Without thought, I sprint the final few feet and before she realizes I’m there, mykatanaeasily slices through her neck all the way to the spinal column. Blood sprays like paint as she snaps back to the ground, falling off of Nolan. He rolls away, grunting with pain, as he drags himself further from the demon bitch.
Gurgling sounds come from her cut windpipe and her fingers curl, showing she isn’t dead yet. With my foot, I flip her to her stomach and then with all my strength, drop the blade against her spine, severing what was left of her head.
The ground sways beneath me, mykatanafalling from my hand, but I stay standing, because from the lifeless corpse forms the demon that was inside. It’s some type of lust demon with engorged breasts and belly, long spindly limbs, and her flesh nothing but dried muscle since her skin was torn away from her tortures in hell. Or at least part of it is. One arm, half her face, and cracks in the flesh are a shining golden white light of what is left of Letti’s spirit.
The demonic side of her face is twisted in rage while the pure spirit’s expression is sorrow and agony. She screams, rushing to claw at me, but she’s weak without a mortal form, and I easily force her back to the ground.The demon has her. You can’t save her.
Feeling for the magical threads that connect me to my sire on the other side, I open a portal that leads to the gates of hell. Humans always think of fire and brimstone, but all that’s there is cold barren wastes and a gate that appears to go nowhere.
Muted in color and life, two fallen angels in black Romanesque armor stand guard over the entrance, while new spirits already losing their pure golden sheen huddle and await their sentencing from Lucifer.
One of the angels notices the open portal and raises a brow in recognition, but nothing more.Fucking assholes.
Grabbing the demon’s arm, I drag her to the freezing entrance, refusing to look in Letti’s terrified eye that looks so much like Nolan’s, and throw her through.
“Tell grandpa Lucifer hello for me,” I sneer at the disinterested angel, “and to do his fucking job better.”
The angel ignores me, not even bothering to collect the demon since this portal is one way.
Shock is setting in way too fast from my injuries, and I fall to my knees. The edges of the portal start to wobble, holding onto the connection difficult due to my injuries.
Get up, asshole. You’re not done yet. There’s still one more. Kaleb needs you.
“Don’t close the gate,” is yelled from a very pissed-off British voice, and I’m fucking giddy with relief as Mildred comes around the corner.
Floating in front of her is something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget. In a contained air bubble is the twisted form of both demon and host body burning in an unquenchable fire. She marches right up to the portal and tosses the whole thing in, bubble and all. The mortal host body drops to the ground with a plop, as if it hit a brick wall, while the flaming bubble still containing the demon whizzes through the air-- nearly hitting the asshole angel that ignored me. The portal snaps shut, the last thing visible being the genuine annoyance on the guard’s face.
There’s crusted blood at Mildred’s temple and in her hair, and a blooming bruise taking up the left side of her face, but she looks alert, her brown eyes quickly assessing the damage.
“Not all of this is mine,” I joke, making a gesture at the blood painting us and the yard.
“But some of it is,” she replies curtly, not really in the mood for our brand of humor, apparently. “Stay here. I’ll get some things to tend to your wounds.” Before she leaves, her eyes get a glassy quality to them and she asks, “Callie?”
“Safe with Connor,” I answer. “Kaleb?”
“He’s wounded but fine. Resting on the porch, also waiting on treatment. The way he was talking, I believe your friend Felix is sitting with him,” she replies with a weak smile, then heads back around the house for supplies.
Nolan crawls up beside me, drenched in blood and his left arm hanging at an odd angle at the shoulder.
“You okay?” he hisses. If he saw Letti within the demon, his expression doesn’t show it.
“I’m not dead,” I reply, because that’s all I really have at the moment. Every moment the adrenaline drains away, parts of my body start going numb and tingly. My fingertips, my lips, my limbs. “You?”
His smile isn’t more than a small twitch of his lips. “I’m not dead.”
I knee walk over to his injured side and instruct, “Lie down.”
“Into the blood soaked grass?” he comments, resembling something out of a goddamn horror movie.
“Worried about adding more to all the shit on you? Now lie down, so I can pop your fucking arm back in,” I grunt.
He nods, his lips pressed tight, and I help him slowly lie back onto the grass. The right thing to do would be to lie him down on a table or bed or something, but that’ll take time, and I need to fix something for him now. I can’t fix that he was nearly tortured and killed by his estranged sister, but I can at least pop his fucking arm back in. It’s more awkward for me to get his arm at a perfect 90 degree angle, but with a few slow steady pulls on his arm, I’m able to pop it back into place and he groans with relief.
I flop down beside him, choosing to look up at the sky verses the very human looking decapitated corpse-- and the fucked up burnt mess beside it. Unlike in the movies or TV, there’s no scorched out eyes or bodies that turn to dust. Just a body I have to bury or burn. I knew this would be my life, but… I always thought of the demons that lay inside that I had to destroy, not their hosts. The demons’ images are what’s illustrated in the texts. Nothing in there about it looking and feeling like I’m killing a person-- or how the host souls might still be trapped inside.
“You’re shivering,” Nolan observes, shifting closer to me.
“It’s shock,” I reply, my voice detached. “I think my stomach is cut up worse than I thought. Won’t stop bleeding.”
