Page 49 of Rescuing Air

Micah dove into the thick of it, his blade moving incredibly fast along with sending out fire balls. I scanned the area, knowing he would be fine for the moment, and saw a group of our people getting overwhelmed by a swarm of demons. These weren’t demon-possessed people, these were straight-up lower-class demons with wings, dive bombing and trying to blind people. With a flick of my wrist, I grabbed a bunch of pebbles and hurled them at the demons, scattering them. Jay always had better luck with this type of demon since he could shoot them in the air but I switched to my smaller dagger, knowing they wouldn’t hurt the non-possessed people. Then I heard the snarl of a higher demon as they skulked in the shadows, the sunlight too much for them to attack us just yet.

“Micah, we got trouble!” I yelled, knowing his fire was the best solution to deal with things quickly. He whipped his head around as I boxed the demons in with rock walls, which was our typical method.

Understanding lit up Micah’s face as he caught on to what I meant. I was trying not to freak out our people since the horror stories of the venomous higher demons were well known in the Elementi. “On it!” Micah answered and charged the rock prison I made, leaping up as I created an opening for him.

Leaving that to him, I returned to dealing with the lesser demons who were wreaking havoc and making it harder for our people to fight those they could win against. Fuck, this was worse than we thought. I hope Parker and Hudson are faring better than we are.

thirty

Hudson

Demons, there had to be actual demons in the mix, didn’t there? The Dark Lord was making use of all that he controlled in this world, not just on those injected with the serum. It made sense that the Elementi helping us couldn’t kill demons the same way we could with just blessed weapons. They needed holy weapons, and they didn’t have those. In reality, there were only a few hundred of them to go around so it wasn’t surprising. The sound of gunfire filled the air as we fought.

We hadn’t been able to catch them off guard, having an open field in between us and them, so they came out charging, ready for a fight. The only good thing about that was I could hear the roars of higher-level demons trapped in the forest, unable to come into the light. It gave the Elementi a fighting chance, while Parker and I went to deal with them. My newly improved weapons shot faster and with the flaming bullets, they were one-hit kills if I hit a vital spot. Winged demons darted around us but I used water to swallow them up into a whirlpool where I could shoot them easier.

Parker moved lightning fast with his double-bladed staff, cutting down our enemy as if they were nothing. It gave me peace of mind that we were paired together since our weapons and fighting style meshed well. The problem we were running into was there were far more to fight against than we anticipated. Were the others dealing with this as well? These groups were not meant as backup. They were equipped to make sure that everyone was dead and stayed that way. The higher demons alone made that clear since they leach the soul right out of you. Memories of when Lailah was attacked by one flashed through my mind, marking the beginning of our journey to this point. That was when the Dark Lord marked her and started to torture her mind with nightmares.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve faced one of these, you ready?” Parker asked as he gripped his staff tighter.

Taking a steadying breath, I nodded. “Let’s do this. The sooner we kill them, the faster we get back to Lailah.”

“Yeah, this was far more intense than I thought we would be dealing with.”

As we entered the forest, we found three higher-level demons prowling about. I created a water whip and sent it slamming into two of them, tossing them back and allowing us space to deal with one at a time. Parker charged forward and dropped to his knees at the last moment, dodging the long-clawed arms of the demon. He sliced up and across, effectively gutting the demon while I sent off as many shots as I could into its skeletal face. To our shock and amazement, the demon burst into smoke and evaporated, returning to Hell.

What once used to take all our power and strength, now was something we could defeat rather efficiently. Never would I say it was easy, but this was a far better outcome than we were used to. The other two recovered from my attack and boxed us in. The most dangerous part of the higher-level demons were the claws. They were attached to long spindly arms that could reach while leaving their bodies a safe distance away. I fired off two shots, watching it stumble back then I pulled on my power, wrapping it up and freezing the water so its arms were trapped at its sides. Never before had I been able to freeze without Jay’s help, but clearly our powers were changing now that the bonding was complete and Lailah had her powers.

Just as I was going to get off another few shots, a body slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. Shoving back with my elbow, it slammed into something hard and a person cried out. There was a shattering sound as the demon broke out of my ice bindings.

Fuck, I need to get this man off me.

Using my power, I tried to shove him off me but it didn’t work, which meant it was a pure human. This also meant my spirit weapon guns wouldn’t work either, and my real gun was trapped on my hip against the ground. Thrashing about, I nailed him again with my elbow but he wouldn’t let up. It was as if he was trying to hold me down long enough for the demon to get me. But that would mean he would steal the soul from this person too. “It’ll kill us both!”

“Hail the Dark Lord. May he reign the world forever,” the man answered.

“Sorry, asshole, that’s just not going to work for me and I’m gonna need you to get off my friend here,” Parker commented from somewhere above me. “Hudson, would you mind shooting that demon while I deal with this prick?”

There was a grunt and the weight of the man on me was gone. Glancing over my shoulder as I got to my feet, I found Parker wrestling the man to the ground in a choke hold. Not wasting any more time, I called on my weapons but instead of my handguns, a large crossbow appeared. If this was anything like Lailah’s, then this was going to be a one-hit-and-done moment for the demon. Sure enough, as the bolt shot out of the crossbow and struck the demon, it exploded. The force of it shook the ground, bringing along with it shrieks of lesser demons as they got swept up in the aftershock.

“Holy shit, dude, why didn’t you use that to begin with?” Parker demanded as he stepped up next to me.

Glancing down at the crossbow and then back up at him, I blinked a few times. “I didn’t even know I could call on it.”

“Well, now that we know you can, let’s skip the pew-pew guns and go for the big boom, alright?” He patted me on the back and started to jog back to the main fight, a reminder to me that this was far from over. We’d just begun.

thirty-one

Micah

Five, there had to be five fucking higher demons running around in this goddamn forest, trying to kill us. For once, I was thankful that Parker pushed us to do this, because if they had run free once the sun went down then way too many people would have died. Higher demons didn’t give a fuck who your allegiance was to, if you were in their reach, they would kill you. I saw it right before my very eyes moments ago. Brayden had trapped two of them for me to deal with but when I was done with the second, I almost impaled myself on one of their clawed hands, jumping down from the stone jail.

Blasting it in the face with fire, I blinded it long enough to get the fuck out of its way and slice its head off. With our power levels where they were at now, it was so much easier to kill the motherfuckers, but getting close enough still took skill. Brayden wasn’t that person, which is why we came up with the method that we were using now years ago. Three down, two more to go, but I couldn’t spot them anywhere, and the sky was getting darker every minute that passed.

“Where the fuck are you ugly bastards?” I grumbled as I pulled up a fireball, trying to get more light into the area.

I heard someone scream from deeper in the woods so I took off running. I found a woman with the claws of the demon piercing her chest as she thrashed, trying to free herself. It was too late to save her but I could stop the demon from taking any more souls tonight. Charging forward at its back, I released my weapons so I could move silently without drawing attention to myself. Leaping, I kicked off the demon’s back as I materialized my blades, removing its head in one swift motion. The demon disintegrated as I dropped back to the ground and made my way over to the woman who was gasping for breath, blood trickling out of her mouth.

“Where... am I?” she managed to get out, her voice garbled with blood.