“It all fell neatly into place in the end,” Juni smirks. “I was planning to come to Carcery Vale, looking for an excuse to explain my return. When your friend died, I donned my psychologist’s disguise, disposed of William Mauch and replaced him. You and Bill-E couldn’t have been more welcoming. And Dervish… Well, he was positively overjoyed to see me.”
“You betrayed us,” I snarl, blinking away angry tears.
“You were easy to betray,” she murmurs. I can see the wickedness in her eyes. How did I ever miss it? “Dervish fell for my pretty pink eyes and cool white skin. He never looked into my heart. I didn’t even have to use magic on him — he fell in love with me of his own accord. The sap.”
I feel magic flare within me when she says that. Howling, I bring my fists up. Energy shoots from my knuckles, a ball of pure, invisible power. I direct it at Juni, meaning to blast her into a million fleshy pieces.
Alarm ripples across her eyes. She starts to cast a protective spell, but it’s too late. I’m going to destroy her, rip her atoms apart and…
Lord Loss sticks out four of his arms. He blocks Juni from the force of my blow and absorbs the energy. Flinches, staggers back a few metres, then rights himself and smiles.
“You are powerful, Grubitsch, but untrained. Perhaps, if you had spent more time learning the ways of magic, you would be able to control that great force and defend yourself and these other unfortunate victims. But you ran from your responsibility. Therefore you – and all around you – will die.”
I scream at him, then unleash a second blast of magic energy, more powerful than the first. It strikes him in the middle of his chest, drives him back several metres. He knocks Juni to the floor and almost loses his balance. But then he straightens and laughs. Brushes away drops of blood as if cleaning fluff from a jacket.
“Have you finished or do you want to try again?” he asks. “Maybe you will be luckier the third time. What do you think, Miss Swan?”
Juni’s getting back to her feet, irate at having been knocked down. “I think we should take him now and drop the games,” she snaps.
“‘Take me’?” I repeat. “Take me where?”
“My realm,” Lord Loss says. “You surely didn’t think I’d kill you here, along with these meaningless others, quickly and cleanly? Dear me, no. You robbed me of my great joy in life — chess. You must pay properly for that, in the universe of the Demonata, where time passes oh so slowly, where I can torture your soul for a thousand years… maybe more.”
“A bit harsher than detention after school, wouldn’t you say?” Juni sneers.
“Artery,” Lord Loss calls. The child-shaped demon with fire instead of eyes pulls his head out of the air hostess’s stomach cavity and looks up, guts dribbling down his chin.
“Spine,” Lord Loss says. The giant scorpion sheathes its stinger and regards its master from the ceiling, where it’s hanging upside-down.
“Femur,” Lord Loss finishes, and the rabbit-like demon hops on to the head of a corpse, acid frothing from its lips.
Lord Loss points beyond me to where the majority of the survivors are huddled, terrified and weeping. “Make quick work of them. We must leave soon, before our window home closes.”
The familiars laugh horrifically, then race towards me. I flinch as the monstrous creatures draw level, but they veer around and leave me untouched. Screams behind — then awful ripping, munching, stabbing, sizzling sounds.
I don’t look back. Part of me wants to. Maybe my magic would work against the familiars. Perhaps I could kill them. But I dare not turn my back on Lord Loss. The demon master is the greatest threat. If I let him attack me from behind, I’m definitely doomed.
Hell, who am I trying to kid? I’m doomed anyway. He’s shown he can take my worst and shrug it off. I might as well surrender and get it over and done with. And if he promised me a quick death, maybe I’d take that way out. But I don’t like the sound of a millennium of torture in his webbed, wicked world. I’m not going to willingly sacrifice myself to such a miserable fate. If he wants to turn me into one of his long-term playthings, he’ll have to fight for me.
“Come on then, you lumpy, ugly amateur!” I yell, backing away from him. “You think you can take me? You’re wrong. You’ll fail, just like you failed to beat me at chess and kill me in Slawter. You’re pathetic!”
Lord Loss’s face twists. His arms extend towards me. Power crackles in the air as fierce magic gathers in his misshapen fingertips. I bid farewell to life and steel myself to die.
Then his expression mellows and his arms drop. “No, Grubitsch,” he chuckles. “I won’t be provoked. You hope to goad me into killing you swiftly. A clever ploy, but I shall not fall for your trick. I came to take you and take you I will. I’ll kill you later, when we are…”
A burst of heat to my left makes him pause. It’s coming from the wall of the cabin. I glance at it, expecting another of Lord Loss’s familiars to appear. The wall’s glowing with a white, hot, magical light.
“Master?” Juni says uncertainly as Lord Loss draws to a halt.
“Quiet,” he snaps.
They don’t know what it is!
I move closer to the light, ignoring the heat, figuring if this is something Lord Loss isn’t controlling, it can only be good news. Maybe the plane is coming apart and this is the start of a giant explosion. If so, I want to be caught square in the blast. That would wipe the smirk from the demon master’s wretched mush.
An oval hole appears in the side of the plane. About two metres from bottom to top and a metre wide. I see a man through the hole, outside, clinging to the wing of the plane. It’s the tramp! He’s been following me for the last few weeks, waiting to see if I turned into a werewolf. He was lurking near my house last night when I burst free of the cellar where Dervish had me caged. I thought he was one of the Lambs – werewolf executioners par excellence – but now I’m starting to have doubts.
The tramp half leans into the cabin and stretches out a hand to me, holding on to the wing of the plane with his other hand as a fierce, unearthly wind whips at his hair and clothes. “Boy!” he shouts. “Come with me. Now!”
“No!” Lord Loss and Juni scream at the same moment.
Lord Loss’s arms snap up and he unleashes a magical shot of energy at the tramp. But the white light around the edges of the hole absorbs the power and disperses it in a shower of crackling sparks.
I’m staring stupidly at the tramp, jaw slack, mind in a spin.
“Boy!” the tramp shouts again. “I can’t take another blast like that. Come now or die.”
I look from the tramp to Lord Loss and Juni. Their faces are filled with hate. Juni’s muttering a spell, lips moving incredibly fast. Lord Loss is readying himself for a second shot at the tramp.
A quick look in the other direction. Artery, Spine and Femur are rushing up the aisle, desperate to pin me down.
I face Lord Loss again, grin and flip him the finger. Then I dive towards the tramp, sticking out my right hand. The tramp grabs it and hurls me through the hole. He shouts a word of magic and the hull of the plane starts to close. I hear Lord Loss bellow with fury. Then the hole seals itself and there’s only the roaring howl of the wind.
I realise I’m clinging to a tramp on the wing of an aeroplane, thousands of metres above the face of the earth. I have a split second to marvel at the craziness of that. Then the wind grabs us. We’re ripped loose. The plane soars onwards.
We