Mal traced them with his fingers and then cursed softly under his breath.
“What?” I tugged on his hand. “What is it?”
Mal pushed open the door and bright light streamed into the stairwell. My eyes took a moment to adjust, and then a fist punched me in the chest.
“Fuck,” Mal whispered.
I grabbed his arm. “We need to find the others, right fucking now.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Azazel
“You need to hurry,” Lilith says.
She’s frantic now.
Samael circles the cage, looking for a way to disable it.
“You need to disrupt the runes,” Lilith instructs. “I couldn’t from the inside. I can’t touch the bars. Hurry, my love.”
Samael scans the runes as if he understands them, which he probably does. And then he slides a dagger from the holster at his waist and reaches for the bars.
Movement catches the corner of my eye as Samael slashes across the runes. I spin, scythe at the ready, as Mal and Fee tumble out of a hole in the wall.
What the fuck?
“Stop!” Mal cries out to Samael.
Samael stares at Mal in surprise. “Where did you come from?”
Mal holds up his hands, his gaze shooting from Samael to Lilith. “Step away from the cage.”
“What’s going on?” Keon asks.
But my attention is on my mother. On the way her eyes bleed to black and the way her mouth stretches into an impossibly wide grin containing way too many teeth.
“No…” Samael staggers back, his face draining of color.
“That thing isn’t Lilith,” Mal says.
The thing in the cage licks its lips with a slimy black tongue.
It tilts its head to the side. “Not Lilith,” it says in a croaky voice. “But hungry.”
Samael draws his sword as the runes on the cage begin to glow and it hits me that he’s just let this thing free.
The bars of the cage pulse as if the metal itself is expanding.
Oh shit. “Look out!”
I throw myself toward Fee at the same time as Mal does. We shield her with our bodies as metal shards whizz and ping across the room. Pain lashes at my back where shards slice through my clothes.
Samael lets out a bellow and then the room goes deathly still as if all the sound and air are being sucked from it. Keon’s muffled curse reaches my ears as I turn to face the threat prickling my back, but the world is moving in slow motion, as if I’m stuck in molasses, and then the monster is revealed: ten-foot-tall, inky black, with twelve inch horns extending from the sides of his head. I’ve never seen anything like it. It lashes out at Samael with hands that are too large and fingers that have too many joints. Samael tries to evade, but his body is in the grip of the time warp and the entity is too fast.
The blow connects, and Samael is lifted off his feet, arms flailing in slow motion as he floats across the room.
“What is this?” Mal’s voice is distorted, every syllable elongated.
“Time warp,” Keon cries out. “Minor primordial daemon.”
The entity cackles and moves toward Samael with bloodlust and hunger in its eyes. My muscles strain as I try to get to him, scythe doing an achingly slow sweep through the air, and I know, with certainty, I won’t make it.
Samael brings his sword up, but he won’t be quick enough to defend.
Around me Mal and Keon are also headed toward Samael.
But there is no fighting this daemon. Not like this.
The air behind me crackles, and a figure rushes past me.
Fee slips through the molasses effortlessly, scythe swinging in regular time to intercept the creature.
How is she doing this? Then it hits me. Her blur-mode ability must be countering the molasses effect.
Her bellow of rage cuts through the thick air and the daemon swings its body toward her just in time for her to bury her blade in its flank.
There’s a sharp pop and then I’m in full on motion as the time warp effect shatters.
The daemon swipes at Fee but she ducks to evade and then spin-kicks it in the abdomen.
Pride swells my chest.
That’s my fucking girl.
Now to kick some daemon ass.
Fee
The daemon threw its shoulders back and pushed its head forward to scream at me, blasting me with its foul-ass breath.
I swallowed a gag and shoved my scythe in its face. It pulled back to avoid the slice before movement flickered in the periphery of my vision. I leapt in time to avoid the swipe of a thick leathery tail.
Where the hell had that come from?
“It’s morphing!” Keon shouted. “Watch out.”
The fucker was growing tentacles. “Cut them off.”
Azazel obliged, bringing his sword down on a thick appendage and eliciting a delicious bellow of pain from the daemon.
“Keep attacking!” Mal shouted.
I stabbed and swiped, cutting into the daemon at every turn. The thing wasn’t as powerful without the time warp ability. We could totally do this.
The time warp must have been a one-time deal, because otherwise why wasn’t it using it now? Wounding it seemed to have deactivated the ability somehow, but it still had the ability to morph, and it was doing it again, growing an extra head with serrated teeth and uber-wide jaws. The jaws lunged at me, pink slimy maw pulsing eagerly. Yuk. I stabbed upward burying my blade in the wet inside of the beast, and then my feet left the ground as its head whipped back, taking me with it, still attached by my scythe.
Fuck I was stuck, and in a minute, I’d be shaken into the things jaws.
Arms wrapped around me and Azazel’s scent filled my head. “I’ve got you.” He tugged, wings beating furiously, and I came free, bringing my scythe with me.
We landed neatly on the ground to find the daemon shifting yet again. The wounds we’d inflicted knitted as it transformed, and it hit me that this could go on forever. It would just shift every time we wounded it, and then it would be whole, and eventually…Eventually we’d tire. We’d slip up and then, bam, it would have us.
One by one, it would take us down.
“We can’t keep this up.” I backed up so I was abreast of Samael with Azazel on my other side. Keon and Mal were to my far right, all of us focused on the shifting hungry daemon. “It’ll keep healing.”
“You’re right,” Samael said. “We must do irreparable damage. Inflict it fast and mercilessly.”
“Great plan, but how in the hell do we do that?”
“Not you. Me. I just… I’m, not sure if I’m strong enough yet.” He took a deep breath then exhaled in a fuck-it way. “Stand back. It’s been a while.”
We backed up, and Samael’s inky black wings flared out. They shimmered and a sheen fell over them as an armored layer covered them. Like the dominions, his wings were now metallic, lethal and cutting.
As the daemon finished its transformation and lifted its now serpentine head, Samael attacked in a spinning top motion that propelled him toward the entity, wings open and slashing at the air as he spun, faster and faster until he made contact with the daemon. The next few moments were a blur of blood and screams and flashes of silver and black as Samael buried himself inside the daemon.