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The six gods stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“What’s wrong?” I asked them.
“Lord Faris sent us to guard the Nectar,” Devlin said, tucking his limp arm into his jacket. “We will not lose it to the demons.”
“I hate to break it to you, Dev, but you’ve already lost it,” I told him. “There are sixteen demon soldiers. And only eight of us.”
“Two-to-one. Not bad odds,” Arabelle said.
“Especially with the Angel of Chaos on our side,” Punch added with a low chuckle.
“You six are injured.” I hadn’t wanted to point it out, but they really needed to realize this wasn’t a battle we could win.
“Only flesh wounds,” Octavian said breezily.
I set my hands on my hips. “Just how much more flesh do you guys want to lose?”
“This version of Leda is no fun,” Punch said to the others. Then his gaze snapped to me. “What happened to the reckless, fearless Leda we knew? The one who always had our back?”
“Having a kid will change you. I might not be as reckless as I used to be, but I will always have your back.” I set my hand on his shoulder. “It’s because I have your back that I’m telling you we need to get out of here while we still can. Before those demons finish the job they started on you.”
“She’s right,” Stash told them. “If we die here, we can’t report back to Faris. We can’t warn him the demons are targeting our Nectar and that we need to send more soldiers to protect it. By the time the council figures out what’s going on, many more storehouses will be hit. And the gods will lose more Nectar. Do you really want to be the reason that the Nectar stops flowing?”
Devlin’s team shifted uncomfortably. No, they really didn’t want that.
“Very well, we will retreat for now,” Devlin decided. “But we will be there when the demons strike again.”
“Maybe you can even lead them into a trap, using the Nectar as bait, now that you know that’s what they’re after,” I said.
“Yes.” Devlin nodded. “Good idea.”
His team retreated into the tunnel, and I sent Stash a silent thank-you for finding the winning argument. We hurried toward the exit.
We almost made it too.
But a demon soldier was blocking the door. A demon we hadn’t accounted for.
He was massive, a behemoth in his thick suit of black armor. Red lights lit up his helmet where his eyes should have been. He looked more like a robot than a person.
But despite his enormous size, he moved like lightning, batting the gods away, throwing them against the rocky tunnel walls. And when they got up again, the demon lifted both hands over his head, summoning a storm of sparks. Sizzling tendrils of electrified magic slid over the demon’s armor, and soon the whole suit was pulsing with obsidian light, black and terrifying.
I knew that light. Back in Faris’s defaced temple, I’d seen it shoot out of the god-killing batons. Only this light was so much bigger. So much worse.
I jumped at the demon, my wings bursting out of my back to give me height, so I could come at him from above, my legs kicking. I knocked him down to the ground.
I stood over the felled fiend. The armor was pulsing faster now. Harder. It was humming, pounding, beating. Racing toward one terrible moment. The echoes filled my ears. In another moment, magic would explode from that armor, and the gods would not survive. Stash would not survive.
When the explosion of magic came, I threw myself over the demon, using my body to cover as much of the sinister armor as I could. I felt a jolt of raw, unfettered dark magic. It was like being struck by about a thousand bolts of lightning all at once.
Venom. That’s what the magic was, poison to gods and angels. But I wasn’t made of light magic alone. Half of me was as dark as the darkest demon, and that part of me ate Venom for breakfast. Venom wasn’t poison to me; it was food. It was energy. It was life.
Reenergized, I jumped up and hurled the armored demon down the tunnel. “Come on!” I shouted to the gods as I planted myself between them and the demon. He was already rising to his feet. “Run!”
The gods didn’t need to be told twice. They bolted out of there, Devlin in the lead, Stash guarding the rear. I backed up slowly, keeping the demon in my sights. His armor was already glowing again, charging up for another go.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I said to the demon. “Venom doesn’t kill me. It only makes me stronger.”
I licked my lips, tasting the Venom in the air. It was calling to me, beckoning me. I reversed directions, moving toward the fiend now.
