With one more swipe of my blade, his sword fell, along with the remainder of his arm.
I had around ten minutes before his arm regenerated, so I danced to the right and hacked at his neck. He successfully evaded my blade and kicked out, catching me in the side with a clawed foot.
A rib cracked. Pain flared brighter than a falling star, but I swallowed it. My rib would heal. As long as I didn’t end up with a punctured lung, I’d survive.
The demon and I danced around each other. Losing an arm hadn’t hindered him too much. I’d noticed many times before that the more powerful the demon, the less physical painaffected them. It made killing them so much harder, and also less satisfying.
“Why are you here?” I asked while stabbing it in the thigh. It hissed but ignored my question. A claw lashed out before it tried to grab the sword still in the grip of its severed arm. I kicked the limb away, and the demon sneered.
“Are you after the witch?”
I swung and my blade nicked the demon’s neck. A flicker of alarm registered before it knocked me to the floor, causing me to lose my grip on my angel blade, which bounced away, just out of reach.
“She’s ours,” the demon rasped, his tongue flicking out in excitement when he realized he’d gained the advantage. I tried to reach for my blade, but the demon blocked me. “All ours.”
Did that mean she was part demon?
I frowned. It made no sense. Demons lacked souls. They didn’t breed with non-demons. No child born of such a union would survive, especially not if it was later dragged to the hell realm. The lesser demons ate babies and children for breakfast.
Literally.
The demon, confident he had me cornered, lunged to finish me, his claws extended.
At the last minute, I pulled the blade to my hand, praying my magic fucking worked. If it didn’t, I was about to end up in the demon realm minus a soul.
My blade quivered for a fraction of a second before reappearing in my hand. As the demon’s claws scraped my neck, I stabbed the blade deep into its heart. His eyes widened in surprise before he fell back and collapsed, clutching his chest.
While angel blades could kill demons if used to stab them through their blackened hearts, I wasn’t taking any chances.
I removed the creature’s head and kicked it into the long grass. A faint muffled curse filtered through the shadows, and I grinned. It sounded as if I’d just scored a hole in one.
5
Raven
“Princess,” the ugly motherfucker of a demon purred in a rasping voice, reaching for me with a clawed fist. “It’s time to come home.”
“Nope.” I swatted it away and took a giant step back. The demon rolled its eyes, exasperated.
“Your father has been searching for you since news of your existence reached us. Staying is not an option, princess.”
“Huh?” I understood the demon just fine, despite his overly long fangs and propensity to lisp. Maybe it was a demon thing. He’d benefit from a dental makeover, for sure. The fucker had a seriously bad case of gingivitis.
Managing oral hygiene must be a bitch with teeth that long. I squinted hard. Was that a bit of stringy meat wrapped around his freakishly large incisor?Gross.
The demon cursed in a language I didn’t understand. Not that I needed a translator. It wasn’t hard to figure out that at least one demonic word in his invective meant cunt.
“Don’t fuck with me, princess! If I fail in my mission, the king will flay me alive and roast my body in hellfire for all eternity!”
“Sucks to be you, then,” I chirped. Dammit, I needed to find my way out of this shadowy place before this demon dragged me to hell. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it there.
No lie, a warmer climate would suit me given how much I wasnotenjoying the current temperatures, but his casual reference to hellfire and torture didn’t make the hell realm sound like a wellness retreat for exhausted witches.
And the goddess knew I could do with a stay in one of those right this minute. Facing off against a demon had me all stressed out.
“Who is my father anyway?” I’ll admit I was curious despite a desire to put several thousand miles between me and the demon who, apparently, wanted to kidnap me.
“His Royal Highness, our Demonic Overlord, Nymon, King of the Hell Realm.”
