I kept the biggest rock in my hand and ran toward where the screams were the loudest. The landscape of buildings, streets and churches looked completely different than when Adrian, Jasmine, Costa and I had strolled through here hours ago. Darkness had since claimed it, and that darkness was more than the absence of light. It was a living, writhing force that brought death and terror, literally, judging from the minions and demons that spilled out of those snakelike plumes.
“Make for the churches!” I began to shout at the people. “Everyone, get to hallowed ground as fast as you can!”
I repeated that chant over and over, only to be ignored by all who heard it. Up ahead, a minion dragged a screaming girl who resembled my former dorm mate toward one of those dark flumes. I ran toward them, but they disappeared into the realm tentacle before I could reach them, and I couldn’t cross it to save her. I wanted to scream out of sheer frustration. Instead, I channeled my raging emotions into something else. If no one would listen to me and run for hallowed ground, then I would force the minions to pick on someone their own size.
I flung myself right into the midst of two more minions, who were forcibly corralling a group of students toward another realm flume. My adrenaline was so high, I smashed the rock over the first minion’s head, then ducked under the punch the second one threw before head-butting him in the midsection. He hadn’t been expecting my strength, so it knocked him flat, and then I slammed my foot down onto his neck.
The crunch I felt coincided with him going completely limp. A rush of wind warned me to whirl, and the minion whose head I’d bashed missed tackling me by only an inch. His momentum sent him sprawling, and I leaped onto his back before he could roll over and attack me again. With all of my strength, I smashed the rock into his head again. This time, I felt his skull give, and when I jumped off, he was as dead as his now disintegrating friend.
“Head for the nearest church!” I ordered the stunned group of students. “As long as one of those black flumes isn’t on it, you’ll be safe.”
“Screw this,” one of the guys muttered, running off. With a frightened bleat at the bodies turning to ash, the other girls followed him, and none of them were headed toward a church.
My teeth ground together. So many innocent people were getting hurt, killed and kidnapped right now, and as these crowds and the tourists at Scotty’s Castle had taught, everyone was too panicked to do what I said. My best bet was to distract the demons and minions from continuing their evil roundup, and I happened to know the perfect bait. Me.
“I am Ivy Jenkins, the last Davidian!” I yelled, holding up my right arm with its now glowing, uncurling sling for emphasis. “Come and get me, demons!”
All the demons and minions within earshot stopped what they were doing and began to run toward me. Oh shit, I thought, realizing that there were more of them than I had anticipated. A lot more. I didn’t even have enough rocks on me to take out half their number, but I didn’t have to fight them. All I had to do was outrun them. So, I spun around and ran.
My plan to distract them from hurting innocent people worked. Within a staggeringly short amount of time, it looked like I was leading a macabre version of a parade. Gleaming-eyed minions outnumbered their masters by about five to one, but quick looks behind me revealed that at least ten demons were hot on my heels. None of them had wings, though one had the head of an owl, another had long horns and another had Medusa-like snakes protruding from her head.
I began to notch rocks in my sling and hurl them at the horde without really aiming. I didn’t have the time to. I was already running as fast I could while using a supernatural weapon that made my arm feel as though it had been set on fire. Add that to avoiding those winding realm tunnels that more demons could be hiding in, plus trying to run away from the most populated areas to give the people a chance to get away, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that I felled very few of the monsters chasing me.
That was fine, I reminded myself, putting everything I had into increasing my speed. I knew where the Archon gateway was, and once I was through it, none of them could follow. In the Eden realm, I could gather all the rocks I needed and come back through the gateway with my slingshot blazing. They wouldn’t even know what hit them.
A large man stepped out from behind one of the buildings, and relief swelled in me when I recognized him even though he was still about a hundred yards away.
“Ivy, this way!” Adrian shouted, motioning me toward him.
I changed course and headed toward him instead of taking the next right toward the Eden gateway. With more relief, I noted that Adrian didn’t look hurt after his tangle with Blinky. In fact, he didn’t even look wet from my bathwater anymore, and when had he found the time to change clothes? He hadn’t been wearing that outfit the last time I saw him—
Realization hit me and I skidded to a stop a good twenty yards away from him. This might look like Adrian, yet it couldn’t be. And I only knew one demon who could shape-shift into someone’s exact likeness, but he was supposed to be dead. Again.
“Demetrius,” I panted.
Adrian’s form blurred. The unfamiliar clothes that had tipped me off turned into shadows that spread over the demon like a layer of oil. In the next instant, it parted, revealing pale skin, long black hair, a dark pink mouth and the blackest eyes I’d ever seen.
“So,” Demetrius drawled. “You’re not as stupid as I thought you’d be.”
I had another moment to note that his shadows hugged his frame instead of towering behind him in their usual, formidable array. Then reality slammed home. I had succeeded in luring minions and demons away from the helpless, panicked people on campus, but Demetrius’s shape-shifting trick had caused me to veer away from the gateway. Now I was trapped between a murderous crowd at my back and a far more deadly obstacle in front of me, and I was all out of rocks.
“The realm leak wasn’t a result of crumbling walls, was it? You spilled the realm onto the campus,” I accused, trying to stall so I could figure out my next move.
“Of course,” Demetrius replied with naked satisfaction. Then his voice lowered to a hiss. “You destroyed my shadows.” He took a step toward me, rage contorting his features. “You will suffer for that.”
In response, I began to spin the sling. He didn’t know the notch that was supposed to hold a rock was empty. Besides, the rope itself was hallowed. It might not kill him, but if it touched him, it would hurt, and I intended to lash him with it until he was distracted enough for me to run by him.
“One more step, and I’ll finish the job I started with your shadows,” I warned.
He smiled, so satisfied and chilling that I knew my bluff has failed. “If you could, you would have already done so.”
I refused to be deterred by how easily he’d called my bluff. He’s only one demon, I reminded myself, spinning the sling faster. And without his shadows, he was no bigger than an average man. I risked a quick glance behind me. Grins began to wreath the faces of the demons and minions who’d chased me. Shouts rang out, and I recognized enough Demonish to know that they were suggesting different ways to kill me.
Not today, I thought fiercely, about to turn back to Demetrius and lash him with my sling. Then something in the sky caught my eye. The crowd didn’t see it. They were all facing me.
A large form swooped down behind them and began ripping a path through the center of the murderous horde. Glowing, red eyes appeared between the bloody row, and a fierce surge of pride coursed through me. It was Brutus, plowing through the crowd with incredible velocity, his granite-hard wings cutting down everything in his path as if it was grass and he was the lawn mower.
“No!” Demetrius roared.
I ran toward Brutus, not caring that I was also heading toward the remains of the bloodthirsty crowd. Nothing short of a surface-to-air missile could stop Brutus.
His head
and shoulders were so large, I hadn’t noticed Adrian crouched behind him until his arm shot out, hand extended for me to grab. I reached up—and a horned demon lunged at me, knocking my hand away. In the same instant, he grabbed Adrian’s arm and yanked. With Brutus’s continued velocity in the opposite direction, Adrian was ripped from the gargoyle’s back.
Multiple shouts sounded as Adrian fell into the crowd. I rushed toward him, but then was snatched up as Brutus’s wild grab for me sank his claws into my shoulders. I screamed as those claws dug deep, hauling me above the crowd. Brutus tried to grab Adrian next, yet he had already been swarmed. Denied of their chance to watch me get murdered, the minions and demons tore at Adrian with all of their unspent vengeance. His arms flashed in a flurry of ferocity as he fought them, but in moments, he was overcome. There were simply too many of them.
“No!” Demetrius shouted again. “Stop!”
I thought that furious roar was directed at me. Brutus was beating his wings, but we were flying right at Demetrius, and even without his lethal shadows, we were low enough that Demetrius could reach me with one good jump. I braced myself to fight. To my complete disbelief, Demetrius ran right past us, throwing himself into the group that surrounded Adrian.
“Get your hands off my son!” he howled.
My own screams drowned out everything as Brutus shifted his grip, his claws tearing out of my flesh as he dropped me, only to grab me in a firmer grip a second later. In this new position, I was able to reach for the harness around his neck, and I hauled myself from his arms up to his back. My shoulders flamed from the multiple puncture wounds and the added agony from the hallowed sling being activated, but I gritted my teeth and wound the reins around my fingers.
Pulling up meant fly higher, pulling down meant dive, and pulling straight out meant cruising. Adrian hadn’t taught me what position meant murder all the bad guys, but I intended to find out.
“Come on, Brutus,” I yelled. “Let’s do this!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I PULLED UP, and Brutus began to blast us into the sky. Even though I was in a frenzy to get back to Adrian, we needed the velocity. Once we were about a hundred stories up, I turned Brutus so he’d have plenty of space to circle back around to the remains of the crowd, and then I yanked the reins down.
Brutus dove so fast that it looked like the ground was rushing upward to meet us. At the last moment, he leveled out and headed toward the crowd without me even needing to steer.
“Good boy!” I shouted. “You know exactly what we’re doing!”
Then, I tucked my head behind his bulky shoulders the way Adrian had. Otherwise, at this speed, I’d decapitate myself when Brutus collided with the crowd, and I wanted other peoples’ heads to roll, not mine. Right before we hit, I gripped Brutus as tight as I could and braced for all I was worth.
Despite that, when Brutus plowed into the minions and demons, the impact almost knocked me off his back. Blood spattered me and countless thuds felt like they were rattling my bones as body parts were sheared off from the bladelike effect of his wings. If I didn’t trust him so much, I’d worry that Adrian would inadvertently be cut down, too. But I did trust Brutus, so I held on for dear life as the gargoyle hacked his way through the crowd.
When we came out on the other side, Brutus swung around so fast that my legs flew out behind me. Only my grip on the reins kept me from being launched off, and when I scrambled back on and saw what was left of the crowd, I was stunned.
Ashes littered the ground in piles that coated the body parts Brutus had just hacked off so ruthlessly. Only a few people were left standing. The rest were all dead, and that hadn’t been Brutus’s doing. Despite the gargoyle’s best efforts, he could only kill minions, and there had been a lot more demons here. For a moment, I didn’t understand. Then I heard a furious bellow followed by a voice I knew all too well.
“I told you not to touch him,” Demetrius snarled, grabbing one of those few remaining figures. His shadows stabbed out from his hands, their reach miniscule compared to before, but the pale-haired demon in his grasp screamed. Then dark, smoking holes appeared in those small stab wounds. They grew, spreading all over the pale-haired demon’s body, until they turned the screaming demon into ashes right before my eyes. It only took seconds, and the remaining demons exchanged a look of terror before running for the nearest realm plume.
Then, something moved in the heap of ashes and body parts, followed by the sound of Adrian groaning. Brutus heard it, too. He let out a warning snarl and flared his wings into chopping position. Then he began to lumber toward the demon.
“Stay back,” Demetrius snapped, and I was so shocked at what I saw next, I actually pulled on Brutus’s reins to stop him.
Unless I was hallucinating, I was watching the most evil demon I’d ever encountered gently lift Adrian’s prone form from the ashes. He wiped them off Adrian’s face, revealing bloodstains and more than a few slashes. Adrian groaned again, but he didn’t open his eyes, and his limbs had the kind of looseness that spoke of a severe concussion or something worse.
“You killed your own kind to protect him,” I said, still shocked beyond belief. “Why?”
Demetrius looked at me. His usual, venomous hatred quickly filled his dark gaze, but in the instant before it, I saw something I would’ve sworn was impossible from a demon.
Love.
Despite all the horrible things he’d done to Adrian, and despite the fact that Demetrius was as close to evil incarnate as anything could come, he truly loved Adrian. If I hadn’t seen the proof for myself, I would never have believed it.
“He is my son.” The words were spit at me, then his voice softened as he looked back at Adrian. “Minions can’t kill him, but demons could, and they weren’t obeying my orders to stop.”
His words sank in, bringing with them a realization that rocked me. I didn’t want to believe it, but in that moment, the truth was too obvious to be denied. Demetrius’s revelation that only demons could kill Adrian just confirmed what I now knew all the way to my soul. Demetrius had been hiding the truth in plain sight every time he referred to Adrian as “my son.”
“You’re his father,” I breathed. “His real father.”
Demetrius set Adrian down and rose. Brutus reared up in a threatening manner, but the demon didn’t move toward me. Instead, he smiled, and the wisps of his shadows sliced the air around him as if yearning to be cutting into my flesh.
“The only reason I’m letting you live is because Adrian needs manna and I don’t have any.” Demetrius’s tone was light, yet his gaze held no less hatred. “So, take my son and heal him, Davidian. I’ll save killing you for the next time we meet.”
With that, Demetrius raised his arms, and the unnatural wind that had been swirling around the campus picked up speed, increasing until it felt like a hurricane had landed on us. More incredible was how the black tunnels began to pull back, leaving the buildings and returning to the realm they had spilled out from. Flashes of lightning revealed that realm. In it, as if looking through a dark, frozen mirror, I caught a glimpse of all the buildings, streets and cars that were here, but over there, they were desolate and ice-covered. Then, with a rush of wind strong enough to knock Brutus back a few feet, Demetrius, the realm and all of those encroaching tunnels simply disappeared.
As if on cue, police and fire truck sirens began to ring out. I looked back at Adrian. The ashes around him were gone, as were the body parts that had turned to ash during Demetrius’s mind-blowing display of power. I wasn’t sure if this was a trick or if Demetrius was really letting me go so I could heal him.
Didn’t matter. I slid off Brutus’s back and grabbed some of the rocks that the gale-force winds had scattered across the ground. If this was a trick, I’d be ready. With rocks in my pocket and one notched in my sling, I ran over to Adrian.
Brutus beat
me there, and his wings formed a protective shield around us as I knelt beside Adrian. He was still unconscious, and he was covered in so much blood and soot that I had to feel him to judge which wound needed immediate attention.
A crashing sound made me jerk up with my sling at the ready. Relief filled me when I saw that it wasn’t Demetrius or another demon, but a familiar bus driving over fallen tree limbs, rubble and other debris left after the realm tunnels’ retreat.
“Get in,” Jasmine urged, opening the door. Then she yelled, “Adrian’s down!” at Costa, and jumped out of the bus.
“Is he dead?” she asked, hurrying over.
I continued to search Adrian with my hands. The worst of his wounds seemed to be his head and a very nasty gash on his stomach. “No, but he’s hurt pretty bad.”
“We don’t have any more manna,” Jasmine said, telling me something I already knew, not that I had been about to share that information with Demetrius.
I glanced at the bus, then back at the street sign that Demetrius’s unearthly winds had blown over.
“Help me load Adrian into the bus, then follow me. I think I know where we can get some.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I WASN’T ABOUT to put Demetrius’s promise to kill me the next time we met to the test, so I didn’t go into the Eden realm alone. I pulled Adrian, Jasmine, Costa and even Brutus into the stunningly gorgeous realm. Now, no one could be taken as a hostage while I got the manna that Adrian needed. Zach was our supplier, so either he had some, or he knew where to get it.
Once through, Brutus took one look at the endless sunlight and ran for the nearest set of bushes. Zach seemed to be in the exact same spot that he’d been before, so either he’d been waiting on me, or he was really comfortable in that position. I knew it wasn’t the time difference. What had been about half an hour on the other side should have equated to a lot longer here.