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She stared at the bogle. “You little dipshit,” she said.
It leaped at her, a frenzied ball of fur and teeth. Amber batted it away and stumbled as the bogle hit the ground and immediately resumed its attack. She evaded it as much as she could, throwing things in its path, jumping to avoid its swipes, but it was closing in and suddenly she had nowhere left to go. She kicked at it and missed and it leaped at her leg, tried to dig its claws into her flesh, but beneath the yoga pants her skin grew black scales, and the bogle bounced off. Right before it hit the ground, Amber managed to land a solid kick that sent it hurtling into the shadows.
She ran for the DIY section, listening for the telltale patter of tiny, evil feet. She heard a noise and turned, saw nothing but gloom and darkness. She backed up, her foot nudging something heavy. A man, lying there, and covered inexpertly in hockey jerseys. She crouched, clearing them away, revealing first the security-guard uniform and then the face. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and his eyes were missing.
Amber straightened, and a bogle landed on her shoulder – a different one, with darker fur – and she cursed and swiped it off. More of them were on the shelves above her, flinging themselves down with delighted yips of sadistic pleasure. One landed on her head, its claws getting tangled in her hair. She yanked it off, held it by its leg as it twisted and snapped, but another one came down right on her horns, impaling itself and squealing as it writhed.
Amber drop-kicked the one in her hand, tore the other one off even as she felt its blood trickle down to her scalp, and stomped on it till it shut the hell up.
She stared down at the mess she’d made, couldn’t help but feel like she was beating up teddy bears.
There was a high-pitched whine and a bogle came at her with a goddamn electric saw. She jumped back, tried to kick it, but it was too fast. Her scales would probably protect her against the saw, but she didn’t want to test that theory. She jumped on to a display table that proved as wobbly as a rickety boat, and the bogle circled her like a shark with a whirring, serrated disc for a fin. Around and around it went, cackling madly, going faster and faster, but then it must have tripped, because suddenly the disc vanished and the cackling stopped, and chunks of fur and flesh flew up and the saw cut off.
She stayed where she was, making sure it wasn’t a trick, but then another bogle rammed into the table legs and Amber found herself leaping off, getting a foot on to something in the dark and springing off that, before crashing into the sports section. She got a foot tangled up and fell, bringing down a rack of sportswear around her.
She stayed on the ground for a moment, groaning. There was movement around her, stifled cackling, and when she looked up she saw a bogle holding a golf club.
“Bwuuh!” it squealed, and swung the club right into her face.
Black scales formed before the impact, but it still hurt like hell, and Amber rolled sideways, grabbed a shelf and pulled herself up, turning just in time to take a baseball bat right to the jaw. She whirled, tripped over her own feet and went stumbling, overturning a display of tennis racquets.
The bogle with the baseball bat chortled, leaped off a display of catcher’s mitts and scuttled away. Amber let it go, focusing instead on remaining upright.
When her vision stopped spinning, two small figures came into view, standing on the overturned display and brandishing racquets. These bogles were wearing toddler tennis clothes – the one on the left wore white shorts with its T-shirt, while the one on the right wore a white pleated skirt. They even had headbands.
The first bogle threw a ball high into the air – only it wasn’t a ball: it was one of the security guard’s eyes – and when the bogle swung the racquet the eye exploded on contact. The bogle howled in dismay, and now the one in the skirt threw its eyeball into the air, swung the racquet and connected beautifully. The eye hit Amber in the face with a wet smack, and she charged after them. The bogles jumped down and ran away, screaming.
She frowned when she heard a strange sort of gurgling behind her. Recognising a distorted version of the Rocky theme tune, she turned to watch a bogle wearing boxing gloves emerge from the darkness.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
The bogle shuffled forward, threw out a series of jabs, moving its head from side to side as it got closer.
“This is insane,” Amber said loudly. “Who’s dressing you? Are you dressing yourselves? How do you even know that movie?”
The little boxer-bogle paid her no heed as it closed in.
Shaking her head in frayed disbelief, Amber took a step and kicked it and watched it sail away over the racks of clothes.
Then she heard a warbling voice from the other side of the partition.
“Plahby-pluh!”
Amber frowned, moving forward slowly.
She peered round the side of the partition, seeing nothing but gloom and display stands. She carried on.
“Tooty-plahb!”
Then she saw them, maybe eight or nine, lined up in formation on the floor ahead, all of them wearing football helmets that covered most of their bodies.
“Bloe! Blah! Blee!”
The bogles charged forward and the quarterback stepped back and Amber just had time to catch the glint of the pistol in its hands before it opened fire. She dived out of the way even as the recoil flipped the quarterback head over heels, and then the helmets were flung off and the rest of the bogles came at her with the butcher knives they had been concealing underneath.
She cursed, rolled away from them, her scales deflecting some early slashes, but they were too fast. In an instant, they were all over her, knives stabbing downwards. She turned over and over, but they kept their balance like they were goddamn log rollers or something. Amber’s clothes were being hacked to shreds, but her scales covered her, head to foot. Some of the little bastards were attempting to force the tips of their knives in between her scales to get at the skin beneath. The ones on her head were trying to stick their knives in her eyes, her ears, her mouth.
Amber thrashed, knocked a few off, struggled to sit up and then a tsunami of bogles descended on her. She managed to turn over on to her belly, tried to crawl, but they flattened her to the floor again.
Then their master walked into view.
“Aw crap,” she muttered.
(#ulink_6dbbeafc-8286-5ee6-8897-890446f54bdd)
MIDDLE-AGED AND SAD-LOOKING, PAUL Axton dragged a cheap plastic chair behind him. He sat on it, and looked down at Amber.
“So you’re the Shining Demon’s new representative,” he said. “Prettier than the last one, and that’s no lie. Astaroth’s demons tend to be the best looking – have you noticed that? I could have been one of you, you know. I could have asked to be a demon, to be tall, and strong, and handsome. Red, too, and horned, but you can’t have everything. Of course, I didn’t ask to be any of those things. I just asked for the ability to communicate with these fascinating creatures.”
Amber wanted to respond, but the fascinating creatures kept trying to stick knives in her mouth.
“Naturally, I’ve heard about you,” he continued. “You discovered your demonic heritage only a few months ago, didn’t you? Which means you’re sixteen years old. That’s the age when all this happens. When you go through your … changes. But, instead of a heart-warming family moment, your parents proceeded to hunt you clear across the country. Bill and Betty Lamont. Quite a notorious couple, in certain circles.
“Interestingly, though, they are not the only parents who like to eat their young. Lions, polar bears, certain types of prairie dogs … they all indulge in infanticide when the mood takes them. Lots of others, too. And that’s just the mammals. But only demons like your parents have absorbed the strength of their offspring in such a blatant fashion.
“How long has it been going on? A hundred years? More? You had a brother and sister, didn’t you, that your parents and their friends consumed? I can barely imagine what that must have felt like. That rush of power. That taste of immortality. And then it was you on the dinner platter.
“Only you turned the tables, did you not? Now that you’re Astaroth’s representative, the hunters are the hunted, and the hunted is the hunter. Although, obviously, in view of your current situation, the hunter is back to being the hunted again. The circle of life is rarely kind.”
Axton chuckled thinly. “Once upon a time, I was something of an anthropologist – now I am so much more. I have devoted my life to the study of creatures like these bogles – creatures too vicious to survive in today’s world. Take you, for example. Those scales are wonderful. Not reliable, though, are they? I’ve found, in my studies, that they are tied to your unconscious instincts. Yes, you can control them to a degree, but I bet they’ve let you down before, haven’t they? When you needed them most? Have you ever asked yourself why?”
Amber just stayed where she was. The bogles started going after her eyes again so she squeezed them shut, kept her head down. Some of them, on the lower half of her body, were still trying to stick their knives in between her scales. She struggled to control her temper.
“It’s all subconscious,” Axton was saying. “If you think you ought to be punished in some way for sins you have committed, or are about to commit, your scales will let a little damage in. It’s really quite interesting, linked as it is to one’s own self-loathing. How about you, young lady? You must have done some rather dubious things to have been made the Shining Demon’s representative. How much do these sins affect you? How much do they eat away at you?”
Amber tried to block out his words, but he was right. Her scales should have protected her from Elias Mauk the day before they reached Desolation Hill, should have protected her fingers from his hammer. In the battles she’d been in since, sometimes the scales shielded her from the punch, the slash, and sometimes they didn’t. They’d failed her before. If they failed her now, she’d be little more than a pincushion to these creatures.
“It’s all about doubt,” Axton said. He had a miserable voice. Everything about him – his voice, his slumped shoulders, his sad little belly – screamed loser. More than that, they screamed lost. Defeated. “That’s the killer, isn’t it?” he said. “The moment a little bit of doubt creeps in, it all starts to go wrong.”
Panic flared as Amber felt the scales on her stomach start to slowly retract. She tried to command them, to regrow them, but more retracted in an instant. She pressed her belly to the floor, did her best to pretend to be calm, but more scales were disappearing. A knife scraped her red skin and drew blood.
This guy. Axton. This asshole. Talking about doubt. Talking about her scales failing her. He did this. He put these thoughts in her head and now they were there, they had taken root, and the more she tried not to think of it, the more she thought of it and the more her scales retracted.
“Whumba de na poebee,” Axton said, and the bogles grumbled, but paused in their stabbing.
Amber raised her head, looked up at him. “You control them.”
“Me?” said Axton. “No, not at all. But I communicate, and they listen. Aren’t they wondrous? Terrific mimics. Although I think they may have picked up some bad habits from watching all that TV.”
“You know why I’m here,” she said.
Axton nodded. “Because I made a deal with the Shining Demon, and I welched.”
“He sent me to bring you back.”
“And you’re surprised I’m resisting?”
“Nope,” she said. “Not surprised at all. Expected it, to be honest. Was surprised by the freaky little monsters you’ve got running around, though.”
Axton smiled. “Didn’t see them coming, did you?”
“I did not,” Amber said, feeling the air on her skin as more scales retracted. The small of her back was now bare, and she expected to feel a knife plunge into her flesh at any moment. “You’re a clever man,” she said.
“I am?”
“Got me doubting myself.”
He chuckled. “It’s all true, though. Astaroth can’t have you too unstoppable, you see. You demons need chinks in your armour, both figuratively and literally.”
Her arms. Her arms were bare. Amber could feel the bogles’ claws digging into her skin now. She could feel the cold steel of their knives pressing between her shoulder blades.
“He didn’t just grant you the ability to talk to these little bastards, did he?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
Axton shrugged. “I can talk to anything and anyone.”
“Including me. You’re getting me to calm down. The more I calm down, the less scales I have.”
“We’re just having a conversation.”
“While you’re getting ready to kill me,” said Amber.
“That’s by the by, is it not? I’m not a violent man.”
“How many people have you killed?”
“There are plenty more people to go around, young lady. There are only a few of these bogles. Although, admittedly, they do breed incredibly fast.” Axton nodded to a bogle that sauntered towards him, holding its bloated belly. “They need very specific nesting conditions in order to lay their eggs, however. A very particular environment that provides both a viable temperature for birth and food for the offspring.”
“Yeah?” said Amber. “And where’s that?”
Axton blinked. “Why, on you, of course.”
(#ulink_fa7d3786-03f2-50ba-9d74-db5637781b22)
AMBER GLARED. “DON’T YOU dare.”
“It’s actually a very beautiful process,” said Axton.
“I swear to Christ,” she responded, gritting her teeth, “if it lays its eggs on me I’m gonna break every goddamn bone in your body.”
Axton smiled with reassuring banality. “It’s not going to hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about. Well, it will, but it’ll be over before you know it. They are rather fast eaters.”
“It’s not about the pain, Paul. I just have a rule that forbids anything from ever laying its eggs on me, that’s all. It’s a personal thing.”
“It’s nature, young lady,” Axton told her. “It’s the circle of life.”
“If it were the circle of life, it would keep happening to me. But this, this right here? This’d be the first time a little furry freak laid their eggs on my body, so it’s not the circle of life, it’s just gross.”
“It won’t take long.”
Amber watched the pregnant bogle get closer. “Which part?” she asked.
“Any of it,” said Axton. “They have an accelerated hatching rate.”
Amber took a deep, calming breath. “Paul, you pay attention to what it is I’m saying to you.”
The pregnant bogle moaned.
“Too late, I’m afraid,” Axton said. “Fahl-ahey booshop.”
Amber felt dozens of little hands grabbing her, and before she could lash out she was flipped on to her back. The bogles swarmed over her once more, their knives tearing through the lower half of her tank top, poised to pierce her red skin as her scales continued to slowly retract.
“I wouldn’t move, if I were you,” said Axton. “Their eggs can be laid on a freshly killed corpse, but it’s certainly not the ideal way to do it.”
Some of the other bogles lay down, forming steps to allow the pregnant one to waddle up on to Amber’s bare belly. The bogle poked and prodded and Amber growled, and got a couple of blades nicking her throat for her efforts.
Finally, the pregnant bogle squatted down, right over Amber’s navel, and closed its eyes and started straining.
The scales on Amber’s face were now fully gone, and the knives had more places to threaten. It was Axton’s voice that was doing it, even more than his words. His voice was getting into her head, lulling her defences to sleep.
“Someday I want their eggs to be laid on me,” Axton said. “To be a part of this, to be such an integral part … that would be the ultimate honour.”
“Take my place, then,” Amber said quickly. “Come on, time’s a-wasting.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Axton. “They were going to use the body of the security guard, but now they have you. I can only hope that someday soon I prove myself worthy of being a nest.”
The pregnant bogle grunted, dumping a reddish-tinged liquid on to Amber like someone had upturned a bucket. The smell hit her and Amber clamped her mouth shut and stopped breathing as she turned her head away.
Axton was weeping. “Nature’s miracle,” he said.
Amber looked back at the bogle as its straining got more intense. Its belly bulged, and as the egg protruded Amber tried to go to her happy place. But she didn’t have a happy place. All she had was the floor of a department store at night, and the furry monster that was laying its eggs on her belly.
The first egg plopped out. It was grey and mottled, covered in a thick, mucus-like liquid. It settled on her belly.
The bogle strained again, and a second egg began to appear.
“How many?” she muttered between clenched teeth.
Axton raised an eyebrow. “Sorry? What was that?”
