--------------------

One thing I’d learned from my many years as a teenage slacker, was the fact that most mall food courts were interchangeable. Half the restaurants in these food courts were from the same chains, while the other half might as well have been. So even though I was eating a greasy slice of pizza from a restaurant that I’d never even heard of before, it was virtually identical to the cheap greasy pizza from the mall back home.

Julie sat at the table beside me, making exaggerated ‘nom nom’ sounds as she ate her own pizza. I watched her with an amused smile, knowing how much she was enjoying this. Not the pizza…but the freedom to eat it without guilt or fear of getting fat. Julie had never been one of those girls who always turned her nose up at junk food in order to only eat tofu and salads, but I knew that she’d been concerned about her weight anyway…mostly due to the fact that she tended to put it on so easily. But not anymore. I was pretty sure that this was her favorite part about being Val Kyr.

While we ate, I carefully watched our surroundings. The mall wasn’t very busy at this time of day so there weren’t as many people as there could have been, but there were still a couple guys who kept looking over at us. I was uncomfortable with this attention, though Julie seemed to alternate between enjoying it and feeling embarrassed. However, I did my best to ignore the stares and appreciative looks, and instead tried to see if anything stood out as possibly being related to a daemonite.

“You know,” Julie said with a sigh. “I never thought I’d say this, but I am sick and tired of the mall…”

“I know what you mean,” I agreed, letting out a sigh of my own.

It was the second day that Julie and I had been wandering around the mall, keeping watch for any daemonite threats. And in that time, we’d checked out every single store at least twice, including the ones that neither of us had any interest in at all. It would have been great if we could have at least gone and caught one of the movies that had recently come out, but we couldn’t do that and do our real job at the same time.

Yesterday, I’d bought everything I really needed…and then some, which left me little to really shop for today. I’d been tempted to buy a new Kindle to replace the one I’d lost, but that would have been useless once we returned to Val Halla. Instead, I settled on buying a few real books, which I could still read in a place where electronics were useless.

I let out another sigh, eager for Cindy to finish with her shift so we could leave, though that wouldn’t mean the end of our bodyguard duty. Yesterday, once Cindy was done with work, Connie and Shannon took over as her primary bodyguards, taking turns with the duty, while everyone else took turns walking around her apartment complex. Since Cindy’s apartment was right across the street from our motel, we could get to her pretty quickly if someone did spot a daemonite.

“I wonder how long we have to keep watching her,” Julie mused aloud.

With a shrug, I answered, “Probably until she either agrees to become Val Kyr…or we figure out a way to make sure she’s safe after we go.”

Admittedly, that did bring up a few questions about what we would do if Cindy said no. We certainly couldn’t guard her for the rest of her life, nor could we guard every other potential Val Kyr. There were far too many out there who carried a spark of val, and Val Halla didn’t even know who half of them were. A lot of bloodlines had never been recorded for one reason or another.

Just then, I noticed two boys walking directly towards us, making me groan in anticipation. They were about the same age as Julie and I, and I’d seen them staring at us a short time ago. In fact, I’d even listened in on their conversation, and I wasn’t exactly happy about their crude descriptions of hot they thought we were and what they wanted to do to us.

“We’re not interested,” I said, before either boy could open his mouth.

“But you don’t know what we have to say yet,” the taller of the two boys responded with a grin, apparently deciding that I was just playing hard to get. “I was just going to ask if it hurt when you fell from Heaven…”

I glared at the boy while Julie snickered. “Actually,” I responded with an evil smile, “my fingers do hurt a little from digging my way up from Hell…” Julie burst out laughing.

“Hey, give me chance,” the shorter of the two boys said, giving a smile which I thought was supposed to be charming.

“I’m sorry,” Julie said, giving them both an obviously fake smile. She reached out and grabbed my hand, then gave me an exaggerate look of adoration that almost made me burst out laughing. “But my girlfriend and I were trying to have lunch in peace…”

The two guys both looked embarrassed and quickly hurried off much to my relief. I rolled my eyes in exasperation, then told Julie, “That was the third time today…”

“Yeah,” Julie responded with a shake of her head. Then she brightened up, “But at least this wasn’t as bad as that old guy… I mean, he was almost old enough to be my grandpa…”

I shuddered at the memory. Getting hit on by guys was awkward enough as it was, but when I had some creepy old guy asking me out on a date, that had been downright disturbing. I couldn’t wait until we could get away from the mall, and away from all this unwanted attention.

“You are getting better at handling those guys,” Julie pointed out, reminding me of how I’d frozen like a deer in the headlights the first time a guy had hit on me. I shuddered at the memory.

I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time, saying, “Lindrell should be here any time…”

Lindrell had called a little earlier, saying that she was going to come and see how we were doing. For the most part, I suspected that she’d realized just how bored the two of us were, so she was coming to break up the monotony a little. I made a mental note, that once we were done with this mission, to avoid going to any mall again for a long time.

We didn’t have to wait much longer before Lindrell arrived. She saw us across the food court and immediately came to where were sitting, taking a look at the few bags we’d collected today, then taking a seat.

“No makeup today?” Lindrell asked me with a faint smile.

I turned bright red and self-consciously touched one of the earrings I was still wearing. Yesterday, when she’d seen me in jewelry and makeup, she’d been amused, though she had complimented me. I had to admit, that after the time Julie and I spent in the makeup shop getting makeup and lessons, I had looked pretty good. However, I wasn’t really comfortable with wearing makeup yet…though Julie had talked me into buying a small makeup kit for the future.

“Not today,” I responded, trying to play it off as though the makeup had been no big deal. I glanced over to Julie, who actually was wearing a little makeup, though it was done pretty lightly.

“There is no shame in looking beautiful,” Lindrell assured me. “Or in taking pride in your appearance. In fact, it pleases me a great deal to see that you’re starting to experiment with such things.” With that, she put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a gentle smile.

“I was thinking of dragging her in for another makeover today,” Julie said, giving me a teasing smile.

Lindrell chuckled at that. “Just do not get distracted from your true mission here. You must be ready to respond in the unlikely event that daemonites do make a move in this place.”

I nodded at that, then said, “We’ve been keeping a close watch.”

“Good,” Lindrell responded, looking pleased. Then she looked around for a moment before musing, “Now, for something to eat…”

A short time later, the three of us were all eating ice cream sundaes from Baskin-Robbins, with mine being smothered in extra chocolate sauce. Once again, Julie was making exaggerated ‘nom nom’ sounds, and I was pretty sure she was doing this for my benefit. Lindrell just gave her an amused smile, the same kind you might give a little kid who was doing something silly but cute.

Then I suddenly felt a small surge of val energy, coming from Lindrell’s purse. Lindrell frowned as she reached into the purse, pulling out a golf ball sized stone that was carved into an odd shape. This was a key stone, though most Val Kyr just called them keys for short. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but this stone was somehow linked to the three stone pillars that surrounded the anchor in Val Halla, and because of that, this allowed for communications between the two realms. From what I’d been told, these keys were also how the anchor guardians knew when and where to open portals so that Val Kyr could return to Val Halla.

Lindrell clenched the key tightly in her hand and quietly said, “I’m here…” I could feel the strange mix of val energies from the stone, energies that synchronized with Lindrell and allowed her to communicate. Since I wasn’t touching the key, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, only what Lindrell was whispering in response, which wasn’t much. Then she finally did the equivalent of hanging up and putting the key back into her purse.

“What’s wrong?” Julie asked.

Lindrell sat there for several seconds with a grim expression before she finally answered, “There’s been another incursion…”

“No,” I gasped, remembering what the daemons had done to that town and everyone in it.

“Daemons destroyed a village in Kenya,” Lindrell stated with a dark expression. “Apparently, they’ve been there for about a week…” Julie and I both let out a gasp of horror at that as we realized just how much damage the daemons could have done in that time. “They’ve started to get entrenched, so Freya sent six triads to deal with it.”

I grimaced, clenching my fists in anger as I thought about all the people those daemons must have killed. “Are we going?”

“No,” Lindrell shook her head. “For the moment, we’re staying here. The daemonites are becoming more brazen…and seem more willing to operate in the open.”

I nodded at that, feeling a knot in my stomach as I considered what she’d told us. “Two large incursions in less than a month…” From what I’d been told, large incursions were a rare thing, and when they did happen, they usually occurred in the middle of nowhere…well away from any populations that could report their presence…at least until they were fully entrenched. “This isn’t good…”

“At the rate the daemonites are moving,” Lindrell said, nodding agreement, “it will only be a matter of time before they launch an incursion in a large populated area.”

After hearing that news, I no longer felt like finishing my ice cream, and neither did Julie or Lindrell. All three of us threw away what was left of our sundaes and started walking across the mall, towards where Shannon and Cindy were busy working.

“I have bad news,” Lindrell told Shannon once we arrived at her kiosk. Shannon’s expression immediately turned grim and wary, but before she could say anything, Lindrell told us, “You two can go back to keeping a lookout…”

“Sure thing,” Julie responded, looking just a little disappointed that we were being sent back to work. I couldn’t blame her since this was a lot more interesting than walking around the mall yet again.

“You know,” I told Julie to cheer her up, “there is that cookie shop on the other end of the mall…”

“If I was in the mood for junk food,” she told me, “I would have finished my ice cream.” However, I noticed that she was already starting to walk in that direction anyway.

I stretched out my awareness as we walked, something that I’d practiced with enough over the last few days that I was now able to do this without much thought or effort. A middle-aged man was watching us with an appreciative look while a woman, who I assumed to be his wife, glared alternately between us and him. A woman at a kiosk watched as we went past as well, though from the look on her face, I assumed she was deciding whether or not she could talk us into buying the cutesy hair brushes that she was selling. I let all the details from my enhanced awareness come and go.

Suddenly, I felt something at the edge of my awareness, something which felt…wrong. I froze and immediately focused all my awareness in that direction, and I could feel the sense of wrongness even more clearly. It was the same sense of wrongness that I felt all over the place in Australia. A daemon. And as I focused on it, the feeling of wrongness grew stronger and stronger. More daemonites were appearing.

“They’re here,” I blurted out, my heart jumping in my chest.

“Oh shit,” Julie exclaimed, already pulling out her cell phone to call Lindrell while I began opening the backpack that had been slung over my shoulder so I could pull out the weapons.

Before I’d even finished undoing the zipper, I heard the first scream, which told me that I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the daemons. However, that was immediately followed by more screams of terror, which told me just how bad this was. A moment later, the first daemon came into view, racing down the hallway and looking mean and nasty. It looked something like a bald rodent, that was covered with scabs and warts, and was about the size of a large dog.

“I’ve got the rodent of unusual size,” I snarled, pulling one of the guns from the backpack and opening fire. My fighting lessons in Val Halla hadn’t included firearms of any sort, but I’d done enough practice shooting with my dad that I had no problem hitting what I aimed for. It took six shots, but the daemon fell to the ground dead. Without a word, I handed the other gun to Julie.

“I’ve never used one of these before,” Julie admitted, though she had a grim look on her face. “But I’ll figure it out…”

“Point this end to the monsters and pull the trigger,” I said, handing her the short sword while keeping the axe for myself. After all, the axe was already charged with my essence.

Thick gray mist began to pour down the hallway where the daemon had come from, and several people came running in our direction just ahead of the mist. It only took a few more seconds before I saw the figures walking down the hall, half obscured by the mist. There were four figures in red cloaks and at least a dozen daemons.

“Oh shit,” I gasped. Three daemonites had completely destroyed that town, and now there were four of them here in the mall. I gulped, having a very bad feeling about this.

My eyes were immediately drawn to a short and stocky daemonite who was actually riding on the back of a hellhound, and who was most likely a binder. Every daemonite had a psychic ability to communicate with daemons, which is how they were able to be near the creatures without being torn apart themselves, but binders took that ability even further, being able to create a powerful psychic link that let them control the daemons completely. Only a binder would risk riding a daemon.

The next daemonite was a middle-aged black man with a beard, who was obviously a summoner. He held out his hand and summoned a daemon that was the general size and shape of a pony, but it was covered with dark gray scales and had a head vaguely resembled that of a crocodile. I wasn’t at all surprised to see a summoner among them, or even a binder, since I’d been told that those were the two most common types of daemonites.

The third daemonite was a young woman with dark hair, and she was holding a sword in each hand. I wasn’t sure what kind of daemonite she was, which made her an unknown threat. I just hoped that she wasn’t a channeler, because the one we’d faced in Australia had been something of a nightmare.

And then there was the last daemonite, another attractive young woman…and one I immediately recognized. She was the ripper who escaped from us in Australia, which meant that she was the one who’d provided this group transportation, and the one we couldn’t afford to let escape again. I grimaced at that, knowing that taking her out wouldn’t be quite that easy, not when she was surrounded by lethal daemons.

As always, the daemons were varied, and included not only the hellhound that was being ridden and the hideous lizard pony, but a few other daemons that I’d never seen before. One had a squat but muscular body, with two heads that each spat out a stream of fog. This one was the source of the thick mist that had come pouring down the hallway. And then there was one daemon which seemed to have the head and wings of a large vulture, while the rest of its body looked like some kind of mangy lion. It looked like some kind of sick and twisted parody of a griffin.

But of all the daemons present, the one that caught my attention the most was one that could almost be mistaken as human from a distance…a great distance. He was seven feet tall, with long limbs and a very gaunt build. His skin looked almost like white wax, his hair…what little there was of it…was long and greasy. And unlike any other daemonite I’d ever seen, this one was actually wearing clothes…or at least rags that looked like they had once been real clothes.

“The Val Kyr,” the summoner exclaimed, pointing straight at Julie and me.

The ripper snarled, glaring at us with a look of pure hatred and spitting out, “I think they were some of the ones who killed Bobby and Jerome…”

“Kill them,” the one with the swords commanded. “Find any recruits they have and kill them…”

“Kill everyone here,” the binder exclaimed. “To make certain…”

The gaunt daemonite stared at us with black hollow eye socks, then opened his mouth, revealing sharp black teeth. “Gladly…,” he said, his voice quiet and raspy.

“It talks,” I Julie blurted out. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”

I stared at the approaching daemons, my heart racing with terror. Though some of the others were undoubtedly more dangerous, my eyes went to the hellhound. That was the one I was most afraid of, simply because of what a hellhound had done to me. However, I didn’t waste time staring at the approaching monstrosities, and instead, I opened fire with the hang gun.

My first shot hit the summoner who was more dangerous than any individual daemon. I followed that up by shooting at the other daemonites, hoping that if I could take them all down, then the daemons themselves would be easier to clean up. Unfortunately, after I hit the summoner, the rest dove for cover behind daemons. Julie and I backed up, emptying our clips at the daemons and daemonites, killing several of the smaller daemons and hitting the binder in the leg. Then the daemons reached us and we had to drop our guns and use our other weapons.

Julie bent down and put her hand on the ground, causing the ground to shake and shatter, knocking several daemons back. She immediately leapt at one of the daemons who was off balance and sliced her sword through its neck, yelling, “There can be only one!”

I swung my axe at the nearest daemon, noting that the gaunt one was keeping back, being more careful than the rest of the daemons, who seemed to be nothing but mindless rage and hunger. I slammed the blade of my axe into the head of another daemon, driving it in as hard as I could. While I was doing this, the gaunt one suddenly launched himself at me, reaching out with his clawed fingers.

“NO!” Lindrell screamed, charging into the fight and throwing a one handed axe that was nearly identical to the one I was currently using. The axe hit the gaunt daemonite in the side with enough force that he was thrown back. “Don’t let those that thing touch you. Their touch is deadly.”

“Thanks,” I told her, warily watching the daemon get back to his feet.

Most of the people nearby had run away in terror, though a few had been stupid enough to stick around to watch. One teenage boy, maybe a year or two younger than me, was standing in the doorway of a store, watching everything with his mouth open. Suddenly, the gaunt daemon charged at the boy, grabbing him before I could get there. The boy let out a scream and tried to run, but he couldn’t move fast enough. As soon as the daemon got hold of him, the boy collapsed to the ground.

“I’ll deal with that one,” Lindrell stated grimly, her expression cold and angry as she picked up the axe from where it had fallen to the ground after hitting the daemon. “I can handle getting touched by that thing a little better than you can.”

Julie destroyed the mall floor, sending a wave of tiles and concrete at the daemons. Her range definitely seemed a little shorter than normal, but she was still doing a good job of keeping daemons from coming around and hitting me from the side or back. And when I saw the pony daemon was knocked over and vulnerable, I slammed my axe into its side. Then, I turned and leapt back to avoid being chomped by the hellhound.

“Kill the Val Kyr,” the binder yelled to his mount.

The ripper just stood back, yelling out, “Yeah, kill the fucking bitch… For what she did to Bobby…”

The hellhound leapt at me, but I jumped to the side. However, the hellhound was already shifting position, apparently guessing what I was going to do. Or more specifically, the daemonite controlling it guessed what I was going to do. The daemon snapped its jaws at me, and as I jumped back, it lunged forward, watching my arm in its jaws and biting down. I screamed in pain, then slammed my axe into the side of its head, thankful that my axe was in the hand it hadn’t grabbed. The hellhound shook me and let me go.

“Michelle,” Julie cried out in fear.

I grimaced, desperately trying to ignore the pain in my arm, which was probably broken at the moment. Fortunately, getting the crap beat out of me every day during training had given me a bit of practice in fighting on in spite of pain. When the hellhound lunged again, I released the essence in my axe, which became covered in frost. I suddenly dodged to the side, moving as quickly as I could, then hitting the creature in the shoulder, cutting him deeply but also leaving a deep patch of ice. I pulled my axe out and hit the daemon several more times, leaving deep gashes each time along with a nasty case of frostbite.

Then the two-headed daemon came at me, obviously under control of the binder as well because it was acting to help the hellhound, and I’d never seen daemons actively help each other this way before. In spite of the pain, I stretched out my senses and used every bit of the skill Ionne had taught me to dodge and weave around the attacks. Then, I used every ounce of strength I had to bring the axe down, right through the one of the two-headed daemon’s necks. It screamed in pain and I followed that attack up by driving the axe right into the other skull. I’d removed both heads, but the creature still stumbled around, though it was no longer a threat.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot along with a burst of pain in my side. I yelled and fell to the ground, grabbing at my side and looking up to see the hellhound about to lunge at me. The binder sat on its back, with a gun held in his hand. It suddenly struck me as unfair that someone who controlled daemons would use a gun to fight...but they may have thought the same thing about my using a gun earlier.

“No you don’t,” Julie cried out, just as a burst of concrete and tiles erupted right beneath the daemon’s feet. I looked to Julie, who’d crept up on the daemon from the other side and was crouched down nearly beneath it. She was wincing in pain, apparently having been hurt when I hadn’t been paying attention to her.

“Thanks,” I told her, getting back to my feet with a grimace.

I clutched my axe tightly, fully aware of the fact that the essence charge had already burned off. However, that wasn’t really a problem as I took another swing with my axe. The daemonite rider saw me coming and moved to change positions, but I was expecting that and had begun to leap to the side, almost the second he’d made the decision to move. Before the hellhound had even finished its move, I was on the binder, hitting him in the side with my axe instead of his daemon. He screamed as he fell from the creature.

“I’ve got this one,” Julie said, driving her short sword right into the side of the hellhounds head and killing it.

Until this point, the ripper and the woman with the two swords were holding back, watching but not fighting. From the shotgun that the ripper was holding in her hands, she might have made a difference in the fight if she’d actually contributed, just as those swords might have.

Lindrell had finished, with not only the gaunt daemon, but with two smaller ones that had attacked her at the same time. She came up and joined Julie and I, preparing to charge the two remaining daemonites.

“Lindrell,” the daemonite with swords spat out, pulling back her hood and giving me a better look her face…and the look of cold hatred she was giving us. “It has been a long time…”

“That it has,” Lindrell responded grimly as she glared at the other woman. “Estrid.”