“Holy shit…” Sullivan trailed off. He prided himself on always being cool in a fight, but this was overwhelming, even for him. It was a whole lot scarier being on the same side of the river as this thing. “Either I’m bad at estimating size or it’s still growing.”
“It’s sucking in the air around it and turning it into Summoned smoke. When it gets thick enough, it turns that into ink and it stretches its body even bigger,” Faye explained. He did not know how she could see that. It had to be that head map of hers that she was always talking about. “Want me to take you back?” Faye asked, terrified herself.
“Tempting, but naw. I got this.”
Faye nodded and then she was gone.
The Roosevelt Memorial was at his back. The familiar bronze of Teddy on his rearing stallion rose behind the trees, rifle lifted overhead in a dramatic pose that had never actually occurred during the Great War, since there hadn’t been much use for horses in the trenches. Many of the antimagic marchers had camped in the open space east of the Roosevelt Monument, and they were running for their lives now. He couldn’t rightly blame them, since the demon was still scooping up people and stuffing its face, not even bothering to chew. It was a demon, living on alien essence and magic. It couldn’t possibly need the nourishment. It seemed to be eating them out of spite.
Most of the figures around the Lincoln Memorial were running away, but one had somehow managed to climb onto the creature’s back and was moving between the spines, swinging what could only have been a sword. That had to be Toru. Maybe he’d climbed up its leg. Maybe he’d jumped from the top of the Memorial onto its back, but it didn’t matter, since the demon jerked violently and slapped at its back with one claw. It was like the motion a man might make when stung by a wasp. The Iron Guard was knocked off and fell into the trees.
Sullivan steeled himself. He had absolutely no idea how to hurt this thing. His Power had already been used hard during the night’s events, but even at full strength he wouldn’t have been able to squish something that big. There was no time to dwell on it, though, since the demon was heading his way. Four glowing eyes tilted as its head swelled, like it was testing the air, and somehow Sullivan understood that it sensed the thousands of defenseless lives trapped in the open to the east. The marchers would just be waking up and fleeing now. The demon roared.
He fired the BAR without consciously thinking about it. The bullets did nothing. Sullivan pointed it right at the creature’s eyes, but those were vast empty pools of fire. It didn’t so much as twitch as it got closer. Reloading, hand a blur between gun and vest, Sullivan tried again. The second magazine was as useless as the first. The demon was closer now, and it was like trying to stand during an earthquake. Stumbling, he turned and ran for the cover of the Roosevelt Memorial. He dove behind a concrete flowerbed as one of the demon’s huge feet kicked the iron bars of the perimeter fence overhead.
The demon had an overpowering stink to it, like damp ground and ozone. Sullivan crawled forward as another foot landed only twenty feet away, bouncing him across the grass. The foot was shaped like a monkey’s paw, with toes like fingers, each as long as a tall man, with an obsidian nail on the end like a shovel head. The limb was covered with plates like broken asphalt chunks, while the skin beneath was black as oil and appeared slick and moist.
Tracer bullets splashed across the reflecting pool, tore up clumps of dirt, and ripped into the demon. A sleek Curtiss biplane banked away, engine buzzing. The demon roared with a noise that threatened to make Sullivan’s ears bleed. There was a terrible sound as the bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt and his horse was ripped from its base and hurled after the speeding plane. This time the demon connected, and the statue tore one set of wings off. The Curtiss went spiraling downward in a cloud of wood splinters and aluminum shrapnel.
Sullivan gathered enough Power for a brutal Spike, rose, and concentrated on the nearest foot. He brought gravity down on it, sloppy, but hard and fast as he possibly could. A visible depression appeared in the oily skin and the plates cracked. A cloud of demon smoke spilled forth as the foot jerked into the sky. Summoned oil fell on him like rain. It can be damaged!
Then the massive foot came down right on top of him.
The Power use was instinctive, and he flared it hard, increasing his density as everything went black. He was driven deep into the ground, flat on his back, stomped like a bug.
There was no light. There was no air. No sound. There was dirt in his eyes, filling his ears and mouth. He was buried alive beneath the black oily heel of the demon. His Power was burning hot, dwindling quickly, but he was alive. Alive and crushed beneath the incalculable weight of a god.
This had to be how he’d survived the year before when he’d fallen from a blimp and through a train car. There was no calculation to this magic, only a pure desire to live. Even seconds from death, in a race between what would run out first, his air or his magic, Sullivan’s analytical mind was making notes of this surprising use of his Power. Fascinating.
The wounded foot rose, leaving Sullivan at the bottom of a footprint in the grass. His mass returned to normal and he could move again. His lungs filled with air. Desperate, he scrambled upward, drawing himself out into the night. The demon was moving on. Sullivan had to hurry and strike with whatever he had left.
But before Sullivan could do anything else, the beast spun, tearing one leg through the Memorial. The landscape seemed to curl into a wave of approaching earth. An uprooted tree spun his way and he barely had time to increase his density before impact.
He found himself sailing through the air. Water came rushing up to meet him, but not nearly deep enough to cushion the impact. The splash was far too brief and his shoulder cracked the concrete beneath. Sullivan sat up in the middle of the reflecting pool, gasping and choking.
The injured foot came down, still mangled and bleeding smoke, but the demon just contorted its unnatural body and used one of its spare hands to steady itself. It must not have realized where that attack had come from, or he’d be dead for sure. It knew that something in the area had severely injured it though, and that something had to be eliminated. Both mouths opened wide and emitted a blast of pure fire in an arc that stretched for hundreds of feet. It swept its head across the mall, side to side, immolating everything. Trees exploded into flame. Innocent people were burned to ash. Sullivan ducked back under the lifesaving water as the fire tore across the pool.
The son of a bitch breathes fire, too? he thought as he hugged the bottom. It was very shallow, and much of his back was still exposed to the intense heat. He rolled quickly to put himself out. This keeps getting worse.
Holding his breath as long as he could, it finally felt as if the worst of the heat had passed. The water was scalding as he sprang up and gasped for breath. The air was filled with smoke. Being crushed had left him dizzy and weak. It took quite some time to collect himself.
Sullivan wiped his eyes and watched as the demon went on to attack the Washington Monument. It covered a football field’s worth of ground every couple of steps and reached the monolith in no time. Even as big as the demon was, the monument was far taller still, and that just seemed to make it mad. The creature struck it several times, angry that anything else might upstage it, but after clawing away several chunks of stone it seemed to realize that the monument was no threat to its superiority. Instead it scrambled effortlessly up the side of the monument, climbing to a higher vantage point so that it could survey its new kingdom.
A pair of biplanes did a strafing run against the demon. This time it simply turned and engulfed the incoming planes in a stream of fire. One was struck and exploded in midair. The other managed to dodge under the flames, only to cut too close to the monument and was swatted from the sky by one of the demon’s extra arms. It would accept no challenges to its rule.