Page 131 of Demon Touched

“Thanks, you madman,” I call as I pull myself to my feet.

Leah’s on her feet too, her eyes wide.

“Take him back to the city,” she tells me, grabbing my hands for emphasis. “You both need to get to safety as soon as possible.”

My eyes fall on the drum, the ominous energy of it thrumming through my system.

“What’s it going to do?” I ask.

She stretches her wings, searching the sky for someone—the demon lord, I think.

“If this fight keeps going like it does, it’s going to explode. Soon.”

Syrus

I have no love of war. I don’t crave the sight of a life ended by my hand. I don’t long to watch the light drain from my enemies’ eyes as I shed their blood across the scarred earth.

But for three hundred years, I’ve had to send my people out onto the cursed battlefields of Strata, unable to stand by their side, to defend the demons I’ve sworn to protect. No matter how many hours I spent agonizing over my responsibilities as lord, there was a gaping hole in my ability to fulfill my duties to my people.

It feels good to rectify that at last, to unleash three hundred years of frustration on the ephilium troops. My shadows dart between demon and pale-blood, choking ephilium throats, swallowing up their lightning. I run through a soldier who’s moments away from slitting the throat of a Malicite, then rip another from the air before he can catch up with the Vylish demon he’s hunting and send him hurtling toward the earth.

All the while, I keep one eye on Leah below me, because my people aren’t the only ones I have to keep safe.

I drive an ephilium officer into the path of half a dozen Rancorites, letting them finish him off, then spot a flash of feathers down below. A pale-blood woman with an elegant, curved sword has obviously taken an interest in Leah’s black wings and is now making a beeline toward her. Leah hasn’t seen the soldier, too busy dispatching a big, gray demon with her lightning, so I dive toward the pale-blood. The soldier hears me coming and lifts her weapon, the blade crackling with lightning, but she doesn’t have the strength to block my magic, and it rolls across the blade and down her forearms, tightening around her like a rope.

I leave her fighting the darkness. She might manage to shake the shadows loose eventually, if an opportunistic demon doesn’t find her first. I’m only focused on Leah now, kneeling beside whatever she’s uncovered. She’s alone, her cousin retreating across the plains with the scavenger boy.

I land beside her, a coil of dread running through me when I see the metal drum carved with Cyrax runes.

“Recognize any of them?” she asks.

I nod. “That one there,” I point. “And those two—they’re the same as the ones used in the possession ritual.”

“But this isn’t a spell to possess anyone,” she says, her words come fast. “It’s going to do something much worse. I don’t know what exactly but⁠—”

“Whatever it is will come at the peak of the battle,” I finish, studying the rest of the runes.

“Yes. It’s set to explode at the point when it’ll cause maximum destruction, isn’t it?”

I nod. The Cyrax is old and obscure, and combined like this, the complete meaning isn’t immediately clear, but the spirit of it comes through. This thing wants to rip through everyone on the plains until all that’s left is piles of ash, flesh, and bone. This isn’t a weapon of war. It’s a tool of extermination.

“What do we do?” she asks. “I thought about breaking the runes like I did for you⁠—”

“No,” I say sharply. “There are too many unknowns. You could just end up triggering it.” I look at the battle raging up above. It’s already a ferocious fight, but if the battle suddenly got bigger—reinforcements arriving from either realm—then that could certainly set the magic off. And that could come at any moment. But if we de-escalated it…

“We should warn them,” Leah says, following my gaze and echoing my thoughts. “If we can get everyone to retreat, it might never go off.”

“And if we can’t?

“We need to move it,” she says, brushing her fingers against the canister. “Get it off the plains and out of range.”

The drum is already mostly unearthed, but she starts to dig around the base to expose it completely.

“I’ll fly it out of here. I think there’s a barren stretch out east that would be safe from people. You find the nearest general and⁠—”

“No,” I say again, my jaw tightening. “You’re not going to carry that thing out of here when it could go off at any moment.”

“Well I’m not going to be able to convince an army to turn around, am I?” she snaps. “The Infernum troops will listen to you, Syrus. If you can get them to retreat, the ephilium might give up too.”