5. Jules #2
A distortion crowds the air around her, trying to fold itself into the space her body occupies. Her jaw is clenched. Her eyes are clear. Furious, if anything. Faint geometric wards shimmer over her skin, pulsing every time the thing presses closer.
Eon issues skin wards to staff without Resonance—portable protection for people who can’t summon a weapon when something demonic gets close. They burn out against our magic, so the girls and I can’t use them.
I’ve never seen one activate before. Gold geometry spreads across Camille’s throat and hands, almost pretty if it weren’t the only thing keeping something from crawling inside her.
And for the first time since I met her, Camille doesn’t look composed.
Her blonde hair has come loose around her face, her blouse is wrinkled, and her breathing is rough enough to prove she isn’t made entirely of polished steel and scheduling software.
Something curious sparks in me.
Terrible timing.
“Oh, good,” I say. “You’re not possessed yet.”
Her eyes cut to mine. Clear. Furious. Offended, if anything.
The thing surges against the wards again, and every screen in the corridor shrieks. Camille’s head knocks against the wall hard enough to send something hot sparking through my chest.
No. Absolutely not.
Camille can go back to being a massive pain in my ass after I get that thing away from her.
I summon Voltstep without thinking. The twin blades crack into my hands in a flare of gold-white light, their familiar weight settling me.
Better.
The murky demonic presence tightens around the cables, making them twitch against Camille.
“And there you are,“ I say to the demon this time, grinning despite myself. “Found you.”
The cables snap toward me.
I move fast, running up the wall, pushing off hard, flipping over the first strike, and coming down fast with one blade slicing through the nearest line. It parts with a wet electric snap, recoiling not like metal but like something that feels pain and resents it.
Nice.
The corridor screams. Literally. The sound spikes hard enough to make my ears ring and pressure punch against my skull.
I laugh anyway. “Oh, good. You’re loud. That’s fun.”
Two more cables whip toward my legs. I pivot and slash through one, duck the second, then let a third skim close enough to spark against Voltstep. The blade answers with a crackle of electricity that races along the cable and sends the nearest monitor exploding into black static.
Okay.
Maybe a little too much fun.
Camille is still fighting the restraints with controlled, furious precision, twisting against them instead of wasting energy. The warding over her skin flares again as the presence leans in, trying to force itself through by inches.
Its voices sharpen in the air around us, a distorted groan of, “Open. Let. Through.”
Camille’s mouth parts like something is trying to borrow it and failing.
Then, clipped and furious in her actual voice, she says, “I am not allowing this.”
I bark out a laugh.
The thing presses harder. Her wards flash bright enough to sting my eyes. Good. She’s protected. Not enough to get out of this on her own, apparently, but enough to keep it from taking root.
“Love the boundaries,” I say. “Hate the situation.”
The cables strike again, faster and less random. They’re learning my rhythm, trying to catch the spaces between movements.
Cute.
I spin low, slice through a cluster near the floor, plant one foot against the wall, and launch upward. Voltstep sings in my hands as I come down in a double strike, severing two more lines across Camille’s torso.
The pressure around her shudders.
Not enough.
It abandons subtlety. Every corridor screen turns at once, the broken images snapping toward me. For one deeply unpleasant second, every face on every monitor looks in the same direction.
Mine.
“Oh, that is unsettling,” I say. “Points for creativity, though.”
It lunges. Not with a body. With force. A burst of static and sound and warped intention slams into me hard enough to drive me back a step. I catch myself, grin wild and breathless, and roll my shoulder.
“Okay,” I tell it. “Now I’m definitely killing you.”
I cut through another line, then another. One catches my side as it whips past, pain flaring sharp and hot. Warmth spreads beneath my shirt.
I hiss through my teeth. “Rude.”
The corridor is too tight for distance fighting, but I don’t need distance. I need angles.
I launch off the opposite wall, bounce from the narrow ledge beneath the dead monitors, and bring both blades down in a cross-cut where the cables converge around a mounted camera array.
The whole corridor convulses.
There.
That’s the center.
Not physical, exactly, but close enough. Wiring, signal, current, and intent braided together into one ugly little throat.
I grin. “Gotcha!”
It hits me again, all noise and force and layered voices trying to climb into my head, but I’ve had worse. I’ve performed through worse.
I drive forward.
One strike. The knot buckles.
Two. The voices spike.
Three—and the whole system snaps.
The cables drop all at once, dead weight thudding to the floor. The screens go black. The air loses that charged, hostile thickness so fast it feels like surfacing.
I land hard, knees bending to absorb the impact. Voltstep dissolves from my hands in glittering threads of light as the adrenaline spikes and then crashes just enough to make my fingers shake.
I breathe once. Then twice.
Cool.
Normal hallway demon rescue. Average day.