Demon Apocalypse

I realise I’m clinging to a tramp on the wing of an aeroplane, thousands of metres above the face of the earth. I have a split second to marvel at the craziness of that. Then the wind grabs us. We’re ripped loose. The plane soars onwards.

We fall.

FLIGHT

→ Dropping at a stomach-punching speed towards the earth. Freefall. Surrounded by blue sky, clouds far below but getting closer every second. I glance desperately at the tramp, praying to spot the hump of a parachute pack. But there’s nothing. He’s falling the same way I am, with only one way of stopping — the hard way.

I scream and flap frantically with my arms. Crazily I wish I was back in the plane. At least I stood a glimmer of a chance with the demons. This is death for certain.

“Boy!” the tramp shouts cheerfully. “Are you having fun?”

“We’re going to die!” I roar, clothes rippling madly on my limbs, the scream of the wind ice-cold in my ears.

“Not today,” the tramp chortles, then angles his body and glides closer towards me. “We can fly.”

“You’re a lunatic!” I shriek.

“Perhaps,” he grins, then arcs his body up, pulls away from me, swoops over and beneath me and draws up on the other side. “Or maybe not.”

“Let me hold on to you!” I yell, grabbing for him.

He pulls away. “No. It’s time you learnt to fend for yourself. You’re a creature of magic. Use your power.”

“I can’t,” I howl.

“Of course you can,” he tuts as if he was a teacher and we were debating an argument in class, safe on the ground, instead of hurtling towards it at a speed I don’t even want to think about.

“We’re going to die,” I shout again.

“I’m not,” he says. “You won’t either if you focus. But you’d better be quick,” he adds as we enter a thick bank of cloud, then burst through it a second or two later. “You haven’t much time.” He points at the earth, which I can see clearly now we’ve broken through the cloud.

I start to scream senselessly, thoughts wild, gravity pulling me to my high-impact doom. Then the tramp asks casually, “Are you cold?”

The craziness of the question draws a furious response. “What sort of a nut are you? I’m falling to my death and you’re discussing the temperature!”

“Answer me,” he says calmly. “Are you cold?”

“No. But what the–”

“At this height, don’t you think you should be? It was in the region of minus forty Celsius on the wing of the aeroplane. Any normal person would have felt the icy bite immediately. You didn’t because magic kept you warm. It can also keep you aloft — if you direct it.”

“What must I do?” I moan, the landscape filling my vision, surely no more than half a minute away from a bone-crunching collision.

“Visualise a bird,” the tramp says. “Think of the way it flies, how it soars out of a dive with the slightest tilt of its wings. Don’t picture your arms as wings or anything like that. Just imagine a bird and fix it in your thoughts.”

I do as he says. Close my eyes and think of a swallow swooping and soaring. I’ve seen them fly many times, when walking home from school or looking out of my bedroom window, glimpsed through the uppermost branches of the forest. They make it look simple — nudge out a wing, duck or pull up their head, catch the wind currents, sail them as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

My head rises. The roar of the wind lessens. A new sensation. Not one of falling, but of…

I open my eyes. I’m moving away from the earth, arms by my side, legs straight, head facing the clouds, the tramp by my side. Flying.

“There,” the tramp says with a wicked little grin. “Simple, aye?”

→ Flying high. A creature of the sky. Laughing and hollering with delight. Flying on my front, back, sides — however I please. Somersaulting mid-air, a far greater rush than any roller coaster.

“This is amazing!” I yell at the tramp, who flies nearby. “How am I doing it?”

“Magic,” he says.

“But I’m not trying. I’m not casting spells.”

“True magicians don’t need spells most of the time.”

I stare at him, stunned. “But I’m not a magician.”

“No?” He nods at the earth far below. “Then how do you explain this?”

“But Dervish said… I’ve never… Bartholomew Garadex!” I throw the name out desperately.

“You’re different to Bartholomew,” the tramp says. “Different to every magician I’ve ever known or heard about. But you’re a magician none the less. You draw your power directly from the universe, like the Demonata.”

Mention of the demons reminds me of the plane and its doomed passengers. “We have to go back!” I shout, cursing myself for flying around happy and carefree while Lord Loss and his familiars wreak havoc. “We have to save the people on the plane.”

The tramp sighs. “Dead, all of them.”

“No! They can’t be! We have to–”

“They’re dead,” the tramp says stiffly. “And even if they aren’t, what could we do?”

“Fight!” I roar.

“Against Lord Loss?” He shakes his head. “I’m powerful, boy, and so are you, but Lord Loss is a demon master. We wouldn’t last long in a battle with him.”

“We have to try,” I whisper, thinking of all those men, women and children. Picturing the Demonata and Juni Swan at savage work. “If we abandon them…”

“We’ve already abandoned them,” the tramp grunts. “The choice was taken when I pulled you out. Everyone on that aeroplane is dead and it has crashed – or will shortly – destroying the evidence.”

“You let them die,” I gasp.

The tramp shrugs. “I would have saved them if I could. I’ve devoted my life to protecting humanity from the Demonata. But some battles you can’t win. Some you can’t even fight.”

Flying in silence. Thinking about what happened and what the tramp said. Cold inside and scared. Unable to get the faces of the people – the dead – out of my mind. Yet a big part of me is secretly glad we didn’t go back, that the tramp spared me another run-in with the demons.

“This is insane,” I mutter, looking at the world beneath. “Who are you? What were you doing on the plane? Why have you been following me? I thought you were one of the Lambs. I know nothing about you. I need–”

“Soon,” the tramp hushes me. “I’ll answer all your questions once we’re safe on the ground. For now, just fly.”

And since there’s no point arguing, I tuck my arms in tighter, pick up speed, trail the tramp through the air and try – unsuccessfully – to push the faces of the dead from my thoughts.