with fear, I back away from the approaching demon master. There are several empty rows behind me — the other passengers have fled to the tail of the plane. Lord Loss makes a small humming noise. “At last you move. I thought I might wring no sport from you today.”
“Leave them alone,” I snarl, hands knotted into trembling fists. “It’s me you want, so let the others go.”
“I cannot do that, Grubitsch,” Lord Loss sighs. “My familiars are hungry. I promised them food. You would not ask me to break my word, would you?”
“My master always keeps his promises,” Juni chuckles.
I focus on her. The fair-faced but black-hearted cuckoo in the nest. She acted like my mother. I loved her. I let her steal me away from Dervish. And all the time she was plotting against me. “Harpy!” I sob. “What the hell are you — a demon in disguise?”
“I don’t have that honour,” she replies smoothly. “I’m merely a human like you. In fact I’m from the same family tree, believe it or not. But unlike you and your fool of an uncle, I chose to serve those greater than ourselves, rather than vainly battle with them.”
“You sold us out!” I shout. Then confusion kicks in. “But… I don’t understand. In Slawter, when we trying to escape from the demons, you helped us.”
“No,” she smiles. “That was all a pretence. When I first visited your house with Davida Haym, I used magic to convince Dervish to come to Slawter and bring you and Bill-E with him. On the set it was my job to win your confidence. I found out your secrets, so we could use them against you.
“I played you like pawns,” she boasts. “I had you thinking I was one of your pathetic group, a trusted ally. I let you make escape plans and even allowed you to act on them — it would have been more delicious if you failed with freedom in sight. At the end, just before you breached the barrier, I meant to reveal my true self and turn you over to my master. And I would have, except…”
“You were knocked unconscious,” I gasp, remembering the dying demon who clubbed her in its death throes.
Juni nods bitterly. “By the time I recovered, it was too late. I paused to silence Chuda Sool – he knew the truth about me – then departed to join my master and plot our next approach.”
“We had not planned to strike so soon,” Lord Loss says. He’s come to a stop three metres away, enjoying my growing understanding of how we were betrayed. “I could sense the magic within you, even though you hid it masterfully. I didn’t want to move on you until I knew precisely what I’d have to deal with. But then Juni had a vision.”
“I catch glimpses of the future,” Juni says smugly. “I saw you change into a werewolf a few months before it happened.”
“I could not wait any longer,” Lord Loss sighs. “I wished to punish you while you were human — there would be no satisfaction in killing a senseless animal. So I set a watch on you. I’m a fine judge of werewolves. I was confident of timing it so that I struck just prior to the final turning — I liked the idea of letting you suffer the agonies of the impending change for as long as possible.”
“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