And finally, we listened to Janissary Jane tell the family how to fight demons. She marched back and forth across the stage, her cold, practical voice making what she had to say even more disturbing, and scary.

“Demons,” she said flatly, “cannot be reasoned with, or bought off. You can’t negotiate with them. They see us only as a commodity, something to be used. Some come from Hell, some from the past or the future, and some from other worlds or dimensions. It doesn’t matter. All you have to remember is that they only exist to destroy everything you care about. They’ll take your lives, your world, your souls, and use them for their own purposes. And never give a damn. They’re locusts, sweeping through a field until nothing is left. Unless you fight them, with everything you’ve got. And you’re going to have to learn to fight as an army, because this is a war. You can’t be warriors anymore, fighting individual duels. You can’t be heroes. You have to be soldiers, fighting in a great cause. You have to learn to be an army, because there’s armies of them.”

Penny smiled as Molly and I wandered, just a little dazed, back into the lobby.

“Well, Eddie,” she said. “Looks like you finally did something right.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Bitch,” said Molly.

“You’re welcome, bitch,” I said.

CHAPTER SEVEN - A Thousand and One Damnations

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Thousand and One Damnations

It was early afternoon on a bright and breezy summer day, and the grounds of the Hall rang with the merry sound of organised mayhem. Janissary Jane had half the family out doing military exercises again. Separated into groups with terse, efficient names like Alpha, Beta, and Omega, men and women charged up and down the lawns yelling their battle cries and frightening the gryphons. Group attacked group with blank ammunition, wooden batons, and even bare hands, and generally ran themselves ragged under Janissary Jane’s barked orders. Watching happily from a comfortable deck chair, in the shade of a broad parasol, I thought they looked pretty good. Even if they were making a hell of a mess of the carefully cultivated lawns. The team of gardeners had already thrown a major wobbly, and slouched off for a collective sulk and brew up in their shed.