Her body flailed helplessly as I forced her to swallow the potion, and tears pricked at my eyes as she screamed beneath me.
Her voice shattered in and out, mixing with the voice of the creature as the potion worked its magic.
After several long moments, she stopped struggling, and I released her.
I scrambled away from her, my heart pounding and my chest heaving with the effort of our struggle.
She lay so still that, for a moment, I worried she was dead.
The voices of my people continued to chant and ring out around us, and I took comfort in the warm, golden hum of magic.
My friendship chain that connected me to Willow was rusted and tattered. It hung limp between us, and fear like I’d never known before welled in my chest as I waited.
Please work, please work…
After a long, pregnant moment, her body twitched.
The momentary excitement I felt was replaced with terror as I realized the thing that was moving her body wasn’t Willow but the parasite that had infected her.
Her mouth opened wide, and long, white fingers reached out of her mouth, curling around her cheeks like a spider’s legs as the abomination pulled itself out of her body.
Black ink and blood spurted out of Willow’s mouth as a bone-white, skeletal thing oozed out of her. Wet, half-formed wings unfurled behind it as it tore itself out of my friend’s body.
It was smaller than a fully grown person, and it had sharp edges and paper-like skin. Strings of wet, copper hair hung from its skull-like head as it turned eyeless holes to me.
“What… the… FUCK!” I screamed as it threw itself at me in a flurry of sharp bone and sinew.
“Hecate!” I heard Gabe’s voice, and instinctively, I reached behind me to catch the scepter he had launched into the circle.
The scepter passed easily through the protective barrier of the witchwood, and I caught it.
Its energy rushed up my arm with the force of a hurricane, and time slowed as I drew it behind me.
I felt like I was moving in slow motion as the half-formed angel attacked. As if someone else were in charge of my body,I brought the scepter down on the creature’s skull, and an explosion of black liquid erupted from its cranium as the bone collapsed.
The creature went down, but I didn’t stop.
I slammed the scepter into it repeatedly as it screeched in agony beneath my relentless blows.
I beat it over and over again, anger and hatred for this thing that had hurt my friend taking over my actions.
I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t think.
I could only destroy.
This was not what I was about. I didn’t destroy things. Imadethings. I believed in harmony and community—not mindless destruction.
But this thing had threatened the very core of my being, and it needed to be killed so that the natural way of things could be returned.
So, I allowed the violent need to destroy to take me over as I unmade this thing that had been created with the sole purpose of wiping out my people.
Over and over again, I beat the angel with Gabriel’s scepter until the screaming stopped, and the only sounds left were the wet squelch of my weapon tearing into the now-still lump of bone and flesh.
The chanting had stopped, and only my ragged breaths filled the room by the time I was done.
I was covered in inky angel blood and panting hard as I came back to myself.
