Chapter 16 #3
Maxim had closed his eyes, and Pippa shook his shoulder. When he looked at her, she gently swept his hair back from his forehead. The blood at his temple was tacky and beginning to mat, so at least the wound had closed.
“Can you move?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
Maxim nodded, though it made him wince. “Head hurts a bit. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
He gave her a wry look. “No.” Then he swallowed and pushed himself closer to her. “What do we do?”
Pippa took a deep, filling breath. “My magic will come back eventually.” She spoke in a whisper barely above silence, unsure how much the Tro’grath demons were able to hear over their cavorting. “We have to stall them somehow. Or just . . . hope they let us sit here for that long.”
“And if they don’t? Start preparing our own kidneys for dinner?”
His words set off a flare of recollection within Pippa.
“Boe demons. The, uh, the one that’s different from all the others here, like the one that was in the elevator at work.
They have a gland under the arms kind of like a kidney.
Hit it hard enough and they might not go down, but they’ll be hurt. ”
“So, what, we fight our way out?”
“If we have to.”
Maxim nodded slowly. “What about the horned ones?”
“Tro’graths are fast. Their teeth are sharp, and they can unhinge their jaws. Silver burns them, but I don’t have anything with it.”
“What else?”
Pippa bit her lip in thought. “See the glowing gem in their forehead? The central one is a bit more fragile than their skull, so aim there if you need to hit them.”
Maxim nodded again, then winced and tenderly prodded at his head.
“Maxim—”
“Do you see anything we could use against them?” Although still pained, his expression held a certain determination.
He was never going to admit that he was too hurt to fight back against whatever death awaited them in this sewer.
Maybe it was the attitude she should adopt as well; what had grim surrender ever done for anyone?
“No,” Pippa said. “But I haven’t—“
The old demon rapped the cane on the concrete floor until all of the demons grew silent.
“I know we have waited long enough for this,” the demon said in a raspy croak. “So I will not talk overlong.”
Shit. Pippa shared a look of dread with Maxim.
The demon continued to speak. “Our prince was unjustly killed, his body defiled by witchcraft. That witch, that putrid offender of our ways, is here now. And we have been given a bounty. The witch has come along with an additional extra bit of flesh. Whatever shall we do with them?”
She didn’t know that Tro’grath demons could laugh, and now she never wanted to hear it again.
It was part jeer and part cackle, as dry and sharp as an old, broken bone.
Jaws slackened and teeth shone in the dim light, and she turned away from the sight of drool dripping down from one demon’s open mouth.
There was nothing around them but concrete. Concrete, and rubble left from when this area had been roughly expanded.
Pippa nudged Maxim and jerked her head at a chunk of rock as large as her hand. And there, a length of galvanized steel conduit only a few feet away.
“Consider this my gift to you,” the old demon said. “A welcome to our new home. Let us consecrate it in their blood.”
The demon closest to the corner where Maxim and Pippa sat took a step toward them.
Maxim began to breathe faster and deeper. He gave Pippa a quick, short nod, and that was it.
They moved at once together, Maxim grabbing the rock and surging to his feet as Pippa threw herself at the conduit pipe.
Her hand closed around cold metal, and even though she was still on the ground, she swung it as hard as she could at the nearest knee.
The pipe impacted the Tro’grath with a sickening crunch, and the demon screamed in alarm.
Another shriek came from behind her, and she risked a glance over her shoulder to see that Maxim had smashed another Tro’grath in the forehead with the rock. The demon staggered backward, the center gem in its forehead crushed.
The other demons let loose a series of awful, discordant screeches. It felt fitting then, to be in a cave. For a second, it seemed as if she were in the darkest corner of hell, surrounded by the furious damned. The ground seemed to shake with the volume of it all.
Pippa urged herself to her feet and as she rose, she swung her section of pipe at another demon. It dodged easily; they were expecting an attack now. She barely managed to dip out of the way when it swiped at her with its claws. When she swung again, the end of the pipe clipped a demon’s rib cage.
It was all so futile. The pipe in her hands wasn’t light, and each swing caused the muscles in her arms to burn, and with every additional miss, it became harder to bring the pipe back up to try and block the downward swipe of demon claws.
Something glowed in the cavern, and Pippa glanced up.
The older demon had discarded the knobby cane.
It held the tattered book open in one hand as it raised the other over its head.
As it rasped out a series of grating words, crackling blue light coalesced in its open palm.
Then, just like the demon was throwing a baseball, it sent the magic flying out at Pippa.
She threw herself to the ground and the magic collided with the wall behind her. A sickly warmth radiated out from the wall, making the back of her throat burn. Chunks of concrete dug into her palms. She could smell blood, somewhere. Maxim yelled her name but it sounded muted.
A demon leaped for her and she kicked at it as hard as she could. Her heel impacted a soft demon belly and it doubled over, wheezing.
Pippa scrambled upright. Faster than she could even see, the Boe appeared before her and grabbed her shoulder, digging sharp claws into the flesh around her collarbone. Her eyes watered at once.
Armpit.
With a yell, she swung the pipe up and sent it hard into the Boe’s armpit. It seized, arching backward in pain. The grip on her shoulder released immediately, and Pippa staggered backward into the reach of a waiting Tro’grath.
Claws raked across her back, fully from her neck to her waist. Pain followed—a bright, acidic bite that seared her veins.
She cried out as her muscles locked in shock.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Her vision flashed white and she tasted bile.
But she could hear Maxim to her left, hear him yelling and attacking and still fighting.
A memory came to her then of him in the elevator.
Battling every screaming nerve in her body, she spun around and struck up with her knee, hitting the Tro’grath fully in the stomach.
The old demon barked words from its ancient spellbook, then hurled out more magic. Pippa saw it too late this time. She wouldn’t be able to dodge this.
But it wasn’t directed at her. She watched as the bright magic left the demon’s clawed hand, speared through the air, and impacted Maxim in the chest.
Everything froze.
No.
NO.
A lock of his hair blew in some unseen breeze as he collapsed to the ground.
Pippa didn’t care about the demons or the magic or the hot blood flowing down her back. She dove to where Maxim lay. She didn’t have to feel for a heartbeat or breath to know that both would be absent. Something deep within her knew.
No, the Reaper magic knew. There was nothing within this body to control.
Fury, anguish, rage. She was burning from the inside, breaking apart like blinding-hot metal heated past its limit. Her vision swam and wavered.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t use the Reaper magic. She’d kept it inside to protect her family, to protect Maxim. But now? None of it mattered.
The Reaper magic knew what to do, and Pippa let it come.
In the sunlight and between rows of trees in a peaceful neighborhood, she’d let it sniff the air.
It had stretched, moved around and brushed up against her before she buried it deep enough to pretend it no longer existed. Now, she let it consume her.
Pippa dug her fingers into Maxim’s shirt and screamed. Her lungs felt infinite. As she screamed, it began to reverberate around the room, becoming layered and frantic. Concrete crumbled from the ceiling and rained down around her like little hailstones.
The demons surrounding her all stepped back, but that older demon came closer. The stones in its forehead reflected the glow building once again in its palm.
Magic raced beneath her skin and surged out around her as she stood. Chips of stone dug into her feet and an aching throb began in her heels. She looked up at the Tro’grath and it stilled, the thin muscles in its arms bulging uselessly. The magic curled around the demon and dug into the pale body.
Pippa’s senses bloomed. The demon’s heart lurched as it sensed the new intrusion.
Blood slithered through its veins in a thrum that matched its quickening heartbeat, and thick tendons pulled and stretched.
Lungs inflated around rich air, bones as solid and white as obelisks stood powerful within a construct of meat and viscera.
In this body was strength, energy, life.
Everything that the demon had destroyed in Maxim, and all that it no longer deserved to have.
Everything that she now would take.
Pippa yanked on those strong bones, those unyielding tendons, and with a yell of exertion, threw the demon bodily into the wall with a horrid thud. Chunks of concrete thundered down onto its body and she felt its life dim and then go out, like a candle sputtering against a gale.
One of the younger Tro’graths charged at her, and she twisted on its body, its mind.