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Damon was sprawled on the rocks right by the cliffside. The glowing balls of magic my fellow witches had left floating through the air turned his skin a sickly yellow. A dark streak of blood colored his palm. His shoulders were tensed, his eyes wide and jaw clenched.
His terror as the demon careened toward him rang through me, bringing tears to my eyes. I blinked them away and sucked in a breath. Leaping past the splintered tree trunks, I planted my feet on the rocky ground already half a step into my magicking.
The demon pounced. I sent all the force I could summon, all my need to protect my consort, ramming into the monster’s back. Its clawed hands were already snatching at Damon’s body—
My magic hit the fiend and propelled it farther, faster, over the edge of the cliff. In a second, it had tumbled right over.
It shrieked as it fell, claws scrabbling against the rock with a horrible screech. Damon rolled away from the edge, clutching his arm to his chest.
“Go get it!” he shouted. “I’m fine. Go!”
My pulse hiccupped anyway, but I couldn’t stop to check on him, or we might both be dead in another instant. My feet flew over the pebble-strewn ground to the path cut into the sheer rock.
The demon had caught hold of that ledge farther down, about halfway between me and the cave. It clambered toward me with a low reverberating growl, its glow flickering around it like flames in a breeze. Damon had gotten it so close to the cave, to the portal I needed to shove it through. I just had to push it the rest of the way.
The path didn’t give me much room to move through a form. I focused on my arms, whipping the energy within me around me and out, stepping backward and forward in time.
The surge of magic I cast out propelled the demon a few feet farther down the Cliff, but that was all. Every muscle in my body throbbed.
I couldn’t let this become another standstill. I had to end this battlenow.
The rough rock my hand had come to rest against bit into my fingers. My thoughts darted to the recovering witches, to their stories of blood and skin offered up to hold the demons back. A sacrifice offered up for that purpose—a power greater than anything the demons could produce in response.
Did I have enough blood in my whole body to contain this creature now that it was free in our world—to contain it and still be conscious enough to hold that spell?
My instincts said no. But as I dug down deep to draw all the power I could from my spark, the tearing ache of that magicking made my breath catch with a sudden idea.
The possibility that had just crossed my mind brought a fresh ache with it, sharper and more poignant. That emotion only convinced me I was right. A sacrifice wasn’t a sacrifice unless you let go of something you cared about.
To destroy this menace, I would give up the thing I’d cared about most after my consorts. And I’d pray that my sacrifice would see my purpose through.
The demon heaved itself toward me again. I raised my hands and spun around on that narrow outcropping of rock, trusting my feet to find purchase, trusting my balance to hold. Trusting in the great Spark that blessed witches like me with its power.
“All that is lit and warm in the world, hear me now,” I called out. “Let me bleed my spark, let me put all of it into this magicking. I give every piece of it I need to drive this demon back to whence it came.”
My spark flared in my chest and seemed to split. Agony stabbed through me as a fragment of that flame snapped from the light in my chest and flowed to my hands. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I whirled my arms in another magicking shaped around that piece of my spark.
My nerves wrenched even more as the light left me—but it burst into a blazing glow that walloped the demon and sent it skidding down the path, all the way to the cave’s entrance. I scrambled after it on wobbly legs, with ragged breaths, already reaching inside myself to tear away another piece of the source of magic I’d been born with.
This was more than blood, more than skin, more than bone could have been. It was the core of who I was, who I’d been. But not who I’d be, not anymore—if I survived this battle at all.
The demon tried to rear up, but I was ready for it. With a thrust of my hands that seemed to rip me open from the inside out, I tossed it sideways into the cave. The ache crept right up to the back of my skull. My muscles were burning.
I couldn’t stop. I had more. I could give everything, if that was what it took.
The demon staggered upright on the floor of the cave. Its eyes were as flatly black as always, but they looked wider now, its challenging grimace less certain. It hadn’t expected this. It hadn’t expected me.
Behind it, the starker glow of the portal whirled. One demonic face and then another swam in its depths. Clawed hands scrabbled at the edges. The power in the seal wavered, and my stomach flipped over.
Even without blood spilled, we’d almost been too late.
My knees started to give.No. I drew a form with my limbs as I sank down to the cave floor, pulling more and more of my spark from its place nestled deep inside me. With every stream of that purest magic I tore away, another knife of agony sliced through me. My vision was blurring.
I balled the blaze in my hands and whipped it at the demon with all my strength. The force drove it backwards, crashing into the portal and through. A clatter of rasping voices in a language I didn’t understand carried out. Something screamed. The cave shuddered.
I pushed harder, condensing all the magic I’d gathered into a searing light and smashing it against the portal, jerking my arms and flicking my wrists to bind, to seal, to implode.
Strands of the portal’s red glow broke off and flowed through the magic pressing inward on that opening. They spiraled into the vacant space within, chunks of rock falling after them. Cracks raced across the cave ceiling.
