v1 CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE: In which rescue attempts reach a dead end.

John, Cassandra, and Maria hurried through the woods, carrying Susan’s limp form. They’d almost reached the van when the earth trembled. Maria yelped and put a hand out to steady herself against John.

Cassandra stared back through the dim silhouettes of trees, with Susan slumped over her shoulders in a firefighter’s carry. The demon hunter had carried the unconscious student most of the way, bearing her weight with only a little help from Father John. “What now? More explosions…?” she muttered.

Maria swung a flashlight around, pointing it back the way they came. Tree roots and ferns shone in the dim light. “Could it be an earthquake? It felt like something… spreading out.”

John shook his head. “Not likely in these mountains. Something else is happening. We’ve got to get Miss Miller here back to the van… that way we can return look for Micki. According to the readings on that… gadget Susan constructed, Micki is here somewhere. Chances are, she’s in the middle of whatever caused that tremor.” He moved ahead impatiently, pushing a branch aside.

Cassandra nodded. “You’re correct. No time to delay.”

Maria took a turn helping Cassandra carry Susan towards the van; the unconscious girl was muttering, as if in her sleep. Her burden slightly abated, Cassandra scanned the area: nothing but shadows. A few seconds later, she heard something, like distant screams or shouts.

The shaking came again, accompanied by a low rumbling sound that grew louder by the second. Suddenly, flickering lights blinked on and off in the surrounding trees, and a wind rushed past, pushing them backwards. All three of them stumbled to their knees, holding on to each other and nearby tree trunks for stability.

Susan’s eyes flickered open. “A true horror has returned,” she moaned, her eyes glassy. Cassandra brought Susan around to rest in her lap, holding the girl in her arms.

“You’re awake!” exclaimed Maria, though it wasn’t clear if she was overstating. Susan looked dazed, shaking her head in confusion.

“Look,” said John, his anxiety clearly mounting. “If this place is coming apart, maybe we can drive back to the main gate and—” The priest stopped speaking; for some reason, Maria had turned off the flashlight, leaving them with nothing to see by but the faint glimmer of the crescent moon, barely shining through the trees.

“Over there,” said Maria. A glowing light was faintly visible in the middle distance, bright enough to be visible through the undergrowth, shining up from the ground. “What is that?”

***

Nezz seemed to grow with each passing moment. That’s good and bad, Una figured, her thoughts darting in a near-panic. On one hand, the thing was too large to move easily; Una could flee down the hallway as the demon tried to cram itself through the doorway.

“My property,” the thing bellowed in a monotone garbled with static and flat tones. “Submit immediately or be repurposed.”

The downside to a monstrous archdemon in hot pursuit was the being’s unnatural strength. Nezz kept ripping chunks of concrete and rebar from the walls, either intentionally or as part of its bizarre growth pattern, adding matter as its form coalesced out of dust and debris.

Una rounded a corner. Her hooves were awkward to get used to, but startlingly spry, allowing her to leap and trot.

“Did you think they were just for show? To look more beastly, or something?” thought Yael, from one side of Una’s consciousness.

Una could only grunt in response. She didn’t have the breath to speak, or the presence of mind. Her thoughts raced faster than her hooves, but lurched erratically. I’m being chased by a massive archdemon. Who used to be my boss. But only because he brainwashed me into becoming—her memories derailed, she couldn’t even think about that part; it was too much—but now I’m me, and I’m Yael, and Micki…

“Snap out of it,” barked the Yael in her.

Nezz forced part of his particulate, billowing bulk into the hallway; she wheeled to stare at the bizarre, leering face, flattened on one side of the inverted pyramid that served as a head. “You will come to me now, so that you may serve me.” The archdemon simply regarded Una silently, waiting.

“Fuck you,” Una snarled back. “YOU CAN ALL FUCK OFF RIGHT TO HELL!”

Her heart pounded hard enough that it felt like her heart would explode—but then she heard a sound that quieted her: the sounds of someone yelling for help. A girl’s voice, and one she recognized.

That cinches it, she decided. I’m going this way. Without another glance at Nezz, Una broke into a run again, darting around a corner and out of the massive thing’s gaze. The archdemon howled behind her, its furious voice garbling into static.

“What are you playing at now, kid?” Even as she felt a wave of disapproval from Yael, there was a quieter, countering force pulsing in resistance, urging her onwards. Michael? She sent the thought inwards. But there was no answer. A tremendous crash echoed behind her, sounding like a wall had shattered. Una raced through what looked like a security gate and turned to slide it shut. It had a bolt, so she slammed that in as well. Hell’s bells, she thought, I’m gambling that there’s another way out of here.

In the next hallway, she found the correct door easily: the girl inside was still yelling. She slammed the viewing window open, and confirmed her suspicions. “Sherill?”

The girl turned to face her, eyes wide with terror. Una’s brows shot up. Sherill didn’t look exactly like her dream self, but mostly due to clear signs of malnutrition. These monsters… Spencer, and that woman Mary Elizabeth. Who could do this to a young girl?

Sherill rose unsteadily and approached the door. Though Una now realized that the Sherill she’d encountered on a dream-spawned beach had really been Mary Elizabeth in disguise, her memories of what the witch had done to her were horrifying enough that she had to clench her hands to keep them from trembling.

“Who… who are you?” Sherill’s eyes were slightly sunken, with a bruise beneath one, but the orange ring around her brown irises sparkled with hope and intelligence. “I felt something break through. I was in a dream and then suddenly… oh! I can feel it coming. It’s angry! Are you one of Spencer’s people, or…?”

“Sherill, it’s me… um, Micki? Or maybe you remember from the dream where we were running through the hallways, when I was—” She choked and stopped for a moment. In the distance, something boomed. Nezz won’t let this go, she thought.

“I mean, I know I look different, and we sort of haven’t actually met in real life, but… you’re right there’s a demon coming.” Una looked down at herself. “Okay, obviously I’m a demon too. But the other one’s a much worse demon, an insane one who’s not wearing a cute maid outfit.” Another crash like shattering bricks from the hallway beyond her lent credence to her words.

“Can you get me out of here? It’s locked!” Una tugged on the door. If only I had incredible demonic strength… Yael, how do I rip things apart with my bare hands?  Now her thoughts echoed inside her consciousness with no answer, just talking to herself.

Or maybe I could just pay attention a little more, she thought as she turned her gaze to the left. There was a green button on the wall next to the door. She pressed it; the lock disengaged, and the door swung open. As soon as she did, Sherill tumbled out into her arms.

Una didn’t hesitate—she took off like a shot, pulling Sherill along with her. Behind them, they could hear Nezz screaming incoherently, a sequence of numbers. With a deafening boom, a cloud of debris enveloped them from behind, causing Sherill to stumble. Willing her body to greater feats of strength, Una scooped the girl up and kept running.

“Is there anyone else in here? That thing is destroying the place!” Una could feel her body burning through the demonic energy she’d stored, but it was effective; she wasn’t even winded.

Sherill shook her head, staring up at Una in amazement. “No… I don’t think so. They kept me away from the others, because of my dreams.”

Una heard another crash behind them—just as they reached the end of a hallway. Only a single door stood in front of them, so Una stepped through.

They were at the bottom of a stairwell that led up through what looked like an old cistern. We must have come a long ways underground, thought Una, as there wasn’t any structure like this attached to the office building she’d seen at the compound.

Unfortunately, the stairwell had crumbled halfway up, with two stories or more missing before the small walkway and hatch they could see at the top.

“Are you… the kind of demon that has wings?” Sherill asked.

Una blinked in amazement, as another horrible scraping sound echoed in the hallway. “You know what? I am, although just recently… “

Yael sighed within her. “I’m sorry, kid. The wings take an awful lot to manifest; you’d need more energy than you’ve got.”

Una’s smile turned to a frown. “So I’m sorry… I don’t know if I can fly right now. I could try, but—“

Una was cut off as an enormous, taloned hand wreathed in black smoke slammed through the door, grabbing for Sherill.

She screamed and pulled back, just out of reach. Una couldn’t help herself: she burst into terrified giggles. “This is not funny!” she said, trying to get her breathing under control. “Now what?”

Sherill stared at the arm reaching for her, then looked up towards the far side of the cistern. “Over there! There’s a drainage pipe of some kind.”

With Nezz attempting to squeeze through the door behind them, Una didn’t argue; she ran over to where Sherill pointed and saw a metal grate in the wall near the floor. She grabbed it and yanked hard until it came free from its moorings. It fell down with a clang onto the floor of the cistern, which responded with an echoing boom. The two girls crawled in.

The pipe was not the kind of place they wanted to stay for long—narrow, pitch black, and wet—but there was something that looked like an opening ahead, just slightly less dark than the rest. Una and Sherill wriggled their hardest and squeezed into what felt another tall, concrete shaft. Suddenly, the whole structure shook, and chunks of concrete and debris rained from above.

Sherill screamed. Una grabbed at her, but a piece of twisted rebar and metal separated them, falling on the younger girl’s legs. Debris had already covered the entrance they’d come through. “Sherill! Hold on!” Una tried to shift the chunk of concrete, but felt her strength fading. Sherrill was sobbing softly. For whatever reason, Nezz had stopped pursing them.

“Maybe… maybe I can climb out of here and get some help,” Una said. But the sides of the shaft were slick and at least twenty feet up. As her eyes adjusted, she could see an opening above, with the shapes of treetops through what looked like bars. This was some kind of ventilation shaft, maybe exiting into the forest.

“Yael,” she said silently. “Do you know any spells for light.”

“Michael never even studied basic cantrips as a priest, huh? You should have enough for the simplest cantrip: Lux.””

Una said the word, and soft green glow filled the chamber, coming from nowhere in particular. Sherill’s eyes were closed, though the girl was breathing. Una felt a great temptation to close her own eyes, to just let the whole thing be over for a time.

Then someone spoke from above. “Is someone down there?” A familiar voice, the deep tones of Father John Hayes.