A shaft of ice into my brain. Words.
Mine mine mine,the demon thought.
My arm was behind me now, stretching me out between Mainet and the demon.
The blade ripped from Mainet.
I slashed the shadow-flesh with the Mughal blade. There was little resistance. He was here and not here. Even steel created to withstand death and coated with the blood of the Heir couldn’t cut through demonic smoke. It parted and reformed around the cut. He clasped me against him. I caught a glimpse of Molly. She was free.Ahhh. Free because the demon had let go of her death magics, taking me as his sacrifice.
He had shaken his finger free of Gramma when she was shot. As she fell.
Jane. Jane is your name,his thoughts sang into my brain, ringing like broken bells. Jane Doe Yellowrock. Ahhh. Dalonige’i Digadoli. Yeeesss. I choose you.He pulled on my skinwalker energies, the silver mist with dark motes exploding out of me.
No. Is not Jane. Is I/we. IsBeast! Is Eli! Is three!
Beast wrenched our magic back inside of us. I/we shoved the Glob into the smoky shadowed cavern of the demon’s chest. I/we slashed with the Mughal blade. Together, Beast and I pulled on the power ofle breloque. The crown sizzled against the horrible cold and scalding heat.
The building rocked.
The angel statue fell and shattered, white stone shards, sharp as knives, shooting out.
Something splashed onto my face. Eli. Holy water. The demon roared. Shook my body.
Visions of war exploded through my brain. Men fighting with wood and stone spears and rock hammers. Blood spraying across fields in a blood sacrifice to the Earth. Then metal blades. Spears pierced. Swords cleaved. Axes cut. Blood everywhere. War with guns. Explosions. Fire and rockets. And always blood drenching the land. Land that sucked it up. Land that devoured hate and dark purpose and the blackness of deeds along with the blood.
The Glob burst into black flames. I cut the smoke with the brittle, broken blade. I struck again. Again. The slashingof the blackened steel separated the shadows for an instant, like a sharp wind tears fog. Holy water splattered through the opening. The Glob heated. Sucked up the damaged shadow. A whirlwind of smoky energies tore around us three. Through us.
My scalp scalded. My hand seared. Eli screamed a war cry pierced with pain.
It wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough.
The demon cursed in words that sliced like knives. Words thatwereknives. The specific stench of my blood mixed with the smell of Lachish’s blood. Ka’s. Grandmother’s. The rotten meat scent ofu’tlun’tablood. A different kind of Rule of Three, but enough were dead or damaged beyond participating.
The smell of feces and urine and vomit. The clean smell of holy water.
Nitrocellulose from fired weapons.
The taste of dark magic like rotten lemons and maggoty meat on my tongue. The stench of demon, the reek of hell and brimstone.
The desecrated church was permeated by the darkness and the might of the demon. Death and demon energies rolled out like shock waves into the building. The earth rocked and quaked.
Everything slowed until I could see it all. Time almost standing still.
I looked down to see my left hand holding the Glob. A dark pocket of night opened from it. A thing so foreign to our universe it had no name, a thing of no matter. No energy. The nothingness grew wider and longer, the center empty, a void of no-time, no-space, so dark I couldn’t see it clearly. The nothingness intensified, forming a spear of power so black it appeared to blink here and then away.Le breloquewrapped might and power around the Glob’s void. Gave it form and shape and mass/no mass, a thing I understood, yet didn’t, all at once.
With the hand holding the Glob, I threw the spear.
It flew into the demon’s smoky flesh.
The pointed end of the spear opened like a clawedhand, like my own clawed hand in the strongest of my half-form shapes. It gripped the smoke.
With a scream that shattered the night, the will of my spirit and the power of the Glob yanked on the demon energies. A whirlwind of churning power, a tornado of blackness, and the smoke of demon flesh. Coiled it into a knot and began to shove it into the pocket world of the Glob. The demon raised me over his head and slapped me down.
I landed hard across the broken angel statue near the altar where Lachish was tied.
My ribs shattered.
