Slay Bells #3
The air stank of ichor. Iron and acid clung to the inside of my throat.
I got behind the creature and slammed my knife into the joint where neck met spine.
More ichor sprayed out, and the corvathos abandoned its attempt to pull out the earlier knife in favor of clawing me off its back.
Its diamond-sharp ribs scraped at my arms and face, but I hung on as long as I could, stabbing and stabbing again.
I pressed my advantage until the demon was on its knees, ichor leaking from half a dozen wounds.
The only way to kill a corvathos was by cutting off its head or burning it.
I’d damaged its neck, its spine, its legs, but all I’d really done was weaken it.
I wanted this fight over with—I was bleeding too—and that made me careless.
I leaned in, sweeping my arm around the demon’s front to pull my knife across its throat.
It grabbed my arm with both hands and heaved.
If you’ve ever sumo-wrestled with an elephant, this felt something like that.
I went flying, flipping over the demon’s head and landing against the wall with a thump.
The throw knocked the breath out of me, and I saw nothing but black and stars.
Every part of me ached, but I knew I had to get up—I couldn’t let the corvathos win.
I shook my head, trying to clear my vision, and attempted to press myself up.
I’d barely managed to lift my head before the corvathos was looming over me.
It had a fistful of razor sharp ribs in each hand, ready to slice—and then a glass bottle whistled through the air and smashed against its head.
Liquid splattered everywhere, red and sticky-sweet, and the demon reared back with a scream, clutching at its skull.
I pushed myself onto my elbows to see Dylan standing on top of the bar. His hand was still raised from the throw. Another bottle—this one labeled Sugar Plum Rum—was clenched in his other fist, ready to go.
“I told you to leave,” I yelled, pushing myself up despite the creaks and groans my body made.
“Well, good thing I didn’t listen,” he shot back, his voice high and wild. “Or you’d be dead right now.”
He had a point. The corvathos shook itself, ichor dripping from the gash on its head as I stood up.
The back of its head smoked, and the scent of cinnamon vodka filled the air.
It smelled like the holidays in a sorority house built on top of a hellmouth.
Merry Christmas, have some demon blood with your shots of Fireball.
My mind raced. The creature’s ichor smoked every time it hit open air, hissed when it touched wood, and burned human flesh. A fragment I’d read in a Hunter’s journal years ago swam to the surface of my mind: volatile when exposed to flame.
The idea landed hard and fast. If I could ignite the ichor that coated the demon, I might be able to kill it.
The problem was, we were surrounded by alcohol, wood, and tinsel.
If I set the corvathos on fire inside the bar, Dylan, Walt, and I would be ash before the demon was. But if it was vulnerable to fire…
“Lighter,” I called to Dylan. “Get me a lighter!”
He blinked, confused, then nodded and reached underneath the bar, pulling out a long wand lighter.
He tossed it to me, and tired as I was, I still managed to catch it in mid-air.
Then I turned back to the corvathos. Dylan hadn’t questioned what I needed the lighter for.
He trusted me to kill this thing and not burn the bar down in the process.
I’d do my best.
Body aching from pain and exhaustion, I pushed forward, slashing with my knife in one hand, the other hand gripping the lighter. I clicked down and watched flame blossom at the end of the wand—and the corvathos froze.
I smiled.
If the thing had eyes, had any kind of normal facial features, I would have said it looked terrified. As it was, it backed up slowly, its face trained on the lighter, no matter which way I swung it.
I pushed forward, bringing the lighter ever closer to the creature.
The thing flinched from the fire, distracted, and that gave me the opening I needed.
With my other hand, I slashed hard across its throat.
Black ichor sprayed, hissing where it hit the floorboards, and the demon clawed at its neck, still cringing away from the flame.
I shoved my boot between its shoulder blades, forcing it down, and with grim effort sawed through its long neck until the head came free.
It hit the floor with a wet thump, the phantom light in its ribcage sputtering out as the body went limp.
For a second, I just stood there, chest heaving, heart pounding loud enough to drown out thought.
The bar was a wreck—broken glass, overturned chairs, ichor smoking on the wood.
But I was alive. Dylan too, pale and staring, and even Walt—snoring in the corner, completely oblivious.
The lucky bastard had slept through the whole thing.
Judy Garland’s voice warbled Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas through the undamaged radio, the song sweet and soft against the carnage.
All I wanted was to sink to the floor and not move again—for the rest of the night, or possibly the year. But Dylan was climbing down from the bar, bottle still clenched in his hand. His eyes were wide, his body tensed for a fight. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.
“What. The. Fuck.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a question or just the only phrase that fit. “You’re okay,” I said, forcing my voice to be steady and solid. “You’re okay.”
“I-I—” He broke off, swallowing hard, then looked at me. “You killed that thing.”
“I did.”
“Did you know it would be here?”
“No. But I thought it might. Especially once you mentioned Walt bleeding.”
“Is that why you’re in town? Why you were asking so many questions?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“But how did you—I mean, what even—” He shook his head. “What the fuck is going on? Is that thing real? Is it really a… I don’t even know? A monster?”
“A demon, technically,” I said. “Called a corvathos. And yes, it’s real.”
“But that’s not possible.”
I snorted softly. “Pretty sure it is, considering it’s lying dead in front of you.”
“But what does—I mean, where did it—I mean—what the fuck?” Dylan’s voice cracked on the last word, louder this time.
“I’ll do my best to answer your questions in a minute,” I told him. “But first I have to dispose of the body.” I held out my hand. “You wanna give me that cursed bottle of rum you got there?”
He held it out to me wordlessly. I took it with the hand that gripped the lighter.
Then I grabbed the demon’s arm with my other hand and dragged its body out the front door.
It was heavy, and it took two trips—I had to go back for the head—but eventually I got both head and body out into the parking lot.
I looked around to make sure I was still alone. I had no idea what time it was. Had an hour passed or only a minute? It didn’t matter. I’d gotten the demon out of the bar, and I wasn’t moving it any farther than I had to.
Snow swirled in the wind, dusting my shirt and exposed arms. I doused the body and head with rum, leaned in, and lit the lighter.
Flames roared to life instantly, feeding on both the alcohol and the volatile ichor.
The blaze lit up the parking lot, shadows leaping against the side of the bar.
I jumped back, careful not to let the sparks touch me.
I was smeared with ichor too, and the last thing I needed was to go up like a bonfire.
The demon’s body burned faster than a corpse had any right to, collapsing inward with astonishing speed.
In less than a minute, it was nothing but a pile of smoking ash on the gravel.
The snow caught the edges of the fire, tamping it down, and the north wind carried the smoke away into the night.
By morning, there’d be no sign the corvathos had ever been here.
I grabbed my duffel from the car. Snow had piled up to an inch on the windshield while the world went to hell and back. It crunched under my boots on the way in. My fingers burned from the cold and from the lingering nip of ichor on my skin. I flexed them once and shouldered open the door.
Dylan was right where I’d left him, staring at the spot where the corvathos had died. Walt was still asleep, and Christmas carols still issued from the radio. Cinnamon vodka mixed with ichor in a sickly stench.
Dylan looked rattled in a way I recognized, cheekbones too sharp with tension, shoulders up by his ears, his whole body trying to fold in on itself. It was a shock under the best of circumstances, seeing behind the curtain, and tonight definitely didn’t qualify as the best of circumstances.
I reached over to the wall and flicked the OPEN sign off. Then I slid behind the bar, took a clean pint glass from the stack, and filled it with club soda from the gun. I shoved it into Dylan’s hands. “Drink something,” I told him.
He did, in gulps big enough to hurt. Then his hand found a whiskey bottle like it had a homing beacon. He sloshed a shot into the glass, threw it back, and then poured another. He held the glass out to me.
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
He laughed humorlessly and drank it himself.
“Come on.” I took his hand.
He didn’t pull away. Could’ve been because he didn’t want to. Couldn’ve been shock. I didn’t overthink it.
I led him down the hall toward the bathroom by the back exit, past a faded Santa taped to cinderblock and a string of half-dead lights. The bathroom was small enough that two people made it feel crowded. I turned on the faucet, then put his hands in the sink basin.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He didn’t look that dirty—just a smear of ichor across one cheekbone and freckles of black spatter up his forearms—but cleaning gave him a job to focus on, and he needed that right now.