“Hold on,” Naomi told her little dragons.

She clutched her belly, wincing as the next contraction tore through her. Were they supposed to hit her so hard from the beginning?

The demons were coming around for another pass. As though they hadn’t supercharged her labor enough already. Naomi blasted Paladin and Paragon with a stream of bright pink Fairy Dust. It shot through the air toward the demons like a flaming ribbon.

The demons split, each one veering off in a different direction, moving like smoke. Naomi’s Fairy Dust ribbon split too, chasing after both demons. Now there were two Fairy Dust ribbons. Each ribbon slammed into a demon, fracturing their shadowy forms further.

“Hold on just a little longer,” Naomi said to her little dragons—and to her tormented body.

The demons spun around, splitting into many more shadowed figures. There were dozens of them now. They’d completely surrounded Naomi. They dove through her again and again without pause. Each time they passed through her, they set off another contraction explosion. She felt like earthquakes were going off inside of her.

Naomi channeled her pain into her magic, using it to hurt the demons who were hurting her. But it was really the love for her babies that kept her going as her body teetered toward the edge of complete and total collapse. Fairy Dust exploded out of her like a firework bursting from her body. The magic shock wave hit all the shadows around her at once. They dissolved, reforming into the two demons.

Paladin and Paragon waved their hands in the air, muttering deep, harsh sounds that might have been words. A dark glow sizzled across Naomi’s skin like black diamonds. She tried to brush it off, but it stuck to her skin like bugs to hot glue. Her Fairy Dust also failed to dislodge the vile spell.

Pain exploded in her, more intense than anything she’d ever felt before. She reached down between her legs. She could feel her baby’s head crowning. A second agonizing explosion dropped her to the ground. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

The demons loomed over her. Their features were coming into focus now. Orange eyes stared out from the darkness like flames burning in the night.

“It’s too late,” Paragon told her.

“There’s no point in fighting this,” said Paladin. “It’s inevitable.”

The demons’ hair was visible now, long and waist-length. Except it wasn’t really hair. It was made of bright blue flames, constantly in motion.

“The closer you come to giving birth, the stronger we become,” Paragon said. “The more resistant we are to your magic.”

“The magic that created our young hosts.” Paladin’s laugh grated against Naomi’s eardrums like a ragged razor. “You can’t hurt us anymore, Spirit Warrior.”

Naomi pushed out her hands, blasting the demons with her magic. Nothing happened. Paladin was right. Her magic didn’t work against them anymore. She tried to punch them, but her hands went right through their bodies.

She could see the demons’ skin now. It was as black as the slowly-solidifying smoke billowing around their bodies—and as dark as the black diamond spell crawling over her skin. The demons’ features were taking shape, forming before her eyes. Their noses were long and pronounced, their bodies so thin that they were hardly more than bones. Their hands closed around her arms, and it burned like the fiery pits of hell. The black diamond magic coating her skin caught on fire.

The demons’ were filling out. Their muscles grew bigger, stronger, allowing them to squeeze her harder. The pain was nothing short of excruciating. Black spots danced in front of Naomi’s eyes.

Twin war cries shrieked in her ears, jolting her awake as her heavy eyelids fell. Her two little dragons dove at the demons. Their talons did not pass right through them. As the demons fell back, clutching bleeding wounds, the pain on Naomi eased. It wasn’t enough. She still felt like she was being split open from the inside.

The demons swatted at the little dragons, smacking them aside. The dragons slammed against a building, then spiraled to the ground. They pushed their tiny bodies out of the debris, whimpering in pain. The demons strode over to them, victory thundering with every footstep.

Naomi rushed forward to protect the dragons, her pain forgotten, overruled by the need to shield her babies. Her run came to a stuttered stop almost before it began. She looked back at what had tripped her. She found two daggers, each one nestled safely in its sheath. She recognized the markings on the hilts. Those were Rane’s daggers. What were they doing here? And how had they appeared out of nowhere?

Pushing those questions to the sideline, Naomi grabbed the daggers and pulled them from their sheaths. She rose to her feet, holding them in front of her as she stalked toward the demon princes. The daggers couldn’t be here by chance. They had to be here for a reason.

The demons had changed direction to intercept her, but they froze when they saw the black daggers in her hands. The victorious smirks on their faces faded, washed away by fear. Well, that confirmed her theory that the daggers were here for a reason. Maybe they could hurt the demons.

Naomi took a step forward. The demons took a step back. She stepped forward again. They moved back.

“What’s wrong?” Naomi said, flashing the demons a smile.

Paragon couldn’t take his fiery eyes off the daggers. “Where did you get those?”

“I paid a little visit to your father Hero.”

“You killed him.” Paladin sounded surprised. He and his brother must have been so deeply tucked away into her babies that they didn’t see what was going on outside.

Well, it was high time that Naomi showed them the door.

“You stole Hero’s power,” Paragon growled.

Stole Hero’s power? When had she… The daggers! She’d used them to kill Hero. In that moment, they must have absorbed the demon’s power.

Naomi thought back to Rane’s story about the first Spirit Warrior, the fairy who had stolen a demon’s power as she killed him. That’s exactly what had happened when Naomi had killed Hero. She looked down at the daggers in her hands. They held Hero’s magic. Hero, the demon king of hell and Paladin and Paragon’s father. Their sire, the source of their hellish power.

Just as Hero held power over his sons, so did these daggers that contained all of his magic. Naomi could use the daggers to fight Paladin and Paragon. Rane hadn’t left her weaponless, after all.

Naomi slashed out with the daggers. The demons scurried away. She streamed her magic through the blades. Her Fairy Dust now laced with Hero’s magic, she cast a wall of Dust behind the demon princes. They backed away from her, but the Dust wall closed in on them from behind. The demons bounced off of it, falling forward.

As they scrambled to stand, Naomi slashed out and stabbed Paladin with one dagger, Paragon with the other. She streamed more of her magic through the daggers, wrapping her Hero-power-spell around the demons.

“Stop,” Paladin croaked, his face contorted with pain.

Naomi tightened her magic hold on them, swaddling them in her spell.

“We can talk about this,” Paragon choked out. “We can come to an arrangement.”

“I don’t make deals with demons,” she declared, her eyes burning.

“Surely, there’s something you want,” Paladin coughed.

“Something you thought was impossible.”

“We can get it for you.”

Naomi tightened the magic on them further. “I want you to leave my babies alone, for your parasitic presence to be gone from them forever. How’s that for a deal?” Then she stabbed the demons. They burst into flames, disintegrating. She looked down at the piles of ashes and declared, “There’s only one way to deal with demons.”

Little screeches drew her attention. She looked up and smiled at her baby dragons. They swooped down to land on her shoulders.

“We got them,” Naomi said weakly, scratching the dragons under their chins.

Their mouths nipped playfully at her fingers.

Another shock of pain hit her. The world shifted out from under her, like a rocking boat in the storm. Naomi fell. Her hands hit the ground.

When she looked up, she wasn’t in the world of dead cities anymore. She was back in her house. Makani knelt beside her, his hand holding hers. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear his words.

Slowly the sounds faded back in.

“The baby is here,” Rane said.

“And Paladin and Paragon?” Naomi asked.

“They are gone,” Rane told her.

Naomi reached for the bundled baby in Rane’s hands. She had to see him.

But Leilani took the bundle from the demon and muttered a few words over him. Magic flashed, then she set the bundle into Naomi’s arms. Two babies stared up at her. She hugged them gently to her chest.

“You sent the daggers to me in that illusionary world,” Naomi said, meeting Rane’s gaze. “When I stabbed Hero, the daggers absorbed his magic. That magic is what allowed me to fight the demon princes after none of my own magic could hurt them.”

“How serendipitous.”

“You knew this would happen. That’s why you sent us to Hero’s fortress to get the dagger—to give me a weapon against the demon princes.”

“That is a very serious accusation,” Rane said with no semblance of patience whatsoever. “And I, of course, have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t fool me.” Naomi grinned at her. “You really do care about us.”

Rane’s cackle shook the walls. “The three most dangerous demons in the spirit realm are dead, the only three with the power to stand against me, I might add. And they happen to be the demons who sent me into exile.”

“I thought you sent yourself into exile.”

“They were the only demons standing in the way of my return,” Rane continued, ignoring Naomi’s words. “Now they are gone, and I didn’t have to lift a finger to do it. You did it all for me, Spirit Warrior. As an added bonus, now I hold two daggers with some magic from three different demons. All in all, not a bad haul.” Rane flipped the daggers in the air, catching them.

Rane was certainly devious. There was no question about that. She was a demon after all, which meant she never did anything that didn’t help her. She’d used Naomi to gain some very powerful weapons.

But that wasn’t all there was to Rane. The demon actually cared about what happened to them—at least in her own way.

“I delivered the little rug rats.” Rane glanced down at the babies in Naomi’s arms. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“That I owe you a fruit basket?”

“No,” Rane laughed. “It makes me their godmother, dearie. Demon tradition must be upheld, after all.”

And before Naomi could protest Rane crowning herself the boys’ godmother, the demon disappeared.