A bat-snake threw a loop around my right arm. I grabbed its neck with my left hand before it could sink fangs in me. Human, I remain wolf; I bit its head off. Barely in time, I cut at a twin-tailed manta coming for Ginny. It fell aft, spilling guts. An aerial hound sought to intercept us. I held my weapon straight and got him with the point.
Horns hooted their discord. The flapping, cawing, stinking flock retreated in its regular disorder. Our stratagem had worked. Their entire outfit, infantry, air corps, and all, was being summoned to defend the palace.
We pursued to within a hundred yards. The manor was no longer visible for wings and feculent bodies. I lifted my blade as signal. We swung right and whizzed downward. Babel erupted behind us.
We landed jarringly hard. Surrounded by walls, brooded over by the cap of its tower, the building huddled in twilight. I bounced from my seat to the door and tried its ill-feeling handle. It creaked open and we ran in.
A single room, dank jagged stone, lay before us. It wasn’t large in area, but opened above on the measureless dark of the tower. The room was bare except for an altar where a Glory Hand cast dull blue light. The arrangement of objects and the pattern on the floor were similar to those we’d employed for transit.
The heart cracked in me. “Val!” I sobbed. Ginny wrestled me to a halt. She couldn’t have done so without Svartalf getting between my ankles.
“Hold it,” she gasped. “Don’t move. That’s the changeling.”
I drew a lungful of air and regained my sanity. Of course, of course. But it was more than I could endure to look at that chubby shape before the altar, gold curls and empty, empty eyes. Strange, also, to see next to the half-alive thing the mass already exchanged from our house: dust, sandbox contents, coffee grounds, soggy paper towels, a Campbell’s Soup can—
The devil garrison was boiling over the walls and through the portals into this courtyard. I slammed the door and dropped the bolt. It was good and heavy: might buy us a few minutes.
How many did we need? I tried to reconstruct events. The kidnaper was doubtless moronic even by hell’s standards. He’d heard Marmiadon’s curse. A lot of them must have, but didn’t see anything they could do to fulfill it. This one noticed our vulnerability. “Duh” he said, and flashed off to collect some kudos, without consulting any of the few demons that are able to think. Such a higher-up could have told him to lay off. His action would give a clue to the link between hell and the Johannine Church, and thus imperil the whole scheme for the sabotage of religion and society that the Adversary had been working on since he deluded the first of the neo-Gnostics.
Being the dimbulb he was, this creature could not solve the momentum problem of transferring a body other than his own between universes, unless the exchange mass was nearly identical in configuration. His plan would have been to appear in our home, scan Valeria as she slept, return here, ’chant a hunk of meat into her semblance, and go back after her. The first part would only have taken seconds, though it got the wind up Svartalf. The snatch ought to have gone quickly too, but the cat was waiting and attacked.
At this moment, if simultaneity had meaning between universes, the fight ramped and Svartalf’s blood was riven from him. My throat tightened. I stooped over him. “We’d ’ve arrived too late here except for you,” I whispered. “They don’t make thanks for that sort of help. Infinitely gently, I stroked the sleek head. He twitched his ears, annoyed. In these surroundings, he’d no patience with fine sentiments. Besides, currently they were Janos Bolyai’s ears too.
Ginny was chalking a diagram around the room for a passive defense against demonurgy. It took care, because she mustn’t disturb altar, emblem, or objects elsewhere. They were the fiend’s return ticket. Given them, he need simply cast the appropriate spell in our cosmos, just as we’d use the things and symbols in Griswold’s lab for a lifeline. If the kidnaper found himself unable to make it back with his. victim, God alone knew what would happen. They’d certainly both leave our home and a changeling replace them. But we’d have no inkling of how this came about or where they’d gone. It might provide the exact chance the enemy needed to get his project back on the rails.
Outside, noise swelled-stamp, hop, clang, howl, whistle, grunt, gibber, bubble, hiss, yelp, whine, squawk, moan, bellow. The door reverberated under fists, feet, hoofs. I might well have to transform. I dropped the scuba gear and my outer garments, except for wrapping Barney’s jacket around my left forearm.
A mouth, six feet wide and full of clashing teeth, floated through a wall. I yelled, Svartalf spat. Ginny grabbed her wand and cried dismissal. The thing vanished. But thereafter she was continually interrupted to fight off such attacks.
She had to erect fortifications against them before she could begin the spell that would send us home. The latter ritual must not be broken off till at least a weak field had been established between this point and the lab on earth, or it became worthless. Having made initial contact, Ginny could feel out at leisure what balance of forces was required, and bring them up to the strength necessary for carrying us. Now she wasn’t getting leisure. In consequence, her defensive construction went jaggedly and slowly.
The hullabaloo outside dwindled somewhat. I heard orders barked. Thuds and yammers suggested they were enforced with clubs. A galloping grew. The door rocked under a battering ram.
I stood aside. At the third blow, the door splintered and its hinges tore loose. The lead devil on the log stumbled through. He was rather like a man-sized cockroach. I cut him apart with a brisk sweep. The halves threshed and clawed for a while after they fell. They entangled the stag-horned being that came next, enabling me to take him with ease.
The others hauled back the log, which blocked the narrow entrance. But my kills remained as a partial barrier in front of me. The murk outside turned most of the garrison into shadows, though their noise stayed deafening and their odors revolting.
One trod forward in the shape of a gorilla on man’s legs. He wielded an ax in proportion to his size. It hewed. Poised in karate stance, I shifted to let it go by. Chips sleeted where it hit stone. My cutlass sang. Fingers came off him. He dropped the ax. Bawling his pain, he cuffed at me. I did the fastest squat on record. While that skull-cracker of a hand boomed above, I got an Achilles tendon. He fell. I didn’t try for a death, because he barred access while he dragged himself away. My pulse seethed in my ears.
A thing with sword and shield was next. We traded blows for a couple of minutes. He was good. I parried, except for slashes that the jacket absorbed; but I couldn’t get past that shield. Metal clashed above the bedlam as sparks showered in twilight. My breath started coming hard. He pressed close. A notion flashed in me. As he cut over the top of his shield, I dropped down again. My weapon turned his, barely. My left hand grabbed the ax, stuck the helve between his legs, and shoved. He toppled, exposing his neck. I smote.
Rising, I threw the ax at the monster behind, who reeled back. A spear wielder poked at me. I got hold of the shaft and chopped it over.
No further candidates advanced right away. The mass churned around, arguing with itself. Through the hammering of my heart, I realized I couldn’t hold out much longer. As human, that is. Here was a chance to assume the less vulnerable Lyco state. I tossed my blade aside and turned the flash on myself.
At once I discovered that transformation was slow and agonizing amidst these influences. For a space I writhed helpless between shapes. A rooster-headed fiend cackled his glee and rushed forward, snickersnee on high. Were or no, I couldn’t survive bisection. Svartalf bolted past me, walked up the enemy’s abdomen, and clawed his eyes out.
Wolf, I resumed my post. The cat went back inside. We were just in time. The garrison finally got the idea of throwing stuff. Space grew thick with rocks, weapons, and assorted impedimenta. Most missed. Hell is no place to develop your throwing arm. Those that hit knocked me about, briefly in pain, but couldn’t do any real damage.