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  I knew the rest. The spell had depended upon all six of the casters being magic-users. If one of them were a fake, the demon would have been able to work through them, rather than merely having no choice, but to obey orders. It had granted their wishes for power and revenge, tearing apart the entire school to satisfy whims and desires most of them hadn’t even known they had, but it had also drawn on enough power to manifest itself properly in the mundane world. Once the girls died, having been completely drained of their energy, it would be free to walk the world and commit havoc. Our world would suffer under its antics…

  Oh, an angel might come down to remove the demon, but I knew better than to count on it. The Compact between Heaven and Hell prevented uninvited interference with both sides, ever since Jesus walked the Earth, but humans had summoned the demon into our world. Heaven might choose not to get involved. If the demon got free, we would be helpless against it. It knew that as well as I did.

  The demon smiled. There was nothing human in its face now.

  “And what are you going to do?” It asked, mockingly. “What choice are you going to make now?”

  I looked down at the leader, the fake witch, and winced. Her body and soul was being drained directly. It wouldn’t be long before the demon had enough power to manifest openly without her, but until then, there was still a chance. I stepped forward and placed my hands on her shoulder. She felt cold and clammy under my fingers, as if I was touching an ill baby, one on the verge of death. Merely touching her made me feel sick. I looked down at the symbols, drawn in their own blood on the floor, and winced. The demon was well beyond depending on them now. Breaking the circle would merely free it from the remaining constraints early.

  “Of course you could,” the demon said, pleasantly. “You could end it right now.”

  I stared at it. “And then…what?”

  “Why, you get the pleasure of my company at a later date,” the demon said. It had shed its human form entirely. I wasn't sure if the red swarm of deadly light was its real form, or merely another metaphor the human mind would understand, but I could no longer look at it directly. “After all the shit you’ve done, what do you think you deserve?”

  Its voice became sweeter. “And if you make a deal with me now, I won’t torment you afterwards. I won’t even trick you, human man.”

  I shivered. The hell of it – pun not intended – was that the demon was telling the truth. If it made a deal with me, any kind of deal, it would have to keep that deal…and it wouldn’t even try to trick me. I could avoid the fires of hell…

  But that would leave the demon free on Earth. I couldn’t allow that to happen. The oath I had sworn to the United States of America had to mean something. Whatever the consequences for me personally, I wasn’t going to allow the United States to suffer because of my inaction. I’d be remembered longer than Benedict Arnold, assuming that anyone survived to condemn me…I couldn’t do that, whatever the cost.

  I put my hands on the girl’s neck and broke it with one smooth motion.

  The demon flickered once and vanished…

  But its laughter echoed in my head for a long time.

  Chapter Two

  Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.

  -Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

  The moment the demon vanished; I felt the magic curling through the building start to fade. The demon’s presence would have boosted and enhanced the magic the girls had generated, but without the demon in the circuit, it wouldn’t be long before it fell back to the normal background level. I had to act fast…and I could barely think. The Demon Shock was already starting to affect me. I reeled, as if I were drunk, and forced myself to stand straight. I didn’t have much time.

  I checked my radio. It was working, much to my relief. Magic can do strange things to technology; there are places out in the countryside where technology barely works at all, no matter how simple or complicated. “Chief,” I said, keying the radio, “it’s safe to move in now. The danger has gone, but everyone in the building needs medical attention. Leave the gym strictly alone until I clear it first. Go.”

  The police would take care of the injured – or, at least, those that had survived the experience. The demon had forced their dark inner selves to surface, the better to generate enough magic for its manifestation, and even the uninjured would be a long time healing. The lucky ones would know what they’d done under the demon’s spell; the unlucky ones would never know, but suspect, until their dying day.

  “Idiots,” I said, looking down at the five girls. Freed from the spell, they were lying on the ground, moaning. Two of them had blood running in streams from their eyes. They’d seen something that no mortal mind, not even a Guardian, could handle without being scarred. They’d be lucky to regain their sight, even with the most advanced medical and magical techniques. They hadn’t lost it through any mundane cause. “What were you thinking?”

  I checked the first girl quickly. She had been attractive once, with nice breasts and legs, but now she looked like a famine victim from Ethiopia or Afghanistan. Her bones showed through skin that had become almost translucent, but she was in no immediate danger. I checked the other four quickly and confirmed my suspicions. The demon hadn’t been able to drain them all dry before I’d arrived. The bastard had known that it wouldn’t work any longer…and had baited me anyway.

  Another wave of dizziness crashed over me and I staggered, before stumbling towards the small collection of safety equipment mounted on the wall. A red fire hose case loomed up in front of me and I clutched it gratefully, as a child might clutch a teddy bear, feeling how real it was. I could have held it forever, but that was the Demon Shock talking. There was no time to waste. I unsnapped the cover on the wall, unhooked the hose, and pointed it at the symbols the girls had drawn on the floor. They’d been luckier than they deserved to be. They’d somehow managed to get half of the runes and glyphs wrong. No wonder the demon had been able to drain them so easily. A little more incompetence and it would all have been over very quickly.

  “You wanted revenge,” I muttered, to the girls. In their state, I doubt they heard me. I was talking more to myself. “Was it really worth the price you paid?”

  I pointed the fire extinguisher at the symbols and triggered the water. The pressure nearly pushed me over backwards, but I knew somehow that if I fell on the floor, I wouldn’t be able to move again for a long time. I couldn’t leave the circle on the floor for long. The residues of magic would be drawn to it in the long run…and that would be very dangerous for the school, assuming that they weren't closed down in the wake of this disaster. Parents get very nervous when magic is near their children, not without reason. Children have no sense of proportion, let alone right or wrong. The girls could have hexed all of their enemies with ease, but no, they’d had to go for a demon. Idiots.

  The symbols washed away as I played the water over the floor, rapidly becoming unreadable as I sprayed them all with care. Any magician with proper training would have known better than to risk summoning a demon, but the girls hadn’t really known what they were doing. They’d created a circle that acted as an open invocation for a demon, a full-fledged Duke of Hell. The symbols they’d drawn proved how short-sighted they’d been. In science, the symbol and the item are not the same things, but in magic, they are. That is the core behind magic. The symbol has control over the reality.

  Water to dampen the magic, I thought tightly. The girls were still moaning, but I ignored them and continued to spray until the symbols had been completely destroyed. The fire extinguisher ran dry and I dropped it, narrowly missing my feet. It might not have been a bad thing – the pain would have helped me to stay focused – but I couldn’t afford broken feet now. It would have made completing my tasks impossible.

  I looked around the gym, searching for the book I knew they had to have somewhere…and finally saw it lying on a shelf that held gym equipment. Nothing was too
expensive for the school, I realised, as I staggered over and picked up the book. I’d expected an old leather-bound volume, looking like something from the previous few centuries, but instead it was printed on modern paper, with the help of a mundane printing press. I didn’t understand, at first, until I checked inside and realised that all of the symbols had been drawn carefully separate, rather than together. The symbol is not the thing, even in magic, if the symbol is not complete. Whoever had created the book had done an astonishing job. He had also created a nightmare.

  “Stupid bastard,” I swore. The girls moaned again and I realised I’d probably left them there longer than I should have done. They needed urgent medical treatment – and probably a trial. Once the news got out, once the parents of the dead or dying realised who was to blame for what had happened to their children, they would be out for revenge. Could the girls even be tried for their crimes in their state? I wouldn’t have put money on two of them surviving for the remainder of the week.

  I keyed my radio again as I picked up the book, after a quick check for unpleasant surprises. Magical books are rare – until now, I was beginning to realise – and most of them have booby traps implanted into their text for unwary visitors. I didn’t like it – books are there to be read, not to do horrible things to the readers – but I doubted that anyone cared what I thought. There’s a storybook in the Department of Magic that holds one of my fellow Guardians. She opened the book without taking any proper precautions and now she’s nothing, but part of the story. She probably hates it, if she can still think for herself; the story isn’t anything beyond a simple older version of a children’s tale. I hadn’t read the version of Snow White where she’s awakened, not by Prince Charming, but by the birth of twins, after the Prince had been and gone.

  “Chief, you can send medics into the gym now,” I said, carefully. I’d taken one last look around the room and seen nothing else out of the ordinary, nor had a cursory scan found any trace of magic left in the room. Hell, the book they’d somehow obtained didn’t have any trace of magic in the pages. Whoever had written it deserved a reward. A punch in the nose, for preference, followed by being thrown out the nearest window. We’d have to find him, quickly, but I had a nasty feeling that that particular genie was already out of the bottle. Modern technology, mixed with magic, had produced surprises before and would probably do so again. “They’re going to need stretchers.”

  I waited with the girls until the medics clambered down the steps. “My God,” the lead medic said. His nametag read BOB. “What the hell happened here?”

  “Hell is about right,” I said, grimly. The medics were pouring over the girls, examining them quickly, before lifting them up and placing them on the stretchers. I assisted one of them to lift one of the girls and was surprised at how light she felt. She seemed to weigh less than a feather. Judging from her emancipated body, I suspected that she wouldn’t survive the night. “Get them to hospital and do what you can for them.”

  I followed them up the stairs and back into the school. The aura of magic had faded completely, leaving the bloodstained floors and the bodies horribly out of place. The scene almost sent me into another dizzy spell, but I forced myself onwards, somehow. It was so hard to focus my mind, but I had no choice. I had to get the book back to my superiors and convince them that a Guardian should be assigned to hunt down the bastard who had produced it. If we moved quickly, perhaps we could destroy them all before another school – or worse – was destroyed by a demon from the pits.

  The sound of crying, great heaving sobs from hundreds of throats was growing louder as I reached one of the classrooms. The medics were trying to calm the teenagers down, but they’d been scarred too badly by the demon and its sticky fingers in their heads, awakening urges that normal civilised people struggle to repress. I saw bodies torn apart, some by other teenagers, others by their own hands. I hadn’t known that it was possible to commit suicide by snapping your own neck with your bare hands, but one of the boys, his hands stained with blood, had somehow succeeded. Had the demon pushed him into giving way to the great despair that lurks at the back of any human mind, I wondered, or had he killed himself when the spell snapped and he realised what he had done? He wasn’t the only one who had killed himself, either; there had been several suicides in the last few moments. The demon, I guessed, had been trying to rush things once I had walked in to confront it. The girls who had summoned the creature would be lucky not to be lynched by a mob.

  I found an empty room and stumbled into it, sitting down in a comfortable chair that had probably belonged to the headmaster. I needed to focus badly, but the Demon Shock was setting in firmly. My eyes felt like blazing coals in my head, burning away at my soul, and I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I didn’t dare sleep in the school, not until it had been emptied. God alone knew what might have been attracted by the demon’s presence. Any number of supernatural creatures might come to investigate once the night fell and the building was emptied.

  “I should report, I know,” I said, aloud, opening my eyes again. It hadn’t improved the pain. I massaged them gently with my fingertips, but that didn’t help either. I wanted eyewash, but I knew that that wouldn’t help either. The only cure for Demon Shock that anyone knew about was just to allow it to take its course. I could have had someone perform a memory-wiping spell on me, but somehow – and no one knew why – the Demon Shock would remain. Magic can’t solve all problems, no matter what most magic-users will tell you. It normally creates more problems than it solves. “I just need to…”

  I looked around the room in hopes of finding a distraction, and realised that I had stumbled into the Magical Creatures study room. It was decorated with pictures of the creatures that had infested our world ever since the Fair Folk lost their war with their mysterious enemy, sending thousands upon thousands of nightmares and horrors into our world. Some were quite mundane and common, such as the Werewolves and Vampires, others were far more dangerous – and, thankfully, rare. For most people who encounter a medusa…well, it’s normally the last thing they see. I saw a poster for Sour Ron, a well-known vampire-worshipper, and sighed. There are entire cults formed around vampires, attended by idiots who think that vampires are sexy and romantic, mostly because they’ve never met one. Vampires are not just bloodsuckers, but worse; they suck away at your very soul. If you fall into their thrall, they’ll drain you dry…and yet, some people regard that servitude as a honour. There are times when I wonder if the human race deserves to survive. How stupid can we get, really?

  The door opened and the Police Chief stuck his head into the room. “They’re going to be emptying the building for hours,” he said, grimly, “but so far they’ve found over two hundred bodies.”

  I winced. I had known that it was going to be bad, but I hadn’t known just how bad. I tried to look on the bright side, to remember that if the girls had tried for something smaller, they might have managed to manifest it fully before I arrived to throw a wrench into their plans, but it wasn't easy. The death toll was far too high. It would only give ammunition to the anti-magical crowd in Congress, who would demand laws that would be completely unenforceable and lead to more problems for the Guardians.

  “What happened here?” The Police Chief demanded. “What happened to these kids?”

  “Drained,” I said, bitterly. I had failed them. If I had acted quicker, perhaps some of the dead would have survived. The demon’s mocking laughter echoed in my head again, rattling around my skull. “They were used and then drained dry. I’m sorry, Chief.”

  “That doesn’t help,” the Police Chief snapped. “Who did this to them?”

  I could have told him. It would have been the easy choice. “That’s an official Guardian matter,” I said, firmly. The Guardians have jurisdiction over all magical incidents and crime, at least where humans are concerned, principally because no one else wants it. “The incident will be investigated and the guilty will be punished.”

  He glared at
me. I knew he wanted to shake me, perhaps hit me, and I wouldn’t have blamed him in the slightest. “Damn you,” he snapped. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Whatever I need to do,” I said. I would call my superiors and get them to send a team to the hospital, where they would pick up the girls and transport them to a more secure location. If they survived, they might be able to give us a lead on the person who gave them the magical – yet not magical – book. If not…if not, we wouldn’t have to bother with a trial. “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to sound compassionate. I probably just sounded tired and worn. In any case, he stood up and stomped out of the room. I sighed and carefully pulled myself up out of the chair, feeling my legs buckling before I managed to stand upright. It seemed an eternity before I reached the door, but once I was through, it was easier to walk down the corridor towards the entrance. My mind just couldn’t take it any more. On one side, the school was a school, with pictures the pupils had created on the walls decorating the building. On the other, it was a chamber of horrors, with dead bodies everywhere. The city was going to be in mourning for months. There hadn’t been a similar disaster since Mannington.