Charlie took the pistol from Bob and climbed to his feet, nearly fell, then steadied himself and backed away from the hull of the ship. The squirrel people scattered around him. Bummer let loose with a fusillade of angry yapping.
The demon hit the water about thirty feet away. Charlie felt a scream rising in his throat but fought it down. The thing was nearly ten feet tall, with a wingspan of thirty feet. Its head was as big as a beer keg, and it appeared to have the shape and horns of a bull, except for the jaws, which were predatory, lined with teeth, like a cross between a shark and a lion. Its eyes were gleaming green.
“Soul stealer,” it growled. It folded its wings into two high points behind its back, and stepped toward Charlie.
“Well, that would be you, wouldn’t it?” Charlie said, a little breathless still. “I’m the Luminatus.”
The demon stopped. Charlie took the hesitation to bring up the pistol and fire. The shot took the demon high in the shoulder and spun him to the side. He turned back and roared.
Charlie could smell the creature’s breath, like rotting meat, wash over him. He backed up and fired again, his hand numb now from the recoil of the big pistol. The shot knocked the demon back a step. There was shrill cheering from above.
Charlie fired again and again. The slugs opened craters in the demon’s chest. He wavered, then fell to his knees. Charlie aimed and pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked.
Charlie backed up a few more steps and tried to remember what Minty had shown him about reloading. He managed to hit a button that released the clip from the pistol, which plopped into the water. Then he unsnapped one of the pouches under his arm to retrieve an extra clip. It slipped out and fell into the lake as well. Bob and a couple of the squirrel people splashed forward and started diving beneath the water, looking for the clip.
The demon roared again, unfurled his wings, and, in one great flap, pulled himself to his feet.
Charlie unsnapped the second clip and, with his hands shaking, managed to fit it into the bottom of the Desert Eagle. The demon crouched, as if to leap. Charlie jacked a shell into the chamber and fired at the same time. The demon fell forward as the huge slug took a chunk out of his thigh.
“Well done, Meat!” came a female voice from above.
Charlie looked up quickly, but then back to the bullheaded demon, who was on his feet again. Then he braced his wrist and fired, and again, walking forward, pumping bullets into the demon’s chest with each step, feeling any second as if his wrist would just shatter into pieces from the recoil, until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He stopped, just five feet away from the demon when it fell over, facefirst into the water. Charlie dropped the Desert Eagle and fell to his knees. The grotto seemed to be tilting before him, his vision tunneling down.
The Morrigan landed on three sides of him. Each had a glowing soul vessel in her claw and was rubbing it on her wounds.
“That was excellent, lover,” said the raven woman standing closest to the fallen demon. Charlie recognized her from the alley. The stab wound his sword had made in her stomach healed over as he watched. She kicked the bullheaded demon’s body. “See, I told you that guns suck.”
“That was well done, Meat,” said the one to Charlie’s right. Her neck was still knitting back together. She was the one he’d blasted up onto the cabin roof.
“You guys do bounce back with a certain Wile E. Coyote charm,” Charlie said. He grinned, feeling drunk now, like he was watching all this from another place.
“He’s so sweet,” said the hand-job harpy. “I could just eat him up.”
“Sounds good to me,” said the Morrigan to his left, whose head was still a little lopsided.
Charlie saw the venom dripping from her claws, then looked to the wound below his chest plate.
“Yes, darling,” said hand job, “I’m afraid Nemain did nick you. You really are quite the warrior to have lasted this long.”
“I’m the Luminatus,” Charlie said.
The Morrigan laughed, the one in front of Charlie did a little dance step. As she did, the bullheaded demon lifted his head from the water.
“I’m the Luminatus,” said the demon, black goo and water running between his teeth as he spoke.
The Morrigan stopped dancing, grabbed one of the demon’s horns, then pulled his head back. “You think?” she said. Then she plunged her claws into the demon’s throat. He rolled and threw her off, sending her sailing twenty feet in the air to smash into the hull of the ship.
The Morrigan behind Charlie patted his head as she passed. “We’ll be right with you, darling. I’m Macha, by the way, and we are the Luminatus—or we will be in a minute.”
The Morrigan fell on the bullheaded demon, taking great chunks of flesh and bone off his body with each slash of their talons. Two took to the air and swept in, taking swipes at the demon, who flailed at them, sometimes connecting, but too weakened from the gunshots to fight effectively. In two minutes it was finished, and most of the flesh had been flayed from it. Macha held his head by the horns like she was holding the handlebars of a motorcycle, even as the demon’s jaws continued to snap at the air.
“Your turn, soul stealer,” Macha said.
“Yeah, your turn,” said Nemain, baring her claws.
Macha held the demon head out in front of her, driving it at Charlie. He backed away as the teeth snapped inches from his face.
“Wait a minute,” said Babd.
The other two stopped and turned to their sister, who stood over what was left of the demon’s corpse. “We never got to finish.”
She took one step before something hit her like a ball of darkness, knocking her out of sight. Charlie looked at the demon head coming at him, then there was a loud smack and Macha was yanked to the side as if she’d had a bungee cord attached to her ankle.
The screeching started again and Charlie could see the Morrigan being whipped around in the darkness, splashing, and chaos—he couldn’t follow what was happening. His eyes wouldn’t focus.
He looked to Nemain, who was now coming at him with her claws dripping venom. A small hand appeared at the edge of his vision and the Morrigan’s head exploded into what looked like a thousand stars.
Charlie looked to where the hand had appeared before his eyes.
“Hi, Daddy,” Sophie said.
“Hi, baby,” Charlie said.
Now he could see what was happening—the hellhounds were tearing at the Morrigan. One of them broke, jumped into the air and unfurled her wings, then dove at Sophie, screeching.
Sophie raised her hand as if she was waving bye-bye and the Morrigan vaporized into a spray of black goo. The souls, thousands of them, that she had consumed over the millennia, floated into the air, red lights that circled the grotto, making the whole huge chamber appear to have been frozen in the middle of a fireworks display.
“You shouldn’t be here, honey,” Charlie said.
“Yes, I should,” Sophie said. “I had to fix this, send them all back. I’m the Luminatus.”
“You…”
“Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly, in that Master of All Death and Darkness voice that is so irritating in a six-year-old.
The hellhounds were both on the remaining Morrigan now, tearing her in half as Charlie watched.
“No, honey,” Charlie said.
Sophie raised her hand and Babd was vaporized like the others—the captured souls rose like embers from a bonfire.
“Let’s go home, Daddy,” Sophie said.
“No,” Charlie said, barely able to hold up his head. “We have something we have to get.” He lurched forward and one of the hellhounds was there to brace him. The whole army of squirrel people was coming around the bow of the ship, each carrying a glowing soul vessel he’d retrieved from the ship’s cabin.