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My knees wobbled on the buoyant tar, but I threw my hand out and caught Nadia’s body midair as she leapt for the window. Spears of telekinesis wrapped around her form, and I pulled her to the roof again. The demon snapped free of my hold and her hand lashed out in my direction. A dark object shot through the air, and in the blink of an eye, pain lanced through my gut.
A large shard of metal protruded from my stomach. Nadia lunged at me, and Jackson fired again, but she was unperturbed by the bullets. The only sign she’d been shot were the rivulets of black blood streaming over her skin.
I closed my eyes and called up magic from my core, focusing my will forward into my voice. Strings of Latin, prayers, and blessings tumbled from my lips, but nothing worked. It only pissed her off.
The demon blurred running toward me, and then Nadia’s hand wrapped around my throat, her nails like fire in my neck. My lungs tried to expand but when my throat flexed it felt like glass ripping me apart from the inside. I couldn’t breathe.
I heard a loud growl in the distance, but I couldn’t focus. Large black dots clouded my vision. Grabbing the demon’s wrist, I used it to lift some of my weight up and away from her hand. A granule of air hit my throat, but it wasn’t enough. Her fingers tightened, and fresh searing pain erupted in my gut as she pulled on the piece of metal in my stomach, shoving it upward, angling it under my ribs.
Something roared off to my right, and then a second blur rushed past me, taking the demon with it. Air flooded back into my chest, and I dropped like a sack of potatoes, coughing more blood across the ground. Hot crimson liquid poured from my stomach as if it had turned on a faucet instead of opening my veins. I tried to staunch the flow with my fingers, but the pain was too much. My head lolled to the side, and I almost didn’t recognize the loud yelp that followed.
Jerking my head around, I found a large white wolf on the roof. It took a second before I recognized the tail lashing back and forth in the wind. It’d been so long since I’d witnessed Jackson transform. I’d forgotten the luminescent shine to his fur. I'd forgotten how he moved at night like a shooting star through the trees.
A large red gash was visible on his side, and it made my heart stop. Demon venom could be deadly for anyone, but especially for a wolf.
“Jack, don’t.” I rasped. My energy had waned too far, and my throat felt raw. He couldn’t hear me. I tried to stand. I tried to summon some sort of spell, but all I could do was watch as Jackson snapped his teeth at the demon’s neck. Nadia sidestepped his lunge and raked both hands down his side again.
“No!” I cried, struggling to get up off the ground. Magic seethed under my skin, demanding I use it, but the more I bled, the harder it was to reach.
My foot slipped in the blood pooling beneath me, and it clicked. Blood. I couldn’t hold my telekinesis steady enough to help Jackson, but I could use my blood.
In front of me, there was an audible thwack, and Jackson’s wolf form flipped through the air. His spine hit the roof hard and he flopped over onto his side, struggling to get back up. The demon danced back and forth at the opposite end of the building, licking his blood from its claws.
“Stay away from him,” I snarled.
The demon smiled, and something snapped inside my head. Magic raced across my skin and a painful shock rocketed through my skull as I wrapped my left hand around the metal sticking out of my gut. I pulled the glove from my right hand with my teeth and took a deep breath.
The demon’s eyes widened and I ripped the metal from my body. Blood spurted from the wound, and I caught it in my right palm. The air around me charged with electricity, and I smiled as I drew my right hand through the air, and droplets of my blood froze, waiting for a command.
“Sagitta Sanguinis.”The words rolled off my tongue, and a pulse went through the blood, thinning each droplet into a sharpened needle. I flicked my fingers, and each one shot forward. Nadia yelped in surprise, and tried to leap into the air, but my blood arrows followed her, slamming into her chest like a thousand broken shards of glass. She tumbled back across the roof, screaming, and vanished in the bright blue light of a teleportation rift.
Her magic faded, and silence fell. The venom inching its way along my spine burned out my nerve endings. I lost feeling in my toes, calves, and knees in rapid succession. I fell as Jackson came racing towards me, transforming back into his human shape.
“Rebekah!”
8
Cauterize
When I opened my eyes, I was on Nadia’s floor. Jackson’s warmth hovered over me. “Come on, talk to me, Rebekah. Open your eyes. Look at me. Come on, baby. Look at me.”
“Jackson?”My tongue felt like a cotton ball stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my ribs were on fire. Every beat of my heart sent fresh pain radiating through my bones.
“Bex! Oh, thank God. Stay with me,” he said. “Stay with me. Open those beautiful eyes for me.”
“We need to stop the bleeding,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
Jackson looked away from me and snarled, “I’m doing the best I can.”
Something pressed hard against the wound in my stomach and my eyes rolled shut as a vision flickered in the darkness, but nothing surfaced. I’d lost too much blood for my magic to work.
“No, no, no. Rebekah, open your eyes. Come on... talk to me,” Jackson shouted, but his voice sounded so far away.
Something had hooked itself around my soul. I could feel it dragging me down into the abyss, inch by inch. Everything was dark and cold. Too cold to shiver. Too cold to breathe.
“Brace her, this is going to hurt like hell,” the second voice said. This time I recognized it as Monty, the landlord.
I groaned. “I’m so cold.”
