the smoking remains of his home.

The changeling moaned, and Baalphegor smiled, a warm trickle of saliva dribbling from his widening grin to spatter down onto his spawn's face. Danny sputtered and coughed, arms waving in the air as he regained some semblance of consciousness.

"So good to see you alive," Baalphegor said, attempting to disguise the excitement in his voice. "Now let's get down to business."

Eve opened her eyes, gazing up at the nighttime sky through thick billowing clouds of smoke. She attempted to move, feeling broken bones grinding painfully together as they attempted to heal.

The pain was pretty bad, but she'd get over it. She always did.

She remembered the flash of arcane energy, the explosion decimating Julia's home and tossing her like a rag doll through the air. It usually took quite a bit, but Eve guessed that she must have lost consciousness. Pushing herself into an upright position she heard the chatter of humanity outside, drawn to the disaster like moths to flame.

Not good. Just more lives to be lost in collateral damage.

Willing herself to heal faster, Eve rolled over and struggled to her feet, not even wanting to think about the condition of the outfit she had just bought at Copley. Briefly she considered talking to Conan Doyle about a clothing allowance. The number of outfits that were ruined while working for him was a crime, and she didn't see why she should have to foot the bill.

"What the fuck?" she grumbled, almost losing her footing as wreckage shifted under her. She threw herself forward and landed on the roof of a UPS truck that had been parked outside of the Ferrick house.

Eve stood and surveyed the destruction caused by the demon's spell. The Ferrick house was toast. There was nothing much left of the Colonial but burned piles of wood, brick, and rubble. The smoke and fire seemed to be keeping the spectators at a distance, but that wasn't going to last much longer. She could already hear the wail of fire engines and police cars.

Glancing to her left, Eve saw something that caught her eye in a nearby tree. Walking to the edge of the truck's roof, she found Ceridwen nestled within the oak tree, its branches having reshaped themselves as if to comfort her. She didn't appear to be injured too badly, but there was the slight tang of Fey blood spiking the air.

"Hey, Ceri," Eve called. "You all right?"

The sorceress's eyes opened. Her staff had fallen to the ground far below. Now it shot up into the air, straight to her grasp. The moment her fingers closed around it, the moisture in the air collected around the top of the staff and formed a frozen sphere of ice. Flames flickered inside the sphere.

"Daniel," she said, eyes darting about.

"Yeah," Eve said, jumping down to the ground. "I was just thinking the same thing."

Ceridwen joined her, lowered to the ground by the limbs of the oak.

"Can't see shit with all this smoke," Eve said, prompting Ceridwen to raise her staff, summoning a wind to clear the obstruction.

"Oh, shit," Eve said, her gaze falling upon the large pile of rubble across from them.

Baalphegor stood atop the wreckage, a beaten and bloody Danny Ferrick on his knees before the demon. The boy was clutching a jagged piece of glass, the edge of the makeshift blade about to cut into the thick tendril of flesh the connected the swollen sack to his body.

A clatter of bricks behind her startled Eve, and she whirled around ready for a fight, but pulled back when she saw that it was Squire and Shuck, emerging from shadows cast by a burning sofa. The animal appeared injured, but alive, dragging a dead, eel-like creature behind it. The beast plopped down among the rubble with a sigh, and started to eat its prize. Shuck was done with fighting, she guessed, and that was all right with her.

"What'd I miss?" the hobgoblin asked, brushing soot from the arms of his leather jacket, attempting to ignore the fact that he'd recently riddled her with bullets blessed by the Pope.

That was an issue for another time.

Squire's eyes bulged as he saw what was about to happen.

"This is not good."

Danny saw his friends emerge from the rubble of his house, desperate to reach him, to prevent him from doing what he was about to do. He wanted to apologize to them, to tell them that he'd tried to fight it, but it was just too strong. The monster inside him wanted to be free, and it had showed him every horrible thing that he'd done over the last few days - every bloody detail in order to prove to him that his humanity was already dead, that the Danny Ferrick he remembered had died a long time ago, and he just had never realized it.

The cool breeze summoned by Ceridwen's magic caressed his face, carrying her lovely voice within it as she begged him to stop. Squire was screaming, as was Eve, bounding across the wreckage of his home - of his life, really.

Eve. Deep down he thought she would be the one to understand. She had hinted at a time in her life long ago when the monster had dominated, and he had to wonder, had it ever really gone away? Or was it still inside her, locked away.

Is there a chance for me? Danny wondered. If he did what he was about to do, cutting away his humanity, embracing the monster, would there be an opportunity to regain what he'd lost?

If completely a monster, would he care?

Baalphegor roared, casting a spell that acted as a concussive blast, hurtling Danny's friends back to where they had started. His demon sire looked back to him, large golden eyes beckoning him to take that next step - to begin the journey toward his special destiny.

The touch of the glass was excruciating, a single spurt of blood shooting out as his makeshift knife bit into the thick flesh. It wouldn't be long now, he thought, starting to saw, hands sticky with the blood of his humanity.

Soon he wouldn't care; soon he would feel nothing.

The air grew deathly still, the world seeming to slow and then completely stop. Danny couldn't move, and no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to complete his task.

His father tossed back his head and roared his rage at the night sky. Seemingly unaffected by whatever had occurred, the demon spun around, arcane energies leaking from its fingertips, ready to confront whatever had denied him his prize.

Frozen, Danny watched two figures - a man and a woman - passing through the stationary plumes of smoke on their way toward him.

"Doyle!" Baalphegor shrieked, his screams echoing strangely about the stilled air.

Yes, it was Conan Doyle.

And my mother.

Conan Doyle was so furious that the spell required to bend time to his will - something that normally would have winded him at the very least - actually fueled the fires of his rage.

This never should have been allowed to get this far, he thought as he walked down the debris-strewn Newton Street. He remembered when he had first encountered Baalphegor during the war in the Faerie realm, where the fates of all realities were hanging in the balance. That is where their association should have ended. He ought to have killed the demon, then. None of this would have happened.

But such recriminations were useless. The past was past. Tonight concerned the future.

Julia stumbled by his side, almost falling to her knees. It was as if she were in a trance, mesmerized by the sight of her home, now only a smoldering pile of rubble, and her monstrous son perched with his demon sire atop the ruins.

Even from this distance, Conan Doyle could see what the boy was about to do - giving up his humanity, handing it over to the hungry predator - and he had put a stop to it, momentarily. The spell around Danny would not last for long.

And there was something else lingering in the smoky nighttime air.

A hint of Hell.

The demon screamed his name, the shrill cry cutting through the thickening stillness of the frozen moment.

It had been toward the end of the Twilight Wars, sick and exhausted from the years of battle, that he had encountered Baalphegor at the edge of a clearing where the walls of reality had grown incredibly thin. The beast had been but a shadow of itself, its dark, leathery skin covered in bleeding sores as it squatted on the brink of death, attempting to manipulate magicks too complicated for its current condition. It was attempting to open a portal, to escape the death that would surely claim it in the realm of Faerie.

So lost in its misery, the collector demon hadn't even heard Conan Doyle and his patrol as they approached.

The armored guard, many of them having fashioned garb from creatures such as this, had prepared to slay the demon. But Conan Doyle had stayed their hands. The wretched creature had not been one of their enemies. Baalphegor was merely a scavenger, a parasite, hoping to benefit from the conflict. His presence alone was enough to condemn him, but Conan Doyle had been so tired of all the killing - of all the death - that he had allowed the pathetic beast to flee, even lending him a bit of his own magic to momentarily peel back the veil of reality to one of the lesser realms.

The guilt weighed upon him now, added to all of the other mistakes he had made in his long life.

"Stay your hand, mage," Baalphegor screeched from his perch atop the rubble. "All I wish is to leave this realm and the realms that surround it. You know as well as I that soon, no matter how hard you fight, they will be no more."

Guilt gnawed at him. Unaccustomed to admitting his faults, or even that he had any, Conan Doyle's anger surged.

"How dare you," he growled, conjuring a spell from deep within him to strike the filthy beast down.

A sphere of copper-gold magic pulsed and churned in his hand, surging with such power that he could not have held it back had he wished to. Conan Doyle hurled it at the demon, and the explosion of raw magic blasted Baalphegor from his perch.

His body seething with all of the magic he could summon, Conan Doyle looked to Julia, who still stood beside him.

"Go to him," he said, pointing toward the changeling that she still believed to be her son. "See if there is anything left of the child you remember."

He turned away, striding toward the place where he'd seen the demon fall. Squire, Eve, and Ceridwen joined him, and he was reminded of a time long ago when he'd stood with a patrol at the edge of a forest dark and deep and had encountered an evil too pathetic to kill.

Conan Doyle waved them away, needing to do this on his own.

The spell that he had woven on time was unraveling, things flowing again as they should. The wails of police cars and fire engines were very close, adding to the urgency of the situation.

Careful with his footing, the mage climbed over the wreckage of the once quaint home to where he'd seen the demon tumble. Conan Doyle was at the ready, body tensed, defensive magic at his lips, as he steeled himself to deal with a threat that should have been vanquished long ago.

He found Baalphegor cowering in the shadow of what looked to be the only section of wall left standing. The demon's body smoldered, the magic he had thrown at it having charred and torn its leathery flesh.

The demon shivered as if cold, hugging itself as it cowered.

And Conan Doyle was again reminded of a time, long ago.

"I just want to get away," Baalphegor whispered. "Just as before. You're a merciful creature. Let me live . . . allow me to leave this plane, and I will share with you what I know about the boy."

Conan Doyle was taken aback. The magic of his latest spell ran the length of his arm to leak from his finger tips. It ached for release, the power of the hex surging painfully. His whole body shook, but he held the magic at bay.

"What about the boy?"

The effect of his first attack upon the pitiful demon seemed to be spreading. The tears in its flesh oozed, and threads of oily smoke rose from those wounds as Baalphegor continued to shiver and shake.

"Do we have a deal?"

Slowly, Conan Doyle nodded.

"The Hellions that approached me . . ."

"Hellions?" the mage asked, right arm shuddering with a spell uncast, a dark hex that began to form a churning cloud around his fist.

Baalphegor recoiled from the searing light, nodding. "They approached me, knowing all about the boy, whispering of some dark destiny for him. They told me of the Demogorgon, of its coming, and what it will mean to your species."

Conan Doyle considered this, both curious and confused. He knew well of the Demogorgon's coming, but this was the first he'd heard of Hellions acting against their cause behind the scenes, before the Devourer even arrived, and the first whisper he'd heard of some strange destiny for Daniel Ferrick. The dimensions truly were spinning out of control, entropy taking hold even before the Demogorgon arrived.

The words of the poet Yeats now seemed prophetic.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

Things fall apart: the center cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Conan Doyle looked down upon the demon. Already the shivering wretch had begun the process of conjuring a dimensional portal, the air around its wavering hands beginning to shimmer. Baalphegor turned its horrid face to him, its piss-yellow eyes searching for the same compassion that it had found from the mage so long ago.

And Conan Doyle unleashed his mercy, the hex that had built up in him bursting from him, searing his marrow as it arced from the tips of his fingers, reducing the creature to so much ash.

Julia stood amid the wreckage of her home beside the monster that was her son. She could feel something changing in the air, Conan Doyle's magic leaving perhaps, the flow of time returning to normal. Danny held the piece of glass tightly in his grip, the edge of the jagged blade biting into the thick strip of flesh, which she now knew connected the boy to his humanity.

Confusion whirled in her mind. She was not sure how she was supposed to feel at the moment. Staring at her son, she felt new pangs of fear, different from the terror she had felt before. The memory that had been stolen from her was the very foundation of her love for Danny. Had the thieving Hellion destroyed that love?

No, it remained. Even without that memory, there were so many others. Love abided. Yet she stared now at her boy, her Danny, and wondered if all that remained of him was a monster.

Time started to flow fully again, and she gasped as the razor-sharp glass continued to bite into the cord of flesh. Instinctively she reached out, taking hold of Danny's hand, preventing the shard from cutting any further. Danny turned his face to her, and for the briefest of moments she did not recognize him. The hatred and fear in his eyes made her fear for her own life, and for her own soul.

His eyes flashed, and he bared his fangs at her, but she held his gaze, and the demon's stare softened. Julia shook as she reached out and pulled him close, though with love or fear she did not know. Maybe both, she thought, as she took him into her arms.

Kneeling in the broken remains of their home, the two of them began to rock. Julia closed her eyes, rubbing her hand along his back lovingly, as she had done so often when he was an infant and would wake up crying in the night. It had been the only thing that would comfort him so that he could go back to sleep. Julia would rock with him in the rocking chair, softly singing to him.

Julia wanted to sing to her son now, as they rocked together.

But she couldn't remember the words.