With blood oozing from his severed arms, he rushed me once again.
Then he halted mid-step, a dagger suddenly appearing out of nowhere and impaling him in the eye. The black liquid immediately started to drip down his face, and he reached up to grab the dagger by the hilt.
I turned to see who’d thrown it.
It was my father, simultaneously engaged with the other demon that he and Hawk had both attacked. “Defeat him, Lily.”
I snapped back to the demon who had just yanked the dagger out of his eye and ran forward, focused on his right arm. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough strength to slice off the limb from the shoulder, so I focused on the wrist, bringing my sword down in the hope of a clean cut.
The blade sliced straight, and his sword clanked to the ground.
Another blood-curdling scream issued from his lips, and he lunged at me with the dagger he’d just removed, moving quicker than he had before he’d dropped his massive blade on the ground. I couldn’t block the small knife, could only dodgeleft and right, preventing the tip from penetrating my cheek multiple times.
I finally managed to sidestep and fake to my right so his dagger went the wrong way, and then with speed I didn’t think I could produce so spontaneously, I spun and brought my sword down to slice off the hand that gripped the dagger.
He still had two arms but lacked hands for either of them, had no ability to hold a weapon. But he was still monstrously bigger than I was and a threat until he was killed. He bled from all four extremities as he looked at me with one red eye, his rows of teeth glistening as he widened his jaw.
He started to slam his arms down to the floor in an attempt to crush me, knock me out cold from the speed of his attack.
All I had to do was survive this. All I had to do was live long enough to cut my blade through his black heart, and it would be done. So I kept my focus, dodged his bloody hands, gripped my sword extra tight so I wouldn’t drop it. I started to time his swings to find the right opening.
And when it arrived, I threw myself forward and slammed my sword into his chest, hitting the crack I’d previously made and driving my blade in deeper. Without waiting to see if blood began to pour or if my attack was successful, I rolled away so he wouldn’t be able to strike me. I ran for one of the blades he’d previously dropped. Without Callum’s gift of strength, I would have barely been able to lift it, but I held it in a single hand like it was weightless.
But by the time I turned around to face him again, he tumbled forward and collapsed, my sword still sticking out of his chestwhere the blood continued to ooze. The brightness in his remaining red eye had gone dark.
I panted as I caught my breath, the first time I’d been allowed to pause for more than a split second. I felt the hair close to my scalp drenched in sweat. My armor felt constricting, trapping all the heat right next to my body.
But then I turned to survey the rest of the battle—and it was chaos.
My father, Hawk, and Callum all handled the demon with the wolf’s head, along with the servants who served me. But they looked infinitely more tired than I was, and bloody too. Viper, Aunt Eldinar, and Uncle Ezra handled the skeletal one, and then I watched Uncle Ezra be knocked fifteen feet away by a single punch.
I pulled my sword out of the demon’s body and rushed to my father’s side. “Help them,” I said as I arrived with my sword in hand. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Pretty wants to dance?” the wolf said with a cackle, unbothered by the servants that gripped his legs and climbed up his back, like he didn’t even notice.
“I danced with your partner over there, and he couldn’t keep up.”
His eyes shifted behind me, and he spotted his dead comrade, his toothy grin tightening into a snarl before he looked at me once more. Then he issued a low growl, sounding exactly like a hungry wolf.
Callum and Hawk left to help Viper and Aunt Eldinar, because it didn’t seem like my uncle had returned.
“Go,” I said to my father.
My father kept his eyes on the wolf. “They have enough people. It would be my honor to fight beside you,Zunieth.”
I didn’t have the opportunity to feel everything I should have felt when I heard those words, not when the wolf rushed us with his black sword, swiping over where our heads had been a moment ago. We instinctively ducked and separated, dividing our attack to draw his attention to two points at once.
The wolf seemed more interested in me, and he issued a flurried dance with his sword that was so fast I wouldn’t have been able to keep up as a mortal with average strength. I was amazed that everyone in my crew had survived this long. I was a match for these demons, but it was still the toughest battle I’d ever fought.
My blade blocked his at every turn, and my footwork was focused and kept me in the right place at the right time. I battled him with my sword but also my position, always keeping my body in a place where I could dodge or deflect if needed. But he was so fast with his blade that all I could do was block, even when he had only one set of arms while the other demon had had two.
But it allowed my father to cause damage, to stab his blade wherever he could get access and let the river of blood flow.
The wolf released a savage howl before he turned back to my father and barreled down on him with all his speed and strength, unleashing lightning-fast maneuvers with his sword that I feared my father wouldn’t be able to match.
But match it, he did.
He met every hit with his sword, sidestepped and ducked the blade at the right times, his stare so focused he didn’t seem to take a breath. He caught the sword in his vambraces once and then sliced the wrist of the wolf in a split second.
