Demon Chaser, (part 1) by John A. Karr

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This simple language is unfit for the demon tongue. Better to have desert sand than mortals. Where is the dust? Mortal Van Dreen, where is my dust?"
"Xeria will come with the Draden Dust. I beg you to spare what remains of my people --"
"Insects! If my power could shield against the pull of the Draden Mountains, I would extract the dust myself. Where is my dust?"
"Xeria has been captured trying to get it. It . . . is nearly impossible to obtain. There are laws against aiding demons, punishable by death. The other colonists in our solar system have sensors to penetrate all known ship metals to prevent smuggling. Give us more time and we can provide all the dust you require. Only just today were we able to get someone inside the prison to help set --"
"Bring it now!"
Mizk pointed his blaster at Van Dreen's men, who, like Van Dreen himself, had haunted eyes, wore tattered clothes and could barely stand upright for their wounds and the grief that weighed upon them. Van Dreen leaped before the blaster, arms out.
"Wait! The dust is coming ...!"
The blaster hummed a death tune. The barrel could fit a man's head. Van Dreen could see it begin to glow.
Mizk bared his fangs, then threw his massive head back and roared, broad tongue the color of burnt zaridian jutting out and back. He lowered the blaster and turned to the desert.
"It better come soon. Two more cycles and I finish here, then order my forces to wreck the other three planets in this putrid solar system. If I cannot have dust, then my rival Romm will not either. With dust I can defeat Romm, without dust I can only maybe defeat Romm. Does the insect mortal Van Dreen understand?"
"Yes." Frantically he waved his men back to the half-walls and boulders that had been the Desert Temple.
"You should celebrate, Van Dreen."
Van Dreen stared at the back of the demon's grotesquely muscled neck. Shoulders as wide and broad as a starjumper picked up where the neck left off.
"I have little to live for, much less celebrate."
"Oh, but you do -- two more cycles and you are no longer mortal!"
The demon's laughter hammered into Van Dreen's ears as he continued to wave his men away. The laughter gained strength. Now it reverberated in the air like thunder. The monstrosity that was Mizk spun in the air above Van Dreen. Bolts of light and heat erupted from the gun, so bright they dimmed the sun. They passed over Van Dreen's head, singeing what was left of his hair. The rock where Van Dreen's men had stood only seconds before exploded. Van Dreen was hurled twenty feet. He hit the side of a scarlet dune and rolled as the sky rained tiny pellets of rock. The demon alighted on the rock floor and looked over his shoulder at Van Dreen. The men were nowhere to be seen.
"Saved them," Mizk rumbled. "Perhaps Van Dreen has a bit of brain after all."




* * *




More and more lately, Xeria had given serious thought to hurling herself into the laser beams that served as the bars to her cell.