by Meg Xuemei X
“There’s no shelter here,” Lydia cried in dismay. “How did they find us so soon?!”
My throat felt parched, as if hot sand was stuck in its passage.
My glamour might hide me from the demon army, but it couldn’t shield my companions. I’d stumbled upon the magic by chance. I must try to conceal them and lead the demons away, so at least my friends would live.
I threw up my hands and cast my feeble glamour on them. I sensed a magical wind stirring, but it didn’t stick to them. I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat. I didn’t have time to practice it and make it work.
“What was that?” Lydia cried out. “I felt something strange pass by me.”
I’d failed them.
My glamour magic had failed me when I needed it the most. However, I couldn’t let Lydia and Octavia know that I had this magic, or they’d beg me to use it to preserve myself.
“They’re coming,” I said. “We can’t outrun them.”
We would only have an advantage over the demons if we were inside the tunnel. Their wings would hinder their movements in the narrow space. But we’d left the tunnel far behind us. We couldn’t make it back before the attack came.
Then a thought occurred to me—Lydia and Octavia would probably make it.
“Listen,” I said. “You two run back to the tunnel. I’ll distract them as long as I can. If they catch you, you blame all this on me. Tell them that I knocked out Willow and forced you to lead me here. Shed a few tears while you tell the tale. You’ll make it. They want me. They don’t want you.”
“We all swore a blood oath the first day we joined the Thorn Rose,” Octavia said ferociously. “We live and die to serve the Queen of the Flame. Lydia, preserve Queen Calamity at all costs! If she dies, our hope dies.”
Lydia raised her dagger before her chest, brushing her red hair from her pale face. “Queen Calamity, we have to go. We have to leave Octavia to fend off the demon army.”
“As your queen,” I said, pulling the fake rank, “I order you to abandon me and return to Willow.”
“No way,” both Lydia and Octavia said.
The flapping of the wings grew louder. Now both Lydia and Octavia heard the unnerving sound too, as massive red and gray wings bolted from the clouds into the faint light of dawn.
“Run for cover!” I shouted.
The three of us broke into a dead run down the slope, toward a few dead trees at the base of the hills. They wouldn’t provide any cover, and the trees wouldn’t cause trouble for the demons’ wings, but it was better than being so exposed here.
Just as we reached the dead trees and a cluster of thorny shrubs, a dozen or so demon sentinels landed, surrounding us. In their claw-like hands, their angelblades flashed with wicked, dark runes.
Elijah wasn’t among them.
“We’re free citizens!” Octavia shouted. “You’ve no right to hunt us.”
A Sváva demon who had four red streaks on his armored shoulder glanced at Octavia maliciously before fixing his hazel eyes on me. He must be their captain then.
“Everyone in the Underworld is a subject of Emperor Cain,” said the demon captain. His features morphed between angelic and demonic. “We don’t have orders to bring you two back alive, whores; just the slave.” He pointed the tip of his blade at me. “Her fate will be worse than yours.”
Lydia, Octavia, and I pressed our backs against each other. I could hear my pounding heartbeat as well as their panicked breaths. Then, the next second, fear receded from me, and cold clarity filled my mind, just as it had in the arena.
“I’m not a slave, asshole,” I said. “The Underworld isn’t Cain’s. Tell him to get the fuck out of this realm and crawl back to whatever hole he and all of you came from.”
“Well said, Queen Calamity,” Octavia shouted.
“Her slave brand is gone, Captain,” a red-winged sentinel standing beside his captain called in alarm. “How can it be?”
“This slave is dangerous. She probably has witchcraft,” murmured another demon, who seemed to be the next-in-command. “She could be what the emperor has been looking for all along. She even tamed the tiger and the gray wolf and bewitched Lord Elijah and his elite aide. And now she holds an angelblade, which only our kind is permitted to carry.”
“His Majesty will question her in person,” said the captain. “He’ll dissect every inch of her to get the truth out of her.”
I didn’t shiver at the threat, yet a couple of demons shuddered.
I’d heard that being the demon emperor’s personal captive was the worst fate anyone could imagine. But I wouldn’t allow myself to be captured. This ended today.
It was either death or freedom for me.
“Slave, drop your weapon!” barked the demon captain.
The flame that Elijah had named Queen of the Night burned on my left breast. It had crashed into the archangel, not to burn him but to mark him, knowing that he wasn’t my enemy.
The flame should have no problem torching the demons in front of me. I called for it to explode, to blast the horde into oblivion. And I wouldn’t mind going down with them in an eruption of fire.
But no fire surged out of me toward my foes.
My power had been suppressed for decades, and it’d just awoken. To my utter frustration, I had no idea how to conjure it up or direct it toward the hostile force to save our asses.
I didn’t have time to figure it out while the demon sentinels closed in on us, so there was only one thing to do. I adopted a conventional fighting style.
I lunged at the demon captain like the wind. He raised his blade to fend me off, surprised at my ferocity. It was a feint on my side. I wheeled and sidestepped, then I buried the angelblade into the demon’s left side.
Neither the captain nor his minions had expected such a move from me.
At the demon’s bellow of pain, I yanked the angelblade out of him before he collapsed to the ground in a heap. I slashed the blade toward another gray-winged sentinel, but he had seen me coming and diffused my strike with his sword.
Lydia and Octavia shouted a battle cry and charged toward the guards opposite me to protect my back.
I heard the piercing sound of steel crossing, and then Octavia screamed Lydia’s name.
Ice filled my veins.
She hadn’t lasted one blow. Lydia had fallen, and I’d just gotten to know her.
I shouldn’t have let them guide me into the tunnel in the first place. I should have known that if we encountered the demon army, my brave courtesan friends wouldn’t stand a chance, despite their training and determination.
Their blood was on my hands now.
“Octavia, get out of here,” I hissed.
“I’ll never leave you,” she shouted and charged again. “Fuckers!”
I wheeled toward Octavia, my heart constricting at the sight of Lydia lying in a pool of blood. She was beyond our help now.
Rage surged through me. I leapt to my remaining friend’s side to guard her, just as a demon swung his jagged gray wing toward Octavia to impale her.
My angelblade lashed out and cleaved off half of the demon’s wing. He screamed in pain, and I stabbed my blade toward a movement I heard behind me, and punctured an armored chest.
The asshole had tried to sneak up on me.
While I charged another red-winged sentinel in my blind spot, a gray-winged demon moved toward Octavia, oblivious to her blade ramming into his chest. Guilt burned through me. I had left Octavia and Lydia defenseless because I had taken the only angelblade, the weapon that could hurt a Sváva.
Octavia’s blade bounced off the demon’s chest. His claws lashed out and sliced across her shoulder. She cried out in pain. The next moment, he gripped her throat and lifted her up into the air.
“Let her go, you motherfucker!” I shouted, my blade swinging toward him.
He shoved Octavia toward me as a shield.
Three demons closed in on me from all sides, and an angelblade pierced into my
shoulder just as I buried mine into one of them.
“Careful,” the captain hissed. “No mortal can stand a wound inflicted by our blades. If she dies before Emperor Cain has his way with her, I’ll have your head on a spike.”
“I only pierced her skin,” said the demon who had cut me. “We brought the med kit. If we subdue her within an hour, we can inject the serum into her to prevent her from rotting.”
The shallow slice from the angelblade burned me worse than anything.
I groaned in pain, yet I managed to yank out my blade and toss it at the demon who was strangling Octavia. My blade entered through his temple, and he dropped Octavia instantly.
My courtesan friend collapsed to the ground and didn’t move again.
I had no way to check if she was still alive in the middle of a fight. I pushed my tears back and lunged toward the dead demon to take back my angelblade so I could cut down another, then another.
“She moves as fast as us, even though D.J. just cut her with an angelblade,” a red-winged demon said as he moved in toward me.
They struck as one before I could reach for my angelblade. They were trained killers, members of the mighty Sváva race, and I fought only with my old muscle memory.
The pommel of a blade slammed into my temple. I stumbled. When I tried to spin away from the next assaults, which came from all sides, a clawed hand clutched my throat, lifting me into the air.
I kicked the demon, trying to break free, but several hands grabbed my legs, pinning me down. There were too many of them.
“We got her! We got the slave prize,” a demon shouted in vile delight.
I gagged as the iron-clawed hand added pressure to my neck. The demon was incredibly strong.
A whimper rose. I managed to dart my gaze down. Octavia moved a hand. She wasn’t dead! But my joy lodged in my throat as I watched a demon stomp a foot on her chest.
“Let…her…go,” Octavia pleaded. “Lord Elijah…claimed her. He…will skin you…alive.”
She was trying to use the name of the archangel to save me.
“Well, Lord Elijah isn’t here, but we are,” the demon captain answered giddily. “And we’re going to have a little fun with this spitfire before we deliver her to Emperor Cain.”
A red-winged demon standing next to his captain pointed the tip of his angelblade at me. “This slave disguised herself as a boy and escaped us for decades. Now we’re going to take a good look at her and see what she has that both Emperor Cain and Lord Elijah want so badly.”
His blade sheared away my jacket and the top two buttons of my blouse, exposing my breasts.
“No!” Octavia struggled under the demon’s heavy boot, trying to reach me in vain. Pain and terror twisted her beautiful face, her jet-black hair tumbling and spreading on the hard dirt. “Take…me.”
The mark of the Queen of the Night flared on my skin, and I prayed that this time, my magic would burn the demons, but the flame only seared my skin, hot and useless.
“What the hell is that?” the demon captain asked, inching closer toward me to take a peek at my flame mark.
All the demons gathered around, staring at the flame twirling inside white petals, trapped.
I roared inwardly, since I couldn’t make a sound because of the iron grip of the demon’s claws. I screamed at my power, commanding it to defend me, cursing its uselessness.
A borrowed memory flashed beneath my eyelids, stung by my tears. It was that wolf girl again. She removed her gloves and clutched a Sváva’s face in her bare hands.
That Sváva wasn’t a demon yet. He hadn’t fallen, but nevertheless, he was her enemy and hunter. He screamed at her touch, and his skin turned gray in his agonized death.
A realization hit me. The wolf girl and I must be related, and I had the death touch, just like her. Only I needed to will it to manifest.
I threw my hands up with the last of my strength and thrust them toward the demon’s neck.
Burn! Death! I summoned my magic.
“She’s still got some fight in her. This slave is special.” Another demon chuckled, and then all the demon guards joined in the lewd laughter.
The demon who held me captive grinned. “Let’s see what else you got, slave girl.”
His free claw grabbed my breast.
Power blasted from me, and I heard its enraged roaring for the first time.
My captor widened his eyes and screamed in agony. Two trails of smoke wafted from his eyes as my hidden fire burned them to empty pits.
“What the hell?” two demons yelled, and all of them backed away from me.
My captor dropped me and tumbled to the ground, his skin turning gray before it cracked like a clay pot.
I landed in a crouch and pulled his angelblade from him, thrusting my other hand toward the rest of the demon sentinels, a faint red lightning sparking from my fingers.
All I needed was to learn how to push the lightning at them and electrocute them.
“It’s impossible,” the demon captain hissed, his eyes widening to expose the whites, his face morphing between an angel’s and a demon’s. “Only the Queen of Atlantis on Earth has the death touch, and she’s the granddaughter of the High Lord of All Sváva Angels, the ultimate conqueror of the universe.”
“This changes everything, Captain,” one of his minions said excitedly. “If this slave is the lost heir the emperor has been looking for all these years, our reward will be beyond our wildest dreams.”
“Change of plan,” barked the captain. “Don’t let her touch you. Go get the net.”
A massive metal net appeared in the air, held by four demons, their wings flapping as they flew toward me.
They planned to cast the net over me and drag me to the sadistic demon emperor.
I flung my wrists out, roaring for the red lightning to fry the demons and burn them to ashes, but my power only coiled around me.
I had no time to get my magic right. There was only one option left, and I would never allow myself to be captured.
I would not be a slave again.
Even in death, I’d be free.
I turned the angelblade to my throat, ready to slash across it in one deep motion.
“No, my queen. Please…no!” Octavia screamed.
Octavia’s plea was a reminder that I couldn’t let my friend be captured, either. Her fate would be worse than death. I grabbed another blade, aiming for her heart, and then I would end myself before the net came down on me.
All they’d have was my corpse.
CHAPTER 12
_____________
“No! Ayanna!” A roar thundered across the battlefield.
Elijah had called me Ayanna. Had he arrived to rescue me, as he’d done in the arena when I hit the end of the rope? He hadn’t let the emperor have me, and he’d slain Cain’s commander for the contested right to claim me for one night.
A sliver of hope ignited in me, and my trembling hand gripped the hilt of the dagger I intended to use to end my friend and then myself.
I gazed up at the sky. I didn’t spot the pair of golden wings that I’d expected and wished to see again. Instead, I saw a pair of massive, powerful obsidian wings.
Max had found me.
My heart leapt with joy, warmth spreading in my tightened chest. At the same time, hurt brewed inside of me. Elijah hadn’t bothered to come for me, either to capture me or set me free, after he’d had my virginity.
I had no way to know if he was my foe or on my side, but I wouldn’t dwell on it at the moment. I had demons to slay.
Max dove toward the four demons who held the net and slammed into one of them to break their formation. Next, he spun and decapitated another demon. A formidable warrior, he slashed and swung his angelblade like the angel of death. When his blade fell, the crimson runes on it glinting, he impaled the third demon.
I leapt up and sent my angelblade sailing toward the demon asshole who still had his foot planted on Octavia’s chest. He ducked and raised his blade
to parry me, but I was faster, especially as rage carried me like the avenging wind.
My blade speared his guts, the force tearing him away from my friend. Octavia reacted at the same time and rolled away.
“Run to the side,” I ordered her as she struggled to her feet.
The captain and his second-in-command rushed me, one blade thrusting toward my shoulder, the other hacking at my thigh as the demons attempted to incapacitate me. I twisted out of harm’s way, missing their stabs by a hair’s breadth, but their next strikes followed me in perfect coordination.
Twin angelblades appeared and flashed in front of me, one blade plunging into the back of the demon who had tried to amputate my arm, the other swinging toward the demon captain’s neck.
The immediate danger around me was diffused in a second, and a beautiful face framed by silver hair came into view. Ash grinned, winking at me before he turned to engage the captain, his every move lethal.
He wasn’t in his massive wolf form, yet his lanky, muscled fae form was even more terrifying.
I grinned back at him, but he didn’t see it, as he was too busy fending off two demons and their captain. He whirled like a tornado, slashing, cleaving, and swinging his twin blades effortlessly.
I could watch him fight like that all day long, but there were more demons in the battlefield that needed to be dealt with. With renewed vigor, I wielded the angelblade I took from the enemy and charged at a demon who was trying to sneak up on Ash. My blade sliced off part of the demon’s wing, forcing him to leave the fae warrior alone.
The demon screamed in pain and rage and turned to hack at me with brutal force, but a broad sword blocked him inches from my face.
“Don’t you ever touch her, fucker!” Max roared, his long angelblade driving into the demon.
Power burst around Max and Ash.
Max had rushed to my aid after he finished all four demons who had deployed the net in the air, just like he’d come to defend me when I was in the arena.
I fought beside him. Together, we impaled a demon and shared a grin.
