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“I had no idea—I never really thought—” A hoarse chuckle slipped out of his mouth. He pressed his knuckles to his lips, his gaze fixing on the demon again. When mine followed his, a fresh surge of horror tore through my nerves.
Thatfaceso huge and gnarled and yet with features I could identify as human-like. Those darkly opaque eyes that seemed to see nothing and everything at the same time, like twin voids lodged in the creature’s deformed skull…
I tensed my muscles against another shudder and wrenched my gaze to the side. I just wouldn’t look at it if I couldn’t look without my thoughts spiraling away from me. We’d have a lot better chance of surviving if I kept my head.
“Do you think their magic is working?” Jin asked under his breath. “The demon looks like it’s slowing down.”
Taking note from the corner of my vision, I had to agree. The creature’s lumbering pace had faltered. The unsettling vibes that rolled off it jarred against my nerves even harder. I fought to keep my breathing steady. In and out, just like always.
Rose and the other witches had the situation under control. This was their job. I’d done mine. The best thing I could do right now was stay out of their way.
But the thing kept shuffling onward, almost directly toward us. My jaw started to ache from how tightly I’d clamped my teeth together. The demon had slowed down, yeah, but had they dazed it enough? How much of an effect was their spell even having?
A blur of movement, a familiar purple shirt, caught my eye in the curve of the semi-circle around the side of the field. Rose’s dark hair fanned out around her pale face as she bowed and reached in a dance of her own. A faster dance than the enforcers were using. I knew, down in the sensation of light that warmed me from the inside out at the sight of her, that she was casting something more potent, drawing on the reserves of magic inside her that were now even greater because of how closely she and the five of us were interlinked.
The demon came to a stop. The grass around it started to curl with rot. Nausea swelled in my gut, but a little hope unfurled alongside it. If anyone could manage this, it was Rose. Was the demon under her spell?
In the space of a heartbeat, it whipped toward her. A shout of warning snagged in my throat. Jin let out a low desperate sound, and the demon barreled forward. Straight at my consort and the witches around her.
The wind warbled, and my bones trembled with it. I shoved myself upright, but then I didn’t know what to do with myself. It wasn’t as if I could reach Rose before the demon did. It wasn’t as if I had any way of fending it off even if I could have made it there.
Rose wasn’t standing down. I could tell from her expression that she’d seen the demon charging toward her, but she only adjusted her form, her hands slicing through the air, her legs slashing out. The demon leapt, its claws swiping at the gathered witches, and Rose shoved her arms forward.
Both demon and the enforcers around her pitched backward and sprawled on the ground. The aftershock of the colliding forces trembled through the ground all the way to my feet.
Rose’s shoulders shuddered, but she was already moving again. Magicking again. The other witches milled around her, some of them attempting spells of their own, some of them fleeing toward the cars. The ones near us were dispersing too, to try to help push the demon back or to find shelter.
The demon had righted itself in an instant. It let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a roar and lunged at the witches again.
This time whatever magic Rose was summoning wasn’t enough to completely block the fiend’s attack. Its vicious claws severed the neck of one woman and gouged others across the shoulders, the belly. Blood painted the grass red.
I took a step forward and stopped myself. “If we die, Rose dies too,” I said.
“What the fuck can we do?” Jin said miserably. “We can’t just— It’s going to slaughter them.”
The enforcers’ sergeant had clearly realized the same thing. Her shouts for retreat echoed across the field. The demon wheeled at her voice, and for the first time seemed to consider the cars. My heart sank. No, no—
The monster sprang away from its previous victims across the grass. The purposefulness of its movements left no doubt in my mind that it meant to wrench every one of those vehicles apart like it had our cage last time. And then it would plow through all our fragile bodies and Lord only knew how much else of the city we’d been fighting to protect.
We still had the cage—constructed out of copper and imbued with witches’ blood and Rose’s fierce energy. But the witches couldn’t even keep the demonoffthem, let alone shove it all the way over—
The thought clicked into place in my head with a sudden certainty. I’d just have to bring the cage to it.
I was already running to the truck. “Seth!” Jin called, but I didn’t hesitate. My thoughts spun in my head—I had to consider the possibilities, evaluate the risk—what if I hurt more people than I helped racing in there?
But there was no time for that. There was only the demon loping across the field toward our only means of escape, barely stumbling when another wave of magic hit it, and damn it, if I didn’t dosomethingI was going to spend the rest of my life, however short it might be, hating myself for it.
I jumped into the cab of the truck. The key was sitting on the dashboard. I shoved it into the ignition, jerked the controls into reverse, and hit the gas with a slam of my foot.
The truck lurched backwards with a roar to rival the demon’s. The walls of the cage that had been leaning against the ground pulled off the hinges we’d left open for the final sealing. The base, lying on the truck’s flatbed, rattled but held in place.
The truck quaked but kept moving, picking up speed even over the bumpy terrain. My foot jammed on the gas pedal, I craned my neck and yanked the steering wheel I was clutching, aiming the panel behind me directly into the demon’s path.
The demon loomed, my nerves screamed, and the truck’s wheels jolted beneath me. Then the slab of glyph-twisted metal and magic collided with that monstrous form.
The demon’s torso smacked the copper shapes I’d formed so carefully. It screeched and heaved itself away. Its arm lashed out.
A surge of nerve-rattling power blasted into the cabin and threw me right through the windshield. I barely managed to wrench my wobbling arms across my face to shield myself from the spray of shattered glass. My back hit the hood, a knife of agony stabbing up and down my spine. Heat seared my skin.
