Marcus staggered. Didn’t fall. Threw the broken-wristed enforcer into her companion with enough force to crack the wall behind them.
The third enforcer pulled her blade free, Marcus’s blood smoking on the obsidian. She raised it for a killing stroke.
Hazel’s magic detonated.
She didn’t choose it. Didn’t shape it or direct it the way Marcus had taught her. The purple light erupted from her core, raw, wild, furious, and the enforcer simply ceased to exist. Not disintegrated. Not burned. Ceased. One moment a person stood there; the next, the space was empty and the air smelled of ozone and lilacs.
The two remaining enforcers scrambled backward. One was cradling her shattered wrist. The other looked at the empty space where her partner had stood and made a sound that might have been a prayer.
That’s when Azrael transformed.
The small black cat expanded. Shadows poured from him like liquid night, pooling and rising and taking shape. In seconds, he stood eight feet tall: a creature of living darkness with eyes like dying stars and a mouth full of geometries that shouldn’t exist in three dimensions. His tail alone was longer than Marcus was tall, barbed at the tip with something that caught the light and refused to give it back.
This was what he truly was. Not a familiar. Not a pet. Something ancient and terrible that had chosen to wear a cat’s form for reasons only it understood.
The enforcers ran. They didn’t look back.
Azrael shrank back to cat size, padded over to Marcus, and butted his head against Marcus’s hip. “You’re bleeding.”
“Noticed.” Marcus pressed his hand to his side. The black veins had spread across his ribs, visible through his torn shirt. The obsidian poison was different from last time, refined, nastier. Designed for demons. “How bad?”
“Bad enough.” Hazel was already kneeling beside him, hands glowing purple. She pressed them to the wound and felt thepoison fight her. It was like trying to push water uphill; the obsidian enchantment ate at her healing magic, corroding it from the inside. “The blade was cursed. This isn’t just obsidian, it’s been treated with something. Anticoagulant enchantment.”
“Viktor’s been refining his weapons.” Marcus’s voice was tight. “Specifically for demons. He expected me to come.”
She pushed harder. The poison retreated, slowly, grudgingly, like a predator forced from its kill. She couldn’t purge it completely. Not here, not with salvaged supplies and exhaustion pulling at her edges. But she could slow it. Buy time.
“Can you walk?”
“Can you stop asking me that every time I get stabbed?” He tried to smile. It came out more like a grimace.
She got him upright. He leaned on her, heavier than he wanted to be, and they surveyed the damage. The ruins of Wicked Brews. Marcus’s blood on the broken glass. An empty space where a person used to be.
Hazel found the first-aid supplies she’d brought from the cabin and set up a makeshift treatment station in the alley behind the shop. The wall was still warm from the fire. She worked by the purple glow of her own magic. Cut away Marcus’s shirt. Got blood on her sleeve, swore, kept working. Cleaned the wound. Packed it with the anti-venom paste she’d made after the last obsidian attack. Her hands were shaking, and she had to redo the bandage when it went on crooked.
“The poison’s moving slower than it should,” she said, watching the black veins pulse. “Your demon healing is fighting it.”
“Demon stubbornness.” He caught her hand. “We need a plan.”
“I have a plan. Keep you alive. Keep Lily’s tonic coming. Find every murraue in Willowbrook and send them back to whatever dimension Viktor summoned them from.”
“That’s three plans.”
“I’m an overachiever.” She pressed a fresh bandage against his wound, harder than necessary. “Five days until trial. We hold.”
From the shadows of the alley, Azrael watched the street. His eyes, ordinary amber again, nothing ancient or terrible about them, tracked movements that human and demon eyes couldn’t see.
“They’ll be back.” The familiar’s ears were flat. “With more people and better weapons.”
“I know.” Hazel tied off the bandage and sat back on her heels. Her hands were shaking. “So we’d better be ready.”
Somewhere on the other side of town, something screamed. Could have been Lily Henderson. Could have been a fox. In Willowbrook these days, it was hard to tell.
18
The Willowbrook CommunityHall smelled like decades of potluck dinners and floor polish. Hazel stood at the front of the room, facing twenty-three folding chairs. Eleven were occupied. The rest stared at her like accusations.
She’d spent the morning making calls. Every client, every neighbour, every supernatural in her contact list.Come to the community hall. We need to talk about what’s happening to our town.Some had hung up. Some hadn’t answered. Some had answered and said nothing, the silence louder than any refusal.
