His instincts were correct. Just as he realized that the smoking, flaming lump in front of him was only empty robes, he was struck a terrific blow from behind and sent sprawling. He managed to hang on to his staff, but only barely. As he tumbled to the ground, he caught a quick glimpse of the skeletal form that had been standing at his back, stick-thin and hunched over, the demon in its old man form.
Then its killing fire was burning into him, and all of his concentration was on mustering sufficient magic to ward it off. He did so at terrible cost to his own reserves and only barely managed to keep the flames at bay. The demon had tricked him, giving the impression that it lay helpless on the ground when in fact it had slipped away after that first strike. He had been too ready to accept what his eyes told him. His eagerness had blinded him to the truth.
The demon fire ceased, and Logan rolled away from a scorched patch of earth so hot that it made him cry out. He tried to rise and couldn’t. Feeders hovered at the periphery of his vision, crouched and waiting. With his black staff shielding him, he faced the demon from a prone position, looking for a way to fend it off. Again, he had misjudged. This demon was so much stronger than any other, and he had not been sufficiently prepared to defend against it.
The demon was approaching him now, a strange look on its face. It moved a step closer to Logan, as if needing to see him more clearly.
“I know you,” it hissed, its voice a whisper that spoke from the depths of a bottomless well. Surprise reflected in its wicked green eyes. “You’re the boy from the compound, all those years ago . . .”
Logan screamed in fury and counterattacked. Only his rage at the knowledge that the other recognized him gave him the strength to do so. It felt as if the demon had claimed a kind of ownership over him, and he could not bear that. But the effort was futile; the other’s power responded instantly, eroding his own, beating back his defenses, collapsing his shield. Even when he was close to being consumed by demon flames, his skin beginning to sear, he fought to regain his feet, lurching to his knees, struggling to rise.
It was not enough. He could not save himself. The feeders were all around him now and closing. He felt his magic giving way. Despite everything, he was going to die.
Then a wave of blue fire struck the demon from behind, a fire so bright and pure that Logan was almost blinded by its intense glow. He watched it envelop his attacker and saw the look of shocked surprise that crossed the hateful face. His first thought was that Angel had regained her feet and was trying to help him. But this was not Word fire, and Angel still lay where she had fallen, barely risen on one elbow.
He shifted his gaze, and through billowing clouds of dust and smoke he found Simralin.
She was standing not a dozen feet away, the Elfstones gripped in both hands, her face a mask of concentration. Blue fire erupted from between her fingers, burning into the old man. Logan was stunned. She must have disobeyed him and followed him down. She must have decided she would help. And against all odds, she had found a way to master the power of the Stones.
Fighting through pain and rage, the demon began to turn toward her, shifting his own magic to defend himself. The Elven fire illuminated his bones as if he were transparent, and his head was thrown back in concentration. The moment he began to turn, Logan lurched to his feet. He threw off his weariness and his fear of failure, recovered his shattered determination, and walked toward the demon. When he was right on top of him, he jammed one end of his black staff into the other’s back, penetrating skin and muscle and bone, and summoned the magic.
Instantly the Word’s fire responded, ripping into the demon, an explosion of power released from a place inside himself that he did not know existed.
In a flood of dark shapes, the feeders were all over Findo Gask.
The demon half turned, pinned between the killing fires, eyes bright with madness and hatred. Lips skinned back from pointed teeth, and its gaze conveyed to Logan Tom its terrible loathing. But Logan did not relent; he pressed his attack even harder. He pressed it until it was all there was left of him, until the entire world disappeared beneath the weight of his resolve to see the demon destroyed.
There was a moment in which Logan could feel a shift in the tides that marked the battle’s momentum. The demon twisted and thrashed, changing as it did so into something unspeakable, a creature from an older time come at last to the end of its life. The feeders clung to it, ripping and tearing, driven into a frenzy.
Then it exploded into flames and smoke and ash, and Findo Gask was gone forever.
THIRTY-THREE