Mentored in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

“All dead,” Cahal called up.

It isn’t a continuous stream of enemy from back here, Darius thought. We’ve dispatched them. There is likely nowhere to escape to in that direction. We must leave this way, or not at all.

“Oh, we’re leaving.” I rolled my neck and took a second, studying what was in front of me, like I might any spell. “It’s really not so different,” I mused, tracing the magic with my eyes, feeling it, noticing the complexities of the construction. “I have to break it down all at once, like tearing off a Band-Aid, and then attack before they can get their bearings.”

“What can we do?” Emery asked. His arm brushed mine, and a zing of magic worked through me. It reminded me of taking down that massive spell at the Mages’ Guild when we somehow merged our power and were able to tag-team a robust spell to bring it down.

The pyramid of power…

I put out my hands. Emery’s rough fingers wrapped around my right wrist. Penny’s hand filled my other hand. Usually I would shrug it off and tell her to grab me in a not-so-friend-friend place, but, well, if she wanted to hold hands, I owed her that.

Plus of a lot of dead things.

Electricity rolled across me, and our magic swelled, filling the space and beyond.

“Wow, you boosted your power,” Emery said as he pushed up to analyze the spell.

I punched holes through weak parts of the construction, spurting fire through them, while Penny and Emery worked on a spell. She bent to look at a section, and Emery let go of my wrist to hook his arm through mine and waggle his fingers. In a moment, I felt their magic join together, and then it joined mine as I continued to poke holes in all the weak areas.

“Thank you, you vile little creature, for bequeathing me your magic…” Penny muttered, and I knew she was talking about the Red Cap that she’d stolen the godly magic from. The demons’ air wall blackened from the middle, the damage working outward like spiderwebbing glass. A hole developed and started growing.

I pushed the fire through faster, my own secret sauce aiding the dual-mages’ combined efforts—the three of us tearing the wall down.

Emery flinched beside me.

“What?” I asked.

“Something’s…coming. My…” He paused again.

“His premonition.” Penny’s breathing came faster.

“A large demon with black wings, followed by a black dragon…” Emery said. “I keep getting it, over and over. It isn’t immediate death, but—”

“My father. Shit. He’s coming.” I glanced back for Cahal. His eyes were flat and hard.

Go, he thought. You cannot get caught.

“How’s your pain tolerance?” I asked through gritted teeth, working faster, feeling the enemy trying to rebuild. They were building a new wall of air down the way, too, knowing they only had to delay us, not stop us.

“I look like a cue ball, how do you think?” Penny asked. “We have something that helps.”

“Great.” I shook them off and pushed forward, the edges of the fraying wall catching me but not hurting. It was my magic; of course it wouldn’t hurt.

Penny grunted. No one else made a sound.

I reached the first line of demons like a falling star, anger exploding out of me in bursts of complex, incredibly powerful magic. I slashed and struck, summoning fire from the ground and reaching into ten of the weaker demons and grabbing control.

Kill… I commanded them, turning them on one another, their swords swinging, arms and chunks of flesh flying. Blood spattered me and a demon crashed to the ground on the right, Penny’s spell taking half its face off. Large bodies fell on the left, Emery’s fighting having always been wicked.

Darius pushed up beside me as I used air to shove the demons in front of us into a funnel, letting us fight a dozen at a time instead of the whole host. His swampy, whitish vampire form hissed, and he burst into action, ripping and tearing with his claws and magic. He lunged forward and tore into a demon’s neck, drinking while he was there, and then picked it up and threw it ahead of us.

Penny exploded it in midair.

“Good grief, Penny, he was already dying,” I said, working my hellfire in bursts, needing to keep firm control over my energy. I couldn’t fade like I had at the elves’ castle. This time, I had to make it through to the end. We all did.

“And now he is decorating our enemy, isn’t he?” she said.

“I think I just got lady wood,” I said with a grin as I activated my air sword and skewered a demon. I blasted fire down the way and held the air funnel, fighting against those trying to tear it down.

Ten more demons turned against their peers, aiding Darius’s rip-and-tear-fest to my right. Spells were lobbed over us, vicious and deadly, leaving ribbons of flesh by the time we got closer.