Briar Girl had been sheltered, her spirit taking the brunt of the effect. Then shortly after Rose had recovered, it had switched around.
The High Priest worshiped a deity that included madness in his realm of control.
But Eva? Roxanne?
What made them special?
The demon of ruin swung its cube-fist overhead, down for the nature spirit. The attack was only barely dodged, and the strike hit the road.
The town shook, and the entire road cracked and shifted. One lawyer had to stumble back and away. Sections of road with flame on them alternately went partially out or blazed higher.
The spirit struggled to keep its footing. While it recovered, the demon of ruin barely seemed to care about the instability. It advanced, swinging again, and struck the spirit.
Hitting the thing hard enough that Rose could feel it like a hit in the chest from a baseball bat.
A bolt of electricity hit it. Rose could see the lights of the church and surrounding block die.
The Eye struck again. The demon staggered away, and the nature spirit familiar of Briar Girl’s limped back, shaking itself. It took on different forms with every step, but even with the limbs of a coyote, then a lizard, a bear, then a bird of prey, those limbs were shattered. It moved with the same grim tenacity that let a fox chew off a limb that was caught in a trap.
The defenders were reduced to Rose, the spirit, Eva, the Eye, the High Priest and a girl without the ability to practice against the pair of demons, imps circling overhead, on the lookout for opportunity.
Only them?
No, as Rose looked around, she could see that there were others having varying degrees of success at withstanding the demon’s howl.
Why were various Thorburns doing better? Roxanne more than Ellie, Ellie more than Peter, the two of them more than Christoff. Most of the Thorburns were able to crawl, while many Behaims were utterly motionless, almost catatonic.
Alister wasn’t among those Behaims. He was on his hand and knees, head periodically moving, lips moving.
What made them special? What made the Eye similar to Roxanne? What advantage did Roxanne have over Christoff? The taint of the Abyss? No.
Roxanne and her cousin were close in age. But where Christoff was a bookworm, quiet, disciplined, less touched by the misery of the family than others, Roxanne had been embroiled in schemes and nastiness. Steeped in-
No, simpler than that.
Roxanne was fucked up, Rose knew. She had Blake’s memories of family, along with his memories of friends. Rose knew what he’d experienced when she’d been taken to the hospital, how he’d seen Roxanne operate. That Roxanne had very carefully armed herself.
Roxanne, the Eye, Eva, the Thorburns as a whole, all more unhinged.
More inured and experienced with the various shapes and forms that… what was the word? Not mental illness… mental unwellness. They were more familiar with mental unwellness, on both sides of the fence. In cases like Eva’s and the Eye’s, they were batshit nuts.
It fit with the way demons tended to operate. Damned if one did, damned if one didn’t. The only way to avoid being driven out of one’s mind was, well, to already be out of it.
Rose wanted to retreat, to return to the church, but that was exactly what the lawyers wanted. Any and all momentum was already lost, but to force a retreat, then crush the enemy under their heels? The lawyers were ready and prepared.
That demon of ruin wasn’t a particularly unfamiliar type. Chosen, quite possibly, for how it could destroy the practitioner even as it warred with the practitioner’s workings, it caused damage that rippled through connections to damage things and people close to the target. Damage the city a fraction by damaging the road. Damage Briar Girl by hurting her feorgbold zombies.
By damaging the people familiar with the church or the sanctuary the church provided, the demon could batter it down, or tear those still within to pieces.
She needed a solution to the howl. Injecting spirits into people could work, but that would take time, for each person.
Time they didn’t have. The Eye of the Storm wasn’t putting the demons down, even if it was suppressing them for the moment. It could hit one, but by the time the bolt of lightning or spray of flame struck the enemy, the other had more or less recuperated and started advancing again.
Only a good ten paces from Rose, now. Beyond reason and rationale, she knew she couldn’t retreat without leaving Alister behind, and she wasn’t about to let the howling demon have him.
I’ve been infected by Blake’s muleheadedness, she told herself.
She flinched, closing her eyes, as a flash of light struck the howling demon, making it stagger. Twelve paces away, now.
But pain was only an illusion. It wasn’t truly something that could be harmed, it only wore the vulnerability to pain like it wore images conjured from the human subconscious. Its internal directive to bring everything to madness would win out long before damage did anything.
Bending down, Rose tried and failed to drag Alister. Not strong enough, and he was more like a cold, wet sack of potatoes than anything she could carry, awkward in all the worst ways when it came to being moved.
Think, Rose, she thought.
Think. Can’t inject everyone with spirits, to put a barrier between their senses and their minds. Can’t retroactively make everyone more fucked up than they are.
No, wait. She could.
On both counts, she could.
“Jeremy!” she called out, and she tried to put power into the words, give them strength, pushing them along the few stable connections that remained, to ears that were still capable of hearing. “Get our people drunk!”
She managed to drag Alister another foot. The demon was closer to her than she was to the door, and it was advancing faster than she was retreating.
“I don’t have the favor to spare!” the High Priest bellowed the words.
“Get it!” she said.
The demon drew closer. All of the eyes on its cowl of warped flesh were fixated on her.
“Get it now!” she clarified.
Gunshots sounded, one after another. The demon barely flinched, even as bullets took chunks of flesh off its shroud, or put holes in its face and upper chest.
Eva.
The witch hunter unloaded the first gun, shoved it into a holster, drew another, and proceeded to unload that one.
Eva’s head twisted to one side, her eyes averted, in the same moment she got within arm’s reach of the demon. Nothing to do with the flashes of lightning that seemed almost solely focused on the she-demon of ruin. She was enduring the howling, even if her natural mental imbalances made her more resilient to it.
But flinching and averting her eyes in the same moment she drew close?
“Look out!” Rose said, as the demon moved its hands.
The Witch Hunter stumbled back, eyes open but not seeing.
“Demon of madness and pandemonium!” Rose shouted the words, “Devils in this town obey the Thorburns! By my name, I order you to cease!”
The demon came to a halt, the howl still pouring from its mouth, weaker than before. Eva shook her head, trying to think clearly again.
Rose could hear the words of the lawyer that had summoned the howling demon, distant, almost inaudible.
Not quite so strong, but with a hell of a lot more cachet. The demon resumed moving, not two seconds after it had stopped.
But Rose had provided a window, and the witch hunter used it. Eva slashed her machete horizontally, dragging the blade across the demon’s chest. Following through on the same movement, she brought the machete down, dropping to her knees as the demon’s arms reached for her, catching only air. The witch hunter leaped back, casting the machete in Rose’s direction.