Snow started circling ahead of us then winged back diving at incredible speed, right for Rachel's truck. At the last instant, she was Gretta again as she slammed into the bed of the truck, her feet denting the metal. She said into coms, “The hybrids are just over the rise, but there is something wrong. There seems to be infighting.”
We started slowing, and Daria leapt gracefully out to run beside us until we stopped. We all did a coms check and checked our weapons as we approached the top of the hill and into the Peak District National Park. We started getting into thicker forest at the top, and we looked down the hill.
We heard a commotion and saw a hybrid go flying back through the trees, wailing and roaring until its body struck the trunk of an old oak tree with such force that it most likely shattered every bone in its body with a crunch and a wheeze. It was true dead as we could see the gruesomely grafted demon flesh melting off of the poor man it had been into puddles of black ichor.
What in the hell had hit it? That was akin the force of one of Ella-Marie or Kat's punches. We all hesitated as we looked around to the broken and bloodied bodies of at least a dozen or so humans strewn about the clearing below. They were all covered in the black sulfurous sludge of their demon aspects melting away, as they changed back to human after death. It took a lot of damage to kill a hybrid.
We heard a horrendous bellow, it sounded like a thousand voices screaming and moaning in anger, torment, and elation, followed by four hybrids which came running out of the forest below. They seemed desperate and were looking back, and they looked... frightened? The trees were cracking, and the ground was vibrating up at our vantage point. Something was chasing them!
What on this Earth could possibly frighten a demon? Daria's ears flattened against her head, and her tail went out behind her as she started a threatening growl. Something had her hackles up beside the few demons below. Her growl was vibrating through the air as she peeled her lips back.
Those of us with them drew our weapons. I clenched and unclenched my fists ready to engage the enemy as they came. Ella and Daria didn't wait.
My girl just started striding down the hill with her signature cocky confidence, I could feel the very Earth being pulled into her as she prepared for battle. It always gave me the sensation of sinking into the ground, I was the only one who could truly feel the entire effect of her magics like that. Daria just paced her in a crouched hunting posture.
Snow stepped beside me asking nobody in particular as she swung her sniper rifle down the hill and peered through the scope as we heard another bellow and crashing of trees, “What is that?”
Then with a tremendous crash that accompanied the felling of a tree, a beast like no other charged into the clearing below, overrunning the fleeing hybrids. Trampling some to death under its immense hooves and slamming another with its shoulders so hard we heard the snapping of bone from where we stood before the terrified hybrid's lifeless corpse flung off into the woods.
The last hybrid just hung limply from the gnarled and twisted blackened horn on the head of the full demon we saw before us. This was no hybrid!
I stood eight or nine feet tall, it's blackened flesh oozing blood and ichor, and it seemed to be rippling. Snow pulled back and gasped. It looked to be made of dozens of human limbs, burned by hellfire and writing in pain. The agony of the beast's bellow of rage, I could feel that rage wash over me like a wave, and it incensed me, pushed me to want to attack anything and everything. I could barely control my response.
But as it thrashed its head to fling the body off of its horn, I saw other hybrids on it's back and sides, shredding chunks of flesh from it. It reared up on its hooves, and I realized it was some nightmarish version of a unicorn.
I blinked. But why was this demon attacking the hybrids, and they it? It shook itself, it's black mane of singed hair spraying blackened blood around it like a poisonous mist of decay. This shook off the three remaining hybrids. It came down with a ground shaking stomp, crushing two beneath its hooves. Then charged the remaining one which still had a claw full of its flesh, feasting on it.
The hybrid let out a screech and whimper as it tried to flee. Just to be skewered through its back as the hellish horse charged it. They slammed into an oak, the gruesome horn impaling the tree and it shook the branches to the top. I saw the bark blackening around the horn as the sickness of the damned seeped into the wood.
It gave a vicious shake of its head and tore through the old oak like it was made of paper mache. It was terrifying and fascinating, and I couldn't pull my eyes from the hell-spawned nightmare given life.
Then it was silent below except the sound of Ella-Marie's steady footsteps in the forest as she marched down to face the apparition, our wolf stalking silently beside her.
I looked back, “Rose?”
Rose was already moving forward, and she flung her arms wide, and black vines and brambles tore out of her chest. I winced, knowing she felt them tearing through her chest every time. She formed a barrier of poisonous vines in a forty-five degrees funnel ending at us that stretched out as far as she could see.
Any living thing and most demons which came in contact with the neurotoxin-laden vines and thorns would suffer an excruciating and sudden death.
The beast below spun toward us and then bellowed again. The sound felt as if it were trying to strip away my very sense of being. The tortured screams of countless souls of the damned singing in chorus, in the fury and elation of battle, of death.
I started charging at Ella-Marie, lowering its head to the point that godforsaken blackened horn at her and the grey werewolf. Ella rolled her head on her shoulders and cracked her knuckles then screamed out, “Come on you wanker! Let's do this!” Then she charged back, Daria snarling and snapping her powerful jaws and bounding at the monster by her side.
Snow was taking aim when we all hesitated when we heard a sweet voice saying, “Be still.”
A small woman stepped out of the brush below directly between the charging beast and Ella. I screamed out, “Miss! Run!” Oh, my god, she was going to be trampled, or worse!”
She held a hand back toward us, palm out as she just stood there, here eyes locked on the terrible beast as I continued its charge. My girl readjusted so she could attempt to get in front of her before it was too late.
I was running down the hill to the girl. She said again, “Be still. Our enemy is dead. Come back to me.”
The hellish unicorn hesitated and slowed. Then as it reached her it reared up windmilling its massive hooves just inches from the unmoving girl's face. She had no fear of the demon. She reached out a hand as the monster landed back on all fours.
It bellowed at her, her hair blew back from the force of the challenge. She laid her hand on the side of the beast's muzzle, and it shimmed nervously but didn't pull away. My girl stutter-stepped and slowed to a stop behind the girl when she saw the impossible sight I was watching in disbelief. Daria stopped too, looking beyond confused as to what was transpiring.
The girl smiled and laid her forehead against the beasts just below the horn that was dripping with human and demon blood. She said in that soothing voice again, “Come back to me. Come on, calm yourself, I'm here. Come to me. I love you.”
The writing skin of the horse demon wavered, and it seemed to be shrinking in some way. Pulling back into itself, as though it were consuming its own essence. It pulled back from her and bellowed a challenge and mock charged, stomping its hooves.
The woman gave a bubbly laugh that was all silver chimes and amusement. “Oh, so terrifying. Be still, Illiya. Come back to me. Give me your rage and pain.”
It nuzzled her and Daria growled. She placed a hand on the smaller horse's muzzle, and the girl looked back. She was stunning and evoked the type of innocence you only read in storybooks. She chastised our wolf, “You be still too. I can feel your pain from here, you have some of my Illiya in you. Let me bring my girl back to me, and we can talk.”
Then the most shocking thing h
appened, even more, shocking than this girl speaking of love to a demon. Daria whined then trotted up to her and sat. The girl just closed her eyes and laid her forehead against the writhing, blackened flesh of the demon and stoked the bloodied fur gently as it consumed itself.
Its form bled away as it mewled at her then the mewling turned to sobs as a naked woman lay before her, she just held her and stroked her hair as she said soothingly, “It's alright Illiya, I'm here, I've got you.” And she just held the crying woman as we all arrived and stood around the two. I just blinked in disbelief as the other woman nodded and held the other tightly, almost desperately. Had the girl just soothed the tortured soul out of a demon?
We all turned to Robyn as she asked the fearless girl who held the sobbing woman, shocked coloring her tone, “Belle?”
The Pike_Right To Remain Silent Page 17
