Using the shaft as a cane, he pushed himself slowly, painfully to his feet. Sweat broke out all over my body. I could feel my tank getting dangerously close to empty.
“Hurry, Devlin,” I grunted. “I . . . don’t have . . . much left.”
He shouted the magic words once more, and a stardust-enriched, indigo ray shot from the end of the staff. It struck Akashareth in the chest, and he wailed piteously.
“Nooooo!” the demon cried. “You caaaaaannn’t!”
But he could. Devlin kept chanting, and Akashareth slowly lost form. Like some enormous blob of red goo being sucked into a pipe, the demon elongated and was pulled towards Devlin. With a final plaintive cry of regret, Akashareth ceased to be. A flash of blue light nearly blinded me.
When my vision cleared, a tattoo of the once-mighty fiend sat on Devlin’s chest right over his heart.
Devlin sank to his knees. He dropped the staff. Then he put his hands to his face and started weeping.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
I might have posed the same question to myself. My legs were shaky, and having spent so much magic to contain the demonic lord, I was exhausted. Plus, I was pretty sure I had a concussion.
Devlin’s body shook with his sobs. I leaned on my sword, still buried in the stone of the floor, for support.
“It’s over,” Devlin muttered. “Dear God, it’s finally over.”
Summoning pretty much the last of my will, I staggered towards him.
“Yeah, that’s great, Devlin. Are you okay?”
He looked up at me. Tears streaked his face. His blue eyes shone like stars.
“Yes, Sassy,” he said. “I am okay. In fact, I am better than I ever was.”
“Good,” I said.
I hit him under the chin with an uppercut so savage, it lifted him to his feet before knocking him on his ass. He had half a second to look surprised before going over backwards.
“That’s for trying to kill me, motherfucker,” I said.
I drove two kicks into his broken ribs. He whimpered pathetically.
“And that’s for date-raping me.”
I kicked him once more, and he wailed piteously.
“And that’s for not listening to me when I told you this wasn’t just a bad idea, it was a moronically stupid one.”
He coughed and spat blood on the floor. He pulled his arms to his sides and went fetal.
“But it worked,” he said.
“Only because I figured out how to escape your assholic deathtrap!” I shouted. “You put me at the mercy of my sadistic brother! You didn’t just try to sacrifice me to a demonic prince, you gave Ephraim the knife! If I hadn’t figured out that your shitty, silver chains couldn’t hold me, I’d have suffered the most humiliating death imaginable.
“I should kill you on general principle, Devlin.”
“Yes, good,” he said. “Kill me now.”
“Don’t tempt me, Devlin,” I said. “I am in a bad mood and in bad shape. You don’t want me losing it on you.”
He turned to me, rolling painfully onto his back. Blood dribbled on his cheek, stained his goatee.
“I’m serious,” he rasped. “I am mortal now. It is the only way to finish the job.”
“What?”
He had to swallow several times before he could answer. Between what Akashareth did to him, the strain of the binding spell, and my kicking his ass, he was a mess.
“I told you before,” he said. “For the demons trapped within me to be destroyed, I must die.”
Jesus, he wasn’t kidding. He really wanted me to kill him. As much as he deserved it for everything he’d done to me, I was not playing that game.
“Dude, that is fucked up,” I said. “I’m not a killer.”
“You slew . . . a carthaax, three githkeksis, and seven malefaxians. You killed . . . a vampire.”
“In self-defense,” I said. “All those things were trying to off me. That changes the equation. I’m not gonna just murder you in cold blood.”
“You must!”
He tried to shout it, but he was too weak. His voice was pathetic. I shook my head.
“Kill yourself, Devlin. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“No,” Devlin said in a voice that was not his. It was deep, throaty, and . . . evil.
“Pardon me?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“No,” Devlin said, his own voice returning. It sounded weak, scared. “Oh, no.
“Sassy, they won’t let me kill myself. You’ve got to act quickly.”
They wouldn’t let him kill himself? Who wouldn’t?
“Devlin, what the fuck are you talking about?”
A thick curtain of fear dropped over his face. His eyes pleaded with me.
“Sassy, now! Before it’s—”
His face darkened. The terror was gone. His eyes turned black and blood poured from them.
Devlin suddenly rose up off the floor, hovering before me.
“—too late,” he finished in a voice that sounded like a tidal wave breaking over a populous coastal city.
He leered at me with a gaze that sent shivers from my neck to my feet. Alistair Devlin was gone.
I was totally fucked.
Twenty-three
I backed up several steps until my ass bumped into my sword, still stuck in the stone floor like Excalibur. Devlin’s body was bathed in red light. His mouth hung open like a jack-o-lantern.
“Foolish girl,” he said in that terrifying, tsunami voice.
“You should have killed him when he was still his own,” he said in a female voice – a husky alto that seemed to echo down a well.
“Now, he belongs to us,” said a third voice, this one the sound of a slave being flogged.
“We will kill you,” said a fourth voice like the cries of a woman being raped.
“And then we will free ourselves,” said a fifth voice, this one an insidious whisper.
Fear erupted in my stomach and geysered towards my mind like some of sort of terror volcano. Devlin’s malefic appearance combined with five horrific voices undid me. I had no idea what to do with this thing. God damn it, I should have killed Devlin, when I had the chance.
Shoving the fear back down, I set a determined look on my face. I grabbed my sword and yanked it from the stone like I was King Arthur. Then I assumed an aggressive stance, with my katana pointed towards them.
“Fat chance, assholes,” I said, trying to convince myself I was telling the truth. “I am the N’Chai Toroth. Better than you have tried to kill me, and I’m still here.”
“No,” the tsunami voice said.
“None better than us has tried,” the husky alto said.
“And we are not one demon,” the flogged slave said.
“But five,” the assaulted girl finished.
“More than a match for a puny mortal,” the whisper promised.
I summoned up all the bravado I had. I bent my knees and smirked.
“Bring it, bitches,” I said.
Devlin’s body raised its hands and flung sickly blue magic at me. It struck me full-on.
I started working immediately on unthreading it. But it burned. Oh, God, it hurt so badly. Akashareth’s Hellfire had been difficult to master. Fighting off his basilisk’s gaze had required a supreme effort.
But this was worse. Five times worse to be exact. All five of the demonic lords Devlin had imprisoned had thrown the full intensity of their magic into this attack. It seared my mind. It was too much. I couldn’t absorb it all. I couldn’t undo enough of it. The pain was overwhelming.
I dropped my sword. I sank to my knees. I put my hands to my head. I fought so hard to strip the magic of its destructive intent, to store the energy in my soul.
But I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed by the sheer power. Instead of me unmaking the sorcery, it was slowly shredding me from the inside out.
I wailed at the top of my lungs. I could hear their insidious laughter inside my head. I could feel myself dying. I s
creamed like I’d been set on fire.
A gunshot rang out through the church.
Suddenly, the pain ceased. I looked up in surprise. What the hell did they have planned for me next?
But Devlin’s body had a bloody wound in the throat. His face was a mask of confusion and surprise.
A second gunshot tore open a hole in his guts. Devlin’s possessed body dropped to the floor and writhed in pain.
Ash stood a few feet away, pointing a still-smoking gun at where Devlin had hung in the air.
Ash? Holy shit, Ash was here?
Sassy, I’m bringing help. Ash is with me. We’ll find you.
He strode confidently towards the body on the floor, looking sexy as all hell with his longish, curly hair, and his swarthy, Middle-Eastern features set in a determined grimace. He wore his usual black jeans and leather coat. My happiness at seeing him in that moment was exceeded only by my surprise.
Ash stood a few feet from Devlin’s possessed body. He pointed his gun at it and shot the three hundred-seventy-one-year-old demon hunter three times in the head.
Five ghostly forms rose from Devlin’s body – Akashareth, a succubus, a demon with a ram’s upper body and scaly lower body like a fish, a woman with large goat horns, and a malevolent-looking cloud of darkness. All five tried to scatter. They raced from Devlin’s body as though they were trying to get out of a burning building before it collapsed.
But after only a few feet, their bodies – if that’s what they were – caught fire. Each of them wailed horrifically. Ash and I both had to cover our ears to block out the sound, but it was no use. The screams of dying demons were impossible to ignore. They resounded in our heads, seized our minds in their death throes.
And then, in five flashes of brilliant, yellow light, they turned black as coal, as though they were charred wooden statues caught in a forest fire. A second later, they crumbled into ash, and the dust scattered on the wind.
I stared at the aftermath of this ordeal in weary amazement. My whole body shook with relief and grief. Dear God, it was over. Once again, I’d survived.
“Sassy!”
Felicia stood in the entrance of the ruined church. She raced towards me, wearing the exact clothes I’d seen in my vision. She dropped to her knees about two feet from me and slid the rest of the way, wrapping me in an embrace that might have squeezed the life from me if I weren’t still wearing Ephraim’s armor.
I held her tightly as my emotions churned inside. What the hell was she doing here? I’d gone through all this to protect her, keep her safe from Big Brother Asshole and his insane machinations. Now she was here? She’d come after me somehow? What the fuck had she been thinking?
And I was so grateful to have her back. Her love washed through me. It melted all the anger and guilt and fear. Just having her in my arms was the most blissful experience I could ever remember. True happiness filled me ’til I was brimming with joy. I wanted to cry, but my steel eyes didn’t allow it.
After what seemed like hours, she finally withdrew. Tears streaked that pretty face of hers. Her brown eyes were wet, as though happiness were water and she couldn’t contain it. Her blonde hair glowed like it had a magic of its own. She’d never looked better to me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked blowing the moment with my usual tact.
“I was so worried about you,” she said as though it should be obvious. “I knew something was bad wrong when I read your note. You’d never run out on me like that without a reason. There just . . . I knew you needed help.”
A mighty fist of guilt reached up from my stomach, gripped my heart, and started to squeeze. I would never run out on her like that? I ran away all the time. It was what I did. Whether I was running from school, responsibility, or the fear that I might actually get to be happy and have the most perfect thing ever, I was a runner.
“And I told you, Sassy,” Felicia went on. “I’m never going to leave you. I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. And that love is strong enough to protect you from any harm.”
A dam broke inside me. I dropped Ephraim’s armor, became myself again. Tears started trickling down my own cheeks. I believed Felicia. I knew how sincere she was, how strong her belief in the power of love.
But it was wrong. Akashareth and his demon gang would have torn her to pieces before moving onto me. There was no way to protect her, let alone me, with love alone.
And I didn’t deserve it anyway. I’d left her all alone with little explanation, and though he may have roofied me with his pheromones, I’d cheated on her with Devlin – a man who was using me to get what he wanted. He got me horny, fucked me, and then tried to make a human sacrifice of me. So not only had I soiled the purity of my relationship with Felicia, I’d done it with a man who’d repaid me with an attempt on my life.
I tried to tell myself it wasn’t cheating. Under the influence of the sex-demon’s magic, I hadn’t fully given consent. And in my mind, I’d broken up with Felicia. I’d never intended to see her again, so I hadn’t thought I was breaking any vows. But it didn’t matter. If Felicia knew about it, she’d be heartbroken. And that wasn’t the sort of thing you did to people who loved you. I was shit.
“How did you find me?” I asked, trying to get away from the guilt and self-loathing – running again, I suppose.
“I tried to get Ben to help,” Felicia said.
“You involved Ben in this?” I practically shouted.
My actual brother was straight-laced and unaware of my magical abilities. I’d gotten him in enough trouble by asking him to look into Gerard Dulac’s business holdings.
“Relax,” Felicia said. “I didn’t tell him anything. I just said you’d left town and that you’d left a note. I asked him to try to trace your travel. He didn’t do much, and what he did try didn’t tell me anything.
“So I went to Ash.”
I looked up at Ash. He stood uncomfortably nearby. His face was covered in guilt too. I’d begged him to leave me alone, and he knew I had to be pissed about him interfering.
“He had resources I didn’t,” Felicia said as though she could feel my anger. “Things Ben couldn’t do. We tracked you by your dreams.”
I cocked my head in confusion. Dreams?
“I hired a medium,” Ash said. “She was able to find you by tracking your father’s appearances in your dreams.”
“My father?” I said.
Daddy’s being chased by two people he doesn’t know, and a friend.
Holy shit! That’s what the little girl had been trying to tell me in the first dream she appeared in. And that’s why he kept looking over his shoulder in the middle of trying to tell me something and then disappearing.
Someone is looking for you.
Felicia. It had been Felicia, of course, not Ephraim. She’d persuaded Ash to find me, he’d hired a medium, and they were looking for me in my dreams.
“Damn, that all makes sense now,” I said.
“I couldn’t let you go, Sassy,” Felicia said. “I couldn’t let any harm come to you. I know you’re tough and badass, but I also know you can’t do this by yourself. You need help.”
That fist of grief gave my heart another savage squeeze. Felicia was a better person than me – a lot better person. I didn’t deserve her.
“Well, it’s a good thing you did,” I admitted. I looked up at Ash. “If you hadn’t gotten here when you did, those demons would have killed me.”
“Fortunately, I was aware of who Alistair Devlin was,” he said.
“How the hell did you know that?” I said.
He crossed his arms and gave me an are-you-serious look.
“Sassy, I work for The Order,” he said. “Do you really believe we wouldn’t be aware of a three hundred-seventy-one-year-old demon hunter?”
I nodded. That made sense.
“When I saw what was happening,” he continued. “I figured he’d trapped his last demon. I knew what had to be done.”
>
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t, I’d be dead and those demons would be loose on the world,” I said. “So . . . thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Speaking of which,” Felicia said, “what exactly happened?”
I sighed. I did not want to talk about this just now. I still needed to figure out what to tell Felicia about Devlin. An honest relationship required me to put it on the table. But if I told her what I’d done, there would be no relationship at all. I had no idea if I wanted one or not. Having Felicia back was comforting. But it didn’t change the facts about how much danger she’d be in if my enemies knew about her.
And I had enemies. That much was obvious. Whoever Devlin had made his deal with wanted me dead. And Ephraim had gotten away again. He was out there with Stormy the Sex-Demon, and there was just no way I’d seen the end of them.
“Felicia,” I said, “it’s a long story. Can we get out of here, and I’ll tell you later?”
“Actually, I think that’s a good idea,” Ash said. “It would be better if we were gone before anyone found this.”
“Sure,” Felicia said, smiling.
She embraced me again. Her arms were comforting. The vanilla smell of her skin was intoxicating. Dear God, I loved her.
But I had hurt her badly, and she didn’t even know it yet. I had no idea how I would live with that.
“I’m so glad we found you,” she whispered in my ear. “I love you.”
“I know,” I replied.
Hopefully, the Han Solo ploy would keep her distracted.
She released me, and we stood. I was wobbly on my feet again. The concussion along with the near-fatal combined attack from the demons had me shaky. Felicia took my arm and helped me collect my sword and scabbard.
“Come on, sweetie,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
“I thought I told you to come up with something better than ‘sweetie,’” I replied.
“Yeah, I’m still working on that.”
We hobbled out of the ruined church. Felicia wanted to go home. I had no idea how to do that. But for the moment, I didn’t resist.
She deserved the illusion of my love – at least for a little while.
Personal Demons Page 24
