The New Kid (30 page)

“I knew you’d join the team, Will!” he shouted. He was decked out in a black wife beater, slick leather pants he was way too fat for, and absurd-looking steel-toed boots. He looked so stupid Will wanted to puke.

Rudy stopped dancing with Sharon and looked up at Will. For the briefest moment Will thought he saw the old Rudy as he did his funny little wacko dance and his eyes looked almost human. But he wasn’t, of course. Will remembered the Demon Trapper in his backpack and hoped it would work.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Rudy,” he told him.

Rudy shook his head and quickly reverted to his demonic self.

“Nobody’s going anywhere, Will. Most of all you.”

Sharon suddenly leapt up like an animal, bounding from rock to rock until she reached him. She wrapped her arms around Will and made a move to kiss him, her tongue snaking a good six inches out of her mouth. It was barbed and slimy. Will backed up and grabbed
one of her wrists. He checked her palm. She had a small nasty-looking mouth with sharp teeth in the middle of it.

“Don’t be such a prick, Will. Give us a kiss,” hissed Sharon.

Now she had three tongues wagging at him, one out her mouth and one coming out of each hand. Will whipped out a small knife and cut off the tongue on her right hand. The mouth there squealed in pain. Sharon’s eyes narrowed and she lunged again. Will caught her with a breast-kick that sent her sprawling backward. She whirled and vomited at him. He ducked but some hit his hair and it burned. Will swatted it out.

The chamber erupted with laughter. Again Will’s eyes swept across the crowd of lost souls. It seemed like the whole of the town of Harrisburg was there. They’d all made deals with the Black Prince, sold away their souls for gratifications of the flesh.
I want to be taller, thinner, richer, luckier. I want to be stronger, to rule men, to get back at my ex-wife. I want to torment those who have hurt me. I want to live forever.
They all had wants and desires, and satisfying those desires meant paying the ultimate price. Though they didn’t know it, they had joined an army that would never stop marching. They began yipping and screeching and Will wanted to unload his weapons and waste the whole lot of them then and there. He was sorely tempted. And then he saw Rage.

The rat bastard demon was standing in one of the catacomb entrances, his head twitching like there was something crawling around inside it. His gaze was strange—sad yet somehow beckoning. Will’s blood began to boil when he saw what was dangling from a chain Rage held in one hand. It was Edward’s railroad pocket watch: bait, for Will. Will’s heart punched against his ribcage and as the red curtain drew across his mind’s eye he lost all sense of reason and anger overcame him. He raced across the chamber in pursuit of Rage, who fled down a tunnel while the demons below chattered like rats in a box. Their shrieking din rose up around him as he charged down tunnel after tunnel. The army of demons followed
eagerly like coyotes on the scent of blood and as Will ran after Rage their cries grew louder and more obscene. They could sense that the game, the hunt, was nearing its conclusion and no one wanted to miss a delicious moment. Will the New Kid, the demon hunter, would soon be confronted with the surprise of his life.

W
ill kept chasing the elusive demon, driven by a powerful feeling that by confronting and defeating Rage he would finally find his father. Surging with a burst of speed he ran like a super-halfback, dodging through stalagmites and leaping across a chasm to tackle Rage. The two tumbled in the dirt and Rage’s sharp nails clawed at Will, ripping through the sleeve of his leather jacket but failing to puncture the body armor suit Will wore beneath. Then they both sprang to their feet like jungle cats and squared off. Will attacked with a series of Savate kicks but Rage deflected them, kicking and punching and clawing back.

For a brief moment Will thought he might be losing his mind because he was certain he saw a blood-covered leech fly out of one of Rage’s ears. But Will
wasn’t
seeing things. Rage clawed at the ear like a dog, clearly going mad from the creatures inside his head. Will seized the moment and finally caught Rage under the chin with a kick that sent the demon sprawling backward. Rage’s head smacked into a boulder, stunning him, and Will took the opportunity to leap forward, pin him against the rocks, and get right in his face.

“Where is he?” demanded Will. “Where’s my father?”

“You’re so close . . . so very close. . . .” said Rage, a tinge of sadness and defeat in his voice.

“Why doesn’t anybody speak English down here!” shouted Will. “It’s a simple question! Where’s my father? Where’s the Dark Lord keeping him?”

Rage looked like he was going to answer but instead clutched the sides of his head and began laughing and crying at the same time as his head shook back and forth. His head was shaking so fast it looked like Rage’s head might fly right off his neck. Then, as suddenly as the spell had come upon Rage, it left. He took out the railroad pocket watch.

“This belongs to you,” said Rage.

Will snatched it from the demon’s grasp and held it. It was like a talisman; holding it infused Will with power and energy. He felt like he could conquer the world.

“Where is he?” he again demanded.

“You have an appointment. Look at the time,” said Rage.

Will glanced at the pocket watch. It was 7:06. Or if you ignored the usual way time was told and interpreted the numbers differently it would have been 6:66. Will’s grip on the demon had momentarily relaxed and Rage broke free and disappeared into the darkness. Will chased after him but stumbled. For one long moment in the black Will felt utterly and completely alone. And then just as suddenly as this terrible feeling had come upon him he was visited by another one. This time he felt a closeness to his father, a closeness he had not felt in years. He cried out to him.

“Dad!”

Will heard no reply, save for the warm winds whooshing through the shadowy catacombs. He ran blindly forward and came blasting out of a tunnel into a large cavern. Rage could have gone in any one of several directions, could have ducked into any number of tunnels. Will chose one but was met by a pack of demons. Some were demonteens and some were older demons and they all rushed him.
He whipped out his Megashocker and zapped three of them but there were too many of them. Two got close and ripped at him with their claws but his suit of under armor held and again he avoided serious injury.
Thank God for science class
, thought Will. Then a huge old mature demon, a mechanic from North Carolina who had once worked on his mom’s car, came in low, squatting like a sumo wrestler, his arms ropey with muscles.

“You’re a long way from Greenhaven, Buck,” said Will.

Big Buck smiled.

“The trip was worth it just to see you, Will,” snorted Buck.

Buck made his move and Will sidestepped him and brought the Megashocker down on his neck, raking it through his scalene muscles. Blood gushed out like Buck’s neck had sprouted a fountain. But if he was fazed he didn’t show it. He just grunted and whirled and swiped with one of his massive ham hands and his blade-like claw nails sliced Will’s left hand, drawing three thick lines of blood. The wound was deep and Will knew he’d have to act quickly. Summoning his time-bending speed he circled Buck in a blur, jamming the Megashocker into both his eyes and then stabbing him directly in his chest. Buck went down hard, dead before his head hit the ground, and he sparked and dematerialized like so many fireflies.

Backing into a small cave Will yanked a healing patch out of a sleeve pocket and slapped it on his hand. The bleeding stopped almost immediately and Will knew the wound would be healed in minutes. But he couldn’t wait, he had to keep moving. He raced out of the cave, chose another tunnel, and double-timed it, ripping along until he came to a Y-junction. Again he chose and again another pack of ghoulish demons cut him off. At the head of the pack were Duncan, Todd, and Jason. Duncan held a rusty saber with jagged edges.

“I would soooo like to cut your arms off,” he snarled.

“The feeling’s mutual,” replied Will. “Bring it on!”

Todd and Jason held Duncan back and shrieked some unintelligible demon words in his ear. Duncan’s whole demeanor changed as he nodded. Then the trio of Harrisburg juniors zoomed up while other demonteens swooped down. This group was a total freak show. Will was suddenly surrounded by demons that looked like they wanted to devour him and they were starting to really get on his nerves. He armed himself with the Rapid-Fire Terra Blazer.

“Hungry, are we?” said Will. “How about chowin’ down on this!”

He fired off staccato shots, blowing the heads off seven of the creatures while the survivors, including Duncan, Todd, and Jason, shrieked and swooped up into the darkness above. The funny thing was they didn’t seem all that alarmed that Will had just toasted their buddies.

Then Will caught sight of Rage and gave chase again, thinking to cut him off. But then another gigantic pack of demons dropped down from above out of a huge fissure, claws outstretched.

“If you freaks keep this up somebody’s gonna get hurt,” said Will.

Then he calmly used his Long-Range Blinder and zapped them with a light explosion that blew out their eye sockets completely. They just kept flying around, bashing into the walls and falling to the ground like dead birds, where Will scorched them with the Rapid-Fire Terra Blazer and their bodies squirmed and crackled and dissolved.

“Nobody listens,” said Will.

Another wave of demonteens, undaunted by the fate of their comrades, attacked. One got through, slamming into Will head-on and knocking him back against a jagged boulder that cut through his armor and pierced his skin. It was just a flesh wound but Will decided it best to temporarily retreat. He backed quickly into a low dark chamber and was reaching for another healing patch when he felt a sudden searing pain in his shoulder. Turning around he saw Principal Steadman gripping the other end of the spear embedded in
Will’s shoulder. Steadman smiled and jammed it farther in before he let go. Standing next to Steadman were Duncan, Todd, and Jason. Steadman’s forearm crutches were gone. The principal smiled.

“There’s no going back now, Will. We’ve all come too far for you to leave the party.”

Duncan and Todd and Jason were jabbering in demonspeak amongst themselves and then Duncan belched and smiled at Will.

“Look at it this way. You’re no longer the New Kid,” said Duncan.

“You’re so much more,” added Todd.

Will wondered what the hell they were talking about but was still in shock, his eyes wide with disbelief as he pulled the lance out and stared at Principal Steadman.

“They got to you?”

“Yes, they got to even me,” said Steadman. He did a little dance like that old black and white movie star guy Fred Astaire. “Look at me. I can dance! Don’t you see, it’s so much simpler this way. This way we’re all on the same page.”

“I’ll never be on the same page with you as long as I live,” said Will.

“That’s what you thi—”

Steadman was going to say “think,” but Will had whipped out a silver throwing blade from his boot and flung it at the principal. The scalpel-like blade sunk into his forehead and he toppled over but he still had a smile on his face. His feet kept on dancing until his body exploded in a shower of sparks.

Duncan, Todd, and Jason fled but other demons swooped down and looked plenty ready to rumble. Using his left hand Will yanked out the spear and threw it with enough force that it skewered an advancing demonteen, killing it on the spot.

Unlike the wound on his hand, the one inflicted by Principal Steadman was real bad. Will had to buy himself some time. Blood poured from his back as he changed his position, squatting down to charge and fire his weapon again and giving a pair of flying monkey
boys a double blast that not only blew the eyes out of their sockets but flamed their wings, too. They nose-dived like planes shot out of the sky. More shrieks of gleeful bloodlust bounced off the cavern walls as Will kept wasting them. They were like crazed religious fanatics, proud to meet their demise on the field of battle, certain some twisted nirvana awaited them on the other side. The Terra Blazer was out of juice and Will tossed it aside as he fled into another of the myriad stone coves. He yanked out two healing patches, reached back, and applied them to the gaping wound on his back. The bleeding took almost a full minute to stop and Will sat gasping for breath, listening to the demons caterwauling as they flew through the chambers, trying to pick up the scent of his blood.

As he pushed onward down another tunnel it occurred to Will that the demons attacking him weren’t just sacrificing themselves, they were also
herding
him, manipulating him, guiding him. He was a pawn in some sort of game and he had no idea what the rules were. He couldn’t think clearly; he kept seeing Rage and could not help himself. He pursued the demon with every ounce of strength he had, and yet Rage continued to dance just out of his reach.

At an expansive stone juncture Will looked up and saw that his cat and mouse game with Rage was being observed from high above by the Dark Lord himself. What was going on? What kind of psychotic sport was he engaged in? Where was Natalie and where was his father? As much as Will wanted to climb the sides of the walls and hack off the Black Prince’s head, he felt bound to pursue Rage. He sensed—no, he
knew
—Rage had answers and he wanted them so badly he could taste them. He could feel the truth coming within his reach.

Will charged onward through a maze of tunnels but stopped when he heard the one sound that was like a dagger in his heart, sapping his strength and willpower: the sound of crying. He stepped through a pool of light into a stone vestibule and when his eyes adjusted to the low light he could make out two forms that appeared
to be part of a piece of fabric that covered the entire wall. Firing up a light stick Will was able to see the entire horrifying scene clearly. The forms were female, and they were woven into a huge net of pulsing crimson veins, a living breathing creature that held them in its throbbing grasp.