His dark face tightened. The monster was still coming, brushing aside the damage the weapons were causing, unfazed by the damage, lumbering through the smoke and fire and explosions to reach them.
Frickin’hell, he thought in despair and rage.
The KLEE SAW THE TRAPPED LOOK in the eyes of its quarry and was pleased. They belonged to it now, all of them. It would kill them one by one. It would take its time.
But an instant later, a little girl appeared from out of the gloom. She rushed toward the others, a tiny figure pinned against the wall of the storm, red hair flying, arms waving, shouting something indecipherable. Her friends screamed at her to get back, to run away, but she kept coming.
The Klee turned, its flat head swiveling, its huge body following, blocking the little girl’s way. She seemed to have no sense of what she was doing, charging into the fray with such wild determination that she might have thought herself invulnerable to harm. The Klee reached for her, but the fierce dog knocked the little girl down, and wheeled back to stand over her protectively.
Then a second figure appeared, this one more substantial and measured in its approach. A rune–carved black staff levered downward, pointing at the Klee’s midsection, and the demon felt a chill run up its spine. White fire exploded from the black staff, fire so bright and pure that it was blinding. The force of the strike staggered the Klee, burning into it. A second strike followed close on the first, hammering into the low, flat head before enveloping it in fire.
This new attacker was someone the Klee knew. She had escaped it at the cottage home of the blind man. A mistake, it thought, leaving her alive. She was shouting at the other humans to run, keeping up her attack as she did so, advancing one slow step at a time.
“Run, yourself!” the dark–skinned one shouted back, firing his weapon anew.
The skinny girl who stood beside him was quick to join in. All three produced a steady barrage, weapons fire and bright magic catching the Klee from two sides. The demon was infuriated. It stood its ground a moment, and then advanced on the female Knight of the Word. But the force of her magic was too intense, and it had to give way. The woman was screaming, words that caused the others to press forward. The Klee swung its great arms furiously, turning this way and that. Then it tried to turn away altogether, to use its shape–shifting skills to disappear back into the haze. But its strength was sapped and its concentration fragmented. It could not seem to make anything work.
Now the dog had moved to block its way, too, and suddenly it had nowhere to go. It chose to attack the boy and the girl firing the automatic weapons, seemingly the weakest of its attackers. The girl dropped back quickly, but the boy held his ground. When the Klee was right on top of him, he jammed the barrel of his weapon under its chin. The Klee’s great claws were ripping at the barrel as the weapon discharged and blew away the lower half of its face. One arm caught the boy a glancing blow as he tried to duck aside and sent him sprawling.
But the damage was done. The Klee’s head was in ruins, and it could no longer see. It could heal, but only slowly now, very slowly. It could hardly believe what had been done to it. It staggered about blindly, trying to escape, to gain time. Too late. The Knight of the Word’s white fire was burning into it once more, scorching it in a dozen places, setting its body afire, turning flesh and bone to ash. The Klee lurched badly and dropped to one knee.
It could feel its life draining away. It could feel death’s cold approach. It heaved upward and fell back again. Realization of what was happening took hold. It had one final moment of frustration and rage, and then it was dead.
THIRTY
TWILIGHT ARRIVED, and the storm departed. The winds died away into breezes and then into stillness, the dust and grit settled, and the air freshened. Three of the four horizons returned for a short time in the form of stark outlines against the deep blue of the sky–mountains east, hills north, and plains south. Then darkness descended and swallowed everything but the moon and the stars.
The weary members of the caravan dug themselves out, brushed themselves off, ate a much–needed dinner, and settled in for the night. Groups formed and dispersed, one after the other, exchanging stories and encouragements, rehashing what had happened and speculating on what lay ahead.
In the distance, west of where they were encamped, visible until the darkness cloaked it and audible even after that, the dust storm raged undiminished, a blinding wall of swirling debris and raging winds.
Somewhere in that haze was the army of the demons and once–men. Somewhere, too, was a missing Knight of the Word.
Owl sat with Sparrow, River, and Candle, and all four spoke of him in hushed, worried tones.
“I think he’s done what we’ve done,” Owl said, steadfast in her optimism, the one who always adopted the most positive outlook. “He’s found shelter to wait out the storm. It’s just taking him longer to get free of it.”
Sparrow frowned. “I don’t know. He should have been here by now. He has that big AV to drive. He could drive through a dust storm.”
“I don’t know …,” River said, trailing off.
“I hope the demons didn’t find him,” Candle said quietly. “I don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”
No one spoke for a moment, thinking as one of Fixit. The survivors of the bridge defenders had arrived just as the storm was closing in, but their news of what had happened two days earlier in the battle with the demon army had only just begun to circulate. It was Cat, come back with the defenders, who had told Owl of the death of Fixit and the disappearance of Logan Tom. Then she’d gone off by herself, and they hadn’t seen her since.
“Fixit was so brave,” River said. “I couldn’t have done what he did.”
“It won’t seem like a family without him and Chalk,” Sparrow added. “Not like we’re a whole family anymore.”
“We’re a whole family,” Owl insisted. “We just have to start over. We just have to go on with our lives. This has been very hard and very sad. None of us thought we wouldn’t all get to where we are going.
But three of us are gone, and we can’t change that. If we want to make losing them matter, we must tell ourselves that giving up is not the answer. Going on is how we can heal.”
“I’m not saying we should give up,” Sparrow said defensively. “I would never suggest that.”
Owl nodded. “I know that. I’m only giving voice to what I’m thinking. I feel emptied out by this, and I need all of you to fill me up again. Do you feel something of that, too?”
They nodded, no one saying anything. In the darkness beyond where they sat, a baby began crying. They could hear its caregiver hushing it softly, and then the crying stopped.
Sparrow brushed at her spiky blond hair. “At least we got rid of that demon,” she said. “At least we don’t have to worry about it lurking out there in the darkness anymore.”
Angel had told the Ghosts what it was they had faced and how brave they had been to stand against it and see it destroyed. It made Owl wonder, thinking of it anew, how evil the world had become in the aftermath of civilization’s destruction. Or perhaps the evil had always been there and just taken different forms. Weren’t there probably always demons in their midst, taking whatever forms suited them? She thought maybe so. Creatures like the demons and once–men didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. If they weren’t there already, the potential to create them certainly was.