Dis
THE room was not entirely dark. Mage lights bobbed around near the ceiling, but not enough to make it really bright. But Toby didn’t want to see any better. There were too many demons here.
Not monsters. Demons.
Toby couldn’t put into words why some of the creatures in Dis made him think “monster” while others made him think “demon.” What was the difference? But there was a difference, even if he couldn’t explain it, and these . . . these were demons.
“Toby,” Diego whispered, “I’m out of diapers and he just pooped.”
He glanced at the other boy. He’d put Diego in charge of the littlest of them to give him something to do. Noah was only four months old and mostly he slept, but right now he was awake and working away at the bottle Diego held.
“You’ll have to use one of the big ones.” They’d had only a handful of the diapers sized for a really little baby, but they still had plenty of those made for one Ryder’s size.
“I’ll get it,” Sandy said and scooted on his butt to the small pile of supplies the demons had dumped next to them.
Ryder reached for Toby’s hands and used them to pull herself to her feet. Again. She chortled and picked up one foot and fell. Again.
There were two kinds of demons in the big, underground room their captors had brought them to. One kind stood up on two legs and had red or pink skin and no hair. Their faces looked like gargoyles, only with more eyes—two in front and two in back—and they had little horns on top of their heads and long, clever tails almost like a cartoon devil, only without the arrowhead at the tip. Instead they had a bony ridge that looked sharp enough to cut you open. Like all the other demons Toby had seen, they were naked, so he knew some were male, some female, but the females didn’t have breasts. There wasn’t room for breasts because that’s where the smaller pair of arms grew, right out of their chests. Those arms were short and ended in hands that looked almost ordinary. The upper arms were long and thick with muscle like an ape’s and grew out of powerful shoulders. Those arms ended in claws like the ones on their big feet.
The second kind of demon was built like a giant, hairless hyena, with skin that ranged from dun to black. These demons had only two eyes, but those eyes were red and glowing. They had two short rear legs and two longer front legs, plus a pair of weird-looking arms with too many joints sprouting from their chests. Those arms ended in hands, but with claws so wicked long that Toby didn’t think they could use their hands for much.
A ring of fire three feet high penned Toby and the kids in the middle of the room. It was real fire, too, not the fake kind Cullen sometimes used. Toby was hot and sweaty from sitting near it, but he didn’t have much choice. Their circle of floor wasn’t very big.
“Such a big girl!” Toby sang out as Ryder pulled herself to her feet once more. And thought about how odd it was that he could sound so cheerful when, inside him, a beast was raging.
He needed that beast. His wolf. He might be too young to Change, but the wolf’s rage had helped him. Kept him from curling up in a ball and screaming or sobbing. His dad was coming for him. He knew that. But he wasn’t here yet. He might not get here in time . . . whatever “in time” meant. Toby tried not to think about that, and his wolf helped there, too.
Ryder gurgled and lifted a foot and plopped back down on her bottom. She fell every time, mostly because she always tried to walk and she couldn’t, not yet. Cynna called her a born overachiever. But falling on her butt didn’t discourage Ryder. She reached for his hands to do it again . . . and froze.
Toby’s gaze flicked up. Sure enough, the scary woman, the one with two voices, stood just on the other side of the fire. She smiled at him. The man was there, too, slightly behind the woman, but Toby couldn’t spare any attention for him. Not with her so close.
“Such a cute baby,” the woman said in her ordinary voice. “Not that I care much about babies, but I don’t object to them. And my other half—that’s terribly inaccurate, by the way, but I’ve never been good at math. My other half positively dotes on babies. Especially girl babies. So pure . . .” She sighed in a dreamy way that sent ants crawling up Toby’s spine. “You’re right, you know.”
Toby didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure he could. Even his wolf went still.
“Diego should have more faith in what you tell him. Your father is not only coming, he’s here. Quite close, really. But we can’t make it too easy for him. Where would be the fun in that? Time to cut those traces Ryder’s mommy is using to Find you two.” She pointed at him. This time her voice rolled through him like thunder. “Midello-sha!”
Toby froze in anticipation of whatever terrible thing she’d done . . . but nothing happened.
“All right, Alice,” she said sweetly, stepping aside to reveal someone else. A woman he’d never seen before. “They’re all yours now.”
The surrounding fire vanished and Toby saw the woman called Alice clearly. She was small for a grown-up and really pale. Pale hair, pale skin, pale eyes. She wore a pale blue top and pants. There were five men with her. They were all short and looked Chinese or Japanese or something like that. They also looked mean. They wore funny helmets, some of them metal, some leather, and had leather breastplates strapped across their chests. They carried swords.
Toby reached for Ryder, gathering her close before standing up. “Who are you?”
“I am Báitóu Alice Li. Who are you?”
“Toby.”
“Toby, I am going to take you and the other children to the next stop on your travels. It is called Lóng Jia. We will go through a gate—”
“No!” Automatically Toby backed up a step. A gate meant another realm. He couldn’t go to yet another realm. His dad was here, looking for him.
“It will be all right, Toby.”
All right? He bared his teeth at her. His wolf wanted to leap at her. To grab her throat in his jaws and shake her, punish her for lying. But he didn’t have a wolf’s jaws or teeth, and if he leaped at her, the armored men would stop him, maybe kill him with their swords.
Fight or flight. He couldn’t fight. So he ran.
It was stupid. He knew that even as he pelted for the door, dodging hands that reached for him, darting around demons, pumping his legs as fast as he could and clutching Ryder tightly. Where could he go? Even if he reached that door, where would he go? But his body had decided to run and run it did, and it felt like the hidden beast in his gut gave him strength and speed and—