Chapter 24
All across the field, a deadly fight rages. Dark blood sprays, and overhead, much of the colorful magic shimmering through the meadow has been tainted with a thick, oily substance.
Dark magic.
There’s so much of it—much more than even the most malevolent witches would use. And it’s not just in the air; it clings to bodies and wounds like the deepest of shadows.
It’s as I take in those bodies that I notice there are individuals bending over many of them, drinking from them.
Demons.
“Get your blades ready, my queen,” Memnon says.
I draw them, my neck tingling where I was so recently bit. As we step onto the field, the orbs of light above us are winking out one by one.
That sight is perhaps more frightening than the devilry below because it means my coven sisters are dying.
“Nero, feel free to attack anything with fangs,” I say to my familiar as my shoes crunch against the stalks of dead grass. “Just don’t eat them. They’ll give you indigestion.”
I’ve barely made it past the first body when a demon notices us. She turns, her lips and chin coated in blood.
She lets out a laugh when she sees me. “There’s the girl.” Her gaze drops to my daggers. “Your weapons don’t frighten me, Roxilana.”
The hairs on my arms stand on end. Before I can so much as react, Memnon swings his own long dagger, sinking it into the demon’s throat.
“Say it again,” he commands, grasping the demon by the hair and withdrawing the blade. “Say her name again.”
I can’t see the black blood spilling from her wound, but I do hear her.
“Rox—”
Memnon swings again, cleaving her head clean off her body. The demon’s torso falls to the ground with a sickening thump.
A chill races down my spine as the body continues to writhe. Coolly, Memnon slices through the creature’s limbs, disarticulating it, before he moves onto the next approaching demon.
Nero and I break away from the sorcerer and move deeper into the melee. We haven’t made it very far when my panther sprints toward a brown-haired demon feeding on a fallen witch.
Nero leaps onto the demon’s back, and his jaw closes around the creature’s throat before he rips it clean out.
If that were a human, that would be a killing blow. Because it’s not, I lift my palm toward the demon. I wait for the moment the creature attempts to throw Nero off his back.
As soon as a large portion of his body becomes unguarded, I whisper, “Paralyze.”
My spell hits him in the shoulder, and the demon goes rigid. I force my gaze away from the fight and trust that my familiar can handle himself in combat.
Ahead of me, a witch throws her turquoise power at the redheaded demon leaping at her.
The spell hits the creature square in the chest, and it too must inflict some sort of paralysis because for a moment, the demon’s form grows rigid in midair.
But the instant the creature hits the ground, her limbs begin to move again.
Other witches are firing off magic at the demons, but there are so many of these unholy entities that there’s always another creature to take a fallen demon’s place.
And once the spells dissolve, the struck demons are back up on their feet.
It doesn’t help that all my coven sisters have nearly no practice using their magic in battle.
Most have been taught to do no harm, which is great for everyday magic wielding.
But now, against undying hellspawn? Not so much.
I step between my coven sister and the redheaded demon, squaring off with the creature.
“Call the Politia,” I say over my shoulder to the witch before focusing on the demon.
Blood stains the creature’s lips and teeth. Her eyes glint red as they catch the moonlight. The demon’s attention touches on my daggers for an instant before she rushes me, her sharpened claws extended.
I haven’t done much fighting in this life, and in my last, I was more of an archer than anything else. But my boot comes up, and I kick the demon square in the chest, sending her careening to the brittle grass.
I follow her down, using my body to pin her in place.
“Obso,” I incant.
Sleep.
Her body goes limp, though I know from experience it won’t hold long. Crisscrossing my blades, I swipe them across the demon’s throat. She wakes on a choked gasp.
“Obso,” I repeat.
Again she goes limp, though this time only for a moment. Her pain is likely too great to keep her under. Still, it’s long enough to cleave away the rest of her head. I gag as I do so. Goddess, but this is disgusting.
Grabbing her disembodied head by the hair, I toss the thing, accidentally hitting another nearby demon and sending the creature sprawling.
Beneath me, the headless body still writhes, and the demon’s claws scour my skin, parting flesh. Blood pours from the wounds, droplets of it sprinkling down on the soil.
…We can taste you, Empress…
Not again.
“There is plenty for you to feast on besides me right now,” I say in Sarmatian as I saw off the demon’s hands. I have to pause to lean over and retch.
…Nothing tastes quite like you, ancient queen…
The sounds of screams are giving way to moans and weeping, and our surroundings have slowly dimmed as the orbs above us have gone out.
I’m just about to rise when a clawed hand drags me up to my feet. I turn and see a flash of long, sharp teeth an instant before a blade shoves its way through from the back of the creature’s skull and out through their open mouth.
With a wet sound, the blade withdraws from the demon’s face. But only for a moment. I see the weapon move through the air, slicing cleanly through the creature’s neck.
The demon’s head topples off, and standing behind them is Memnon, in all his ferocious glory. His eyes shine, and his hair ripples, and the moment he sees my bloody arms, his power explodes out of him, storming across the field like a plague of locusts, encircling witch and demon alike.
“Heal those wounds, my queen, or I will,” he says, his eyes burning with power. He seems utterly unaware of what his magic is doing.
I stare at him, my mind still catching up to the moment. Once it does, I move my blades into one of my hands and place the other on my arm.
“Vakahi.” Heal.
Slowly, the wounds close.
Only then, after my skin appears unbroken once more, does Memnon turn his attention to the field around us.
His indigo power is so thick in the air that I can only see the individuals closest to us, but it appears as though his magic has a viselike grip on everyone besides us in this field, demon and witch alike. Thank the Goddess.
“Do you have enough control to release the witches?” I ask Memnon.
He draws in a deep breath and closes his eyes. The thick blue plumes of his magic peel themselves away from several trembling women. As soon as my coven sisters are released, they stumble around, disoriented.
“Run!” I call out as loudly as I can.
At the command, they scatter, darting into the shadowy forest beyond. All that’s left in Memnon’s clutches are the snarling, cursing demons.
They squirm against my soul mate’s magic, but try as they might, they cannot pry themselves free.
The sorcerer approaches one and simply stares at him. His magic, however, begins to rip him apart limb by limb. It’s a grotesque, stomach-churning sight, and it’s made all the worse by the unearthly screams of the demons.
As Memnon moves from creature to creature, I devise my own plan. The sorcerer’s power won’t hold them forever, not like a spell circle would. But I have no more salt to draw such a circle, and the chalk I have is useless.
An idea comes to me then, one that is a tad unhinged but just might work.
Sheathing my blades, I focus on the soles of my feet, then I move my focus lower still, deep into the ground.
I’m familiar with the magic here—I used to draw from it when I was Roxilana, and if the demon spoke true, then my spirit must’ve existed down there for some time, which I refuse to fucking dwell on.
Right now I cannot see what lies deep in the soil, but I can sense that resting within that gritty, fecund earth is power. Power the Hungering Ones cling to.
Power I need.
I cast my awareness beneath me like a net, and then I draw it up, through the layers of strata, past dormant seeds and dead roots and webs of mycelium.
All that moist earth has the potential for life, and now I funnel that power to the fungi I sense, willing them to grow.
I draw them up, up, until the first mushrooms sprout at my feet.
I coax the next several of them to curve around the nearest demon—the one that tried to attack me—until a neat mushroom circle forms. There is still blood on my arms from the gouges the demon cut into my skin. I dab a bit of it onto my finger, then smear it onto the nearest mushroom head.
“Bind this circle so that nothing may escape.”
I feel the rush of power sweep across the circle and see the faint arc of the spell’s barrier as the walls of it come up.
The demon inside is nothing more than a headless body, but it is still powerful, still capable of hurting others.
Once the spell circle is activated, it bangs uselessly on the walls of its prison.
I weave through the thick fog of Memnon’s magic, raising circle after circle, activating each one with a smear of blood. From the thick swathes of Memnon’s magic Nero prowls forward, his fur damp with the blood of demons.
He silently joins me as I move from creature to creature. I grimace as the scent of sulfur ripens in the air, and thin, oily tendrils of dark magic drift up from the creatures like unholy smoke.
Several times, in order to confine the demons—and only the demons—I have to move them away from the ravaged bodies of my sisters. More than once it’s my tears, rather than my blood, that brings the spell circle to life.
The nightmare for these witches should’ve been over now that the Fortunas and their trafficking ring had been dealt with. Instead, another looming menace chose to come after them—after us—and on the full moon of all nights, when dark magic should have the weakest hold.
It takes a small eternity to make every last one of these circles, and I’m swaying by the time I finish the last of them.
It’s only then, once I’ve finished imprisoning the disarticulated demons, that Memnon releases his hold on them.
All around me I hear wet, sickening thuds as the bodies of demons that were caught in the grip of the sorcerer’s power now fall to the ground, many of them mangled.
The indigo smoke of Memnon’s magic clears, and though there are no more orbs lighting the field, the full moon gives me a stark and unsettling view of Slain Maiden’s Meadow.
The field where I clasped hands with coven sisters on Samhain and danced with them during the Harvest Moon is now the site of a massacre. Several of those coven sisters I shared a roof and meals with now have their throats and abdomens ripped out, their innards speckling the ground.
Even the sight of the imprisoned demons lying trapped in broken heaps isn’t enough to soothe my heart. It just seems to add to the nightmare of it all
And amongst it all is Memnon, his hair rippling, his eyes glowing amber. Black blood flecks his face and forearms, and his T-shirt and black pants are splattered with gore. He looks every bit the mythical warlord he once was.
I give him a sad, tired smile, and then I cant sideways, nearly toppling into Nero. Memnon’s magic catches me before I collide with my familiar, and then the sorcerer is there, holding me up.
He gazes down at me for many long seconds while his hair slowly settles and his eyes gradually dim. The moment his power truly releases him, his entire body shudders.
Memnon draws in a shaky breath. Then, ever so slowly, he reaches out a hand and cups the side of my face tenderly.
“Brave, reckless woman, running into battle right after cheating death,” he whispers. He swallows thickly.
“I’m glad you didn’t stop me,” I breathe. If he had, who knows if there would’ve been more casualties.
Memnon’s gaze touches on the rings of mushrooms around us. “What you did was incredibly clever.”
I lean into him a little then, feeling so very tired. I had a little help, I say softly across our bond.
He gives me a soft smile before his eyes return to the field. “There might yet be some survivors. If you stay here with Nero, I will seek them out and heal them.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say stubbornly, even as my legs tremble from overexertion.
He gives a dark laugh. “You’re not.”
His magic spills from him then and twines around me, coaxing my body to the ground. Whatever leniency he felt earlier in the woods is gone, replaced by the Memnon of old.
I glare at him.
His mouth curves into a hungry smile. “Love it when you look at me like that, Empress. I can’t wait to fuck that fire out of you later.”
He leans in and gives me a quick kiss, retreating before I can sink my fingers into him. “I’ll make this quick. Please stay mad in the meantime.”
The survivors are few and far between, and by the looks of it, most of them have demon venom running through their veins.
Again and again Memnon incants the Moche curse-breaking spell, his words carrying across the field to where I rest with my back against Nero.
“Honestly, the audacity of the man to spell me to the fucking ground,” I say to my familiar. “If he weren’t helping my sisters right now, I’d hex his ass.”
Nero glances over his shoulder at me and his look says, you are so full of shit.
“You could side with me for once, you know,” I say.
He yawns in my face, and I grimace as I get a whiff of overgrown cat breath.
I return my attention to Memnon, though it’s hard to watch him pass over many of the witches dotting the earth, knowing those are the ones that cannot be saved.
The smell of soiled earth becomes nearly overwhelming then. Blood has an unforgettable smell. Stand amongst enough butchered dead, and you’ll notice it. Raw with a metallic tang.
From nearby comes a soft, pained cackle.
I glance over my shoulder toward the sound, convinced it’s another coven sister who’s survived the ordeal.
Instead, I see one of my spell circles. Within it, one of the previously sliced up demons has now partially reformed, though her breathing is wet and labored.
My eyes rise to hers just as Memnon moves on to another witch on the opposite side of the field.
The demon sees me watching. “You think you’re safe?” she wheezes. Her head shakes back and forth in almost exaggerated strokes. “All the power in the world cannot keep you safe from my mistress’s wrath, Roxilana.”
I stiffen as, for the second time that evening, I hear my ancient name.
The demon’s eyes glitter. “Eislyn sends her regards.”