“The N’Chai Toroth?” he said. “You have no authority over me. Begone from this place. Leave me to destroy this fool. Or pay the price for interfering in my business.”
I shook my head. Maybe it was because I’d narrowly escaped being sacrificed to bring this asshole to Earth. Maybe it was because I was irritated that I was protecting Devlin after he’d raped me and nearly gotten me killed. Maybe I was just feeling myself because no matter what anyone tried to do to me, I kept coming back. But I was not taking shit from a demon, no matter how tall and mighty he was.
“You know, every one of you big uglies just doesn’t get it,” I said. “I keep telling you: I am the original badass. Either you do what I tell you, or you take a whuppin’ of legendary and epic proportions.”
Akashareth smirked, as though he’d never heard someone that stupid before.
“Die, girl,” he said.
He hurled another blast of his Hellfire at me. I opened my arms wide and bent my knees slightly. The flames struck me full in the face and chest.
Once again, the intensity was difficult to deal with. Of all the magic I’d absorbed since first discovering my powers, this was the rawest, most primal energy I’d ever felt. It threatened to overwhelm me. The tired part of my brain, the piece of me that was weary from this constant struggle, from always being on the run, wanted to give in.
But that was just not who I am. You must discover yourself, the little girl had said. The truth was, I needed to rediscover myself. And it was happening right here. I remembered that I was not Cecily Kincaide. I was not Sarah Connor. I was not some scared child on the run from the big, bad bogeyman. I was Sassy Kincaide. And only a total dumbass messed with me.
I sucked in Akashareth’s Hellfire, and then I sent a pulse back at him, extinguishing it at the source. I snuffed his finger as I might have a candle. He went round-eyed in response.
“No, thanks, asshole,” I said. “I’m perfectly content staying on the not-dead side of things.”
Feeling all kung fu, I performed a windmill block in the air. Then I thrust a palmstrike in his general direction. A concussive blast of blue energy shot from my hand and struck him in his giant-sized balls.
Akashareth’s eyes and knees crossed simultaneously. He hunched over, and a high-pitched squeal escaped his lips. He might have been a twenty-foot tall demon, but he was as vulnerable to a pants-punch as any other male.
While the gargantuan fiend was stunned, I turned to Devlin.
“Where’d you put my sword?” I asked.
“We left it in the minivan,” he answered, his blue eyes wide at what I’d done to the demon he’d been chasing for three hundred, forty-four years.
“You left my five-hundred-dollar sword in a mom-mobile?” I shouted. “Do you know how long I had to save up for that thing?”
“Well, I—”
“Damn it, Devlin,” I cried. “I need something to fight him with!”
“Then summon it,” he said as though it should be obvious.
“How?”
Seriously, it was like he thought I knew how to do all this stuff. If he knew who I was, he had to know that I’d only discovered I was Nephilim six months ago. He’d been training me. How could he not understand there were huge gaps in my knowledge?
“Open your hand and will it to come to you,” he said.
I shook my head. As though it were that simple.
Still, I didn’t have much choice. Akashareth was already getting his wind back, and he was going to be pissed when he recovered.
I opened my right hand and pictured my katana materializing in it like I was an anime character transforming into their super-form, complete with legendary weapon.
A second later, there was flash of blue and red light, and my sword appeared from thin air. I closed my hand around it. It was solid and real.
God damn, that was really fucking cool! Why hadn’t I known about this when I’d gone to Gerard Dulac’s ranch or D’Krisch Mk’Rai’s charity ball?
There was no time to be frustrated about that, though. I had a demonic prince to slay.
I passed the weapon to my left hand and yanked the sword from its sheath with my right. Then I focused on the demon.
He’d recovered fully. His body shimmered and became amorphous. A second later, he had reformed himself into a horrible monstrosity. He had six legs, with three-fingered extremities and sharp claws, hard plates like an armadillo, and two heads attached to undulating necks. I didn’t even know what he’d turned into. It was like some D&D monster, but I’d never heard of it before.
I didn’t have time to think about it, though. He lunged for us, one head aiming at me, the other at Devlin.
“Move!” I shouted and shoved him out of the way.
Then I launched myself into the air, flying up like Supergirl to get away from the beast’s attack. There were a shit-ton of sharp teeth in both of those maws. They snapped angrily at the spaces Devlin and I had occupied only a second before.
I hovered over him, preparing to divebomb, but before I could move, he whacked me with an enormous tail. It was like being hit with a giant baseball bat. I sailed across the ruined church, hit a column, cracking it enough to take stone with me, and crashed to the floor in a heap. If I hadn’t still been wearing Ephraim’s armor skin, I might have been ripped to pieces and broken like a ragdoll.
Speaking of Big Brother Asshole, where the hell had he gone? I looked up to the dais. It was empty. Jesus, the cowardly, little shit had scooped up his sex-demon girlfriend and run for it. I scanned the church. They were nowhere to be seen, nor were any of the cultists who had summoned their dread lord.
Typical. Ephraim creates a problem and then doesn’t stick around to fix it. He really was worthless. Offhandedly, I wondered what our father had really thought of him. My bet was Ephraim was a huge disappointment to him.
I didn’t have any more time to think about that. Akashareth had renewed his assault on Devlin. Both heads surged towards him, hoping to rend him in two, I guess.
Devlin spun his staff and shouted magic words. A disc of blue energy appeared in front of him, thwarting the demon’s attack. Both of the fiend’s faces looked pissed.
They reared back as one, then rushed forward a second time. But this attack wasn’t aimed at Devlin. Those nasty teeth actually sank into the blue energy, which crackled and sparked. Devlin furrowed his brow, straining to hold the spell together.
It was no use. Akashareth was too strong. His heads pulled in opposite directions and tore the shield in half as though it were a cloth sheet. With a loud bang, the magic ceased to exist.
“Your sorcery is no match for me, Alistair Devlin,” the left head said.
“You may be partially immortal,” the right head added.
“But I am a Prince of Hell!” they said in unison.
“Man, that’s just creepy,” I said.
Akashareth’s heads turned to face me.
“Talking out of both of your mouths? That’s weird as shit, dude. People are gonna laugh at you.”
I started towards him, but Devlin shouted more magic words, and a lightning bolt crackled down through the hole in the ceiling and struck the demonic prince in the back. The flash was so bright, I had to cover my eyes. But it must have hurt, because Akashareth roared like he’d been burned.
My vision recovered before the disgusting fiend’s. I rushed him, adding a little superspeed to make sure he wouldn’t be able to stop me. I brought my sword up high and plunged it into his hind quarters, hoping to pin him there, so Devlin could cast his binding spell.
He howled like a wild animal and whirled towards me before I could get him planted. The suddenness and strength of his move nearly ripped the sword from my hands. I barely held onto it as he brought one of his ugly-ass heads to bear on me.
Stumbling backward, I slashed him across one of his throats. He screamed again. Cutting him twice really pissed him off.
Akashareth shifted forms again. This time he became
a basilisk, and I swear he looked just like the illustration in the Monster Manual.
I couldn’t avert my eyes in time. The steel skin I’d stolen from Ephraim started transforming to stone.
Twenty-one
I was in a lot of trouble here. Akashareth’s basilisk gaze was petrifying me. My arms, back, and legs stiffened. It became harder to think, harder to move.
Shit, Sassy! Do something quick!
I set my brain to unthreading the magic, making it mine instead of his. Like with his Hellfire, it was powerful, difficult to manage. It became harder and harder to resist his will. He poured more and more eldritch death-gaze into me. The magic was working its way towards my muscles now. Soon, I’d have more no thoughts, I’d be nothing but a statue.
Come on, Sassy! Fight it!
I closed my eyes, so I could concentrate better. Instantly, it became easier to stall the progress. Yes, of course! If I wasn’t meeting his stare, he couldn’t keep turning me to stone.
With the influx of magic blocked, I focused on converting what was in me into raw potential rather than a specific effect. I sucked the power deep into my core. Slowly, my muscles relaxed, my skin became flexible again. After several seconds, I was free.
I opened my eyes and raised my head, careful not to meet his gaze.
“Sorry, asshole,” I said. “The rules don’t apply to me.”
Devlin twirled his staff and attempted the binding spell, while Akashareth stared at me in slack-jawed stupor. A beam of blue energy engorged with stardust struck the demon lord in the back. He roared, and the magic enveloped him like a sheath.
“That’s right, you demonic shitbag,” I taunted. “You’re dead.”
But I was wrong. Akashareth whipped his body in several directions seemingly at once, and the blue light around him cracked like it was ceramic. Then he skittered across the floor away from both of us. He transformed into a giant winged snake and flew up to the ceiling, wrapping himself around a rafter.
“Damn!” Devlin shouted, offering a rare curse word. “I cannot bind him if he cannot be held. And if I cannot bind him, he will surely kill us both and wreak havoc on the world in revenge.”
I kept my eye on the serpentine fiend above us, making sure he couldn’t divebomb us unawares.
“I’ll hold him,” I said. “You be ready.”
“Cecily, the only way to hold him is with a containment circle. That’s why we needed the ritual – to bring him to Earth and control him.”
“God damn, you just don’t listen, do you?” I said. “First of all, my name is Sassy, not Cecily. Secondly, it’s like I told Asshole-a-reth here: The rules don’t apply to me.”
Summoning the abundance of magic I had in me after the petrifying gaze attack, I flew into the air, zooming straight for the serpentine demon. I don’t know if snakes can actually smile, but it sure looked like it as Akashareth unwound himself from the rafter and flew for me.
As we neared each other, he spit venom from his fangs. I dove under it and then arced back up toward his belly, intending to split him open.
But he was as quick as I was. He undulated his body around me, then cracked his tail like a whip. It caught me full in the chest, and I sailed across the church and slammed into a wall. Once again, if I hadn’t had armor skin, I’d have broken half the bones in my body and been lucky to survive.
As it was, it hurt like hell. I bounced off the wall and dropped to the marble floor, absorbing another vicious blow from the sudden impact at the end of the fall. I groaned audibly, as I scraped myself up.
Akashareth probably could have killed me then. I was wobbly and sore, and it would have taken a major effort to defend myself from a follow-up attack. But he was either arrogant enough to believe he’d killed me or more interested in dealing with Devlin. He dove for the demon hunter, his jaws open as though he might swallow him hole.
I burned more magic into superspeed to not only get off the ground but race across the church. I put myself between Devlin and the demon a second time and aimed my sword at his ugly, Hellish face.
He saw me in time to break off, but he was too big and moving too fast to fully avoid me. He impaled himself briefly on the katana, then sliced open a huge gash in his underbelly as he attempted to abort.
His howls were terrifying – like hundreds of people being eaten by sharks. It sent a cold shiver down my spine that made me want to flee. I bit my lip to steady my courage.
Akashareth hovered in front of me and brought his tail back to crack me across the church again. Partially driven by fear and partially by combat instinct, I raised my left hand and unleashed a bolt of concussive force on his midsection. This time, it was the demon who sailed across the sanctuary and slammed into the wall. He was big enough, he knocked down a chunk of it. Most of the debris flew out onto the grounds, but the section directly above him collapsed. Chunks of masonry rained down on him, and he groaned with each blow.
Seeing the opportunity to finish him, I lit up the superspeed again and charged him. My plan was to end him just like I had D’Krisch Mk’Rai – plant my sword in his brain and unleash a thunder-blast of magic.
But fighting demonic lords is harder than dragons. I was only halfway there when he transformed back into his original form. He crouched low and threw a vicious uppercut at me.
I was moving too fast to avoid it.
His massive fist connected with pretty much my whole body. The blow lifted me off my feet and sent me airborne. I struck another column and felt my brain rattle in my skull despite my steel skin.
Briefly, I stuck in the masonry, my body held there by the dent it had made in the stonework. But the depression wasn’t deep enough, and I tumbled forward out of it. As soon as I was no longer there to support it, the column crumbled.
I hit the ground first. Then a shit-ton of stone and plaster fell on me.
Stars danced in my eyes. I struggled to string two thoughts together. Darkness crowded the edge of my vision.
Summoning what little strength I had left, I pushed myself up out of the rubble. But that was all I had left. I was defeated, too hurt to go on.
Akashareth grinned in triumph.
Twenty-two
Somehow, I managed to remain conscious. The room was spinning, and I couldn’t get my eyes to focus. It looked like there were three Akashareths. Which one did I hit?
Devlin hurled magic at him. With my triple vision, I couldn’t see exactly what happened. But I could perceive that shitheel Lord of the Pit somehow swatted the spells aside like he was Wonder Woman deflecting bullets with her magic bracers as he stomped across the church. Pews exploded into showers of splinters. Stone walls rained chunks of masonry. I covered myself instinctively, huddling against the carnage.
Squeezing my eyes tight, I forced my vision into focus. The picture was better when it was fuzzy.
Akashareth was practically on top of Devlin. He snaked his enormous tail around himself, wrapping up the staff, and seizing it from Devlin’s hands. With another flick of his tail, he hurled the wooden shaft across the sanctuary. It clattered on the marble and came to a stop against a pew.
Devlin put up his hands like he had some other magic, but Akashareth bent over and scooped him up in one giant fist. He squeezed, and Devlin cried out as his ribs cracked. I winced in sympathy.
“So, once again you have failed, Alistair Devlin,” the demon drawled in a voice like rending flesh. “You thought to have weak-willed humans summon me? Tell me something: Where are they now?”
The fiendish bastard squeezed again, and Devlin cried out in agony.
“You thought you could lure me with a human sacrifice, so you could bind me?” the demon said. “My corruption of you is complete. I’ve turned your zealotry into a weapon to harm others rather than save them.”
God damn it, Devlin, I told you that. You fell for the exact trick you told me to watch out for.
I had to do something. Devlin needed to bind the demon. My job was to hold him, so he could. I w
asn’t holding up my end, and if I didn’t do something soon, Devlin was going to die.
“Now I will release my brethren from their imprisonment,” the fiend taunted. “They will once again be free to torment your world.”
Oh, to hell with that idea. It was time to get my ass in gear. I grabbed my sword and stood. The church was still spinning. It was difficult to even remain on my feet. I didn’t care. I had a fucking world to save.
“All this is due to your villainy,” the demon said. “I have you to thank for at last freeing those you have insultingly and wrongly imprisoned. And you have your arrogance and blind hatred to blame for undoing all you have attempted to accomplish.”
I stole softly across the floor. My legs remained wobbly, my head continued to pound. But if I could just make it there before it was too late . . .
“I will burn the flesh that imprisons my brethren,” the demon drawled. I was right behind him now. “And I will delight in your screams of agony.”
I crept next to the behemoth’s enormous foot. Before he could notice me, I raised my katana high and drove it through the top of his foot like a spike. Akashareth roared in surprise and anguish. He dropped Devlin and put his hands to his head. Seizing the opportunity, I turned my magic on high and sent it pouring into my sword, shoving it hard until the steel penetrated the marble floor and anchored the big bastard to the spot.
“And I will delight in your sadistic ass dying, bitch,” I said.
He turned an enraged gaze on me and reached for me. But I was ready. Gripping the katana’s handle and using it as a focus, I envisioned shackles binding him to the floor. Red magic blazed from the sword and covered him in a thick shell, freezing him in place.
“Now,” I said through gritted teeth. The strain of expending that much magic was incredible. “Cast your binding spell. I don’t . . . know how long I can hold him.”
Devlin nodded. He reached towards the staff, wincing as his cracked ribs savaged him. He opened his hand, a quick flash of blue magic erupted around his palm, and the staff flew across the room and landed neatly in his grip.
Personal Demons Page 23
