“So I should rely on your methods?” replied the Daemon silkily. “Of cobbled-together monsters and half-formed creatures? Tell me, how well did you fare in Pompeii?”
The demon took a step back. “The others will hear of this.”
“Oh, I’m sure they will.” But the Daemon was relaxing, shifting back into a stance of nonchalance. “But the difference between my methods and yours is that everyone will now still be alive to hear about it.”
The demon retreated, keeping her gaze fixed on the Daemon. Then she turned on her heel and walked away. She took two steps before Dee’s ears popped and the demon simplyvanished, leaving the four teenagers on the ground and their keeper standing before them.
TWENTY-TWO
For a long minute, nobody moved.
Dee remained still; she felt that if she moved, the world would shatter. The female demon would return, the void would reopen, that nightmarish thing of cobbled body parts would crawl back into existence—
The quiet seemed tenuous and Dee dared not break it.
It was James who spoke first.
“What,” he said, “the hell?”
Which seemed to sum up the situation quite well, in Dee’s opinion.
Cora rose unsteadily to her feet. She was visibly shaking, her gaze fixed on the place the void had been.
The Daemon did not answer. And somehow, his silence gave Dee the courage to move. She pushed herself upright; dirt clung to her jeans and she could feel tangled pieces of dead grass between her toes.
“What was that thing?” said Dee. “That giant… thing.”
The Daemon slid a look toward where the female demon had gone, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “The voids need to be destroyed,” he said. “We living, feeling beings cannot enter them. We have found ways around it. And trust me when I say your kind would fare no better than ours, should one of those doors open fully.”
“She called it a homunculus,” said Cal. “But—I know what that word means. It’s a miniature human construct, but that thing was enormous…”
“Well,” said the Daemon, “we built them smaller at first.”
Cal let out a snort.
“Come now,” said the Daemon, looking at all of them. The betrayal they felt must have been clearly written on all their faces. “Nothing has changed. Surely you must realize that.”
He was wrong, though. Dee felt in her bones—everything had changed.
She half expected the Daemon to use his magic to teleport them all home, but he did something far more mundane: He led them back across the field, to the large strip mall parking lot, and then he broke into a car. Well, breaking in sounded far more physical than what he actually did, which was to twitch his fingers at a Mercedes and the car came to life.
Cora all but lunged for the backseat, apparently wanting as much distance between herself and the Daemon as was possible. Dee slid into the middle of the backseat, and James pushed himself in beside her. It was Cal who pulled open the front door and settled himself only a few feet from the Daemon.
No one spoke.
The silence felt heavy in the car. Dee stared out the window, at the city lights as they rushed by. She was trying not to think about that… thing. The enormous creature made of human body parts, the reason that demons took people’s arms and legs. It was too horrific to contemplate.
But she couldn’t really think of anything else.
And apparently, neither could anyone else. Because just as they were heading across a bridge, Cora said grimly, “Pull over.”
“What?” said the Daemon.
Cora’s voice was tight. “Pull over. I think I’m going to be sick.”
The Daemon threw her a look over his shoulder and if Dee didn’t know better, she would have thought it wasanxious. Worried for the state of his charges… or the upholstery, perhaps.
The car left the bridge and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. Gravel crunched beneath the tires, and then Cora was clawing at her door, shoving her way outside. She headed for a clump of trees; Cal hurried after her. James hesitated, glanced between Dee and the others, then opened his own door and half jogged after them both.
