Another four thunks followed the first. They came unevenly, as if it were an animal with a limp. Each one rocked the world.
Each was slightly louder than the one before.
Slightly closer.
“Those are not aftershocks,” Shalise said with her voice barely above a whisper.
Juliana didn’t dare speak that loud. She suppressed her voice to the quietest level possible. “Something walking?”
Every thunk reinforced that idea.
Juliana wanted to run. Each of the steps shook the ground enough that she had trouble just standing still while leaning against the wall.
Shalise went down on her knees and held onto Juliana’s legs.
That did not help matters.
Even if she could run, there was nowhere to go. Towards the noise or away from the noise, it was a single corridor with no alcoves aside from the closed cell doors.
And the noise was moving fast.
“What do we do?”
Juliana hushed the girl clinging to her legs. “Don’t move, maybe it won’t see us.”
“That only works on T-Rexes.”
Juliana did not dignify that with a response.
Another thunk interrupted.
At the edge of her vision in the direction from which the noise came, a metal pole appeared in the dim light.
A second pole slammed into the ground with a resounding thunk, followed by a third, fourth, and a fifth.
Following the poles upwards, Juliana had to crane her neck to see the top. Almost five stories up, a man had been impaled on top of the poles. Each arm and each leg had a thorny metal pole piercing straight through for several feet.
A fifth pole ran through his neck.
He lifted a leg, bringing up the pole with it.
His leg only moved forwards by a few inches, but the five-story pole swung out half the distance between him and Juliana.
It crashed into the ground with an ear-splitting thunk.
That broke whatever spell they had been under.
Shalise cried out.
It was all Juliana could do to clasp one hand over her mouth.
Her action came too late.
The impaled demon stopped moving. All the poles settled down before dragging themselves closer together.
It didn’t take long for Juliana to figure out why.
As the distance between the poles shrank, the human-shaped body impaled at the top moved, sliding downwards at an alarming rate.
Every inch the demon descended had it grow in perspective. Ylva towered over everyone in any given room. Arachne wasn’t far behind.
This thing would dwarf Arachne standing on Ylva’s shoulders.
The demon stopped a foot off the ground. Ignoring the pole piercing his neck, he twisted his head around, searching with milky-gray eyes.
Juliana’s own eyes were as wide as they went when his gaze met hers.
The moment lasted forever. All time and space expanded into an eternity while its eyes stared into her own.
And the demon’s head continued sweeping the area. He didn’t make any moves or acknowledgment.
Taking much smaller steps, the demon walked forwards before beginning his search again.
Blind?
It gave up searching after a few minutes. It ascending to the top of its poles was one of the most painful things Juliana had witnessed. On several levels.
With the thing right in front of them, yet no longer actively searching for them, Juliana took note of a few smaller details. The poles were not smooth shafts. Spines and barbed hooks staggered along the metal. The demon used the spines to climb the poles. Its flesh tore open, dripping black blood as it went.
Most agonizing of all was the sheer time it took to ascend. Its arm slid up, catching on a hook. Then a leg. The other arm.
By the time it reached the apex, Juliana’s arms and legs had completely locked up.
And then it started moving.
Juliana winced at the thunderous thunk. That single step took it almost to the edge of her vision. Two more and the only sign of it was the sound.
Even with the ache in her joints, Juliana did not move a single muscle until the last of the demon’s heavy thunks had quieted to murmurs.
Shalise moved far sooner than Juliana had wished. She peeled off the fingers blocking her mouth and took a deep gasp of air.
“W-what–that thing–it was enormous.”
“Y-yeah.” Juliana closed her eyes and took a few calming breaths. Her words were not as steady as she wanted. As she needed. It was her responsibility to get Shalise through whatever mess they had gotten themselves into. Especially if it was her fault they were here in the first place. “P-please don’t scream again.”
“I-I’ll try.”
Juliana took a step in the direction the impaled demon had gone.
Shalise didn’t move except to grip Juliana’s arm. “We’re f-following it?”
“It’s either that or go where it came from. We might as well continue in the direction we were going. It didn’t see us, so it should be safe to come across as long as we don’t make noise.”
Shalise’s face was twisted in an expression that Juliana wasn’t sure what to make of. Instead of puzzling it out, Juliana wrapped her arms around Shalise.
“We’ll get out. We’ll be fine. We’ll get back to mom and Eva and Zoe and we’ll have a great story to tell. Adventure, danger, and all that. We could even write a book and sell it!”
Probably not. Telling people they interacted with demons wouldn’t go over well, not if what she’d heard about demon hunters had any grain of truth.
Maybe anonymously? But how would royalties be received? Any competent tracker could follow the money trail.
Perhaps a work of fiction pretending to be real. That might work.
Shalise sniffled, interrupting Juliana’s thoughts.
Juliana moved back, giving her some space. She kept her fingers interlaced with Shalise’s as reassurance.
She just hoped she believed her own words.
Keeping their hands together, Juliana started off after the demon.
It took half an hour of walking–at a decent pace, no less–before the scenery changed again.
Changed might be an understatement, Juliana thought as she glanced around.
The cold cell corridors changed into a series of much larger, open-front cells. Each one had a glowing red barrier capping the open end.
Juliana stopped at the first one and looked in. A gasp came from Shalise at her side.
It was easy to see why.
Ylva was one thing. Regal, tall–a giant, even–and radiated an air of power.
Arachne was another thing. Violent, twisted, and had an eightfold glare.
Neither of them quite measured up to what Juliana would have identified as a demon before actually meeting one for real. And, in fact, very few of the demons she had summoned resembled classical demons. Perhaps the imp. But things like the marionette theater-demon? Not a chance.
The creature chained to the back of the cell was a demon in every sense of the word.
Red skin, hoofed feet, curled horns sprouting from his forehead. His–and it was a he without a doubt–legs were the size of tree trunks and his arms weren’t much smaller. The demon’s stomach looked like it had been chiseled out of a mountain.
A very buff and well-toned mountain that Juliana found difficult to tear her eyes away from.
He looked on with glowing red eyes, somewhat reminiscent of Eva’s own. Surprise turned to curiosity turned to mirth.
A deep laugh reverberated in Juliana’s chest.
When he spoke, his voice rumbled in a deep baritone. Borderline bass.
“Mortals. Free me.”
Chapter 002
It was surprising how normal everything seemed.
Not seemed.
Everything was normal.
Just like after Halloween, people’s lives went on. School went on. Learning went on. Everyone just ignored the empty table where her students usually sat.