Demascus nodded. “It’ll have to do. Assuming we can negotiate a price my patron is comfortable with.”
“Of course. But if this mysterious patron of yours has coin to burn, as you-”
The captain broke off and cocked his head, listening.
“What-” began Demascus, then he heard it, too. A thin cry echoing down the street from the edge of the warehouse district, where it abutted the wharf. It was like a wolf’s howl, but somehow more raw and threatening.
“Never heard anything like that before,” said Thoster.
“Sounded like something chasing down prey,” Demascus replied.
“Well, nothing to do with us, I expect,” said Thoster.
“Maybe not. But then again, someone needs help.”
Thoster raised his eyebrows as if the idea was wholly novel to him.
“I’ll see you in two days,” said Demascus. He flung himself down the rain-slick gangplank and onto the pier. The captain was probably right. The disturbing howl had nothing to do with him. But if some kind of creature was loose in the city, then it needed to be dealt with in case it took a while for peacemakers to arrive on the scene. And if nothing else, Demascus was good at “dealing” with things.
Besides, Arathane had identified a warehouse as a location of interest related to the sudden silence at the arambarium mine. Which Riltana had gone to investigate. Odds were miniscule the noise and Riltana were connected, but … Demascus increased his pace. The gray pall allowed him no easy shortcuts through shadow. And the bulk of his too-large sword, which he’d strapped onto his back and then forgotten about, was a hindrance as he ran. The scabbard rapped the backs of his calves every few steps, as if trying to trip him. Demascus slowed. Probably smart, anyway, given how slippery the street was with rainwater and runoff. Luckily he didn’t have far to go.
A scattered crowd of bemused warehouse workers were pointing at one building. He dashed over, taking a few more scabbard slaps for his trouble. A broken window gaped high in the exterior wall, and shattered panes glinted on the street. Muffled bangs and cries issued from inside the gray and brown structure. The warehouse address and the place Riltana had made for earlier in the day were one and the same. Of course.
Demascus pulled the sheath off his back and drew the blade. The sword snuggled into his grip as if it’d missed him. He dropped the scabbard and ran inside.
Genasi workers fought a pitched battle against a horde of spiders. Spiders?
Lords of light, he thought, was the swarm demon they’d burned in the pit below the motherhouse still alive? How could it be? We roasted everything in that damnable hole. Although … he’d seen a few smoke-scorched moths escape, but they’d certainly expired. Right? Regardless, he’d been certain the spiders, roaches, and other crawlers had all been destroyed.
A woman’s voice screamed something unintelligible. It issued from behind the door at the top of a short flight of stairs.
The deva swept his blade through a fat brown spider that was menacing a fallen earthsoul. Then he charged up the stairs. Something growled and moved behind the door, throwing a finger of darkness under the frame that brushed his boot. Just like that, he was through.
Demascus found himself in the shadow of a hulking humanoid with tangled black hair, horns, and a sword easily as long as Demascus’s own. A name swam up from the blackness of some previous life … Oni. The thing was an oni mage, wielding a weapon ideal for its size and strength. A fearsome opponent. Great.
Just beyond the oni flitted Riltana. She parried and ducked the creature’s frighteningly skillful sword strokes even as she stomped on and danced around another damnable swarm of spiders! A few were larger than any spider had a right to be. One especially bloated creature lay on its back, its hairy legs yet convulsing as ichor leaked from a dagger-shaped hole in its abdomen.
Demascus raised Exorcessum, intent on decapitating the oni with one perfect stroke-
“Pashra, behind you!” came a woman’s voice. Demascus flinched, because the voice came from just above and behind him.
The oni ducked beneath the deva’s swing and shuffled a quarter turn out from its original position. Instead of standing directly between Demascus and Riltana, the oni now formed one point of a triangle made up of Demascus, Riltana, and an oni apparently named Pashra. The oni was going to be trouble. Not to mention all the spiders trying to swarm over the windsoul. As well as whoever had warned the oni, someone he’d failed to-
He slapped at a burning sting on his neck. A spider fell away. No, not a spider; its tiny head wasn’t arachnid. It was a woman’s head with white hair!
“Gods!” Disgust pulled his face into a grimace.
Pashra laughed. The spider scuttled, but Demascus stomped on the tiny hybrid abomination. It popped under his boot like a rotten egg and squirted a messy green fluid everywhere. The tiny head spoke once more in a dying wheeze, “You’ve earned the enmity of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, subcreature …”
That’s probably not good, Demascus thought.
“Chenraya!” the oni exclaimed, his delight transmuted to consternation.
Demascus took the opportunity to draw a deep line of blood down the creature’s right arm with Exorcessum’s rune-carved edge.
The oni howled and retreated a halfstep, parrying Demascus’s follow-up swing with a clang of iron.
“What’s a Demonweb queen?” asked Riltana, who’d taken advantage of Demascus’s attack to slip up close to the oni. She planted a dagger into Pashra’s left kidney.
The oni howled.
A familiar joy infused the deva, as the rhythm of conflict beat in his blood.
Demascus closed with the oni … then stumbled. Uh oh. He couldn’t feel his feet. And his fingers were going numb. And why was everything suddenly all misty? He realized the Hells-spawned spider had poisoned him!
He dropped to his knees. Exorcessum was nearly jarred from his grip. Nausea wrenched his stomach with a gruesome green claw and pulled. His battle elan slipped away. It couldn’t compete with the urge to sickup all over the floor.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. The oni turned its back on the deva and tried to divide the windsoul in two with a swift downward stroke. She deflected the blade with her short sword. The stroke’s force sent her staggering back into the throng of spiders.
Merciful lords, he thought, give me the strength to ignore his insult. He gagged, and drooled a line of spittle. Breakfast was about to make an encore appearance-
A white rune on Exorcessum flared. When it washed across him his nausea vanished. Feeling returned to his hands and feet, and a little strength. The rune dimmed, becoming more a scar than a design. Still on his knees, he drew a gaping wound diagonally up the oni’s back with Exorcessum’s tip. Blood poured from the wound. It was the oni’s turn to collapse.
“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. “Get these things off me!” Spiders mobbed her entire lower body. The windsoul’s eyes were wide with terror as she swatted and rolled, but the insects continued to pile on.
He came to his feet and stepped around the motionless and bleeding oni. Riltana was hyperventilating. How was he going to extract her before they chewed her to the bone or poisoned her to death? Heartbeats counted!
He let Exorcessum clatter to the floor. He ripped the Veil from his neck and whipped the end so that it swirled around Riltana, spiders and all, wrapping them in an embrace of the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge.
The oni’s shadow beneath the door had given him entry into the office, a shadow forged by the wavering office lantern. That same light, and the shadow of a dead spider the size of a wheelbarrow, would provide his next stepping-stone. The question was, could he bring Riltana along but not the spiders?
He stepped, willing his friend to accompany him across the gap of nothingness that lay beneath the world’s facade and to leave mandibles and web-shrouds behind. He flashed into a fell echo of the room, where surfaces were uncertain and shadows writhed like centipedes up the walls.