Complete and total.
They hit the ground resembling statues, eyes wide, mouths open in screams they can’t voice because their lungs won’t move, their muscles won’t respond, their entire existence locked in amber made of the very thing they crave to keep them existing.
The push tears something loose inside my chest. Not a clean pain, a tearing one. It feels as though muscle is being ripped from bone. My breath catches hard, shuddering out of me while heat floods my lungs and refuses to leave.
Something metallic floods my mouth.
I choke on it, copper-thick and unmistakable, and when I swallow it, it only makes the pressure worse. Warm wetness slides from my ears, down my jaw, soaking into my collar, and the world tilts violently to one side. The edges of my vision darken, bleeding inward, shadows smearing across the battlefield. The colors dull, the sounds warp, and beneath it all, something vast and patient presses closer.
Lilith.
Not forcing her way in.
Waiting.
Waiting for the moment I can’t hold the line anymore.
Her presence surges, trying to take advantage of my weakness.
“Let me in! You’re killing yourself! Stop this madness and let me—”
“No!” I scream, pushing her back. Forcing her down. Not gone, never gone, but contained. A partnership instead of a possession, even though every second of resistance feels as if I’m holding my hand in an open flame.
My Crimson Sight shifts, focusing on the demon-possessed humans.
These ones hurt worse. Because beneath the black-eyed parasites wearing their flesh, I see their humanity. Their real selves, trapped and screaming, forced to watch their bodies commit atrocities they’dneverchoose.
The nurse in me recoils.
The Blood Witch in me knows whathasto be done.
I weave my Bloodfire carefully this time, threading it through the possessed with surgical precision. Not the all-consuming inferno Lilith wants to unleash. Something more controlled. Morehuman.The kind of fire that burns away infection while leaving healthy tissue intact.
My flames erupt in twelve simultaneous locations, wrapping around the demon-possessed in cocoons of luminous light. The demons inside them shriek, their otherworldly voices cutting across dimensions in frequencies that make me rattle. They claw at the fire, trying to dig deeper into their hosts, to use human flesh as shields against my magic.
I don’t let them.
My Bloodfire intensifies, burning hotter, brighter, focused with an intensity I didn’t know I possessed. And instead of consuming the humans, it does something else.
It purifies.
Their demonic essence burns away like morning fog under harsh sunlight. The black fades from their eyes. Their bodies stop jerking in unnatural movements. And as the flames die down, leaving the humans gasping but alive, my magic does one more thing.
It heals them.
Not just purges the demons.
Actually heals the damage possession caused.
Rebuilds torn muscle.
Mends shattered bones.
Returns their human vitality instead of leaving them as broken shells that need Jet’s wraith form to carry them to safety.
Because I’m not just a Blood Witch.
I’m a nurse.
