As the demon collapsed onto the ground, I came down hard on the back of his neck, cutting off his head clean.
“Are you okay?” I asked Emberly, panting with my hands on my knees.
She was sweating, most likely from the pain, but her face had a grim look of determination. “Fine,” she growled, and I knew she wasn’t fine. She was in agony, but she would push through it.
“We’ve got company,” Tiny yelled from behind me, where I could see the hound dead at my students’ feet.
Whipping my head to the front door, my stomach fell when I saw the dozen or so assorted demons making their way inside, grins on their faces.
This was a bloodbath, except I knew they wouldn’t kill me. No, they would kill everyone I loved, and take me to fulfill my promise to Lucifer.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Elodie pulling her son into her arms. She knew this wouldn’t end well.
“Take the others and run. We’ll hold them off,” I told her.
Mrs. Greely looked conflicted. She was a teacher and battle trained, but she had patients to protect.
“Go!” I roared at her, and then faced forward.
If I had Sera, I would incinerate these fuckers out of existence until they were all just ash at my feet. Yet, without my soul weapon, I wasn’t as powerful. The demons were fanning out in one big line. Brimstone, Monkshood, Yew demon. They were all here, like Lucifer sent a little collection of them to taunt us.
I couldn’t bear to see any harm come to my students. I had faith that they could handle the Hellhound, but this was another story. They would fall. Every single one of them.
Turning to Emberly, I grasped her arms tightly. “Get my students out of here. It’s me they want, and they won’t kill me. Lucifer needs me.”
Emberly looked like I’d made her smell dog crap. “No way, psycho. We stay and fight.”
I groaned. “You don’t understand. They’ll kill you all and take me back to Hell. Better to let them take me so you guys can walk away with your lives.”
Emberly ripped her arms from my hands, clenching her teeth. “I am a descendent of the Archangel Michael himself. I don’t leave people behind. Ever. And I don’t run from demons.”
Chills broke out on my arms at her declaration. I didn’t even have an ounce of the courage Emberly had when I was fifteen. Or now, for that matter.
Ripping her sword free, she held it out before taking a deep breath, and the light tattoos on her skin swirled like crazy as they danced up and down her body. Suddenly her sword started to glow blue, a blinding Celestial blue, and shards of light began to grow off the sides.
Whoa.
“Build your shield as big as you can and protect the others. I’m going to slice and dice these bitches,” Emberly declared, marching forward.
I wasn’t sure if she was being overly cocky, or if she was in fact capable of doing that. Maybe a little of both. Peering behind me, I saw all eleven of my students had stayed, as well as Scarlet. She stood next to them with her meat cleaver in her hand, nodding at me when I made eye contact. Elodie and her son had left out the back door with the teacher and the injured.
God, please don’t let a single one of these people die tonight.
“If you’re staying, then at least bar the back door!” I told my summer crew.
I had no idea if my text had been received by Lincoln and the crew, or if they even had their phones on them while out on the raid, but that didn’t matter. It was just us now, and more demons were filing in through the open double doors every second.
This was planned. Freaking Lucy planned this! He knew I was hiding here.
I dropped to one knee and held my hands out before me, allowing that silverish mixture of both sides of my power to stream out of my palms, and form a translucent shield. Emberly stood just in front of it, her sword building up more and more blue streaks of light, like a disco ball with shards on it.
“I command you to step back, or meet your death!” Emberly roared. I could imagine her eyes flashing purple as she pushed her control, and a few of the lower-level demons fell backward, away from the advancing line to cower in the corner.
Interesting. Her mind control worked on lower-level demons. Still, that left over a dozen upper-level demons, grinning like psychotic fools and coming right for us.
Raising her sword, Emberly cried out and then brought it down into the gymnasium floor. Shards of blue light shot out of her blade, seeking the nearest demons, and sunk into their flesh like knives.
Pandemonium crashed down onto the gym then. The injured demons roared as the blue light seared their flesh, and the others began to run at my shield like linebackers preparing to tackle.
“Emberly, get behind my shield!” I shouted to the crazy teenager.
She looked like she didn’t want to for a second, then finally slipped behind my shimmering layer of protection, as I worked to thin out just that part and allow her through it.
I had a problem. I could hold and strengthen the shield, or I could hurl my magic at them all and try to kill them. Not both.
My gut instinct was saying to stay with the shield, that if I dropped it and tried to fight, someone would die. I wasn’t going to let anyone perish, so I held firm, pushing everything I had into the wall of protection I’d erected. It spanned the entire width of the room, kissing the walls so no one could pass.
When a Brimstone demon came right up to my face, spewing black smoke from his horns, I had to close my eyes to keep from losing my concentration. The slew of demons slammed into the shield and waves of pressure rippled through my energy, forcing my body to shake with it. But I held.
“You got this.” Emberly stood next to me, and my eyelids snapped open as she placed a hand on my outstretched arm. Blue light seeped from her palm and surrounded my hand, causing an electrical current to rip through me, strengthening my shield.
She’s feeding my power.
“Kill them and bring her to me!” the Brimstone demon called out, just as a gigantic smack rippled against my shield, making it flicker for a brief second.
Tiny. Jones. Marek. Jenkins. Nick. Ray. Every single one of my students’ names flickered through my head in that moment, and I knew if this shield dropped, they were dead. They had done great as a group against one Hellhound, but this? This was a massacre waiting to happen.
Emberly too. She was strong and badass, but I wasn’t sure she could withstand the demon army waiting to devour our small group.
A frustrated cry burst from my lips when my arms started to quiver.
No. I wasn’t letting this happen!
With a groan, I pulled deep inside of me, and brought up everything I had. That jellylike plasma substance I used to protect Lincoln and myself from the Succubus in San Francisco made its appearance again. It flowed from my palms and spread out onto the wall I’d created, reinforcing it, making it thicker and stronger.
Take that, you demon motherfuc—
My thought died out as a Snakeroot demon spat acid right at my face, and the fluid began to slowly eat away at my shield.
Oh shit.
“No!” Emberly cried. More blue light erupted from her palms and coated my arm, and the hole from the Snakeroot’s acid started to patch itself together with her help.
Turning, I faced Emberly. “Please take the others and run. I can’t hold this much longer.”
Her eyes were alight, reminding me of the full moon. It was like she was made of light. She shook her head. “They’ll come after us. You just need to push through this. Hold on a little longer. Help is on the way.”
My brow furrowed. It is? How could she—never mind. Tremors shook my arms from the straining pressure of trying to hold up the damn wall. If I weren’t already on one knee, I would have been by now. A deep throbbing pain was working its way into my limbs as exhaustion pulled at me.
“Everything hurts,” I groaned.
“I know pain. We’re friends, pain and I.” The teenager fed more and more blue light into my arms. “It will pass. Just beyond the place where you think you can’t take any more, there is a numbness. You’ll get there, and the pain will be manageable,” she told me sagely.
A whimper caught in my throat as my hands started to involuntarily lower with fatigue.
Emberly’s hands latched onto mine with a viselike grip. “Brielle.” Her voice was low and controlled. “I don’t want to scare you, but there are over a hundred demons on this campus, and they are all headed this way. If you drop the shield, we’re all dead. I can’t fly in this pain, and I can’t fight off that many. You are our only hope.”
Oh God. She had some kind of telepathic ability or something.
Over a hundred?
Mrs. Greely, the injured….
“They got away,” Emberly informed me, but I knew she might lie to keep me sane right now.
Wait. She could read my mind this entire time and didn’t tell me?
“It’s not polite,” she explained.
I was about to retort when, beyond the translucent wall I’d built, I saw blobs of people walking slowly our way. As they neared and their figures became clearer, my stomach dropped.
“What. The hell. Is that?” I gasped.
It was… a pack of three-headed Hellhounds.
Emberly sighed. “New demons. Lucifer is really cranking them out.”
Without a word, one of the Hellhounds slammed into the wall, and it shook. The other demons, encouraged now, began to batter the wall in unison, and my shield flickered. Burning pain laced up my arms and my knee started to wobble, causing me to fall to the side.
Keeping my hands up, I cried out as I slumped down to sit on my heels. A gap formed on the side of my shield, and a Monkshood demon slipped right through before I could close it again.
Emberly jerked in the direction of the Monkshood demon, who was beelining for my students.
“Don’t make eye contact! He can control your mind,” I shouted behind me, trying my best to hold this damn shield. I wanted to give up—my arms were on fire, and my energy was depleted—but I found that space Emberly spoke of, just beyond the pain. It was a numbness, like she’d said, and it spread through my limbs, momentarily giving me a small measure of relief.