a tremulously thin man who must have been in his seventies. The frail man tumbled to the wooden planks, looking up at Jacob in shock. The other members of the circle took an involuntary step back, except for Rosalyn, who knelt by Hiram’s side and tried to help the old man to his feet.
“What are you doing, Jacob? This is not what we are working for!” she yelled up at the grinning man.
“It’s not what you fools are working for, but it is exactly what I’ve been planning. My lord Raguel shall lift me up from this mediocre vessel and give me the power of the heavens! I shall make men bow before me! They will give me money, women, influence . . . whatever I desire will be mine!”
I’d heard enough. I dropped down from the branch to land about ten feet from the bandstand and started walking toward the circle and the accidental demon summoners. “There are just two problems with that, friend.” I stepped onto the bandstand across the circle from Jacob. “One, that’s not Raguel. And two, I’m not going to let him stick around on this side of the Pits.”
The demon charged forward, just enough of him pushing through the smoke to let me see his face, and it was not something I wanted to ever see again. Horns, yellow eyes with vertical cat-slit pupils, a triple row of needlelike teeth, and a forked tongue slavering across its chin made me take an involuntary step back. I raised my voice above the demon’s growls. “Time to go home now, pal. I bet there’s a lovely Mrs. Hungry Demon right down there in Hell just about ready to call you in for supper. So piss off back to the eternal fires while I have a brief chat with your little friend here.” I cracked my knuckles on the word chat so there would be no mistaking exactly how unpleasant I intended for that to be.
“NO!” screamed Jacob, charging forward with his eyes on the outline of the circle.
“Ventus!” I shouted back at him, calling wind to slam him through the air into one of the beams holding up the bandstand’s roof. Heard the wood crack under the impact, but Jacob was up almost immediately. Damn demon-touched. He would barely feel pain now, unless it was something intense like the broken arm I gave him the night before.
“Stop him,” I called to Rosalyn. “Don’t let him break the lines of the circle. If he does, there’s nothing to contain the demon.” I turned to punch the yellow-eyed man coming up on my left in the jaw, spinning him around and knocking him to the floor. As I whipped my head from side to side, I saw that the other two demon-touched humans were coming my way, while the demon in their midst had shed his human disguise and was trying to get through the circle from the outside. Being an infernal creature, he couldn’t manipulate the circle directly, so after a few seconds, he turned his attention to me as well.
Great. Counting Jacob, I now had four demon-touched humans and one lesser Pit Dweller coming for me, with two innocent civilians lying on the floor staring at the whole mess with their eyes wide and their mouths agape. I looked around for the last member of the coven, and offered up a quiet prayer of thanks that all I saw of him was his back as he beat a hasty retreat down one of the park’s shady paths.
I called power and hurled two orbs of purple force at the nearest cultists, striking them full in the chest. One went down flat on his back, but the other dodged my blast and stepped in close to engage me. Shit. The longer I was tangled up with these minions, the more time Jacob had to erase the circle and set this demon free upon the world. I ducked a clumsy punch and worried a little less as I dropped the zealot with one punch. A spray of long blond hair as she fell told me I had just decked a woman, but I didn’t have time to feel unchivalrous, because the demon was upon me.
“Die, human!” the Pit Demon hissed, leaping for me. It was a hair over five