We dragged Snell inside and slammed the door. There was a horrible smell of singed fur and clothes, and he was bleeding from the head. Mind you, he was very lucky to be bleeding at all... a direct hit would have killed him outright. As I watched, his fur faded from black, the feathers changing to white. His features changed only slightly.
Clumsy, I thought. I'd have changed species if I still lived a life of crime.
Snell opened an eye and caught sight of his hand. "Oh... no..." he moaned, realising that he'd reverted to his base form. I stood there in sheer amazement, staring at him. A snow-leopard with pure white wings and golden hair.
"A...Azrael?" I gasped, the words coming out before I could stop myself. He gave a cry of terror and his fur puffed up.
"Lord Cross...!" he hissed. "K-keep away from me, you maniac!"
"Damn it," I said angrily. "Pull yourself together! I've just been through all that with the Council."
I glanced around. People were staring at us, at me. I didn't need to be an incubus to realise what they were thinking. They were all wondering if the bigger threat was the demon mob outside, or the soul-devouring monster trapped inside with them.
"Look," I said, exasperated. "I'm not into that weird stuff anymore. I came here to tape a documentary, not torment Beings for kicks. I mean, live and let live, right?"
"What about your 'laws'?" one of them spat.
"My laws? The ones about making Beings and Creatures equal within the realm of Ha'Khun?"
"No, the ones saying that it is your duty as an incubus to destroy us!"
He would have used a more mocking tone if he'd dared, but we held the advantage. For while they outnumbered us, each one of us could take several of them - killing both body and soul - and without our help they had little chance of escaping the demons outside.
I looked at him blankly for a few moments. "First I've heard of it," I admitted.
"Thinking about it, that's probably some clan-specific thing. Seriously... there are only about thirty thousand of us in the entire world and we're scattered throughout it. Who could enforce laws on such a sparsely-distributed population?"
Our argument was interrupted by a sound from the roof. "Not good," I said. "It sounds as if the Big Bad Pig has decided to climb down the chimney. Now, you guys seem to have done an impressive job of armouring the walls and the door, but did you pay as much attention to the roof? Is there anything up there they can break?"
"The window!" one of them said. "We had to replace one of them... did we get the enchantment renewed on it?"
"Where is it?" I asked, dying to know why an unbreakable window needed to be replaced, but realising that there were more appropriate times.
"In the kitchens," he replied. Suddenly there was a crash as the window was kicked in. We dashed into the kitchen.
High above us, the demon was struggling. The window was just a shade too narrow for him to get through easily, so all we could really see was a pair of legs waving up by the ceiling.
Looking below, I immediately saw a way of saving ourselves, eerily similar to the grotesque fate of the Big Bad Pig. But I could also see the flaw in the plan, and besides, it felt too much like murder.
Izak and the doberman leader of the Burning Feather had fewer inhibitions. "Don't!" I said urgently.
"Whose side are you on?" sneered the dog as they opened all the lids.
"Get back!" I yelled up at the demon. "This is your only warning! Get back or you'll die!"
He laughed loudly and unpleasantly as he finally made it through. The three of us turned tail and I slammed the door shut, wondering what it was made from.
Moments later there came the most blood-curdling shriek as the demon fell into the deep-fat fryers, cut short when his head was submerged. I pray that I never hear the like again.
"Incubus," I reminded him almost on reflex, the whole of my attention taken up by something behind him.
He looked at me with a puzzled expression, until he followed my gaze to the small window set in the kitchen door. An expression of horror dawned upon his face as he noticed a small series of fires were starting to take hold. What they had done had not only killed the demon, but also splashed a large amount of superheated cooking fat throughout the kitchen. Their actions could very well have killed us too.
"I hate to say 'I told you so,'" I began. Then the sprinkler system kicked in, drenching us as well as the kitchen. I had been afraid of that. Indeed, we might have made it if this hadn't happened.
With the lid off, the water sprayed straight down, directly into the banks of deep-fat fryers. Hot fat erupted everywhere and the entire kitchen was ablaze in no time at all.
"You enchanted the outer walls, but what about the internal partitions?" I asked.
Snell rose groggily as the water soaked through his fur. I almost told him to lie down again, but what was the point? At least he'd die on his feet. Or perhaps he had a Warp-Aci. I certainly couldn't teleport us out myself because the place was warded against it.
"A fire?" he said, his voice becoming harder and less slurred. "Let me at it."
"Immolation is never the answer," I began, thinking he was still concussed, and I guess, trying to humour him.
"Ice magic," he said. "I'd make a piss-poor snow-leopard if I didn't know some tricks."
He got up unsteadily. "I need to reach the sprinklers." I gave him a leg up, and moments later the water stopped - he'd frozen a blockage in the feeder pipe. Fortunately the flow came from the kitchen. If it had flowed the other way, it would have made matters worse.
The door into the kitchens was now hot to the touch. Snell touched it anyway, and frost began to appear on the window. In the meantime, I located the main circuit breakers for the kitchen and threw them. It might have been a bit late by then, but on the other hand, it might just save our hides. When I came back, he had cast some kind of protection field upon himself and was striding boldly through the flames like some unearthly messianic figure.
The power now cut, he touched the fryers with a paternal hand almost as though he was making some kind of benediction, wing-tentacles serving to bless the other pair. Then he stuck his hands inside. His eyes glowed faintly for a moment and the fat froze instantly into a hideous, congealed mess. The demon was still in it.
"The hotter they are, the faster they cool," he coughed, staggering back through the door before stumbling and collapsing back to the ground.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Smoke," he spluttered. "Should be fine..."
Izak laid a hand upon him which glowed briefly. Apparently my brother knew more healing spells than I did. But then he'd stayed on at SAIA.
Meanwhile, blocking the water lines in the dining area had had an unforeseen benefit - it had increased the pressure on the sprinklers in the kitchen. With the fryers themselves now inert, the kitchen was returning to a state where we could enter it once more. But the damage had been done.
The structure, weakened by the flames was now held together entirely by the enchantments, which were never designed to protect charred wood and molten fibreglass, and the demons now had a more-or-less clear run at it unless I could somehow block them. This must have been how the window was broken... they were only enchanted against external damage. At that moment there was a crash from the kitchen and the door suddenly burst open. A demon strode through, killing the nearest Being with a sweep of her clawed hands.
Snell - still not fully recovered - leapt up and grabbed at the demon, placing one hand upon each side of her head and emitting a hoarse yell.
The demon crumpled backwards with a look of surprise and annoyance on her face. She had died instantly as her blood froze, rupturing every cell in her brain. I imagine it must have been a painless way to die, but nonetheless I have never been able to look an ice-mage in the eye ever since.
There was another crash from the kitchen, another demon entering from the roof.
The laughter died in his throat as he was struck by a hail of magical fire. It didn't do much damage, but his expression changed to one of pure rage and he prepared to smite the challenger with a burst of energy. But nothing happened. The demon stared and was promptly cut down by a hail of fire and ice from the fox and his mate as they flickered slightly, and for a moment I thought I had seen a flash of skin, like they had suddenly gone bald. But I had expected something like that. No normal Being would have dared.
"Help me with the door," I told them, and pulling the corpse away, began to invoke a ward with their aid. "Don't worry," I said quietly, "I won't tell the others what you are."
"Thanks," he replied, the relief evident in his voice.
I glanced back at Snell, who was sleeping. This was not normal for 'Cubi, but on the other hand, he had just taken a real beating and even his metabiologically enhanced body needed some rest to recover from an ordeal like that.
Hoping that I had not just made a critical mistake, I opened the front door and just beyond the warding, began to construct a portal as swiftly as I could.
When it was done, I dived through, finding myself in the forest as I had intended. I turned back and peered desperately through it.
"RUN!" I yelled, "Through here!" I couldn't hold the portal open for long, and in any case I had to shut it before the demons could get through or it would all be in vain.
There were people left in the restaurant, but I just couldn't keep the gate open. With a look of agony and despair, I let go and it collapsed to nothing.
In the Hovel, the front door became a front door again. I don't know what happened after that. Perhaps there were other Creatures among them, perhaps they did manage to evade the demons. I would like to think so, but deep down, I can't bring myself to believe it.
What I do know is that however many people once lived in that town, less than thirty survived.
Snell had agreed to help make the documentary, and Izak and I were to meet him again in the forest clearing just as we had tried to do before.
Reluctant as I was to return there, I realised that only by doing so could I get out of my rut and with luck, get over my feelings of guilt. Survivor's guilt, I suppose.
Arriving with a complete set of equipment, we chose another town - one which Snell had burgled before in the past - and set off to do the job.
We had just reached the treeline when a Stun spell took us from behind and everything went black.