Chapter 27 Des
Des
Des watched in horror as Everard scooped Aurelie off the ground, leaving behind a bloody streak on the white snow. He was
torn between following her to a townhouse he would never find again on his own, returning to the campus to eliminate the demon,
and going back to the fortress for reinforcements.
He couldn’t tell Commander Yew what he’d seen tonight, not without risking Aurelie’s life. Even if they could find the townhouse,
any attack on Everard could result in her death—and her uncle’s, apparently. But he was fairly certain that whatever Everard
wanted from her now, he wasn’t going to kill her unless he felt threatened. Not when she was clearly useful to him.
With no good options, he clenched his jaw and set out for the fortress. He wrestled with telling Daisy the entire way back,
and yet he shouldn’t have. She was already waiting on his bed when he returned, excited to tell him about her trip to visit
her cousin. But her mood shifted immediately when she saw the look on Des’s face, the blood staining his tunic.
“We need backup,” she said after he had quickly explained. Everyone else was asleep, but Des knew she was right. He woke Jasper,
but it was Daisy who insisted they tell Gareth.
“He’s just a kid,” Des argued.
“Yeah, one who cares about Aurelie.”
Des didn’t like it, but he didn’t know who else he could trust. They met at the obstacle course, armed and buzzing with adrenaline.
“Where do we go first?” Daisy asked. “Should we split up?”
Des shook his head. “The demon is contained, but it’s already fed on human flesh. We need to stay together until it’s taken
care of.”
“What about Aurelie?” Gareth asked.
“I think she’s as safe as she can be right now. Everard seemed to know how to treat her wound. For now, we need to focus on
the demon.” Having seen what this demon did to the guard, he knew this was not going to be an easy dispatch. All the more
reason they couldn’t let this monster loose in the city.
Des let himself on campus first, followed by Jasper. “We’re going to see if we can find any sign of the demon,” he said to
Daisy through the iron bars. “You two stay here and watch the gates. Whistle if you see anything.”
Daisy nodded, and Des spared a moment to worry that he’d endangered the only person in the world he cared about by bringing
her into this. At the same time, she never would have let him come without her.
Des and Jasper made their way back toward Easton Hall with their swords drawn. The guard’s body was still on the stairs, and
a set of clawed footprints in the snow trailed away from it toward the back of campus, where Des and Aspen had encountered
Aurelie and Professor Sheldrake.
As the old clock tower came into view, Des held up a closed fist, sure he’d caught a whiff of brimstone.
They ducked behind a tree and peered out.
Sure enough, the demon was near the door leading into the building.
It had grown considerably since Des first saw it, though it retained its same ghoulish shape.
Des motioned to Jasper to stay put while he went after the demon. It wouldn’t do any good for them both to become cornered
or trapped. Inside, the building was dark and dank. He followed the demon’s trail of brimstone up a winding, narrow staircase,
his sword raised in front of him.
He reached the top floor without seeing any evidence of the demon. Afraid it may have doubled back behind him, he decided
to do a quick sweep of the floor. Then he’d find a window and warn Jasper that it was heading his way.
He entered what appeared to be a professor’s office, though it was far messier than Aurelie’s lab. Des bumped his head on
a contraption hanging from the ceiling and flinched. This had to be Professor Sheldrake’s office, and based on the oddities
here, it certainly looked like he was producing demons. But he didn’t have time to worry about that now. He felt a cold breeze
reach him and noted that the window was open, a pair of yellowing curtains flapping noisily. He had a feeling it hadn’t been
open before.
Des hurried across the room to the window and looked down. For a moment, he didn’t see Jasper, and his heart rate began to
tick up. Then he located him, standing near an old well in the courtyard below. He was waving somewhat madly at Des.
He looked up.
At first, he thought it was one of the gargoyles adorning the older buildings on campus. Then the creature moved, so swiftly
Des shouted an obscenity and ducked back into the room, knocking his head against the windowsill.
The demon burst in after him. Des stumbled backward into a desk, sending paperwork flying.
The creature was enormous, the size of a full-grown man, its muscular frame a near match for Des’s.
During their demonic studies classes, Des had heard of all types of demons, but this had to be among the largest. If it fed on Des, it might become a record setter. He couldn’t allow this thing to escape.
Des charged, hoping to catch it off guard, but the demon was smarter than it looked. It leaped sideways, knocking over a mirror.
Glass shattered, littering the floor, but the demon crunched over it without flinching. It growled at Des, its fangs smeared
with blood and gore. Des’s stomach turned. The remnants of the guard’s intestines.
He charged again, this time nearly catching the demon’s shoulder, but it managed to scramble away on all fours, rushing back
out the door. Des grunted and hurtled after it, praying he could get to it before it reached the stairwell.
He was too slow. The demon ricocheted off the walls, making far better time than Des could on two legs.
“Jasper! Get ready!” He doubted his partner could hear him, but he had to give some kind of warning. Des was breathless as
he reached the bottom of the stairwell, his legs burning from the effort.
By the time he reached the snowy courtyard, the demon was perched on top of the old well, Jasper only a few yards away.
“This thing is huge!” he shouted at Des, who could only nod wordlessly. “Any ideas?”
Des joined Jasper, wishing they could regroup but too afraid to let this thing out of his sight. “It’s not interested in fighting,
from what I can tell,” Des panted. “It keeps running away, not toward.”
“Maybe it’s full,” Jasper deadpanned.
“We can’t get to it while it’s on that damn well,” Des said. “I’m going to climb up toward it. When it jumps down, try to hit it with whatever you can.” He wished he’d brought some iron-tipped arrows, but they weren’t typically necessary for close-range combat.
Jasper nodded, assuming a fighting stance, and Des approached the well, his eyes trained on the red glare of the demon. It
bared its teeth again, emitting a foul stench Des hadn’t noticed in the commotion upstairs. Its skin was gray and warty, like
a toad’s, its hands and feet almost humanlike, aside from its claws. If he had more time, he’d capture this thing and study
it. It was unlike any other verita he’d encountered. He couldn’t guess at any invention it might be related to, and a horrified part of him wondered if it even
was a verita.
As Des got closer, the demon did as he expected: it leapt over him, heading for Jasper, or at least for the path behind him.
Des dove with his sword, missing the demon by centimeters. When he hit the snow, the wind left him in a rush, and he could
only wheeze for Jasper to run.
Someone shouted. Des staggered to his feet in time to see the demon rounding on him. He reached for his sword, realized he’d
dropped it when he fell, and braced himself for impact.
A blade whizzed through the air and hit the demon between the shoulder blades. It was a killing blow. Or at least it should
have been.
The demon roared in fury, but instead of going for Des, it turned to the person who’d thrown the blade.
Aurelie. Her arm was still outstretched, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done, but she yelped in fear as the demon
rounded on her.
What the hell was she doing here? Why was she always in the midst of danger?
Des scrambled to his feet and grabbed his sword, unable to understand what he was seeing. The demon, still snarling, was circling
Aurelie. But it should be dead. Des had never known a demon to survive direct contact with iron before. Jasper looked to Des as if he had some idea what to
do next, but he was at a loss. The demon would attack Aurelie far faster than he could reach it.
As if things weren’t dire enough, Daisy and Gareth came running into the courtyard then, distracting the demon momentarily.
“Why did you abandon your post?” Des demanded as he waved them over to his side, never taking his eyes off Aurelie.
“We tried to stop Aurelie from coming in, but she wouldn’t listen,” Daisy said.
“She hit it with that blade,” Jasper said, joining them. “It should be dead.”
Meanwhile, Aurelie and the demon were doing a strange dance. She was unarmed. The demon should have finished her by now. But
it seemed to be warring with itself, taking a step forward and then backing off again.
“A little help here?” Aurelie said out of the side of her mouth.
If an iron blade wasn’t enough to kill this thing, what would be? He was going to have to decapitate it, and the only way
to do that was to approach and risk Aurelie in the process.
“What do we do?” Daisy asked, her voice tinged with a slight edge of fear. She was a good soldier, but she obviously cared
about Aurelie.
“The well is filled with salt water,” Aurelie said, still slowly turning as the demon moved around her. “I’m going to try
to lure it there.”
“Aurelie, I am ordering you not to—”
“Do you have a better idea?” she hissed at Des. To his dismay, she was already moving toward the well, the demon keeping pace.
It was a ludicrous idea, but if Aurelie could at least get the well between the demon and herself, he might have a shot of
getting to it before it got her. He began to make his own slow movements in their direction. As he got closer, he could hear