BlackWing didn’t shift forms. He dug his hands into the deep folds of his ebon cloak, and when he drew forth his fists, he had bladed cesti on them. He bared his fangs in a menacing grin, and Kari could see they were dripping venom, which he pooled on his tongue and spat onto the bladed backs of the gloves. She wondered if he thought he’d be able to fight her effectively, bladed gloves against scimitars, but if he was so confident, he had to know something she didn’t. He stood several paces away and seemed to take account of her armor and defensive posture, so Kari took up the scorpion-like pose she had learned from her master, Suler Tumureldi.
BlackWing’s chances evaporated when Eli approached, his ornate warhammer in hand. “Where’s your girlfriend?” the half-corlyps asked.
“Turillia?” BlackWing returned. “She’s preparing the ritual. Oh, but you’re too hell-bent on killing me to worry about that, aren’t you? Fools. The pattern has been right in front of you all along, but now it’s progressed too far for you to stop. You have already lost.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” Eli grunted as he went in at an angle and tried to force BlackWing toward Kari with a wicked swing of his hammer.
“No one that still draws breath,” BlackWing returned. He stepped into Eli’s swing and caught the haft of the hammer. His balled right fist struck Eli across the jaw with a vicious backhand. The bladed cestus turned the right side of Eli’s snout into a torn, bloody mess, and BlackWing grabbed the half-corlyps by the throat.
Eli drove his knee into the taller man’s groin. Before his foot returned to the ground, he put it across and behind BlackWing’s knee and threw him to the ground effortlessly. It was just like Eli’s stories of how, over the years, when he traveled and sparred with Tormaar, he’d grown accustomed to tripping and throwing much larger, heavier opponents. It served him well fighting BlackWing.
He stepped on BlackWing’s crotch, then slammed his hammer across the brute’s face, a powerful blow that would’ve killed nearly any other man. “Go find the succ… Turillia!” Eli shouted to Kari. “I can handle this. He’s nothing without his poison.”
“Sherman, Sharyn, with me!” Kari called, and she bolted toward the southwest district. Sherman and Sharyn chased after her.
Eli watched their egress, then turned his attention to the fallen half-demon at his feet. “So, the trap is set, is it?” he asked. “Too bad you won’t live to see it sprung.”
BlackWing was on his feet in an instant. Eli never even saw him stand; one moment he was lying down, the next he was standing at the ready. Eli backed up in disbelief.
“Typical mortal,” BlackWing said, rolling his head to the side, and he flexed his jaw. “The moment you think you have the advantage, you throw it away in arrogance.”
BlackWing approached and Eli swore under his breath. He’d hit the larger half-demon such that nothing mortal would’ve gotten back on its feet before the next day. The way BlackWing called him a “typical mortal” had to mean Kari and Katarina were at least partially right. They weren’t dealing with a serilian-rir at all.
Eli felt the burn in his veins from the “half-demon’s” poison, but his body was fighting it off, just as it had when the succubus had bitten him. It was potent, there was no denying that. But cowardly as they were, corlypsi were designed to take punishment and not be easily killed—a trait that their children inherited to a degree. Eli wasn’t sure why Deirdre had nearly succumbed to it; was it because she’d been bitten? Such might mean BlackWing’s poison was more potent than the succubus’, even if she had drawn it from him.
Eli noted that BlackWing had his hands down by his sides; how could someone who made such a gross error be considered a deadly assassin? While Eli’s initial blows didn’t appear to have had much effect, he couldn’t imagine BlackWing wanted to be on the receiving end of them again. Shrugging off his thoughts, Eli sidestepped and swung his hammer at BlackWing’s head, but he redirected the hammer’s path halfway through and struck the larger half-demon in the knee. He followed up the strike with a kick to the back of that same knee, and then threw himself shoulder-first into the larger half-demon’s chest.
BlackWing rolled with the shoulder-charge and grabbed Eli and pulled him down to the ground. He flipped Eli and ended up on top of him, and BlackWing bit Eli on the side of the neck, going right for the jugular. Eli screamed in pain as the half-demon’s fangs sunk deep into his neck, and within seconds the half-corlyps could feel a deeper burn as his veins filled with venom. BlackWing didn’t suck out Eli’s blood or essence as the succubus had, but Eli knew that if he didn’t get BlackWing off of him, he’d be dead in less than a minute.
BlackWing’s fangs ripped sideways through Eli’s neck after a few moments, and the half-corlyps thrashed in pain. BlackWing had been struck by something, and Eli used every ounce of willpower he had left to roll away from the larger half-demon. He put his hand to the side of his neck to try to stem the flow of blood. Eli was already getting woozy, though whether from blood loss or the poison, he wasn’t sure; he guessed it was both. His blood was on fire, and he could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. He raised his bloodshot eyes to see who had saved him and saw Piotyr smashing BlackWing’s head with a vicious-looking mace.
BlackWing was thrashing, trying to get the enraged half-elite priest off of him. The blows had to hurt to some degree, but any other man’s skull would’ve come apart under the half-elite’s flurry. Whatever this demon truly was, its physical form was resilient.
After bashing the larger half-demon’s skull a few more times, Piotyr put his knee into BlackWing’s sternum and placed an open palm over his forehead. “By the light of the dawn, I abjure you, minion of darkness, enemy of the light, defiler of life!” he shouted. “By my hand and the purifying light of The Ascending Dawn, I cast you back into the darkness!”
BlackWing screamed in pain, and Eli found the sound comforting. Considering how many times they’d struck the assassin in the head without drawing so much as an ouch, Eli was glad the priest’s abjuration had some effect. Piotyr was thrown back off of BlackWing after a moment, and the half-corlyps thought perhaps the abjuration had failed, so he began crawling toward Katarina just in case.
It took the last of Eli’s strength to make it into the safety of the paladin’s nimbus of light. When he reached her, Katarina knelt and laid her free hand upon his wounded neck. Without taking her eyes from Piotyr or their enemy, Katarina uttered a quiet prayer. Eli’s wounds began to close, and the burn of the poison subsided.
A sound like the tearing of a massive piece of fabric drew Eli’s attention, and he turned over and onto his side. Several priests from the other churches came out onto their front steps to see what the commotion was. They went as wide-eyed as Piotyr, who rose and backed into the circle of light. A dark cloud rose from BlackWing’s body, and Eli wondered if Kari’s vampire-dragon was taking its own form in the middle of the street. It had no real substance yet, but it didn’t blow away when a breeze filtered down the street. It was unlike anything Eli had seen in all his years working for the Order or adventuring.