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I couldn’t say the same for myself and the others. My mouth was still hanging open at the sight of Quill coming to the rescue, stunned by the simple fact that his fires, for once, were directed at a common enemy, and not at my face.
The gush of flames ended. From somewhere in the trees, Belphegor’s two remaining hags shrieked in fury at the demise of their handiwork. Quill had the right idea. Just like a mythical hydra, the flowers and tendrils couldn’t reproduce on scorched earth.
There was a flurry of noise and voices as Artemis thanked Quill for his help, as Royce commended him on his talent. In the midst of it all, Quilliam trained his eyes on me.
“It was nothing.” He winked at me. I glowered. He raised his fingers to his lips, blowing across them like he would on the barrel of a gun. “Just gotta kill them with fire.”
26
I grimaced. I couldn’t say it was good to see Quilliam in such circumstances, despite him helping us out. Artemis wasn’t holding back on the gratitude, shaking his hand fervently. I groaned. Just another thing for Quill to let get to his head.
“Fire magic works, well and good,” Maharani said, “but we can’t go around the entire city burning everything. There are too many risks.”
“Then we nip it in the bud, like I said.” Royce held two fingers up to his temple, like he was activating an invisible device. “Yeah, send some Wings and Hands out to find the perimeter for these things. Use fire. As much as you can spare. Beat it back while we manage things up here. Raze everything, but control the burn. Be careful.”
Artemis nocked another arrow, watching the trees and the bushes for another sign of the hags. “Why don’t you bring up more of your Scions? You need the big guns.”
Maharani shook her head. “Everyone’s already engaged, at least the ones we could contact. These flowers are everywhere. Mr. Albrecht. Behind you.”
I spun on my feet, my blade already carving a semicircle through the air. One of the hags had snuck up on me, and she would have dodged the cut of my sword as she attempted to duck – but something had stopped her dead in her tracks. Time magic? Her eyes went huge with terror as she watched the sword cleave her skull open.
“Thanks,” I told Maharani over my shoulder, still looking out for the last witch. “But I thought you said you couldn’t stop time for – ”
“For something like Belphegor, yes. That is correct. But his minions, I can handle.”
Belphegor’s chanting rang through the air, a bizarre, layered cacophony of words and voices. I’d had very little experience with the demonic tongue up until that point, and I realized that night that ignorance truly was bliss, especially when it came to their language. I couldn’t understand a word of Sloth’s incantations, but I knew in my heart that everything he said was intrinsically blasphemous, evil, corrupt, as if the very vernacular itself was built upon the unholy concepts of the prime hells.
It was just distracting enough to confuse the senses of even the most stoic and experienced among us. The third hag came stampeding out of the underbrush, shrieking at the top of her lungs as she descended on Maharani in a rage. It was almost effortless, how Rani held her hand out and froze the witch in place. A single whistling arrow in the chest sealed the hag’s fate. Her body crashed to the ground, disintegrating into a pile of petals.
From above us, Belphegor roared. “You think you’ve stopped anything? You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
He roared louder when another gout of fire consumed an even larger section of crimson flowers. Loki’s garden was going to be just cinders and ashes by the time Quill was finished.
Belphegor scowled, then slashed his hand through the air. It wasn’t there just seconds ago, but a projectile the size and shape of a crimson spear materialized from thin air, soaring directly for Quilliam. His eyes went wide with surprise, and maybe some slight terror.
Damn it.
I raced to Quill’s side, raising my free arm in front of us both, a golden kite shield from the Vestments springing into our reality from out of the armories upstairs. I flinched, digging my heels into the earth as the spear struck the shield, its impact threatening to throw me off my feet. But we were safe. The spear disappeared, its power spent.
Beside me, I could hear Quilliam gasping for breath. His knees were bent, his body huddled behind my shield.
“Didn’t need you to save me,” he grunted.
“Get over yourself. You did us a favor, so I did you one. We’re even for now, but when this is over, we go back to wanting to kill each other.”
His eyes flashed as he gathered a clump of fire in one hand. “Deal. Lower the shield.”
I did, and Quill thrust his arm out, hurling a fireball at the crimson flowers. Royce and Maharani had handled the rest of the rooftop – fire magic was probably the most common tool for arcane combat, but even that was too complicated for me. It meant nothing to a Scion, and even less, apparently, to Quill, who wielded the element like a flamethrower.
Note to self. Never, ever let him know that I’d complimented him, even mentally, at any point in my existence.
“It’s over, Belphegor,” I shouted. “The Lorica’s sweeping the city. We just need to do some cleanup here, and that’s it. Your plan is ruined. Give us Florian. Give up your insa
ne plot.”
The Prince of Sloth looked down coolly on us, studying each of our faces and finally settling on mine. “Your first mistake, nephilim, is thinking that this is finished. Your second is trusting the hell-spawned mongrel pretending to help you.”
Quilliam stood on the balls of his feet as he shouted. “I am not a mongrel!” He turned over his shoulder, glowering at me. “And not that you should care, but I’m not doing this to help you. Belphegor cannot be allowed to overtake the others. Mother will be angry.”
