I grabbed the violet crystal around my neck. “Ori vis siderea!”
A crackling, multi-hued sphere appeared in my hand and I hurled it at her as she lunged for me. It burst against her wrist, knocking her arm back. The weapon dropped from her numb, magic-stained hand.
“Ori vis siderea!”
A second orb manifested in my palm, and I chucked it at her face. It hit her in the forehead.
I yanked a fall spell from around my neck. “Ori decidas!”
As I leaped for her, crystal extended in my reaching arm, she threw herself back and kicked out. Her boot caught my hip, and my dive turned into an awkward fall. I crashed down on her legs.
She seized my wrist and slammed it on the pavement. The activated artifact flew out of my hand.
Desperate to keep her too busy to mind-control me, I threw myself into her.
We rolled across the ground. The hard parts of her body—fists, elbows, knees—were finding all the soft spots in mine, but I kept grabbing her, trying to pin her down. Her fist connected with my jaw and my vision went white. The world spun, and my chin hit the pavement, her knee driving into my back. She grabbed my right arm and wrenched it behind me.
I screamed as agony tore through my shoulder. Twisting away from her, I pushed up with one hand, shaking uncontrollably.
Her arm looped around my neck from behind and clamped tight.
As she pulled me into her, she caught my good wrist and bent my arm behind my back, locking me in place on my knees. My other arm hung limply, a nuclear inferno of agony burning through my shoulder.
“Look,” she hissed in my ear.
Magic flashed and danced, the air rippling with the heat rising from Alistair’s snaking lines of lava. The silver war hammer, splattered with blood, lay abandoned on the ground. Girard scrabbled at his belt for an artifact as he limped sideways, almost stepping in a molten fissure. Tabitha darted back and forth in front of a demon, flicking ice shards in its face.
Aaron had one arm around Kai’s chest, the electramage sagging in his hold. He held a fistful of Drew’s shirt in the other hand and was dragging the unconscious telekinetic away. Ezra, one of his swords missing the last few inches of the blade, faced a demon alone.
“They’re all going to die,” Xanthe crooned. “Just like everyone in Enright died. Xever was waiting in the underground temple. When the time was right, he had Nazhivēr slaughter them all like the brainless cattle they were.”
I fought for air, my mouth gaping.
“These are First House demons. The most powerful of them all—except for a female demon, of course.”
My lungs screamed for air. My head spun, sparks flashing behind my eyes.
“Stop fooling around,” she called, “and finish them off!”
The three demons glanced at her, then faced their outmatched human foes once more.
Xanthe’s constricting arm loosened enough for me to gasp in a tiny breath. “Don’t die yet,” she purred in my ear. “Watch your beloved die first.”
I sucked in another wisp of air—then threw my head back, smashing my skull into her nose.
She gasped and jerked away. Wrenching my wrist free, I grabbed the purple crystal resting against my chest—and with my injured arm, I reached for her neck. Agony burst through my shoulder, blurring my vision, but I didn’t stop.
“Ori vis siderea!” I gasped.
As my weak fingers scraped across her neck and caught on her infernus chains, I smashed the arcana orb into her sternum.
It exploded, throwing her backward—and I tore the demonic pendants over her head.
Her furious scream rang out as I whirled around. Her weight crashed into me from behind, and I slammed down. As she lunged for my wrist, I whipped my arm back—
And hurled the infernus pendants.
They arced through the air, crimson light creating a violent backdrop to their graceful flight, then plunged into a wide crack in the pavement where glowing lava bubbled.
The silver discs plopped into the lava, floating on top of the dense fluid. The metal edges charred, then the medallions melted into silver puddles.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As one, the three demons went completely, unnaturally still. Their magma stares were blank, their bodies as motionless as flesh statues.
“N-no,” Xanthe stammered. “No!”
Aaron leaped over a cooling lava fissure. Sharpie’s blade glowed red with heat, flames licking the steel. He swung the weapon at the nearest demon’s neck. The super-heated blade passed clean through flesh and bone.
The demon’s headless body collapsed to the ground with a dull, heavy thud.
Xanthe’s weight vanished from my back. Her shoes scuffed across the ground, then broke into a pounding run. I lurched up—and gagged as agony burned through my shoulder. Half blind with pain, I broke into a run, my blurred vision locked on her.
The gap between us widened. She was escaping.
She skidded to a halt. Her arms flew up, and she cringed backward. “No!”
Terror laced her high-pitched cry. My steps slowed, my gaze jolting over the dark, empty street for whatever was scaring her.
Then I saw them—the mob of combat-geared mythics streaming toward us.
For a terrifying instant, I thought they were cult reinforcements. Then I saw the woman at the head of the line, her long ponytail swinging with each step and a silver badge displayed on her chest.
Agent Lienna Shen. And the mythics with her—
“Pandora Knights!” she called. “Take the west side. Odin’s Eye, take the east. SeaDevils, set up a triage immediately.”
I stood in the center of the street, numb with disbelief as thirty mythics sprinted past me on either side, rushing toward the flashes of magic, booming bursts of power, and cries of pain that still echoed from the battlefield behind me.
They sped past, and then it was just me … and Xanthe. The cult leader cringed where she stood, hands gripping her head and fingers digging into her skull.
A footstep crunched, the sound almost lost in the weak patter of rain, and I
