by Jenny McKane
The thing wouldn’t let go and Sunny worried she’d make it worse if she pulled harder. Instead, she took her right hand and stabbed the thing in the back with her obsidian blade, just as her mind registered the fact that she’d just disregarded the warning she’d been given earlier.
The one Asmodeus had provided.
The one that reminded her not to stab a feral demon with an obsidian blade.
Chapter Twenty-two
The thing stuck on Plaxo’s back didn’t miss a beat after Sunny cut it with the obsidian blade. There was no pause for dramatic effect. No shuddering transformation that played out over a series of seconds. It was fast and violent, and before Sunny realized what was happening, the thing’s attack on Plaxo had gotten more frenzied, violent, and vicious.
For his part, Plaxo was yelling at Sunny to run.
“Go, Lady Hunter,” he yelled as the two demons fell from the counter to the floor. “Get out!”
Like hell.
Instead, she put the stupid obsidian blade back in its sheath and grasped the handle of her runed sword and got back into the fray.
“Protect your neck, Plaxo,” she yelled over the din as she jabbed the non-psychosis inducing weapon back at the red ball of terror.
The thing had gotten bigger, too. It’s back was stretched wider than it had been before and muscles bulged from its arms now, as the unforgiving talons and teeth were doing their worst.
Sunny wanted to swipe at the thing with all her might, but they were so close together that there was a chance she’d hit Plaxo. When another attempt at pulling the thing off by its head only got her forearm gnawed on for a good second or two, Sunny had to go another route. Without overthinking all of the ways that it could possibly go wrong, Sunny just slid the broadside of the blade sideways and between the two bodies of the demons as the red feral chomped at her wrist and arm again, making her cry out. The teeth were like razors and the thing had the jaws of a Pitbull.
When the tip of the blade was all the way to the other side of their squirming, bloody bodies, Sunny reached under the tip and grasped the dull edge of the blade, angling the sharp side right at the demon’s throat.
With a quick breath in, she pulled the blade hard and threw herself back to the ground, pulling her arms up and away from her body so she didn’t cut her face off.
And miracle of all miracles, the plan worked. With a sickening pop, the demon’s head came off its body and a geyser of gore erupted all over Sunny. For once, things went her way and the demon’s blood wasn’t corrosive--another warning she’d gotten and forgotten in the span of twenty minutes.
Plaxo swayed on his feet, his gray skin slick with dark blood, mostly his if Sunny were to guess, and pulled himself back on the counter to obviously finish the job. Not two seconds later, footsteps stormed through the back door and Eli’s terrified face appeared above her. She was still on the floor with a demon’s head on her midsection and Sunny knew she was coated with the red feral’s ichor-like blood. She could feel it everywhere.
Eli’s frenzied eyes jumped from her face to the feral’s head and back again before he kicked the thing off her and was kneeling down beside her.
His face was white. He looked practically stricken.
“Eli,” Sunny said. “I’m okay. Really--”
But he wasn’t hearing her. He was running his hand over her shoulders, over her heart, down her sides, and over her clothing as he checked nearly every visible inch of her for a wound of some sort. Her arms were certainly chewed to hell, but he hadn’t seemed to notice that yet.
“You’re covered in blood, Sunshine,” he rasped, still not looking her in the eyes as he sought the source of the fresh blood.
“It’s not mine, Eli,” she said, trying to get his attention. “I swear, it’s not mine.”
Sucking in a breath, he seemed to believe her just as Asmodeus and Metatron came running through one of entrances.
“Oh no,” Metatron said upon seeing Sunny but Asmodeus spoke up.
“Feral blood,” he said and Metatron turned to look at him. “None of the blood is her own. But the dream demon--he’s definitely in trouble.”
Sunny glanced up as he said it and saw that the portal had been destroyed and she’d somehow missed it in the chaos that followed the feral losing its head. But while the portal was gone and only a scattering of charcoal ashes remained, Plaxo was slumped over, face down on the steel counter and not moving.
*****
Sunny staggered down the back alleys of Shooting Star as the militia did their best to lead them to the vehicles without stirring up another nest of feral demons. Sunny would later learn that the fight had revealed more than one nest of them and that the abandoned laundromat wasn’t the only building they’d taken up residence in. And a few days after the portal incident? Jericho would tell them that there had, in fact, been a feral nest on the second floor of the Grayman Building. The one feral who had made it downstairs managed to do so without waking up its brethren and the fight that had ensued hadn’t woken them, either.
The town was blessedly quiet as they made their way to the supermarket parking lot and loaded into the cars. Jericho had offered their camp as a safe place to see to Plaxo’s condition, despite Sunny’s rather idiotic insistence on finding a hospital.
She wasn’t doing well seeing Plaxo covered in his own blood and Gabriel had demanded that they put her in a separate car while they drove out to the militia’s camp.
Eli rode with Metatron, Sin, and Plaxo. Sunny was with Gabriel and Asmodeus. Ronnie rode with his daughter and they broke every motor vehicle law and posted speed limit sign known to man on that ride.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Gabriel asked after they’d been on the road a few minutes. Sunny was shivering and stared wide-eyed out the window, her mind having an impossible time forming coherent thoughts.
All she could think about was the sound the demon made as it ripped at Plaxo’s tough skin like it was nothing. The shrieks it made as its bloodlust grew would likely haunt her dreams for weeks.
And the sensation of its head leaving its body when she pulled back like she did? She’d already vomited on Eli’s shoes in the diner kitchen and she wasn’t certain that would be the last time.
Her forearms were shredded and caked in demon and human blood, but she didn’t care. They were starting to ache and she was sure a few of the wounds would need stitches, but again, all she could think about was what was happening with Plaxo.
“Sunshine,” Gabriel’s voice snapped her attention back to him. “What happened?”
She recounted how Eli had pulled her out of the fight on the street and told her to hide in the sporting goods store while he went back to help.
“But, of course, you didn’t,” Asmodeus said from the back seat, a hint of amusement in his voice.
For the level of freaked out everyone seemed to be, Asmodeus was relatively calm and collected. Even the amount of blood covering Sunny and Plaxo hadn’t rattled him.
Sunny shook her head at his implication. “No,” she said. “I knew we could find our way into the building from where I was at the back of the store and I worried that if we waited, more demons would wake up and we’d never make it to the portal,” she whispered, her voice weak and shaky. “I thought by using the fight in the street as a distraction, it would buy us time.”
She’d failed Plaxo. The thought ripped at her heart and made her gut sink even lower.
“But isn’t that what it did?” Asmodeus asked.
Sunny now knew that one of Asmodeus’ favorite methods of getting a point across was to use the Socratic Method. He asked questions—even if he already knew the answer to them, he put them out in the air and let them do their job.
But it wasn’t really working on Sunny at the moment. Maybe, when Plaxo was healed and whole once again, she’d be able to look back objectively on the afternoon, but for right now, she felt like she’d royally fucked up.
“What I’m curious about,
” Asmodeus continued, “is how that nasty little bugger ended up with its head off its body and its blood all over you.”
She tried her best to recreate the fight that was going on. And she admitted to stabbing the thing with her obsidian blade.
“I had its ear in my left hand,” she explained. “And without thinking, I just started stabbing it with my right. But I had my obsidian in the right hand.”
“And what happened?”
“Just what you said would happen,” Sunny said miserably. “The thing went berserk and was even harder to kill than it would have been if I hadn’t.”
Sunny was rubbing her hands over the caked grime on her sweatshirt, just noticing that some areas where it was particularly thick had burn marks—little dots and circles where the fabric had been burned through. With a slight sense of panic, she pulled her shirt up in fear that the blood had somehow burned her skin, too, but upon inspection, there was no burned skin beneath the fabric.
What was that about?
“Interesting,” was all Asmodeus said. He’d been watching the whole episode from the back seat and hadn’t failed to notice what Sunny had discovered.
“What does it mean?” she said, her words clipped and her mind still struggling to keep up with where it was headed. Had the feral blood been corrosive after all?
“No idea,” Asmodeus admitted. “But it’s definitely worth bringing up when we re-convene.”
Fine. Sunny was glad that the archdemon didn’t want to peel back too many layers right now, anyway—they were about 10 minutes from their destination, if Jericho’s timing was to be trusted, and all she could think about was Plaxo.
“Do they have some kind of healer out there who can help him? I don’t understand why we have to drive all this way.” She was back to worrying herself into a tizzy. “What happens if the drive wastes too much time? Why am I the only one worried about this?”
Gabriel spoke then.
“I promise you, you’re not the only one worried,” he said, using his calming voice again. He used to use it on her when she’d get on her worst crying jags right after Gideon left. “We’re all worried about Plaxo. We just had a bigger discovery occur during that little street fight.”
Oh? It was news to her—but to be fair, she hadn’t done a whole lot of listening or processing yet. She still hadn’t gotten details about that ambush.
“What happened?” She didn’t like the tight set of Gabriel’s lips or the hardness in his eyes.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“The archangel is broken,” Asmodeus finally said.
Despite the weird vibes happening between the two over the past few days, he didn’t really sound happy about the news he was delivering. In fact, he sounded a little sad. Something new for Asmodeus entirely.
“How are you broken?” Sunny cut the middle man out and asked Gabriel.
“I went to use some of my battle powers and they weren’t there,” he said in a low, miserable voice.
“What are your battle powers?” Sunny wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Remember the thing I did with the succubi? That blast of power I can call when needed? I went to do that today and there was nothing there for me to call on,” he said, ending the sentence with a deep sigh.
“Shit,” was all Sunny could come up with, firmly in disbelief.
“Exactly,” Asmodeus said. “Only the three warrior archangels are capable of that particular party trick, along with the three warrior archdemons.”
Warrior archangels and warrior archdemons? They were moving into some heaven and hell mythology that Sunny was unaware of.
“Gabriel is obviously one,” she said, trying to connect the dots. “Who are the other two?”
“Michael, who’s dead,” Gabriel said. “And Raphael. Who’s missing.”
Sunny processed the information. Gabriel was one of their weapons in the upcoming fight—his pulse of power had leveled a field of succubi in less than a second. While they knew the opponent they were facing off against in the near future would be much more powerful, they’d at least counted on him being a big part of their arsenal. Him, Asmodeus and the generals.
Sunny stopped and glanced back at Asmodeus.
“No,” she said as the dots connected. “Please tell me you aren’t a warrior archdemon. You’re an academic or something, right?”
Asmodeus gave a wry smile but shook his head. “Sorry, Rosie,” he said as he leaned his head back against the headrest behind him. “I’m a warrior, too.”
Sunny swallowed hard, trying to stay focused.
“It’s connected, isn’t it,” she said. “The two of you losing your powers? It’s not because Gabriel was missing those weeks. It’s something about our little group dynamic?”
Gabriel didn’t answer, but she knew Asmodeus would.
“That’s our guess right now,” he said. “And if I had to speculate when our powers went on the fritz, my guess would be right around the time you summoned the last general.”
“Another Seal of some sort?”
Asmodeus tilted his head to the side as he glanced out the window.
“Something like that.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The campsite was a cluster of RVs and travel trailers gathered on a BLM preserve. As they drove over the cattle guard, Sunny realized they weren’t going to a hotel or someone’s house. They were headed into the wilderness.
A few miles in, they came upon the campsite and instead of the roughing it nightmare she’d envisioned in terms of being able to get Plaxo comfortable, she was reasonably surprised to see the small dwellings all had generators and they’d even fashioned a sort of common area by placing picnic tables beneath canopy tents.
The cars skidded to a stop and she was out of the car and hot on Eli’s heels as he carried a limp Plaxo under the canopies. Sin was beside him whispering to Plaxo, but Sunny couldn’t hear what was being said.
“What do you know about dream demons?” Asmodeus said as he took Plaxo’s state in.
“Little,” Sunny said. “We’re friends, but he’s still pretty secretive.”
Asmodeus nodded.
“A healer won’t help him, not a human one,” he said. “He needs to return to the demon realm and find a healer from his kind. Dream demons are too powerful for anyone but their own to heal.”
None of them could jump or create portals and the closest real portal that was still standing probably in Los Angeles.
“I can’t get into Hell and find Nino, his lieutenant,” Sunny said, her mind racing.
“You can’t, but you can call on the South to help you,” Asmodeus said. “Zepar can jump portals and he can find the dream demons to help.”
Sunny didn’t hesitate, despite the fact that Eli had just spun on his heel and looked like he was about to say something to stop her.
Aperio. Aperio. Apprendi. Zaparei.
In a blink of an eye, the small lust demon stood in front of them in an immaculate suit. He was impeccably tailored and groomed, but he still looked about the size of an average 9-year-old. Sunny had such a hard time taking him and his mythos seriously.
But she also wasn’t in a light-hearted mood, so it wasn’t hard to get down to business. Plaxo lay on the table beside them, his chest barely moving.
Knowing her words mattered, she spoke slowly and carefully.
“I need you to travel to the demon realm and find the dream demons,” she said, trying to put as much authority in her voice as she could.
Zepar, his eyes black as onyx to match his hair, glanced around and frowned.
“Has the war begun, then?”
He assumed they were in Armageddon now.
“Not yet,” Sunny replied. “But ferals are overrunning the mortal realm and one of them injured one of our team members.”
The urgency instantly left Zepar’s face and he studied Sunny for a moment. He took in the obvious gore still caked to her and her tear-stained face. Sunny knew that Zepar was we
ighing his options and figuring out how to get the most out of whatever was going to transpire.
“What is it worth to you, Solomon?”
She sucked in a breath.
“Plaxo is very important to me,” she said, her fists clenching. “What are you asking me?”
“I’m saying nothing is for free,” he replied, a smarmy look on his face.
Sunny suddenly didn’t like this demon very much. She had yet to really form an opinion about Zepar up to this point, but now she was pissed off and he was on her shit list. Something inside Sunny snapped at that moment and her hand shot out, gripping the expensive suit coat and dress shirt at his throat.
Sunny wasn’t the strongest person, but she was big enough in relation to the fabric to get a good handful of material and twist it before pulling him up and towards her. Zepar was on the tip of his toes trying to regain his balance, his eyes wild.
“I’m not making a deal with you, demon,” Sunny said between clenched teeth. She knew that it was a moment where, had she been a demon, her voice would have been low and monotone and terrifying. “You get to the Shadow Realm and you find a dream demon named Nino and you bring him here. If Plaxo dies because you were too busy trying to weasel some insignificant deal out of me, Death’s not gonna be what you need to worry about. I’ll fucking kill you myself with one of my obsidian blades. Do you understand me? I will summon you. You will come because you have no choice, and I will push the obsidian dagger right into your heart as soon as you materialize.”
Zepar’s eyes were side and his nostrils flared as he took her words in. A few moments passed and he gave a curt nod that was barely perceptible before yanking himself free and smoothing down his clothes. He cast Sunny another angry glare before snapping his fingers and disappearing.
From behind her, a single, slow clap began. Sunny turned and saw Asmodeus walking toward her, a gleam in his eye.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, his hands on his hips now. “We might just have a chance, what with you finding this backbone I never knew you had.”
