CHAPTER 24
Stay down?
Fiona lay on a bed of leaves and twigs for half a second and blinked. Was he out of his bloody mind?
As soon as his weight left her, she sprang to her feet. Walker had been right. The same demon that had attacked her when she first appeared in Manhattan the week before crouched in the center of the clearing, eyes glittering red-orange with menace. It had its gaze locked on her, staring past Walker’s huge half-wolfen form with malevolent intent. Slowly, never blinking, it raised one misshapen hand and licked a drop of Walker’s blood from its long, curving claw.
The rage bubbled inside her like lava, thick and searing and destructive. She’d never experienced anything like it, never known she was capable of hating so violently and so completely. Her people were poets and lovers, a race that had fought one war in its entire existence—the war that had banished creatures like this one to the depths of Below and bound them there forever. For the first time Fiona understood what it meant to have a racial enemy, something that could be despised not for who it was, but for what it was. Evil.
She stepped forward, but Walker cut her off, keeping his body between hers and the demon’s. It wasn’t that difficult. In his were form, one that combined the features of man and wolf, he stood over seven feet tall on his hind legs, and his body rippled with cords of heavy muscle. She knew she couldn’t get around him without cheating, damn him.
The demon, though, didn’t pay Walker any attention. Not until it tried to push past him. With an echoing howl, Walker lunged for its throat, lips drawn back over gleaming white fangs, hands heavy with sharp black claws of his own.
Astonishingly fast for something so huge, the demon thrust its arm out and caught Walker with a backhanded blow just before his teeth made contact with its thick skin. Fiona cried out as her mate went down to the ground with a grunt. He turned even as he landed and slashed at the demon’s leg, slicing through armored skin into flesh and tendon. The demon bellowed in pain and turned away from Fiona to stare down at Walker, hate and murder gleaming in its eyes.
Fiona heard Walker snarl something she couldn’t understand, but the message was clear. He arched his back and flipped himself onto his feet, ducking beneath another heavy blow. Keeping his head down, he launched himself at the demon like a linebacker, coming in hard and low. The demon staggered backward a couple of steps but didn’t fall. Its goatlike legs absorbed the shock and pushed back, shoving Walker away with brute strength.
Remembering the early struggle between demon and wolf, Fiona felt her stomach churning. They had both been injured last time, and that had been before the demon had a chance to feed. By now, its strength would have multiplied, increased by every heart it had consumed. She didn’t know if Walker could defeat it.
She looked down and saw Squick watching the battle from between her feet, eyes wide, hands moving in pantomime punches in time with the contestants.
“Squick, I need you to do me a favor.”
The imp looked up at her. “Now, Miss Fiona?”
“Yes, now. I’m going to try to do a spell, but it’s a tricky one, and I’m going to need to concentrate. I need you to watch out for Walker. If he gets into trouble, you need to do whatever you can to distract the demon until I’m ready. Do you understand?”
“I understands, miss, but why you wants to help the furry mortal guy I doesn’t know. Mortals break too easy, you know?”
“Just do it, Squick. Make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. And make sure you don’t, either.”
Face grim, Fiona moved quickly to the gate, pressing her back up against the stone. She might not be able to get through the damned thing, but she might be able to get a little boost of energy from it, if she was lucky. And if not, at least this way she knew nothing was going to come up behind her.
She knew the fabric of the spell she was about to cast. She’d read about it many times during her education, but she’d never cast it herself. She wasn’t sure if anyone had, not since the end of the Wars. After all, when the demons had been banished, there hadn’t been much reason for anyone to cast a spell designed to destroy them.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and struggled to block out the sounds of the battle. She hated it, hated not being able to see what was happening to her mate, as if her watching him somehow protected him from harm. But she knew that unless the cavalry came charging over the hill in the next couple of minutes, this was the best chance she had at ensuring they all survived this attack.
The lack of sleep from the previous night actually served her well in this instance. She might be tired, but her body thrummed with the energy of their long, intense night of loving. She could feel it, welling up inside her, spreading from the depths of her heart and her womb and coursing through her veins until she could have glowed with the intensity of it.
This spell bore a resemblance to the one she’d used against this same demon a few days ago, but only a passing one. She needed a lot more energy for this one and a lot more concentration. She let the power build further and further, gathering it up in waves and compacting it into a tight, dense ball of magic. She could feel the ball like a weight inside her chest, feel it getting bigger and bigger until she had fed it all the power she had. She could only hope it would be enough.
When she opened her eyes, the clearing looked different, glowing with a bright haze that haloed the trees and shrubs and the limping form of her mate.
Her breath hitched and her body tensed. Instinct screamed for her to run! Go to him! He’s hurt! Keep him safe!
Her heart leaped into her throat, and she had to fight to keep her feet in place. She could help him better from here, by casting this spell rather than distracting him and giving the demon any greater advantage.
She saw how the demon was the only thing in the clearing that looked dark to her new vision. It moved through her line of sight like an oil slick, black and cancerous, constantly shifting.
Drawing a deep breath, Fiona lifted her hands, sent a fervent prayer to the Lady, and gathered up every scrap of magic she could muster, aiming it carefully at the massive demon.
That’s when her heart stopped.
At the edge of the clearing, she saw a new form emerge from the woods. This one looked almost human, like a tall, hard, menacing man with eyes as black as pitch. It didn’t have hooves or horns or scales or claws, Fiona saw, but it was enormous, thick enough with muscle that a professional wrestler would have run from it. It had dark golden hair that waved about its head, but even that couldn’t make it look angelic. It carried a sword almost as long as she was tall, and its aura wasn’t glowing to her bright, hazy vision. She might not have known if the magic hadn’t told her.
It was a demon.
A shout tore from her throat, half warning, half curse, and she saw the first demon’s bovine head shoot up at the sound. Its flaming eyes locked on her and blazed as if suddenly reminded of her presence.
Fiona felt her concentration begin to unravel and the ball of magic went soft around the edges, the power beginning to sink back inside her. She swore and fought to hold it together, but she couldn’t look away from the new threat that was moving unhurriedly across the forest floor, its eyes locked on the violent straggle. It held the huge sword easily in one thick-wristed hand, the tip pointed to the ground as it stalked closer to Walker.
“No!”
Desperate now, seeing no alternative, Fiona drew the remnants of her spell quickly together and with as much prayer as magic sent the ball of magical sunlight hurtling toward the newest threat.
The second demon had its eyes on her mate, but somehow it sensed the spell. Quick as a cat, it shifted, one huge brawny arm lifting the sword high into the air as if to deflect the magical blow. The blade sparked to life, but instead of dodging the magic, it seemed to absorb it. The demon glowed a bright, silvery violet-blue, ringed in a halo of magic she had given it.
That was impossible. It should have been impossible. Fiona had crafted a sun spell, a larger, more powerful cousin of the light spell she had cast last week, the one that had injured the demon and stopped it long enough for Walker to carry her to safety. Demons couldn’t tolerate light, especially sunlight. It burned them like acid, more toxic to them even than it was to vampires. Fiona’s spell should at least have stunned it, if not seriously injured it. Even having lost a good part of its intensity because of her distraction, the spell was still a powerful weapon against demon kind.
Her heart sank, and she felt the first wave of terror wash over her. If this new monster had some sort of protection from or immunity to sunlight, they were lost. It would kill her and her mate, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Well, she sure as hell wasn’t going to go down without fighting.
“Squick!” she screamed, her voice carrying over the din of the fighting. “Help him!”
Hoping the imp could at least trip the thing or maybe climb up and plant a hoof in its eye, Fiona sprang at the human-looking demon.
What she intended to do she wasn’t sure. She had thrown every scrap of her power into that sun spell.
Frantic, she searched for something more, some small thread left over that could distract or disarm the demon. The power she cobbled together had more to do with prayer than with magic, but it was the best she could do. If she could have, she would have pulled the energy out of her soul. Her heart froze in her chest as she stretched out a hand and threw her last, desperate weapon at the armed demon.
The second blast didn’t have near the intensity of the first, and she knew even before it hit the second demon squarely in the chest that it wouldn’t make any difference. The creature barely paused, then seemed to shake like a dog coming out of the rain before it continued onward.
She didn’t know what else she could do. Her magic was gone, but she couldn’t not try. She could still move. She could try to wrestle the sword from its hand, although her rational mind told her the attempt was doomed to failure. Maybe scratch its eyes out or find out with her knees exactly how much like a human man its body really was. Either way, she knew she couldn’t stand by and just watch while it killed her mate.
She made it about halfway across the clearing when the second demon drew close to where Walker struggled with the first. She could see that her wolf was weakening. The demon had landed several bone-crunching blows, and the gash in his side continued to bleed, soaking his silver-gray fur. She was never going to make it in time to save him. Feeling her heart tear inside her chest, Fiona screamed his name.
Distracted, Walker spun around and fixed her with a dazed golden stare just as the second demon lifted its sword high overhead and plunged it straight down into the heart of its bovine kin.