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Was this how it ended? Spinster torn to pieces by mysterious assailants on a subway? What a shitty way to die.
As the demon nearest to me hissed and showed off the fangs it planned to use to bite, a familiar male voice grumbled, “Hold tight, Sadie. I’m coming.”
Cain?
He was at the far end of the train car, his scythe swinging, the blade carefully avoiding the few people sobbing and cowering in their seats. The tip of the hook impaled the demon about to kill an old woman wearing a grocery store smock. Cain yanked it away and pinned it to the floor before slicing it in half.
The death of the demon caused the monsters stalking me to lose interest. As one, they focused on the real threat: Cain, wearing his long coat, grim-faced and sexy with determination.
The demons ran for him. Not all of them on the floor, I should add. A pair used their claws to climb the wall and then race across the less obstructed ceiling. It played like a scene in a horror movie, not that Cain seemed bothered. He stood tall in the middle of the aisle, looking badass in the feeble cell phone lights, his blade a weapon of deadly massacre.
He felled the monsters, each swing of the blade taking heads and limbs. One by one, step by step, he destroyed the demons, and hope returned—Hell yeah, I’m not dying today!—until he yelled, “Behind you!”
I whipped my head around as a demon launched itself at me. My hands went up defensively, and I screeched. Not a brave warrior yell, but a sound of pure fear that turned to revulsion when the hot, leathery skin of the demon hit my palms. The momentum flung me to my back, and it took all my strength to keep the gnashing jaws from biting off my face.
“No. No. No,” I chanted as those teeth got closer.
“Hold on, Sadie. I’m coming,” Cain bellowed again.
I didn’t have time to wait. The jaws inched closer, and I closed my eyes. If only I really were a witch like Nova claimed, then I’d blast this fucker to hell.
Drool dropped onto my cheek, burning like acid, which activated a new fear of being permanently maimed in the face. At my age, I didn’t need extra scars to go with my crow’s feet, and it adrenalized me to holler hotly, “Fuck off with your slobbering.” I shoved with all my rage and terror.
A shove that actually sent the demon flying. It hit the far wall before doing a slow slide down. Dead, I should add, with two palm-sized burn marks on its chest.
Burns caused by my glowing hands.
I gaped at them stupidly as Cain joined me, gruffly asking, “Are you hurt?”
“Uh, no. But there’s something going on with my hands.” I held them up, and his lips flattened.
“Try to not touch anyone,” he advised, glancing from the demon I’d killed to my suddenly dangerous hands.
“Will it go away?” I huffed, holding them far from my body lest I accidentally incinerate myself.
“No idea. Never seen that trick before.”
“Not reassuring.”
“My job ain’t to coddle your ass. What do you say we get out of here before another wave of demons appears?”
“More?” I took in the carnage with wide eyes. Not of the demons. They were already vanishing, their bodies puddling into a goo that evaporated. But the trauma they’d inflicted remained. A handful of people remained, huddled and crying. Blood spattered the inside of the train. Bodies lay across seats and on the floor.
So many dead. And I’d almost been one of them. The shock of it glued me in place.
“Don’t you fall apart on me now,” he growled. “Move your ass.” Cain tugged at me, and I staggered with him to the nearest door, holding in a whimper as I had to step over a young guy missing half his face. On the threshold, I hesitated. Cain jumped down first and waited for me.
The drop of a few feet would be easy, but the whole leaving the subway for the tunnel beyond? I trembled.
“What are you waiting for? Jump.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should hole up inside the car and wait for help to arrive.”
“You want to explain this to the cops?”
Not really. I could only imagine what Detective Williams would say if he found me caught up in yet another murder scene.
“It’s dark. How do I know what I’m jumping on?” My hands had lost their glow as suddenly as it had appeared. The murk outside had almost no light, just a single cell phone lying on the ground, shining upwards. I didn’t want to think of its owner.
