It spasmed. Its flailing limbs slammed into the hallway walls sending shards of the metal studs flying in every direction.
Damn it. I had to get it away from the women I was trying to rescue. Canceling the lightning tat, I took a couple of steps toward the demon until I was even with the door to my recent prison. I could lure the demon outside where I could deal with it.
Turning, I was surprised to see Tess still in the chair I had vacated.
I fired off another energy blast, just to keep the demon’s attention on me, and then stepped into the room and hurried to Tess.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m just tired. That spell took a lot out of me,” Tess said. Her voice was surprisingly weak.
I expanded my shield to surround both of us. I placed a finger under Tess’s chin and lifted her face to study her.
Hell, she looked over fifty.
“Damn it, Tess. What were you doing messing with that spell? Never mind, I need to lure this demon away from your Aunts while I deal with it.”
I lifted the crossbow from her hands and then took a good grip on her left bicep. I triggered my levitation tat and we floated up out of the hole Beast had torn in the ceiling.
Beast and Maia were waiting.
I dropped my shield and lifted Tess onto Maia’s back. “You two get clear of the building. A fretha demon is right behind me. Wait for my signal to return.”
“You got it, Rafe,” Beast growled and leapt into the air.
“No, wait,” Tess said. “I can help.”
“You’ve done enough, Apprentice. Now move back out of range while you recover your strength. There’s a ley line a couple of miles west of here. Maia, take her that way until she recovers.”
“As you wish,” Maia said as she leapt to follow Beast.
A massive hand closed on my calf, and I was yanked back into the building.
The fretha demon held me upside down in front of it while it laughed. “Caught you, Raphael. That was too easy.”
I still held Tess’s crossbow in my left hand. I twisted to point it at the demon and fired from a couple feet away.
The bolt embedded itself fletchings deep in the demon’s chest.
With a roar of pain, it released my leg.
I triggered my shield and levitation tattoo and spun around to land softly on my feet in front of the demon. It pawed at the shaft, but the wood broke off in its huge fingers.
Well, I guessed I wasn’t going to get that broadhead back.
I slung the crossbow and bent to draw my knife from its sheath in my boot. It was odd that Frazier and Armstrong hadn’t bothered to relieve me of it, but I guess Frazier didn’t expect me to get out of her circle.
Standing again, I spoke the release spell, and my knife assumed its original katana form.
The fretha demon had stopped trying to get the quarrel out of its chest and was raising a fist to pound me into the floor. I stepped to the side as its fist came down and slashed my blade down the front of its right thigh.
My stroke sliced twenty or so pounds of muscle from the demon’s quadriceps.
It roared in pain and threw a backhand at me. My shield caught the blow, but it drove me through the outer wall and onto a paved area between the hangars.
I got to my feet and shook myself.
The demon had fallen but was already trying to stand.
I caught sight of the sky past the hangar’s curved roof. To the east, the sky was gray.
I had to finish with this distraction.
I pointed my katana at the demon and said, “You can’t best me, demon. Surrender, and I’ll banish you without causing you any more pain.”
“I’m not done with you, yet, Wanderer,” the fretha demon growled.
I couldn’t remember what I had done the last time we fought, but I must have really pissed it off.
“Have it your own way,” I said.
I raised my left and triggered the tat I didn’t want to use.
Black energy flowed out from my palm. Undulating like some great black snake, the spell’s power reached out for the demon.
The demon’s eyes widen as it saw the blackness. It began a spell, but it never got a chance to finish it.
The black energy rolled around the demon and began dissolving its flesh as it did. The demon screamed in pain and fear. Panicking, it began to slap at the blackness as though it were a fire that it could put out. Each time its hands struck, flesh dissolved from its palms. By the third blow with each, the bones were visible in its hands. On the fourth blow, its fingers dissolved.
I walked to the demon, raising my sword over my head. It stared up at me and screamed, “Mercy, Wanderer! Mercy!”
“As you wish,” I said and brought the blade down in a sweeping motion that cleaved the demon’s head from its shoulders.
I canceled the night magic spell, and the corrupting energy flowed back into my tattoo.
I shook excess demon fluids from my blade and then activated my fire tat long enough to burn away any remaining shreds of the demon. Walt had told me that demons don’t really travel here in the flesh, so to speak, but are protoplasm manifestations of their bodies created when the summoner completes the ritual. That’s why the demon had been able to remember me from another time. In slaying its “body,” I had actually been sending its spirit back to its own plane of existence, be that another dimension or hell. I had granted it mercy, regardless of appearances.
I restored my sword to its knife form and slid the tantō back into its boot sheath.
“What the hell was that?”
Looking up, I saw Emily and Ashley standing in the doorway I’d made
