Peripherally, I saw that Granuaile had dispatched the blinded ghoul and was also advancing, coming up behind the others as Oberon bounded forward to take advantage. He nipped at the heels of the one on my left, which sent him sprawling and allowed Granuaile to catch up and end him. The last one leapt at me and I dropped onto my back and tucked my knees against my chest, catching him on my feet and then kicking him up and over my head. It threw him into the pile of bodies against the wall. He made a wet impact noise and then crunched down headfirst onto the blood-soaked floorboards. Not a kill shot, but it dazed him to the point where Granuaile could hustle over and eviscerate him. Then she dropped the scythe, exhausted.
Ragged cheers and cries of relief rose up from the Needle Gate. There were perhaps twenty people crying and clasping hands while thanking their gods and me for deliverance. I smiled and waved at them once before they all died: The Needle Gate exploded and perforated them in at least a hundred different places. Many of the needles passed completely through the people who had been stuck on the barbs of the gate and went on to sink into the flesh of people in the next rank. None of the needles reached us on the far end of the room; they’d shot off to either side or punctured the body of some hapless victim. We flinched and gasped and only then saw the cause of the explosion.
It was the demon barker, now free of his stilts and stalking toward us dramatically to imbue his wee stature with menace. He still wore his bowler hat, but it was pushed back enough to see that his eyes were glowing orange. “You two stay back here,” I murmured. “He’s going to have hellfire.” Oberon and Granuaile agreed, and I ran forward to close the distance between us and get to that bare patch of earth. There was no time to create bindings to remove any more boards, and I needed to engage him a safe distance away from my vulnerable companions.
He saw what I intended and rushed to prevent it, acting on the premise that you deny your opponents what they want. With a roar, he shed his human skin. The red waistcoat, the bowler hat, the entire wee man, turned to bloody mist as the demon’s preferred form burst out. What we then had was a tall, pale, skinny monstrosity with bony thorns all over it. But the lack of muscle tone did not correlate to a lack of strength or an inability to throw a punch. I ducked under the first one, thinking I’d scramble on my hands and knees if necessary, but a sharp thorn from its wrist shot over my back and gashed a deep groove there. It seared my flesh, and when I reared back in agony, the demon connected with a left, the spikes on its knuckles tearing holes in my cheek, sending me spinning.
Hellfire bloomed and shot forth from the barker’s hands and he laughed, thinking he had already won. But his punches had been more effective. My cold iron aura shrugged off hellfire, but I screamed and rolled anyway, right toward the open patch of earth. He let me do so but followed close, just as I had hoped. Once I felt the earth underneath me and saw that he touched the earth too, I pointed my right hand at him and said, “Dhófaidh!”—Irish for “Burn!”
Had I been standing, I would have collapsed, because that’s what casting Cold Fire does to a guy. It kills demons 100 percent of the time, but the trade-off is that it takes some time to work and weakens the caster, no matter how much magic is flowing through the earth. Brighid of the Tuatha Dé Danann—a fire goddess, among other things—had given it to me some years ago to aid my fight against her brother, Aenghus óg, who had allied himself with hell. For the next few hours, I’d have trouble fighting off a hamster, much less a greater demon.
“So what’s all this, then?” I asked, twitching a hand to indicate the room. “Upward mobility for you?”
Scowling because I had not obligingly burned to a crisp, the demon bent and wrapped long, sticklike fingers with too many joints entirely around my neck. He began to crush my windpipe, and all I could manage by way of defense was a feeble Muppet flail. I hoped the Cold Fire spell would take hold sooner rather than later. Its delay could well kill me. The demon grinned at my weakness.
“Yesss. Months have I prepared. Small harvests in small towns.”
I couldn’t breathe, and my vision was going black at the edges as his fingers continued to constrict my throat. Why wouldn’t he die already?
“But now I provide a bounty for hell. I will harvest more souls than—” He broke off and his eyes widened. He released me and I sucked in a desperate breath of foul air. He clutched at his chest and said, “What—” before he convulsed, coughed blue flames, then sizzled to a sort of frosty ash and crumbled on top of me, burned from within by Cold Fire.
Seeing that there were no more immediate threats to her person, Granuaile vomited. I felt close to the edge of doing the same. I was taking deep breaths to recover from choking, and the smell really was overwhelming.
Oberon trotted over and licked the side of my head. <Atticus, you’re still bleeding.>
Yeah, so a wet willy was exactly what I needed, thanks.
<You’re welcome. Can we go now?>
The way was clear through the Needle Gate. I didn’t know if the Anchovy Gate was one-way or not. I had to believe that police would be arriving soon; there had to be some response from all the spectators who had fled after I’d killed the imp in the hallway. While I might have welcomed their help earlier in getting people to safety, now there was no one left to save. All they would do was get in the way of the work I still had to do.
Not yet, Oberon.
I sent a message to Amber through my bond to the earth: //Demons slain below / Two imps remain above / Search for portal beginning//
//Harmony// was the only reply.
//Query: Collapse tunnel between this chamber and surface if it is clear of people?//
Amber’s answer was to cave in the hallway. That would buy us some time.
“We need to find the portal to hell,” I said. “There has to be one around here somewhere. I don’t care how dodgy carnivals are; reapers don’t travel with them.”
<I don’t see anything on the walls.>
Granuaile, looking up, said, “It’s not on the ceiling. It’s probably underneath one of these boards.”
I didn’t have the energy to lift them all up, and I wanted this over as soon as possible, so I bound each sheet to one of the side walls and sent them flying. We found the portal close to the Needle Gate, near the spot where Granuaile had played dodge-the-scythe with the reaper.
Hellish arcane symbols traced in salt formed a circle a bit bigger than a standard manhole. Inside this circle was nested an iron disc, which was itself etched with symbols similar to those on the ground, but it covered up the inner halves of the salt symbols, neatly bisecting them.
“Clever,” I said, leaning on Granuaile a bit for support as I inspected the setup. “It’s still active but dormant while the iron shorts out the spell. Remove the iron cover and the portal flares open. Drop it back down and the mojo fades. They can get their people in and out in seconds, and Amber doesn’t think it’s worrisome enough to call me. No wonder they were able to keep this on the down low.”
“Keep what, exactly?” Granuaile asked. “What was this all about?”
“Souls. The demon barker wanted to move up in the underworld, and this was his scheme. Make people willingly choose hell and then kill them.”