Demon Road

“Nobody cheats me, child.”

“This one did. You gave him what he wanted and then he ran. He never held up his end of the bargain. Do you remember him?”

The Shining Demon paused for a moment. “I know the one you speak of.”

“I can find him. I can find him for you.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, but I can find out. I think I can find out.”

“Interesting,” he said.

“Do we have a deal?”

“If you do find him, Amber, then we will talk of deals.” Bare feet on stone. He was walking away.

“No,” she said.

A sound, like the sharp intake of breath, whistled through the room.

“No?” he echoed.

She had the feeling she had just committed a serious breach of demonic etiquette, but carried on regardless. “I want your word that we’ll have a deal if I bring him to you.”

“Is that what you want? Truly?”

“Yes,” she said, with what she hoped was steely resolve.

He moved closer. “A time limit, then,” he said. “How long will you need?”

“Uh … six weeks?” she said, doubling what Imelda had suggested.

“You have three,” said the Shining Demon, and Amber did her best not to grimace. “Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours.”

“And … and then you’ll protect me from my parents?”

He was standing right in front of her now. “I cannot alter the terms of the deal I struck with them, but, if you bring me this man in the time allotted, I will alter you, Amber. Your blood will be poison. To consume you would mean death.”

“But I’ll be all right, yes?”

That smile, appearing again in his voice. “Your blood will be poison to everyone but you. You have my word. Do I have yours?”

“I … I guess. What’s his name? The man who cheated you?”

“I can give you no more help. I am extending my hand to you – shake it, and we will have a deal.”

“I … I can’t reach out of the circle,” Amber said.

“Come now,” the Shining Demon responded. “Tradition must be upheld or the bargain is not binding.”

“I was told not to leave the circle.”

“You are still standing in it, are you not?”

Amber bit her lip, then slowly reached her hand out.

The Shining Demon grabbed her hand and twisted, and Amber cried out and screwed her eyes shut tighter as he pressed a fingertip into her wrist. It burned.

“Five hundred and four hours,” said the Shining Demon as he moved his finger. “If you fail to bring this man to me in the allotted time, your soul is forfeit.”

“No!” Amber cried, trying to pull away. “I didn’t agree to that!”

“Those are the terms,” the Shining Demon said, and released her so suddenly that she nearly stumbled out of the circle.

She turned away from him, clutching her right hand as she cracked her eyes open. The number 504 was burned into the inside of her wrist, a mark, a brand that was already hardening into a scar. The pain faded quickly. “I didn’t agree to this,” she said. “I didn’t—”

A wind rushed in from all five corridors, a dank wind that brought with it hints of rot and sickly perfume and overripe fruit and human waste, and the wind extinguished the circle of fire and Amber was outside again, in Miami, and Milo was rushing forward to catch her as she fell.

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MILO WOKE AMBER BEFORE five, stirring her from a fitful sleep. She had dreamed of demons and horns and the castles of hell, and she had dreamed of her parents chasing her. She had dreamed of herself as a monster, drenched in blood.

She turned over in her cot and cried silently.

When she had showered and dressed, she joined Milo in the kitchen. He’d made himself a coffee, and poured a juice for her. They drank in silence, listening to the soft sounds of snoring that drifted from Edgar’s bedroom. He had gone to sleep like an excited schoolboy after quizzing Amber about everything she had seen and heard. Her entire experience was now on paper, told through the crazy scribbles and hieroglyphics that was Edgar’s handwriting.

Everything except the time limit, the number that was now burned into her wrist. She wasn’t going to embark on this journey with Milo already viewing her as a screw-up. If she could come away with only one thing from all this craziness, it was going to be the respect of the people around her.

Her wrist ached slightly, and she glanced at it. The numbers now read 500.

Four hours gone already.

Amber pulled her sleeve down quickly to cover it, as Milo laid the map he was perusing on the countertop. “Wisconsin,” he said, tapping the old, creased paper. “And right here is Springton, Dacre Shanks’s old hunting ground. It’s about fifteen hundred miles from here. We’ll be taking I-75 for some of it, but we’re going to be doing our best to stay away from traffic. Your folks will be pulling out all the stops by now, and we don’t want to be spotted by any of their people.”

“How long will it take?”

“Twenty hours of driving, maybe twenty-two, if we were taking the quickest route. But because we’re not … I don’t know. Add another six hours on at the least. Twenty-eight hours on the road, driving eight hours a day, is a little over three days.”

“We can drive more than eight hours a day,” said Amber. “I’ve got my learner’s permit: we can alternate.”

“We won’t be alternating.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m the driver,” said Milo, in a tone that suggested finality, “and we’re taking my car, and, while I’ll be able to travel longer at the start, it’s going to quickly average out at eight hours a day of driving time. You don’t have to know why. You just have to know that those are the rules.”

“Whatever,” she muttered. Three days to get there, maybe a day to find Shanks and talk to him, which would leave her with seventeen days to find the man they was looking for and deliver him to the Shining Demon. Plenty of time.